"Big" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sheriff twinkled as he listened to these speeches. He seemed to regard the affair as a big joke, and to appreciate it accordingly. Though none of us had ever had any official relations with him, we knew him as what all the people called "a good fellow," witty, jovial, and never severe ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... of which he took charge was a movement upon the rebel forces at Big Bethel. It was rash, unskiful, blundering and lacking both in perseverance and courage. His troops were repulsed with great ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... was not merely the botanical collections in the museum which interested the children. They had some philosophical apparatus. There was what the boys called a sucker, which consisted of a round piece of sole leather, about as big as a dollar, with a string put through the middle, and a stop-knot in the end of it, to keep the string from coming entirely through; then, when the leather was wet, the boys could just pat it down upon a smooth stone, and then lift the stone ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... the day, and there was a hush for an instant, then down went the starter s flag, there was a roar, and a shout from the crowd, "They 're off," and I saw the line of horses stretch themselves out across the plain. The big grey was on the inside striding along about three quarters of a length clear of the others, and just behind came a front rank—so to speak—of half-a-dozen horses, and among them gleamed the dazzling black and yellow stripes of our chief opponent, ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... you—a prig," she recollected. "No; that's not quite it. There were the ants who stole the tongue, and I thought you and St. John were like those ants—very big, very ugly, very energetic, with all your virtues on your backs. However, when I talked to ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... the engine he required. Savory was the first to suggest this comparison, but Watt knew that horses differed in size and strength, and in order to be sure of a safe standard for his engine power he experimented with big horses in some London breweries, and after careful calculation and comparison he fixed a horse-power at 32,000 lb., that is to say, that a horse could lift that weight of water one foot above the ground in a minute ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... with a laugh. "Dodo and Paul are trying to pull them apart. I suppose they think the goggles are big enough for two," and she pointed to where the twins, Mollie's little brother and sister, were seated on the velvety lawn, both having hold of a new pair of auto goggles, and gravely trying to separate the two ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... So-qi shook his big belly under the lion's skin, let slip his serpent skin headdress, and let the battle axe that was his symbol of office drop from his hand as he shook with mirth at the great and ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... to the stranded vessel—when the breach and froth of the sea being so big I could hardly see it, it lay so far off—and considered, Lord! how was it possible I could get ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... spend the whole day there. Billiards, music, lunch, painting—they would pass the time somehow. And meanwhile the gusts of wind rattled the windows; and the whirling snow blurred out the sea; and Mr. Tom kept on big fires. ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... room in a hotel. Entrance from the corridor in the centre; also side doors. In front to the right a window with heavy closed curtains. To the left a grand piano. Behind the piano a Japanese screen covering the fireplace. Big open trunks are standing around. Enormous laurel wreaths on several upholstered armchairs. A mass of bouquets are distributed about the room, some of them being ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... is a man's eye but a machine for the little creature that sits behind in his brain to look through? A dead eye is nearly as good as a living one for some time after the man is dead. It is not the eye that cannot see, but the restless one that cannot see through it. Is it man's eyes, or is it the big seeing-engine which has revealed to us the existence of worlds beyond worlds into infinity? What has made man familiar with the scenery of the moon, the spots on the sun, or the geography of the planets? He is at the mercy of the seeing-engine for these things, and ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... nothing of that freshness and airy outbreak which we have praised in the universe of the poet. This modern universe is literally an empire; that is, it was vast, but it is not free. One went into larger and larger windowless rooms, rooms big with Babylonian perspective; but one never found the smallest window or a whisper ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... cards and whispered, "Mr. Millard," biting her lower lip and making big eyes at Phillida, with an "I-told-you-so" nod of the head, and then she proceeded to give vent to her feelings by dancing softly about the room, a picturesque figure in her red petticoat and white waist, with her bare arms flying about her head. If the doors had not been ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... a bit o' green for you to look at," ses the old man, 'olding the plants up; "there's no knowing 'ow long you'll be up there. The big one is yours, Ginger, and ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... and systematic arrangement had rendered the Athenian state immortal—The ten strategists in Athens! Foolish! Too big a sacrifice on ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the Temple; he lived in rooms which he hired from month to month in one of the big hotels at the West End; and he dined at his club, or at the House, when he was not dining with a friend. It was an expensive and a luxurious mode of life,—and one from the effects of which a man is prone to drift ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... he replied, and lifting up the shirt, took hold of the testicles, which were big and heavy and without enquiring which was the bad one, cut them both out at a ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... Miss Violy she say he wuz de han'somest boy she ever did see,—great big strappin' boy wid de grandest ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... last day of school was present in the crowd of parents, brothers, sisters, and friends assembled on that important and, to the children, most exciting occasion. There were declamations from the third and fourth readers,—"How big was Alexander, Pa?" and "He never smiled again," and "Lord Ullin's Daughter,"—and Maggie Loper held the audience spell-bound by an entirely new one, which Elvira had selected and copied for her out of a book of poems,—"The Dream of Eugene Aram." Then there were songs, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... ill-fitting corduroys and soiled blue jerseys, their swarthy necks girt about by vivid handkerchiefs, and their big-peaked caps pulled well down over their eyes, made their way along the narrow lane that led from Merriton Towers to Saltfleet Bay. At the junction with Saltfleet Road, two other figures slipped by them in the half-mist, and after peering at then ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... "Isn't that big thing stickin' up in that field a haystack? I—I'd like a piece of that sponge cake that's left from what we ate at noon, and then crawl in there an' sleep straight through till to-morrow," she declared. "Did you want to go on any ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... It was the one thing he could really talk about, the thing of which his mind and soul were full. Leesville was a typical small manufacturing city, with a glass bottle works, a brewery, a carpet-factory, and the big Empire Machine Shops, at which Jimmie himself spent sixty-three hours of his life each week. The workers were asleep, of course; but still you couldn't complain, the movement was growing. The local boasted of a hundred and twenty members, though of course, only about ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... day a good deal of my Journal, written in a small book with which he had supplied me, and was pleased, for he said, 'I wish thy books were twice as big.' He helped me to fill up blanks which I had left in first writing it, when I was not quite sure of what he had said, and he corrected any mistakes that I had made. 'They call me a scholar, (said he,) and yet how very little literature is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... before Jack Ogden, when he came out at the water's edge, near the dam, across from the mill. That was there, big and red and rusty-looking; and the dam was there; and above them was the mill-pond, spreading out over a number of acres, and ornamented with stumps, old logs, pond-lilies, and weeds. It was a fairly good pond, the best that Cocahutchie Creek could do for Crofield, ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... you see, my masters," said he, as the crew came on deck again. "A big ship forward, and two galleys astern of her. The big ship may keep; she is a race ship, and if we can but recover the wind of her, we will see whether our height is not a match for her length. We must give her the slip, and ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... say, he is a very good jantleman, and as unlike old Nick or the saint as can be; and takes no duty fowl, nor glove, nor sealing-money; nor asks duty work nor duty turf. Well, when I was disappointed of the EFFIGY, I comforted myself by making a bonfire of old Nick's big rick of duty turf, which, by great luck, was out in the road, away from all dwelling-house, or thatch, or yards, to take fire; so no danger in life or objection. And such another blaze! I wished you'd seed it—and all the men, women, ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... had a pot to eat their porridge from: a little pot for the Little, Small, Wee Bear; a middle-sized pot for the Middle-Sized Bear; and a great big pot for ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... Bradford districts entrained together. Every man was crying out of thirst, and at Normanton one of the officers, belonging to Skipton, had the train stopped. How we blessed him for it! We detrained in a body, and rushed to the big pump on the platform (used to fill the locomotive boilers). The water was turned on, and, besides quenching his thirst on the spot, each Volunteer filled his water-bottle. This was a "movement" which took some time ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... yonder swelling bush, Big with many a coming rose, This early bud began to blush, And did but half itself disclose; I pluck'd it, though no better grown, And now you ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... arms three Turks' heads, in memory of Smith's alleged single-handed victory over that number of Saracens. As Selden pointed out, when Englishmen came home from fighting the Saracens, and were beaten by them, they, to save their own credit, pictured their enemy with big, terrible faces, such as frowned at Dickens from so many coigns of vantage in the old ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... affection and care were bestowed upon his children. Many of his comrades will recall the visit of his wife and his son Willie, a lad of thirteen, at his camp on the Big Black, after the surrender of Vicksburg. Poor Willie believed he was a sergeant in the 13th United States Infantry. He sickened and died at Memphis on his way home. No one who reads it but will remember the touching tribute of sorrow his father wrote, a sorrow that ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... in the thick of the fighting, to give and take their share of the blows. And when our men saw themselves hard pressed, they would turn back into the town, fighting all the way; and those pursuing them were driven back with cannon-shots, and the cannons were loaded with flint-stones and with big pieces of iron, square or three-sided. And our men on the wall fired a volley, and rained bullets on them as thick as hail, to send them back to their beds; whereas many remained dead on the field: and our men also did not all come back with whole skins, and there were always some left ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... kingdom all he could, and make it flourish as much as possible; that he should love his people, and be beloved of them; that he should live among them, govern them gently, and let other kingdoms alone, since that which had fallen to his share was big enough, if not too big for him. Pray how do you think would such a speech as this be heard?"—"I confess," said I, "I ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... three hundred and fifty attacked three hundred rebel cavalry near the Big Black with signal success, a number of prisoners being taken and marched to Vicksburg. Forrest attacked Paducah with 7,500 men. The garrison was between 500 and 600, nearly 400 being colored troops recently raised. What troops could have done better? So, too, they ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... I see they have given Rose Stella the last line with a big AND before it. No matter. She is down only once; and I ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... his childhood, lost the other at the siege of Ratz, fought on blind notwithstanding, gaining victory after victory, but was seized with the plague and carried off by it at Czaslav, where his remains were buried and his big mace or battle-club, mostly iron, hung honourably on the wall close by; that his skin was tanned and made into the cover of a drum is a fable; he was a tough soldier, and is called once and again in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... at home. The big blue cap that always fits, And so it is (be calm; they come To goal at last, my wandering wits), So it is with the heroic thing; This shall not end for the world's end, And though the sullen engines swing, Be you ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... Clinton. That is just it. Dick and Humphrey go everywhere as a matter of course. I saw enough of it to know what society in London means. It is like a big family; you meet the same people night after night, and everybody knows everybody else—that is in the houses that Cousin Humphrey got us invited to. Dick and Humphrey know everybody like that; they were part of the family; and ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... too well regulated to consider the alternative of a compromise with a possibly victorious party which he detested. Perhaps his ambition was too vaulting to adapt itself to a restricted field when his imagination had played for years with the big ninepins of history; at all events, it was inseparably bound up with nationalism in the boldest sense achievable, and with methods which days and nights of severe thought had convinced him were for the greatest good of the American people. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... would inevitably suffer without protection. For the moment she felt angry with herself. She hoped almost, since he was there, that he would make his offer again. It is these little things—the saving of a feather boa, the destruction of a flimsy hat frame—that are the seed of big issues. Every book, as is this, is in its way a study in the evolution of a crisis, the germ of tiny incident which through a thousand stages grows in strength and magnitude until it takes upon itself the stature of ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... and serious attempts to saturate myself with a similar feeling, I regret to confess to a certain smallness of esteem for the stork. You can't esteem a bird that makes ugly digs at your feet and heels with such a very big beak. Out in their summer quarters the storks are kept in by close wire, and close wire will give an air of inoffensiveness to most things. But, away in a by-yard, with a gate marked "private," there stands a shed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... cried, joyfully. "It's th' smotherin' shut-upness o' this forlorn hole he's lyin' in. There's a little more air out in th' big room. Just grab t'other end o' th' stretcher, Professor, an' we'll yank him out there—nobody's likely t' come in t' stop us while this storm lasts. An'—an' we must be careful how we talk, Professor, y' know," ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... zeal has spared, offers a picturesque sketch of such cases, according to the shape which they often assumed. In Chaucer's tale, told with such unrivalled vis comica, of the Trompington Miller and the Two Cambridge Scholars, we have a most life-like picture of the miller with his 'big bones,' as a 'dangerous' man for the nonce. Just such a man, just as dangerous, and just as big-boned, we find in the person of an abbot—defending his abbey, not by any reputation for sanctity or learning, but solely by his dangerousness as the wielder of quarter-staff ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the day, and to guarding the nest while she sought her food; but now that her most fatiguing labor was over, his began. At first he took entire charge of the provision supply, while she kept her nurslings warm and quiet, which every mother, little or big, knows is of great importance. When the young father arrived with food, which he did frequently, his spouse stepped to the nearest twig and looked on with interest, while he leaned over and filled one little mouth, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... the while he was tormented with the most perverse scrupulosity of conscience. "As to the act of sinning, I never was more tender than now; I durst not take a pin or a stick, though but so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would smart at every twist. I could not now tell how to speak my words, for fear I should misplace them. Oh! how gingerly did I then go in all I did or said: I found myself in a miry bog, that shook if I did but stir, and was as those left both of ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... The sultry noon seemed endlessly long. The dry earth gaped with thirst in the heat. When I heard from the riverside a voice calling, "Come, my darling!" I shut my book and opened the window to look out. I saw a big buffalo with mud-stained hide, standing near the river with placid, patient eyes; and a youth, knee deep in water, calling it to its bath. I smiled amused and felt a touch of sweetness in ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... rolling sea, resounding swift In his big bass, them fitly answered, And on the rock the waves, breaking aloft, A solemn mean unto them measured, The whiles sweet Zephyrus loud whisteled His treble, a strange kind of harmony Which Guyon's senses softly tickeled That he ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... was. I wonder whether you are going to attend the funeral. I never send wreaths on such occasions, but if I ever did send one it would be now, for I am truly affected by the loss of such a friend. The newspapers seem to have discovered that there were some big men in the last generation, and that there are very few of them in ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... digging a round hole in the ground, about big enough for David to sit in and stretch ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... have a chance to show it. You spoke of that American who was blue-moulded for want of a fight. I said that man was a typical American. Sir, that saying is profoundly true. Sir, the whole American nation is blue-moulded, Sir. It is spilin for want of a fight—a big fight." ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... of pressing by a gang using the last-named house occurred in 1706. Ransacking the town in quest of pressable subjects of Her Majesty, they came one day to the "Cock and Rummer" in Bow Street, where a big dinner was in progress. Here nothing would suit their tooth but mine host's apprentice, and as ill-luck would have it the apprentice was cook to the establishment and responsible for the dinner. Him they nevertheless seized ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Island - 80% ice-covered, bleak and mountainous, dominated by a large massif (Big Ben) and an active volcano (Mawson Peak); McDonald Islands - small ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... too—do you s'pose I am? Poor father left us in debt, you see. I thought I came away from Sunnybrook to get an education and then help pay off the mortgage; but mother doesn't say anything about my coming back, and our family's one of those too-big ones, you know, ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pamphlet—"for the use of emigrants, by a Backwoodsman," is one of the pleasantest and most sensible little books of the day. It is worth all the "great big books" upon the same subject, and, strange to say, has scarcely a spice of the leaven of party wickedness in its pages. The information is in a facete but earnest vein, and we cheerfully miss in its tone the dull preachment, the cold calculation, and matter-of-fact obstinacy of a work professing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... resemble the distorted freaks of nature in a dime museum. They may all be possible, but not one of them probable. Taffy and Gecko are the best of the lot. The first is a big, good-natured Englishman who wants to see his sweetheart married to his friend, weds another and supports her quite handsomely by painting pictures he cannot sell; the latter a Pole with an Italian's temperament, yet who sees the woman he loves in the power of a demon—by whom she is ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... he drew the thousand dollars from the bank. A good many of his debts he wanted to pay in cash; there was no use putting checks through, with incriminating indorsements. Also, he liked the idea of carrying a roll of money around. The big fellows at the clubs always had a wad and peeled off bills like skin off an onion. He took a couple of drinks to celebrate his approaching immunity ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the country, extending the consolations of wealth and influence to the poor. Let them but do this,—and instead of those dangerous and distracted divisions between the different ranks of life, and those jealousies of the multitude so often blindly painted as big with destruction, we should see our country as one large and harmonious family, which can never be accomplished amidst vice and corruption, by wars and treaties, by informations, ex officio for libels, or by any of the tricks and artifices of ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... have dozens and dozens; but there are three great big ones which increase in greatness as they ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... larger American newspapers has made the reporting of athletic and sporting events into a separate department under a separate editor. The pink or green sporting sheets of the big papers have become separate little newspapers in themselves handled by a sporting editor and his staff and entirely devoted to athletic news, except when padded out with left-over stories from other pages. Although on smaller papers any reporter may be called upon to cover an athletic ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... neither tail nor cheek pouches. They are true bipeds on the ground, applying the sole of the foot flatly, not, as Cuvier and others have remarked of the Ourangs, with the outer edge of the sole only, but flat down, as Blyth, who first mentions it, noticed it, with the thumb or big toe widely separated. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... came to see me he suggested that I should take a few weeks' rest in England. I objected and said I wanted to be in the big British spring drive in Belgium. He replied that a few days' holidays would not deprive me of that honor, and that he considered the Allies might postpone the offensive ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... we to say of the Portuguese? I counted in Barra one store for every five dwelling- houses. These stores, or tavernas, have often not more than fifty pounds' worth of goods for their whole stock, and the Portuguese owners, big lusty fellows, stand all day behind their dirty counters for the sake of selling a few coppers' worth of liquors, or small wares. These men all give the same excuse for not applying themselves to agriculture, namely, that no hands can ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... in their native country. I won't say against you, sir, if you say it is—that is, to the outside of all your knowledge. And twenty thousand of them may need letters by the sack. But what use they could make, sir, of cannon as big as I be, and muskets that would kill a man a hundred yards of distance, and bayonets more larger and more sharper than ever I see before, even with the Royal Volunteers—this goes out of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... the private automobiles, the motor-buses, the express-wagons, and calculate my chances. Then I shrink back. If it is a corner where there is no policeman to bank the tides up on either hand and lead me over, I wait for some bold, big team to make the transit of the avenue from the cross-street, and then in its lee I find my way to the other side. As for the trolleys, I now mock myself of them, as Thackeray's Frenchmen were said to say in their peculiar English. (I wonder if they ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... sleeves. It created a laugh. "As impossible as it is," said the artist, "I will wager a dinner that if I present it seriously to a certain fashion paper they will take it up." This is said to be the history of the "big-sleeve" fashion that really amazed the ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... it took no heed of me nor even felt me; and, loosing my turband from its feet, I made off with my best speed. Presently, I saw it catch up in its huge claws something from the earth and rise with it high in air, and observing it narrowly I saw it to be a serpent big of bulk and gigantic of girth, wherewith it flew away clean out of sight. I marvelled at this and faring forwards found myself on a peak overlooking a valley, exceeding great and wide and deep, and bounded by vast mountains that spired ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... small men, when for Ben Becker swift waters flowed under the bridge. He was just that, a small man, prided himself upon it and was frequent in his boast: "I'm a small man, Carrie. I don't hope to make a big or showy success of it. Just a comfortable and unassuming living is about all I expect to get out of it, and that's a pretty ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Chames. If I'd bin taller I'd have stood for being a New York cop, and bin buying a brownstone house on Fifth Avenue by this. It's de cops makes de big money in old Manhattan, dat's who ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... but they who look upon it from a private chamber, who have the fun of the procession. And once you are at that, you are in the very humour of all social heresy. It is no time for shuffling, or for big, empty words. If you ask yourself what you mean by fame, riches, or learning, the answer is far to seek; and you go back into that kingdom of light imaginations, which seem so vain in the eyes of Philistines perspiring ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "There's marmalade in the big tin back of you," said Pennington's softly cultivated Oxford voice from the doorway. "And if you fill the small buckets with coffee they will take them, together with ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... house quite snug," continued the Brigadier. "The eastern suite is to be avoided, because there is no roof there; and if it rains outside for a day, it rains in the best bedroom for a week. There is a big kitchen in the basement, with a capital range. That's all, I think. The chief thing to avoid is movement of any kind. The leaves are coming off the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... know how to outwit the big brute, and then I mean to cure him of his bullying ways," he was wont to say cheerfully, as he festooned his face with strips of adhesive plaster, and tried ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... for wark, nowt but wark'll do, an' theas 'at can't wark mun plan. This wur th' cry all up an daan Haworth next morning, an' for weeks all wor vary bizzy. One man made a wheelbarra it'h chamber, but it wor soa big wal it cudn't be gotten aat withaat takkin th' haase side daan. Anuther invented a koulin' machine to koul th' muck up both sides to save wheelbarras an' work toils for th' navvies. Some started a practicin' ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... was all. There were no omnibuses, no motors, no incessant tramp, tramp, tramp, of horses' hoofs, making the never-ceasing dull roar to which she had been accustomed all her life, and Jessie missed it. Suddenly she felt very lonely and forlorn. The world was so big and empty and silent, and her mother so very, very far away. There seemed to be nobody left to see, or care, or hear, no matter ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... "'The big show is about to commence in the main tent,'" he quoted, grinning. He caught the woman suddenly to his breast and kissed her. "One can never tell, Jane," he said. "We'll do our best—that is all we can do. Give me your spear, and—don't run. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... both. You're not very big;" and as he said this the man drew his arm about the boy in a ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... competition by the private teachers were suppressed, that otherwise the medical examination might become as great a quackery as the medical degree, and that the whole question was a mere squabble between the big quack and the little one. He unfolds his views in ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... SUBJECT. Care should be used in the statement of the subject. It should not be so stated as to be more comprehensive than the composition, but should be limited to cover only what is discussed. For a small essay, instead of a big subject, take some limited ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... o'clock a spruce little lisping rebel named Ross would appear with a book, and a body-guard, consisting of a big Irishman, who had the air of a Policeman, and carried a musket barrel made into a cane. Behind him were two or three armed ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... you simply confirm the experience of the ages, but, frankly, you amaze me. You are moving amongst the big places of life, you are with those who are making history, and you would be content to give the whole thing up. For what? You would become a commonplace, easy-going young animal of a British soldier, for the sake of the affection of a good-looking, well-bred, commonplace British ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mounted his horse, seeing who it was, and met me. We had there between the lines, sitting on horseback, a very pleasant conversation of over half an hour, in the course of which Lee said to me that the South was a big country and that we might have to march over it three or four times before the war entirely ended, but that we would now be able to do it as they could no longer resist us. He expressed it as his earnest hope, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... whose influence and diplomacy the Yankton Sioux were kept neutral throughout the Sioux wars; Lone Wolf of the Kiowas, Quanah Parker of the Comanches, whose mother was a white captive, and Governor James Big Heart of the Osages were all men of this type, natural leaders and statesmen. Iron Eyes, or Joseph La Flesche, a head chief of the Omahas, was a notable leader in progressive ways; and so is John Grass of the Blackfoot Sioux, also a ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... HAVEN'T seen her out much this season," said Eckert. "But I heard she had bolted from 'Society' with the big S, and was going East—going to ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... trains made up in part of coaches grander and more beautiful than any she had ever seen. She knew they must be the parlor and dining and sleeping cars she had read about. And now they were in the midst of a fleet of steamers and barges, and far ahead loomed the first of Cincinnati's big suspension bridges, pictures of which she had many a time gazed at in wonder. There was a mingling of strange loud noises—whistles, engines, on the water, on shore; there was a multitude of what seemed to her feverish activities—she ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... though to himself. "You have cost me my self-respect, a big part of my future and the cream of my best friendship. What higher price could a man pay for the thing ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... I hold thee reverently. Break off the parley; for scarce I can refrain The execution of my big-swoln heart Upon that Clifford, that ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... statement from that fellow Marcus, who was crushed in the Avon mills yesterday. Marcus accepted the medical services of our physicians, and died in our hospital. Just before he went off, his wife accepted a settlement of one hundred dollars. Looked big to her, I guess, and was a bird in the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... garden of Delemy, where we encamped, is stocked with very fine 147 vines from the mountains of Idautenan,[121] a mountainous and independent country, a few miles north of Santa Cruz; these grapes were of the black or purple kind, as big as an ordinary-sized walnut, and very sweet flavoured, as much superior to the finest Spanish grapes, as the latter are superior to the natural grown grapes of England. Large pomegranates, exquisitely sweet, the grains very large, and the seed small, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... ruts were described as being four feet deep. In Young's Tours through England (1768) the Essex roads are spoken of as having ruts of inconceivable depth, and the roads so overgrown with trees as to be impervious to the sun. Some of the turnpikes were spoken of as being rocky lanes, with stones "as big as a horse, and abominable holes!" He adds that "it is a prostitution of language to call them turnpikes—ponds of liquid dirt and a scattering of loose flints, with the addition of cutting vile grips across the road ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... night I hunted the Draper woods. To-night I'll cross the brook just this side the old bars, and take a look into that pasture-corner among the junipers. There's a rabbit which plays round there on moonlight nights; I'll have him presently. Then I'll go down to the big South meadow after mice. I haven't been there for a week; and last time I got six. If I don't find mice, there's that chicken coop of old Jenkins. Only"—He stops, with his foot up, and listens a minute—"only he locks the coop and leaves the dog loose ever ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... uncorded all the bedsteads and made life miserable for the festive bedbugs by an application of whale oil from a capable feather applied to the inside of all holes through which the ropes ran. The re-cording of the beds was a tedious process requiring two persons, and I soon grew big enough to count as one. I remember also the little triangular tin candlesticks that we inserted at the base of each of the very small panes of the window when we illuminated the hotel on special nights. I distinctly ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... would lie still in her cot, waiting. The door would open, the big pointed shadow would move over the ceiling, the lattice shadow of the fireguard would fade and go away, and Mamma would come in carrying the lighted candle. Her face shone white between her long, hanging curls. She would stoop over the cot and lift Harriett up, and her face would be ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... legs. In her lace and velvet, with a good display of smooth black stocking and of snowy petticoat, and with the refined profile of her face and slender plumpness of her body, she showed in singular contrast to the big, black, intellectual ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to visit a friend in the country, a modest man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple, unpretentious house, set about with big trees, encircled in meadow and field rich with the promise ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Frenchmen were all scientists of note. One of the Serbian delegates had been continuously in the battle field for four years and was thoroughly tired of war. He was a handsome and very interesting man. In fact all the Serbs whom I saw in Paris were big, fine-looking men. ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... would belong to others. If Lourdes had restored her to him, Paris was about to take her from him again. And he pictured this ignorant little being fatally acquiring all the education of woman. That little spotless soul which had remained so candid in the frame of a big girl of three-and-twenty, that soul which illness had kept apart from others, far from life, far even from novels, would soon ripen, now that it could fly freely once more. He beheld her, a gay, healthy young girl, running everywhere, looking and learning, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... here regarded as the roof of the earth and supported on pillars. The ancients believed the stars to be fixed in the solid firmament: comp. Par. Reg. iv. 55; also Wint. Tale, ii. l. 100, "If I mistake In those foundations which I build upon, The centre is not big enough to bear A ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... the wonderful invention that the Big Corporation or the Utilities suppressed...? Usually, that Wonderful Invention won't work, actually. But there's another ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... replied she, "I cannot give you my address, since tomorrow I may no longer have one, but I will call and see you, and I will mend your coat, which has a hole so big that one could shoot ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... sad thing when the "big house" of the village is empty. The labourers who never see their squire begin to look upon him as a sort of ogre, who exists merely to screw rents out of the land they till. Those who are dependent on land alone are often the men ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... dinner-party, but if one had to offer one's arm to Spartacus, to let him take one down...! Really, no; it would never be Vercingetorix I should send for, to make a fourteenth. I feel sure, I should keep him for really big 'crushes.' And as I never ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... a suburb once removed—a kind of second cousin to the big city—the only kind of a suburb that could really be aristocratic. Meadeville was populated considerably by moneyed New Yorkers and the First Presbyterian was the smartest church in town. The men who passed the plate all belonged to ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... ago, the priests of Mugenyama, in the province of Totomi (1), wanted a big bell for their temple; and they asked the women of their parish to help them by contributing ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... for Tom Bond was dead. He lay flat on his face with his hands stretched afore him, and a revolver, the daps of mine, had fallen from his hand and dropped a foot away from it. And, looking close, I saw a big dabble of blood about him, that had come from his body ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... his father that he was killed in the battle with the Indians at Little Big Horn, called the "Custer massacre," ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Secretary, and various courtiers, as likewise myself. The lady herself is not quite a Desert maiden, skipping like a young roe over the mountains, in untutored innocence or coyish bashfulness. She is young, it is true, but full-blown and bloated, very big about, and excessively dirty and nasty. The favourite of the Mudeer is besides almost as black as a Negress, with a pock-marked face. After dodging about with the Negro clown some ten minutes, her eye catches the shape ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... so big, Martin," Foy whispered over his shoulder; "everybody is staring at you and that red beard of yours, which glows like a ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... which will affect the choice of routes and of means of conveyance, and that is the question of language. The natives in the big towns and all servants in hotels and private houses speak Malay, which is the official language for communication between them and the Europeans. There is always supposed to be one man in each native ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... headquarters at Staunton, but we find him, in August, with his main army at Valley Mountain (Big Springs), on the Huntersville road, and about twelve miles south of the Union camp at Elk Water on the Tygart's Valley River. General W. W. Loring, late of the United States Army, an officer who won some fame in the Mexican War, was in immediate command of the Confederate troops ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... commentators have discussed the star of Christ's birth from various points of view. Some have thought it a real star; others have had enough astronomy to see that this was impossible, and have argued that it was a big will-o'-the-wisp, created and directed by supernatural power, like the pillar of day-cloud and night-fire that led the Jews in the wilderness; while still others have favored the idea of a supernatural illusion, which was confined to ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... was brought to him, and, with many other of the senators, affirmed the action was right, and commended the virtue of those that contrived it, and had courage enough to execute it; and said that "tyrants do indeed please themselves and look big for a while, upon having the power to act unjustly; but do not however go happily out of the world, because they are hated by the virtuous; and that Caius, together with all his unhappiness, was become a conspirator against himself, before these other men who attacked him did so; and by becoming ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... kitchen," said Aunt Phillis. "You, Sal an' Bet, hurry up yah wid a big basin full, an' soap an' sand an' house-cloths. Glad 'nuff dat massa shot dat ole debbil, but Miss Elsie's house not to be defiled wid ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... accustomed to the presence of a prefet, and is no doubt important. But it is not so large that people going in and out of it can pass without attention, and this we take to be the really true line of demarcation between a big town and a little one. Had Michel Voss and Adrian Urmand passed through Lyons or Strasbourg on their journey to Granpere, no one would have noticed them, and their acquaintances in either of those cities would not have been a bit the wiser. But it was not ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... Arrowhead Village,—"I tell ye that girl ain't a gon to put up with any o' them slab-sided fellahs that you see hangin' raound to look at her every Sunday when she comes aout o' meetin'. It's one o' them big gents from Boston or New York that'll step up ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... lonely life. "I know now," he wrote, "just how much there is to bear, and how to bear it. Strange men come between us, but you are not far off when I am alone on these plains. There is a place where I can always meet you, and I know that you have found it,—under the big ash-tree by the barn. I think I am nearly always there about sundown, and on moonshiny nights, because we are then nearest together; and I never sleep without leaving you half my blanket. When I first begin to wake I always feel your breath, so we are never really parted for long. I ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... went well. The only question was as to the disposition of Miss Dibbs toward me. I prayed that she might turn out to be a romantic dragon; but, in case she should prove obstinate, I made my approaches with all possible caution. When my carriage stopped at the door I jumped out. The head waiter, a big fellow in a white waistcoat, was on the steps. I drew him aside, and took a ten-franc piece ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... may be learned. I have known one old gentleman, whom I may name, for he in now gathered to his stock - Robert Hunter, Sheriff of Dumbarton, and author of an excellent law-book still re-edited and republished. Whether he was originally big or little is more than I can guess. When I knew him he was all fallen away and fallen in; crooked and shrunken; buckled into a stiff waistcoat for support; troubled by ailments, which kept him hobbling in and out of the room; one foot gouty; a wig for decency, not for ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whose style I admire the least, and called "an elegant Jeremiah." It is because I say (to use the words which the Daily Telegraph puts in my mouth):—"You mustn't make a fuss because you have no vote,—that is vulgarity; you mustn't hold big meetings to agitate for reform bills and to repeal corn laws,—that is the very height of vulgarity,"—it is for this reason that I am called, sometimes an elegant Jeremiah, sometimes a spurious Jeremiah, a Jeremiah about the reality of whose mission the writer in the Daily ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... has served her purpose; her caresses mean death. The female scorpion devours the male in the same way. Among our wild bees it is the queen alone that survives the winter and carries on the race. The big noisy blow-flies on the window-pane are females. With the honey bees the males are big and loud, but are without any authority, and are almost as literally destroyed by the female as is the male spider. The queen bee does not eat her mate, but she ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... Venus!—and at Maricopa Flying Field Lieutenant McGuire and Captain Blake laugh at its possible meaning until the radio's weird call and the sight of a giant ship in the night sky prove their wildest thoughts are facts. "Big as an ocean liner," it hangs in midair, then turns and shoots upward at incredible speed until it ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... they personally ought to subscribe. This ideal sum was recorded on the face of a clock, hung outside the building. As the gross amount actually collected increased, the hands were seen to revolve. Everything that eloquence and ingenuity could devise was done to gather funds for the war. Big advertisers made a gift of their newspaper space to the nation. There were certain public-spirited men who took up blocks of war-bonds, making the request that no interest should be paid. You went to a theatre; during the interval actors and actresses sold war-certificates, ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... an uncle of his out in Australia who was et by a big oyster once; and when, he got inside, he stayed there until he'd et the oyster. Then he split the shell open and took half a one for a boat, and he sailed along until he met a sea-serpent, and he killed it and drawed off its skin, and when he got home he sold it to an engine company for a hose, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... Netherlands, Portugal, and a huge colonial empire; (2) Under the Austrian branch—Austria and its dependencies, Hungary, Bohemia, and the title of Holy Roman Emperor. Despite the herculean labors of Philip II, France remained outside Habsburg influence, a big gap in what would otherwise have been a series of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... a great squirrel-hunt, on Duck River, which was among my people. They were to hunt two days; then to meet and count the scalps, and have a big barbecue, and what might be called a tip-top country frolic. The dinners and a general treat was all to be paid for by the party having taken the fewest scalps. I joined one side, and got a gun ready for the ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... kings by heart, it would subsequently have been a matter of perfect indifference to me whether Niebuhr had or had not proved that they never really existed. And had I not learned those dates, how could I ever, in later years, have found out any one in big Berlin, where one house is as like another as drops of water or as grenadiers, and where it is impossible to find a friend unless you have the number of his house in your head! At that time I associated ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... As the big door swung behind me I caught the echo of a roar of laughter that went up to the ceiling of the bank. Since then I bank no more. I keep my money in cash in my trousers pocket and my savings in ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... Johnson. His representation of the case warmly interested the feelings of that benevolent officer, who promised him to spare no exertions in his behalf. This promise he religiously performed. He went in person to the village of the Big White Man, as soon as the opening of the spring permitted, and offered him many splendid presents of guns and horses, but ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... them, and their scattered neighbours, who had driven there across several leagues of prairie, a supper in his barn, and a big rusty stove, which had been brought in for the occasion, stood in the midst of it. Its pipe glowed in places a dull red, and Stukely now and then wondered uneasily whether it was charring a larger hole through the shingles of the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... shifting eyes that blinked behind a pair of eyeglasses. To conceal an indecision of character of which he was quite conscious, he assumed a manner that, according to whom he addressed, was familiar or condescending. At one of the big hospitals he had been an ambulance surgeon and resident physician, later he had started upon a somewhat doubtful career as a medical "expert." Only two years had passed since the police and the reporters of the Tenderloin had ceased ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... know the next week that his "big brother" had won a prize of one hundred dollars. And when Joseph passed with honor and took his degree, they were ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... You can frighten her fast enough—but how are you going to keep her frightened? By showing her that you're as powerful as she is. All the letters in the world won't do that for you as you are now; but with a big backing behind you, you'll keep her just where you want her to be. That's MY share in the business—that's what I'm offering you. You can't put the thing through without me—don't run away with any idea that you can. In six months you'd be back again among your old worries, or worse ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the door, but the Snow came in in a cloud, and the path was half a foot deep again. It shows on what little threads big things hang, for when I saw the storm I gave up the idea of bringing Mr. Sam down to see the young man, and the breath of fresh air in my face brought me ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... My informant lowered her big brown eyes, with an air of conscientious meditation that was inexpressibly quaint. "To me she appears so," she said at ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... one of the typical formative devices of our language. Such words as goody-goody and to pooh-pooh have become accepted as part of our normal vocabulary, but the method of duplication may on occasion be used more freely than is indicated by such stereotyped examples. Such locutions as a big big man or Let it cool till it's thick thick are far more common, especially in the speech of women and children, than our linguistic text-books would lead one to suppose. In a class by themselves are the ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... strength, Happy as always; something grave, perhaps; The great vein-cordage on the fret-worked brow, Black-swollen, beaded yet with battle-drops The yellow hair o' the hero!—his big frame A-quiver with each muscle sinking back Into the sleepy smooth it leaped from late. Under the great guard of one arm, there leant A shrouded something, live and woman-like, Propped by the heart-beats 'neath the lion-coat. When he had finished his survey, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... "Aint he rather big to speak such broken English?" asked Mr. O'Shea. "I hope you remember that it is part of your duty to stamp ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... the combat efficiency demonstrated by colored organizations during the last war, my first recommendation in the interest of national defense and saving the taxpayer's money is to let the organization die on the vine. We make a big subject of giving the taxpayers the maximum amount of protection for each dollar spent, then turn around and support an organization that would contribute little or nothing in an emergency. It is my own opinion ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... is quite delightful, no mosquitoes as yet to speak of; but the two big marshes on either side of the farm harbour ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... and the trapper Lacosse's explanation Arrive at Sutter's Purchase flour at eighty-five dollars a barrel Camps of miners A gold-washing colony Encamped for the night Horses and flour missing in the morning Visit a big bony American A hole threatened in their skulls How quarrels are settled Lacosse promises to join the party at Sutter's The march resumes Arrive at Malcolm's shanty The doctor prescribes for his patient Malcolm's first idea of the lasso The ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... wagon, one of Engle's men driving, Ignacio Chavez and two other Mexicans accompanying on horseback. Virginia had forgotten nothing. Quick hands did her bidding now, altering the anteroom of the King's Palace into a big airy bedroom. There was a great rug upon the floor, a white-sheeted and counterpaned bed, fresh pajamas, table, chair, alcohol-stove, glasses and cups and water-pitchers. There were cloths for fresh ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... answer, at a moment so big with the most horrible surmises, was decisive: furiously, therefore, he forced himself past her, and opened the door:—but when he saw them together,—the rest of the family confessedly excluded, his rage turned to horror, and he could hardly ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... not a minute too soon, for she had scarcely done so before the handle was turned and the voice of Irene was heard outside crying through the keyhole, "What changeling is in this room? Which of you housemaids has dared to lock herself in? Come out! I've got a big spider ready, and"—— ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... drew on. Admiral Watson began to fear that when the tide fell his big guns would be at too low a level to do further execution. There was always considerable rivalry between himself and Clive, fed by the stupid jealousy of some of the Calcutta Council. While Clive, foreseeing even more serious work later, was anxious to spare his men, Watson was ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... did not shake his confidence in the art of raising squashes. He had become a thorough believer in squashes,—they were now a part of his creed. He could see them on the vines before the seeds were planted. Some of them were very large,—as big as a water-pail, and his glowing imagination set him to work already, rolling them into a wheelbarrow. He cared little for the bugs, though they should come in a great army, he could conquer them, ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... really feel that there had been any danger, especially as a second glance at the street door showed that Mortlake had been thoughtful enough to slip the loop that held back the bolt of the big lock. She allowed herself another throb of sympathy for the labour leader whirling on his dreary way towards Devonport Dockyard. Not that he had told her anything of his journey, beyond the town; but she knew Devonport had a Dockyard because Jessie Dymond—Tom's ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... good F - - - t; It is better than Wealth, It will comfort your Heart: And when you have done, With the Crack of your B - - m, Bend your Knees, And then squeeze, And something will come, You'll be better, tho' it's not so big as your Thumb. ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... The negro's big, yellow-palmed hands worked dexterously among the instruments to his right; then, amidships, grew a shrill whine which keened upward in pitch. A few sparks raced by the Star Devil's after ports, quickly to disappear after they left the almost invisible envelope of delicate bluish light that entirely ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... postcards and photographs, such as the poor Italians love, deftly enough arranged and fastened together by some mysterious not apparent means. Many of the postcards were American. Near two small flags, American and Italian, fastened crosswise above the head of the big bed, was a portrait of Maria Addolorata, under which burned a tiny light. A palm, blessed, and fashioned like a dagger with a cross for the hilt, was nailed above it, with a coral charm to protect the household against the evil eye. And a little to the right of it was a small object which Hermione ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens |
