"Flea" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... permitted to retire. Besides, people who know how to take an eviction gracefully usually know enough to get out before they are put out. But Abbie had to be pushed, and she went, heartbroken, disgraced, resentful. Jake sulked after her. They moved like a couple of old flea-bitten mongrels spoken ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Ranger, "that is a well known, game old elderly spinster lady commonly called the Moon; and that other on the branch chittering swear words is nothing in the world but a Douglas squirrel hunting—I think he is really hunting—a flea to mix in his spruce ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the manager he had quietly walked into the office, asked for his bill, and ordered a cab to be sent for and his luggage to be brought down. Apparently the doctor attending him had tried to protest, and had been sent away with a flea in his ear. I can only assume that the old fellow was subject to some violent malady, which comes and goes suddenly, one of whose attacks he has been ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... flea in your ear, John," remarked Aunt Deb. "Sir Reginald will just consider you troublesome. You are much more likely to succeed if you let ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... once that my youngest brother Davie, a very little fellow then, for he could not speak plainly, came running in great distress to Kirsty, crying, "Fee, fee!" by which he meant to indicate that a flea was rendering his life miserable. Kirsty at once undressed him and entered on the pursuit. After a successful search, while she was putting on his garments again, little Davie, who had been looking very solemn and thoughtful for some time, said, not in a questioning, but ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... valleys and over snow-clad mountains, until they found that it was impossible to overtake the red men. The sagacious Indians broke up their party into small squads of two and three and scattered in all directions. To continue the pursuit would be like chasing "a flea upon the mountains." ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... from home, embittering me. A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue. For years I was his mistress—no one knew. I learned from him the parasite cunning With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog. All the time I was nothing but "very private," with different men. Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years. His sister called me his mistress; And Daniel wrote me: "Shameful word, soiling our beautiful love!" But my ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... lots of such little properties which are of no use to him at all. What do you say, for instance, to an estate of one hundred acres or so; it would be a mere flea-bite to him. But flea-bite or no flea-bite that's all one to me. I wish him to give it me and give it he must. I mean ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... Badoura in her sleep was carried to the bed of Prince Camaral'zaman that she might see him, Danhasch changed himself into a flea, and bit her lip, at which Badoura awoke, saw the prince sleeping by her side, and afterwards became his wife.—Arabian Nights ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... economy, as well as in every other part of life, to have the proper attention to proper objects, and the proper contempt for little ones. A strong mind sees things in their true proportions; a weak one views them through a magnifying medium, which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a flea: magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive great ones. I have known many a man pass for a miser, by saving a penny and wrangling for twopence, who was undoing himself at the same time by living above ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... are you not charmed with the splendid accommodations of your fancy ship?" whispered the mischievous Jim. "There is not room for a flea to hop, without giving him the cramp in ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... growled Shoop. "But I got to do this personal. This here pen is like a rabbit gone loco. Now, here I set like a bag of beans, tryin' to tell John Torrance why I'm quittin' this here job without makin' him think I'm glad to quit—which I am, and I ain't. It's like tryin' to split a flea's ear with a axe; it can't be did without mashin' the flea. Now, if John was here I could tell him in three jumps. The man that invented writin' must 'a' been tongue-tied or had sore throat some time when he wanted to talk awful ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... I get the misery you can hold my hand as long as your little heart desires. 'Leven hundred to the good! Good night! Get down off my shoulder, you little flea, you. I got to turn in here and take a drink on the strength of that! 'Leven hundred to the good! ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... and the Lord avenge me Of thee; but mine hand shall not be upon thee. 13. As saith the proverb of the ancients, Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked: but mine hand shall not be upon thee. 14. After whom is the king of Israel come out? after whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea. 15. The Lord therefore be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out of thine hand. 16. And it came to pass, when David had made an end of speaking these words unto Saul, that Saul said, Is this thy voice, my son David? And Saul lifted up his voice, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... flea-bite. Let her keep it. You're in for it now, and you'd better say nothing about money. He has a decent solicitor, and let him arrange about the settlements. And look here, Jane;—get it done as soon ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... are not, it amounts to the same thing. Every dog knows that you meant to be there, or at any rate, that to be there was the scheme of someone equally bad. The slightest rustle of the wind, the call of a bird, the ejaculation responsive to a flea—any of these, anything ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... who leaned against a netting and looked vaguely out upon the horizon, waiting for the outcome of the search, got a start. Yonder, far away on the other side of the river, between a little wood and the Staria Derevnia, a light boat drew to the shore, and a little black spot jumped from it like a flea. Koupriane recognized the little black spot as Kathanna. She was safe. Now he could not reach her. It would be useless to search the maze of the Bohemian quarter, where her country-people lived in full ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... our minds the terror of the Turks, let us consider his false sleight, for this tale he telleth us to make us forget him. But let us remember well that, in respect of himself, the Turks are but a shadow. And all that they can do can be but a flea-bite in comparison with the mischief that he goeth about. The Turks are but his tormentors, for he himself doth the deed. Our Lord saith in the Apocalypse, "The devil shall send some of you to prison, to tempt you." He saith not that men shall, but that the devil shall, himself. For ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... because he was all muddy anyway, where he fell down the cellar; and how could it matter to anybody that had any sense at all? Well, then we had the rixual, and—and—why, the teeny little paddlin' he got wouldn't hurt a flea! It was that little coloured boy lives in the alley did it—he isn't anyways near HALF Georgie's size but Georgie got mad and said he didn't want any ole nigger to paddle him. That's what he said, and it was his own foolishness, because Verman won't let ANYBODY call him ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... eternal persistence, even though he was a pest. Johnny saw more in him than his companions could find, and had quite a little sport with him: he made fine practice for roping, for he was about as elusive as a grasshopper and uncertain as a flea. Johnny was in the same general class and he could sympathize with the irrepressible nuisance in its efforts to stir up a little life and excitement in so dull a crowd; Johnny hoped to be as successful ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... tell Helen when she comes back home," he announced. "Cal'late I'll put a flea in her ear. 'Helen,' I'll say, 'don't feel too bad now, don't cry and get your handkerchief all soakin', or nothin' like that. I just feel it's my duty to tell ye that your little Albert is sparkin' up to somebody else. He's waitin' on a party by ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... riding on red roan steeds—or, to be more explicit, on a paint and a flea-bitten sorrel—two wooers. One was Madison Lane, and the other was the Frio Kid. But at that time they did not call him the Frio Kid, for he had not earned the honours of special nomenclature. His name ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... life?" he said. "Know then that Godric's life is such as this:—Godric, at first a gross rustic, an unclean liver, an usurer, a cheat, a perjurer, a flatterer, a wanderer, pilfering and greedy; now a dead flea, a decayed dog, a vile worm, not a hermit, but a hypocrite; not a solitary, but a gad-about in mind; a devourer of alms, dainty over good things, greedy and negligent, lazy and snoring, ambitious and prodigal, one ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Man of the Dee, Who was sadly annoyed by a flea; When he said, "I will scratch it," They gave him a hatchet, Which grieved that Old Man of ...
— Book of Nonsense • Edward Lear
... hams, one's intellect is apt to fall into neglect: a moral sentiment which applies out of Pigdom. This creature would not have passed muster at a county fair; no Suffolk blood compacted and rounded him; he belonged to the "racers," and skipped about his pen with the alacrity of a large flea, wiggling his curly tail as expressively as a dog's, and "all but speakin'," as Israel said. He was always glad to see Miss Lucinda, and established a firm friendship with her dog Fun, a pretty, sentimental, German spaniel. Besides, he kept tolerably clean by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... first night is generally very uncomfortable, because one is not accustomed to the tickling and biting of the fleas. I am sure, in the morning, there was not a space on my legs the size of a shilling which had not its little red mark where the flea had feasted. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Klutchem had some game up his sleeve. But if that is so, why bring his daughter? My lawyer told me to-day the assault and battery case is all settled, so it can't be that. Wonder if the Colonel has converted Klutchem as to the proper way of running a bank? No, that's nonsense! Klutchem would skin a flea and sell the tallow, no matter what the Colonel said to him. Coming to ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... patriarchs of Jerusalem.' 'Two feathers of the phoenix tayle' I do not remember at Oxford, nor 'a cherrystone holding ten dozen tortoiseshell combs, made by Edward Gibbons.' But I think the Ashmolean collection still holds the 'flea chains of silver and gold, with 300 links apiece, and yet but an inch long,' and, of course, the Oxford dodo's skin is famous. It was not a dodo, though, to John Tradescant. It was a 'dodar, from the island of Mauritius: it is not able to flie, being so big.' The ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... had grown very strong. The good old King did all in his power to dissuade her from this wish, representing Men as fierce and selfish giants: "No living creature," said he, "is secure from their mastery; the biggest elephant is obliged to dance to their will, as well as the smallest flea." But all was of no avail; his daughter had taken it into her head to visit the world, and go she would. The thought of this preyed upon her mind, and she grew more and more melancholy and thin; until at length the King resolved to grant her wish, in the hope that the sight would frighten her for ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... agreeable to me? I always despised the critter; always thought he wuz a turrible fool—and now I'm convinced on't. I'm completely disgusted wit him—and I let him know it to-night. I gin him a piece o' my mind 't I guess he'll be apt to remember for a spell. I ruther think he went off with a flea in his ear. Why, Cappen—did ye ever hear of such a piece of audacity in all yer born days? for him—Tim Crane—to durst to expire to my hand—the widder o' Deacon Bedott, jest as if I'd condescen' to look at him—the old numbskull! He don't know B from a broomstick; but if he'd a-stayed ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... Christmas fire is to them like the heats of the dog-days. Though they are frequently heard by day, yet is their natural time of motion only in the night. As soon as it grows dusk, the chirping increases, and they come running forth, and are from the size of a flea to that of their full stature. As one should suppose, from the burning atmosphere which they inhabit, they are a thirsty race, and show a great propensity for liquids, being found frequently drowned in pans of water, milk, broth, or the like. Whatever is moist they affect; ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... turning himself into some small commonplace creature to plague his friends on board—a mouse, one day, a flea the next, a fly on the third. Quite naturally, no one suspected his ability to adopt such fantastic disguises. So little did they guess—he had one or two narrow escapes from being swatted or ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... the chief thunder-god, fell violently in love with the same Aino woman. Said one of them to the other, in a joking way: "I will become a flea, so as to be able to hop into her bosom." Said the other: "I will become a louse, so as to be able to stay always ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... How! a Christian fellow to a dog, or a cat, a mouse, or a rat! no, no, sir; if you turn me into any thing, let it be in the likeness of a little pretty frisking flea, that I may be here and there and every where: O, I'll tickle the pretty wenches' plackets! I'll be ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... heading up-stream. It may be that I shall find myself going west and southwest into the country of the Ilongotes, who are enemies of the ones I am now with. I have to go much lighter than what I am now to keep up with the little black Negrito. He is like a flea; here to-day, there to-morrow, and ever on the move when food is gone, and at rest, when he has a supply, long enough to consume it. He is at outs with the particular people I am with ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... yew (yu), a kind of tree. dye, to color. eye, the organ of sight. draught (draft), drawing I, myself. ay, yes. draft, a bill of exchange. aye, an affirmative vote. dun, a dark color. flee, to run away. done, performed. flea, an insect. fate, destiny. flew (flu) , did fly. fete, a festival. flue, a passage ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... do with folk who teem by the billion, like the Chinese and Japs and orientals altogether. Only vermin teem by the billion. Higher types breed slower. I would have loved the Aztecs and the Red Indians. I KNOW they hold the element in life which I am looking for—they had living pride. Not like the flea-bitten Asiatics—even niggers are better than Asiatics, though they are wallowers—the American races—and the South Sea Islanders—the Marquesans, the Maori blood. That was the true blood. It wasn't frightened. All the rest are craven—Europeans, Asiatics, Africans—everyone at his own individual ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... boteleto. Flat plata. Flat (music) duontono sube. Flatten platigi. Flatter flati. Flatterer flatulo. Flattering flatema. Flavour gusto. Flaw difekto. Flax lino. Flay senhauxtigi. Flea pulo. Flee flugi. Fleece sxaflano. Fleecy laneca. Fleet (quick) rapida. Fleet sxiparo. Flesh (meat) viando. Flesh karno. Flexibility fleksebleco. Flexible fleksebla. Flexion flekso. Flicker lumsxanceli. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... them and Professor Sandburr's bony, spectacled face was thrust forward. "I would not have missed it for a great deal. I would like to capture a specimen of a Patagonian alive and take him home in a cage. The Patagonian dog-flea, too, I ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... that husband of hers! He's a nice one, he is! Would you b'lieve it, he come along and she spoke to him, and he swore at her somethin' dreadful. That's why she's cryin'. Poor critter, I guess by the looks she's used to it. Well, I give HIM a piece of my mind. He went away with a flea in his ear. I do despise a profane man above all things. Yes, the baby's all right, Mrs. Saunders. I'm a-comin'. Good-night, Cap'n Hedge. I s'pose I shall see you all in the mornin'. You ought to be careful ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... want to do one thing, and that is to give up my keys as soon as possible. I am tired of this profession of jailer. Besides, I shall not be able to stay here much longer. This escape has put a flea into the ear of the authorities, and they are going to give me an assistant, a former police sergeant, who is as bad as a watchdog. Ah! the good days of M. de Boiscoran are over: no more stolen visits, no more promenades. He is to be ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... Mike Flannery, "ye would not say that same, for to the flea professor th' flea is as big as a house. He studies him throo a telescope, Mrs. Muldoon, that magnifies th' flea a million times. Th' flea professor will take a dog with a flea on him, mam, and look at th' same with his telescope, ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... and then to express it in as quaint a manner as possible became the chief aim of English poets during the first three-quarters of the seventeenth century. Donne had encountered trouble in obtaining his wife from her father. Finding one morning a flea that had feasted during the night on his wife and himself, he was overcome by its poetic ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... resemble the rash of measles. Fleas, unlike lice, do not breed on the body, but as soon as they are satiated leave their host. Their eggs are laid in cracks in floors, on dirty clothes and similar spots, and it is only the mature flea which preys upon man. The human flea may infest the dog and return to man, but the dog flea is a distinct species, and never remains permanently on the human host. For these reasons it is not difficult to get rid of fleas after ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... The turnip flea-beetle quickly destroys young plants of the cruciferae family by eating their leaves. Paris-green, one part to twenty parts of pulverized gypsum (land plaster) dusted on the plants while damp, helps to ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... have no doubt that the exercise assisted to keep me in good health. I used to remove my clothing, which I turned inside out and shook very carefully. Then I bathed from head to foot in some villainous brandy that no respectable flea would or could endure; after this ablution was ended, I donned my garments, wrapped in my blanket, and proceeded to dream that I was a hen with thirteen chickens, and doomed to tear up an acre ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... useless life a thousand lives saved from decay and death. One death, and a hundred beings restored to existence! There's a calculation for you. What in proportion is the life of this miserable old woman? No more than the life of a flea, a beetle, nay, not even that, for she is pernicious. She preys on other lives. She lately bit Elizabeth's finger, in a fit of passion, and ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... luxe, the breach of faith as to places, and the discomforts of the journey; but never a glimmering conception seems to flit across the popular mind that here is a Colossal Wrong, compared to which Monte Carlo is but as a flea-bite to the Asiatic cholera. This chartered abuse connects the three biggest towns in France—Paris, Lyon, Marseilles—and is absolutely without competitors. It can do as it likes; and it does it, regardless—I say "regardless," without qualification, because the P.L.M. regards ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... in the earth. For the oyster-shell bark louse, apply linseed oil. Paris green, in water, will kill the canker worm. Tobacco water does the work for plant lice. Peach-tree borers are excluded with tarred or felt paper, and cut out with a knife. Jar the grape flea beetle on an inverted umbrella early in the morning. Among small-fruit insects, the strawberry worms are readily destroyed with hellebore, an ounce to a gallon of warm water. The same remedy ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... the spray a pound of fresh lime to each pound of the arsenical should be added; or, better yet, Bordeaux mixture should be employed as a diluent instead of water. This mixture has some insecticidal value, is a most valuable fungicide, and is also a powerful deterrent of flea-beetle attack, acting to a less degree against other insects which are apt to be found on the tomato. In applying any spray a sprayer costing not less than $7 ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... uttermost quarters of the earth, how should he escape the ruin that he carried? We have heard of living men who have been fettered to the dead; the grievance, soberly considered, is no more than sentimental; the case is but a flea-bite to that of him who should be linked, like poor M'Guire, to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seed get a handful or twaine To save against March, to make flea to refraine: Where chamber is sweeped and Wormwood is strowne, No flea, for his life, dare abide to be knowne. What saver is better (if physick be true), For places infected than Wormwood and Rue? It is as a comfort for hart and the ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... vanity, but I am obliged to ask that important men make an observation here. Taking the size of a man to be about five feet, the figure we strike on Earth is like that struck by an animal of about six hundred thousandths[2] the height of a flea on a ball five feet around. Imagine something that can hold the Earth in its hands, and which has organs in proportion to ours—and it may very well be that there are such things—conceive, I beg of you, what these things would think of the battles that allow a vanquisher ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... most part, blind to what took place immediately around her. General Bellairs himself (who vaguely supposed that some man might try to make love to his daughter five years hence, and thereupon be promptly sent off with a flea in his ear) was not more unconscious than she that there was, had been, or might be anything, as the phrase runs, 'between' the two junior members of the party. Lady Deane had no hints to give and no questions to ask; she seated herself placidly in a corner and began ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... reached the cool glade of topmost Tinnaburra, he found that his arrival had caused considerable perturbation among a small mob of brumbies, or wild horses, consisting of some seven or eight mares and foals, led by a flea-bitten old grey stallion, who snorted angrily as he saw Finn, and minced forward toward the Wolfhound, his long chisel teeth bared, his four-foot tail billowing out behind him like a flag, and his black ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... But even the flea season was a matter of indifference to the hapless folk who lay around us, and although we fussed and railed we could not persuade them to go forward before dawn broke. Then, though, they struggled to their feet and started without argument. But an hour after the start we reached the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... Hugo, and he roared; and let the rest of the world judge whether, under such circumstances, there was majesty in the roar. The spectacle of Hugo, prancing on the ramparts and hurling bad names at the German armies, recalls the persistent but painful manoeuvres of a lion with a flea. Both are terribly in ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... all," coolly replied the officer. "We can't be bothered with a single prisoner. What is one flea on a blanket? Another time, if we come across you again with enough of your comrades to make the game worth while, why then, perhaps we may give ourselves the pain of keeping you. You've seen that we have enough food to feed your whole trench, ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... head at one blow of his scymitar.[308] He then makes a hole in the ear or cheek with his dagger, by which he will sometimes bring three or four heads at once to his general. When it is proposed to send these heads taken in war to be seen by the king or the khan, they very adroitly flea off the skin of the head and face, which they stuff up with straw like a foot-ball, and so send them by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the rain for art for art' sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... The flea, as well as the fly, is a valiant and industrious purveyor of disease. From beast to beast they hop, carrying their toxic germs with them: and the dog, displeased with his persecutors, scratches them ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... critic's critic, and a daily paper favors us with some critical remarks on the performance of the writer in the Weekly, who has criticised the critical notice in the Monthly of the critical essay in the Quarterly on the critical work we started with. And thus we see that as each flea "has smaller fleas that on him prey," even the critic himself cannot escape the common lot of being bitten. Whether all this is a blessing or a curse, like that one which made Pharaoh and all his household run to their toilet-tables, is a question about which ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... absurd and she knew it. Margaret could go where she liked. It would all be chaste as a piano-recital. But the flea that she had been trying to put in the girl's ear seemed very ineffective. She is just as I was at her age, thought this lady, who, in ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... studies, not so light as doth his own brother. For myself, the matter furnishes no surprise at all. As for you, you had never confidence in me, nor in yourself. Gad! Will, hadst but the courage of a flea, what days we two might have together here ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... deep-water bark, she is enough sight. And the fust mate's got a uniform cap on, like a purser on a steamboat. Make that artist feller take that cap off him, Jim. He's got to. I wish he could have seen some of my mates. They wa'n't Cunarder dudes, but they could make a crew hop 'round like a sand-flea in a ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sitting-room as well. But I won't have any more of it, not if I know it. Sh—h! Hold your tongues, you brats there, and wipe your noses, too; if you don't, I'll come and do it. I never saw the like of such people. Here they walk in out of the street, without even a penny to buy flea-powder, and begin to kick up rows in the middle of the night and quarrel with the people who own the house, I don't mean to have any more of it, do you understand that? and you can go your way, every one who doesn't belong home ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... up in the cook-house she would say: "You must come out and tighten the tent ropes with this gale blowing, it won't be funny if the whole thing blows over in the night." But none of the horrors she depicted ever persuaded me to turn out once I was safely tucked up in my "flea bag" with "Tuppence" acting as a weight to keep the top blankets in place. In the morning when I awoke after a sound night's sleep, I would exclaim triumphantly: "There you are, 'Squig,' what price the tent blowing down? It's as safe as ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... Maryage, MS. play Father-in-law Feare no colours Feeres Felt locks Feltham's Resolves Fend ( make shift with) Fins (a very doubtful correction for sins) Fisguigge Flat cap Flea ( flay) Fletcher, John, MS. copy of his Elder Brother; his share in the authorship of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt Flewd Fly boat (see Addenda to vol. i.) Fool (play on the words fool and fowl) Fooles paradysse For I did but kisse her (See Appendix) Fortune my foe Fox ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... flea stick on the wall! Look hither," and she pointed to the smoky ceiling, which was covered with hieroglyphics. These were accounts, vulgo scores; intelligible to this dame and her daughter, who wrote them at need by simply mounting a low stool, and scratching with a ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... hundred had found him on the scene at most of its exciting events. Where Fate refused to take him, he asserted his strong hand and took Fate, until that weary lady was forced to go hopping about the map of South Africa with the agility of a sand flea. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... for nothing could be a more terrible or ferocious antagonist than many of our well-known insects, if sufficiently enlarged. No animal now alive has more than a small fraction of the strength, in proportion to its size, of the minutest spider or flea. It may be that through lack of food, difficulties imposed by changing climate, and the necessity of burrowing in winter, or through some other conditions changed from what they were accustomed to, their ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... solidity and sense. The body, however, was but a pompous trifle, and I had for many a day held his observes and admonishments in no very reverential estimation. So that, when I heard him address me in such a memorializing manner, I was inclined and tempted to set him off with a flea in his lug. However, I was enabled to bridle and rein in this prejudicial humour, and answer him in his ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... wives have often told how they Saw Cupid bitten by a flea; And thereupon, in tears half drown'd, He cried aloud: Help, help the wound! He wept, he sobb'd, he call'd to some To bring him lint and balsamum, To make a tent, and put it in Where the stiletto pierced the ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... of 'Little Russia' and is much cleaner than 'Great Russia.' I brought with me a few fleas from Great Russia and have the greatest sympathy for Tibi for the time she was exposed to flea companionship. How they bite ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... purgatory before leaving its tenement of clay, those torments were endured by myself last night. When I rose from my blankets this morning, after a sleepless night, I do not think there was an inch square of my body that did not exhibit the inflammation consequent upon a puncture by a flea, or some other equally rabid and poisonous insect. Small-pox, erysipelas, measles, and scarlet-fever combined, could not have imparted to my skin a more inflamed and sanguineous appearance. The multitudes of these insects, however, have been generated by Indian filthiness. They do not ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... a gash in his chin). Is it not a hard thing for a man to be late for his breakfast and the rain falling, falling, and the wind rising, rising. It's destroyed I am with the loss of blood and no food in my stomach would keep the life in a flea. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... aristocratic humanity. He has the good taste to refuse condescension sufficient to allow him to eat at table with a Frederick Douglass, a Samuel R. Ward, or a Dr. Pennington. Poor light little soul! It can borrow a pair of flea's legs, and, hopping up to the magnificent lights of public opinion, sit looking down upon the whole colored ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... The rough, ungarnished coffin of stained deal lay bare and unsightly on the floor of an old market- cart; a woman sat beside, steadying it with her feet. The husband drove; and the most depressed of the three was the horse, a broken- kneed, flea-bitten grey. It was pathetic, this bringing home in death of the old father whom, while he lived, they had been too poor to house; it was at no small sacrifice that they had spared him that terror of old age, a pauper's grave, and brought him to lie by his wife in our quiet churchyard. ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... say you'd not," retorted Mrs. Jenkins. "All the world knows you are soft enough for anything. I have sent him away with a flea in his ear; that's what I ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... thinking how to give greater power to the leg-muscles of the flea, that he may more easily escape from his enemies. The balance of attack and defence is broken.... ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... flea-headed woodchuck-chaser," I said to him—"you moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, egg-stealing old beagle, can't you see that I don't want to leave you? Can't you see that we're both Pups in the Wood and the missis is the cruel uncle after ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... minister about her shoes, an' what do you think, Mrs. Lathrop, what do you think! The minister had clean forgot himself! He was sittin' there on his piazza advisin' Mrs. Brown to make her pound-cake by sayin' 'One, two, three, Mother caught a flea,' the flea bein' the butter, an' Mrs. Macy says it was plain to be seen as he was n't a bit pleased at her comin' in that way to have his memory ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... such diseases as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, African tick fever, and other infections. The bedbug is also by no means the harmless creature which it is generally regarded. To its credit are placed such maladies as relapsing fever. The flea has been responsible for such terrible diseases as the plague. It often operates by means of rats as its carrier to the human being. The louse is one of the direst offenders in the insect line, as it must take the responsibility not only for many cases ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... fairy tales, boy. That steer was all right. He broke away from the drove, but he wouldn't hurt a flea." ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... deserted huts about the village is accounted for by the erratic habits of the people, which induce them never to stay long in one set of houses, but to flit from one side of the valley and from one settlement to another as the fancy strikes them. That the large increase of the flea population among such a race, however, may have something to do with their restlessness, seems more ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... break the wind. The fleas bit the sheep, and the sheep bit the ground, and the sore had spread to this extent. It is astonishing what a great sore a little scratch breedeth. Who knows but Sahara, where caravans and cities are buried, began with the bite of an African flea? This poor globe, how it must itch in many places! Will no god be kind enough to spread a salve of birches over its sores? Here too we noticed where the Indians had gathered a heap of stones, perhaps for their council-fire, which, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... enyronn'd[52] plies[53]; 50 Loude dynns[54] the arrowe ynn the wolfynn's eare; Hee ryseth battent[55] roares, he panctes, hee dyes. Forslagenn att thie feete lett wolvynns bee, Lett thie floes drenche theyre blodde, bott do ne bredrenn flea. ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... of eight-and-forty hours from the occurrence of the rigor (in the majority of cases), the eruption comes out; and shows itself first on the face and neck in minute flea-bite spots. In the course of the next four-and-twenty hours in some cases, and in others not until the expiration of two or three days, it completely covers the body; not being confined exclusively to the skin, but frequently extending to the mouth and throat, and even ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... reproached herself, now that it was too late, with her mistrust of his powers of retaining a secret. See how keenly alive he was to the need of keeping Sally's parentage in the dark! And that was what the whole thing turned on. Gerry's continued ignorance might be desirable, but was a mere flea-bite by comparison. In her strained, sleepless, overwrought state the wish that "the Major" should know of her happiness while they could still speak of it together grew from a passing thought of ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... him. Like the flea in the American story, when you've got your finger on him is the time he ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and knew myself for a law-breaker. One lingering hope remained—that the Captain had pushed ahead into the woods, and that, as yet, Mr. Jack Rogers (whose good nature I might almost count upon) had alone detected me and would pack me home to the ship with nothing worse than a flea in my ear. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Wood of the Evangelist had sent their latest luxury and style to flout the tombs of the past with the ghastly flippancy of to-day. The cheap tripper was there—the latest example of the Darwinian theory—apelike, flea and curio hunting! Shamelessly inquisitive and always hungry, what did he know of the Sphinx or the pyramids or the voice—and, for the matter of that, what did they know of him? And yet he was not half bad in comparison with the "swagger people,"—these people who ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... sitting astride a flea-bitten gray mare that seemed to be in a perpetual doze, looked more like an Apache squaw than a boss cowboy. The old man's clothes were even more ragged than when Hardy had seen him at Bender, his copper-riveted hat was further reinforced by a buckskin ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... no more comparable to the Productions of many other Natural Philosophers, who are now every where busie about greater things; then my little Objects are to be compar'd to the greater and more beautiful Works of Nature, A Flea, a Mite, a Gnat, to an Horse, an ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... bring yourself home we don't care,' said Blanche, treating the loss of the junk with far more resignation than did Tom that of the flea. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wife, though the woman spared not to doe all necessary things that appertained to a good housewife indifferently for them both, as in making cleane their Cabin, and euery other thing that appertained to his ease: for when he was seasicke, she would make him cleane, she would kill and flea the dogs for their eating, and dresse his meate. [Sidenote: The shamefastess and chastity of those Sauage captiues.] Only I think it worth the noting, the continencie of them both: for the man would neuer shift hemselfe, except he had first caused the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... know. Can't keep track of HIM. Might's well try to put your finger on a flea. He's here to-day and gone yesterday, as the Scriptur' says. He ate a little mite of supper, but not much, and then off he puts. Says he's goin' to walk the fog out'n his head. I told him, s' I, 'You'll walk a plaguey sight more in than you do out, THIS night,' but he went just the same. He was ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... from being rational, our notions on cleanliness are in the highest degree superficial. We make a great fuss over a flea; hardly mention it in polite company; but we tolerate the dirty housefly on all our food. We eat high game which our cook's more natural taste calls muck. We are only just beginning to realise the indescribable filthiness of carious teeth, than ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... the tropic jungle, Miss Drexel and Juanita, her Indian maid, led the way. Her brother, carrying the three rifles, brought up the rear, while in the middle Davies and Wemple struggled with Mrs. Morgan and the two decrepit steeds. One, a flea-bitten roan, groaned continually from the moment Mrs. Morgan's burden was put upon him till she was shifted to the other horse. And this other, a mangy sorrel, invariably lay down at the end of a quarter of a mile ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... your reply would lead one to infer that Gossamer proceeded from spiders in general; and if it be meant that all true spiders spin, it is no doubt correct; but the Gossamer which "A Young Inquirer" asks about is the production of a small black spider about the size of a flea, which was a true aeronaut long before Montgolfier or Lunardi, and if "A Young Inquirer" has access to either the "Linnean Transactions" or the first series of Loudon's "Magazine of Natural History," he will find particulars in the latter, showing that ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... know how it would have ended, or whether dawn would have found us still staring like barnyard cats, for chance, and a dog, suddenly settled the matter. The dog, a forlorn, flea-driven cur, snuffed the fresh trail, followed it to the tree, and snarled out a shout of protest. He snarled but once. The Indian drew his knife, stooped, and I heard the sound of tearing hide and spouting blood. It was ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... answered. "Will and I lay and scratched, while you rested, with proper flea-food for protection! Don't worry, we'll find you ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... end to end. On this plank-bridge sat the Christ, His legs hidden in this tomb, holding a cross. His face was haggard and hollow, He was crowned with green thorns, and His emaciated body was spotted all over by the ends of the scourges as if the wounds were flea-bites. Over Him, in the air, floated the instruments of the Passion: the nails, the sponge, a hammer and a spear; to the left, on a very small scale, were the busts of Jesus and of Judas, near a pedestal on which lay three rows ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... waltz. The plumes in the hats of the cunning little ladies nodded hither and thither, and the tiny swords of the cunning little gentlemen bobbed this way and that as the throng of dancers swept now here, now there. With one tiny foot, upon which she wore a lovely shoe made of a tanned flea's hide, the fairy queen beat time, yet she heard every word which the gallant elf prince said. So, with the fairy queen blushing, the mellow lamps swaying, the elf prince wooing, and the throng of little folk dancing hither and thither, the fairy ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... fishes, the drifting of the snow, the white crystals of the frost, the shrieking of the ice, the boom of the bittern, the barking of the sea lions, the honk of the wild geese, the skulking coyote who knows that each beast is his enemy and has not even a flea to help him "forget that he is a dog," the leap of the salmon, the ecstasy of the mocking-bird and bobolink, the nesting of the field-mice, the chatter of the squirrel, the gray lichen of the oak, the green moss on the log, the poppies of the field and ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... underneath the nail, or sometimes to the soles of the feet. When a person feels an irritation in these parts, he must immediately look at the place; and if he discern a tiny black point, surrounded by a small white ring, the former is the chigoe, or sand- flea, and the latter the eggs which it has deposited in the flesh. The first thing to be done is to loosen the skin all round as far as the white skin is visible; the whole deposit is then extracted, and a little snuff strewn in the empty space. The blacks ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... Carps, and one great one, all Male Carps, draw them and take out all the Melts, flea the twelve small Carps, cut off their Heads and take out their Tongues and take the fish from the bones of the flead Carps, and twelve Oysters, two or three yelks of Hard eggs, mash altogether, season it with ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... will you, Rob?" exclaimed Merritt, pretending to be horrified. "If ever there was a case where eyes were bigger than a stomach, it's right here. Millions of them, Tubby wants now; seven is only a flea-bite to him." ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... jigger results from the introduction of the eggs of the sand-flea (Pulex penetrans) into the tissues. It occurs in tropical Africa, South America, and the West Indies. The impregnated female flea remains attached to the part till the eggs mature, when by their irritation they cause localised inflammation ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... who, about the year Fifteen Hundred, made a box with a glass cover that magnified the contents. This great man would catch a flea and show it to the people. Then he would place the flea in the box and show it to them, and they would see that it had grown enormously in an instant. The man could make it big or little, by just taking off and putting on the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... I'm goin' to git tired o' hearin' you cuss my proxy," Mr. Gibney bawled after him, "an' when that fatal time arrives I'll scatter a can o' Kill-Flea over you an' the shippin' world'll ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... one thing she would fall for in a rank outsider—superlative manners. His being poor is rather in his favor. I'll put a flea in her ear—" ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... not far from where they had met on the previous morning, but no officer appeared to interrupt their combat. Both men looked nervous and worn, especially Broderick, who had spent the night in a flea-infested hut on the ocean shore at the suggestion of his seconds who feared further interference. Terry had fared better, being quartered at the farm house of a friend who provided breakfast and ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... A flea some blockhead's shoulder bit, And then his clothes refused to quit. 'O Hercules,' he cried, 'you ought to purge This world of this far worse than hydra scourge! O Jupiter, what are your bolts about, They do not put these foes ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... particular friends, Atterbury and Warburton. The misfortune is that the more just his satire, the more perishable is its interest; and if we regard the 'Dunciad' simply as an assault upon the vermin who then infested literature, we must consider him as a man who should use a steam-hammer to crack a flea. Unluckily for ourselves, however, it cannot be admitted so easily that Curll and Dennis and the rest had a merely temporary interest. Regarded as types of literary nuisances—and Pope does not condescend in his poetry, though the want is partly supplied ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... in a ditch to have a go at him, but he would ride by, looking for all the world as if he would shoot a flea off the tail of a shnipe, so that, with all the whisky in the world to help me, I dared not do it,' was his explanation ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... lad, and can, perhaps, give you a lift. Skip shall have a flea in his ear before the whistle sounds again; but, of course, it's none of my business what ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... man!' cried my lady in wrath. He had come near to oversetting her plate. 'What flea ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... of his tail some gay ribands she bound, Marrowbones, cherrystones, Bundle'em jig. And then at the races he tript o'er the ground, And bore off the prize, 'ere a flea could hop round: Though the slowest of Donkeys the winner is found, He's an ambling, scambling, Braying-sweet, turn-up feet, Mane-cropt, tail-lopt, High-bred, thistle-fed, Merry old ...
— Deborah Dent and Her Donkey and Madam Fig's Gala - Two Humorous Tales • Unknown
... flurry may be characteristic of the manners of to-day; both are far from the ideal of beautiful manners which should be as assured, as smooth, as controlled as the running of a high-grade automobile. Flea-like motions are no better suited ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... attributed to the late king, or, it may be, to the aventures galantes of a financier with a ballet girl. M. Blaizot was never tired of listening to him. This M. Blaizot was a little old man, dry and neat, in flea-coloured coat and breeches and grey woollen stockings. I admired him very much, and could not think of anything more glorious than, like him, to sell books at the Image of ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... mentioned hitherto. Among these organisms there are several species of worms, spiders, gnats, and, above all, crustaceans of the lower class. The most interesting of the latter is perhaps a variety of the sand flea (Fig. 8—Gammarus pulex). The crustacean found in the pits of mines, which is related to the sand flea, shows, according to Dr. R. Schneider, a slight degeneration of the organ of sight, which has taken place in consequence of its adaptation to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... farther down into the recesses of my flea-bag, though its linings had broken down and my feet stuck out at the bottom. Then I pulled my British Warm over me and muffled my head and ears in it to escape the regularly-repeated roar of the 9.2. Though the whole house seemed ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... Gerard de Nerval, and they include: (1) Chants de la fete de Paques; (2) Paysans sous les tilleuls; (3) Concert des Sylphes; (4 and 5) Taverne d'Auerbach, with the two songs of the Rat and the Flea; (6) Chanson du roi de Thule; (7) Romance de Marguerite, "D'amour, l'ardente flamme," and Choeur de soldats; (8) Serenade de Mephistopheles—that is to say, the most celebrated and characteristic pages of the Damnation (see ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... hurry. Old Aunt Minnie, over at Clayton, has just had her hundredth descendant. She had sixteen children of her own and all of them have had their share of children and grandchildren. I know it's so because I just sold one of the great-granddaughters some hair straightener and a box of flea powder and she thought of getting some talcum powder for the new baby, but decided to ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... half, they arrived at Shellal, a village of a few mud huts and a station, a jetty with a steamer or two, which took travellers farther to the south, to Wadi Haifa and Khartoum. About the place itself there was little of interest; it was a one-horse show with a few Arabs, Bedouins and Sudanese, many flea-bitten mongrels and clouds of flies. But this island-studded expanse of water was the great Assuan Dam. The gates had been closed at this season for about a month, and the rising tide had just reached the floor of the beautiful Temple ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... like him to forget all about the herder and the promise of pinochle that night. He went eagerly to the decrepit little shed which housed Rambler, his long-legged, flea-bitten gray; saddled him purposefully and rode away toward the violet hills at the trail-trot which eats up the miles ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... back at their loopholes, the rest were busy loading the spare muskets, and everyone with a red face, you may be certain, and a flea in his ear, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proper attention to proper objects, and the proper contempt for little ones. A strong mind sees things in their true proportion; a weak one views them through a magnifying medium, which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a flea; magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive great ones. I have known many a man pass for a miser, by saving a penny, and wrangling for two-pence, who was undoing himself at the same time, by living above his income, and not attending to essential articles, which were ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Renoir, that it took him twenty years to find out that painting was not sculpture. Those earlier and heavy impasto studies of his are the evidence of this worthy deduction. It was significant, too, when he said that Gaugin was but "a flea on his back," and that "he does nothing but ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... what I suspected!" she exclaimed furiously. "You are waiting here to find that out! How can you play the spy for him! You talk about shooting a man! Why, you haven't the moral courage to kill a flea! The kindest interpretation I can put upon your actions is to assume that you ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... Papists, our rulers, we know, Had been trying their talent for many a day; Till Farnham, when all had been tried, came to show, Like the German flea-catcher, "anoder goot way." ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... invading my blankets, urged me to return with him to his island domain, where he might have an opportunity to make me comfortable. The kind gentleman little knew how hardened I had become to such annoyances as hard floors and the active flea. Such inconveniences had been robbed of their discomforts by the kind voices of welcome which, with few exceptions, came from every southern gentleman whose territory had been invaded by the ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... kinds in bottles, or 'pinned' them on cardboard trays,—he was an interested observer of the sprightly manners practised by the harvest-bug, and the sagacious customs of the ruminating spider,—as well as the many surprising and agreeable talents developed by the common flea. Leach's virulent hatred of Maryllia Vancourt was not lessened by the apparently useful and scientific nature of the employment he had newly taken up under the guidance of his reverend instructor,—and whenever he caught a butterfly and ran his murderous pin through its quivering body ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... year's first sub. Then a provisional Varsity was formed and the Second Team began doing business with Bi at right guard again. The left guard on the Varsity was Bannen—"Slugger" Bannen. He didn't weigh within seven pounds of Bi, but he had springs inside of him and could get the jump on a flea. He was called "Slugger" because he looked like a prizefighter, but he was a gentle, harmless chap, and one of the Earnest Workers in the Christian Association. He could stick his fist through an oak panel same as you or I would put our fingers through a sheet of paper. ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... pretty and coquettish barberess. M. Gillenormand admired his own discernment in all things, and declared that he was extremely sagacious; here is one of his sayings: "I have, in truth, some penetration; I am able to say when a flea bites me, from what woman ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... manners and it's not straight. What I'm going to do or not going to do in the Cathedral to-morrow is none of your business: and if I catch sight of you hanging about the place to-morrow after your work's done, I'll send you home with a flea in your ear. Now you mind that.' Of course I said I was very sorry and that, and equally of course I went off and laid my plans with Evans. We knew there was a stair up in the corner of the transept which you can get up to the triforium, and in them days the door to it was pretty ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... churches and chapels, plastered and nicely warmed, and comfortably seated, could have dropped in upon us and spent an hour. Of course, they would have had the back-ache and cold feet, and, perhaps, carried away a flea or two, even in March, but they would have gone home saying, "If people can meet in such a place, some refined, intelligent ladies even, and continue to go night after night, I ought to be very, very willing to go to my church whenever the Lord calls a meeting and my presence and voice are ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... possible in some cases, the water flea, for example, for the female to produce young without the necessity of fertilization by the male. In order to perform the necessary work to insure food supplies for the winter other insects have developed highly specialized workers, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... years ago. That air thresher is jist like the feller all fixed up with lace and fallals called the Piccador, who used to stir up the animile with squibs and crackers and make him fly round like a dawg when he's kinder tickled with a flea under his tail; and the sword-fish, as you calls them outlandish things, are sunthen' like the Matador that gives the bull his quietus with his wepping. That air power of blood that you see, I guess, is from them, and not from t'other's ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... Jan to Suleiman, 'should this rat-flea escape, thy soul and thy body shall pay, for I will put out thine eyes with glowing charcoal and hang thee in the skin of a pig, if I have to follow thee to Cabul to do it—yea, to Balkh or Bokhara. See to it.' And Suleiman put his head upon my brother's feet, poured ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... knew nothing. He was, too, a bad hand at galloping, but with a shambling, half cantering trot, which he had invented for himself, he could go along all day, not very quickly, but in such fashion as never to be left altogether behind. He was a flea-bitten horse, if my readers know what that is,—a flea-bitten roan, or white covered with small red spots. Horses of this colour are ugly to look at, but are very seldom bad animals. Such as he was, Crocker, who did not ride much when up ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... been many other benevolent and economical schemes for keeping your cake after you have eaten it, for skinning a flint, and boiling a flea down for its tallow and glue, and this one of cheap art may just go ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... I knew what was the matter, darling," he said at last in a dispirited voice. "Good heavens! what flea has bitten you?" ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... working. I can but enumerate their names, and I take this opportunity of saying that this is the last time I shall put on record the names of competitors who give no sort of clue to the process by which their answers were obtained. In guessing a conundrum, or in catching a flea, we do not expect the breathless victor to give us afterwards, in cold blood, a history of the mental or muscular efforts by which he achieved success; but a mathematical calculation is another thing. The names of this "mute inglorious" ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... inflicts much damage on the potato, tomato, eggplant, and other garden plants. The accompanying figure shows the common striped flea-beetle which lives on the tomato. The larva of this beetle lives inside of the leaves, mining its way through the leaf in a real tunnel. Any substance disagreeable to the beetle, such as plaster, soot, ashes, or tobacco, will repel its attacks ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... kangaroo rats come out of their box peering and blinking. The cockatoo finds an audience in them, for they sit listening to him, now and then catching a flea, or rubbing the backs of their heads with their fore-paws. But a buck 'possum, who stealthily descends by a pillar from unknown realms of mischief on the top of the house, evidently discredits cocky's stories, and departs ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... for their city o' refuge, t'others run the two gals off into the big woods at the side o' the road. Then Mister Hoss-Captain picks up the Afrikin, chucks him on a hoss and sends him a-kiting with his flea in his ear; after which he climbs his hoss and makes tracks hisself—not to ketch up with the gals, ez you mought reckon, but off yon way," pointing across the creek and down the road to ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... before every young gentleman in Great Britain; and to judge by the mental stamina it affords him in most cases, what a waste of good food it is! The dishes are so numerous and so quickly changed, that he has no time to decide on which he likes best. Like an industrious flea, rather than a bee, he hops from flower to flower in the educational garden, without one penny-worth of honey to show for it. And then—though I feel how degrading it is to allude to so vulgar a matter—how high ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn |
