"Bat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we went back we should only have to bowl for old Eely. Everybody has to bowl for him, and he thinks he's such a dabster with the bat, but he's a regular muff. Never carried the bat out in his ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... also quite in the order of things for them to be poor. Two younger boys, who were still at school, gave up all their leisure time to music—they had never in their lives tumbled round a football or swung a bat—and Franz believed that the elder would prove a skilful violinist. Of the little girls, one had a pure voice and a good ear, and was to be a singer—for before this Juggernaut, prejudice went down. Had anyone suggested to Frau Furst that her daughter should be a clerk, even a teacher, she would ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... one, mon ami; we islanders are like the bat in the fable—beast or bird, as it suits us—we belong to either country. For my own part, I have a strong national affection ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... he could almost feel the hot blast of white light hit his face with the physical impact of a baseball bat. With what was almost a whimper of suppressed fear he rocked backward on ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... You can come and clear up after breakfast, and if you've got nothing to do after morning school, you can come and take a bat down at the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... "Not a bat," said her mistress correctively; "it was a cat. You look at this letter an' you'll see. And, anyway, how could a man shootin' at a cat hit a cook?—not 'nless she was up a tree birds'-nestin' after owls' eggs. You don't seem to pay much attention to what I read ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... Miss Salome a look as of one who would say, You're bat-blind if you can't read between the lines of that; but Miss Salome was placidly unconscious. She was not really thinking of the subject at all, and did not guess that Chester ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... from their most vivacious essence shines upon our intellect, inasmuch as we perceive the above-mentioned reasons and many others, even as he who has the eyes closed affirms the air to be luminous, because of some little brightness or ray of light which passes through the pupils; as it is with the bat, for not otherwise are the eyes of the intellect closed, so long as the soul is bound and prisoned by ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... not always look beautiful. If you see me with my face all black, don't be frightened. If you see me flapping wings like bat's wings, as big as the whole sky, don't be afraid. If you hear me raging, you must believe that I am just doing my work. Nay, Diamond, if I change into a serpent or a tiger, you must not let go your hold of me, for it will be I just the same. And ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... nature that is not interesting and in some way useful. Perhaps you will say "How about a bat?" As a matter of fact a bat is one of our best friends because he will spend the whole night catching mosquitoes. But some one will say "he flies into your hair and is covered with a certain kind of disgusting ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... of the summer night We see the Brick Bat take his rapid flight. And, with unerring aim, descending straight, He meets a cat on the back garden gate. The little Brick Bat could not fly alone,— Oh, no; there is ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... fantastic branches of the old elms, intertwined with the parasitic ivy looked grim and threatening, silhouetted against the lurid after glow. Master Busy liked neither the solitude, nor yet the silence of the woods; he had just caught sight of a bat circling over the dilapidated roof of the pavilion, and he hated bats. Though he belonged to a community which denied the angels and ignored the saints, he had a firm belief in the existence of a ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... side went in first, and Charlie himself went to the bat. The pitcher was Godfrey. He was really a fair pitcher, and considered himself very superior. Charlie finally succeeded in hitting the ball, but rather feebly, and narrowly escaped losing his first base. ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... mounting moon, and the lovers turned to go, all being still: even the noise of the waters still to their ears, as life that is muffled in sleep. They saw the cedar grey-edged under the moon: and Night, that clung like a bat beneath its ancient open palms. The bordering sward about the falls shone silvery. In its shadow was a swan. These scenes are but beckoning hands to the hearts of lovers, waving them on to that Eden which they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Alsop wants to sarve out his time for his pension, and when he has sarved, you see if, when the surgeons examine him, they don't invalid him, as blind as a bat. I should like to have him as gunner's mate, and that's just what he's fit for. But, Mr Simple, I think we shall have some bad weather. The moon looks greasy, and the stars want snuffing. You'll have two reefs in the ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... secret passage deep, Under roofs of spidery stairs, Where the bat-winged nightmares creep, And a sheeted phantom glares Rushed we; ah, how strange it was Where no human watcher stood; Till we reached a gate of glass ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the angular severity of "business." Roscoe Orlando, on the other hand, had an intense affinity for such things as the Fall of Madame Lucifer, and was hoping for something more of the same sort. Madame was falling in red tights and Parisian slippers, with black bat-wings inserted between her straight, slim legs and her outstretched arms, while Lucifer himself, a much smaller figure, fell some distance behind her; and her staring eyes and open mouth and streaming hair were a sight to see—even upside down. As Roscoe Orlando turned over ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... is followed, strings and wind standing for violin and piano. Wagner from the first discarded this mechanical notion; wind and strings are played off against one another, but there are none of these mechanical alternations, one holding the bat while the other has the ball. On the whole The Fairies ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... on refusing the eligible owner of an unmortgaged estate. No! she set out to look for work off her own bat, and actually found it in that occupation which, far less paid than more, opens up a perfect vista of possible adventures under the guise ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... golly! that's great, that's great! Of course, of course. Here, I'll kiss you again—you can answer my second question." He embraced her with hysterical enthusiasm. "Oh, when did it happen?" he begged. "How did you know? Since when have they been engaged? My! I have been a bat! Where were my eyes? Of all the jolly luck!" he leaped from the bench and executed a triumphal ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... You didn't mean it either as a brick-bat or a bouquet, merely the truth as you see it. You are transparently truthful, fundamentally truthful, and at the same time the American business woman! You can't understand ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Tqibuli, Tsqaltubo, Zugdidi note: the administrative centers of the 2 autonomous republics are shown in parentheses : autonomous republics: Abkhazia or Ap'khazet'is Avtonomiuri Respublika (Sokhumi), Ajaria or Acharis Avtonomiuri Respublika (Bat'umi) ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... rose of evening drops; Upon the streams its petals float away. The hills all blue with distance hide their tops In the dim silence falling on the grey. A little wind said "Hush!" and shook a spray Heavy with May's white crop of opening bloom; A silent bat ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... ferment just now, and it is best that this noisy gas should have its vent; you will soon sober down again, and then—we shall see. As for you," he continued, with a furtive scowl at Johnson, whose face beamed with gratification, "you have had your day, and, blind bat as you are, you were beginning to see it just for a moment, but this fine speech of yours has thrown you off your guard again. You doubtless think that with a few empty boastful words you have recovered your lost position, but you are mistaken, my good friend, ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... a princely gathering to see me carry out my bat! Don't grin, you fellows. I know it was a fluke—a dashed fine fluke, too. But it's what I always meant, after all. There's good old Monty, yelling himself hoarse in the pavilion. And his girl—waving. Sweet girl, too—the best in ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... thousandth year since the creation, and the impression was universal that the end of the world was at hand. It is worthy of remark that this conviction seemed rather to increase recklessness and crime than to be promotive of virtue. Bat the years glided on, and gradually the impression faded away. Ivan, with extraordinary energy and sagacity, devoted himself to the consolidation of the Russian empire, and the development of all ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... night walked in his sleep, put his hat on over his night-cap, got hold of a fishing-rod and a cricket-bat, and went down into the parlour, where they naturally thought from his appearance he was a Ghost. Why, he never would have done that if his meals had been wholesome. When we all begin to walk in our sleeps, I suppose they'll be sorry ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... ourselves into our rooms, and at the end of two days, whosoever may ask us a Meisterschaft question shall get a Meisterschaft answer—and hot from the bat! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Guinness's Stout, Gum Arabic, and Epsom Salts?" I have followed this recipe (given me by a young friend, who says he has often been in Scotland) faithfully, but the result is not wholly satisfactory. I doubt whether genuine porridge should be of the consistency of a brick-bat, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... beyond shell fire and had my hair cut at last. I also had tea with a Capt. Sherlock, whose wife, I think, was a friend of yours, one of Sir Francis Cruise's daughters, "Gussie." I heard from Major Alston, of the 2nd Bat., how Capt. Whelan was killed. He showed great courage, and stood up on a parapet to demonstrate to his men where he wanted some digging done, only 250 yds. from the Germans. Of course he was seen at once, and was hit in the lungs. Major A—— also said that ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... replied calmly, "it did not touch me; and now, if I chose, I could pin you to the wall like a bat; but that would be repugnant to me, though you did waylay me to take my life, and besides, you have really amused me with your ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... feeling as weary and blase as though I had been a king all my life; and everybody kissed my hand, and the ambassadors paid me their respects, among them old Lord Topham, at whose house in Grosvenor Square I had danced a score of times. Thank heaven, the old man was as blind as a bat, and ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... and Hundetone. The men of Northanton also came; and those of Eurowic and Bokinkeham, of Bed and Notinkeham, Lindesie and Nichole. There came also from the west all who heard the summons; and very many were to be seen coming from Salebiere and Dorset, from Bat and from Sumerset. Many came, too, from about Glocestre, and many from Wirecestre, from Wincestre, Hontesire and Brichesire; and many more from other counties that we have not named, and cannot, indeed, recount. All ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... "Each to his or her own opinions. We're here in pursuit of facts, not fancies. Rick, you're first at bat." ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... as long as he will. It is necessary only to sit perfectly still. But this is unsatisfactory; you can never see just what they are doing. Once I had thirty or forty close about me in this way. A sudden turn of my head, when a bat struck my cheek, sent them all off in a panic to the ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... little. Considering its complexity, the fineness and delicacy of its mechanism, the results attainable by the human eye seem far from adequate to the expenditure put upon it. We have flattered ourselves by inventing proverbs of comparison in matter of blindness,—"blind as a bat," for instance. It would be safe to say that there cannot be found in the animal kingdom a bat, or any other creature, so blind in its own range of circumstance and connection, as the greater majority of human beings are in the bosoms of ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... "I'll bat you over the head if you try it," growled the voice; and the boy stood trembling while the hasp was unfastened and the door was pushed back a little. The light of a lantern flashed in through the crack, ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... 394. flitter-winged. Imagining the poem winging its way along like a bird. Flitter, cf. flittermouse bat. ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... A bat, against the gibbous moon, Danced, implike, with its lone delight; The glowworm scrawled a golden rune Upon the dark; and, emerald-strewn, The firefly hung ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... repent it in maturity. These precocious little sentimentalists wither away like blanched potato-plants in a cellar; and then comes some vigorous youth from his out-door work or play, and grasps the rudder of the age, as he grasped the oar, the bat, or the plough-handle. We distrust the achievements of every saint without a body; and really have hopes of the Cambridge Divinity School, since hearing that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... like a base-ball catcher," said Morris, taking up a position somewhat similar to that of the useful man behind the bat. ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... and off the porch, seemed legion, and they were besieging Susan. In reality there were seven of them, of all sizes and sexes, from the third Joshua with a tennis-bat to the youngest who was weeping at being sent to bed, and holding on to her Aunt Susan with desperation. When Honora had greeted them all, and kissed some of them, she was informed that there were two more upstairs, safely tucked away ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... never found time to plumb. She knew that the hour of dawn was always still, but she had never imagined a stillness so complete, so final as this. Nor was there any fresh lightness in the morning air. It seemed to press downward like an enormous invisible bat; or like the shade of buried cities, vain outcroppings of a vanished civilization, brooding menacingly over this recent flimsy accomplishment of man that Nature could obliterate with ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... it—if people asked his opinion, he "gave it to 'em straight". So now he caused this white angel to understand that he regarded the effete aristocracies of the old world with abysmal contempt; he meant to put them out of business right off the bat. In vain the white angel pleaded that some of them might be useful people, or at any rate well-meaning: Jimmie pronounced them a bunch of parasites and grafters; the thing to do was to make a clean ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... :WOMBAT: /wom'bat/ /adj./ [acronym: Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] Applied to problems which are both profoundly {uninteresting} in themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often used in fanciful constructions such as 'wrestling with a wombat'. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... when we are asleep? Sometimes the stars, sometimes the moon, sometimes the clouds, sometimes the wind, sometimes the snow, sometimes the frost, sometimes all of them together, are busy. Sometimes the owl and the moth and the beetle, and the bat and the cat and the rat, are all at work. Sometimes there are flowers in bloom that love the night better than the day, and are busy all through the darkness pouring out on the still air the scent they withheld during the ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... to see her go over a fence and race when we ride together. She can scud, too, like a deer when we play 'Follow the leader,' and skip stones and bat balls almost as well as I can," said Mac, in reply to his uncle's ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... had he not in prison fought a duel with a viscount? Montmorency (of the Norfolk Circuit) was in the Fleet too; and when Canterfield went to see poor Montey, the latter had pointed out Walker to his friend, who actually hit Lord George Tennison across the shoulders in play with a racket-bat; which event was soon made known ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... legislature, having exhausted all other ways of improving mankind, should forbid the scoring of baseball games, it might still be possible to play some sort of game in which the umpire decided according to his own sense of fair play how long the game should last, when each team should go to bat, and who should be regarded as the winner. If that game were reported in the newspapers it would consist of a record of the umpire's decisions, plus the reporter's impression of the hoots and cheers of the crowd, plus at best a vague account of how certain ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... of birds. There is a halting victualler, who styles himself the partridge; Menippus calls himself the swallow; Opontius the one-eyed crow; Philocles the lark; Theogenes the fox-goose; Lycurgus the ibis; Chaerephon the bat; Syracosius the magpie; Midias the quail;[325] indeed he looks like a quail that has been hit heavily over the head. Out of love for the birds they repeat all the songs which concern the swallow, the teal, the goose or the pigeon; in each verse you see wings, or at all events a few feathers. This ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Spanish camp and night-fires they descried: Then on the stranger's neck that wild maid fell, And said, Thy own gods prosper thee, farewell! The owl[224] is hooting overhead; below, On dusky wing, the vampire-bat sails slow. Ongolmo stood before the cave of night, 90 Where the great wizard sat:—a lurid light Was on his face; twelve giant shadows frowned, His mute and dreadful ministers, around. Each eye-ball, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... "Another poond o' candles, and it was only last Monday as you bought the last—nigh two candles a night. Thou wilt kill thyself sitting up reading o' nights, and thy eyes will sink i' thy head, and thou'lt be as blind as a bat afore thou'rt forty." ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... hats they braided quite well with their own fair hands; snuff we could get better than you could in "the old concern." But we had no hoop-skirts,—skeletons, we used to call them. No ingenuity had made them. No bounties had forced them. The Bat, the Greyhound, the Deer, the Flora, the J.C. Cobb, the Varuna, and the Fore-and-Aft all took in cargoes of them for us in England. But the Bat and the Deer and the Flora were seized by the blockaders, the J.C. ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... girls in pictorial magazines had vanished, and 'Frisco Kid the sailor, strong and dominant, was on deck. He ran aft and tacked about as the jib rattled aloft in the hands of Joe, who quickly joined him. Just then the Reindeer, like a monstrous bat, passed to leeward of them in ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... Byron, now. It was very good of you not to mention him before, Mrs. Vervain. Bat I knew he had to come. He called it a coffin clapped ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... earnest Kate and Constance and Brother Willy look, Counting up varied treasures, ship, bat ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... dollar for a thing it's worth ten. I made investigations through an agent who came up to Dry Valley from San Francisco. He turned in his bill on time and that was about all. He was an ordinary man and consequently a fool. But, blind as a bat himself, he showed me a little light that set me thinking. A few days ago I came out myself." She snapped her fingers. "It didn't take me that long to get to the bottom of ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... brought out. "I must tell you," she quickly subjoined, "that though I've mentioned my talk with her as having finally led to my writing to you, it isn't in the least that she then suggested my putting you the question. I put it," she explained, "quite off my own bat." ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... I had been on a bat!" exclaimed Carden, surveying himself in a mirror. "Do you think any girl could find any attraction in ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... drawing, for he is considerably magnified. But when we hear even a very small fellow buzzing around our heads, in the darkness of a summer night, we are very apt to think that he sounds as if he were at least as big as a bat. ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... egotist of the first water. Audubon had but humble quarters, for it was hard work in those days for him to keep the wolf from the door; nevertheless, he entertained the distinguished traveler, whom he was himself destined to far eclipse. One night, a bat flew into Rafinesque's bedroom, and in driving it out he used his host's fine Cremona as a club, thus making kindling-wood of it. Two years later, still steeped in poverty, Audubon left Henderson. It ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... any one standing upright. Snakes glide about there, lithe, quick, with narrow heads uplifted on swanlike necks. Great turtles crawl slowly forward, hares and water-rats flee before preying beasts, and a fox bounds after a bat, which is chasing mosquitos by the river. It seems as if every tuft has come to life. But through it all the little birds sleep on the waving rushes, secure from all harm in that resting-place which no enemy can approach, ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... I lingered on for over a week at the Bat and Belfry Inn, as we all called it, and so, strange to say, did the duodenal couple, whom, indeed, we left there, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Missionary Reports, and the third or fourth of Mandeville's English History, which had belonged to the former occupant of the place. These I took from their resting-place, and essayed to read, when, in an instant, a bat dropped from the rafters, and fluttering round and round the lamp, cut short my studies. Formerly, church-service was wont to be celebrated in this same room; and for the purpose of kindling, by means of music, any latent sparks of devotion ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... tank him enough; me never pray to him enough: me never remember enough who give me all dese goot tings. Massa, me afraid my heart is very bat. Me wish ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... through the wheat, With resolute heart and purpose grim: Though the dew was on his hurrying feet, And the blind bat's ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... Scribner employees, but, in an important game, the junior member of the firm played on it and the senior member was a spectator. Frank N. Doubleday played on first base; William D. Moffat, later of Moffat, Yard & Company, and now editor of The Mentor, was behind the bat; Bok pitched; Ernest Dressel North, the present authority on rare editions of books, was in the field, as were also Ray Safford, now a director in the Scribner corporation, and Owen W. Brewer, at present a prominent figure in Chicago's book world. It was a happy group, all closely ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... slowly back and forth, and, above all, the moon shining down upon the silent prairie. The moon was quite faint, so that only an indistinct view of objects could be seen. Occasionally Johnny clambered up the bank and took a survey of the surrounding plains; bat seeing nothing at all suspicious, he soon grew weary of this, and confined his walks to the immediate vicinity of the camp-fire, passing back and forth between the narrow ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... he becomes an old man, he does not care in the least for a baseball bat; he wants rest, and a snug fireside and a newspaper every day. He wonders how he could ever have taken up his thoughts with baseball ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... night when he had flung away the cherished pill-box that now lay regally entombed under fifty feet of snow, he had suffered no collapse. His gradual method of unwinding the chain had averted that final danger and degradation. Bat there had been days when all his training in self-discipline had been needed to restrain him from applying to Zyarulla, whose kummerbund held a perennial store of the precious drug,—the more so since his Ladaki ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... "Don't bother, please, Jane," begged Judith. "We are almost late and I hope for a set of tennis before class. I need it every day to keep off the heartbreak. Darlink Sanzie," she sniffled. "To think he will nary again bat a ball in ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... he exclaimed, 'how rude he'll think me!' And he rubbed something out of his eyes. He gave one long, yearning glance at the spangled sky where an inquisitive bat darted zigzag several times between himself and the Pleiades, that bunch of star-babies as yet unborn, as the blue-eyed guard used to ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... our hero in all the strength and majesty of full-grown doghood, you would have experienced a vague sort of surprise had we told you—as we now repeat—that the dog Crusoe was once a pup—a soft, round, sprawling, squeaking pup, as fat as a tallow candle, and as blind as a bat. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... were both out crawling about somewhere, and the only damage was to their dinner. Every mortar, whose position was known, was given a name and marked on a map, so as to simplify quick retaliation. Captain Burnett spent much time at the telephone demanding the slaughter of "Bear," "Bat," "Pharaoh," "Philis," "Philistine," "Moses," "Aaron," ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... on the steps and listened to the shrill katydids or watched the devious lanterns of the fireflies. A bat darted over the head of Rivers, who ducked as it went ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... is so misunderstood as the bat. He seems such a queer compound of mouse and bird, and to most of us he is such a stranger, that we do not have a very friendly feeling ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... closely, in which night alternates with day? Has the heart two aspects—one on which its love is poured forth in light; the other in darkness? Here a woman of light, there a woman of the sewer. Angels are necessary. Is it possible that demons are also essential? Has the soul the wings of the bat? Does twilight fall fatally for all? Is sin an integral and inevitable part of our destiny? Must we accept evil as part and portion of our whole? Do we inherit sin as a debt? What awful subjects ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... invention of paper machinery. This invention was finished in 18O7, [Footnote: Dict. Nat. Biog. Vol. XX.] and then misfortune fell upon them: the misfortune that so often descends like the "black bat night" upon those who have spent all their money, thought, and labour on the effort to launch their self-designed ship upon the uncertain sea ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Hie away; and aim thy flight Where consort none other fowl Than the bat and sullen owl; Where upon the limber grass Poppy and mandragoras With like simples not a few Hang for ever drops of dew. Where flows Lethe without coil Softly like a stream of oil. Hie thee thither, ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... tu' mult ac' o lyte ep' i taph grav' i ty com' bat ants pref' er ence a maz' ed ly ath let' ic Vi at' i cum in her' it ance cem' e ter y re tal' i ate un flinch' ing ly ir re sist' i ble un vi' o la ted con temp' tu ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... extended on wires, shading their withered, ill-favoured countenances, and making them look indeed more like female inquisitors, ogres, or Witches of Endor than human beings. I never saw human nature made so uninviting, and I could fancy the terror inspired by these awful figures, with their bat-like flaps, in the tender minds of the little children entrusted to their care. It was edifying to hear these holy women discourse upon the Paris Exhibition, which it is hardly necessary to say the clerical party throughout France was bound to consider ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and scurrying all about you. Numerous tenants who pay no rent have heard eviction notice, for the house in which no men live is the abode of many races. Another blow near another nail, and more shingles jump and flee, and this time a clammy hand slaps your face. It is only the wing of a bat, fluttering in dismay from his crevice. Blow after blow you drive upon this board from beneath, till all the nails are loose, its shingle-fetters outside snap, and with a surge it rises, to fall grating down the roof, and land with a crash on the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... saying, I jumped into Mounttop's boat, which, d'ye see, was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and snatching the first harpoon, let this old great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir —hearts and souls alive, man —the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat —both eyes out —all befogged and bedeadened with black foam —the whale's tail looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday, with a blinding sun, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Fenn passed from Congress Street and walked with a steady purpose manifest in his clicking heels. It was not a night's bat that guided his feet, no festive orgy, but the hard, firm footfall of a man who has been drunk a long time—terribly mean drunk. And terribly mean drunk he was. His eyes were blazing, and he mumbled as he walked. Down Market Street he turned ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... undershirt. There was Rosario, the little maid who waited on me and went to school. She was third base and umpire. A neighbor's boy, about eight years old, was first base. Manuel was second base and pitcher combined. Ceferiana was at the bat, while behind her her youngest brother—he whose engaging smile occupied so much of my attention at the funeral of the lavandero aforementioned—was spread out in the attitude of a professional catcher. His plump, rounded little legs were stretched so far apart that he could with difficulty retain ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... underground palaces and temples had no charms for him. Also he did not think he could do any good by going, since after "sucking him as dry as an orange" with reference to religious matters "that old vampire-bat Oro had just thrown him away like the rind," and, he might add, "seemed no better for the juice he ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... words Era which had canonised hypocrisy Evening not conspicuous for open-heartedness Everything in life he wanted—except a little more breath Fatigued by the insensitive, he avoided fatiguing others Felt nearly young Forgiven me; but she could never forget Forsytes always bat Free will was the strength of any tie, and not its weakness Get something out of everything you do Greater expense can be incurred for less result than anywhere Hard-mouthed women who laid down the law He could not plead with her; even an old man has his ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of John Galsworthy • John Galsworthy
... rising to quit the room, and speaking hurriedly as if the words were forced from her, "you are as blind as a bat; Ruth would cut off her right hand for ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... together at a country college, gathering blueberries in study hours under those tall academic pines; or watching the great logs as they tumbled along the current of the Androscoggin; or shooting pigeons and gray squirrels in the woods; or bat-fowling in the summer twilight; or catching treats in that shadowy little stream, which, I suppose, is still wandering riverward through the forest,—though you and I will never cast a line in it again,—two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear to acknowledge ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... hint, but it was an indication of the trend of Mr Iver's thoughts. So it was a dangerous ball, and that clever little cricketer, the Imp, kept her bat away from it. She laughed; that committed her to nothing—and left ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... such to sight as those who come from where the Nile flows valleyward. Beneath each came forth two great wings, of size befitting so huge a bird. Sails of the sea never saw I such. They had no feathers, but their fashion was of a bat; and he was flapping them so that three winds went forth from him, whereby Cocytus was all congealed. With six eyes he was weeping, and over three chins trickled the tears and bloody drivel. With each ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... quarrel of people who cannot agree as to whether the history of Spain or the number of pips is the more important thing about an orange. The Romantics and Realists were deaf men coming to blows about the squeak of a bat. The instinct of a Romantic invited to say what he felt about anything was to recall its associations. A rose, for instance, made him think of old gardens and young ladies and Edmund Waller and sundials, and a thousand quaint and gracious things that, at one time ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... her teepee, her mind busily going over the events of the day. The night sounds of the range drifted to her. A bull-bat rasped a note or two from above. A picketed horse stamped restlessly just outside and a range cow bawled from an adjacent slope. The night-hawk had relieved the wrangler and she could half-hear, half-feel the low jar of many hoofs as he grazed the remuda slowly up the valley, ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... Hungry: they are twins and their legs are made of macaroni. (They bow, staggering.) Here are the Luxury of Knowing Nothing, who is as deaf as a post, and the Luxury of Understanding Nothing, who is as blind as a bat. Here are the Luxury of Doing Nothing and the Luxury of Sleeping more than Necessary: their hands are made of bread-crumb and their eyes of peach-jelly. Lastly, here is Fat Laughter: his mouth is split from ear to ear and he ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... upper rivers—who will not keep their seats—who ply the bottle, and who will get home by and by and tell how wicked Sodom is; broad-brimmed, silver-braided Mexicans, too, with their copper cheeks and bat's eyes and their tinkling spurred heels. Yonder, in that quieter section, are the quadroon women in their black lace shawls—and there is Baptiste; and below them are the turbaned black women, and there ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... specimen of their language under its present name is given by Johannes de Laet in his Novus Orbis, seu Descriptio Indiae Occidentalis (Lugd. Bat. 1633). It was obtained in 1598. In 1738 the Moravian brethren founded several missionary stations in the country, but owing to various misfortunes, the last of their posts was given up in 1808. ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... gleam, in so much darkness, seemed to burn with the brightness of a conflagration. The smoke, also, from our torch, ascending into the vaulted roof of the cavern, was beginning to disturb the weird dwellers from their gloomy abode, and already ghostly, bat-like forms began to fill the air space above our heads. It was time to leave, and, reluctantly, we began to push the boat toward the mouth of the cave, promising ourselves to return next day for more of the precious stuff; ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... save where the weak-eyed bat, With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Airedale at her side protecting her from the terrors of a million years ago. I can visualize the entire scene—the apelike Grimaldi men huddled in their filthy caves; the huge pterodactyls soaring through the heavy air upon their bat-like wings; the mighty dinosaurs moving their clumsy hulks beneath the dark shadows of preglacial forests—the dragons which we considered myths until science taught us that they were the true recollections ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... o' the craft in Wimbledon; and, if you had not been blind as a bat, you would have discovered, ere this, the sign of "Peter Paul Pimble, Esq., Attorney-at-Law," hung over the door of a small, black building in Mudget square. True, Mr. Pimble don't practise his profession much, for a very good ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... strong a hand hath Time! Man rears, And names his work immortal; years Go by. Behold! where dwelt his pride, Stern Desolation's brood abide; The owl within his bower sits, The lone bat through his chamber flits; Where bounded by the buoyant throng, With measured step, and choral song, The wily serpent winds along; While the Destroyer stalketh by, And smiles, as if in mockery. How strong ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... come when she hears it crying, In the shape of an owl or bat, And she'll bring us our darling Anna In place ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... marked, and he walked with a sliding gait. Seeing this, a woman who stood there halted and limped a few paces by his side, and pretending not to see him, shouted with a mocking laugh, "What is it—a man or a bat?" ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... bee sucks there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie: There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... bounds. After I got going at my business, when I was twenty-five or so, I was pinned down to a desk for about ten years. I worked hard in a most exacting place. I was so healthy it hurt. I had just as much appetite for food as I had ever had; but I didn't get a chance to bat around as I had been accustomed to do and burn up that food. The result was inevitable. I began to get fat. I had a big chest—forty-six inches—and the fat filled in underneath. That big chest, combined with my broad shoulders, concealed the size of my paunch, and I didn't realize I was ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... [Sidenote: All sorts of musical instruments are heard in the hall.] & al on blonkken bak bere hit on honde. 1412 & ay e nakeryn noyse, notes of pipes, Ty{m}bres & tabornes, tulket amo{n}g, Sy{m}bales & sonete[gh] sware e noyse, & bougou{n}[gh] busch bat{er}ed so ikke; 1416 So wat[gh] serued fele sye e sale alle aboute, [Sidenote: The king, surrounded by his loves, drinks copiously of wine.] W{i}t{h} solace at e sere course, bifore e self lorde, er e lede & alle his loue lenged at e table. [Sidenote: It gets into ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... the cricket pitch on the village green. Oh, the cricket! She thought that so funny—the men in high, sugar-loaf hats, grown-up men, spending hours and hours, day after day, in banging at a ball with a wooden bat! ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... dad, coming. (On the window threshold, he stops; looking after Crampton; then turns fantastically with his bat bent into a halo round his head, and says with a lowered voice to Mrs. Clandon and Gloria) Did you feel the pathos of that? ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... carried a gun firing explosive bullets loaded with oxygen, and in addition, and true to the best tradition of Japan, a sword. Mostly they were Japanese, and it is characteristic that from the first it was contemplated that the aeronaut should be a swordsman. The wings of these flyers had bat-like hooks forward, by which they were to cling to their antagonist's gas-chambers while boarding him. These light flying-machines were carried with the fleets, and also sent overland or by sea to the front with the men. They ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... wrote home to my father, modestly implying that I was short of cash, that a trap-bat would be acceptable, and that the favorite goddess amongst the boys (whether Greek or Roman was very immaterial) was Diva Moneta, I felt a glow of classical pride in signing myself "your affectionate Peisistratos." The next post brought a sad damper to my scholastic exultation. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tearing crash as we took a fender off a machine just emerging from a cross street, but my lunatic never checked up at all. He just flung a curling ribbon of profanity over his shoulder at the other driver and bounded onward like a bat out of the Bad Place. That was the hour when my hair began to turn perceptibly grayer. And yet, when by a succession of miracles we had landed intact at my destination, the fiend seemed to think he had done a praiseworthy and creditable thing. I only wish he had been able to understand the things ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... ever since she was born," said Killigrew dryly. "I've yet to see her make a mistake in sizing up a man. She picks 'em out the way I do, right off the bat. The minute you dodder about a man or a woman, there's sure to be something' to dodder about. Good lord! you don't suppose he had a hand in these ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... found as a mythological figure on pottery vessels and inscriptions from the Maya region (compare Seler, Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, 1894, p. 577) does not occur in the manuscripts. It is true, however, that hieroglyphic signs, which seem to relate to the head of the bat, occur in isolated cases in ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... pole forms a line across his body. In this way he is steadied and supported and his whole weight relieved, much more so than it would be with an ordinary walking-stick or with one in each hand. When he walks he keeps putting the staff, which he calls a bat, in front, and so poles himself along. There is an invalid boy in the yard, who walks with a similar stick. The farmer is talking with a friend who has looked in from the lane in passing, and carries ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... new paint-box, and a Polyglot Bible; there were several new books too, and a very large pile of new clothes, but they did not take up much of Arthur's attention. His quick eyes soon detected a fishing rod and cricket bat, that stood in the corner of the room near by; indeed there seemed to be nothing that his kind father and mother had not provided. He noticed something else that was there, and that was a Russia-leather purse; and when he took it to examine the inside he found ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... He goes to bat at a critical juncture in the game. The score is close. He as much as anyone would like to have runs to his credit. But for the sake of the team his chief concern must be to advance the base runner. So he plays ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... baseball bat with him—I regarded baseball at that time as a sort of cricket gone mad—and a round visored cap on his thick fair hair. His chin was deeply cleft, his eyes grey-blue, his skin very fair. To me he was an upper-form demi-god and I, seeing nothing odd ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... from life and some from memory,—as, for example, a chameleon with two legs; others from hearsay, among which is the portrait of the griffin said to haunt certain districts of Mexico,—a monster with the wings of a bat, the head of an eagle, and the tail of ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... eagerness to try their mettle, to do something "off their own bat." At the end of each day the Ten Hundred swung in a long swaying column behind their band along the pave roads homewards. Company after company sending up defiant echoes with the marching rallies peculiar to the Normans, they splashed noisily through the almost interconnected line ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... up thy pipes Till they be weary: I will laugh, ho, ho, hoh! And make me merry. Make a ring on this grass With your quick measures: Tom shall play, I will sing For all your pleasures. The moon shines fair and bright, And the owl hollos, Mortals now take their rests Upon their pillows: The bat's abroad likewise, And the night-raven, Which doth use for to call Men to Death's haven. Now the mice peep abroad, And the cats take them, Now do young wenches sleep, Till their dreams wake them. Make a ring on the grass With your quick measures: Tom shall ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... friend Velasquez. He afterwards marched up the country to a place called Naco in a very populous district, which is all now laid waste. While here, he sent off various detachments in different directions, among which one was commanded by Briones, who had first instigated him to revolt; bat Briones now revolted from him in his turn, and marched off with all his men for New Spain. He was a seditious fellow, who had on some former occasion had the lower part of his ears cut off, which he used to say had ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... the murmur of my rising fount, I slumber; here my clustering fruits I tend; Or from the humid flowers, at break of day, Fresh garlands weave, and chase from all my bounds Each thing impure or noxious. Enter in, O stranger, undismay'd. Nor bat, nor toad Here lurks; and if thy breast of blameless thoughts Approve thee, not unwelcome shalt thou tread My quiet mansion; chiefly, if thy name Wise Pallas and ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... live, but oi thank Misther Merwyn that took him out o' the very claws uv the bloody divils, and not their bat's eyes. Faix, but he tops all yez frin's, Miss Marian, tho' ye're so could to 'im. All the spalpanes in the strates couldn't make 'im wink, yet while I was a-wailin' over Barney he was as tender-feelin' as ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... die," Henley answered, grimly. "I cursed man and God. That gal was my life. I was as blind as a bat in daytime." ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... bat la campagne? Qui ne fait ch[^a]teau en Espagne? Picrochole [q.v.], Pyrrhus, la laiti['e]re, enfin tous, Autant les sages que les fous.... Quelque accident fait-il que je rentre en moi-m[^e]me; Je suis Gros-Jean ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... he was a bat, for I've always been fond of bats, they are such soft, grey, velvet things; and I should have liked to tell him that he was much more like a chicken hawk, only that would have been vulgar; and, besides, I didn't intend to pose as chicken to ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... had been in front of the battle all through; but neither of them were wounded. It was to Foret that the colonel had given up his sword, after he had been dragged headforemost through a window, had had his head cut open with a brick-bat, and his sheath and sword-belt literally torn from his side. He had certainly not capitulated before he was obliged to do, and the people did not like him the worse ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... tense silence. Outside they could hear the crunch of the sentry's heel in the gravel, and from the baseball field back of the barracks the soft spring air was rent with the jubilant crack of the bat as it drove the ball. Afterward Ranson remembered that while one half of his brain was terribly acute to the moment, the other was wondering whether the runner had made his base. It seemed an interminable ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... correspondence with several—were thinking of joining. If they had been making a move he would have gone at once—very competitive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be left behind in anything—but to do it off his own bat might look like 'swagger'; because of course it wasn't really necessary. Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked. It was altogether mixed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... shuddering, as I feel, start up within him and shoot through his whole frame at the sight of them, these miscreate deformities, such as toads, beetles, or that most nauseous of all Nature's abortions, the bat, are not indifferent or insignificant: their very existence is a state of direct enmity and warfare against his. In good truth one might smile at the unbelievers whose imagination is too barren for ghosts and fearful goblins, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Crow; [6] And the leader chosen to hold command Of the band adverse is a haughty foe— The dusky, impetuous Harpstina, [7] The queenly cousin of Wapasa. [8] Kapoza's chief and his tawny hunters Are gathered to witness the queenly game. The ball is thrown and a bat encounters, And away it flies with a loud acclaim. Swift are the maidens that follow after, And swiftly it flies for the farther bound: And long and loud are the peals of laughter, As some fair runner is flung to ground; ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... my enjoyment was the failure of the pretty boy David Willis, who, injudiciously put in first, and playing for the first time in a match amongst men and strangers, was seized with such a fit of shamefaced shyness that he could scarcely hold his bat, and was bowled out without a stroke, from actual nervousness. Our other modest lad, John Strong, did very well; his length told in the field, and he got good fame. William Grey made a hit which actually ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... d'or floating on quicksilver. The curve of his nose gave him an aquiline silhouette, which suggested the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands, long, slender, with prominent veins and sinews protruding like the strings on a violin, with nails like the claws on the membraneous wings of the bat moved with a senile trembling painful to behold, but those nervously quivering hands became firmer than pincers of steel, or the claws of a lobster, when they picked up any precious object, an onyx cup, a Venetian glass, or a platter ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... in the air above her, and a clumsy bat came bumping through the dusk as she crossed the creek just below ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... those of the lias beneath, as the beds are higher in the series, and therefore nearer. There, too, are found principally the bones of that extraordinary flying lizard, the Pterodactyle, which had wings formed out of its fore-legs, on somewhat the same plan as those of a bat, but with one exception. In the bat, as any one may see, four fingers of the hand are lengthened to carry the wing, while the first alone is left free, as a thumb: but in the Pterodactyle, the outer or "little" finger alone ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... to a query, "whether the vampire of India and that of South America be of one species," Mr. Waterton replies, "I beg to say that I consider them distinct species. I have never yet seen a bat from India with a membrane rising perpendicularly from the end of its nose; nor have I ever been able to learn that bats in India suck animals, though I have questioned many people on this subject. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... beauty, wiping away the really starting tears with her white lace cloak. "I told you the elegant Constantine was the lord of my heart; and you have seduced him from me! Till you came, he was so respectful, so tender, so devoted! Bat I am rightly used! I ought to have carried my secret ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... take a thimbleful of ice-cream and an attenuated wafer, and then solemnly declare to the maid that I have been abundantly served. In the hallowed precincts that I call my den I could absorb nine rations such as they served and never bat an eye. And yet, in making my adieus to the hostess, I thank her most effusively for a delightful evening, refreshments included, and then hurry grumbling home to get something to eat. Such are some of the manifestations of social hypocrisy. These all pass current at their face ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... was all in place. A trumpet and a gun that had made vain and perilous efforts to join the bat in the stocking leaned against the bed in expectant attitudes. A picture-book with a pink Bengal tiger and a green bear on the cover peeped over the pillow, and the bedposts and rail were festooned with candy and marbles in bags. An express-wagon with a high ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... (Khwajeh Kostantin?) for a large sum—two napoleons, a new shirt, and a quantity of coffee. A similar story is found in the Badiyat el-Tih, the Desert north of the Sinaitic Peninsula. At the ruined cairns of Khara'bat Lussan (the ancient Lysa), an Arab saw a glimmer of light proceeding from a bit of curiously cut stone. "This he carried away with him and sold to a Christian ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... what she asks, pa says. She sells him groceries in the store, sometimes, when Uncle Frank's away, ye know. Pa says what she asks first is for practice—just ter get her hand in; an' she expects ter get beat down. But you paid it, right off the bat. Didn't ye see how tickled Aunt Jane was, after she'd got ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... onwards, its six legs all working hard, butting up against stones, upsetting itself on ridges, but still gathering itself up and rushing onwards to some all-important appointment somewhere in the grass plot. A bat fluttered up from behind the beech-tree. A breath of night air sighed softly over the hillside with a little tinge of the chill sea spray in its coolness. Dolly Foster shivered, and had turned to go in when her mother ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... silent ship, with her population of blue-jackets, marines, officers, captain, and the admiral who was not to return alive, passed like a phantom the meridian of the Bill. Sometimes her aspect was that of a large white bat, sometimes that of a grey one. In the course of time the watching girl saw that the ship had passed her nearest point; the breadth of her sails diminished by foreshortening, till she assumed the form of an ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... to be ominous, and dreaded the future event enchained to them. That the night owl should screech before the noon-day sun, that the hard-winged bat should wheel around the bed of beauty, that muttering thunder should in early spring startle the cloudless air, that sudden and exterminating blight should fall on the tree and shrub, were unaccustomed, but physical events, less horrible than the mental creations ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... dark rib of the mountain. It was invisible from below, but any roving eye from the top would be caught by it in an instant. In a second he had raced along the edge, dived in and out of the blocks, guiding his way by a sort of bat's instinct, till he reached the rocky stairway, which he descended at imminent ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... out of the harbor. To the cat's excited glance the man's legs suggested the beginnings of tree trunks, at the top of which there was safety and repose from the spitting demon at the side of the boat. Like a flying bat he made the leap. But he had misjudged both the distance and his own rheumatic muscles. He landed on the girl, and came to a rest half-way to her shoulder. His claws sank into the thick folds of her sweater. Elizabeth released her hold on the wheel, and with a cry fell back ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... Why, for the last two hours you've been sitting with that 'just-break-the-news-to mother' expression of yours, and paying no more heed to my cheerful brand of conversation than if I had been a measly four-flusher. You don't eat more than a sick sparrow, and often you don't bat an eye all night. You're looking worse than the devil in a gale of wind. You've lost your grip, my boy. You don't care whether school keeps or not. In fact, if it wasn't for your folks, you'd as lief take a short cut across the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... for the wickets, armed with pads and gloves and bat, I did not feel happy; still, I was in hopes I might at least succeed in "breaking my duck's egg," which was more than could be said for ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed |
