"Magpie" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Moreham Mains. But, be that as it may, the heart of the man and the fancy of the poet are the two grand considerations for which I live: if miry ridges and dirty dunghills are to engross the best part of the functions of my soul immortal, I had better been a rook or a magpie at once, and then I should not have been plagued with any ideas superior to breaking of clods and picking up grubs; not to mention barn-door cocks or mallards, creatures with which I could almost exchange lives at any time. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... talkative again like a magpie, that amiable young man, and all because his wretched painting was to be preserved for some time. O impetuous, O happy youth! Here I could not restrain myself from a little jest for the purpose of teaching a lesson to the self-confident ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... with my team and my dray too, Wid a whip like a flail and such gaiters, Ohone! But the bullocks, as they eyed me, they seemed for to say too, “You may do your best, Paddy, we’re blest if we go.” “Gee whoa! Redman! come hither, Damper! Hoot, Magpie! Gee, ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... pheasants and partridges in abundance, and snipe and wild-fowl resorted to the river in winter. Thither also, at all seasons, repaired the stately heron, to devour the finny race; and thither came, on like errand, the splendidly-plumed kingfisher. The magpie chattered, the jay screamed and flew deeper into the woods as the horsemen approached, and the shy bittern hid herself amid the rushes. Occasionally, too, was heard the deep ominous croaking of ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... done, Mr. Dean," was the response of the master; and they exchanged bows as the dean turned into the deanery. "She's three parts a fool, is that Lady Augusta," muttered the master to the cloister-flags as he strode over them. "Chattering magpie!" ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... 'tis boldness gains the day. When you come back, come to my place, d'ye hear? There'll be drinking going on three days at home; there'll be some necks broken, I can tell you; my wife's a devil of a woman; our yard's on the side of a precipice.... Ay, magpie, have a good time till your tail gets pinched.' And with a sharp whistle, Efrem plunged ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... me. She was not at home, but her little niece, who lives with her, a child of four years old, said that Aunt Mary would be in directly, and asked me to walk into the parlour. I did so, and the little thing stood by my side chattering away like a magpie. In reply to my questions as to whether she liked to live with her aunt, what she amused herself with, &c., &c., she entered into a long account of her various playthings, and ended by saying that ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... Fr. pie, Lat. pica, with the comestible pie is uncertain, but it seems likely that the magpie's habit of collecting miscellaneous trifles caused its name to be given to a dish of uncertain constituents. It is a curious coincidence that the obsolete chuet or chewet meant both a round pie and a jackdaw.[30] It is uncertain in which of the two senses Prince ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... smooth, white road they sped, rejoicing in the clear beauty of the day and in the freedom with which they flew through space. Myrtle had chosen to sit in the back seat, and lolled happily among rugs and wraps, keeping a keen eye out on the road ahead and chattering away like a magpie to Leslie, telling her what a darling she was—she pronounced it "dolling"—and how this ride was just the one thing she needed to recuperate from her violent study of the night before, incident to an examination ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... knew all the people: the old cobbler, who sat next her, and chattered all day long like a magpie; the tinker, who had come up many a summer night to drink a-glass with Antoine; the Cheap John, who cheated everybody else, but who had always given her a toy or a trinket at every Fete Dieu all the summers she had known; the little old woman, sour as a crab, who sold rosaries and ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... the wind was fair and strong from the southeast. The chaloupe ran swiftly along the coast past the broad mouth of the River Saint-Jean, with its cluster of white cottages past the hill-encircled bay of the River Magpie, with its big fish-houses past the fire-swept cliffs of Riviere-au-Tonnerre, and the turbulent, rocky shores of the Sheldrake: past the silver cascade of the Riviere-aux-Graines, and the mist of the hidden fall of the Riviere Manitou: past the ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... Bucknor had not heard her say it nor had he heard his sister's cruel answer, as he had come into the hall the moment afterward. Now he was plainly bored, but trying to conceal it. The girl was chattering like a magpie. Suddenly Jeff looked up ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... same device before producing a single coin from his store; and that he endured unheard-of agonies in crawling out of bed alone, and taking it from that unlucky box. In effect, we presently heard him uttering suppressed groans of the most dismal nature, as this magpie proceeding racked him in every joint; but while Peggotty's eyes were full of compassion for him, she said his generous impulse would do him good, and it was better not to check it. So he groaned on, until he had got into bed again, suffering, I have no doubt, a martyrdom; and then called us in, pretending ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Pope confessed his own pain by his anger; but he gave no pain to those who had provoked him. He was able to hurt none but himself; by transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own magpie, who from his cage calls cuckold at ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... nature that on the morrow Pierrette rose light and joyous as a lark, as radiant and as gay. Such a change could not escape the vigilant eye of her cousin Sylvie, who, this time, instead of scolding her, set about watching her with the scrutiny of a magpie. "What reason is there for such happiness?" was a thought of jealousy, not of tyranny. If the colonel had not been in Sylvie's mind she would have said to Pierrette as formerly, "Pierrette, you are very noise, and very regardless of what you have often been told." But now the old maid resolved ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... sentence—He doffed his cap to every woman, high or low, he caught sight of, and with eagle eye discerned her best feature, and complimented her on it in his native tongue, well adapted to such matters; and at each carrion crow or magpie, down came his crossbow, and he would go a furlong off the road to circumvent it; and indeed he did shoot one old crow with laudable neatness and despatch, and carried it to the nearest hen-roost, and there slipped in and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... feet of the little lady. Trembling with joy, and with heart fluttering more than the bridge of wings, she crossed the River of Heaven, and was in the arms of her husband. This she did every year. The lover-husband stayed on his side of the river, and the wife came to him on the magpie bridge, save on the sad occasion when it rained. So every year the people hope for clear weather, and the happy festival is celebrated alike by old ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... space after it cometh to full maturity, and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth feathers, and groweth to a fowl, bigger than a mallard, and lesser than a goose; having black legs, and a bill or beak, and feathers black and white, spotted in such manner as our magpie, called in some places a Pie-Annet, which the people of Lancashire call by no other name than a tree-goose; which place aforesaid, and all those parts adjacent, do so much abound therewith, that one of the best may be bought for threepence. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... song for the thousandth time, the boy rode over the place. He put his hands up to his mouth, as a pipe, and called: "The magpie will get them. The ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... was a very old inn bearing the name The Magpie and Stump. It was a quaint old structure, and the court-leet and court-baron held sittings in it. In 1886 it was destroyed by a fire, and is now replaced by a very modern structure of the same name. Further on there are immense red-brick ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... cathedral, where were crowned all but six of the kings of France, and where the stained-glass windows, with those in the cathedrals of Chartres and Burgos, Spain, are the most beautiful in all the world. Children know Rheims through the wicked magpie which the archbishop excommunicated, and to their elders, if they are rich, Rheims is the place from which comes all ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... week-ends now; it was too slow a journey to make every morning and evening. She stayed during the week at a hotel called the Red House, in Magpie Alley, off Bouverie Street. It was a hotel kept by revolutionary souls exclusively for revolutionary souls. Gerda, who had every right there, had gained admittance through friends of hers who lodged there. Every evening ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... But the Herr Mayor must have proof of that. Now, could Jacob shoot a feather out of the tail of the magpie ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... the level brown earth recently harrowed or rolled. On such a surface birds are visible at a distance; but when the blades of the corn begin to reach any height such as alight are concealed. In many districts of the country that might be called wild and lonely, the magpie is almost extinct. Once now and then a pair may be observed, and those who know their haunts can, of course, find them, but to a visitor passing through, there seems none. But here, so near the metropolis, the magpies are common, and during an hour's ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... in his face made Polly feel a little guilty, so she fell to grating nutmeg, with a vigor which made red cheeks the most natural thing in life. Maud, the traitor, sat demurely at work, looking very like what Tom had called her, a magpie with mischief in its head. Polly felt a change in the atmosphere, but merely thought Tom was tired, so she graciously dismissed him with a stick of cinnamon, as she had nothing else just then to lay ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... deponent, he, this deponent, did again distinguish himself, and that the cheering at that time, accompanied with clapping of hands and stamping of feet, was in this deponent's case thundering and awful. And this deponent further saith, that his white-and-black or magpie waistcoat, did create a strong sensation, and that during the hours of promenading, this deponent heard from persons surrounding him such exclamations as, "What is it! Is it a waistcoat? No, it's a ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... peaceful one, except on Fridays, when Mrs. Burton received seventy bosom and particular friends, and talked to them at the top of her voice in faulty German, Italian, which she spoke fluently, or slangy English. [277] In the insipid conversation of this "magpie sanhedrin," "these hen parties," as he called them, Burton did not join, but went on with his work as if no one was present. Indeed, far from complaining, he remarked philosophically that if the rooms had been lower ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... also let by the Government to excavate a tank of 15,000 yards, to a man named Collins. He quickly commenced operations with his plant at Magpie Gully, about half-a-mile from the town. When he had made a hole of about 12 feet deep, a very heavy thunderstorm filled the excavation with water. Previously, he had to cart his water nearly three miles, ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... The magpie, lighting on the stock, Stood chattering with incessant din: And with her beak gave many a knock, To rouse and ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... in the saddle for eight hours and it is enchanting to rest in this peaceful, aged temple. Outside children are shouting and laughing but all is quiet here save for the drip of water in the well, and the chatter of a magpie on the pine tree. Today we made the stage in one long march and now we can rest and browse among our books or wander with a gun ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... in such order as not to produce a single German sentence. He doffed his cap to every woman, high or low, he caught sight of, and complimented her in his native tongue, well adapted to such matters; and at each carrion crow or magpie down came his crossbow, and he would go a furlong off the road to circumvent it; and indeed he did shoot one old crow with laudable neatness, and carried it to the nearest hen-roost, and there slipped in and sat it upon a nest. "The good-wife will say, 'Alack, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... the village clock, The dew is heavy, the air is cool— A mist goes up from the glassy pool, Through the dim field ranges a phantom flock: No sound is heard but the magpie's mock. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... non-migratory birds are really, for the most part, strangers acclimatized by long sojourn. Some of them—the turtledove, the magpie, the kingfisher, the partridge, and the sparrow-may be classed with our European species, while others betray their equatorial origin in the brightness of their colours. White and black ibises, red flamingoes, pelicans, and cormorants ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the king: only a little goose of a boy," returned the magpie loftily. "And I'm here not to explain things, only to show them. Shall I show ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... reddish clay, to the plateau or tableland at the top. Right up on the top, well behind our front line and close to one of our communication trenches, there is a good big hawthorn bush, in which a magpie has built her nest. This bush, which is strangely beautiful in the spring, has given to the plateau the name of the ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... him. He was able to hurt none but himself; by transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he destroyed its efficacy; for by showing that what he had said of one he was ready to say of another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own magpie, who, from his cage, calls cuckold at ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... laugh at," said Lubin, nodding his head. "A magpie bodes ill-luck. That's well known, that is. So you just keep your eye open, that's all I've got to say. It's a warning, you see. Did ye never ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... and with the mounting sun the silence has become complete save when it is broken by the heavy, quick flap of the wood-pigeon or the remonstrance of a surprised magpie. Service is just beginning all over England in churches and the chapels belonging to a hundred sects. In the village two miles away the Salvation Army drum is beating, but it cannot penetrate these recesses. Stay! a faint vibration from it comes over the hill, but now it ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... not so much awakening as turning over in its bed. Pallid men rushed by, pinching together their coat-collars; a great swarm of tired, magpie girls from a department-store crowded along with shrieks of strident laughter, three to an umbrella; a squad of marching policemen passed, already ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... thousand more? Hoards, not like theirs whose volumes rest Like treasures in the Franch'mont chest, While gripple owners still refuse To others what they cannot use: Give them the priest's whole century, They shall not spell you letters three; Their pleasure in the books the same The magpie takes in pilfer'd gem. Thy volumes, open as thy heart, Delight, amusement, science, art, To every ear and eye impart; Yet who of all who thus employ them, Can, like their ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... beamed with happiness; he, the silent man, chattered like a magpie, gazed admiringly at his Frantz and remarked upon his growth. The pupil of the Ecole Centrale had had a fine physique when he went away, but his features had acquired greater firmness, his shoulders were broader, and it ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Miss Wardle's, with headlong pursuit in other chaises and four; nor are special licenses issued at a moment's notice to help clandestine marriages. There is now no frequenting of taverns and "free and easies" by gentlemen, at the "Magpie and Stump" and such places, nor do persons of means take up their residence at houses like the "George and Vulture" in the City. No galleried inns (though one still lingers on in Holborn), are there, at which travellers put up: there were then nearly a dozen, in the Borough and elsewhere. There ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... said when no answer came, "I cannot understand what sadness can be found in our topic, nor what can burden your mind, but one thing I can see, that today you all are like a herd of thoughtless sheep with whom nothing can be done. Kaetheli, you magpie, can you stop a moment and listen to what I am saying? You all are going home. I have had enough, and everyone—do you understand?—everyone takes home some home-work for punishment. As you go out, come to my desk, one ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... the branch of a tree," called another, "and it rocks like a child's cradle. Come and build beside it," but the magpie said "No." ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... magpies appeared to be debating whether to continue their work or move elsewhere. One would hop down to the place where the shell had hit and, cocking his head this way and that, would let loose a flow of magpie talk that would bring his mate to him and then they would both investigate, flying to the shattered place, clinging to the bark and picking out splinters and pieces of wood. Then they would go up aloft and consult ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... begun, they turned in to the Vicus Patricius, and soon found themselves before the dwelling of Aulus. A young and sturdy "janitor" opened the door leading to the ostium, over which a magpie confined in a cage greeted them ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... replied Nancy, mimicking the Irishman, "and I'll be as silent as a magpie, any how. And, Mr Fitzpatrick, you'll just be plased to keep your two eyes upon your prisoner, and not be staring at me, following me up and down, as you do, ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... clerk's French as she is spoke given as well as that of M. le Duc? And how much more telling it would have been had M. le Duc been served well and faithfully by a clerk like Perker's Mr. Lowten, fresh, very fresh, from a carouse at the "Magpie and Stump," or even by one of Messrs. Dodson and Fog's young men who enjoyed themselves so much when "a twigging" of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... his ornithological properties were on the verge of going too far, they were quenched, dissolved, melted down, and neutralised in the barber; just as his bald head—otherwise, as the head of a shaved magpie—lost itself in a wig of curly black ringlets, parted on one side, and cut away almost to the crown, to indicate immense ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... disappointed man. Not only his associates but the members of the diplomatic corps were made to feel the sting of his resentment against overwhelming circumstances. Such references as that directed at the French Ambassador, M. Jules Jusserand, now dean of the diplomatic corps, whom he called "the magpie," cost him many friends. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... slave-girls, attracted by her screams, came to the rescue, threw a pail of water over him, and turned him out of doors. He, nothing discomfited, likened himself smilingly to Socrates conquered by Xantippe; and, philosophically yielding to circumstances, hopped about like a tame magpie for a couple of hours at the entrance of the alley, pouring forth a stream of light raillery on the passers-by, which several times endangered his personal safety; till at last Philammon, hurrying breathlessly home, rushed ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... them are like her, beautifully marked, with pink noses, and black ears, and just the right blackness and tanness on them; but one is very queer, great splotches of black on his nose and his hind quarters, and all the rest of him white. So they named him "Magpie," right off; but I haven't come to the names yet. He is not very pretty, but he looks very bright, and I shouldn't wonder if he was terribly clever, to make up for not being so handsome as the others. And ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... a treasure. She inquired who was the owner of this exquisite organ, and was informed that it was little Anne Arnould. The Princess sent for the child, who came readily, and was not in the least abashed by the presence of the great lady, but sang like a nightingale and chattered like a magpie. The wit and beauty of the girl charmed the Princess, and she threw a costly necklace about her throat. "Come, my lovely child," said she; "you sing like an angel, and you have more wit than an angel. Your fortune is made." As a result of the ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... days later, the visit came to an end. The next Sunday, Lois was at home again, 'chattering like a little magpie,' as her mother said, about everything she had seen and done. She had so much to think about, that even Meeting did not seem as long as usual, though she thought the walls looked plainer than ever, and the glass windows very empty, till the sight of them reminded her ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... air came to the magpie and asked her to teach them how to build nests. For the magpie is the cleverest bird of all at building nests. So she put all the birds round her and began to show them how to do it. First of all she took some mud and made a sort of round ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Alora's disappearance, but they took Josie in to dinner, realizing it would be impossible to get her to talk seriously or to listen to them until she was quite ready to do so. And during the meal Josie chattered away like a magpie on all sorts of subjects except that which weighed most heavily on their minds, and the little thing was so bright and entertaining that they were encouraged to dine more heartily than they ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... eagle, through the air a queen, And one far different, I ween, In temper, language, thought, and mien,— The magpie,—once a prairie cross'd. The by-path where they met was drear, And Madge gave up herself for lost; But having dined on ample cheer, The eagle bade her, 'Never fear; You're welcome to my company; For if the king of gods can be Full oft in need of recreation,— Who rules ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... mimic such peculiarities as are most admired in others, she affects a loquacity peculiarly flippant and teazing because scandal, routs, finery, fans, china, lovers, lap-dogs, or squirrels, are her constant themes. Her amusements, like those of a magpie, are only hopping over the same spots, prying into the same corners, and devouring the same species of prey. The simple and beautiful delineations of nature, in her countenance, gestures and whole deportment, are habitually arranged, distorted, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... change it worked on his emotional tone. For he was compelled to think of her as a human being and be sorry because she was plainly cold and miserable; and it was his desire to look on women with a magpie thievish eye and no concern for their souls. Considering the part that most of them played in life it was unwarrantable of them to have souls. The dinner that one eats does not presume to have a soul. But the happy freedom of ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... say 'good-by' at all, then!" asked the child, a mischievous but winning young scamp of six or seven, who had as many tricks as a monkey or a magpie. In fact, in chattering and hiding things he was nearly as bad as a magpie, and the torment of his governess's life; yet she was fond of him. "Why do you bid us good-by, Mr. Roy? Why don't you stay always with ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... a wedding; or, when on a journey, to meet two magpies portends a wedding; three, a successful journey; four, unexpected good news; and five, that the person will soon be in company with the great. To kill a magpie, indicates or brings down some terrible misfortune. The Sparrow Hawk was sacred with the Egyptians, and the symbol of Osiris. The Yellow Hammer is superstitiously considered an agent diablerie. The Wheat-Ear is, in the Highlands, a detested ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... gong. My masseur disappeared. A stunted old Negress entered, dressed in the most tawdry tinsel. She was talkative as a magpie, but at first I did not understand a word in the interminable string she unwound, while she took first my hands, then my feet, and polished the nails with ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... weary perpetual dance through the forest. It seems very wonderful that birds, at other times solitary, should thus combine daily in large numbers, including in their bands scores of widely different species, and in size ranging from those no larger than a wren to others as big as a magpie. It is certainly very advantageous to them. As Belt remarks, they play into each other's hands; for while the larger creepers explore the trunks of big trees, others run over the branches and cling to the lesser twigs, so that every tree in their route, from its roots to the topmost foliage, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... rainy or windy weather, will be found to shorten and strengthen the guys of his web, lengthening the same when the storm is over. There is a popular superstition that it is unlucky for an angler to meet a single magpie, but two of the birds together are a good omen. The reason is that the birds foretell the coming of cold or stormy weather, and at such times, instead of searching for food for their young in pairs, one will always remain on the nest. Sea-gulls predict storms by assembling on the land, as they know ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a three-legged chicken has come out of the shell, or a magpie has come before you in your path? Or maybe ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... the most boyish-looking man in the force. He had a perfectly smooth face, ruddy complexion, and fair hair. He was of middle height, and was rather inclined to stoutness. He was so fond of talking that his comrades nicknamed him "Magpie." A colonist by birth, he could speak the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... from his hold, The Magpie swiftly flew; He seiz'd the spoon: ah! wretch so bold, And ...
— The Maid and the Magpie - An Interesting Tale Founded on Facts • Charles Moreton
... The boy was apparently oblivious of everything but the parrots up aloft, and it was not till after he had had his shot that he returned the young man's salutation. Then he took a seat astride the log and offered some commonplace information about a nest of joeys in a neighboring tree and a tame magpie that had escaped, and was teaching all the other magpies in Wilson's paddocks to whistle a jig and curse like a drover. But he got down to his point rather suddenly ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... that Simkin should in his blood ally. She was y-foster'd in a nunnery: For Simkin woulde no wife, as he said, But she were well y-nourish'd, and a maid, To saven his estate and yeomanry: And she was proud, and pert as is a pie*. *magpie A full fair sight it was to see them two; On holy days before her would he go With his tippet* y-bound about his head; *hood And she came after in a gite* of red, *gown And Simkin hadde hosen of the same. There durste no wight call her ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... by some awkward individual. She had been quite pleased with Mme. de Lorcy, her sympathy and her kindly services, and she had bestowed her most amiable attentions upon her. Mme. de Lorcy had done her best to respond to her advances; but she found herself revolted by this old magpie whose prattling never ceased, and whose chief delight was in the recital of the secret chronicles of every capital of Europe; Mme. de Lorcy, in fact, soon grew disgusted with her cosmopolitan gossip and her physiology; she found her cynical and evil-minded. In meeting her at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... fierce and pugnacious, driving such birds as approach its nest with great fury to a distance. The Welsh call it "pen y llwyn," the head or master of the coppice. He suffers no magpie, jay, or blackbird, to enter the garden where he haunts, and is, for the time, a good guard to the new-sown legumens. In general he is very successful in the defence of his family; but once I observed in my garden that several magpies came ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... the variety of their songs, must necessarily have excited the fetishtic fancy of primitive men. The worship of birds was therefore universal, in connection with that of trees, meteors, and waters. They were supposed to cause storms; and the eagle, the falcon, the magpie, and some other birds brought the celestial fire on the earth. The worship of birds is also common in America, and in Central America the bird voc is the messenger of Hurakau, the god of storms. The magic-doctors of the Cri, of the Arikari, and of the Indians of the Antilles, wore ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... before the trees; and the engineer saw a man sitting on the grass with Ruth Gardner and Imogene Martin, the three chatting and laughing gaily. When Bryant got a good look at the other visitor he gave vent to an ejaculation in which was blended surprise and contempt. "That magpie! Of all damn impudence!" For the cavalier so debonairly entertaining the young ladies was none other than ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... said Freddy. "I have always had such a longing to get folk to dance. But the funniest thing of all is this gun, for it brings down almost anything that I aim at, however far it may be off. Do you see that magpie yonder, sitting in the spruce fir? What will you give me if I hit ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... the hideous, unearthly cry of the laughing-jackass, called often the bushman's clock; the screaming cry of thousands of parrots flying here and there through the forest; there was the cackle of the wattle-bird, the clear notes of the magpie, and the confused chattering of thousands of leather-heads; while many other birds added their notes to the discordant chorus, and speedily banished sleep from the eyes of their hearers. The stockmen started to their feet, and hurried off to bring in the ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... magpie, and Maud fidgeted, till Tom proposed to put her under the big dish-cover, which produced such an explosion, that the young lady was borne screaming away, by the much-enduring Katy. It was altogether ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... feel QUITE well if he only felt my pulse," said Duchess, backing away from the magpie, who sidled up ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... Abe?" I asked. "Did you find a magpie's nest in your Jerusalem artichokes or half-crowns in the ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... days' moon was driving across the window; then stars, darkness, dawn and sunrise painted the open square; till rustling, and turning towards the light, she awoke. At the top of the window a magpie wiped his beak on a branch, bent head, and tail bent to balance him —then dropped like a mottled pebble out of sight. She sat up, drew the table prepared overnight towards her, lit the lamp for the chocolate —thinking of the dim Julien ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... you perceive that if we continue to hide ourselves as we do now the enemy will never guess where we are. But if you chatter like any magpie, of course ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... Copsychussaularis, Linn.. Called by the Europeans in Ceylon the "Magpie Robin." This is not to be confounded with the other popular favourite the "Indian Robin" (Thamnobia fulicata, Linn.), which is "never seen in the unfrequented jungle, but, like the coco-nut palm, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... massa—top, I shall see." And the fellow to whom I addressed myself stepped forward, and began to squint into the muzzle of one of the fieldpieces, slewing his head from side to side, with absurd gravity, like a magpie peeping into a marrow—bone. "Him most be load— no daylight come troo de touch—hole—take care make me try him." And without more ado he shook out the red embers from his pipe right on the touch—hole of the gun, when the fragment of a broken tube spun up in a small jet of flame, that ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... about him, that intrigued her, and an old man's look, that interested her, and then, beside this, an uncanny singleness, a quality of being by himself, not in contact with anybody else, that marked out an artist to her. He was a chatterer, a magpie, a maker of mischievous word-jokes, that were sometimes very clever, but which often were not. And she could see in his brown, gnome's eyes, the black look of inorganic misery, which lay behind ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... happened below by bending its head attentively, now on one side then on the other. It evidently took intelligent interest in our doings. My men had gone out to do their cooking. The bird watched them with the greatest attention—with jerky movements not unlike those of a magpie. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... bolts of the thunder Smote the statue of bronze, and hurled in wrath from its left hand Down on the pavement below the clattering scales of the balance, And in the hollow thereof was found the nest of a magpie, Into whose clay-built walls the necklace of pearls was inwoven." Silenced, but not convinced, when the story was ended, the blacksmith Stood like a man who fain would speak, but findeth no language; All his thoughts were congealed into lines on his face, as the vapors ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... ear he glanced round at them and then relapsed into his former inattentive position. Now, however, though apparently absorbed in his own thoughts, he was listening to every word they said, for he had caught the name of The Magpie Reef, a quartz mine, which had lately been floated on the market, the shares of which had run up to a pound, and then, as bad reports were circulated about it, dropped suddenly to four shillings. Vandeloup recognised one as Barraclough, a well-known stockbroker, but the other was a dark, wiry-looking ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... condemns without a jury. At once the torrent of her words Alarmed cat, monkey, dogs, and birds: All join their forces to confound her; Puss spits, the monkey chatters round her; 30 The yelping cur her heels assaults; The magpie blabs out all her faults; Poll, in the uproar, from his cage, With this rebuke out-screamed her rage: 'A parrot is for talking prized, But prattling women are despised. She who attacks another's honour, Draws every living thing upon ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... his ribs; but they sprang all right under the vet's thumb. Tell me, why does our baronial friend look so vinegary? He chattered like a magpie in the police bureau, or whatever it is called, ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... summit the brass cover to the object end of my spy-glass; and as it will probably remain there undisturbed by Indians, it will furnish matter of speculation to some future traveler. In our excursions about the island, we did not meet with any kind of animal; a magpie, and another larger bird, probably attracted by the smoke of our fire, paid us a visit from the shore, and were the only living things seen during our stay. The rock constituting the cliffs along the shore where we were ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... punts playing bridge, moored at our first camping-place below Kingston Weir, disquieting rumours reached us in the form of excited questions from the occupants of passing craft. And now, as we rose from the dinner-table at the Magpie, Sunbury, two days later, it seemed that ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... foot of the granite mountains, which we climbed this morning to take some barometrical heights; and here among the rocks was seen the first magpie. On our return, we saw one at the mouth of the Platte river. We left here one of our horses, which was unable to proceed farther. A few miles from the encampment we left the river, which makes a bend to the south, and traversing an undulating ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... wonderful there—bantams, speckled and top-knotted; Friesland hens, with their feathers all turned the wrong way; Guinea-fowls that flew and screamed, and dropped their pretty-spotted feathers; pouter pigeons, and a tame magpie; nay, a goat, and a wonderful dog, half mastiff, half bull-dog, ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... where the sun shines nearly every day Where the skies are ever blue. Where the folks are as happy as the day is long And there's lots of work to do. Where the soft winds blow and the gum trees grow As far as the eye can see, Where the magpie chaffs and the cuckoo-burra laughs Australia is the ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... personal names were derived from those of birds. In the {170} Hundred Rolls we find a "Richard Rikelot" in Huntingdonshire (vol. ii. p. 626.). I know not what has led to the supposition that this name denotes the magpie. It may possibly be traced to the same root as that of a cognate species, the cornix frugivora; Roeck, Germ., according to Gesner; Friesic, roek; Ang.-S. hroc, the rook: but I am at a loss to discover anything similar in old French to explain the occurrence of the termination, which ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... house of scent and soft carpets. The staircase was covered with pink silk, and in the recess on the first landing, or rather where the stairs paused, there was an aviary in which either hawks screeched or owls blinked; generally there was a magpie there, and the quaint bird now hopped to Frank's finger, casting a thievish look on his rings. The drawing-room was full of flowers. There was a grand piano, dark and bright; the skins of tigers Lord Seveley had shot carpeted the floor, ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... approved of this idea, and encouraged the children by every means in his power; so that, for more than three weeks, the beans went in regularly and the halfpence in Tuttu's store, which he kept like a magpie hidden away in a crack of the woodwork, ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... mirth and joy, Among the hills the Echoes play A never, never ending song To welcome in the May. The Magpie chatters with delight; ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... the immigrants cluster, chattering a magpie chorus in many tongues. The four-and-twenty blackbirds which were baked in a pie without impairment to the vocal cords have nothing on them. Most of the women were crying when they came aboard at Naples or Palermo or Gibraltar. Now they are all ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... MAGPIE (Corvus pica).—Pages might be filled with the merry mischief of this handsome creature. Perhaps the most observable characteristic of the three tame ones closely observed was their exclusive and ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... for the defence!" said the Swallow, quite delighted, as were all the other creatures, at the Magpie's accomplishment; "you must save the prisoner from ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... call it the magpie, but it is the piping crow of Australia. It is one of the earliest singers, and if we'd been here at daybreak I dare say we should have heard quite a ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... his dear little Excellency would see the bridge, that father built out of the old summer house; and the streamers, and the boat, and all that.—I only turned my head round for a moment, to look after a magpie—crush! down went the bridge, with his little Excellency; and oh, how I was scared to see ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... we do now?" asked the magpie. "There's nothing much more to be done with his Majesty, except a funeral. Suppose we float up again at a safe distance and see it all. It will be such fun. There will be a great row in the city and I wonder who we shall ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... day; the same being equally true of "The Leather Bottle" at Cobham. The old "White Hart" in the Borough High Street, the scene of the first meeting of Mr. Pickwick and Weller, was demolished in 1889. Not so the "Magpie and Stump,"—that referred to in "Pickwick" as being in the vicinity of the Clare Market, and "closely approximating to the back of the 'New Inn.'" This seems to have been of an imaginary character in nomenclature, at least, though it is like enough that some neighbourhood ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... bought an outing hat without strings, trimmed with fluffy white, she takes her work out under the trees in a basket, and has given up tying her head in a thin and a thick veil every time she drives out. If she could learn to sit comfortably back and lounge a trifle, and if a friendly magpie would only chance along and steal her stock of fronts, for a nest, so that she would be obliged to show her own lovely hair that shades like oxidized silver, the transformation would ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... dawning clung to each giant limb, Till the sun came up from ocean, red with the cold sea mist, And smote on the limestone ridges, and the shining tree-tops kissed; Then the fiery Scorpion vanished, the magpie's note was heard, And the wind in the she-oak wavered, and the honeysuckles stirred, The airy golden vapour rose from the river breast, The kingfisher came darting out of his crannied nest, And the bulrushes and reed-beds put ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... to the lady herself, my own countenance no doubt sufficiently expressive of the wonder which I felt, but there was little to be read in that quarter which could give me any clue to the mystery. Yet she chattered like a magpie; her conversation running on certain styles of dress, various purchases of silks, and satins, and other stuffs, which she had been buying—a budget of which, I afterward discovered, she had brought with her, in order to display to her ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... offered his friend Toline half his bed, and the little fellow accepted it. Lady Helena and Mary Grant withdrew to the wagon, and the others lay down in the tent, Paganel's merry peals still mingling with the low, sweet song of the wild magpie. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... resembling a small magpie, has a pretty but short note. There is not any bird in the country that can be said to sing. The ti-yong, or mino, a black bird with yellow gills, has the faculty of imitating human speech in greater perfection than any other of the feathered tribe. There ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... very interesting, consisting as it does of a strange mixture of hills and plains birds. Among the latter the most prominent are the grey-necked crow, the koel, the myna, the king-crow and the magpie-robin. In the spring ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... in her hand and laid her cheek against their downy breasts, the younger children following her movements in respectful silence. Between the bars of the rabbit hutch she thrust enough greenstuff to last the two little occupants for days; and everywhere she went she was accompanied by a legless magpie, which, in spite of its infirmity, hopped cheerily and quickly on its stumps. Laura had rescued it and reared it; it followed her like a dog; and she was only less devoted to it than she had been to a native bear which died ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... more than thirty; while the soldier, at thirty years of age, looked to be forty at the least. Both wore the red rosette that proclaimed them to be officers of the Legion of Honor. A few locks of hair, mingled white and black, like a magpie's wing, had strayed from beneath the Colonel's cap; while thick, fair curls clustered about the magistrate's temples. The Colonel was tall, spare, dried up, but muscular; the lines in his pale face told a tale of vehement ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... it beyont what he'd be druv to, if he wanted to get e'er a crop out of it at all, and keep things together in any fashion: he wasn't such a fool." Andy hesitated, as if on the brink of a painful theme, and resumed with an effort: "He's bought Magpie and the two two-year-olds off of Peter Martin. Chape enough he got them, too, though he had to give ten shillin's a head more for them than Martin ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... food, certainly to get possession of their feathers, which they use as ornaments. Those which frequent the woods, are crows and ravens, not at all different from our English ones, a blueish jay or magpie, common wrens, which are the only singing bird that we heard, the Canadian or migrating thrush, and a considerable number of brown eagles, with white heads and tails, which, though they seem principally to frequent the coast, come into the Sound in bad weather, and sometimes perch ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... between, or a few exquisite green and white flashes of the herb called Snow-on-the-Mountain. The inhabitants were jackrabbits, or American magpies in sharp black and white livery, forever trying to balance their huge tails against the wind, and yelling in low-magpie their opinion ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... on the platform then, as well as comfortably located in the audience. He must be asked to read, or sing, or fiddle, or do whatever he can. If not, he will feel he is being read at, or sung to, or fiddled for, and will go off to the Magpie and Stump, instead of bringing missus and the little ones to the "pa'son's readings." Let the Penny Reading teach us the truth—and how true it is—that we are all "working men." What matters it whether we work with head or with hand—with ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... ravens, jackdaws, canaries, magpies, and even parrots, have shown unmistakable signs of uneasiness and distress. The raven has croaked in a high-pitched, abnormal key; the jackdaw and canary have become silent and dejected, from time to time shivering; the magpie even has feigned death; the parrot has shrieked incessantly. Owls, too, are sure predictors of death, and may be heard hooting in the most doleful manner outside the house of anyone doomed ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... a roaring in the woods all night; The rain came heavily and fell in floods; But now the sun is rising calm and bright, The birds are singing in the distant woods; Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods, The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters, And all the air is filled with pleasant noise ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... more about it than this, for he had now been "on the road" between Roydon and London for more than a year. The carrier's cart started at eleven o'clock in the morning, and having distributed and received parcels on the way the driver put up his horses at an inn called "The Magpie and Stump," in a part of London named the Borough. So far it was all very well, and not at all hard work; but then came the return journey at night, which began just at the moment when a boy, after a good warm supper, naturally thinks of going to bed. This was trying, and at first ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... a leather tanner, whom Jo's baby magpie mistook for its parent, as he fed it at intervals every morning. A Czech in typhus cloths spent his days down in the disinfecting, operating and bathrooms. He had been an overseer in a factory and had added to his ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... was to be seen at the gate of the tribunal. Since then we let him go out no more, but he escaped us by the drains or by the skylights, so we stuffed up every opening with old rags and made all secure; then he drove short sticks into the wall and sprang from rung to rung like a magpie. Now we have stretched nets all round the court and we keep watch and ward. The old man's name is Philocleon,[29] 'tis the best name he could have, and the son is called Bdelycleon,[30] for he is a man very fit to cure an insolent ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... of their magpie chatter, but it was a proud moment. Alone, unaided, a stranger in a strange land, I had gained the attention of children while speaking in a foreign tongue. Oh, if I had only left the door open that Salemina ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... red-headed woodpecker, the Arkansas kingbird, and one will often see, and more often hear, the clear, strong notes of the Western meadowlark ringing over the hills and meadows. The wise, and rather murderous, magpie goes chattering about. Here and there the quiet bluebird is seen. The kingfisher is in his appointed place. Long-crested jays, Clarke's crows, and pigmy nuthatches are plentiful, and the wild note ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... like a magpie about the swell villas and places we could see here and there white against the dark trees, but I wasn't paying much attention, and at last he ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... of the jay much resembles that of the magpie, the same jaunty, uncertain style, so that at a distance from the flight alone it would be difficult to distinguish them, though in fact the magpie's longer tail and white and black colours always mark ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... old, dried-up Frenchwoman in a brown merino gown and a high-crowned muslin cap who hopped and chattered about the bed like a frightened magpie. ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... bang, which he always carried with him. In a short time it began to operate, so as to bereave him of the little sense he possessed, and his head was filled with ridiculous reveries. While he was musing, a magpie beginning to chatter from her nest in the tree, he fancied it was a human voice, and that some woman had asked to purchase his cow: upon which he said, "Reverend mother of Solomon, dost thou wish to buy my cow?" The bird croaked again. "Well," replied he," what wilt thou give ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... considerately divided her attention between the futile efforts of the amateur grave-digger and the flippant behavior of a black and white magpie, which was perched on the branch of a dead pine near by, derisively jerking its long tail. She wondered whether the magpie perhaps shared her astonishment, that an able-bodied son of Erin should not take more naturally to a spade. She had supposed that, ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... found for her to attend at the revels that night. The maids were already dressing themselves. Two of them were fairheaded, and four neither fair nor dark; but one was dark as night, and dressed all in black with a white coif, so that she resembled a magpie. Some were curling each other's hair and others tightening stay-laces with little wheels set in their companions' backs. Their bare shoulders were blue with the cold of the great room, and their dresses ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... her early that in her position—that of a young person spending, in framed and wired confinement, the life of a guinea-pig or a magpie—she should know a great many persons without their recognising the acquaintance. That made it an emotion the more lively—though singularly rare and always, even then, with opportunity still very much smothered—to see any one ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... with plain black covers; Nicholas peeped into it, and, behold, it was full of coloured pictures of birds. And such birds! In the garden, and in the lanes when he went for a walk, Nicholas came across a few birds, of which the largest were an occasional magpie or wood-pigeon; here were herons and bustards, kites, toucans, tiger-bitterns, brush turkeys, ibises, golden pheasants, a whole portrait gallery of undreamed-of creatures. And as he was admiring the colouring of ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... Cuthbert felt more like a light-hearted boy than ever he had done in his life before. His lively little companion, clinging to his arm and chattering like a magpie, effectually drove away all grave thoughts. The sun shone brightly in the steely-blue sky; the frost had made the streets absolutely clean and dry. Walking, even in the most trodden places, was easy and pleasant, and everybody seemed ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... drawers, and various apparatus, to induce systematic regulation, under the sanguine illusion that it would be of any possible assistance to Dinah in her arrangements. He might as well have provided them for a squirrel or a magpie. The more drawers and closets there were, the more hiding-holes could Dinah make for the accommodation of old rags, hair-combs, old shoes, ribbons, cast-off artificial flowers, and other articles of vertu, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... dry, man, dressed in grey and white, like a flint; with small twinkles in his eyes, as if something struck sparks out of them. The three natural kingdoms, indeed, had each a fanciful representative among this brotherhood of disputants; for Snitchey was like a magpie or raven (only not so sleek), and the Doctor had a streaked face like a winter-pippin, with here and there a dimple to express the peckings of the birds, and a very little bit of pigtail behind that ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... Like the Magpie, the Jay has considerable talent for mimicry, and in a state of domestication may be taught to articulate words like a Parrot. At certain times I have heard this bird utter a few notes resembling the tinkle of a bell, and which, if syllabled, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... does that chattering magpie tell such lies to a woman? Ah me! ah me! ah me! oh, doctor! doctor! what shall I do? what shall I do?" and poor Lady Scatcherd, fairly overcome by her sorrow, burst out crying like a ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... climb, and reaching the level ground above strolled along until they came opposite the tall tree out of which the magpie had flown. ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... he is in earnest. It was he who gave her this social triumph—he made her Queen of the Carnival. He even bought her dresses. It was that which caused her to send for me this afternoon. Heaven knows I was in no mood to listen, but she chattered like a magpie. As if ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... verbosity &c (diffuseness) 573; gift of the gab &c (eloquence) 582. talker; chatterer, chatterbox; babbler &c v.; rattle; ranter; sermonizer, proser^, driveler; blatherskite [U.S.]; gossip &c (converse) 588; magpie, jay, parrot, poll, Babel; moulin a paroles [Fr.]. V. be loquacious &c adj.; talk glibly, pour forth, patter; prate, palaver, prose, chatter, prattle, clack, jabber, jaw; blather, blatter^, blether^; rattle, rattle on; twaddle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... irksome monotony of her appeal. I loved Kitty Mannering; honestly, heartily loved her, and with my love for her grew my hatred for Agnes. In August Kitty and I were engaged. The next day I met those accursed "magpie" jhampanies at the back of Jakko, and, moved by some passing sentiment of pity, stopped to tell Mrs. Wessington everything. She knew ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... with Johnson, Goldsmith became the object of Boswell's magpie curiosity; and to Boswell's Life of Johnson we are indebted for many of the details of Goldsmith's life,—his homeliness, his awkward ways, his drolleries and absurdities, which made him alternately the butt and the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... it behoved her to prepare for speech before the dread verdict was given, which she did in a manner astonishing to her companions. Of French grammar she had the poorest opinion, but she was sharp as a magpie to pick up the phrases of others and store them for her own use. The morning after Mademoiselle had suffered from a headache, Pixie's handkerchief was soaked with offerings of eau-de-Cologne, from the various girls to whom she had repeated ejaculations of distress; she ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... from the very cut and nature of them, they should be worn so still, or abandoned altogether. We quarrel with them, not on the score of form so much as on that of inutility and undue contrast of colour. If the thing be dark, and the stocking light, an effect of cleanliness is attained; but the magpie appearance immediately prevails. The case is the same as that of a white waistcoat and a black coat; too glaring, trop prononce. If they are both of the same colour, then the tight and continuous pantaloon is far more reasonable and becoming, and, for use, any thing else is better—experto ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... barber at Rome, could imitate to a nicety almost every word it heard. Some trumpets happened one day to be sounded before the shop, and for a day or two afterwards the magpie was quite mute, and seemed pensive and melancholy. All who knew it were greatly surprised at its silence; and it was supposed that the sound of the trumpets had so stunned it, as to deprive it at once of both voice and hearing. It soon ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... State bethink them of their inaccessible canyons. The saucy jay abandons the settlements where he has been so familiar as to dispute with the dogs for their food, and sets up his homestead in a tall pine-tree on a slope which to look at is to grow dizzy; the magpie, boldest of birds, steals away to some secure retreat; the meadow-lark makes her nest in the monotonous mesa, where it is as well hidden as a bobolink's nest in ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... one magpie alone bodes bad luck; two, good luck; three, a "berrin;" four, a wedding. This is our version of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... the Inns as Dickens knew them, let us accompany Mr. Pickwick to the Magpie and Stump in search of Mr. ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... already gone to search for him about the island, which is three leagues distant from the main land. Farther west are other islands; among them one six leagues in length, called by the savages Manthane,[83] south of which there are among the islands several good harbors for vessels. From the Magpie Islands we proceeded to a river on the main land called the river of the Etechemins,[84] a tribe of savages so called in their country. We passed by so many islands that we could not ascertain their number, which were very fine. Some were two leagues in extent, others three, others ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... But we've watched you. We know how you went to the Babylonian. We know your guilt. And now the good gods have stricken you mad and delivered you to justice." She waved her bony fists in the prostrate man's face. "Run, Phormio! don't stand gaping like a magpie. Run, I say—" ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... was kept awake most of the night by a bird in a tree near the window which kept saying, "Whip-poor-will" over and over again at intervals. I understand that's its name, and it is hated by the ranchers. No, it is not the bright little black and white bird like a small magpie which pecks around, ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... covered with anchors and arrows and letters, tattooed in with gunpowder like a sailor-boy's, and a stink fit to knock you down coming out. 'Twas all the Doctor could do to stand his ground, and East and I, who were looking in under his arms, held our noses tight. The old magpie was standing on the window-sill, all his feathers drooping, and looking disgusted ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... is the culture, as you call it, that you want; but if that were really it, you would not go. You would find it here. The greatest minds that the world has ever known you may have right here in your home, on your library table. And you may listen to their thoughts without being disturbed by the magpie chatterings of vain and shallow pretenders. You are attracted by the pretentious forms and manners of that life; you think that because a certain class of people, who have nothing else to do, talk a certain jargon, and profess to follow certain teachers—who, nine times out of ten, are charlatans ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... had made in the bushes a bird flying out from that window, and following the creature till she alighted in her nest he climbed the tree and searched that nest. It was encrusted with jewels. The bird was a magpie and had followed its usual habits, but—the chain was not there, nor one or two other articles of decided value. Nor were they ever found. The bird bore the blame; the objects missing were all heavy and might have been dropped in its flight, ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Janice said, rising. "I promised Lottie a ride in my car. I'll meet her before she comes in. I suppose she is as inquisitive as a magpie?" ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... none the less, her eyes large and wakeful, her lips as if ready for an excited smile. She still felt all the grateful solemnity of that sadness, which was after all wonderfully beautiful. The mists on the meadow became transparent, the sky turned almost white, a magpie began to chatter in the thicket, and a crow flew through the glassy twilight, very black and heavy. A dream-world, and Billy felt that surrender which we have in dreams, for dreams give us all possible miracles even without our aid. Then came color, a string of rose-red cloudlets ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... way we saw the usual birds—the beautiful little green parrots, the magpie, and some others; and also the slender native bird of modest plumage and the eternally-forgettable name—the bird that is the smartest among birds, and can give a parrot 30 to 1 in the game and then talk him to death. I cannot recall that bird's name. I think it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sloes, and dew-berries, and hazel-nuts "brown as the squirrel whose teeth crack 'em," but caught for her the squirrel itself. He brought her a whole litter of dormice, and tamed for her diversion a young magpie, whose first effort ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... cases. Some expedition had answered when the resolution to undertake it was resolved on under an ancient tree, and accordingly that tree became lucky and sacred. Another expedition failed when a magpie crossed its path, and a magpie was said to be unlucky. A serpent crossed the path of another expedition, and it had a marvellous victory, and accordingly the serpent became a sign of great luck (and what a savage cannot distinguish from it—a ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... it was all over with him. But he wasn't the man to be thinking that way long. So he thought he'd better make the best he could of it, and he took the skin off the ox and started with it to the town to sell it. And as he was going along a magpie perched on the skin and began pecking at it, and all the time chattering, for it had been taught to talk. With that Donald put round his hand and caught the magpie and held it under ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... sees her way through the darkness, and proceeds on her road to Vannes. On awakening next morning, Comorre finds his wife fled, and pursues her on horseback. The poor fugitive, seeing her ring turn black, turned off the road and hid herself till night in the cabin of a shepherd, where was only an old magpie in a cage at the door. Comorre, who had given up the pursuit, was returning home that road, when he heard the magpie trying to imitate her complaints, and calling out "Poor Triphyna!" he therefore knew his wife had passed ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser |
