"Billed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... opened up by the great sciences, as astronomy and geology, but upon life and movement and personality, and puts in a shred of natural history here and there,—the "twittering redstart," the spotted hawk swooping by, the oscillating sea-gulls, the yellow-crowned heron, the razor-billed auk, the lone wood duck, the migrating geese, the sharp-hoofed moose, the mockingbird "the thrush, the hermit," etc.,—to help locate and define his position. Everywhere in nature Whitman finds human relations, human responsions. In ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... for 'yellow'—a glass of agwa with yellow." Branch's voice shook. "I'm dying of a fever, and this ivory-billed toucan brings me a quart of poison. Bullets!" It was impossible to describe the suggestion of profanity with which the speaker colored this innocuous expletive. "Weak as I am, I shall gnaw his windpipe." He bared his teeth suggestively and raised two ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... discovering that Douglas, the marvelous boy, was in their midst. He must make an address. They erected a platform and billed the town. I stayed near until Douglas rose to speak. He looked fresh and tidy in his new suit, and with freshly shaven face. I heard his great voice roll out over the large crowd collected to hear him. I heard the applause that welcomed ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... with the whole tribe. As the spring advances, from the sylvan glades of Pennsylvania a curious note, constantly repeated, is heard, resembling the word "cow-cow." It is the note of a bird, and from the sound it resembles it is generally known as the "cow-bird." It is also called the "yellow-billed cuckoo." It is in no respect behind any of its neighbours of the grove in conjugal and parental affection, for it builds its nest, hatches its own eggs, and rears its own young, Wilson assures us. It is about a foot in length, clothed in a dark drab suit ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... notes made by Flinders on this expedition are of unusual interest. Upon the islands he found "Kanguroo" (his invariable spelling of the word), "womat" (sic), the duck-billed platypus, aculeated ant-eater, geese, black swan, gannets, shags, gulls, red bills, crows, parrakeets, snakes, seals, and sooty petrels, a profusion of wild life highly fascinating in itself, and, in the case of the animals, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... join on to the typical group, so as to complete the circle. The first of the aberrant groups (natatores) is remarkable for making the water the theatre of its existence, and the birds composing it are in general of comparatively large bulk. The second (grallatores) are long-limbed and long-billed, that they may wade and pick up their subsistence in the shallows and marshes in which they chiefly live. The third (rasores) are distinguished by strong feet, for walking or running on the ground, and for scraping in it for their food; also by wings designed to scarcely raise ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... pressed against my shoulder as if he knew I would protect him. At the door of the freight car which I had chartered, he hesitated, but only for an instant. At the word of command he walked the narrow plank into the dark interior and there I left him with food and water, billed for St. Paul where I expected to meet him and transfer him to a car for West Salem. It all seemed very foolish to some people and my only explanation was suggested by a brake-man who said, "He's a runnin' horse, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... significance. Then he went on, just a shade more sharply. "Now, see here. When that freight gets in I hold you responsible that the hindmost car—next the caboose—is dropped here, and the seals are intact. It's billed loaded with barrels of cube sugar, for Calford. Get me? That's your duty just now. See ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... "We are billed to stay there some time longer," replied Goddard confidently. "The roads are in no condition to move cavalry and artillery. There really is no prospect of our leaving winter quarters ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Passez, completed his law apprenticeship. In the first pages of Colonel Chabert the novelist gives us a sketch of the interior where he acquired his knowledge of chicane. Our nostrils are familiarized with its stove-heated atmosphere, our eyes with the yellow-billed walls, the dirty floor, the greasy furniture, the bundles of papers, the chimney-piece covered with bottles and glasses and bits of bread and cheese; and our ears are assailed by the quips and jokes and puns of the clerks and office-boys who were his companions ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Though billed by her publisher as a merciless analyst, Mrs. MORDAUNT is really (if you want to fling this kind of title about) an eclectic synthetist or synthetic symbolist. Her wicked people are prodigiously ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... easy to arouse. No statement is too wild to lack believers, no rumor too exaggerated to find takers. Within an hour the crew of the steamer was busy unloading countless tons of merchandise and baggage billed to Dawson, and tents began to show their snowy whiteness here and there. As a man saw his outfit appear he would pounce upon it, a bundle at a time, and pile it by itself, which resulted in endless disputes and much confusion; but a spirit of youth and expectancy permeated ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... as he got his breath, 'my financed bride billed to appear in a hugging handicap? Not yet! Sabrina you certainly do jag my jib to think that you would enter into such a deal. From now on our trail parts.' 'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... Stuff had been shot back by a Boston Editor with a Complimentary Note, he had billed himself as an Author and had been pointed out as such at ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... whipped everyone in sight at G.H.Q., and was being touted as the champion of Amex forces. He was billed to fight both Pewther and a French heavyweight aspirant the same evening. He had to disappoint ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... yellowhammers Made mirthful clamours, And billed long straws with a bustling air, And bearing their load Flew up the road That he followed, alone, without ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... new experiences with the same old familiar birds, or new thoughts about them. This season I have had new impressions of our cuckoos, which are oftener heard than seen. Of the two species, the black-billed and the yellow-billed, the former prevails in the latitude of New England, and the latter farther south. We cannot hail our black-billed as "blithe newcomer," as Wordsworth does his cuckoo. "Doleful newcomer" would be a fitter title. There is nothing cheery ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... ever on their lips. As pleased as little children where these grow In cobbled pattens and worn gowns they go, Proud of their wisdom when on gooseberry shoots They stuck eggshells to fright from coming fruits The brisk-billed rascals; pausing still to see Their neighbour owls saunter from tree to tree, Or in the hushing half-light mouse the lane Long-winged and lordly. But when those hours wane, Indoors they ponder, scared by the harsh storm Whose pelting saracens ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... he cried; "man, how I've pined for you! And you haven't come an hour too soon. You're known here and waited for; I've been booming you already: you're billed for a lecture to-morrow night: 'Student Life in Paris, Grave and Gay': twelve hundred places booked at the last stock! Tut, man, you're looking thin! Here, try a drop of this." And he produced a case bottle, staringly labelled PINKERTON'S ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Behind me are sharp cries of titlarks. From the direction of the river come frequent reports of guns. Somebody is doing his best to be happy! All at once I prick up my ears. From the grass just across the creek rises the brief, hurried song of a long-billed marsh wren. So he is in Florida, is he? Already I have heard confused noises which I feel sure are the work of rails of some kind. No doubt there is abundant life concealed in those acres on acres of ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... wanted to kill someone for you, I didn't think you would suggest myself, least of all that you wanted me fattened up like a Christmas turkey first. To go down to posterity as the large-bodied gentleman who inhaled the badger's hair; to be billed in the London press in the words, 'Curious Fatal Accident to Adipose Treasurer'—to do this simply by way of celebrating your twenty-sixth birthday, when we actually have a bottle of Apollinaris left in the Apollinaris bin—darling, you cannot have ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... the grey shrike (Lanius excubitor), the common cormorant, the pigmy cormorant (Graeculus pygmaeus), numerous seagulls, as the Adriatic gull (Larus melanocephalus), Andonieri's gull, the herring-gull, the Red-Sea-gull (Larus ichthyo-aetos), and others; the gull-billed tern (Sterna anglica), the Egyptian goose, the wild duck, the woodcock, the Greek partridge (Caccabis saxatilis), the waterhen, the corncrake or landrail, the coot, the water-ouzel, the francolin; plovers of three kinds, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... banks of rivers, the jabiru (Mycteria americana, L.) loves to wade, together with the rose-colored spoon-bill (Platalea ajaja, L.); the fish-devouring ibis (Tantalus loculator, L.), the curved-billed snipe (Rhynchoea Hilaerea, Val.), the party-colored cranes, plovers, land-rails, shrites, and even sea-swallows.[91] In the rivers there are ducks: these birds are, perhaps, carried down by the currents from the Andes, or, possibly, they fly in great trains from the inner ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the short-winged, soft-billed birds, which come trooping in such numbers in the spring, I am at a loss even what to suspect about them. I watched them narrowly this year, and saw them abound till about Michaelmas, when they appeared no ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... picture in Bank's Natural History Book. Next to the Ornythrincus or Duck-billed Plat-i-pus. If they came into the house Mamma would be frightened. But I would not be frightened. I should ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... shipped promptly and the right goods sent, but when the telegrams and letters are opened, you can have all the kicks sorted out, and run through them before they're distributed for the day. That's where you'll meet the clerk who billed a tierce of hams to the man who ordered a box; the shipper who mislaid Bill Smith's order for lard, and made Bill lose his Saturday's trade through the delay; the department head who felt a little peevish one morning and so wrote Hardin & Co., who buy in car-lots, that if they ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... grievous illness is little known in lodgings) fall on the ground-floor tenant, then did not the first-floor come down to comfort him in the evenings? First-floor might be tired after a long day's work, and note when his frugal meal was done that 'twas a fine evening, or that a good company was billed for the local theatre; yet he would grudge not his leisure, but go down to sit with ground-floor, and tell him the news of the day, perhaps even would take him a few oranges or a tin of sardines. And ground-floor, who ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... enough for 'Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster'; poor French accent, worse German; awfully good English, but that doesn't count. Can sing old ballads, folk-songs, and nice, forgotten things that make dear old gentlemen and ladies cry—but not pay. If I were billed at all, ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... take unto other living creatures; as it is seen in the Turks, a cruel people, who nevertheless are kind to beasts, and give alms, to dogs and birds; insomuch, as Busbechius reporteth, a Christian boy, in Constantinople, had like to have been stoned, for gagging in a waggishness a long-billed fowl. Errors indeed in this virtue of goodness, or charity, may be committed. The Italians have an ungracious proverb, Tanto buon che val niente: so good, that he is good for nothing. And one of ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... called on a learned gentleman who knew all about hearts and blood pressures, he prescribed baths and unpleasant waters, and my cure began. All this by way of preamble to the statement that I had comfortably settled down in Royat a week before Les Petit Patou were billed to appear in Clermont-Ferrand. Having nothing in the world to do save attend to my internal organs, I spent much time in the old town, which I had not visited for many years, match-hunting (with indifferent success) being at first my main practical ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... acrobatic turn of mediocre quality, and the boys waited impatiently for it to finish, for Tim and Larry were billed to appear in the next act. With a moderate meed of applause, the acrobats retired. The orchestra struck up a catchy tune and the big curtain slowly rose. The scene disclosed was pretty and artistic, representing ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... over light-headed: a Booby who had fine legs. How these first courted, billed, and cooed, according to nature; then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged and blew one another up.—Boswell's Life ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... bird sailing in wide, graceful circles. Instantly Peter crouched a little lower in his hiding-place, for he knew this for a member of the Hawk family and Peter has learned by experience that the only way to keep perfectly safe when one of these hook-clawed, hook-billed birds is about is ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... which run only in the fall, the males are hooked-jawed and red-blotched when they first enter the Straits of Fuca from the outside. The hump-back, taken in salt water about Seattle, shows the same peculiarities. The male is slab-sided, hook-billed, and distorted, and is rejected by the canners. No hook-jawed females of any species ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... Murre and Razor-Billed Auk. These are finely shaped birds, black above and white below, twice the size of a pigeon, and closely resembling each other, save in the bill. That of the murre is not noticeable; but the other's is singularly shaped, and marked with delicate, finely cut ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... The remedy for this is for the Pacific ports to build elevators; and even when they haven't elevators, the saving in rates over and above the extra sacking has already been from eight to fourteen cents a bushel on grain billed for Liverpool via the one hundred ninety miles of rail over Tehuantepec, or via the Panama railroad, where bulk need not ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... kind save, perhaps, the viciousness with which he thrust a pitchfork into a cock of hay. The two were turning over hay-cocks that had been drenched with another unwelcome storm, and they had not been talking much. "Forking" soggy hay when the sun is blistering hot and great, long-billed mosquitoes are boring indefatigably into the back of one's neck is not a pastime conducive to polite ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... gutta-percha or other resistant steamers which can neither be billed nor gaffed, shot nor slashed into sinking—vessels beyond all capacity for bathos, and no more to be persuaded into going under than was the black Baptist convert of David Crockett's story. What would naval battles amount to between such invulnerables? ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a-prickle as the skin nervously tightened and the hair uprose stiff-ended. It was a nervous moment for all concerned, the introduction of a new dog into the cage. The tow-headed leopard man, who was billed on the boards as Raoul Castlemon and was called Ralph by his intimates, was already in the cage. The Airedale was with him, while outside stood several men armed with iron bars and long steel forks. These weapons, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... drenched after his late immersion, for he sat in the sun, spreading out his beautiful plumage of dark metallic-green to dry. The piping call of the cheerful jacamar was changed at intervals for the deep, full note of the red-billed shrike, as he sat hidden in the thicket; bright yellow weaver-birds twittered in crowds on the boughs, whilst from the depth of the shade came the cooing murmur of the turtle-dove. Stark and rigid, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... bit of Maria's system of bluffing in order to boss. Peggy hasn't more than the brain, in proportion to the rest of her, of a small swelling dove on a window-sill; but she's extremely pretty and absolutely nice, a little rounded pink-billed presence that pecks up gratefully ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... madam," said the man, "but I have been looking for my little friends, the 'Happy Day Twins,' as they are billed. Their real names are—well, I suppose they have told you," and he smiled at Lucile and Mart, who were ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... over on someone. But he's a man. He'd go through hell an' high water fer a friend. He was the only one of the whole outfit had the guts to tend Jimmy Trimble when he got the spotted fever—nursed him back to good as ever, too, after the Doc had him billed through fer yonder." Cinnabar Joe turned and brought his fist down on the bar. "I'll do it!" he gritted. "Purdy'll think Tex switched the drinks on me. Only I hope he wasn't lyin' about that there stuff. Anyways, even if he was, it's ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... provided, and all the conditions of departmental red tape complied with when the effects entered the United States, for in 1882 the All-Canadian railway was a young giant fighting for life with the mighty rocks of the North Shore route, and railway traffic with the New West was, perforce, billed over American roads. These details and a score of others called for patience, for tact, and a judicious distribution of dollar bills. Harris made a mental note of his obligation to Tom Morrison in the matter. He was shrewd ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Nuttall Codex, occur several figures of heavy-billed birds that may be macaws or other smaller parrots of the genera Amazona or Pachyrhynchus. They are not, however, certainly identifiable (Pl. 26, ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... receipt of the package, to immediately telegraph to Atlanta of its arrival, and to send it off by the train that left that evening for Columbus. I had no right to the package, and should have immediately re-billed it and sent it off. I was certain that no one knew that it had been missent. It had evidently found its way into the pouch through a mistake, as it was not marked on the way-bill, or its presence known to the messenger. I never thought I should be guilty of theft ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... be married and billed and cooed in the wood like the birds in the garden under the lime trees; life lay before them like a sunny meadow which the scythe had not yet touched. But he had to pass his examinations in mining first, and that would take him,—including the ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... likely to your Board of Directors that the Association's investment in government bonds would have to be converted into cash to meet the year's expenses. There was barely enough money in the treasury to pay for the 42nd Annual Report, which should have been billed the preceding year. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... Cosy Moments, was billed for a "ten-round exhibition contest," to be the main event of the evening's entertainment. No decisions are permitted at these clubs. Unless a regrettable accident occurs, and one of the sparrers is knocked out, the verdict is left ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... or "grand finale," is worthy of special mention, for various reasons. It was billed as "The Carnival of Flowers," and included all the members of the junior class. Each was in evening dress and was either profusely decorated with, or carried, an elaborate design of the flower which she had ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... seemed to detract little from the beauty and interest of the woodlands. The warblers, the humming bird, the tanager, the bob-o-link, the ovenbird, the vireos, the chat, the red start, the oriole, the dickcissel, the black-billed cuckoo, all greeted their friends as numerously as ever. So with the flowers: the columbine, the shooting star, the painted cup, the puccoon, the beautiful though inodorous large white trillium, the delicate little corydalis, the star grass and ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... at the recollection. "He looked up; he saw me about five yards away; he gave one squawk like the female ducked-billed platypus calling to her young, and he faded round the traverse like the family do when the landlord comes for the rent. Come here, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... clear, and muddy water, too, The long-billed gentleman fishes; Our pious gentlemen we view Fingering in ...
— Faust • Goethe
... "We are billed to be back here in New Orleans about the fifteenth of February, and if you can make it, my boy, I'd like to see you here then. I've got a berth as supercargo open to you, and there's a fine chance to see something ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... heron, night heron, red-tailed hawk, yellow-billed cuckoo, kingfisher, flicker, humming-bird, swift, meadow-lark, red-winged blackbird, sharp-tailed finch, song sparrow, chipping sparrow, bush sparrow, purple finch, Baltimore oriole, cowbunting, robin, wood thrush, thrasher, catbird, scarlet tanager, red-eyed vireo, yellow warbler, black-throated ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... forward and two backward. Call-note loud and like a tree-toad's rattle. Song lacking. Birds of low trees and undergrowth, where they also nest; partial to neighborhood of streams, or wherever the tent caterpillar is abundant. Habits rather solitary, silent, and eccentric. Migratory. Yellow-billed ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... entry, the Red Dragon, borrowed for this race because the biplane was too heavy and clumsy for such fast work, were wheeled to the starting line. Already three of Kelly's machines were there, among them being that of Senora Le Roy, or, as she was billed, the Cuban Skylark, the Only Woman Flyer in the World. It appeared now that she had small claim to the title. The crowd set up a cheer for her as she took her seat in a neat-looking monoplane of the ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... it," continued his Excellency. "Well, where was I,—at the black horse? Yes, at the black horse. Well, I mounted her on the black horse, and rode her en croupe, egad—ha, ha!—to Birmingham; and there we billed and cooed together like a pair of ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the mad glad May days, Woo'd I one who was with us still; Bade him wake to the world's blithe heydays, Leap in joyance and eat his fill; Sang I, sweet as the bright-billed ousel, a Paean of praise for thy pal, Methuselah. Ah! he too in the Winter's grey days Died ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... the other person (if the subscription is a gift) that the paper is being sent to her with the compliments of her friend, or by an anonymous person, as the case may be: but at any rate, that the subscription is for a certain time and that she will not be billed for it. This takes two letters and two stamps. When a subscription is sent in by some suffragist who is acting as agent in forwarding subscriptions for other people, we acknowledge the order only to the sender, thinking that receipt of ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan
... was billed to start at eight o'clock, so I rolled up at ten-fifteen, so as not to have too long to wait before they began. The dress-parade was still going on. George was on the stage, talking to a cove in shirt-sleeves and an absolutely ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... "seen." These rumors have covered nearly every northern state, the whole of the southwest, and California. For years and years we have been patiently writing letters to explain over and over that the band-tailed pigeon of the Pacific coast, and the red-billed pigeon of Arizona and the southwest are neither of them the passenger pigeon, and ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... of reeds, which mark the character of the Murrumbidgee,—the low grassy banks or limestone rocks, the cascades and caverns, the beautiful festoons of creeping plants, the curious form of the duck-billed platypus,[18] which are to be found on the Glenelg; the sandstone wastes of the Wollondilly, the grassy surface of the pretty Yarrayne,[19] with its trees on its brink instead of on its bank; the peculiar grandeur of the tremendous ravine, 1,500 feet in depth, down which the ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... particularize, while the summit was shaded by tall forest timber. Proceeding along a rough bridle path for the space of two miles, we attained the highest part of the saddle, and turned sharp off to the right, to follow a small footpath that had been billed in the bush, being the lines recently run by the land—surveyor between Mr Bang's property and the neighbouring estate, the course of which mine host was desirous of personally inspecting. We therefore left our horses in charge of the servants, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... country to be pitied, not pelted, as he is sure to be when accidentally seen in sunlight—for melancholy is a misfortune, especially when hereditary and constitutional, as it is popularly believed to be in the Black-billed Bubo, and certainly was in Dr Johnson. In young masters and misses we can pardon any childishness; but we cannot pardon the antipathy to the owl entertained by the manly minds of grown-up English clodhoppers, ploughmen, and threshers. They keep terriers to kill rats and mice in barns, and they ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... and on the ledges the gulls and cormorants squabbled and shrieked, and took long circling flights without fluttering a wing, to show what gulls could do, or skimmed darkly just above the waves and into them, to show that cormorants were never satisfied. And now and again wild flights of red-billed puffins swept up from the water and settled out of his sight at the eastern end of the rock, and he promised himself to look them up some other ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... chough, the red-billed (Graculus eremita), which is identical with the European form, and the yellow-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax alpinus), are found in the Himalayas; but he who would see them must either ascend nearly to the snow-line or remain on in the hills ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... Now you may or may not have heard of a Music Hall artiste—a sort of conjurer and impersonator combined—called Zyco the Magician, who was once very popular and was assisted in his illusions by a veiled but reputedly beautiful Turkish lady who was billed on the programmes and posters as 'Zuilika, the ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... was intent upon the two Spanish clowns, Lui-Lui and Soltamontes, whose drolleries spoke the universal language of circus humor, and needed no translation into either German or English. They had missed by an event or two the more patriotic attraction of "Miss Darlings, the American Star," as she was billed in English, but they were in time for one of those equestrian performances which leave the spectator almost exanimate from their prolixity, and the pantomimic piece ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and rather small than large; the mouth or snout so exactly resembles that of some broad-billed species of duck, that it might be ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... rival the flashing colors of the humming-birds in the jungle openings; king-fishers of large size and brilliant blue plumage make the river banks gay; shrieking paroquets with coral-colored beaks and tender green feathers, abound in the forests; great, heavy-billed hornbills hop cumbrously from branch to branch, rivaling in their awkward gait the rhinoceros hornbills; the Javanese peacock, with its gorgeous tail and neck covered with iridescent green feathers instead of ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... October and November hosts of sea-birds come hither to nest, and so also do nutmeg or Torres Straits pigeons, blue doves, peaceful doves, honey-eaters, wood-swallows, the blue reef heron, and occasionally the little black cormorant. The large-billed shore plover (ESACUS MAGNIROSTRIS) deposits her single egg on the sand, merely carelessly whisking aside the casuarina ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... you, ye birds, whose jocund note (Linnets and larks and jays and red-billed ousels) Oft in those happier springtides now remote Caused me to catch the lyre and clear my throat After ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... descending, the other would shoot up and come slowly down, expanded. The entertainment ended in a fight between the two performers; but whether the more beautiful or the more pugnacious were the accepted suitor, I know not. Another fine humming-bird seen about this brook was the long-billed, fire-throated Heliomaster pallidiceps (Gould), generally engaged in probing long narrow-throated red flowers, forming, with their attractive nectar, complete traps for the small insects on which the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... camp, from whence he was only lured occasionally by the mischievous miners, who wished to exhibit his peculiar performances. For although Billy had ample food and sustenance among the crags, he had still a civilized longing for posters; and whenever a circus, a concert, or a political meeting was "billed" in the settlement, he was on hand while the paste was yet fresh and succulent. In this way it was averred that he once removed a gigantic theatre bill setting forth the charms of the "Sacramento Pet," and being caught in the act by the advance agent, was pursued through ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... when North Island was given over to the gulls and long-billed pelicans, and San Diego valued it chiefly as a natural bulkhead that made the bay a placid harbor where the great combing rollers could not ride. But other birds came; great, roaring, man-made birds, that rose whirring from its barrenness and startled the gulls ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... she's mine. It's going to be slow work. I asked her if I couldn't drive out to see her next Sunday, but she wouldn't hear to it. She finally said I could come on the first Sunday of next month to hear a brag preacher that is billed to appear for the first time on that date. It's a dern long time to wait, but she's laid down the law, and ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... and doze in graceful shade; And hazed cornfields beyond the glade, Undulating and dazzling sight, Seem quivering for predestined flight To worlds of unrevealed delight. In lustrous sheen, their stately looks Sedate as parsons reading books, Flock grey-billed, see-saw-gaited rooks Strutting; or when they wings assume Pluck the warm air with fingered plume, Labouring, anxious if weight and size Make flight most hazardous or wise! Nelly we sauntered on and on By hedgerows, brightly overhung And sprinkled thick with snowy showers ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... Mortlake, if you please. Is it true that you were billed to preside at a great meeting of clerks at St. James' Hall between one and two to-day to protest ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... for the uncle right away. And only a few pages later there he was in the limelight again in connection with the yellow-billed cuckoo. It was great stuff. The more I read, the more I admired the chap who had written it and Jeeves's genius in putting us on to the wheeze. I didn't see how the uncle could fail to drop. You can't call a chap the world's greatest authority on the ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... its birds that Lundy is perhaps most notable. To those who first approach its mighty cliffs it might appear to be the haunt of all the birds in creation. There are gulls of many varieties, falcons, kestrels, ravens, crows, cormorants, kittiwakes, puffins; there is the razor-billed auk, and that now extinct bird, the Great Auk, was seen on the island no later ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... she meant to live. And it was a start, a move in the right direction. She accepted; they discussed certain details. She did not care to court publicity under her legal name, so they agreed that she should be billed as Madame Benton,—the Madame being Howard's suggestion,—and she ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... world both sexes of many soft-billed birds, especially those which frequent reeds or sedges, are obscurely coloured. No doubt if their colours had been brilliant, they would have been much more conspicuous to their enemies; but whether their dull tints ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... mighty youth, Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth, And be a swift familiar of the sun Where aye before God's face his trumpets run? Or have we but the talons and the maw, And for the abject likeness of our heart Shall some less lordly bird be set apart?— Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat? Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... London were already billed with an early announcement of the marvels of the Pageant of Terpsichore, which was to occur at the Albert Hall, under the superintendence of the greatest modern English painters, in aid of a fund for soldiers disabled by deafness. The ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... shown where all the accounts of advertisers were computed by means of an automatic device that registered the space taken by a specific firm and the price of such space. There was also a circulation department where lists of subscribers and records of their subscriptions were filed and billed. ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... off, and assume manifold shapes, In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low, In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky, In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs, In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods, In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador, I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... billed to lecture at Hillsboro, Texas, on the eve of the local option election. The Antis took possession of the opera house and changed his subject. Following is a ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Rosie leave tonight for Pittsburg and we are going to stay with Rosies brother in law Hyman Margolius. Write us how things is going in the store to the Outlet Auction House Hyman Margolius prop 2132 4 & 6 North Potter Ave Pittsburg Pa. You should see that Miss Cohen billed them 4022s on date we packed them as Goldman the shipping clerk forgot to give them to Arrow Dispatch when they called. That ain't our fault Morris. Write and tell me how things is going in the store and dont forget to tell Miss Cohen about the ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... for was the Easter egg, and it seemed to be the only egg that was not mentioned. There were birds' eggs, and reptiles' eggs, and fishes' eggs, and molluscs' eggs, and crustaceans' eggs, and insects' eggs, and frogs' eggs, and Augustus Egg, and the eggs of the duck-billed platypus, which is the only mammal (except the spiny ant-eater) whose eggs are "provided with a large store of yolk, enclosed within a shell, and extruded to undergo development apart from the maternal tissues." I do not know whether it is evidence of the irrelevance of the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... on-toward the goal of all my ambitions, my square mile of Iowa land, steered by Henderson L. Burns, who, between shooting prairie chickens, upland plover and sickle-billed curlew, guided me toward my goal by pointing out lone boulders, and the mounds in front of the dens of prairie wolves and badgers. We went on for six miles, and finally came to a place where the ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... and on chilly nights he had the 'Beatrice stove' lit for us. Then the Summer began in real earnest. We got in extra gardeners, worked like niggers ourselves, and when the turf was in perfect condition and the thyme was coming up on Titania's bank we fixed the date and billed the county. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... So it's you, is it?" asked Bully, making ready to hop away, for as soon as he saw that long-legged and sharp-billed bird, he knew right away that he was in danger. For the bird was a heron, which is something like a stork that lives on chimneys in a country called Holland. And the heron bird eats frogs and mice and little ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... constitutional amendment that shall prohibit States from disfranchising citizens on account of sex. That trick will not do. We wager a big apple that the ladies referred to are not "beautiful" or accomplished. Nine of every ten of them are undoubtedly passe. They have hook-billed noses, crow's-feet under their sunken eyes, and a mellow tinting of the hair. They are connoisseurs in the matter of snuff. They discard hoops, waterfalls, and bandeaux. They hold hen conventions, to discuss and decide, with vociferous expression, the orthodoxy of the minister, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... song-birds not found in Sweden, &c. Besides, a number of the Scandinavian types living here also, according to Lieutenant Nordquist, are distinguished by less considerable differences in colour-marking and size. The singular spoon-billed sandpiper was at one time in spring so common that it was twice served at the gunroom table, for which after our return home we had to endure severe reproaches from animal collectors. This bird is found only in some few museums. ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... looked eagerly at the straight-billed, long-legged, black-and-white bird, but shook his head, while Chip, the dog, who had seated himself with his nose close to the bunch, ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... supervising the labours of the field with greatly diminished attention. That is to say, no matter whether the scythes were softly swishing through the grass, or ricks were being built, or rafts were being loaded, he would allow his eyes to wander from his men, and to fall to gazing at, say, a red-billed, red-legged heron which, after strutting along the bank of a stream, would have caught a fish in its beak, and be holding it awhile, as though in doubt whether to swallow it. Next he would glance towards the spot where a similar bird, but one not yet in possession of a fish, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... omnivorous, scavenging, thieving, poaching brown rat—when it lives near a pond or stream, learns to swim and dive as naturally as a duck. Next comes the vole, or water-rat, which will not live away from water. Then there are water shrews, the beaver, otter, duck-billed platypus, and a host of others, not related, just as, among birds, there are water ousels, moorhens, ducks, divers, etc., which have permanently made the water their home and seek their living in it. All these ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... it is necessarie to have care, that thei get not over them to much auctoritie. And you must consider that this auctoritie, is gotten either by nature, or by accidente: and as to nature, it behoveth to provide, that he which is boren in one place, be not apoincted to the men billed in the same, but be made hedde of those places, where he hath not any naturall aquaintance: and as to the accident, the thing ought to be ordeined in suche maner, that every yere the heddes maie be changed ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... place, Ontario was practically dependent on the customs duties collected at Quebec ports of entry for a provincial revenue. The goods might be billed for ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Frank; one question at a time. For the snipe, I found them very unexpectedly, I tell you, in a bit of marshy meadow just at the outlet of the pond. Garry was paddling me along at the top of his pace, after a wing-tipped wood-duck, when up jumped one of the long-billed rascals, and had the impudence to skim across the creek under my very nose—'skeap! skeap!' Well, I dropped him, you may be sure, with a charge, too, of duck shot; and he fell some ten yards over on the meadow; so leaving Garry to pursue the drake, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... now; the little house wren who has lost her chatter; the vireos and the orioles, the wood pewee, the crested fly catcher and the kingbird. They all seem to be going southward. There are a few nests and young birds in the early part of the month—the yellow-billed cuckoo, the Savannah sparrow, the goldfinch. But these are exceptions to the ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... Hudson, and Crawford; the arrival of these American slavers was publicly billed ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that Sparling had changed his date and was planning to make Corinto the same day we are billed there?" ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Kultur is treated in the country of the promised 'new orientation,' in which (according to the Imperial Chancellor) 'the road is to be opened for all who are efficient.' These are the methods by which the spirit of independence is systematically to be billed. That is the reason for the arrests of members of the Socialist party who stand on the side of determined opposition. You imagine that by isolating the leading elements of the opposition you can crush the ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... masses of all. In Reptiles, the mass of the brain, relatively to the spinal cord, increases and the cerebral hemispheres begin to predominate over the other parts; while in Birds this predominance is still more marked. The brain of the lowest Mammals, such as the duck-billed Platypus and the Opossums and Kangaroos, exhibits a still more definite advance in the same direction. The cerebral hemispheres have now so much increased in size as, more or less, to hide the representatives of the optic lobes, which remain comparatively small, so that the brain ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... billed Whistler for incidentals to one of his exhibitions, and thoughtfully included a pair of stockings worn by an ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... often attack the capon while his neighbour, the knight, was still encumbered with his stewed beef; and when the justice of the peace opposite, who has just pledged him in sack, is knuckle-deep in the goose, he falls stoutly on the long-billed game; while at supper, if one of the college of critics, our gallant praised the last play or put his approving stamp upon ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... billed to deliver his lecture last night. Those old long horns, McNulta and Lovell, got us in with the crowd, and while they didn't know exactly what was coming, they assured us that we couldn't afford to miss it. Well, at the appointed ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... night the gas lamps light our street, Electric bulbs our homes; The gas is billed in cubic feet, Electric light ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... the lofty house was the stork's nest, now empty. The red-billed guests did not usually set out on their journey to the south so early, and some were still in Leyden, standing on the roofs as if lost in thought. What could have become of the cobbler's beloved lodgers? At noon the day before, their host, who in March ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... again in the damp shadows of the calles. His ear was taken by the vibrant jargoning of the boatmen as they pushed their craft under the bridges he crossed, and the keen notes of the canaries and the songs of the golden-billed blackbirds whose cages hung at lattices far overhead. Heaps of oranges, topped by the fairest cut in halves, gave their color, at frequent intervals, to the dusky corners and recesses and the long-drawn ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... finds that Dr. Daniel Feldman is qualified to practice all the arts and skills of the medical profession on Mars and that he acted ethically in the performance of his duties in the case of the deceased Harriet Lynn," he ruled. "The costs of the case shall be billed to Medical Lobby ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... humming-birds; but so far we had seen no specimens of the gorgeous quetzal, and it was for these that our eyes wandered whenever we reached a patch of woodland, but only to startle macaws, parroquets, or the clumsy-looking—but really light and active—big-billed toucans, which made Pete shake ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... ants, too, had reformed their parasol procession, which the temporary deluge had seriously disorganised; and, but that several solemn-looking blackbirds, of a larger species than the yellow-billed variety familiar to us in England, were now hopping about on the lawn under the orange-trees, digging up worms, and that a stray drop or two of crystal glittered on the petals of the roses like diamonds, or reflected ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... across the seat. "Oh, they're yours all right, I reckon, Curly," said he. "Mother's dead. No relations. They come from Kansas, where all the twins comes from. I found 'em waitin' up there in Vegas, billed through to you. Both dead broke, both plumb happy, and airy one of 'em worth its weight in gold. Its name is Susabella and Aryann, or somethin' like that. Shall I wake it up? ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... scarcity of food. Insects are few in dry situations; and the large perennial grasses, which occupy most of the ground, yield a miserable yearly harvest of a few minute seeds; so that this district is a poor one both for soft and hard billed birds. Hawks of several genera, in moderate numbers, are there, but generally keep to the marshes. Eagles and vultures are somewhat unworthily represented by carrion-hawks (Polyborinae); the lordly carancho, almost eagle-like in size, black and crested, with a very large, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... shoot up and come slowly down expanded. The entertainment would end in a fight between the two performers; but whether the most beautiful or the most pugnacious was the accepted suitor, I know not. Another fine humming-bird seen about this brook was the long-billed, fire-throated Heliomaster pallidiceps, Gould, generally seen probing long, narrow-throated red flowers, forming, with their attractive nectar, complete traps for the small insects on which the humming-birds ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... of the meetings of the Royal Geographical Society, at which Burton had been billed to speak, there were present among the audience his wife, Mr. Arundell, and several other members of the family. Considerable hostility was shown towards Burton; and Colonel Rigby [270] and others flatly contradicted some of his statements respecting Zanzibar. Then Burton ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... recognised the vague outline of these weird bundles. They were corpses swathed in shrouds. The heads and shoulders alone were visible, and on the brows of the dead trickled icy water, dispensed sparingly but regularly by duck-billed taps that ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... pith-helmets were of the best quality they were, after all, but pith, and a cocoanut is a cocoanut, the world over. While we were debating this point and seeking a possible way into the jungle which was not overarched by trees I heard a low bird-call, as I supposed, the even-song of the cross-billed cuttywink. On the instant a towering circle of dark forms sprang from the haro and at a glance I saw that we were completely ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... scarce ever charms the long twilight: Mute with the cares of the nest; only known by a 'chuck, chuck,' and dovelike Call of content, but the finch and the linnet and blackcap pipe loudly. Round on the western hill-side warbles the rich-billed ouzel; And the shrill throstle is filling the tangled thickening copses; Singing o'er hyacinths hid, and most honey'd of flowers, white field-rose. Joy thus to revel all day in the grass of our own beloved country; Revel all day, till the lark ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of song were the reawakening of the woods in spring? Were man to disappear, annihilated by his own foolish errors, the festival of the life-bringing season would be no less worthily observed, celebrated by the fluting of the yellow-billed songster. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... himself—nothing should stop him—he would drop everything and go along—it was the prettiest idea he had run across for many a day. He wanted to glide out the back way and start at once; but I showed him that that wouldn't answer. You see, he was billed for the king's-evil—to touch for it, I mean—and it wouldn't be right to disappoint the house and it wouldn't make a delay worth considering, anyway, it was only a one-night stand. And I thought he ought to tell the queen ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... demand to the committee, and Phedre was billed for December 21, with Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt for the first time in the ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... across numerous round, or oval, masses of dried weeds and grass—mice homes we may think them; and the small, winding entrance concealed on one side tends to confirm this opinion. Several will be empty, but when in one our fingers touch six or eight tiny eggs, our mistake will be apparent. Long-billed marsh wrens are the architects, and so fond are they of building that frequently three or four unused nests are constructed before the little chocolate jewels ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... of Maui! Manai-i-ka-lani—"made fast to the heavens"! An earth-twisted cord ties the hook, Engulfed from lofty Kauiki! Its bait the red-billed Alae, The bird to Hina sacred! It sinks far down to Hawaii, Struggling and in pain dying! Caught is the land beneath the water, Floated up, up to the surface, But Hina hid a wing of the bird And broke the land beneath the water! Below was the bait snatched away And eaten at once ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... the boy that the young tramp, as they called him, was billed through to New York, to look after some cattle that were on the train; but that he was a worthless, ugly fellow, who had not paid the slightest attention to them, and whose only object in accepting the job was evidently to obtain ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... and gladsome god of day, His fiery steeds had yoked to flaming car (By which, my Gill, you may surmise The sun was just about to rise) And that be-feathered, crook-billed harbinger, The rosy-wattled herald of the dawn, Red comb aflaunt, bold-eyed and spurred for strife, Brave Chanticleer, his strident summons raised (By which fine phrase I'd have you know, The cock had just begun to crow) And gentle Zephyr, child of Boreas, Stole ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... boat had cast off her fasts, and everything suddenly quieted down on board of her. The distance between the Ionian and the man-of-war was soon reduced to about a mile. It was beginning to grow dark, but the crew had been stationed and billed while the ship lay off the Navy Yard; but the new hands sent on board were assigned to watches and quarter-watches, stationed and billed, as though they were a part of the regular ship's company. One of ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... and waiting when they arrived. Jordanville had been well billed, and the posters held, in addition to the conspicuous names of Farquharson and Murchison, that of Mr Alfred Hesketh (of London, England). There was a "send-off" to give to the retiring member, there ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... writin' a form sheet on any unknown, you can hang out the waste paper sign and send me to the scows. Look at the mess I makes of this here Mallory business! Why, first off I has him billed for a Percy boy that had strayed into the general office from the drygoods district. He had a filin' job in the bond room, and when he drew his envelope on Saturdays it must have set the Corrugated Trust back for as much ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the past and the present; forgot that he was menaced by a prison on the one hand and starvation on the other; forgot that he was come to that island, desperately foraging, clutching at expedients. A drove of fishes, painted like the rainbow and billed like parrots, hovered up in the shadow of the schooner, and passed clear of it, and glinted in the submarine sun. They were beautiful, like birds, and their silent passage impressed him like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hat, bottom side up, on the carpet and lowered himself into a huge leather armchair, furnished to the county by a political friend of Mr. Peckham and billed at four hundred per cent of the regular retail price. Then he reinserted the stogy between his lips and produced from his inside pocket ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... agricultural village had been billed with "Lecture on Keats" for over a fortnight. The evening arrived at length, bringing the lecturer ready to discourse on the poet. The advertised chairman, taken ill at the last moment, was replaced by a local farmer. This ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... possible for Joe to try some tricks on the circus trapezes. As a result Jim Tracy, the ring-master and one of the owners of the show, made Joe an offer to join the circus. Joe would have liked this, as he had taken quite a fancy for Helen Morton—billed as Mademoiselle Mortonti—a fancy rider on her trick horse, Rosebud. But Joe thought it best to remain with Professor Rosello ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... and six small boxes over on the raft yesterday afternoon," announced the motor-boat captain, who was also the crew. "Billed for ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... numbers, no longer offered any resistance. The officers cried out, "No prisoners!" The soldiers billed those who were standing, and despatched those who had fallen. Many awaited their death with their heads erect. The dying raised themselves up, and shouted, "Long live the Republic!" Some soldiers ground their heels upon the faces of the dead, so that they should not be recognized. There, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... and started on its slow career to the wicket. The whole business had some of the dignity of the old-fashioned minuet, subtly blended with the careless vigour of a cake-walk. The ball, when delivered, was billed to break from leg, but the ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... plentiful. Colonel Fleming shot, for the subsistence of himself and his party, many buffalo, bear, and deer, and some elk. His attention was drawn by the great flocks of parroquets, which appeared even in winter, and by the big, boldly colored, ivory-billed woodpeckers—birds which have long drawn back to the most remote swamps of the hot Gulf-coast, fleeing before man precisely as the buffalo ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... twelve tanks of Waterloo ghost-hash from the storerooms, and treated them with radium for two days. These I shipped to the Catskills billed as hydrogen gas. Then, accompanied by two trustworthy assistants, I went to the sanatorium and preferred my demand for payment in person. I was ejected with contumely. Before my hasty exit, however, I had the satisfaction of noticing that the building was filled with ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... good pattern of the real old-fashioned New England meeting-house. It was a large barn with windows, fronted by a square tower crowned with a kind of wooden bell inverted and raised on legs, out of which rose a slender spire with the sharp-billed weathercock at its summit. Inside, tall, square pews with flapping seats, and a gallery running round three sides of the building. On the fourth side the pulpit, with a huge, dusty sounding-board hanging over it. Here preached the Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fired my gun I brought down one of the most curious and beautiful of the Malacca birds, the blue-billed gaper (Cymbirhynchus macrorhynchus), called by the Malays the "Rainbird." It is about the size of a starling, black and rich claret colour with white shoulder stripes, and a very large and broad bill of the most pure cobalt blue above and orange below, while the iris is emerald ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... he spoke of her as a potential tamer of wild beasts. Her anger was no mere gush of emotions, to spend itself and leave her exhausted. It was a sort that hardened in an adamantine resolution. The next chance she got, she'd show them! Unluckily, she wasn't billed to sing again until toward the end of the week. It happened, however, that the Sunday papers, taking away with one hand, gave in a roundabout but ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... was the idol of New Orleans. Seldom had there been a tenor who had sung himself so completely into the very hearts of a populace. When he was billed, the opera displayed "Standing Room" signs, no matter what the other attractions in the city might be. Sometimes Monsieur LeConte delighted small audiences in Annette's parlour, when the hostess was in a perfect flutter of happiness. Not ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... hoarsest croaks his destiny. And now the day of woe drew on apace, A day of woe to all the pygmy-race, When dwarfs were doomed (but penitence was vain) To rue each broken egg, and chicken slain. For roused to vengeance by repeated wrong, From distant climes the long-billed legions throng: From Strymon's lake, Cayster's plashy meads, And fens of Scythia green with rustling reeds; From where the Danube winds through many a land, And Mareotis laves the Egyptian strand, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... that might have been an Indian baby. Besides these, there was a young Monkey, exactly like my brother's boy, Jack; a Mouse, dressed in the last-fashioned paletot; and a little thing that for a long time I could make nothing of, but I fancy they call her a Duck-billed Platypus. ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... see how happy the one is in the picture. The other little fellow will soon take his turn. See how straight he holds his tail up. Find out all you can about these Wrens. You notice they have long bills. We call them Long-billed Marsh Wrens. There are several other kinds. You surely must have seen their cousins, the House Wrens. I will show you their ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... unobtrusively shining; then it rained, and there was rather a bitter wind; but presently it was sunny again, and you felt secure of the spring, for the birds were singing: the birds of literature, the lark, the golden-billed blackbird, the true robin, and the various finches; and round and over all the rooks were calling like voices in a dream. Full of this certainty of spring you went in-doors, and found ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... studying birds in the Park. Berkeley was written all over him. A thin, pure type. He was dressed in field glasses and a bag full of green weeds and stout walking boots. There was an ecstatic glint in his eye which meant that he had discovered a long-billed, yellow-tailed Peruvian fly-catcher, "very rare in ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... for only twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, could Simsbury muster a picture audience; but they could read the bills for the following night. The entrance was flanked on either side by billboards, and they stopped before the first. Merton Gill's heart quickened its beats, for there was billed none other than Beulah Baxter in the ninth installment of her tremendous serial, ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson |
