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Feather   Listen
verb
Feather  v. t.  (past & past part. feathered; pres. part. feathering)  
1.
To furnish with a feather or feathers, as an arrow or a cap. "An eagle had the ill hap to be struck with an arrow feathered from her own wing."
2.
To adorn, as with feathers; to fringe. "A few birches and oaks still feathered the narrow ravines."
3.
To render light as a feather; to give wings to.(R.) "The Polonian story perhaps may feather some tedious hours."
4.
To enrich; to exalt; to benefit. "They stuck not to say that the king cared not to plume his nobility and people to feather himself."
5.
To tread, as a cock.
To feather one's nest, to provide for one's self especially from property belonging to another, confided to one's care; an expression taken from the practice of birds which collect feathers for the lining of their nests.
To feather an oar (Naut), to turn it when it leaves the water so that the blade will be horizontal and offer the least resistance to air while reaching for another stroke.
To tar and feather a person, to smear him with tar and cover him with feathers, as a punishment or an indignity.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Feather" Quotes from Famous Books



... so on. Why he said so nobody knows. He cannot have tried. He was not above trying experiments, like his smaller disciples; but probably it never occurred to him to doubt the fact. It seems so natural that a heavy body should fall quicker than a light one; and perhaps he thought of a stone and a feather, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... Vera added her shriller cries; but all in vain, and the outgoing tide was carrying them, not towards the quay and marble rocks, but farther to sea. The waves grew rougher and had crests of foam, and discomfort began. Once the feather of a steamer was seen on the horizon. They waved handkerchiefs and redoubled their shouts, and Hubert had to hold his companion to prevent her from leaping up; but they never were within the vessel's ken, and she went on her way, while the sea ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... see what's happened all you men to talk so odd. Here's Jim Pettijohn been here a-offerin' his services to help Eunice look after a gold mow, or somethin'. An' me that surprised you could knock me down with a feather, just to see him walkin' up our front path. We ain't never had no 'casion for visits from the Squire—not sence he got to be one. Before then, years ago, when he was a humbly little barefoot shaver runnin' ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... sort, in his battered steeple-hat and cloak of rusty black. The other was closely wrapped in a red mantle, uptilted behind by a sword of prodigious length, and for all that his broad, grey hat was unadorned by any feather, it was set at a rakish, ruffling, damn-me angle that pronounced him no likely comrade for the ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... BUTTON SNAKEROOT, BLUE BLAZING STAR, or GAY FEATHER (L. scariosa), may attain six feet, but usually not more than half that height; and its round flower-heads normally stand well away from the stout stem on foot-stems of their own. The bristling scales of the involucre, often tinged with purple at the tips, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... chains are only strong While slaves submit to wear them; And, who could bind them on the strong, Determined not to wear them? Then clank your chains, e'en though the links Were light as fashion's feather: The heart which rightly feels and ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark

... element of fear of the consequences of displeasing is perhaps more important than the responsiveness to the praise and blame itself. To the praise and blame of close associates most men are also highly suggestible, not less so when there is equality in social status. "Birds of a feather flock together," but humans tend to become similar because they flock together. There are few men who can withstand the pressure of doing what their group approves, and refraining ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... life of me whereabouts I was, in a gig or some of them things, with another spark along with him, and led horses, and servants, and dogs, and scarce a place to put any Christian of them into; for my late lady had sent all the feather-beds off before her, and blankets and household linen, down to the very knife-cloths, on the cars to Dublin, which were all her own, lawfully paid for out of her own money. So the house was quite bare, and my young master, the moment ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth

... Elector" Frederick William of Brandenburg. From the very beginning of his reign Frederick III. was resolved upon a rupture at the first convenient opportunity, while the nation was, if possible, even more bellicose than the king. The apparently insuperable difficulties of Sweden in Poland was the feather that turned the scale; on the 1st of June 1657, Frederick III. signed the manifesto justifying a war which was never formally declared and brought Denmark to the very verge of ruin. The extraordinary details ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... rumors continued to come. Citizens, fearing ridicule, perhaps, slipped unobtrusively out of town, to test their truth. Kemble was back from a trip to the so-called gold fields. Editorially, he made sport of his findings. He had seen feather-brained fortune-seekers gambling hopelessly with fate, suffering untold hardships for half the pay they could have ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... horizontal bands of blue (top), red (triple width), and blue; the red band is edged in yellow; centered in the red band is a large black and white shield covering two spears and a staff decorated with feather ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... Dick, I suppose! You fuss over him like a hen with one chick. Let him run riot if he thinks it'll amuse him. You can whip a young pup off feather, but you can't ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... last with the utmost kindness and respect, especially the rattlesnakes, a dozen of which will frequently be squirming on the ground at once. It is noticeable that the Indians never pick up a rattlesnake when coiled, but always wait until it straightens itself out under the feather stroking, for it is claimed that the rattlesnake cannot strike uncoiled. At all events, when one is at its full length, the Indians not only catch it up fearlessly, but carry it with impunity in their mouths and hands. As might be supposed, however, the Moquis are said to possess an antidote against ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... Strassburg is an example; the detail of workmanship is infinite; even the striking apparatus and the dials showing planetary motions are far beyond our own means, or perhaps our taste. When Peter Henlein invented the watch, using as the mainspring a coiled feather, he may not have made chronometers as exact as those turned out nowadays, but the "Nuremberg eggs"—so called from their place of origin and their shape, not a disk, but a sphere—were marvels of chasing and incrustation ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... was a group of which the center was a young and very pretty girl. A simple white gown became her youth and freshness, and a large white hat with a long white ostrich-feather curled over the brim, shading her piquant face, added to her charm. A few pink roses fastened in her dress were the only color about her, except the roses in her cheeks. Most of those with her were men considerably older ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... stands alone. Have ready the powdered sugar, and then beat it hard into the white of egg, till it becomes thick and smooth; flavouring it as you proceed with a few drops of oil of lemon, or a little extract of roses. Spread it evenly over the cake with a broad knife or a feather; if you find it too thin, beat in a little more powdered sugar. Cover with it thickly the top and sides of the cake, taking care not to have it rough and streaky. To ice well requires skill and practice. When the icing is about ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... I did come to save Ruth Chester from a dancing death, for she is as light as a feather and sails on the air like thistle-down. I felt sorry for Tom, for when he danced with me he could see her, and when he danced with her I pouted at him, even over Judge Wade's arm. I verily believe it was from being really rattled ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess

... "Old Suetonius describes, for example, an instrument that accompanied dinner-parties during the reigns of the last few Caesars. It was a device that accomplished, two thousand years ago, the function of our proud Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities. A feather, my ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang

... acts pleased God; and this act seems to have been particularly satisfactory. These men were "angels of God" who required this infamy for their protection! If it takes all the honor out of a man when he gets to be an angel, they may use my wings for a feather-duster. ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... them—Jehanneton, the fair helm-maker; Denise, Blanche, Isabeau, and Guillemette, the landlord's daughter, who consorted gaily enough with these brightly-plumaged birds of a rogue's paradise. But the sixth woman was a bird of quite another feather. ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... therefore, occurred to the squire to show the white feather upon this unpleasant occasion. The next day, feigning excuse to attend the sale of a hunting stud at Tattersall's, he ruefully went up to London, after taking a peculiarly affectionate leave of his wife. Indeed, the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... quills. Also a pair of red leggings worked with beads. Moccasins worked with colored hair. A fine otter skin robe. White weasel skins to intertwine with his beautiful long black locks. A magnificent center eagle feather. A rawhide covered bow, accompanied by a quiver ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin

... end overlapped the ice for a breadth of scarce two feet, and it seemed a wonder that so huge a weight could be sustained by such an apparently fragile prop. But there it rested; and had done so for years—perhaps for ages—suspended over the beetling chasm, as if the touch of a feather would precipitate ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... the improvement of wages and of conditions, possibly to be won by combined effort. There is a stage, familiar in the East End of London, when there is no hope for anything, except, perhaps, a hired feather and the off-chance of an outing. Yet even the roughest trades employing women and children in factories or large workshops, to be found in the East End or in the outskirts of Glasgow, have in them the remote possibility of organization. Home ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... Some he placed in his pocket, some he returned to its place. He stood thinking, as it were weighing a possibility. While lingering thus, he noticed the reflected image of his own face in the glass—pale and spectre-like in its indistinctness. The sight seemed to be the feather which turned the balance of indecision: he drew a heavy breath, retired from the room, and passed downstairs. She heard him unbar the back-door, and go out ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... trimmed hedges, butterflies, posies, and nightingales of the English poets, but the whole orb, with its geologic history, the Kosmos, carrying fire and snow, that rolls through the illimitable areas, light as a feather though weighing ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... four-poster where once heavy draperies had shut in the slumbers of dead and gone Contessas, and she watched the square of moonlight travel over the painted cherubs on the ceiling. There was always a lump in her throat to be swallowed, and often the tears soaked into the big feather pillows, but there were no sobs ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... from all the fowl to make feather beds. She doesn't remember when women stopped wearing hoops in their skirts nor when bed springs replaced bed ropes. She does remember, however, that ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... every boy to pretend to write a love letter to every girl. Jack could get nothing better than a feather from the Indian headpiece that hung on the wall. This he dipped in Belle's shoe dressing, and wrote a note on the back of Cora's best piece of sheet music. Walter sat on the floor poking his whittled stick into the dead embers in the fire-place, and ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose

... seemed to be the leader of the band. He had a feather in his bonnet, and I saw a steel corslet gleam under his cloak, when some one held up a lanthorn to examine me the better. His trunk-hose were striped with black, white, and green—the livery as I learned afterwards ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... there was a sad patient look on his face, as though he was a martyr. He had no wish to be a martyr; but he had a feeling that for want of other means of expressing their sympathy with Jean Jacques, these rough people might tar and feather him at least; though it was only his misfortune that those sprung from his loins had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... that as the volley ceased, A low sob call'd them where They found an Indian maiden dead, Clasping in death's despair One feather from a Highland plume And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... showed as unsubstantial as a dream, with the wooden reality of the two sticks making itself miserably apparent through the holes. Lastly, she put her dead husband's wig on the bare scalp of the pumpkin, and surmounted the whole with a dusty three-cornered hat, in which was stuck the longest tail feather of a rooster. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... I asked to be enlightened on so important a subject, and soon heard all the details from very willing lips. She was very simple in dress, and often came to call upon us in a fresh cotton-print gown and straw hat, with only the feather of a heron or a woodcock in it. Her husband, Captain Clifton, retired from the army, spoke French fairly well, and although he had little in common with Gilbert—being an enthusiastic sportsman—soon became his most constant ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... the feather in gasoline to which has been added a few spoonfuls of cornmeal. Draw the feather through the hands several times until it is clean; rinse in clear gasoline and shake in the fresh air till dry. A very light-colored or white feather may be tinted by dissolving ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin

... the priests, and we went into one; a very pretty little room, very clean, hung with pictures, set with books. The Priest was in his cell, with his hair clothes to his skin, bare-legged, with a sandal! only on, and his little bed without sheets, and no feather bed; but yet, I thought, soft enough. His cord about his middle; but in so good company, living with ease, I thought it a very good life. A pretty library they have. And I was in the refectoire, where every man his napkin, knife, cup of earth, and basin of the same; and a place for one ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... against the island of Ares all day long; for at dusk the light breeze left them. At last they spied above them, hurtling through the air, one of the birds of Ares which haunt that isle. It shook its wings down over the ship as she sped on and sent against her a keen feather, and it fell on the left shoulder of goodly Oileus, and he dropped his oar from his hands at the sudden blow, and his comrades marvelled at the sight of the winged bolt. And Eribotes from his seat hard by drew out the feather, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... the way, was still wearing his old Janissary uniform, the blue dolman with the salavari reaching to the knee, leaving the calves bare. The only difference was that he now wore a white heron's feather in his hat instead of a black one, and by his side hung the sword of the Grand Vizier, whose palace in the Galata suburb he had levelled to the ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... with beautifully carved flowers and resting on lions' feet, I saw the princess, covered only by a thin silken petticoat, half sunk into a soft white feather-bed, like lightning on an ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... The crowd was so tremendous that we were nearly squeezed to a jelly in getting to our places. I was carried off my feet between two fat Seoras in mantillas and shaking diamond pendants, exactly as if I had been packed between two moveable feather-beds. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... the Bavarian peasants,—an institution got up for the purpose of frightening the women and children, and keeping them in order. While the ordinary dances are going on, there suddenly stalks forth "an ugly apparition in the shape of a man, wearing a feather mantle on his back, reaching from the arm-pits down to the mid-thighs, zebra-painted on his breast and legs with black stripes, bear-skin shako on his head, and his arms stretched out at full length along a staff passing behind his neck. Accoutred in this harlequin rig, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... when the rains ceased, and three or four weeks of clear and delightful weather left them without employment. The richest localities are very thickly populated, the miners having built themselves log-cabins and organized communities for the winter. On parts of Feather river, the American Fork, and the Mokelumne, Tuolumne, and Mariposa rivers, the diggings were still yielding a good return. New discoveries of rich veins of quartz-bearing gold continue to be made. A mine of silver ore, of a very rich quality, is reported to have been discovered in the neighborhood ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... side to side, the whole inclosed by a cap of fine network, fastened with a silver band. From the crest, like the plume of a Roman knight, a cluster of pure white feathers hung, and on the side of it a white feather of uncommon size projected upward and backward, the end of the feather set in a little tube which revolved with the wind, the whole imparting a further air of distinction to ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... left followed by a servant with a couple of sporting dogs in leash. ULFHEIM is in shooting costume, with high boots and a felt hat with a feather in it. He is a long, lank, sinewy personage, with matted hair and beard, and a loud voice. His appearance gives no precise clue to his age, but he ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen

... came in state. He was mounted on a small horse, as were two of his attendants; the rest of the cavalcade were on foot. His dress was most grotesque, consisting of a ragged red coat, with yellow facings, and a military cap and feather, apparently Portuguese. He came curvetting and leaping his horse, until within the distance of a hundred yards, when he dismounted, and, approaching the travellers, seated himself down on the ground. Captain Clapperton, by the hand of Lander, sent him his umbrella, as a token that he wished ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... her father's iron will too well to attempt any further protests. She wiped her eyes, and, while she put on a hat adorned with an aggressive white feather, she bade the family good-night in an unsteady voice. Thaddeus, anxious only to escape notice, sidled towards the door, and stood waiting for her, with a deprecating look ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... was his answer. "Go ahead an' smash the boats. You can hang some of them. But you can't touch me with the law. 'Tis me that's a crippled creature of circumstance, too weak to raise a hand against any man—a feather blown about by the windy contention of men strong in their back an' ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... that crowd the side chapels are subject to the accumulation of dirt as everything else in buildings sacred or lay, and at certain times of the day, a woman may be seen vigorously flapping the brass candlesticks and countless altar ornaments with a big feather broom. On the north side of the chancel some of the windows have sections of old painted glass, and in one of them there is part of a ship with men in crow's nests backed by clouds, a really ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home

... gasping, all. Force, courage, cunning, all were plied; Intrepid troops on either side No effort spared to populate The dusky realms of hungry Fate. This woful strife awoke compassion Within another feather'd nation, Of iris neck and tender heart. They tried their hand at mediation— To reconcile the foes, or part. The pigeon people duly chose Ambassadors, who work'd so well As soon the murderous rage to quell, And stanch the source of countless woes. A truce ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... times of silver mining, she seemed prettier than ever to Robert Fairchild, more girlish, more entrancing. The big eyes appeared bigger now, peeping from the confines of a poke bonnet; the little hands seemed smaller with their half-length gloves and shielded by the enormous peacock feather fan they carried. Only a moment Fairchild hesitated. Maurice Rodaine, attired in a mauve frock suit and the inevitable accompanying beaver, had stopped to talk to some one at the door. She stood alone, looking about the ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... below his chin. The village tailor had made the sleeves so tight that he could not put his little arms together. And how proud he was! He had a round hat with a black and gold buckle and a peacock's feather protruding jauntily from a tuft of Guinea-hen's feathers. A bunch of flowers larger than his head covered his shoulder, and ribbons floated down to his feet. The hemp-beater, who was also the village barber and ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... color of his cloak, and his shoes were russet leather, with rosettes of plum, and such high heels as Nick had never seen before. His bonnet was of tawny velvet, with a chain twisted round it, fastened by a jeweled brooch through which was thrust a curly cock-feather. A fine white Holland-linen shirt peeped through his jerkin at the throat, with a broad lace collar; and his short hair curled crisply all over his head. He had a little pointed beard, and the ends of his mustache were twisted so that they stood up fiercely on either ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... with yellow rolling eyes set in a countenance of extraordinary ugliness and I may add, extraordinary humour. His big, wide mouth with thick lips ran up the left side of his face towards an ear that was also big and projecting. His hair, that had a feather stuck in it, was real nigger wool covering a skull like a cannon ball and I should imagine as hard. This head, by the way, was set plumb upon the shoulders, as though it had been driven down between them by a pile hammer. They were very broad shoulders suggesting enormous ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... traveled West beyond the march of fresh oysters (though by the way, these have been seen in Detroit), and yet thinks he can penetrate the shadows and darkness of the wilderness. They put a hatchet in his hand, and stick a feather in his cap, and call him 'Nitche Nawba.' If I recollect right, in Yamoyden a soup was made of some white children. Indians have not been over dainty at times, and no doubt have done worse things; but on such occasions their modus operandi was not likely to be so much ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... would believe it, that my predominant misery during this night, was a feather bed and a pillow, rendered uneasy because it was soft as down! Yes, astonished reader! I felt about as uneasy in a feather bed, as Mr. Beasly, or any other fine London gentleman would, at laying on a plank, or the ballast of a transport. Such is the power of habit, and such the effect ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... happiness in her own name and that of all his friends in her part of the country. Her good will to Mary was practically expressed by an invitation to her house and a present of eggs, together with an offer of a feather-bed. Her motherly warning and ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... in the world may one see such great picturesqueness, variety, and brilliancy of color in the costumes of the masses as then still prevailed in Mexico. Largely of more or less pure Indian blood, come of a race Cortez found habited in feather tunics and head-dresses brilliant as the plumage of parrots, great lovers of flowers, three and a half centuries of contact with civilization had not served to deprive them of any of their fondness for bright colors. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... a brooch and a cabinet beyond both foretell the unexpected development of good fortune. If the consultant is married, the thimble in the centre would show future changes in the household; that they will be advantageous is shown by the large feather which gives ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... me down with a feather!" she resumed. "He telephones me awhile ago and says to be outside the back door at ten to-night, because he'd something he wanted to tell me. Of course he couldn't come in and tell it me here, because he'd been fired and everything. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... to Schirene; fifty plants of roses from Rocnabad;[71] a white shawl of Cachemire fifty feet in length, which folded into the handle of a fan; fifty screens, each made of a feather of the roc;[72] and fifty vases of crystal full of exquisite perfumes, and each sealed with ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... Sprinkle on them. Believe me, ladies, you will find In that sweet light more solid joys, More true contentment to the mind Than all town-toys. Nor Cupid there less blood doth spill, But heads his shafts with chaster love, Not feather'd with a sparrow's quill, But of a dove. There you shall hear the nightingale, The harmless syren of the wood, How prettily she tells a tale Of rape and blood. The lyric lark, with all beside Of Nature's feather'd ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... therefore he had no credit, and his temper must pass as not proven. But if you had taken from the mother her piece of work—she was busy embroidering a lady's pinafore in a design for which she had taken colors and arrangement from a peacock's feather, but was disposing them in the form of a sun which with its rays covered the stomacher, the deeper tints making the shadow between the golden arrows—had you taken from her this piece of work, I say, and ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... was Don Juan's earliest scrape; but whether I shall proceed with his adventures is Dependent on the public altogether; We 'll see, however, what they say to this: Their favour in an author's cap 's a feather, And no great mischief 's done by their caprice; And if their approbation we experience, Perhaps they 'll have some ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... might be seen about the place, hunting insects and taking their ease on the fence as if no thought of nesting ever stirred their wise little heads. The last addition to the domicile was curious: a soft white feather from the poultry yard, which was fastened up on the edge, and stood there floating in the breeze; a white banner of peace flung out to the world ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... Then Garuda, the lord of birds, struck with thunderbolt, spake laughingly unto Indra engaged in the encounter, in sweet words, saying, 'I shall respect the Rishi (Dadhichi) of whose bone the Vajra hath been made. I shall also respect the Vajra, and thee also of a thousand sacrifices. I cast this feather of mine whose end thou shalt not attain. Struck with thy thunder I have not felt the slightest pain.' And having said this, the king of birds cast a feather of his. And all creatures became exceedingly glad, beholding that excellent feather of Garuda so cast off. And seeing that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... the interchange of looks, the letters she had written and received, the words which had been spoken, tingled and smarted unbearably in her recollections. Their lips had touched—she recalled it with horror. She desired never to see Harry Feversham after this night. Therefore she added her fourth feather to the three. ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... upon its wings descended, And every golden feather gleamed therein— Feather and scale inextricably blended The serpent's mailed and many-colored skin Shone through the plumes, its coils were twined within By many a swollen and knotted fold, and high And far, the neck ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... cleared most of his canvas and boatswain's stores out of the ship. Perhaps a new 3 1/2-inch hawser found its way to the "Terra Nova"; anyway, if the "Invincible's" stores came on board the exploring vessel she made good use of them and saved them their Jutland fate. We left the Solent in high feather ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... where Starlight an' Hawkins was enjoyin' their evenin' meal, an' I was mortal proud of the condition they was in. I reckon the' wasn't another pair in the territory 'at could 'a' covered their ante that day, an' it was a feather in Uncle Happy's ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... the white feather she had given him, and looked at it. Yes, that was what she thought of him. A coward! And all the time he would have given anything to be able to offer himself for ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... obey her. The chorus were in the next room. The room in which they had been sitting till that moment was too small, and was divided in two by cotton curtains, behind which was a huge bed with a puffy feather mattress and a pyramid of cotton pillows. In the four rooms for visitors there were beds. Grushenka settled herself just at the door. Mitya set an easy chair for her. She had sat in the same place to watch ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... explaining to her in low tones that ten thousand francs from one party and fifteen thousand from the other came to twenty-five thousand. A splendid deal! Muffat was getting rid of her in every sense of the word; it was a pretty trick to have plucked him of this last feather! But Rose in her anger vouchsafed no answer. Whereupon Mignon in disdain left her to her feminine spite and, turning to Bordenave, who was once more on the stage with Fauchery ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... Think that pugnosed driver did it out of spite. Who is this she was like? O yes! Mrs Miriam Dandrade that sold me her old wraps and black underclothes in the Shelbourne hotel. Divorced Spanish American. Didn't take a feather out of her my handling them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal party when Stubbs the park ranger got me in with Whelan of the Express. Scavenging what the quality left. High tea. Mayonnaise I ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... White Cloud saw a feather lying on the grass. It was painted, as if it had fallen from a ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor

... rudimentary red eye-specks of the star-fish. After examining the eyes, I next laid open, in all its length, from the neck to the point of the sack, the dorsal bone of the creature—its internal shell, I should rather say, for bone it has none. The form of the shell in this species is that of a feather, equally developed in the web on both sides. It gives rigidity to the body, and furnishes the muscles with a fulcrum; and we find it composed, like all other shells, of a mixture of animal matter and carbonate of lime. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... dinner he met Russ Brissenden. How he chanced to come there, whose friend he was or what acquaintance brought him, Martin did not know. Nor had he the curiosity to inquire about him of Ruth. In short, Brissenden struck Martin as anaemic and feather-brained, and was promptly dismissed from his mind. An hour later he decided that Brissenden was a boor as well, what of the way he prowled about from one room to another, staring at the pictures or poking his nose into books and magazines ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... night. I could hear the water hammering into something that rang like a gong; and each time I rolled over in the musty trough of my feather-bed I fractiously asked myself why the mischief they had left the tap running all night. Next morning the matter was explained when, on demanding a bath, I was told that "there wasn't but one in the house, and 'twas undher the rain-down. But sure ye can have it," with which it was dragged ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... hardly more than that of Earth's moon, but the way the man picked up the limp Motwick with one hand and tossed him over a shoulder was startling: as though he lifted a feather pillow. He followed Trella out the door of the Golden Satellite and fell in step beside her. Immediately she was grateful for his presence. The dimly lighted street was not crowded, but she didn't like the looks of the ...
— The Jupiter Weapon • Charles Louis Fontenay

... and the enforcement of constant practice by all young men and apprentices. The monk's mixture of brimstone, charcoal, and salt-petre, however, in course of time left the old English clothyard shaft with its grey goose feather and the accompanying six-foot bow of yew to be playthings only, or but fit to use in shooting squirrels or other small deer. The "Woodmen of Arden" is the oldest society (in this county) of toxopholites as the modern drawers of the long bow ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... rocky block of El-Bab. I mounted the rock, and saw Sebhah in the north, where we were to rest in the afternoon. There was a huge stone balancing on a ledge of the rock, which apparently wanted but a feather's weight to throw it down. Bent on mischief, I was going to heave it down, when the people called to me to desist. On descending, they told me the stone had fallen from the clouds and caught there; it was unlucky to touch it. A demon sits upon ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... No doubt they thought they had brought her to bay, and expected her to make some sort of confession. They would find there was no getting around her that way. There was no danger of discovery, so long as she kept her head, and she would never show the white feather. She would write another story—she could do it and she would, too, that very night. But first she would go back to the Students' Building. The Dramatic Club was giving a reception to Mr. Blake and the members of the ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde

... the site of the Holy Well, Palestine; but the admiration excited thereby for the excellent good taste of the printer is too soon alas! dispelled, for between the second and third stanzas we see another woodcut representing a feather-clad-and-crowned negro seated on a barrel, smoking—a veritable ornament ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... in the dress of an armed Corsican chief. He entered the amphitheatre about twelve o'clock. On the front of his cap was embroidered in gold letters, Viva La Liberta; and on one side of it was a handsome blue feather and cockade, so that it had an elegant, as well as a warlike appearance. He wore no mask, saying that it was not proper for a gallant Corsican. So soon as he came into the room he drew universal attention.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... evening long to be remembered by the boys. Steve's turn to occupy the extra bunk had come around, and he felt in high feather in consequence, while the other boys had to select ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie

... below and Bertie, and some tea was coming in. They were looking at a picture of Cecil's just returned from being mounted as a screen. It was a group of brilliant autumn leaves—the gorgeous maple, with its capricious hues, an arrow-shaped leaf, half red, half green, like a parrot's feather, contrasting with another "spotted like the pard," and then one blood-red. The collecting of them had been an interest to the children in their daily walks, and Cecil had arranged them with ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... reference to the tolerance which "John Company" wisely conceded to Hindoo religious ceremony, so long as its traditions were found consistent with the ordinary dictates of humanity. "The Story of a Feather" in this volume has five illustrations, two of which are very clever. Among the other cartoons we find The Modern Macheath (the Captain being Sir Robert Peel). The fifth volume contains eight of his illustrations, six being cartoons; among them, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... was sustained. The troops mustered operated in two armies, which started from Rhuddlan and Worcester, and enclosed Llewelyn, as before, from north and south. Meanwhile the ships of the Cinque Ports reduced Anglesey, "the noblest feather in Llewelyn's wing," as Edward joyfully observed. But the King was faithful to his old policy of a blockade. A bridge of ships was thrown across the Menai Straits, and the forests between Wales proper and the English ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... done had I been beheaded yesterday at Hertford,"[667] and goes back to his prison to suffer death. Every detail is found there, even the simple picturesque detail; the rebels arm themselves as they can, with staves, rusty swords, old bows blackened by smoke, arrows "on which only a single feather remained." The account of the death of Edward III. in the same annals is gloomy and tragic and full of grandeur. In the "Chronicon Angliae,"[668] the anonymous author's burning hatred for John of Gaunt inspires him with some fiery pages: all of which would count among the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... a portly person in the half-light of the corridor. There was a shimmer of (what appeared to my inexperienced eyes as) costly stuffs, a huge hat crowned the shadow itself, "topped by nodding plumes," which seemed to account for the depleted condition of my feather duster. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... was a little robin's Egg, all speckled blue and brown; F was a fluffy Feather that was white and ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells

... out at the door, and while the pair descended the stairs with remarkable agility, she ran to the dining-room, and there beheld Pons, in his shirt, stretched out upon the tiles. He had fainted. She lifted him as if he had been a feather, carried him back to his room, laid him in bed, burned feathers under his nose, bathed his temples with eau-de-cologne, and at last brought him to consciousness. When she saw his eyes unclose and life return, she stood over ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... Chancellorsville, while Austerlitz and Friedland pleased our Federalists about as well as Donelson and Pulaski please the English of these times. A few months after Eylau, Benningsen repulsed an attack which Napoleon imprudently made on his intrenched camp at Heilsberg, which placed another feather in his cap; nor did the smashing defeat he met with four days later, at Friedland, lessen his reputation. The world is slow to think poorly of a man who has done some clever things. We have seen how it was with the late Stonewall Jackson, concerning whom most men spoke as if he had never known ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... heap more valuable than that toothache in that wuthless Dabney's jaw, which he could er wropped up, and hunted out all the old sheets for you instid of that petticoat with them real lace ruffles," was Mammy's firm rejoinder, while she passed a feather duster over the table and rolled her ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... or baste on oil-cloth and weave together with tape needle, making it as nearly like the original weaving as possible. By studying Turkish rugs and curtains one can learn how to put strips together with a fancy stitch somewhat like our feather stitch. ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd

... of Tomo Chichi, on presenting the feather of an Eagle to Oglethorpe, is very expressive in his own laconic explication. By a little paraphrase it may be understood to import: "The Eagle has a sharp beak for his enemies, but down on his breast for his ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... upon him it was more by virtue of his natural grace than by that of tailoring. His stockings were of cotton, harsh and plain, and the broad castor, which he respectfully doffed as he came up with her, was an old one unadorned by band or feather. What had seemed to be a periwig at a little distance was now revealed for the man's own lustrous coiling ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... throne in evil hour, And, step by step, intrudes to power. When at the royal eagle's ear. He longs to ease the monarch's care. The monarch grants. With proud elate, Behold him, minister of state! Around him throng the feather'd rout; Friends must be served, and some must out: Each thinks his own the best pretension; This asks a place, and that a pension. The nightingale was set aside: A forward daw his room supplied.[14] This bird (says he), for business fit Has both sagacity and wit. With all his turns, and shifts, ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... I growed up in de quarters. De houses was clean an' snug. Us was better fed den dan I is now, an' warmer, too. Us had blankets an' quilts filled wid home raised wool an' I jus' loved layin' in de big fat feather bed a-hearin' de rain ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... an' didn't I see four o' thim the day o' the fair in Ennis whin O'Dougherty was laid out? An' whin O'Riley cut his arrum wid a bill-hook, an' the blood was runnin', didn't she tie a shtring on the arrum an' dip a raven's feather into the blood av a black cat's tail, an' shtop the bleedin'? An' didn't she bid me take care o' meself the day I met a red-headed woman afore dinner, an' it wasn't six months till I met the woman in the mornin', it a-rainin' an' ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... ill to banish hope and let the mind Drift like a feather. I have had my share Of what the world calls trial. Once a fire Came in the darkness, when the city lay In a still sea of slumber, stretching out Great lurid arms which stained the firmament; And when I woke the room was full of sparks, And red tongues smote the lattice. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... streets with their guards behind them; and the magistrates come in their chairs with their stiff guards behind them; and you meet fortune-tellers, and goldsmiths, and merchants, and philosophers, and feather-sellers, and ultra-Roman Britons, and ultra-British Romans, and tame tribesmen pretending to be civilised, and Jew lecturers, and—oh, everybody interesting. We young people, of course, took no interest in politics. ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... adjoining the burning street. The inhabitants, fully expecting the fire to reach their houses, were hauling out their belongings, but had not yet left their dwellings, and were waiting meanwhile sitting on their boxes and feather beds under their windows. Part of the male population were hard at work ruthlessly chopping down fences and even whole huts which were near the fire and on the windward side. None were crying except the children, who had been waked out of their sleep, though the women who had ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Norway, taking their wives with them. For the women could not be torn from the side of their husbands, either by distance of journey or by dread of peril, but declared that they would stick to their lords like a feather to something shaggy. They found that Ragnar was dead, and that Kraka had already married one Brak. Then they remembered the father's treasure, dug up the money, and bore it off. But Erik's fame had gone before ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... eyes and black lashes and black hair; but she too was greatly sunburnt, with the haymaking (as her father presently told me again; for she spoke very little after we had saluted one another). She was in a green skirt and a skirted doublet of the same colour, and wore a green hat with a white feather; but those things I did not remember till I was gone to bed and was thinking of her. It is a hard business for a lover to speak as he should of the maid who first taught him his lessons in that art; but I think it was her silence, and the look in her eyes, that embodied ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... better sense—of a fancy easily turned into impulse, but with no strenuous and determinate strength in them. What they comprehend best in the 'Italian League' is probably a league to wear silk velvet and each a feather in his hat, to carry flags and cry vivas, and keep a grand festa day in the piazzas. Better and happier in this than in stabbing prime ministers, or hanging up their dead bodies to shoot at; and not much more childish than these French patriots and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... thank you, good Dame Barbara," said the Earl, very courteously taking off the close-fitting black cap with the red feather in it which was upon his head. "I must bide but a moment for your husband to set right certain nails in the hoofs of Darnaway here, to ready me for the morrow. Do you come to see the sport? So buxom a dame as the mistress of Carlinwark should not be ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... want to hear your rowlocks ring Like a good volley, all together." "Hands up (or 'Kamerad') as you swing Straight from the hips. Don't sky your feather, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various

... big yard of the farm were placed articles to be sold at public auction. It was a miscellaneous collection. A cradle with miniature puffy feather pillows, straw tick and an old patchwork quilt of pink and white calico stood near an old wood-stove which bore the inscription, CONOWINGO FURNACE. Corn-husk shoe-mats, a quilting frame, rocking-chairs, ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... a night in the rain under the pines, with my bag for a pillow, would be endurable; but no mortal with a white skin could dare those bloated and odorous feather-beds, where other things—in the shape of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... I've got consideration for my seniors. I was raised that way. I honored your age, Jerry. I knew you was about all in, but I never CALLED you old. I wouldn't hurt your feelings. What did you do? You set around on your bony hips and criticized and picked at me. But you've picked my last feather off and I'm plumb raw. Right here ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... burthen, as he clasped his hands in ecstasy and performed a caper which, in spite of all his master Eyoub's respect for the Marabouts, brought a furious yell of rage, and a tremendous blow with the cudgel, which Lanty, in his joy, seemed to receive as if it had been a feather. ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... ready to cry; but behold, that handy little Adelaide had meantime picked out a nice black silk cape, with hat and feather, gloves and handkerchief, which, if not what Kate had intended, were nice enough for anything, and would have—some months ago—seemed to the orphan at the parsonage like robes of state. Kind Adelaide held them up so triumphantly, that Kate could not pout at their being only everyday things; and ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... little enough whether the dog of an American lived or died so long as he himself continued to get the generous checks from a certain newspaper in New York City. The doctor held the credulity of the men who mailed those checks in fine contempt and proceeded to feather his nest valiantly while his good luck continued, going on many a glorious spree at the paper's expense while Dick Carson went down every day deeper into the valley of the ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... hillside covered with very handsome red pines eleven years of age, some of them grow nearly two feet per year. The soil is sandy and gravelly glacial till which will raise little else beside feather grass and sumac. The red pines are not nut pines, and attention is called to them incidentally because of their value for growing upon this sort ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... gazed with wonder upon these actions, now approached timidly but with every sign of friendship, offering Columbus gifts of flowers and fruits and gay colored parrots, and lances tipped with bone and feather belts. They seemed to have no difficulty in understanding the sign language that the Spaniards used to make their wants understood, and they worshipped the newcomers as though they were more than human, and indeed ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears; for it appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing that the largest ship of the line in existence coming within the influence of that deadly attraction could resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... done, and the darkness Drops from the wings of night As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... holiday, With bag and sack and basket, great and small, Went nutting to the hazels. Philip stay'd (His father lying sick and needing him) An hour behind; but as he climb'd the hill, Just where the prone edge of the wood began To feather toward the hollow, saw the pair, Enoch and Annie, sitting hand-in-hand, His large gray eyes and weather-beaten face All-kindled by a still and sacred fire, That burn'd as on an altar. Philip look'd, And in their eyes and faces read his doom; ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson

... least understood Italian, besides being clearly in the servants' eyes the one of the party marked down by age and appearance to pay the bills; and to her, while Mrs. Fisher put the final touches to her toilette, for she was preparing, by means of putting on a hat and veil and feather boa and gloves, to go for her first stroll in the lower garden—positively her first since her arrival—she explained that unless she was given money to pay the last week's bills the shops of Castagneto ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... his body. Where undraped, tight-fitting hose terminating in red shoes, flashed their elongated black and yellow stripes with stunning effect. A red cap, pointed at top, and rolled up behind, but with a long visor-like peak shading the eyes, and a white heron feather slanted in the band, brought the head into negligent harmony with the rest of the costume. The throat and left arm were bare, the latter ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... had adopted, and was adopting, for the benefit of all who became Chartists. He anticipated great results from his scheme of labour palaces—denied the propriety of being placed in the election returns as a feather in the quill of Whiggery—was an earnest advocate for the amelioration of Ireland, and still willing and determined to agitate for their cause. He would go to parliament, and record his first motion for 'The people's charter, and no surrender.' ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... wind and hidden sun, Wild November weather, Muddy field and leafless tree Bare of fur or feather. Sweeps there be who scorn the game, On them tons of soot fall! All Alleynians here ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... away," he said to De Mauleon; "I don't want to hear that girl repeat the sort of bombast the poets indite nowadays. It is fustian; and that girl may have a brain of feather, but she ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I had gained seemed worthless. Those quiet, sneering words of his almost crushed me. On the load I had struggled to bear without falling they laid one feather too much. ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson

... seven mills on the dollar. Buxton is rich; we are poor. Buxton has few paupers; we have many. Consequently, Buxton may maintain its paupers in what may almost be regarded as a state of affluence. It may go as far as feather-beds and winter fires for the aged; nay, it may advance to some economical form of teeth-brushes, and still demand no more sacrifice from its people than is constantly demanded of us to maintain our poor in a humbler way. Then there are certain prudential considerations—certain, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... early dawn in the great square to greet the rising of the Sun. They were dressed in their gayest apparel, and the Indian lords vied with each other in the display of costly ornaments and jewels on their persons, while canopies of gaudy feather-work and richly tinted stuffs, borne by the attendants over their heads, gave to the great square, and the streets that emptied into it, the appearance of being spread over with one vast and magnificent awning. Eagerly they watched the coming of their ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... lifters begin to draw a long and full breath, and when the inhalation is completed, or the lungs filled, the second signal is given, for raising the person from the chair. To his own surprise and that of his bearers, he rises with the greatest facility, as if he were no heavier than a feather. On several occasions I have observed that when one of the bearers performs his part ill, by making the inhalation out of time, the part of the body which he tries to raise is left as it were behind. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various

... shall see. Tell me now, they mean to revive La Curieuse at the Comedie, I hear—what part in it have you been assigned?" "Ah," exclaimed mademoiselle Hilairet, "is it not always the same thing? I dust the same decayed furniture with the same feather brush, and I say 'Yes,' and 'No,' and 'Here is a letter, madame.' That ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... now; even then my heart smote me heavily at times when I thought of the pride and pleasure he took in all my scientific appliances, and the money they cost him—twenty guineas for a pair of scales! Poor dear old man! he loved to weigh things in them—a feather, a minute crumb of cork, an infinitesimal wisp of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... down with the windward ones and formed farther off. Howard then led in pursuit. But seeing the capitana of the renowned Italian galleasses in distress near Calais, he became a medieval knight again, left his fleet, and took the galleasse. For the moment that one feather in his cap seemed better worth ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... said Nick, and laughed at her softly. "I'm the happiest man on earth. I shall go Home now without a pang, and so will you. We have got to feather the nest, you know. That'll be ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... the advice of Gen. Hatton, a year ago, I removed the feather bed with which my predecessor, Deacon Hayford, had bolstered up his administration by stuffing the window, and substituted glass. Finding nothing in the book of instructions to postmasters which made the feather ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... upon the arrow. He started, a flush of excitement rushed across his face, and his hands and lips trembled as he closely examined the feather. ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty

... but the atmosphere was full of bagpipes. It was an unremitting storm of bagpipes—silent, but assailing me bodily from all quarters—now small as motes in the sun, and hailing upon me; now large as feather-beds, and ready to bang us about, only they never touched us; now huge as Mount AEtna, and threatening to smother us beneath their ponderous bulk; for all the time I was toiling on with little Davie on my back. Next day I was a little better, but very weak, and it was many ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... minutes had passed, John Claverhouse came plodding up the bed of the stream. Bellona was ambling about him, and they were in high feather, her short, snappy barks mingling with his deeper chest-notes. Arrived at the pool, he threw down the dip-net and sack, and drew from his hip-pocket what looked like a large, fat candle. But I knew it to be a stick ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... poisoned well, defiling where she meant to clean. Youth does not save the buxom lass, who has been filling herself, as girls will do, with unripe fruit: nor innocence the two fair children who were sailing their feather-boats yesterday in the quay-pools, as they have sailed them for three years past, and found no hurt; piety does not save the bed-ridden old dame, bed-ridden in the lean-to garret, who moans, "It is the Lord!" and dies. It is "the Lord" to her, though Baalzebub himself ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... gossiped over their fruit-baskets, heaped with purple-brown figs, little mountain-born strawberries, sweet, watery grapes, green almonds, and stupendous pears. At rare intervals a steamboat, bright and neat as a new toy, trailed a long feather of smoke from the foot of the Rigi, shed a small and dusty crowd into the sleepy town, and then bustled back, shearing the silken flood and ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... the mustard-coloured tweeds affected by so many women for country wear, choosing instead a soft dull blue, a hundred times more becoming. For headgear there was a little cap of the same material, with a quill feather stuck jauntily through a fold at the side, while neat, strong little boots and a pair of doeskin gloves gave a delightfully business-like air to the costume. In the rug-strap was a capacious golf cloak, displaying a bright plaid lining. This was waiting in readiness for the six-mile ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... victorious, who cried 'Forward' in the battles, and had flown the length and breadth of Europe, they were saved the infamy of belonging to the enemy: all the treasures of England couldn't get her a tail-feather of them. No more eagles—the rest is well known. The Red Man went over to the Bourbons, like the scoundrel that he is. France is crushed; the soldier is nothing; they deprive him of his dues; they discharge him to make room for broken-down nobles—ah, 'tis pitiable! They ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... occasion for them? Was it for their guns? The bows and arrows which we used, were sufficient to make us live well. Was it for their white, blue, and red blankets? We can do well enough with buffalo skins, which are warmer; our women wrought feather-blankets for the winter, and mulberry-mantles for the summer; which indeed were not so beautiful; but our women were more laborious and less vain than they are now. In fine, before the arrival of the French, we lived like men who can be satisfied with what they have; whereas ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... landsmen are figged out as fine as Lord Harry, With breast-pins and cravats as white as old sail; That I'm a strange creature, a know-nothing ninny, But fit for the planks for to walk in foul weather; That I ha'n't e'er a notion of the worth of a guinea, And that you, Poll, can twist me about as a feather— Lord love you!! ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... as I bid thee; but see thou, sweet playmate, for all thou art a chieftain's son, thou wert but feather-brained to ask me why I shot at thee. I shoot at thee! that were a fine tale to tell her this even! Or dost thou think that I could shoot at a big man on the snow at two hundred paces and miss him three times? Unless I ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... pretend to, that can think any Woman innocent who requires Liberty. Therefore, Patch, to your Charge I give her; Lock her up till I come back from Change: I shall have some sauntring Coxcomb, with nothing but a Red Coat and a Feather, think, by Leaping into her Arms, to Leap into my Estate—But I'll prevent them, she shall be ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre

... John," continued Jeffries, signing even more rapidly. "A gunman shoots his best when there's somebody shooting at him—otherwise he wouldn't be a gunman—he would be just an ordinary, every-day marksman, with a Schuetzenverein medal and a rooster feather in his hat. That's why you shoot well, John—because you're a gunman, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... interposition of Philip, who seized his brother's arm as he was raising his hand to deal the blow. In a box-tree they found the pretty covered-in nest of a bottle-tit, beautifully compact, with its tiny opening or doorway—feather-eaved—at the side. It was a great temptation, and hard to resist was the sight of that nest; it was only about five feet from the ground, and they could have cut off the branch and brought it away with the nest ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... schoolmen fathered on St. Thomas Aquinas an imaginary work in sundry folio volumes entitled De Omnibus Rebus, adding an equally bulky and imaginary supplement—Et Quibusdam Aliis. This is as often used to feather a piece of unfledged wit, as the speculation concerning the number of angels that could dance on the point of a needle, and yet I have never been able to trace out the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various

... excellent. At this moment the gentlemen are going to the right; now they promenade all; in a minute more the ladies will be in the center, and four hands round. That broth of an Irish boy, Conway, wears a rooster's feather in his cap, and has for a partner a soldier twice as big as himself, whom he calls Susan. As they swing Conway yells at the top of his voice: ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... shade and shivered in the sun? I have seen those who have run from the smell of a mellow apple with greater precipitation than from a harquebuss-shot; others afraid of a mouse; others vomit at the sight of cream; others ready to swoon at the making of a feather bed; Germanicus could neither endure the sight nor the crowing of a cock. I will not deny, but that there may, peradventure, be some occult cause and natural aversion in these cases; but, in my ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... forenoon soliciting Otto Bork to take the poor orphan home with him, and there to treat her as a faithful and kind brother, in compensation for her father's harsh and unnatural will; but it was all in vain, as she indeed had prophesied. "Not the weight of a feather more should she get than the two farmhouses in Zachow; and never let her call him brother, for ancient as his race was, never had one of them borne the brand of ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... straight from the bow. I tighten the reins on Prince Charlie's great son— He is off like a rocket, the race is begun. Half-way down the furlong, their heads are together, Scarce room 'twixt their noses to wedge in a feather; Past grand stand, and judges, in neck-to-neck strife, Ah, Salvator, boy! 'tis the race of your life. I press my knees closer, I coax him, I urge, I feel him go out with a leap and a surge; I see him creep on, inch by inch, stride by stride, While backward, still backward, ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox



Words linked to "Feather" :   spurious wing, rotary motion, bird, prince's-feather, fledge, produce, body covering, feather palm, grow, feather reed grass, vane, plumage, flight feather, feathering, feather-foil, web, bastard wing, scapular, Prince-of-Wales feather, feather ball, conjoin, feather boa, melanin, animal material, alula, row, white feather, pinion, primary feather, keratin, contour feather, feather star, square, saddle feather, acquire, paddle, hackle, down



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