|
|
|
More "Quill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tedious, owing to his weakness, the rough country, and the deepening snow. Towards noon he came upon the newly made track of a porcupine, followed it a short distance into a clump of trees, where he soon saw the round quill-covered animal in the snow and shot it. Immediately he built a fire, and singed off quills and hair. Then, as he related to me afterwards, he considered, talking aloud to himself, what was best to do ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... struck her that she would send for Braintop—telegraphing that expenses would be paid, and that he must come with a good quill. "It goes faster," she whispered, suggesting the pent-up torrent, as it were, of blackest ink in her breast that there was to pour forth. A very cunning postscript to the telegram brought Braintop almost as quick to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were my numbers; who could take offence, 145 While pure Description held the place of Sense? Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme, A painted mistress, or a purling stream. Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;— I wish'd the man a dinner, and sat still. 150 Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret; I never answer'd,—I was not in debt. If want provok'd, or madness made them print, I wag'd no war ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... living there; but of which one would like to have had king Dietrich's opinion. Did he felicitate himself like a simple Teuton, on the wonderful learning and eloquence of his Greek-Roman secretary? Or did he laugh a royal laugh at the whole letter, and crack a royal joke at Cassiodorus and all quill-driving schoolmasters and lawyers—the two classes of men whom the Goths hated especially, and at the end to which they by their pedantries had brought imperial Rome? One would like to know. For not only was ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... halt dupe hurl musk pomp malt tune turn rusk romp salt flute churn stung long waltz plume hurt pluck song swan glue curl drunk strong wasp droop deck chill for sheath gloom neck drill corn shell loop next quill fork shorn hoof text skill form shout roof desk spill sort shrub proof ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... he related the story to me. "The friend who had promised to create a vacancy for me in his office ordered his chief clerk to lock the safe and send for the police when he heard of my antecedents. He invited me to dinner, but candidly told me that a rifle was more in my line than a quill." ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... portrait, as a necessary consequence, disappoints everybody, the sitter always included. When we wish to judge of a man's character by his handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common workaday pen, not his best small-text, traced laboriously with the finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting, which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of character recognizably presented to ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... five minutes I set to work, and in a few more, to my intense satisfaction—for I felt nervous—the thing was done, and I had extracted a piece of wood half an inch long, and as thick as a small quill. Then Guest and I carefully washed the wound over and over again in a solution of carbolic acid, and in half an hour the hand was bound up pro tem. Poor Yorke bore the pain without the twitching of an eyelid, ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... spirit Mahjahn, v. march on Mahzhenahegun, n. a book, paper, &c. Mahjemunedoo, n. an evil spirit, or the devil Mahzhenenee, n. an image Mahskemoodance, n. satchel Mahkahday, n. powder, or black Megwon, n. a feather, quill Mekun, n. a road Mejim, n. food Mezhusk, n. hay, weed, grass Menesis, n. hair, of the head Mequom, n. ice Metig, n. a tree Mesheh, n. fire-wood Metigmahkuk, n. a trunk Meowh, only, the one to whose Minjemeneshin, ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... downwards and inwards, and are tipped with white. The two middle tail feathers, instead of being simply elongated and deprived of their webs, are transformed into stiff black ribands, a quarter of an inch wide, but curved like a split quill, and resembling thin half cylinders of horn or whalebone. When a dead bird is laid on its back, it is seen that these ribands take a curve or set, which brings them round so as to meet in a double circle on the neck of the bird; but when they hang downwards, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... putrify, in order to obtain afterwards a four-fold price?—what is the half-naked soldier who takes your garment away with his sword, to the lawyer, who takes your whole estate from you with a goose's quill, without any claim or bond upon it?—and what is the pickpocket who takes five pounds, to the cogger of dice who will cheat you of a hundred in the third part of a night?—and what is the jockey who tricks you in some old unsound horse, to the ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... and darted off up the opposite slope. He had failed to secure his prize, but it was wonderful how so large a bird could slip through the network of branches and extricate himself without striking a quill ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... expand in the evening, and are sweet-scented. They are produced along the margins of the broad, flat, deeply-notched branches, the serratures being rounded instead of angled, as in some of the kinds. The tube of the flower is long and slender, no thicker than a goose quill, and covered with reddish scales; the petals are spreading, and form a cup 6 in. across; they are narrow, pointed, and pure white, the outer whorl, as well as the sepals, being tinged on the under side with a tawny colour. The stamens form a large cluster in the centre, ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... in a hurried, perfunctory voice, put questions to the Lugareno; the clerk scratched with a large quill ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... Apologize. I'll hint at it ... in verse; And, to be sure that Rosalind reads it through, I'll make it an appendix to my will!" —Still cynical, you see. He couldn't help it. He had seen much, felt much. He snapped the snuff box, Shook his white periwig, trimmed a long quill pen, And then began to write, most carefully, These couplets, in the ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... I receive are preceded by a volume of some sort or other, as a token of my new acquaintance being a regularly initiated member of the fraternity of the quill. In two or three instances, I have been surprised at subsequently discovering that the regular profession of the writer is arms, or some other pursuit, in which one would scarcely anticipate so strong a devotion to letters. In short, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... gods are represented with beautiful embroidered pouches, each of a different pattern. In old days the most beautiful things in art the Navajo knew of were the porcupine quill embroideries of the northern races. The art of garnishing with quills, and later with beads, seems never to have been practiced to any extent by the Navajo women. They obtained embroideries of the Ute and other northern tribes, and their ancient legends abound ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... the savage old hetchel was doing duty behind the old churner when he sulked and pulled back so as to stop the churning machine. It was hetcheling wool then instead of flax. The flax was spun on a quill which ran by the foot and the quills or spools holding the thread were used in a shuttle when the cloth was woven. The old loom stood in the hog-pen chamber, and there Mother wove her linen, her rag carpets, ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... the color of the prepared liquid. (2) Put a drop on the finger; then wash it off at once. (3) Dip a quill or piece of white silk into it; then wash off the acid. What color is imparted to animal substances? (4) Add a little to a few bits of Cu turnings, or to a Cu coin. Write the equation. (5) To 2 cc.indigo solution, add 2 cc. HNO3. State the leading properties ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... with a quill pen and blue ink, and never, I think, used a lead pencil. His handwriting was considered extremely difficult to read by many people, but I never found it so. In his manuscripts there were so many erasures, and such frequent ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... one is speaking, and the grating of the clerks' quill pens against the paper is the only sound which disturbs the silence of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles in all directions that defied attack. In his youth One Eye had once sniffed too near a similar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tail flick out suddenly in his face. One quill he had carried away in his muzzle, where it had remained for weeks, a rankling flame, until it finally worked out. So he lay down, in a comfortable crouching position, his nose fully a foot away, and out of the line of the tail. Thus he waited, keeping ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... its structure from all existing members of the class of Birds. This extraordinary Bird (fig. 182) appears to have been about as big as a Rook—the tail being long and extremely slender, and composed of separate vertebrae, each of which supports a single pair of quill-feathers. In the flying Birds of the present day, as before mentioned, the terminal vertebrae of the tail are amalgamated to form a single bone ("ploughshare-bone"), which supports a cluster of tail-feathers; and the tail itself is short. In the embryos of existing Birds the tail is long, and ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... this narrative. These hunters, unerring in their aim to prostrate the buffalo on his plain, or to bring down the geese and swans from the clouds, thought little of any other use of the gray goose quill, than ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... last a goose; I lay my life on't you are wrong, To raise me by such foul abuse; My quill you'll find's a woman's tongue; And slit, just like a bird will chatter, And like a bird do something more; When I let fly, 'twill so bespatter, I'll ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... were, by the way, exceedingly interested in the records of my daily life, sensations, &c., which I had written in blood in the margins of my little Bible whilst on the island in Timor Sea. About this time I tried to make some ink, having quill pens in plenty from the bodies of the wild geese; but the experiment ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... pen. Agamemnon had a steel one, but Solomon John said, "Poets always used quills." Elizabeth Eliza suggested that they should go out to the poultry-yard and get a quill. But it was already dark. They had, however, two lanterns, and the little boys borrowed the neighbors'. They set out in procession for the poultry-yard. When they got there, the fowls were all at roost, so they could ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... rake-handle, although they do not always exhibit great artistic genius, often display vast originality of design. For instance, one contained on the face a diagram (done in ink with the wrong end of a quill) of the pons asinorum, with the rather belligerent inscription, 'REMEMBER NAPOLEON AT LODI.' On the reverse was the head of an extremely doubtful-looking individual viewing 'his natural face in a glass.' Inscription,—'O ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... is derived from {kleios}, glory, or from {kleio}, to celebrate. She is generally represented under the form of a young woman crowned with laurel, holding in her right hand a trumpet, and in her left a book: others describe her with a lute in one hand, and in the other a plectrum, or quill. ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... entering a house, were ushered into a cool, lofty room, where there were a lot of mahogany desks, and a single old clerk, who resembled a last year's dried lemon, with some few drops of acid juice for blood, perched up on a hard stem of a high stool, with four or five quill pens, like so many thorns, sticking out ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... about thirty feet they stopped, and found themselves facing a ponderous door, studded and barred with iron. Caspar took from his pocket a key about the size of a goose quill, felt about for a moment, and then with a slight movement of finger and thumb threw back a dozen ponderous bolts with a great echoing clang; the door slowly opened, and they entered a narrow vaulted passage of stone. Lord Charles took the lamp from Caspar, and led the way ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... to get a footing in a magazine where one would care to appear. There are not many authors whose sole dependence is a goose-quill. Call over the well-known men; they are all something else before they are authors. Your pot-boilers are sure of a market; pictures have become articles of furniture, indispensable to people of taste, and everybody has a taste now-a-days. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... sole pen I writ this book, Made of a grey goose-quill; A pen it was when it I took, And a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... still sturdy. Maskew called 31 and 41, and Elzevir 40 and 50, and then I looked at the candle, and saw that the head of the pin was no longer level, it had sunk a little—a very little. The clerk awoke from his indifference, and was making notes of the bids with a squeaking quill, the bailiff frowned as being puzzled, and thinking that none had a right to puzzle him. As for me, I could not sit still, but got on my feet, if so I might better bear the suspense; for I understood now that Maskew had made up his mind ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... or gutter. Canalis. Baret. Tuyau, apipe, quill, cane, reed, canell. Cotgrave. Canelle, the faucet [l.68] or quill of a wine vessel; also, the cocke, or spout ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... (Ligulatae) is represented by two very distinct families: the smaller club mosses (Selaginelleae) and the quill-worts (Isoeteae). Of the former the majority are tropical, but are common in greenhouses where they are prized for their delicate moss-like foliage ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... went To the Lord at the head of the Government, Who made him, by a stroke of a quill, BARON ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... who sing or say In sonnet sad or sermon chill, "Alas, alack, and well-a-day, This round world's but a bitter pill." Poor porcupines of fretful quill! Sometimes we quarrel with our lot: We, too, are sad and careful; still We'd rather be ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... to a writing-table near the window, opened his desk, and took from it several quires of paper and a bundle of quill pens. He scattered the pens about the table, so that they might lie ready in all directions to be taken up when wanted, and then cut the paper into a heap of narrow slips, of the form used by professional ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... quite a trial to us sometimes!" she whispered to the Mole-mother. "Such bad taste to mention Gypsies. It makes me tremble in every quill!" ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... environment. Sheltered from birth, their anxiety was chiefly how to make life pass the pleasantest. They occasionally showed a spasmodic excitement over the progress of a cricket or polo match. Their achievements were largely those of the stay-at-home warriors who fought with the quill what others faced death with the sword for. Their inertia disgusted her. Their self-satisfaction spurred her ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... a variety of other marine objects, were placed pellmell in every corner of the room. Notwithstanding, there was space enough left to hold three or four chairs around a large oaken table, upon which last stood a large cork ink-stand, with several goose-quill pens; with some sheets of half dirty paper placed ostentatiously around it to awe the visitors, who might ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Society got up on its hind legs and with one voice declared my old pal Jefferson to be the logical successor to Robert H. Browning, Sir Walter K. Scott, Bert Tennyson, or any other poet that ever shook a quill. ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... either bamboo or rattan, and usually nothing is placed under the head, but sometimes small wooden blocks are used. In the morning when they arise they roll the mats, and the chamber-work is done. A young girl whom I measured had her hair fastened up with the quill of a porcupine; when asked to undo her hair, she put the quill under the top of her skirt. The Bukits possess one musical instrument, sarunai, a kind of clarinet, which does not sound badly. There are many blians, nearly all men. Several prominent members of the ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... live the Peacock, in splendour unmatch'd, Whose Ball shall be talk'd of by Birds yet unhatch'd! His praise let the Trumpeter[19] loudly proclaim, And the Goose lend her quill to transmit ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... asserting itself. It was the new girl whom he was defending—the woman he loved. This had given him strength. She knew something of what he felt, and she knew what blind obedience had done for her. With a half-smothered sigh, she reached over Oliver's head, dipped a quill pen in her inkstand, and at Oliver's ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... she loves my child; they all love her," but the thought made little impression at the time; the mind was too full of terror and woe. The doctor now asked for brandy in a whisper. Mrs. Dodd left the room with stealthy foot, and brought it. He asked for a quill. Julia went with swift, stealthy foot, and brought it. With adroit and tender hands they aided the doctor, and trickled stimulants down her throat. Then sat like statues of grief about the bed; only every ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... which are a happy exception to this miserable reality; it must not hesitate to discern whether the motive has been merely to arouse emotional tendencies, by clothing life's dangerous forms in unreal fascinations, or (where the author's hand, guided by his unsullied heart, has taken up the quill as a mighty weapon) to preserve or defend ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... of drawers—the drawers in the bureau and the bookcases were opened and shut sharply—writing-paper was flung on the table, and he sat down to write a letter with a scratchy quill pen. The letter written was ordered to post immediately, and the poking, and stirring, and grunting recommenced. Thus there was tribulation in the house of the head ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... meditation, the other in grief. "You can come," he said, and led them back to Noirtier. Morrel looked attentively on Villefort. His face was livid, large drops rolled down his face, and in his fingers he held the fragments of a quill pen which he had ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that might have been fairly easy. But he was telling about a friend of his, the friend of his life, his one dearest Friend. And when he remembers how they treated Him his eyes fill up, and his heart beats till it thumps, and his quill sticks into the paper in sheer reluctance ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... they only made sport of his appearance; especially one evening, when his monkey jacket being wet through, he was obliged to mount one of his swallow-tailed coats. They said he carried two mizzen-peaks at his stern; declared he was a broken-down quill-driver, or a footman to a Portuguese running barber, or some old maid's tobacco-boy. As for the captain, it had become all the same to Harry as if there were no gentlemanly and complaisant Captain ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... enough, With reasonable forecast and despatch, To ensure a side-box station at half-price. You think, perhaps, so delicate his dress, His daily fare as delicate. Alas! He picks clean teeth, and, busy as he seems With an old tavern quill, is hungry yet. The rout is folly's circle which she draws With magic wand. So potent is the spell, That none decoyed into that fatal ring, Unless by Heaven's peculiar grace, escape. There we grow early ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... of the corded box—I could do it myself. I know where the gorilla goes when he seems lost in the magic cabinet. It is all a clever combination of mirrors. The blood-red letters of some dear departed friend are only made with red ink and a quill pen, and the name of the "dear departed" forged. Well, I suppose I am illogical, too. If one set of things is so simple when it is shown to you, why may not all be? I fear the Willesden outing has unsettled my convictions, and shaken ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Presbyterian Ulster was largely represented: but Mr. Smith Barry of Fota Island, near Cork, one of the kindest and fairest, as well as one of the most determined and resolute, of the southern Irish landlords, was there, and the most interesting speech I heard was made by a Catholic lawyer of Dublin, Mr. Quill, Q.C., who grappled with the question of distress among the Irish tenants, and produced some startling evidence to show that this distress is by no means so great or so general as it is commonly assumed to be.[10] ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... go to school in season to have a little fun with his mates, before the exercises commenced. One day, entering the school-room a little before the time, he put on an old coat which his teacher wore in-doors, stuck a quill behind his ear, and made a pair of spectacles from some pasteboard, which he perched upon his nose. Arranged, in this fantastical manner, he seated himself with great dignity in the teacher's chair, and began to "play school-master," to the amusement ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... thing which is his and not yours, you may say fiddle. I have searched Bonaventura Piscator in vain for notice of this ambiguity. But the Greeks said fiddle; according to Suidas,[63] [Greek: skindapsos][64]—a word meaning a four stringed instrument played with a quill—was an exclamation of contemptuous dissent. How the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... from 8 to 10 inches long, and from one-sixteenth to one-eighth of an inch in diameter; the end used in writing was bruised and not cut. In late times a very much thicker reed was used, and then the end was cut like a quill or steel pen. Writing reeds of this kind were carried in boxes of wood and metal specially made for the purpose. Many specimens of all kinds of Egyptian writing materials are to be seen in the Egyptian Rooms ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... symbols painted on it. The pot hung over the fire was tin-lined copper, of the kind long made in England for Indian trade, but the smaller dishes were of birch bark and basswood. The gun and the hunting knife were of white man's make, but the bow, arrows, snowshoes, tom-tom, and a quill-covered gun case were of Indian art, fashioned of the things that grow in the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Apprehension could inflict, and found I wanted many more Arguments than the little Philosophy I am Mistress of could furnish me with, to enable me to stem that Tide of Raillery, which all of my Sex, unless they are very excellent indeed, must expect, when once they exchange the Needle for the Quill." ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... consent to do so. I was the more anxious about it, as I had seen Mr Catlin's splendid exhibition, and I knew that he had not one in his possession. The dress in question consisted of a sort of kilt of fine skins, ornamented with beautiful porcupine quill-work, and eagle's feathers; garters of animals' tails, worn at their ankles, head-dress of eagle's feathers and ermine's tails, etcetera. They made little objection to part with any portions of the dress except the kilt; at last they had a meeting of the whole band, as the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... make the world wise? Alas, poor Agamemnon! When he had searched the woods for an oak gall to make ink, gone to the post-office, after hours, to buy a sheet of paper, and caused a commotion in the neighbourhood and rumour of thieves by going to the poultry yard with a lantern to pluck a fresh goose quill for a pen, he found that he had nothing to say, and paused—thereby, at least, proving ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... King Obreon a many fairies, all attired in green silk; all these, with King Obreon, did welcome Robin Good-fellow into their company. Obreon took Robin by the hand and led him a dance: their musician was little Tom Thumb; for he had an excellent bag-pipe made of a wren's quill, and the skin of a Greenland louse: this pipe was so shrill, and so sweet, that a Scottish pipe compared to it, it would no more come near it, than a Jew's-trump doth to an Irish harp. After they had ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... do what they can. I will walke vp and downe here, and I will sing that they shall heare I am not afraid. The Woosell cocke, so blacke of hew, With Orenge-tawny bill. The Throstle, with his note so true, The Wren and little quill ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... too young yet, but unless he is going to walk in your steps and turn sailor he might do worse than come out to me in three or four years' time. Rough as the life is, it is a man's life, and a week of it is worth more than a year's quill-driving in an office. It is a pity your family have run to girls, for if one boy had made up his mind for the sea you might have ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... when it grafted roses on a briar. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond, and he that leaps at you is sunk. You were all white, a sheet of lovely spotless paper, when you first were born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's quill." ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... we reckon those of the governmental leeches, who are merely quill-drivers with a salary of six hundred francs ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... that I gave silent thanks, because of what had seemed to me a hardship when my mother forced me to spend so many hours each day in learning to use a quill, until I was able to write ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... object has been getting bigger and bigger to his eyes. He is getting off as far as possible within his earthly span. At last he feels that he has approximately gotten the range. And with the deep glow of his heart gleaming up out of his eyes, he picks up a freshly-sharpened quill to tell ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... nothing in Nature more beautiful, agreeable and handsome. There was no one Grace wanting, that bears the Standard of true Beauty. His Hair came down to his Shoulders, by the Aids of Art, which was by pulling it out with a Quill, and keeping it comb'd; of which he took particular Care. Nor did the Perfections of his Mind come short of those of his Person; for his Discourse was admirable upon almost any Subject: and whoever had heard ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... the truth; his satisfaction was manifest, for I never have seen him rub the tip of his nose with the feathers of his quill pen so often as he did that afternoon, which was with him the sign of exuberant joy, all his gestures having subdued themselves long since to ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... endless, and the ingenuity of manufacturers continually places before us fresh choice of pen-points to work with; but though one occasionally meets with a good steel pen, I have found it too often fails one just when it is sufficiently worn to the right degree of flexibility. One returns to the quill, which can be cut to suit the particular requirements of one's work. For large bold drawing the reed-pen has advantages, and a pleasant rich ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... never goin' to grow up?" he asked; and poured out a big glass of the pure quill for me, and fiercely ordered me to drink it. By this time I was desperate; so I smashed his glass and mine; and taking him by the throat I shook him and told him that if he did not take me to the hump-backed man or to the drayman, and that right off, I'd shut off ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... side of a mountain at the head of a valley, the noble bird sprang from the top of a dry tree above me and came sailing directly over my head. I saw him bend his eye down upon me, and I could hear the low hum of his plumage as if the web of every quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong, level flight. I watched him as long as my eye could hold him. When he was fairly clear of the mountain, he began that sweeping spiral movement in which he climbs the sky. Up and up ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... from each warbling throat. Why blows the blessed air no more, The incense-breathing air that bore Its sweet incomparable scent Of sandal and of aloe blent? Why are the drum and tabour mute? Why is the music of the lute That woke responsive to the quill, Loved by the happy, hushed and still? My boding spirit gathers hence Dire sins of awful consequence, And omens, crowding on my sight, Weigh down my soul with wild affright. Scarce shall I find my friends who dwell Here in Ayodhya ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... give the polypidom a rounded truncate end. The pinnules are excessively fine and delicate, not more than 1/10 to 1/12 inch long, and very closely set, so that the whole polypidom has the most exact resemblance to a beautiful silky quill feather. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... that moment to his lips. He bethought him now of the thousand humiliations his proud spirit had suffered at their hands when he noted the disdain with which they addressed him, speaking to him—because he was compelled to carve his living with a quill—as though he were less than mire. It was not so much against her scorn of him that he voiced his bitter grievance, but against the entire noblesse of France, which denied him the right to carry a high head because he had not been born of Madame la Duchesse, Madame la ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... writes ill, My small sharp quill runs rough and slow; Its slender beak with failing craft Gives forth its draught ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... upon the company gathered in the master's room. The Governor paced to and fro, perplexity in his face; the Colonel knit his grizzled brows and studied the floor; Dr. Anthony Nash brought the writing materials displayed upon the table, closer to him, and held a quill ready poised for dipping into the ink horn, while the Surveyor-General with a carefully composed countenance toyed with a pink which he took from the bowl of flowers before him. Sir Charles leaned back in his seat and looked at Patricia who, seated between him and her father, stared before her ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... and marked; and this can be done in the evening or at odd times, but placing the feathers on the pages ought to be daylight work, that the colors may be studied. Now open the tail-feather packet, and with the razor carefully pare away the quill at the back ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... about, carrying the ink pot into which she frequently dipped the big quill pen. She overlooked nothing in the scantily furnished house. She even went so far as to timidly suggest that certain articles of furniture might well be replaced by more attractive ones, and he had promptly agreed. At last she announced that she ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... French term for a small harpsichord, at that time called in England a spinet. It was named from a fancied resemblance of its quill plectra ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... with a loaded pistol in his hand. He was convinced of the complicity of the Governor, who, on his side, denied that he was responsible for what had happened. 'I asked him why I should plot, and go around a mountain, when a mere order, written with five strokes of the quill, would have accomplished the same thing. He did not answer, but he insulted me, and said he would report my treachery, as he called it, to Shanghai and England. Let him do so; he cannot bring the crazy Wangs back.' The agitated Mandarin hoped ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... went to an old chest that stood in one corner of the room, to get a piece of woolen goods she had carefully prepared for the market, which would bring her several dollars. She had placed an old band box, quill wheel and some other rubbish upon the chest, to conceal it from view as much as possible. Upon opening it, she discovered her treasure was gone, and she knew too well, for what purpose. The son, too, drank with his father, and got so much the start of him in brutality, that even ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... meant sarcastic? Perhaps you think good wine needs no bush? Yes, and I've told Polly I knew you as a boy—and how, instead of quill-driving, you ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... including the sun, moon, and wind; the grass, the corn, Brownie the cow, and her own faithful subject, Dowie. Still, it was a great mortification to her to be put into the spelling-book, which excluded her from the Bible-class. She was also condemned to follow with an uncut quill, over and over again, a single straight stroke, set her by the master. Dreadfully dreary she found it, and over it she fell fast asleep. Her head dropped on her outstretched arm, and the quill dropped from ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... that's the way the ladies dress theirselves, that is," said the father, adding, however, in an undertone to Mr. Macey, "It does make her look funny, though—partly like a short-necked bottle wi' a long quill in it. Hey, by jingo, there's the young Squire leading off now, wi' Miss Nancy for partners! There's a lass for you!—like a pink-and-white posy—there's nobody 'ud think as anybody could be so pritty. I shouldn't wonder if she's Madam ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... the Tiger Beetle (Cicindela campestris) constructs a hole about the size of a feather quill, disposed vertically, and of a depth, enormous for its size, of forty centimetres. It maintains itself in this tube by arching its supple body along the walls at a height sufficient for the top of its head to be level with the surface of the soil, and to close the opening of ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... ensemble a grey which at night was a fathomless dusk, and by day that green which you perceive where the sea is a hundred fathoms deep. With the light upon her eye there was a glint of emerald, that witching glare which made Becky Sharpe irresistible. Now imagine an eyebrow, dark as the raven's quill, overarching such an eye, and contrasting itself with the burning gold of the hair, and a skin of Parian white and purity. Then contemplate a softness beside which the velvet upon the petal of a pansy would seem rigid; and this eye large and timorous, and fringed with long, ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... L. B.—Weeks ago Grant sent his Report, embracing the various operations connected with the fall of Vicksburgh. Grant did not want a year to make a school-boy like composition, as did McClellan with his quill-holders. Every word of Grant's Report resounds with military spirit and simplicity. Grant has not to put truth on the rack and throw dust into people's eyes. Three cheers for McClellan! Grant has confidence in the volunteers; not so McClellan, who had only confidence in shams. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... stoop to handle virgin milk and dragon's blood, as they style their vile mixtures; or else grope in dead men's bodies for the thing which killed them. Which is a pure handicraft and cheirergon, unworthy a scholar, who stoops of right to naught but the goose-quill!" ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the noise and fashion of the city, and presenting altogether a most singular contrast to the teeming life around him, stared at, smiled at, wondered at, yet respectfully greeted by all who knew him; or as finally standing on the rostrum, playing with a goose-quill which his amanuensis had always to provide; constantly crossing and recrossing his feet, bent forward, frequently sinking his head to discharge a morbid flow of spittle, and then again suddenly throwing ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Captain Solomon writing up the log for the day. He always wrote it just after dinner. And when he had finished dinner, he would get out the book and clear a place on the table to put it; and then he took a quill pen in his great fist and wrote, very slowly, and with flourishes. And when he had it done he always passed the book ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... names of stalk to be studied, though, except for particular plants, not needing to be used,—namely, the Latin cau-dex, and cau-lis, both connected with the Greek [Greek: kaulos], properly meaning a solid stalk like a handle, passing into the sense of the hilt of a sword, or quill of a pen. Then, in Latin, caudex passes into the sense of log, and so, of cut plank or tablet of wood; thus finally becoming the classical 'codex' of writings engraved on such wooden tablets, and therefore generally used for ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... of office. A stout man in his shirt-sleeves was sitting behind a desk within a railing, and a large book lay open on the desk. This man, whose blue waistcoat with brass buttons marked him for some sort of officer, looked impersonally at Lemuel and then at the officer, while he chewed a quill toothpick, rolling it in his lips. "What have you got ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... eyes would be opened some day. But very soon he came to be interested in something else, and I never gave Edie another thought until one day she just took my life in her hands and twisted it as I could twist this quill. ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... piece about twelve inches in diameter. The precipitate is removed from the filter as completely as possible by rubbing the sides gently together, or by scraping them cautiously with a feather which has been cut close to the quill and is slightly stiff (Note 1). In either case, care must be taken not to rub off any considerable quantity of the paper, nor to lose silver chloride in the form of dust. Cover the precipitate ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... before I got my fall," he explained, "though if I have got to that I had better go back to England, where those fellows get a half-holiday on Saturdays and lots of bank holidays, and are in civilization at least. Perhaps if the governor saw me with a quill behind my ear, or riding down to the city on top of a 'bus, smoking a pipe, he'd do something for me for the honor of the family. But he's in a beastly humor now, and wouldn't send me a fiver to save my life. He says that I'm not worth my salt anywhere, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... containing a small Quantity of Matter, though capable of containing near two Ounces each; one situated between the vesiculae seminales and Rectum, the other between the vesiculae and Bladder, which opened into the Urethra by one common Orifice, capable of admitting a large Quill, at the Side of the caput galinaginis. The rest of the Viscera ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... relief, but only for a short time. The quills that remained worked their way deeper and deeper into his flesh, like living things. Nose and lips began to swell. Blood and saliva dripped from his mouth and his eyes grew red. Two hours after Gray Wolf had retired to her nest under the windfall a quill had completely pierced his lip and began to prick his tongue. In desperation Kazan chewed viciously upon a piece of wood. This broke and crumpled the quill, and destroyed its power to do further harm. Nature ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... a dress to be hurried with; every quill and gather of its trimming must be "set just so;" and there was still one flounce to be made, and these others were only basted, as ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... passes; did he pause, the light would he apparent through their texture. On the wings of the dragon-fly as he hovers an instant before he darts there is a prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more delicate than the minute filaments on a swallow's quill, more delicate than the pollen of a flower. They are formed of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is resolved into the means and organs of life! Though not often consciously recognised, perhaps this is the great pleasure of summer, to watch the earth, the dead particles, resolving themselves ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... the hole where it grew, and a spray-like part that makes up most of the feather. The horny part becomes hollow or contains only a little dry pith; when it is large enough, as in the case of a rowing feather from a Goose's wing, it makes a quill pen to write with. But the very tiniest feather on this Sparrow is built up in the ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... clouds are moving largo There is no restraining MARGOT. When their movement is con brio 'Ware CHIOZZA MONEY (LEO)! When the sun is bright but spotty Diarists become more dotty. When the sun is dim and hazy Diarists become more crazy. When the nights are calm and still Faster travels GARVIN'S quill. When the blizzard's blast is hissing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... fellow That came with this device. 'Twas queintly carried: The stalke pluckt cleanly out, and in the quill This scroll conveyd. What ere it be the Prince Shall ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... larger than we now see it when mature in its native place; but its comparative anatomy is exceedingly hostile to the idea that it is an animal in a state of transition. It has been found of various sizes, from that of the thickness of a quill to that of the thumb, but its form of organs has been always the same. It is surely a perfect animal of a peculiar species. And it adds one instance more to the number already known of the wonderful manner in which life is produced and perpetuated ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... are required for the application of dressings in domestic surgery, viz.—scissors, a pair of tweezers or simple forceps, a knife, needles and thread, a razor, a lancet, a piece of lunar caustic in a quill, and a sponge. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... all done, and the little flower-show is over, then arises the despairing cry of our own cherished OSCAR. It is in the Last of the Aphorisms; after which, exhausted, he can only sign his name, fling away the goose-quill, and then sink back in his luxurious arm-chair exhausted with the mental efforts of years concentrated into the work of one short hour. Ah! "La plupart des livres d'a present ont l'air d'avoir ete faits en un jour avec des ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... her left hand lay her handkerchief, sufficiently used, and a convenience to spit in appeared on one side of her chair. She being in a reverie when we entered, the maid did not think proper to disturb her; so that we waited some minutes unobserved, during which time she bit the quill several times, altered her position, made many wry faces, and, at length, with an air ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... go thinking that I would come to him presently. But I, too, had to act under the god of friends. In Diego Lopez's room I found quill and ink and paper, and there I wrote a letter to Don Enrique, and finding Diego gave it to him to be given in two hours into Don Enrique's hand. Then Juan Lepe the squire changed in his own room, narrow and bare as a cell, to the clothing of Juan ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... night when Esther came in from canvassing, there lay upon her desk the neglected manuscript of her book, found in a bottom drawer. Before it stood a chair; beside it a drop-light. A quill pen, brand new, bright green and very gay, perched atop a fresh bottle of ink. Near-by appeared a small flat book showing an account between Esther Claff and Ruth Vars and an uptown bank. Inside, between roseate leaves of thin blotting paper, appeared a deposit to their ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... he saw her only now and then, always alone, and generally standing on the end of the ship, her green cape blowing in a gale of wind and showing a scarlet lining, her mignonette hat exchanged for a soft green thing with an upstanding scarlet quill. She was the only companionable person on board, but he did not know her and sat nowhere near her at table, an assemblage of facts that seemed to settle the matter, considering the sort of man he was and the sort ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... when he is very hungry Buster Bear will take a chance on turning you on your back. By the way, don't any of you call Prickly Porky a Hedgehog. He isn't any thing of the kind. He is sometimes called a Quill Pig, but his real name, Porcupine, is best. He has no near relatives. Tomorrow morning, instead of meeting here, we'll hold school on the shore of the pond Paddy the Beaver has made. ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... in a cage in the school-room and the pupils observe: its size as compared with that of other birds; outline of body, including shape of head; the feathers, noting quill feathers, and covering or contour feathers; manner of feeding and drinking; ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... fair body, They then cut off my head, And thus my shape was altered. It's I that make peace between King and ring, And many a true lover glad. All this I do, and ten times more, And more I could do still; But nothing can I do Without my guider's will. [A quill pen] ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... was by the letter I received from Mr. Sylvanus Creed, the well-known connoisseur and arbiter of literary taste, who presided over the fortunes of the publishing house that bore his name. This letter—written with distinction and a quill pen upon beautifully embossed deckle-edged paper, which seemed to me to have a subtle perfume about it—requested the pleasure of my company at luncheon with the great Sylvanus; the place his favourite club—the ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... permit the reader to fall into the same blunder, with regard to the worthy "Maurice," as my friend Charles O'Malley has done. It is only fair to state that the doctor in the following tale was hoaxing the "dragoon." A braver and a better fellow than Quill never existed, equally beloved by his brother officers, as delighted in for his convivial talents. His favorite amusement was to invent some story or adventure in which, mixing up his own name with that of some friend or companion, the veracity ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... that low did lie Rose at a well-dissembled fly There stood my Friend, with patient skill, Attending of his trembling quill. ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... Papillotos (the Curl-papers) of Jasmin. The publication of this first volume served to make Jasmin's name popular beyond the town in which they had been composed and published. His friend M. Gaze said of him, that during the year 1825 he had been marrying his razor with the swan's quill; and that his hand of velvet in shaving was even surpassed by his skill ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... judicious reflexions, etc., his gilt post will bribe over the judges to him. All the time I was at the E.I.H. I never mended a pen; I now cut 'em to the stumps, marring rather than mending the primitive goose quill. I cannot bear to pay for articles I used to get for nothing. When Adam laid out his first penny upon nonpareils at some stall in Mesopotamos, I think it went hard with him, reflecting upon his old goodly orchard, where he had ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... acquaintance with an excellent Pen in the inkstand by my side, and we passed our leisure hours very pleasantly in communicating to each other our past adventures. His knowledge of life was limited, having resided in that inkstand, and performed all the writing of the family, ever since he was a quill. But his experience was wise and virtuous; and he could bear witness to many an industrious effort at improvement, in which he had been the willing instrument; and to many a hard struggle for honesty and independence, which figures of his writing ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... replied Cuchullin. "If thou dost remember well, Let us to them resort," Ferdiah said. Their missive weapons then on either side They both resorted to. Upon their arms They braced two emblematic missive shields, And their eight well-turned-handled lances took, Their eight quill-javelins also, and their eight White ivory-hilted swords, and their eight spears, Sharp, ivory-hafted, with hard points of steel. Betwixt the twain the darts went to and fro, Like bees upon the wing on a fine day; No cast ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... quill of the devil's pinion saw I," replied Wildrake. "He supposes himself too secure of an old cavalier, who must steal, hang, or drown, in the long run, so he gives himself no trouble to look after the assured booty. But I heard the serving-fellows prate of what they had seen and ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Ivy, who undertook to gratify it the very next day, which was Sunday last. He carried me to dine with S—, whom you and I have long known by his writings. — He lives in the skirts of the town, and every Sunday his house is opened to all unfortunate brothers of the quill, whom he treats with beef, pudding, and potatoes, port, punch, and Calvert's entire butt beer. He has fixed upon the first day of the week for the exercise of his hospitality, because some of his guests could not enjoy it on any other, for reasons that I need not explain. I was ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... And therefore to your fair no painting set; I found, or thought I found, you did exceed That barren tender of a poet's debt: And therefore have I slept in your report, That you yourself, being extant, well might show How far a modern quill doth come too short, Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow. This silence for my sin you did impute, Which shall be most my glory being dumb; For I impair not beauty being mute, When others would give life, and bring ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... common sense. She would go back from that excursion reinforced, and bid defiance to that nightmare. Sleep would come to her, she knew, if she could find a modus vivendi with a loose flood of golden hair, and could just get hold of a feather-quill that was impatient of imprisonment and wanted to see the world. She searched for it with the tenderest of finger-tips because she knew—as all the feather-bed world knows—that if one is too rough with it, it goes in, and comes out again ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... fitting arms, the hole thus obliquely perforated, and a faucet or pipe made of a swan's or goose's quill inserted, will lead the sap into the recipient; and this is a very neat way, and as effectual: I would also have it try'd, whether the very top twigs, grasped in the hand together, a little cropt with a knife, and put into the ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... she heard some man on the steamer say. The ranch, the chickens, weeds, and preserving, the dusty roads and shabby stores of Los Lobos were gone; she was no longer a gawky child; she was a young lady in a loose, soft, rough blue coat, with a black quill in her soft ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... gone, and she prepares to write, First hovering o'er the paper with her quill: Conceit and grief an eager combat fight; What wit sets down is blotted straight with will; This is too curious-good, this blunt and ill: Much like a press of people at a door, Throng her inventions, which ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... with a small stone muller. The writing reed, which served as a pen, was from 8 to 10 inches long, and from one-sixteenth to one-eighth of an inch in diameter; the end used in writing was bruised and not cut. In late times a very much thicker reed was used, and then the end was cut like a quill or steel pen. Writing reeds of this kind were carried in boxes of wood and metal specially made for the purpose. Many specimens of all kinds of Egyptian writing materials are to be seen in the Egyptian ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... latter ceased to sound when the key which moved the bridge was released, whereas the harpsichord required what is called a "damper" to stop the sound when the key came up; once the string was touched by the quill, all command of the tone by the key was lost. To regulate this, a device was added to the instrument by means of which a damper fell on the string when the key was released, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... the first time, I touched the goose quill to the treaty not knowing, however, that, by the act I consented to give away my village. Had that been explained to me I should have opposed it and never would have signed their treaty, as my ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... their toyes possesse, 325 And raigne in liking of the multitude; The schooles they till with fond newfanglenesse, And sway in court with pride and rashnes rude; Mongst simple shepheards they do boast their skill, And say their musicke matcheth Phoebus quill. 330 ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... made no sound, nor did they look at one another; and in this silence, so much more full of meaning than any talk, the scratching of the quill went on. Mr. Stone put it down at last, and, seeing two ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... hill So oft hath cald on Alexanders name, As hath poore Rowland with an Angels quill Erected trophies of Ideas fame: Yet that false shepheard, Oenon, fled from thee; I follow her that ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Pip directly went To the Lord at the head of the Government, Who made him, by a stroke of a quill, Baron de Pippe, ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... of paper. But she was burning up with fever; the quill cracked in her nervous fingers. "There," she said, throwing it down after a few seconds, "I don't know what's the matter with me to-day. I'll write ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... thought made little impression at the time; the mind was too full of terror and woe. The doctor now asked for brandy in a whisper. Mrs. Dodd left the room with stealthy foot, and brought it. He asked for a quill. Julia went with swift, stealthy foot, and brought it. With adroit and tender hands they aided the doctor, and trickled stimulants down her throat. Then sat like statues of grief about the bed; only every now and then eye sought eye, and endeavoured ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... "Take a swan quill and a sheet of the finest parchment, and write down carefully what I shall dictate: the story of Zachur ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... writing on the bill of exchange is weaker and a little shaky. That is undoubtedly due partly to the fact that the signature on the bill of exchange is written with a very fine steel pen, while that in the letter was written with a quill. But, what makes me doubt the genuineness of the signature is this,—although the characters are practically the same on the two pieces of paper, your father's name in the letter is the writing of an educated ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... rocks; it is generally of a greenish- brown colour, with a radiating structure; externally it is black with an almost metallic lustre, but often coated by a bright green film. It is soft and can be scratched by a quill; under the blowpipe swells greatly and becomes scaly, then fuses easily into a black magnetic bead. This substance is evidently similar to that which often occurs in submarine volcanic rocks. An examination of some very curious specimens ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... manufacturers continually places before us fresh choice of pen-points to work with; but though one occasionally meets with a good steel pen, I have found it too often fails one just when it is sufficiently worn to the right degree of flexibility. One returns to the quill, which can be cut to suit the particular requirements of one's work. For large bold drawing the reed-pen has advantages, and a pleasant ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... played with it until it was creased and cracked all over like "crazed" china, yet not torn. Old Madam Leigh's face could not be said to be wrinkled, for the lines were shallow. They were as fine as if made with an inkless crow quill, and so close together you would have thought there was not room for another. Her eyes were dark and bright She had French blood in her veins, and showed it in her quick glance ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... moandi, and by others, the kokomatsane. This honey is slightly acid, and has an aromatic flavour. The bees are easily known from their habit of buzzing about the eyes, and tickling the skin by sucking it as common flies do. The hive has a tube of wax like a quill, for its entrance, and is usually in the hollows ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... bit of sacking. He had a table in front of him—a table partially and very insecurely propped up by a bundle of old papers and books, since no two of its four legs were completely whole—and on the table there was a neckless bottle half-filled with ink, a few sheets of paper and a couple of quill pens. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... inches long. Near the uterus its cavity will just admit an ordinary bristle; but near its free end, at the ovary, it is as large as a goose-quill. ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... asked for pen and paper that I might make an attempt at setting my earthly affairs to rights. Yet when the writing materials were brought me, I wrote not. I sat instead with the feathered end of my quill between my teeth, and thus pondered the matter of the disposal of my ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... in honour of their illustrious Sorrentine guest, for the Ferrarese delighted in the handsome stranger who could in an emergency wield the sword as skilfully as he could ply his quill. Twice only however did Tasso revisit the city of his birth, and each return home was occasioned by deep tragedy. In 1577, wounded by the attacks of his literary rivals and humiliated by the Duke Alfonso's discovery of his infatuation for the Princess Leonora ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... also pitched into the Balaam box, and a third drawn—a delightful little cocked-hat of a letter, written on delicately-perfumed paper, probably with a dove's quill. She—of course it is a she!—is going to a garden-party on Tuesday week; would he, the Clerk of the Weather, kindly see that not a drop of rain falls on that day? Only bright sunshine, and occasional cloudlets to act as ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... into her new, dark-blue kid gloves. She was dark and trig in a little belted jacket, a gold quill shimmering at a cocky angle ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... could not understand the readiness with which his nephew agreed to the proposal, "why, how's this? I had fully expected you to refuse. Remember, boy, it is not to be a romantic gold-digger, which is another name for a born idiot, that I would send you out to California. It is to be a clerk, a quill-driver. D'you understand?" ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... trenches without accident. Little was found to be done there, and having distributed themselves in the trenches, they awaited the time for the general advance to begin. The rest of the Battalion moved forward at the same time in a similar formation to "Nib" and "Quill" trenches on "Helene Ridge." Even for this short move direction could only be maintained by means of compasses. We made ourselves as comfortable as possible there, as we knew that we should have some time to wait before advancing further. ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... perceive where the sea is a hundred fathoms deep. With the light upon her eye there was a glint of emerald, that witching glare which made Becky Sharpe irresistible. Now imagine an eyebrow, dark as the raven's quill, overarching such an eye, and contrasting itself with the burning gold of the hair, and a skin of Parian white and purity. Then contemplate a softness beside which the velvet upon the petal of a pansy would seem rigid; and this eye large and timorous, ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the meal-bin, the cover of which was closed and was thus made to serve for a desk. On this were several sheets of what was then called pro patria paper, or foolscap, and most of these were very much bescribbled. An ink-horn and a sand-box completed the outfit, except for a quill in the hands of the bond-servant, which had given rise to the sound the girl had heard. Now, however, it was not writing, for the man was chewing the feather end with a look of deep thought on ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... "And there's a quill pen of the Commandant's on the writing-table," she added; "if you'll burn the feather ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... entertainment was a most exquisite one, about twenty gentlemen sitting down at the beautifully ornamented table. Hawthorne was in uncommonly good spirits, and, having the seat of honor at the right of his host, was pretty keenly scrutinized by his British brethren of the quill. He had, of course, banished all thought of speech-making, and his knees never smote together once, as he told me afterwards. But it became evident to my mind that Hawthorne's health was to be proposed with all the honors. I glanced ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... but your gallants resort. After dinner you may appeare againe, having translated yourselfe out of your English cloth cloak, into a light Turky-grogram (if you have that happiness of shifting) and then be seene (for a turn or two) to correct your teeth with some quill or silver instrument, and to cleanse your gummes with a wrought handkercher: It skilles not whether you dinde or no (thats best knowne to your stomach) or in what place you dinde, though it were with cheese (of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... about 1 foot 8 inches long, and 1 foot across, from the apex of the right to that of the left wing. The furculum, or merry-thought, which is entire, marks the fore part of the trunk; the ischium, scapula, and most of the wing and leg bones are preserved, and there are impressions of the quill feathers and of down on the body. The vanes and shafts of the feathers can be seen by the naked eye. Fourteen long quill feathers diverge on each side of the metacarpal and phalangial bones, and decrease in length from 6 inches to 1 inch. The wings have a general resemblance ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... at opposite ends of the table. The one held a long goose-quill pen, and before her lay several large sheets of paper covered with fine writing. Her eyes followed the lines slowly, and from time to time she made a correction in the manuscript. As she read, her lips moved to form words, but she made no sound. Now and then a faint smile lent singular beauty ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... be reached! Then would that state of things so long foretold have come to pass: the husband takes care of the children, while the wife goes out to vote! Then would the funny artist snatch up his pencil, and the funny editor his quill. It has always been a mystery to me where the laugh came in on this joke. True, it is not his calling; but what is there so very incongruous in a father's "taking care" of his own children? Fathers ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... you mean?" cried the old red hen, As mad as hops was she. "Oh, I've been 'round among great men, In the world where the great men be. And none of them scratch with their claws like you, They write with a quill like me." ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... great galleries were still thronged—though only with men, now; the bright colors that had made them look like hanging gardens were gone, with the ladies. The reporters' gallery, was merely occupied by one or two watchful sentinels of the quill-driving guild; the main body cared nothing for a debate that had dwindled to a mere vaporing of dull speakers and now and then a brief quarrel over a point of order; but there was an unusually large attendance of journalists in the reporters' waiting-room, chatting, smoking, and keeping ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... sat silent for a few moments, thinking deeply. The only sound in the room was the irritating squeak of the clerk's quill pen, as he industriously wrote down all the steward's replies. At last M. de Presles ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... curtains must be arranged to be parted, showing the tableau stage back of the real stage. The tableau stage is elevated a few feet above the real stage (this makes a better picture but is not absolutely necessary). High desk at R. facing the R. wall. Tall stool at this desk; ledger, quill pen, ink, candle on this desk. Small, old desk down L., facing audience. Desk chair back of this desk. Two common wooden chairs at R.C. and L.C. Ledger, quill pen, books, candle stuck in an old dark bottle, on ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... night; so come in the morning betimes, plum your ground, gage your line, bait your hook with a red knotted worme; but I hold a Menow better: put the hook in at the back of the Menow, betwixt the fish and the skin, that the Menow may swim up and down alive, being boyed up with a Cork or Quill, that the Menow may have liberty to swimme a foot off the ground: there is no doubt ...
— The Art of Angling • Thomas Barker
... surprise). Fie! you are not going to play the prodigal son!—a fellow like you who with his sword has scratched more hieroglyhics on other men's faces than three quill-drivers could inscribe in their daybooks in a leap-year! Shall I tell you the story of the great dog funeral? Ha! I must just bring back your own picture to your mind; that will kindle fire in your veins, if nothing else has power to inspire you. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... now sat down again and took from beneath her cape a small pad, a long quill pen and a queer little bottle filled with milky ...
— Hallowe'en at Merryvale • Alice Hale Burnett
... after she went to an old chest that stood in one corner of the room, to get a piece of woolen goods she had carefully prepared for the market, which would bring her several dollars. She had placed an old band box, quill wheel and some other rubbish upon the chest, to conceal it from view as much as possible. Upon opening it, she discovered her treasure was gone, and she knew too well, for what purpose. The son, too, drank with his father, and got so much the start of him in brutality, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... told how the tunnel was pushed forward, foot by foot; how the bank was attacked in its one and only vital spot, precisely as a porcupine curled defensively up in the snow is seized by the fisher-marten, not through open attack, but by artfully tunneling up under the quill-less belly. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... consequently the doll's grandmother, had spun and wove. Its face was colored after a fashion which was real high art to Sarah Jane. The little cheeks and mouth were sparingly flushed with cranberry juice, and the eyes beamed blue with indigo. The nose was delicately traced with a quill dipped in its grandfather's ink-stand, and though not quite as natural as the rest of the features, showed fine effort. Its little wig was made from the fine ravellings of Serena's brown ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... explained, "though if I have got to that I had better go back to England, where those fellows get a half-holiday on Saturdays and lots of bank holidays, and are in civilization at least. Perhaps if the governor saw me with a quill behind my ear, or riding down to the city on top of a 'bus, smoking a pipe, he'd do something for me for the honor of the family. But he's in a beastly humor now, and wouldn't send me a fiver to save my life. He says that I'm not worth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... from lips of fire, No marvel of the immortal quill, Can teach a moral, sterner—higher, Than thou, so helpless and so still. Reft as thou art by blistering burn— Blinded and shorn—poor stricken Fly! The wise may stoop and lessons learn From ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... said Massot, "see to what journalism may lead a man. There you have Sagnier and Fonsegue: just compare them a bit. In reality they are birds of the same feather: each has a quill and uses it. But how different the systems and the results. Sagnier's print is really a sewer which rolls him along and carries him to the cesspool; while the other's paper is certainly an example of the best journalism one can have, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... 143, exhibit the characteristic forms and standard variations of the Round Gothic. In lieu of any detailed analysis of these letter shapes, it may perhaps be sufficient to say that they were wholly and exactly determined by the position of the quill, which was held rigidly upright, after the fashion [132] already described in speaking of Roman lettering; and that the letters were always formed with a round swinging motion of hand and arm, as their forms and accented lines clearly evidence; for the ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... things the easiest to get! How could it care for a fellow's happiness, or even for his leading a correct life! Would he not be a much better man if allowed to have Hester!—whereas in all probability she would fall to the lot of some quill-driver like her father—a man that made a livelihood by drumming his notions into the ears of people that did not care a brass farthing about them!—Thus would Vavasor's love-fits work themselves off—declining from cold noon ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... arrow you strip a goose feather from the quill and, after clipping off the part near the quill-end, you mark a line down the arrow from a point one inch from the nock and, spreading some Spaulding's glue along that line apply the feather, lightly pressing it home with forefinger and thumb. After you have glued ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... pottery, which was made for everyday use, is a lead-glazed earthenware decorated with a liquid clay or slip. The design was usually dropped or trailed upon the ware from the spout (or quill) of a slip cup, somewhat in the manner a baker decorates a cake with icing; or it may have been painted over a large area or placed on in molded pads. Although most of the slip-decorated-ware found at Jamestown was made in England, there is some evidence that a few vessels ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... So Anne dipped the quill in the ink, and, with her head on one side, and her lips set very firmly together, carefully wrote: "My ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... fellow." Warner almost laughed aloud as he wheeled about and took up a quill. He had no jealousy of Hunsdon, knew that he would never win Anne Percy; but the irony of inditing a sonnet to her in the name of another man took away ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... around me to see the scalp of the Indian; they had never seen such a sight before; each of the young ladies wanted a quill from the Indian's head dress; and they asked me what I would take for one of them; I told them the ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... his pipe before the cabin fire of blazing logs, while she cleared the wooden dishes. He watched her get the paper, goose-quill pen and ink as a prisoner sees the scaffold building ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... inches in diameter, placed upon a larger piece about twelve inches in diameter. The precipitate is removed from the filter as completely as possible by rubbing the sides gently together, or by scraping them cautiously with a feather which has been cut close to the quill and is slightly stiff (Note 1). In either case, care must be taken not to rub off any considerable quantity of the paper, nor to lose silver chloride in the form of dust. Cover the precipitate on the glazed paper with a watch-glass to prevent ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... to me—Mrs. Skene had made as much of me as if I was her own son. What could I do but take my bread as it came to me? I was fit for nothing else. Even if I had been able to write a good hand and keep accounts I couldn't have brought myself to think that quill-driving and counting other people's money was a fit employment for a man. It's not what a man would like to do that he must do in this world, it's what he CAN do; and the only mortal thing I could do properly ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... the same time to lay one or more sticks in such a manner as to raise the hive so as to give the bees rapid ingress and egress. If the bees act reluctantly in taking possession of their new habitation, disturb them by brushing them with a goose-quill or some other instrument, not harsh, and they will soon enter. In case it is found necessary to invert the hive to receive the bees, (which is frequent, from the manner of their alighting,) then, first secure the drawers down to the floor by inserting ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks
... with the air of complying exactly and courteously with her demand, folded the quill into three or four lengths, and placed it weltering in ink within my waistcoat pocket. I was looking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... children, that they might know what he had said. Then he gave them many presents of such things as they liked. They gave Penn a name in their own language. They named him "O-nas." That was their word for a feather. As the white people used a pen made out of a quill or feather, they called a pen "o-nas." That is why they called ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... Brawn, topp'd with an empty Skull, Witlessly bold, heroically dull. Long ages pass'd and Man grown more refin'd, Slighter in muscle but of vaster Mind, Smiled at his grandsire's broadsword, bow and bill, And learn'd to wield the Pencil and the Quill. The glowing canvas and the written page Immortaliz'd his name from age to age, His name emblazon'd on Fame's temple wall; For Art grew great as Humankind grew small. Thus man's long progress step by step we trace; The Giant dies, the hero takes his place; The Giant vile, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... (I was now a slave of the quill myself), I received a brief note from Mr. Stevenson, introducing to me the person whom, in his essay on his old college magazine, he called "Glasgow Brown." What his real name was, whence he came, whence the money came, I never knew. G. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... of the Duchesse de Polignac is a droll imitation of a line in the "Mercure Galant." In the quarrel scene one of the lawyers says to his brother quill: 'Ton pere etait ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... for ten minutes more in silence, staring with unseeing eyes at the huddled roofs opposite and the clear sky over them; and the point of the quill in his fingers was split and cracked when Mr. Morris looked in to see if ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... my dear," said I, throwing down the crow-quill pen and pushing my drawing away, "if you remain in this pestilential condition of morbidness, you will die without the necessity of drowning yourself. Instead of making ourselves miserable, let us go and dance at the ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... said the lawyer, taking some paper from his desk, and carefully examining the nib of a quill pen, "Let me see, I think you said your ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... by the Council and Grower nearly ate the end of his quill-pen off, so gnawed he it during the silence. Farfrae the young Mayor, who by virtue of his office sat in the large chair, intuitively caught the sense of the meeting, and as spokesman was obliged to utter it, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... But, Francos, list; a more disturbing mob, Whose crop is filled with discord and contempt, On which they daily feed, I ne'er have sized. 'Twere well to laws enact to hold in curb These brainless cubs who wield a pricking quill And words indite with vitriol for an ink, Which burns the meaning into quiv'ring brain And leaveth scars which time can ne'er efface. A son of Erin in official place Did eulogize my effort at the club; And I, elated, loaned it to the press For publication ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... of the pen and the brush ferreted patrons, instead of aiming to be indispensable to the public, the only patron worth a single gesture of the quill. ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... a washing tub of ink on castors, which he pushes about with him wherever he goes, and in which, as in a Claude-Lorraine mirror, he contemplates everything that he can both on earth and above. He is constantly employed in fishing in it with a quill for ideas; and as often as he catches one, even if it is half drowned, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... on closer acquaintance, and so in three days' time a clergyman said, "Wilt thou take this woman here present to be thy lawful wife?" knowing full well what the answer must be. Short of other materials, the marriage contract was written with a goose quill on the parchment head of a drum. Sir William found that Meg made him a very good wife in spite of her wide mouth, and they lived happily together, the moral being, we supposed, that it is not always the prettiest girl that ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... ana were the Visitors' Book of "Watts' Charity," at Rochester, containing the signatures of "C. D." and Mark Lemon; the quill pen belonging to Charles Dickens, and used by him just previous to his death; a paper-knife formerly belonging to "C. D.," and the writing-desk used by "C. D." on his last American tour; silver wassail-bowl and stand presented to "C. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... of a brick-red, about the thickness of a large quill, and five or six inches long, half protrudes its flat head from one of those enormous, perfumed calyces, in which it ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... bethought him now of the thousand humiliations his proud spirit had suffered at their hands when he noted the disdain with which they addressed him, speaking to him—because he was compelled to carve his living with a quill—as though he were less than mire. It was not so much against her scorn of him that he voiced his bitter grievance, but against the entire noblesse of France, which denied him the right to carry a high head ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... QUILL PEN.—This shows that you may expect, before long, to sign your maiden name for the last time in a marriage register; with other signs, ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... visits I receive are preceded by a volume of some sort or other, as a token of my new acquaintance being a regularly initiated member of the fraternity of the quill. In two or three instances, I have been surprised at subsequently discovering that the regular profession of the writer is arms, or some other pursuit, in which one would scarcely anticipate so strong a devotion to letters. In short, such is the actual state of opinion in Europe, that one is ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... principal figures of La Billardiere's division of the ministry, where also were other clerks of less account, who resembled more or less those that are represented here. It is difficult even for an observer to decide from the aspect of these strange personalities whether the goose-quill tribe were becoming idiots from the effects of their employment or whether they entered the service because they were natural born fools. Possibly the making of them lies at the door of Nature and of the government both. Nature, ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... acorn yet green in its cup, We left also a firchatt upon the great stone hurled by Thor; To a fir branch we tied with a fine whang drawn from a bear we slew The wing feather of an eagle which span towards us, Yet it fell not to the earth, we twain caught it, The one by the quill, the ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... the Indians upon this occasion was generally blue cloth capotes with hoods, scarlet or blue cloth leggins, quill-worked moccasins, and no caps. Some of them were dressed very funnily; and one or two of the oldest appeared in blue surtouts, which were very ill made, and much too large for the wearers. The ladies had short gowns without plaits, cloth leggins of various colours highly ornamented with beads, cotton ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... do they do? Instead of taking it out for a long, cool walk, they sit down at once to work it up, but let it work them up instead into an absolutely uncritical enthusiasm in which every splutter of the goose-quill looks to them like part of ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... woman to be putting a quill on her hat, denotes that she will attempt many conquests, and her success will depend ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... largest of the vulture tribe; the monarch of the birds of that region. He may know it by the glossy black colour, tinged with grey, of its body; the greater wing-coverts, except at the base and tips, and the quill-feathers being mostly white. Round the neck is a white ruff of down; the skin of the head and neck is excessively wrinkled, and is of a dull reddish colour with a tinge of purple. Surmounting the forehead is a large, firm comb, with a loose skin under the bill which can be ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... porcupine, too, just begg'd leave to observe, That reports had been spread which he did not deserve; To say he was "fretful," was using him ill, He would prove the reverse to his very last quill; Though he now bristled up at the simple idea, This was often, with him, but a symptom of fear. As he spoke, a poor toad, who had sate quite aloof In a hovel of earth, with a stone for a roof, Now slowly, on tiptoe, crept out of his hole, ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... richly dressed females; for as I was proceeding to write a letter, a porter came in and told me that writing was not allowed in that saloon. "Freedom again," thought I. On looking round I did feel that my antiquated goose-quill and rusty-looking inkstand were rather out of place. The carpet of the room was of richly flowered Victoria pile, rendering the heaviest footstep noiseless; the tables were marble on gilded pedestals, the couches covered with gold brocade. At a piano of rich workmanship ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Tiger Beetle (Cicindela campestris) constructs a hole about the size of a feather quill, disposed vertically, and of a depth, enormous for its size, of forty centimetres. It maintains itself in this tube by arching its supple body along the walls at a height sufficient for the top of its head to be level ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... received from Mr. Sylvanus Creed, the well-known connoisseur and arbiter of literary taste, who presided over the fortunes of the publishing house that bore his name. This letter—written with distinction and a quill pen upon beautifully embossed deckle-edged paper, which seemed to me to have a subtle perfume about it—requested the pleasure of my company at luncheon with the great Sylvanus; the place his favourite ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... dear little milk-white dove, Her eyes and feet are of coral red. She wears a quill of gray in her wing, And a small ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... to whir with their red-green wings. Gradually the ground in the forest also began to show signs of life. A hedgehog crept sleepily through the underbrush; a little weasel dragged his supple body forth from a crevice in the rocks no broader than a quill. Little hares darted with cautious leaps out from the bushes, stopping in front of each to crouch down and lay their ears back, until finally, growing more brave, they mounted the ridge by the cornfield and danced and played ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... does not pretend to possess what is termed literary style, he would ask the indulgence of the reader in any little slip of the pen which may occur in these pages, as it is not every Crusoe who can command the facile quill, the pure style, or the lively imagination of a Daniel Defoe, to narrate ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... journey to Amack on the night of the New Year. All indifferent poets and poetesses, musicians, newspaper writers, and artistic notabilities,—I mean those who are no good,—ride in the New Year's night through the air to Amack. They sit backwards on their painting brushes or quill pens, for steel pens won't bear them—they're too stiff. As I told you, I see that every New Year's night, and could mention the majority of the riders by name, but I should not like to draw their enmity upon myself, for they don't like people to talk about their ride to Amack on quill pens. I've ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... implore your commiseration, Captain BASIL. 'Oh, tempora! oh, mores!' Have mercy, illustrious and praise-bespattered, and almost Sir-Waltered BOZ. Do not, under the uneasy weight of glory, and in the intoxicating consciousness of a right to the oligarchic exclusiveness of the goose-quill 'haute volee,' strike right and left among your sturdy democratic adorers, because they choose to convert their mandibles into quid-grinders, and their [Greek: chasmat' odonton] into ceaseless jet d'eaux of saliva. Reflect that the 'quid' assists in a philosophic investigation of the ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... the door, and old Kate jumps up onto the sill from the outside. He was one fierce object, let me tell you; weighing about thirty pounds, all muscle, with one ear gone, and an eye missing that a porcupine quill got into, and a lot of fresh new battle scars. We all got a good look at him while he crouched there for a second, purring like a twelve-cylinder car and twitching his whiskers at us in a lazy way, like he wanted to have folks make a fuss over him. And then, all at once, catching sight ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... a little, as it flattered his vanity, but the idea struck him as ridiculous, and he would not give in, and as Ruby Ann grew more and more persistent, telling of the antiques gathered up, and among them Mrs. Biggs's warming-pan and foot-stove and brass kettle,—old Mrs. Baker's quill wheel, and some other old lady's wedding bonnet, he grew furious and swore about the Rummage Sale, and might have sworn at Ruby Ann if she had not discreetly withdrawn and left him to himself ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... roses on a briar. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond, and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white, a sheet of lovely, spotless paper, when you first are born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's quill. I know you; for I loved a woman, and loved her so long, that I found out a strange thing: I found out what a ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... toes with short compressed claws; eyes small, with linear erect pupils; long skull with forty teeth; the orbit complete in many cases, or only slightly imperfect; the hairs are long, rigid, and ringed like the quill of a porcupine, which gives the grizzled appearance peculiar to these animals. The female has only four mammae. They are very active and sanguinary, chiefly hunting along the ground, but can climb with facility. There are several species found ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... determined to return, because he was unwilling to have his children brought up on foreign soil and under foreign influences. But for himself he resolved to abandon literature. As soon as he had finished the manuscript he had in hand, he would give up all further thought of writing. "The quill and I are divorced," he wrote to Greenough in June, 1833, "and you cannot conceive the degree of freedom, I could almost say of happiness, I feel at having got my neck out of the halter." Longings for his old sea-life often ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... one more example. The feather of a bird is a marvellous structure, and no one will deny that as a whole it depends upon adaptation. But what part of it DOES NOT depend upon adaptation? The hollow quill, the shaft with its hard, thin, light cortex, and the spongy substance within it, its square section compared with the round section of the quill, the flat barbs, their short, hooked barbules which, in the flight-feathers, hook into one another with just sufficient firmness ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... house, were ushered into a cool, lofty room, where there were a lot of mahogany desks, and a single old clerk, who resembled a last year's dried lemon, with some few drops of acid juice for blood, perched up on a hard stem of a high stool, with four or five quill pens, like so many thorns, sticking out ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... an ideal substitute for a quill in the stopper of the draftsman's ink bottle. The advantage of this substitute is that there is always one handy to replace a broken or lost pen, while it is not so with the quill. —Contributed by George ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... only by jellyfish but also by the GRAPTOLITE, which takes its name from a fancied resemblance of some of its forms to a quill pen. It was a composite animal with a horny framework, the individuals of the colony living in cells strung on one or both sides along a hollow stem, and communicating by means of a common flesh in this central ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... womanhood, shut in the zenanas beyond the reach of the Gospel which he was bringing to the little villages, there fell at his feet a feather from a vulture's wing. Picking it up, he whimsically cut it into a quill. Thinking that his sister in far-away America might like a letter from so strange a pen, he went into his tent and wrote to her. He told her of the millions of girls shut up in those "citadels of heathenism," ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... and then to see himself set back that way by a complete stranger, it jest nachelly made him sore. Same as it would you or me, mebbe, if we was informed polite and all that from headquarters that they was a new man comin' to jine us that was the pure quill whichever way you looked at him. Old Tom is bein' et up with jealousy, ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... Britannica.' Vincent Spaulding did what he could to cheer me up, but by bed time I had reasoned myself out of the whole thing. However, in the morning I determined to have a look at it anyhow, so I bought a penny bottle of ink, and with a quill pen and seven sheets of foolscap paper I ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... against the mustard-coloured tweeds affected by so many women for country wear, choosing instead a soft dull blue, a hundred times more becoming. For headgear there was a little cap of the same material, with a quill feather stuck jauntily through a fold at the side, while neat, strong little boots and a pair of doeskin gloves gave a delightfully business-like air to the costume. In the rug-strap was a capacious golf cloak, displaying ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... us, in the Preface to "The White Devil," that he does not "write with a goose-quill winged with two feathers"; and also hints that the play failed in representation through its being acted in winter in "an open and black theatre," and because it wanted "a full and understanding auditory." "Since ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... the Beaver Indians, see his Journal, 149. The same author (page 311), describes another game played by the Indians of the Rocky Mountains. It was played by two persons, each of whom had a "bundle of about fifty small sticks, neatly polished, of the size of a quill, and five inches long; a certain number of these sticks had red lines round them; and as many of these as one of the players might find convenient were curiously rolled up in dry grass, and, according to the judgment of his antagonist, respecting their number ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... officer for his indefatigable exertions, and perseverance in accomplishing what would, to ordinary minds, have appeared impracticable. When about four miles from Regent Square we arrived at Dampier's Spring, a stream of water that might pass through an ordinary sized goose quill, and if allowed to spread over the surface of the ground in some climates, would evaporate as quickly as it flowed, but here, conducted into a cask, it affords no inconsiderable portion of the supply at Regent's Square. It is sent down in barrels on the backs of asses, or mules, and served out by ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... Demosthenes rose and walked back to the inner part of the temple, though he was still visible from the front. Here he took out a roll of paper and a quill pen, which he put in his mouth and bit, as he was in the habit of doing when composing. Then he threw his head back and drew his cloak ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... would provide far better "copy" To the industrious drivers of the quill If you were more emotional and sloppy, More richly dowered with journalistic skill; To make despatches blossom like the poppy You never have essayed and never will; In short, you couldn't earn a pound a week As a reporter on The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... king Dietrich's opinion. Did he felicitate himself like a simple Teuton, on the wonderful learning and eloquence of his Greek-Roman secretary? Or did he laugh a royal laugh at the whole letter, and crack a royal joke at Cassiodorus and all quill-driving schoolmasters and lawyers—the two classes of men whom the Goths hated especially, and at the end to which they by their pedantries had brought imperial Rome? One would like to know. For not only was Dietrich no scholar himself, but he had a contempt for the very scholarship ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... length, rounded at the ends, and used by the Kyans and Dyaks of Borneo. Before coitus it is inserted into a transverse orifice in the penis, made by a painful and somewhat dangerous operation and kept open by a quill. Two or more of these instruments are occasionally worn. Sometimes little brushes are attached to each end of the instrument. Another instrument, used by the Dyaks, but said to have been borrowed from the Malays, is the palang anus, which is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... amber, each a scruple; musk, two grains; make a powder. The best part of the cure is taking care of the nurse's diet, which must be regular, by all means. If it be from corrupt milk, provoke a vomit; to do which, hold down the tongue, and put a quill dipped in sweet almonds, down the throat. If it come from the worms, give such things as will kill the worms. If there be a fever, with respect to that also, give coral smaragad and elk's hoof. In the fit, give epileptic water, as lavender water, and rub with oil of amber, or hang a peony root, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... stumbling-blocks. We have the Simeon Brown species, indeed; and among readers even of his kind the book may do some good, and more among the weaker, truer people, whom it will shake like mattresses,—making the dust fly, and perhaps with it some of the sticks and quill-ends, which often make that kind of person an objectionable mattress. I write too lightly of the book,— far too lightly,—but your letter made me gay, and I have been lighter-hearted ever since; only I kept this after beginning it, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... You go into the outer office (there's only one entrance—the big one in Threadneedle Street) and find on the right-hand side of the circular counter a ledger. The ledger is open: there is blotting-paper and a quill pen beside it. Everyone's name is written in alphabetical order on the one side of the ledger and on the other side there is a blank page ruled down the middle with a red line. Having made your appearance at ten to ten, you put your initials in a line with ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... But it certainly was perhaps a little too much of a departure from the usages of a Court when the monarch, about to sign an important document in the presence of his State Council, flung down the quill with which he had begun to write and proclaimed it to be ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sprinkling of visiting-cards, stood a shopkeeper's clock, smothered with dust, and a couple of candlesticks with tallow dips thrust into their sockets. A few antique newspapers lay on the table beside an inkstand containing some black lacquer-like substance, and a collection of quill pens twisted into stars. Sundry dirty scraps of paper, covered with almost undecipherable hieroglyphs, proved to be manuscript articles torn across the top by the compositor to check off the sheets as they were set up. He admired a few rather clever caricatures, sketched ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... years, and the little house in the wilderness was abandoned. In 1878, when I spent three weeks at Ampersand, the cabin was in ruins, and surrounded by an almost impenetrable growth of bushes. The only philosophers to be seen were a family of what the guides quaintly call "quill pigs." The roof had fallen to the ground; raspberry-bushes thrust themselves through the yawning crevices between the logs; and in front of the sunken door-sill lay a rusty, broken iron stove, like a dismantled altar on which the fire ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... hue, With orange-tawny bill; The throstle with his note so true: The wren with little quill; The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, The plain-song ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... no hope of another Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, with his statistics of Dreamland, who makes no difficulty of impressing "fourscore thousand rhinocerots" to draw the wagons of the King of Tartary's army, or of killing eight hundred and fifty thousand men with a flourish of his quill,—for what were a few ciphers to him, when his inkhorn was full and all Christendom to be astonished?—but there is all the more need of voyagers who give us something better than a census of population, and who know of other exports from strange countries than can be expressed by $——. Give us ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... their slight, feathery-looking points, like huge plumes, waving with the slightest breeze, and assisting to keep up a circulation of the air. They are fringed at their joints with short branches of long, lance-shaped leaves. We saw bamboos of all sizes, some with the cane as delicate as a small quill, yet fully ten feet long; and these were also exceedingly graceful. So also were the tree-ferns, which grew in great profusion and beauty on the sides of the hills. But the most curious and valuable tree we saw was the traveller's-tree. It has a thick succulent stem like the plantain. From ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... a white unused quill, and a vellum scroll on which the names of all the members of the Society were written in ominous red. He handed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... sharp knife made it hard to make a good one. In going about he had gathered a quantity of large feathers. He saved these for the time when he should have his paper and ink ready. Now, he cut away a quill to a point and split it up a little way. He was now supplied with writing materials. "Is it not wonderful," he thought, "how all our wants are filled? We have only to want a thing ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... to eat all the Year long. [The Leaves.] The leaves of it are somewhat like those of a Coker-Nut Tree, they are five or six foot long, and have other lesser leaves growing out of the sides of them, like the feathers on each side of a quill. The Chingulays call the large leaves the boughs, and the leaves on the sides, the leaves. They fall off every Year, and the skin upon which they grow, with them. [The Skins, and their use.] These skins grow upon the body of the Tree, and the leaves ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... enormously magnified. During the siege of Paris in 1870-71 the Parisians established a balloon and pigeon post to carry letters which had been copied in a minute size by photography. These copies could be enclosed in a quill and attached to a pigeon's wing. On receipt, the copies were placed in a special lantern and thrown as large writing on the screen. Micro-photography has since then made great strides, and is now widely used for scientific purposes, one of the most important being ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... too certaine ill, Did not extinguish, but gaue honour fier, Th'amazing prodigie, (bane of my quill,) Bred not astonishment, but a strong desier, By which this heauen-adopted Knights strong will, Then hiest height of Fame, flew much more hier: And from the boundlesse greatnes of his minde, Sends back this answer through ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... be no fitting arms, the hole thus obliquely perforated, and a faucet or pipe made of a swan's or goose's quill inserted, will lead the sap into the recipient; and this is a very neat way, and as effectual: I would also have it try'd, whether the very top twigs, grasped in the hand together, a little cropt with a knife, and put into the mouth of a bottle, would not instil, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... collecting and also of revisiting old spots, often with the result of a rich harvest of bark which had been left on partly denuded trunks, and the opening up of new localities. The new shoots springing up from the old stumps have yielded much quill bark, and the root bark of the old stumps has ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... exchanged by the Council and Grower nearly ate the end of his quill-pen off, so gnawed he it during the silence. Farfrae the young Mayor, who by virtue of his office sat in the large chair, intuitively caught the sense of the meeting, and as spokesman was obliged to utter it, glad ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... the end of the book he apologizes for haste, saying that the copy was "given out to two several printers, one alone not being fully able to hold his quill a-going." ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... was looking at the timepiece on the notary's wall. The town clocks were striking the hour. A knock at the door made the notary turn, with his quill pen still indicating the space for Denise's signature. It was the dingy clerk who sat in a sort of cage in the outer office. After opening the door he stood aside, and Susini came in with glittering eyes and a defiant ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... having hitherto affected to despise all the race of her Majesty's quill drivers, ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... heavenly Spirit! from this vain Reck'ning their vanity; less is their gain Than hazard still to meditate on ill, Though with good mind; their reasons like those toys Of glassy bubbles which the gamesome boys Stretch to so nice a thinness through a quill, That they themselves break, and do themselves spill. Arguing is heretics' game, and exercise, As wrestlers, perfects them. Not liberties Of speech, but silence; hands, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... our seats on either side of a long table that ran fore and aft the cabin, whose normal purpose was for the messing of the officers of the ship, but which on the present occasion was supplied with folios of foolscap paper and bundles of quill pens and bottles of ink, systematically distributed along its length, instead of the more palatable viands it more ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... an unlucky goose-quill that lay so handy,' exclaimed Ulick; 'but you may credit me, no eye but my own ever saw the scrawl, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... write of is but the child of sorrow, bred by discontentments, and nourisht vp with misfortunes, to whosc help melancholly Saturne gaue his iudgement, the night-bird her inuention, and the ominous rauen brought a quill taken from his owne wing, dipt in the inke of misery, as chiefe ayders in this architect ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... felt, he said, like a Hindoo god), to see all the cheating, and stuck a notice outside the door, "Door closed," for no earthly reason that any human being could discover. And all the morning from ten till one the quill of Wedderburn shrieked defiance at Hill's, and the quills of the others chased their leaders in a tireless pack, and so also it was in the afternoon. Wedderburn was a little quieter than usual, and Hill's face was hot all day, and his overcoat bulged with textbooks and notebooks ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... it will be so," answered John; "and if rest is what thou needest for thy recovery, it will not be lacking to thee here. It is well that the sword is not the only weapon thou lovest, but that the quill and the lore of the wise of the earth have attractions ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... as Sir Condy, or more willing to pay every man his own as far as he was able, which is as much as any one can do. "Well," says he, joking like with Jason, "I wish we could settle it all with a stroke of my grey goose quill. What signifies making me wade through all this ocean of papers here; can't you now, who understand drawing out an account, debtor and creditor, just sit down here at the corner of the table and get it done out for me, that I may have a clear view of the balance, which is ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... not have been afraid. With the next night Hepburn came; and Kinraid did not. After a few words to her mother, Philip produced the candles he had promised, and some books and a quill or two. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... whose hands were very sore, suggested that perhaps they might break it up with gunpowder. Accordingly, a pound flask of that explosive was poured into the hole, which they closed over with wet clay and a heavy rock, leaving a quill through which ran an extemporized fuse of cotton wick. All being prepared, their fuse was lit, and they ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... wondrous wit, Such as all womankynd did far excell, Such as the world admyr'd, and praised it. So what with hope of good, and hate of ill, He me perswaded forth with him to fare. Nought tooke I with me, but mine oaten quill: Small needments else need shepheard to prepare. So to the sea we came; the sea, that is A world of waters heaped up on hie, Rolling like mountaines in wide wildernesse, Horrible, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... calculated to interest a stranger. The great galleries were still thronged—though only with men, now; the bright colors that had made them look like hanging gardens were gone, with the ladies. The reporters' gallery, was merely occupied by one or two watchful sentinels of the quill-driving guild; the main body cared nothing for a debate that had dwindled to a mere vaporing of dull speakers and now and then a brief quarrel over a point of order; but there was an unusually large attendance of journalists ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... paper, man, and make a new pen, with a sharp neb, and fine hair-stroke. Do not slit the quill up too high, it's a wastrife course in your trade, Andrew—they that do not mind corn- pickles, never come to forpits. I have known a learned man write a thousand pages with one quill." [Footnote: A biblical commentary by Gill, which (if the author's memory serves him) ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... so come in the morning betimes, plum your ground, gage your line, bait your hook with a red knotted worme; but I hold a Menow better: put the hook in at the back of the Menow, betwixt the fish and the skin, that the Menow may swim up and down alive, being boyed up with a Cork or Quill, that the Menow may have liberty to swimme a foot off the ground: there is no doubt of ...
— The Art of Angling • Thomas Barker
... a pen. Agamemnon had a steel one, but Solomon John said, "Poets always used quills." Elizabeth Eliza suggested that they should go out to the poultry-yard and get a quill. But it was already dark. They had, however, two lanterns, and the little boys borrowed the neighbors'. They set out in procession for the poultry-yard. When they got there, the fowls were all at roost, so they could look at ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... bare of feathers to some distance above the tarsal joints, with three long toes to the front and one to the rear, articulated on the tarsus, the front toes free or divided to their bases; the wings of mean length and rounded, the first quill being shorter than the second, and the third and fourth the longest ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... into remorse. At the moment probably, he would have been glad to see something emotional in me. I could not show it. In another minute, however, I should have betrayed confusion, had I not bethought myself to take some quill-pens from my desk, and begin soberly to ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... of hue, With orange-tawny bill; The throstle with his note so true: The wren with little quill; The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, The ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... workmen were some with the unmistakable lozenge eyes, high cheek-bones, and rhubarb complexion of the native American. Upon inquiry, we were introduced to one of the Rhubarbarians. He was a little fellow, not in leggings and quill-embroidered hunting-shirt, with belt of wampum and buckskin moccasins; armed with bow and arrow, tomahawk and scalping-knife; such as one would expect to navigate a wild, romantic lake with, in birch-bark canoe; but a ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... with five semi-palmated toes with short compressed claws; eyes small, with linear erect pupils; long skull with forty teeth; the orbit complete in many cases, or only slightly imperfect; the hairs are long, rigid, and ringed like the quill of a porcupine, which gives the grizzled appearance peculiar to these animals. The female has only four mammae. They are very active and sanguinary, chiefly hunting along the ground, but can climb with facility. There are several species found within the limits of British India, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... trimmed grass, and its beds of gay flowers. Broad streets separated the rows. The white spire of a church loomed proudly at the end of a street. From the doorways dark, full-bodied women smiled happily—their faces clean, and their long, black hair caught back with artistic bands of quill embroidery, as they called to the clean brown children who played light-heartedly in the grassed dooryards. Tall, lean-shouldered men, whose swarthy faces glowed with the love of their labour, toiled gladly in fields of yellow grain, or sang and called to one another in the forest where ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... obediently. Then a fat man came out of the Court House, with a quill in his hand, and a merry twinkle in his eye ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stowed away in it, for your trouble; but don't forget to secure the casks till we can stow them away below. We can't break bulk now; but the sooner they are down the better; or we shall have some quill-driving rascal on board, with his flotsam and jetsam, for the Lord knows who;" and Thompson, to use his own expression, went down again "to lay ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... friend's humour, rummaged about until he found the stump of a quill, a penny inkbottle, and a dirty sheet of paper. These he placed on a rickety table, and Aspel wrote a scrawly note, in which he gave himself very bad names, and begged Mr Blurt to come and see him, as he had got into a scrape, and could by no means see his way out of it. Having folded ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... pen, and, with the air of complying exactly and courteously with her demand, folded the quill into three or four lengths, and placed it weltering in ink within my waistcoat pocket. I was looking intently ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... foot. His defensive armour is found in the fetid effluvium which, by a muscular exertion, he is capable of ejecting upon his pursuer. This he carries in two small sacs that lie under his tail, with ducts leading outward about as large as the tube of a goose-quill. The effluvium itself is caused by a thin fluid, which cannot be seen in daylight, but at night appears, when ejected, like a double stream of phosphoric light. He can throw it to the distance of five yards; and, knowing this, he always waits till the pursuer has fairly got within range—as ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... in my room & so wild outside that I am frightened. I have tried to make myself smart in a blue silk dressing gown & a tosh lace breakfast cap, & I will write neatly with a quill pen from the Mayfair, but just the same I am a lonely baby & I want you here to comfort me. Would you be too shocked to come? I would put a Navajo blanket on my bed & a papier mache Turkish dagger & head of Othello over my bed & pretend ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... subjects of microscopic proportions can be projected on the screen enormously magnified. During the siege of Paris in 1870-71 the Parisians established a balloon and pigeon post to carry letters which had been copied in a minute size by photography. These copies could be enclosed in a quill and attached to a pigeon's wing. On receipt, the copies were placed in a special lantern and thrown as large writing on the screen. Micro-photography has since then made great strides, and is now widely used for scientific purposes, one of the most important ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... asylum for the perverse, the home of the unfortunate. Here the sons of adversity meet the children of calamity, and here the children of calamity meet the offspring of sin. Bankrupt brokers, boot-blacks, blacklegs, and blacksmiths here assemble together; and cast-away tinkers, watch-makers, quill-drivers, cobblers, doctors, farmers, and lawyers compare past experiences and talk of old times. Wrecked on a desert shore, a man-of-war's crew could quickly found an Alexandria by themselves, and fill it with all the things which go to make ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... big bit of news which is going to change my whole life. Whom do you think I had a letter from last Tuesday week? From Cullingworth, no less. It had no beginning, no end, was addressed all wrong, and written with a very thick quill pen upon the back of a prescription. How it ever reached me is a wonder. This is ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... went into the ladies' parlour, and felt rather out of place among so many richly dressed females; for as I was proceeding to write a letter, a porter came in and told me that writing was not allowed in that saloon. "Freedom again," thought I. On looking round I did feel that my antiquated goose-quill and rusty-looking inkstand were rather out of place. The carpet of the room was of richly flowered Victoria pile, rendering the heaviest footstep noiseless; the tables were marble on gilded pedestals, the couches ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... frilly clothes. Now, I suppose your ideal girl wears plain tailor-made suits, and stiff white collars, and small hats without much trimming,—just a band and a quill." ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... now and then, always alone, and generally standing on the end of the ship, her green cape blowing in a gale of wind and showing a scarlet lining, her mignonette hat exchanged for a soft green thing with an upstanding scarlet quill. She was the only companionable person on board, but he did not know her and sat nowhere near her at table, an assemblage of facts that seemed to settle the matter, considering the sort of man he was and the ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... store' before I got my fall," he explained, "though if I have got to that I had better go back to England, where those fellows get a half-holiday on Saturdays and lots of bank holidays, and are in civilization at least. Perhaps if the governor saw me with a quill behind my ear, or riding down to the city on top of a 'bus, smoking a pipe, he'd do something for me for the honor of the family. But he's in a beastly humor now, and wouldn't send me a fiver to save my life. He says that I'm not worth my salt anywhere, and that he washes his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... rivulets of ink have been exhausted, and the virulence of both parties enormously augmented. Now, it must be here understood, that ink is the great missive weapon in all battles of the learned, which, conveyed through a sort of engine called a quill, infinite numbers of these are darted at the enemy by the valiant on each side, with equal skill and violence, as if it were an engagement of porcupines. This malignant liquor was compounded, by the engineer who invented it, of two ingredients, which are, gall and ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... used will depend on the kind of drawing you wish to make. In steel pens there are innumerable varieties, from the fine crow-quills to the thick "J" nibs. The natural crow-quill is a much more sympathetic tool than a steel pen, although not quite so certain in its line. But more play and variety is to be got out of it, and when a free pen drawing is wanted ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... thinking that I would come to him presently. But I, too, had to act under the god of friends. In Diego Lopez's room I found quill and ink and paper, and there I wrote a letter to Don Enrique, and finding Diego gave it to him to be given in two hours into Don Enrique's hand. Then Juan Lepe the squire changed in his own room, narrow and bare as a cell, to the clothing of Juan ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... Black ink was early used, though it is certain that it was either kept in a solid state, like India ink, or that it was of the consistency of glue, and needed the application of water before it could be used. For pens, the iron stylus, the reed, needle, and quill (though the last was not admitted without a struggle) were the common substitutes ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... him a narrow strip of paper on which, in preparation, he has jotted down a few words with his inspired quill-pen. Occasionally he looks at his notes, while he is speaking, rocking himself very slowly to and fro, and twisting his thumbs. He often hesitates, almost stutters, and sometimes even makes a slip of the tongue. He seems to be wrestling with his thoughts, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... "only it was Aladdin's Cave undergoing a wondrous 'sea change.' A poetess, who writes for the papers under the name of Melissa Mayflower, had fastened herself upon our party in some way; and I suppose she felt bound to sustain the reputation of the quill. She said the Nereids must have built that marine palace, and decorated it for a visit ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... W ... son follow'd, of congenial quill, As near the dirt and no less prone to ill. Walcot, of English heart, had English pen, Buffoon he might be, but for hire was none; Nor plumed and mounted in Professor's chair Offer'd to grin for wages at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... and they all say here you must come back—no matter how—and put matters to rights. Fred has placed the thing in my hands, and I'm thinking we'd better call out the "heavies" by turns,—for most of them stand by Trevyllian. Maurice Quill and myself sat up considering it last night; but, somehow, we don't clearly remember to-day a beautiful plan we hit upon. However, we'll have at it again this evening. Meanwhile, come over here, and let us be doing something. We ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... cigars somewhat crumpled and frayed; some matches in a gun-metal case, a silver cigar cutter, two five-dollar bills, a handful of silver chicken feed, the leather case of the eyeglasses, a couple of quill toothpicks, a gold watch with a dangling fob, a notebook and some papers. Mr. Trimm ranged these things in a neat row upon a log, like a watchmaker setting out his kit, and took swift inventory ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... little roopy was his exact expression—and it should be, every drop, devoted to the purpose he had mentioned. Accordingly, it was locked up in his box, and drawn off by himself in a phial, and administered to me through a piece of quill in the cork, when I was supposed to be in want of a restorative. Sometimes, to make it a more sovereign specific, he was so kind as to squeeze orange juice into it, or to stir it up with ginger, or dissolve a peppermint drop in it; and although I cannot ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... crow-quill had been cut ready for use; for some time the paper with its coloured vignette had been waiting by the side of the amber writing-case; yet Edmee paid no attention to them and made no attempt to use them. The letter lay open in her lap; her feet were on the fire-dogs, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... the folk who sing or say In sonnet sad or sermon chill, "Alas, alack, and well-a-day, This round world's but a bitter pill." Poor porcupines of fretful quill! Sometimes we quarrel with our lot: We, too, are sad and careful; still We'd rather ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... passionate and frail, Doris drives an earnest quill, Athanasia takes the veil: Wiser Phyllis o'er her pail, At the heart of all romance Reading, sings to Strephon's flail:- 'Fate's a fiddler, ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... use their wings to propel themselves through the air, but the mechanism of the act we may not be able to analyze. I do not know how a butterfly propels itself against a breeze with its quill-less wings, but we know that it does do it. As its wings are neither convex nor concave, like a bird's, one would think that the upward and downward strokes would neutralize each other; but they do not. Strong winds often carry them out over large ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... himself like an officer, never thinks himself, or is thought by others, deficient in anything that constitutes the gentleman, because he happens not to be at the same time a clerk. He has from his childhood been taught to consider the quill and the sword as two distinct professions, both useful and honourable when honourably pursued; and having chosen the sword, he thinks he does quite enough in learning how to use and support it through all grades, and ought not to be expected to encroach on the profession of the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Orion, suddenly. The quill above the blue buoy nods as it lifts over the wavelets—nods again, sinks a little, jerks up, and then goes down out of sight. Orion feels the weight. 'Two pounds, if he's an ounce!' he shouts: ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... the old baronet as never baronet was plucked before; I have scarce left him the stump of a quill; I have got promissory notes in his hand to the amount of—if you like round numbers, say, thirty thousand pounds, safely deposited in my portable strong-box, alias double-clasped pocket-book. I leave ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Mr. Benny assented, looking up and biting the end of his quill. He did not understand the drift of the question. "Now and then, sir," he repeated; "when ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bust; Ninety odd in the shade as I write, I've a 'ed, and a thunderin' thust. Can't go on the trot at this tempryture, though I'm on 'oliday still; So I'll pull out my eskrytor, CHARLIE, and give you a touch of my quill. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... the flesh of the ostrich fall out in the course of a month or six weeks, or can be easily drawn out, and then a new and good feather grows in place of the old one. The reason why plucking still finds advocates is that the feathers with the entire quill bring a higher price in the market than those that have been cut ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... floor, lights up for Reuben only the cobwebbed corners, the faded roundabouts of fellow-martyrs, the dismal figures of Daboll, the shining tail-coat of Master Brummem, as he stalks up and down from hour to hour, collecting in this way his scattered thoughts for some new argumentative thrust of the quill into the sixthly or the seventhly of his next week's sermon! And the long and weary afternoons, when the sun with a mocking bounty pours through the dusty and curtainless windows to the west, lighting only again the gray and speckled roundabouts of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... was even more simple: a "quill tube," filled with fine powder, fitted into the vent. A fulminate cap was glued to the top of the tube. A pull of the lanyard caused the hammer of the cannon to strike the cap (just like a little boy's cap pistol) and start the ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... play the lute, the violin, the flageolet, the harp, the syrinx and the regals," the other replied; "also the Spanish penola that is struck with a quill, the organistrum that a wheel turns round, the wait so delightful, the rebeck so enchanting, the little gigue that chirps up on high, and the great horn ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... New York for this purpose. He was very short of funds, and this fact alone would have discouraged most young men; not so with this man. He hired a cellar; two barrels with a board across served as desk on which was an ink-stand and goose quill. The proprietor of these apartments was not only editor and manager, but reporter, cashier, book-keeper, salesman, messenger and office boy. One hour he was writing biting editorials or spicy paragraphs; the next rushing out to report a fire or some other catastrophe, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... of which was closed and was thus made to serve for a desk. On this were several sheets of what was then called pro patria paper, or foolscap, and most of these were very much bescribbled. An ink-horn and a sand-box completed the outfit, except for a quill in the hands of the bond-servant, which had given rise to the sound the girl had heard. Now, however, it was not writing, for the man was chewing the feather end with a look of deep thought on ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... noted that and perhaps resented it, for his face darkened. He made no comment, however, but celebrated the end of dinner in his usual manner by pushing back his chair a little, crossing his legs comfortably, and beginning a series of excavating operations with a quill toothpick which he drew from his vest pocket. Miss Ocky winced. This was the postprandial habit of his ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... made with the subclavian vein on the upper side at the place where it is joined by the left jugular vein. The thoracic duct has a length of from sixteen to eighteen inches, and is about as large around as a goose quill. The lower end terminates in an enlargement in the abdominal cavity, called the receptacle of the chyle. It is provided with valves throughout its course, in addition to one of considerable size which guards the opening into the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... the slightest breeze, and assisting to keep up a circulation of the air. They are fringed at their joints with short branches of long, lance-shaped leaves. We saw bamboos of all sizes, some with the cane as delicate as a small quill, yet fully ten feet long; and these were also exceedingly graceful. So also were the tree-ferns, which grew in great profusion and beauty on the sides of the hills. But the most curious and valuable tree we saw was the traveller's-tree. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... mayor of Tours, relates incidents of the novelist's method of work, according to the report of a servant employed at the chateau of Sache: "Sometimes he would shut himself up in his room and stay there several days. Then it was that, plunged into a sort of ecstasy and armed with a crow quill, he would write night and day, abstaining from all food and merely contenting himself with decoctions of coffee which he himself prepared." [Brochure of M. le Docteur Fournier in regard to the statue of Balzac, that statue a piece of work to which M. Henry Renault—another ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... widely from most of the other Aborigines of North America. I allude to their kind treatment of the women. The men do the laborious work, whilst their wives employ themselves in ornamenting their dresses with quill-work, and in other occupations suited to their sex. Mr. Wentzel has often known the young married men to bring specimens of their wives' needle-work to the forts, and exhibit them with much pride. Kind treatment of the fair sex being usually considered as an indication of considerable progress ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... couple of dollars. I then ripped open the print and found my first suspicions confirmed; for, underneath, the quiver was of buckskin, beautifully embroidered with red feathers and porcupine {80} quills of deep red and turquoise blue. The Indian was as much puzzled by my preference for the quill work as I was by ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... surely not hidden from view. It was the world's own fault that it could not interpret what it saw, that it imagined the little yellow monkey would never dare attack the clumsy polar-bear. Because the diplomatic quill-drivers would only see what fitted into their schemes, because they were capable only of moving in a circle about their own ideas, they could not understand the thoughts of others, and the few warning voices died away unheeded. It was not ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... seen, And ready once more at his Country's call To leave his wife, his home, his all. And I, as I thought of what he had done, And the arm-chair band (of which I am one), Elderly scribblers, who can't even drill, And are only good at driving a quill— Humbled and shamed to my inmost core I wished I could drop clean through the floor. For the tables were turned; I stood at zero, And the office boy ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... he had nothing to complain, although it barely served its purpose, like most of the inexpensive objects about him, was a charming. Italian bronze ink-stand, over whose cover wrestled the infant Hercules in the act of strangling a goose—in friendly aid of "drivers of the quill." My father wrote with a gold pen, and I can hear now, as it seems, the rapid rolling of his chirography over the broad page, as he formed his small, rounded, but irregular letters, when filling his journals, in Italy. He leaned ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... I will seek a blessing on our enterprise by taking earthly precautions to secure its success. You, prince, will use the quill of diplomacy, and I shall make ready to defend my right with a hundred thousand trusty Austrians to back me. To-night I march a portion of my men ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... dream, sometimes, of a straight scarlet collar, stiff with gold lace, around my neck, instead of this limp white cravat; and I have even brandished my quill at the office so cutlass-wise, that Titbottom has paused in his additions and looked at me as if he doubted whether I should come out quite square in my petty cash. Yet he understands it. Titbottom was born ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... dependent on daily wages, whose only capital is their skill or bodily strength—factory operatives, artisans, agricultural laborers, to whom might be added, especially in Germany, the day-laborers with the quill, the literary proletariat. This, Riehl observes, is a valid basis of economical classification, but not of social classification. In his view, the Fourth Estate is a stratum produced by the perpetual abrasion of the other great social groups; ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Did he felicitate himself like a simple Teuton, on the wonderful learning and eloquence of his Greek-Roman secretary? Or did he laugh a royal laugh at the whole letter, and crack a royal joke at Cassiodorus and all quill-driving schoolmasters and lawyers—the two classes of men whom the Goths hated especially, and at the end to which they by their pedantries had brought imperial Rome? One would like to know. For not only was Dietrich no scholar himself, but he had a contempt for the very scholarship ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... spiritual process, and that good teachers and willing, obedient, and industrious pupils are about all that is required. As a matter of fact, just as modern business has found it necessary to install one-hundred-dollar typewriters to take the place of the penny quill pens, so must education, to be efficient, develop and employ the elaborate tools needed by new and complex modern conditions, and set aside the tools that were adequate in a simpler age. The proper teaching ...
— What the Schools Teach and Might Teach • John Franklin Bobbitt
... however superior to the Roman in delicate irony, judicious reflexions, etc., his gilt post will bribe over the judges to him. All the time I was at the E.I.H. I never mended a pen; I now cut 'em to the stumps, marring rather than mending the primitive goose quill. I cannot bear to pay for articles I used to get for nothing. When Adam laid out his first penny upon nonpareils at some stall in Mesopotamos, I think it went hard with him, reflecting upon his old goodly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... specimen of her needlework made for a sister-in- law, my mother. In a very small bag is deposited a little rolled up housewife, furnished with minikin needles and fine thread. In the housewife is a tiny pocket, and in the pocket is enclosed a slip of paper, on which, written as with a crow quill, are these lines:— ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... annual, sending up stems to the height of ten or fifteen feet, while drooping from the top are enormous leaves three or four feet in length, and looking, as one writer has aptly said, like "great, green quill pens." It is planted in fields like corn, which in its young growth it much resembles. Each plant produces a single cluster of from eighty to one hundred or more bananas, often weighing in the aggregate as high as seventy pounds. The banana ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... is Migwan," said the next girl. "It means 'Quill Pen,' and stands for my ambition to write stories and things." She was a thoughtful-looking girl with a beautiful high forehead and large ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... the signs on Broadway. A large man of unmistakable American make, but with so little that was of New England or New York in his presence that she might not at once have thought him American, lounged toward them with a quill toothpick in the corner of his mouth. He had a jealous blue eye, into which he seemed trying to put a friendly light; his straight mouth stretched into an involuntary smile above his tawny chin-beard, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... annihilate a man by pad and pencil is indeed an art worthy of admiration. The pen of an indictment clerk is oft mightier than the sword of a Lionheart, the brain behind the subtle quill far defter than said swordsman's skill. Moreover, the ingenuity necessary to draft one of these documents is not confined to its mere successful composition, for having achieved the miraculous feat of alleging ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... hemi-ellipsoidal dome, completely covering the head, and even reaching beyond the point of the beak: the individual feathers then stand out something like the down-bearing seeds of the dandelion. Besides this, there is another ornamental appendage on the breast, formed by a fleshy tubercle, as thick as a quill and an inch and a half long, which hangs down from the neck, and is thickly covered with glossy feathers, forming a large pendant plume or tassel. This also the bird can either press to its breast, so as to be scarcely visible, or can ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... are too proud to be pleased by them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance; at least I suppose this quill I hold in my hand writes better than a peacock's would, and the peasants of Vevay, whose fields in spring time are as white with lilies as the Dent du Midi is with its snow, told me the hay was ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... rounded, every tail of every g and y and z is precisely twisted in colonial script. I think the very trouble and preparation incident to writing conduced to the finish and elegance of the penmanship. No stylographic pens were used in those days, but instead, a carefully prepared quill; and the ink was made of ink-cake or ink-powder dissolved in water; or, more troublesome still, home-made ink, tediously prepared with nutgalls, walnut or swamp maple bark, or iron filings steeped in vinegar and ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... direct progeny of the snorting war-horse. The phrase "mad as a hornet" has become a proverb. Think, then, of a brush loaded and tipped with this martial spirit of Vespa, this cavorting afflatus, this testy animus! There is more than one pessimistic "goose-quill," of course, "mightier than the sword," which, it occurs to me in my now charitable mood, might have been thus surreptitiously voudooed by the war-like hornet, and ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... Congress and a jurist of distinction. Beside him on a table were some papers, obviously of the first importance, for they were plastered with seals, a copy of Coke on Lyttleton, and an inkpot with a quill sticking out of it. His arm was lying lightly on the table, his cherubic face smiling back at its observer wherever he stood; and Tom imagined that his next move would be, after the manner of his great-great-granddaughter, ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... was permitted in the room while he was writing except an Angora cat who was allowed to bound upon the desk without rebuke, or even to perch upon the author's shoulders. Here the cat settled down contentedly, and with half-shut eyes watched the steady driving of the quill across the paper. ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... those that Schleiermacher had brought. Christina held the scroll, and placed the pen in the fingers that had lately so easily wielded the heavy sword, but now felt it a far greater effort to guide the slender quill. ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could not always be important, I nevertheless always endeavored to express them clearly and pointedly, the more so as my friend often gave me to understand what a great thing it was to write down a verse on Dutch paper, with the crow-quill and Indian ink; what time, talent, and exertion it required, which ought not to be squandered on any thing empty and superfluous. He would, at the same time, open a finished parcel, and circumstantially to explain what ought not to stand in this or that ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... sprightliness of imagination vanished at sight of an ink-bottle. With a brush his feelings were fluid, and in a company grace dwelt upon his lips; but when asked to write it out he gripped the pen as though it were a crowbar instead of a crow's-quill. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... and old women for the remainder of my days. My friends, you saw which way my feather flew. I shall hold my shield in that direction, and the lightning will draw a great cloud, and this arrow, which is feathered with the quill of the white swan will make ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... the last war against Great Britain "Non-Intercourse Quills" were for sale. This reminds us that most young people know but little about quills of any kind, and probably not one in a hundred knows, in these days, how to make a quill pen. Quills were in pretty general use for writing until about 1835 or 1836, when steel pens took their place to some extent, although quill pens were used by many down to a comparatively recent period, and occasionally a person may now be seen using one. Steel ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... set; I found, or thought I found, you did exceed That barren tender of a poet's debt: And therefore have I slept in your report, That you yourself, being extant, well might show How far a modern quill doth come too short, Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow. This silence for my sin you did impute, Which shall be most my glory being dumb; For I impair not beauty being mute, When others would give life, and bring a tomb. There lives ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... fairy to appear was Green Feather, an elfin page or messenger, and Reginald made a perfect sprite, in his green suit, and cap with a long, green quill. ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... barely read and did not learn to write until her firstborn had gone away from the home nest. Then it was that she sharpened a gray goose-quill and labored long and patiently, practising with this instrument (said to be mightier than the sword) and with ink she herself had mixed—all that she might write a letter to her boy; and how sweetly, tenderly homely, and loving are these letters as ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with a woollen muffler and a quill toothpick. He saw the sketch in Tinkle's window and thought it was a windmill at first. He was game, though, and bought it anyhow. He ordered another—an oil sketch of the Lackawanna freight depot—to take back with him. Music lessons! Oh, I guess ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... the family, as it were, formality was dropped, and an easy atmosphere of familiarity prevailed. You read that Uncle Enoch Siller had Sundayed over at the Ridge, or that Aunt Gussy Williams was on the puny list, and frequently there were friendly references to "Ye Editor" or "Ye Quill Driver," for after soaring to dizzy heights in his editorials, Mr. Opp condescended to come down on the second page and move in and out of the columns, as ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... through the assistance of the chemist that he finally hit upon the method of staining the sheets with a thin broth of untanned leather, of which the analysis would give a result closely approaching that of the parchment itself. Moreover, he made all sorts of trials of quill pens, until he had found a method of cutting which produced the exact thickness of stroke required, and during the whole time he exercised himself in copying and recopying many pages of the manuscript upon common paper, in order to familiarise ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... writing of my master," hurriedly remarked Gino, who trembled for the fate of the packet, "you will see his skill in the turn of those letters. There are few nobles in Venice, or indeed in the Sicilies, who have a more scholarly hand, with a quill, than Don Camillo Monforte; I could not do the thing half ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to send me up a few quills, I cut out several ostrich quills, and had the pleasure, for the first time in my life, of writing with an ostrich pen. I cut several, and amused and satirized myself by writing in my journal with one quill, "James Richardson has much to learn;" with another quill, "Richardson, James, must take care of his health," &c., "Yâkob Richardson was an egregious ass to come into The Desert," &c., &c. These quills are very firm, if not fine and flexible, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... troubled up they stole To the deep-shadowed sullen water-hole, Among whose warty snags the quaint perch lair. As cunning stole the boy to angle there, Muffling least tread, with no noise balancing through The hangdog alder-boughs his bright bamboo. Down plumbed the shuttled ledger, and the quill On the quicksilver water lay ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... My brethren of the quill, the ingenious society of news-writers, having with great spirit and elegance already informed the world, that the town of Tournay capitulated on the 28th instant, there is nothing left for me to say, but to congratulate the good ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... came in from canvassing, there lay upon her desk the neglected manuscript of her book, found in a bottom drawer. Before it stood a chair; beside it a drop-light. A quill pen, brand new, bright green and very gay, perched atop a fresh bottle of ink. Near-by appeared a small flat book showing an account between Esther Claff and Ruth Vars and an uptown bank. Inside, between roseate ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... head to foot in a raccoon fur coat, with a jaunty hat of the same, trimmed only with a bright quill feather. ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... that conveys the urine from the kidney to the bladder is like a white, round cord, about the size of a goose quill, prolonged from the pouch on the lower surface of the kidney backward beneath the loins, then inward, supported by a fold of thin membrane, to open into the bladder just in front of its neck. The canal passes first through the middle (muscular) coat of the bladder, and then advances perceptibly ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... specimen, met with by Dr Hooker during his journey, and which he has figured and described in his beautiful work, The Rhododendron of Sikkim-Himalaya. It is called R. nivale, or snow-rhododendron. 'The hard, woody branches of this curious little species, as thick as a goose-quill, struggle along the ground for a foot or two, presenting brown tufts of vegetation where not half-a-dozen other plants can exist. The branches are densely interwoven, very harsh and woody, wholly depressed; whence the shrub, spreading horizontally, and barely raised two inches above the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... citrate of potassa in an ounce vial of clear cold water. This forms an invisible fluid. Let it dissolve, and you can use on paper of any color. Use goose quill in writing. When you wish the writing to become visible, hold it to ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Dress repainted, but carefully, leaving the hair untouched. Right hand and pen, now a common feathered quill, entirely repainted, but dexterously and with feeling. The hand was once slightly different in position, and ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... what an effect it had upon him—that sometimes for days he would feed upon the prospect of the most childish trifle because it would break in some slight degree the uniformity of his toil. For example, he would sometimes change from quill to steel pens and back again, and he found himself actually looking forward with a kind of joy—merely because of the variation—to the day on which he had fixed to go back to the quill after using steel. He would determine, two or three days beforehand, to get up earlier, and ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... sitting at opposite ends of the table. The one held a long goose-quill pen, and before her lay several large sheets of paper covered with fine writing. Her eyes followed the lines slowly, and from time to time she made a correction in the manuscript. As she read, her lips moved to form words, but she made no sound. Now and then a faint ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... "he could find nothing amongst us but our writings to distinguish us from the worst of barbarians." But to become an "Author by Profession," is to have no other means of subsistence than such as are extracted from the quill; and no one believes these to be so precarious as they really are, until disappointed, distressed, and thrown out of every pursuit which can maintain independence, the noblest mind is cast into the lot ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... had was Mrs. Freshett. My! she thought they were big and fine. Mother promised her a couple of eggs to set under a hen. Father said she was gradually coming down the scale of her feelings, and before two weeks she'd give Isaac Thomas, at least, a quill for a pen. Almost no one wrote with them any more, but often father made a few, and showed us how to use them. He said they were gone with candles, sand boxes, and snuff. Mother said she had no use for snuff, but candles were not ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... satisfaction was manifest, for I never have seen him rub the tip of his nose with the feathers of his quill pen so often as he did that afternoon, which was with him the sign of exuberant joy, all his gestures having subdued themselves long since to the limits ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... what I mean, but I am afraid it would not be polite to employ that word, so I merely give you the meaning, and leave you to choose a word to your liking—ideas about the nature, the facts, and the objects of writing. Look at it a moment. With your gray goose-quill you sit, O Rhadamanthus, and to your waiting audience pleasantly enough affirm that I have "taken Benlomond for my model." But when I happen to remember that the larger part of my book was written and printed not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... followed about, carrying the ink pot into which she frequently dipped the big quill pen. She overlooked nothing in the scantily furnished house. She even went so far as to timidly suggest that certain articles of furniture might well be replaced by more attractive ones, and he had promptly agreed. At last she announced that ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... abnormal growth of the lily family. The trunk, about 2 feet in diameter, is a spongy mass, not susceptible of treatment to which the other specimens are subjected. Its bark is an irregular stringy, knotted mass, with porcupine-quill-like leaves springing out in place of the limbs that grow from all well-regulated trees. One specimen of the yucca was sent to the museum two years ago, and though the roots and top of the tree ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... Sheykh Yussuf carrying my lantern—and was loudly hailed with a Salaam Aleykee from the old Shereef himself—who began praising the Gospel I had given him, and me at the same time. Yussuf had a little reed in his hand—the kalem for writing, about two feet long and of the size of a quill. I took it and showed it to the Bimbashee and said—'Behold the neboot wherewith we are all to be murdered by this Sheykh of the Religion.' The Bimbashee's bristly moustache bristled savagely, for he felt that the 'Arab dogs' and the Christian khanzeereh (feminine pig) ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... of Llanwddyn long before it was converted into a vast reservoir to supply Liverpool with water was that of Cynon. Of this Spirit Mr. Evans writes thus:—"Yspryd Cynon was a mischievous goblin, which was put down by Dic Spot and put in a quill, and placed under a large stone in the river below Cynon Isaf. The stone is called 'Careg yr Yspryd,' the Ghost Stone. This one received the following instructions, that he was to remain under the stone ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... OLD JOHN: I had lost you, and thought that perhaps you had gone over to the majority, until I saw your name and recognized your quill in a story. Write to me; am doing well. I send you a photograph of all there are of the Howell outfit. No half-breeds for ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... his pocket and carry something towards his mouth, as if it were a quid of tobacco: it was examined, and found to be a letter, of which the enclosed is a copy, written on silk paper, rolled up in gold-beater's skin, and nicely tied at each end, so as not to be larger than a goose quill. As this is the first authentic disclosure of their purpose in coming here, and may serve to found, with somewhat more of certainty, conjectures respecting their future movements, while their disappointment in not meeting with Lord Cornwallis ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... a shepheard (though but young Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill His few yeeres could, began to fit his quill." ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... lady. She wears more "jewelry," as certain young ladies call their trinkets, than I care to see on a person in her position. Her voice is strident, her laugh too much like a giggle, and she has that foolish way of dancing and bobbing like a quill-float with a "minnum" biting the hook below it, which one sees and weeps over sometimes in persons of more pretensions. I can't help hoping we shall put something into that empty chair yet which will add the missing string ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... ill Desires to reconstruct her will; I see the servants hurrying for The family solicitor; Post-haste he comes and with him brings The usual necessary things. With common form and driving quill He draws the first part of the will, The more sonorous solemn sounds Denote a hundred thousand pounds, This trifle is the main bequest, Old friends and servants take the rest. 'Tis done! I see her sign her name, I see ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... let the false outlines alone where they do not really interfere with the true one. It is a good thing to accustom yourself to hew and shape your drawing out of a dirty piece of paper. When you have got it as right as you can, take a quill pen, not very fine at the point; rest your hand on a book about an inch and a half thick, so as to hold the pen long; and go over your pencil outline with ink, raising your pen point as seldom as possible, and never leaning more ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... rattle, making, like most game, more noise than they are worth. Some get back, some dodge among the trees; the fair shots are few and far between: but Elsley blazes away right and left with trusty quill; and, to do him justice, seldom misses his aim, for practice has made him a sure and quick marksman in his own line. Moreover, all is game which gets up to-day; for he is shooting for the kitchen, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... capable of containing near two Ounces each; one situated between the vesiculae seminales and Rectum, the other between the vesiculae and Bladder, which opened into the Urethra by one common Orifice, capable of admitting a large Quill, at the Side of the caput galinaginis. The rest of the Viscera were in a ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... the emigrants gathered around me to see the scalp of the Indian; they had never seen such a sight before; each of the young ladies wanted a quill from the Indian's head dress; and they asked me what I would take for one of them; I told them the ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... idly try To show her sheaepe a-riden by, The rushes brown-bloom'd stems did ply, As if they bow'd to her by will. The rings o' water, wi' a sock, Did break upon the mossy rock, An' gi'e my beaeten heart a shock, Above my float's up-leapen quill. ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... such size as to make street cars or cabs or omnibuses necessary. Time was less valuable than in our day. The merchant kept his own books, wrote all business letters with a quill pen, and waited for the ink to dry or sprinkled it with sand. There were no envelopes, no postage stamps, no letter boxes in the streets, no collection of the mails. The letter written, the paper was carefully folded, sealed with wax or a wafer, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
