"Oyster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that Dartrey Fenellan had departed. It was her sunshine departed. But she went through her task of conversing amiably. Colney, for a wonder, consented to be useful in assisting Fenellan to relate stories of French Cooks; which were, like the Royal Hanoverian oyster, of an age for offering acceptable flavour to English hearers. Nesta drew her mother's attention to Priscilla Graves and Skepsey; the latter bending head and assenting. Nataly spoke of the charm of Priscilla's voice that day, in her duet with the Rev. Septimus. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... His elegant companions thought him mad as they listened to the nonsensical ideas aroused by wine, the sight of the shell fish and the recollection of certain fragmentary reading in his youth. "We're going to eat our grandfathers like the merry cannibals that we are." The oyster is one of the primitive manifestations of life on the planet—one of the earlier forms of organic matter, still resting, uncertain and aimless in its evolution in the immensity of the waters. The sympathetic and slandered monkey only has the importance of a first ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... please remember me in the solemn league and covenant of friendship to Mrs. Lewis Hay. I am a wretch for not writing her; but I am so hackneyed with self-accusation in that way, that my conscience lies in my bosom with scarce the sensibility of an oyster in its shell. Where is Lady M'Kenzie? wherever she is, God bless her! I likewise beg leave to trouble you with compliments to Mr. Wm. Hamilton; Mrs. Hamilton and family; and Mrs. Chalmers, when you are in that country. Should you meet ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... that I should run every hazard for those who have put so much trust in me." My old boatman took me over safely, and left me on the island; but in returning by himself, the poor fellow's little boat was caught by a wave, and it skimmed to the bottom like a slate or an oyster-shell that is thrown obliquely into the water. A general exclamation was uttered from the shore; but, in a few minutes, the boatman was seen sitting upon a row of piles in the middle of the river, wringing his long ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... twelve o'clock we had a hot lunch ready that looked like a banquet on a Mississippi River steamboat. We spread it on the tops of two or three big boxes, opened two quarts of the red wine, set the olives and a canned oyster cocktail and a ready-made Martini by the colonel's plate, and called ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... biting insects the five which we shall discuss are: (1) codling moth, (2) apple maggot, (3) bud moth, (4) cigar case bearer, (5) curculio. The four sucking insects discussed are: (6) San Jose scale, (7) oyster shell scale, (8) blister mite, and (9) aphis or ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... wickedness had a country and was too patriotic to travel! You are an olive-gray, Maurice. Besides, you could as truthfully accuse an oyster of light behavior." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... from the stone formed in the bowels of the earth, by the intimate combination and close coherence of similar and analogous particles, to the sun, that vast reservoir of igneous particles, which sheds torrents of light over the firmament; from the benumbed oyster, to the thoughtful and active man; we see an uninterrupted progression, a perpetual chain of motion and combination; from which is produced, beings that only differ from each other by the variety of their elementary matter—by the numerous combinations of these elements, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... bar-room presented a Sabbath scene of repose,—stage-folk lounging in chairs half asleep, smoking cigars, generally with clean linen and other niceties of apparel, to mark the day. The doors and blinds of an oyster and refreshment shop across the street were closed, but I saw people enter it. There were two owls in a back court, visible through a window of the bar-room,—speckled gray, with dark-blue eyes,—the queerest-looking birds that exist,—so solemn ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... supper, and the moon was up before it ended; for everything "tasted so good" the hearty young appetites sharpened by sea air were hard to satisfy. When the last cunner had vanished and nothing but olives and oyster crackers remained, the party settled on a sloping rock out of range of the fire, and reposed for a brief period to recover from the exertions of the feast, having, like the heroes in the old story, "eaten mightily for the ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... living in a domestic museum. Then, presto! friends had begun to congratulate them on the uniqueness of their establishment, and to express affection for it. It had become a favorite resort for many modern spirits—artists, literary men, musicians, self-supporting women—and Pauline's oyster suppers, cooked in her grandmother's blazer, were still a ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... fireflies, flashed in their eyes like balls of burnished gold and emerald; while great white tassels, swinging from every tree in the breeze which swept the glade, tossed in their faces a fragrant snow of blossoms and glittering drops of perfumed dew.' It is thus that, like the oyster that conceals its scar beneath a pearl, Nature heals her wounds with ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... smoking and talking with Paul Lathrop in the hook-littered sitting-room of his cottage. One was a young journalist, Roger Blaydes, whose thin, close-shaven face wore the knowing fool's look of one to whom the world's his oyster, and all the bricks for opening it familiar. The other was a god-like creature, a poet by profession, with long lantern-jaws, grey eyes deeply set, and a mass of curly black hair, from which the face with its pallor ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as dumb as an oyster, and do yer biddin' in a jiffy," said Pat, backing out of the room, and glad to escape from one whose threatening aspect seemed to forebode evil to any one ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... us, my son," stated Brannan. "They've opened an oyster palace down the street, and ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... 1795,[65] speaking of a contemporary member of the cabinet, he says, "The fact is that he has generally given his principles to the one party and his practice to the other, the oyster to one, and the shell to the other. Unfortunately, the shell was generally the lot of his friends, the French and Republicans, and the oyster of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... at least— Husband's business took him there, and they had went to live East— Then a Spanish macker'l, or a soft-shell crab on toast, Or a broiled live lobster! Well, sir, I don't want to seem to boast, But I don't believe you could have got in the whole of New York Any such an oyster fry or ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... Oyster looked at him, But never a word he said; The eldest Oyster winked his eye, And shook his heavy head— Meaning to say he did not choose To leave the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... near here, Hal, where a fellow can get an oyster fry," Benson explained, returning to his chum. "With that information came the discovery that I have an appetite. Come ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... tinge of the pride of those of his ancestors who looked down upon commerce, though not upon oppression, or even on robbery. But the true man will change to nobility even the instincts derived from strains of inferior moral development in his race—as the oyster makes, they say, of the sand-grain ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... general composition as fish. In clams there is a larger amount of dry matter than in oysters, which contain about 12 per cent, half of which is protein. When placed in fresh water, the oyster increases in size and undergoes the process known as "fattening." Oftentimes impure water is used for this purpose, which makes the eating of raw oysters a questionable practice from a sanitary point of view, as the water in which they are floated often contains disease-producing germs, as typhoid. ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... days in shallow water where they may plump up or fatten, and they have found by experience that this fattening occurs more rapidly in dirty water. If the oysters are fattened in sewage-polluted water, the typhoid germs get inside the shell in the oyster liquor and are thus transmitted to those persons ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... to Casey's, and found a long table set, and a steaming big oyster supper ready for them; and that explained the Thread Man's conference with Mrs. Casey. He took the head of the table, with his back to the wall, and placed Jimmy on his right and Dannie on his left. Mrs. Casey had furnished soap and towels, and at least part of the Boston man's ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Animal Kingdom,—without recalling to my readers a Polyp or a Jelly-Fish, a Sea-Urchin or a Star-Fish. Neither can I present the structural elements of the Mollusk plan, without reminding them of an Oyster or a Clam, a Snail or a Cuttle-Fish,—or of the Articulate plan, without calling up at once the form of a Worm, a Lobster, or an Insect,—or of the Vertebrate plan, without giving it the special character of Fish, Reptile, Bird, or Mammal. Yet I insist that all living beings are but the different ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... connection with the killing of his dog, it had not been his design to accept any more retainers for a long time to come. That occurrence had lifted him, as by the ears, from the proletariat into the capitalistic leisure class; and the map of the world had become but the portrait of his oyster. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... like reasons were not to be trusted. The general belief was very slow. There were frowzy fields, and cow-houses, and dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches, and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door of the Railway. Little tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and of lobster shells in the lobster season, and of broken crockery and faded cabbage leaves in all seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts, and rails, and old cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean houses, and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... oysters served in the shell, and my companion, assuming that I had never seen an oyster [ignorant that our fathers ate oysters thousands of years before America was heard of and when the Anglo-Saxon was living in a cave], in a confidential and engaging whisper remarked, "This, your 'Highness,' ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... of vinegar, and is ready to crawl under the canvas of a circus or repeat a hundred verses of the New Testament in Sunday School. He knows where every melon patch in the neighborhood is located, and at what hours the dog is chained up. He will tie an oyster can to a dog's tail to give the dog exercise, or will fight at the drop of the hat to protect the smaller boy or a school girl. He gets in his work everywhere there is a fair prospect of fun, and his heart is easily touched by an appeal in ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... Dorothy, encouragingly, and Mount did so, dumb as a Matanzas oyster and crimson as a boiled sea-crab. Then, doubtless, deeming that gentility required some polite observation, he spoke in a high-pitched voice of the balmy weather and the sweet profusion of birds and flowers, when there was more like to be a "sweet profusion" of Indians; and I nigh ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Bean Soup Rye Rolls Corn and Oyster Fritters Baked Potato Scalloped Tomato Apple and Celery Salad Graham Pudding with ...
— Foods That Will Win The War And How To Cook Them (1918) • C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss
... condition of wickedness to-day. Man has progressed since your time, my dear grandma, and the modern improvements in the science of crime are no more attributable to you than the invention of the telephone or the oyster cocktail is attributable ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... determined that Arthur's Regiment should serve, and among the brave men who rode in its ranks no heart beat higher or bosom burned with greater military ardor at the prospect of glory now opening before them, than that of Arthur Carlton, for with him promotion was the oyster to be eagerly sought for, but which could only be opened by the sword, and no service, however dangerous, must be shirked, in order to ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... weary we parted, and I endeavoured but in vain to have found Dr. Williams, of whom I shall have use in Trice's business, but I could not find him. So weary walked home; in my way bought a large kitchen knife and half dozen oyster knives. Thence to Mr. Holliard, who tells me that Mullins is dead of his leg cut off the other day, but most basely done. He tells me that there is no doubt but that all my slyme do come away in my water, and therefore no fear ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... sunbeam. Little Mara was the pearl of the old seaman's life, every finer particle of his nature came out in her concentrated and polished, and he often wondered at a creature so ethereal belonging to him—as if down on some shaggy sea-green rock an old pearl oyster should muse and marvel on the strange silvery mystery of beauty that was growing in the silence of ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... we share with everything that lives—with the oyster clinging to his rock, the whale ploughing through cold seas, and our monkey kinsman ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... if we had some oyster sauce to eat with them; as we haven't we must do without. They are capital, and they are not full of bones like the herrings. Now we will paddle on again. You leave that fish alone, Jack; you shall have some ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... bottom of the sea, where it subsists, and grows in a way of which we are ignorant. The included animal resembles a piece of red flesh, or like the tongue of an animal towards the root, having no bones, veins, or sinews. One opinion of the production of pearls in this shell-fish is, that the oyster rises to the surface when it rains, and, by gaping, catches the drops of rain, which harden into pearls. The more likely opinion is, that the pearls are generated within the body of the oyster, for most of them are fixed, and not moveable. Such as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... coat, buff waistcoat, with drab shorts and continuations, was reposing, sub tegmine fagi, in a sort of tea-garden arbour, overlooking a dung-heap, waiting their arrival to commence an attack upon the sparrows which were regaling thereon. At one end of the garden was a sort of temple, composed of oyster-shells, containing a couple of carrier-pigeons, with which Nosey had intended making his fortune, by the early information to be acquired by them: but "there is many a slip," as ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... method, the paltriness from a literary point of view confined to two or three centuries called classic, the tyrannical dogmatism of official pedants, scholastic prejudices and routines should end by converting our colleges into artificial oyster beds. He was learned, a purist, exact, a graduate of the Polytechnic, a close student, and at the same time, thoughtful "even to chimaeras," so his friends said. He believed in all dreams, railroads, the suppression of suffering in chirurgical operations, the fixing of images ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... OYSTER-BED. A "laying" of culch, that is, stones, old shells, or other hard substances, so as to form a bed for oysters, which would ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... did," declared Old Tom, "and of course no gal of any spunk'll stand that. Then about that time come her own lover an' the trouble with HIM. After that she shut up like an oyster an' wouldn't have nothin' ter do with nobody fur a spell. Her heart jest seemed to turn ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... good as the election. That's a cinch. He's a standpatter of the gilt-edged variety. The only issue on which he hasn't shot his mouth off is on votes for women. Nobody quite knows how he stands on that issue, because he keeps dumb as an oyster on that point. But—I'm telling you all this so you can see that in a way it's unlucky you look so ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... a man with a madness, is the true world-advancer. This madness, when cultured, ripens into talent; if original and inborn, we call it genius, and the subtile anatomists of the French schools prove it by telling us that the brains of geniuses are diseased. The healthy oyster ministers only to the palate. It is the diseased oyster that secretes the pearl for Miss Shoddy's necklace. It is the diseased brain that shines through the ages, lights men on to new epochs in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... nerved him. By the time he had played through his first over he had reduced Dick's lead by half. An oyster would have hit out in such circumstances, and Tom was always an aggressive batsman. By the end of the third over the scores were ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... tiny Page,—for, formerly, a boy Was a mere dunce who did not understand The doctrines of Sir Pandarus, of Troy,— Slipp'd the Dame's note into the Friar's hand, As he was walking in the cloister; And, then, slipp'd off,—as silent as an oyster. ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... though for a time we partly relieved our necessities, yet in Maye followinge we weare forced (leavinge a small guarde of gentlemen & some others about the president at James Towne) to disperse the wholl Collony, some amongst the Salvadges but most to the Oyster Banks, where they lived uppon oysters for the space of nine weekes, with the allowance only of a pinte of Indian corne to each man for a week, & that allowance of corne continued to them but two weekes of the nine, which kinde of feeding caused all our skinns ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... hear the grunt that went through that crowd when he said this, but nobody asked any questions, and he went on. 'This here Water-devil,' said he, 'is about as big as six whales, and in shape very like an oyster without its shell, and he fastens himself to the rocks at the bottom with a million claws. Right out of the middle of him there grows up a long arm that reaches to the top of the water, and at the end of ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... presented the Merchant's petition, signed by three hundred of them, and drawn up by Leonidas Glover.(416) This is to be heard next Wednesday. This gold-chain came into parliament, cried up for his parts, but proves so dull, one would think he chewed opium. Earle says, "I have heard an oyster ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... dwells, And five descendants crowd his lucid cells; So the male Polypus parental swims, And branching infants bristle all his limbs; So the lone Taenia, as he grows, prolongs His flatten'd form with young adherent throngs; Unknown to sex the pregnant oyster swells, And coral-insects build their radiate shells; 90 Parturient Sires caress their infant train, And heaven-born STORGE weaves the social chain; Successive births her tender cares combine, And soft ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... a very nice little sort of oyster; not like those we have in England, but much better—they ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... de trough for de pigs and dey has a big gourd and dey totes de gourd full of milk and dey breaks de bread in de milk. Den my mammy takes a gourd and fills it and gives it to us chillun. How's we eat it? We had oyster shells for spoons and de slaves comes in from de fields and dey hands is all dirty, and dey is hungry. Dey dips de dirty hands right in de trough and we can't eat none of it. De women wuks in de fields until dey has chillun and when de chillun's ole enough to wuk in de fields den de mother goes ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... them, and soon discovers that continuous mental energy is not granted to men. The most sensual pleasure, on the other hand, is inseparable from the consciousness of pleasure; no man can be happy who, to borrow Plato's illustration, is leading the life of an oyster. Hence (by his own confession) the main thesis is not worth determining; the real interest lies in the incidental discussion. We can no more separate pleasure from knowledge in the Philebus than we can separate justice from happiness ...
— Philebus • Plato
... two "smart" Yankees, one named Hosea and the other Hezekiah, who met in an oyster shop in Boston. Said Hosea, "As to opening oysters, why nothing's easier if you only know how." "And how's how?" asked Hezekiah. "Scotch snuff," replied Hosea, very gravely—"Scotch snuff. Bring a little of it ever so near their noses, and they'll ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... a perfectly beautiful letter. He has told me that he is very celebrated. And I am glad to know it. He said also: 'The glory of other poets reposes in myrrh and aromatic plants. Mine bleeds and moans under a rain of stones and of oyster-shells.' Do the French, my love, really throw ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... design."[1] But gentlemanly reproof and delicate satire would be wasted on "libellers and common nuisances." They must be met upon their own ground and overwhelmed with filth. "Thus the politest men are obliged sometimes to swear when they have to do with porters and oyster-wenches." Moreover, those unexceptionable models, Homer, Virgil, and Dryden had all admitted certain nasty expressions, and in comparison with them "our author ... tosses about his dung with an ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... of my question entirely, Juffrouw Laps. The meaning would be similar if I were to ask you if you belonged to that class of organisms that live in oyster-shells." ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... therefore I exist.' I almost think those Emersonians are right at times, when they crave the 'life of plants, and stones, and rain.' Stangrave said to me once, that his ideal of perfect bliss was that of an oyster in the Indian seas, drinking the warm salt water motionless, and troubling himself about nothing, while ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... at the minute, and a none too prepossessing bank clerk at that, for Nature had not been any too lavish of her gifts as regards personal attractiveness, seeming to prefer to make up for her miserliness in the bestowal of good looks by an absolute prodigality in the gifts of ears—ears as big as an oyster-shell and so prominent that they seemed even larger than they were, and that is ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... are very thick,—their trunks covered with oyster-shells that adhere to them like barnacles to a vessel's bottom, which annoy those who attempt to pass among them, by tearing their clothes and wounding the flesh as high ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... cane, and the commissary department of a whole army will consist of a mule and a pair of saddlebags. A train load of cabbage will be transported in a sardine box, and a thousand fat Texas cattle in an oyster can. Power will be condensed from a forty horse engine to a quart cup. Wagons will roll by the power in their axles, and the cushions of our buggies will cover the force that propels them. The armies of the future will fight with ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... Peter the aim of Cyril was reached, but his merciless adherents had not glutted their vengeance. They outraged the naked corpse, dismembered it, and incredible to be said, finished their infernal crime by scraping the flesh from the bones with oyster-shells, and casting the remnants into the fire. Though in his privacy St. Cyril and his friends might laugh at the end of his antagonist, his memory must bear the weight of the righteous indignation ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... at which several Sir Foplins drew their faces into as many peevish wrinkles as the beaux at the Bow Street Coffee-house, near Covent Garden, did when the gentleman in masquerade came in amongst them, with his oyster-barrel muff and turnip-buttons, to ridicule ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... conclusive proof, to our mind, of the existence of this law of life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India Islands, especially along the sea-shore, where it becomes the natural habitat of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that the oyster climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the extreme limbs of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is manifestly an error, and belongs to the same class of fallacies as the common impression ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... tow us in, the engine broke down. I think the carbureter probably froze and they were driven before the wind, helpless. There's a chance in a thousand that they reached an oyster shanty and found shelter. We'll hope for the best. In the meantime you and I will have to learn to cook again, ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... away his palette and brushes, walks up and down.) The boot-black only attends to her feet! His color doesn't eat into his money, either. If I go without supper to-morrow, no little society lady will ask me if I know anything about oyster-patties! ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind
... of Korak existence. Removed to an infinite distance, both physically and intellectually, from all of the interests, ambitions, and excitements which make up our world, the Korak simply exists, like a human oyster, in the quiet waters of his monotonous life. An occasional birth or marriage, the sacrifice of a dog, or, on rare occasions, of a man to the Korak Ahriman, and the infrequent visits of a Russian trader, are the most prominent events in his history, from ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... centaury, the star thistle and the rough centaury: the first predominates. Here and there, amid their inextricable confusion, stands, like a chandelier with spreading, orange flowers for lights, the fierce Spanish oyster plant, whose spikes are strong as nails. Above it, towers the Illyrian cotton thistle, whose straight and solitary stalk soars to a height of three to six feet and ends in large pink tufts. Its armor hardly ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... science or, profession, accuracy of memory is not important. As the Sabbath was made for man, so books were made for the reader, and, when a reader has assimilated from any given book his own proper nourishment and pleasure, the rest of the book is so much oyster shell. The end of true reading is the development of individuality. Like a certain water insect, the reader instinctively selects from the outspread world of books the building materials for the house ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... partly Dutch in population were of doubtful allegiance. The graceless Major John Scott, coming to the island with some royal authority, formed a combination of Hempstead, Gravesend, Flushing, Newtown, Jamaica and Oyster Bay, with himself as president, and then proceeded (January, 1664), at the head of 170 men, to reduce the neighboring Dutch villages. Some account of the affair, in the shape in which it reached the Dutch public, may be seen in the extract printed at ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... ultimately a religious root; that is why men find it so easy to die for and so difficult to define. It refers finally to the fact that, while the oyster and the palm tree have to save their lives by law, man has to save his soul by choice. Ruskin rebuked Coleridge for praising freedom, and said that no man would wish the sun to be free. It seems enough to answer that ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... coming up with the shellfish in her hand. It was a large oyster and had been washed quite clean ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... I watched the oyster-catcher, as he flew from point to point, and cautiously waded into the shallow water; and the patient heron, that pattern of a fisherman, as with retracted neck, and eyes fixed on vacancy, he has stood for hours without a ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... of shrimps is more than a mere assimilation of nourishment, more even than the consumption of an article of diet which is beneficial to brain tissues and nerve centres. After all, the oyster or the haddock serves equally well for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... keen fisherman, caught with the fly or grasshoppers. He sometimes caught over one hundred in a day, some of them over three pounds in weight. The streams were also full of huge eels and large prawns, and a kind of oyster was abundant in the sea, so what with wild pig, wild chickens, pigeons, turtles, oysters, prawns, crabs, eels, and fish of infinite variety, we fared exceedingly well. Oranges, lemons, limes, large shaddocks, "kavika," and other wild fruits ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... posts, and later with quarterings (studs), came into practice. There was probably little thought of plastering walls during the first two decades, and when plastering was adopted, clay, or clay mixed with oyster-shell lime, was first used. The early floors were of clay, and such floors continued to be used in the humbler dwellings throughout the 1600's. It can be assumed that most of the dwellings, or shelters, of ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... a few oysters and drank one or two glasses of punch, which they liked amazingly, I begged Emilie to give me an oyster ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... close together that, used as she was to frontier towns, she wondered at it; she saw other buildings whose signs informed her they were store and post-office, drug store, blacksmith shop and restaurant. And now the first visible token of life, a thin spiral of smoke from "Dick's Oyster House." She passed it, pushing her horse to a gallop. She had seen the two or three men upon the high stools at the counter taking their coffee and bacon. They had swung about quickly, like one man, at the cook's grin and quiet word. One of them ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... Fort Johnson. Here I was joined by a sergeant and corporal of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, and we walked across to a little settlement of freed people not far from Secessionville, where a boat and crew were engaged. It would be tedious to relate how, after sticking on invisible oyster-beds and mud-flats, and losing our way among the creeks, at two o'clock we found ourselves about one hundred yards from the north end of the island; and how, since it was too late to try to reach the wharf on the east side, even had we been sure of the way, the two Fifty-fourth boys ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... in autumn, with the sky the color and heaviness of a Lynnhaven oyster, Mrs. Jett sat quite unusually forward on her chair at one of the afternoon congresses of the wives, convened in Mrs. Peopping's back parlor, Jeanette Peopping, aged four, sweet and blond, whom the ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... street-floor of one of my houses in Hanover Street lets for an oyster-room. They keep a bar there, and sell liquor. Last night they had a grand row,—a drunken fight, and one man was stabbed, ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... not long before we ceased to depend on wolf hunting for a living, as immigration soon poured in, and money became plenty. I remember soon after of having seventeen hundred dollars in gold buried in an oyster can under the shanty. ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... probably grow stale, unless you make artificial lees: This you may make of a quart of brandy, and as much flour of wheat as will make it into dough; put them in lumps into the bung hole as soon as it has done working. Or else take a pound of the powder of oyster shells and mix it with a pound of treacle or honey, and put it in soon after it ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... turn into a vapour, and vanish away before my very eyes. I shall be careful about doubting any thing, until I get back to some Christian country, where things go on regularly. For the present, I am in state of mind to believe in phoenixes and unicorns—and why not in oyster-trees? Who knows but we have happened upon a second Prospero's isle? Lead on, Johnny, and bring us to this wonderful tree." And Johnny started off accordingly, followed ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... splendid woman, but no polish". Yank's "olla podrida of heterogeneous merchandise". The author meets the banished gold-dust thief. Subscription by the miners on his banishment. A fool's errand to establish his innocence. An oyster-supper bet. The thief's statements ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... that is not that an oyster is colder or that a rabbit is hotter. The pleasure of that is that there is need ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... was just passing the most fascinating looking dish. It was oyster croquettes, carefully moulded in heart shapes, accompanied by French fried potatoes also cut into ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... be out very soon; I will send you a correct copy, the only one in America I fancy. The enterprise here too is on the "half-profits" plan, which I compute generally to mean equal partition of the oyster-shells and a net result of zero. But the thing will be economically useful to me otherwise; as a publication of the "Miscellaneous" also would be; which latter, however, I confess myself extremely unwilling to undertake ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... come from mussels, as well, and clams occasionally. But you ought to remember," the Deputy Commissioner continued, "that the finding of an occasional pearl in an oyster or a mussel is of comparatively little importance, because it's an irregular sort of thing. The mother-of-pearl industry, however, is of big importance, it has an economic value to the country, and consequently ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Uncle Ben's announcement as he crawled into the car with a bucket in which were his shoes. He was walking down the Coastal Highway and not staying where he belonged—on the shoulder!) "Got to cook crab and ister (oyster). Ain't got much to cook. They don't eat much. Got a gal there to fry fish. They give me recommend for cook. Been get the sea foods for 'em for five year. Iron oven the way we raise." (Aside to his wife) "Stella, if that man come there, see that sack ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... height. While the men were preparing our tea, (for we had only that to boil,) M'Leay and I ascended the hills. The brush was so thick upon them, that we could not obtain a view of the distant interior. Their summits were covered with oyster-shells, in such abundance as entirely to preclude the idea of their having been brought to such a position by the natives. They were ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... greater disadvantage than before they are provided with their cue for the day. They ask with a face of dreary vacuity, 'Have you anything new?'—and on receiving an answer in the negative, have nothing further to say. (They are like an oyster at the ebb of the tide, gaping for fresh tidings.) Talk of the Westminster Election, the Bridge Street Association, or Mr. Cobbett's Letter to John Cropper of Liverpool, and they are alive again. Beyond the last twenty-four ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the meat of an English walnut is almost the exact representation of the brain. Plums and black cherries resemble the human eyes; almonds, and some other nuts, resemble the different varieties of the human nose, and an opened oyster and its shell are a perfect image of the human ear. The shape of almost any man's body may be found in the various kinds of mammoth pumpkins. The open hand may be discerned in the form assumed by scrub-willows and growing celery. The German turnip and the eggplant resemble the human heart. There ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... were undoubtedly the oyster-beds; but how under the sun, in that wild sea, were they to get oysters? He was quickly to learn the way. Lifting a section of the cockpit flooring, French Pete brought out two triangular frames of steel. At the apex ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... for the sheep. The soil was interspersed with rocks and swamps, but at the head of the bay appeared richer. A few natives were seen, who ran away when observed, and though one or two spears were thrown no damage was done to any one. Large heaps of oyster, mussel, and cockle shells were found, amongst them, says Cook, "being some of the largest oyster shells I ever saw." An account, said to have been obtained from the blacks, published in a work on Australian discovery (anonymous, ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... dreadfully nervous, as usual, and when waiting, he forgot to attend to my guests first, but always came to me. The parlor-maid, a new one, and not a great favorite with Joe, made matters worse by correcting him in an audible voice; and once, when somebody wanted oyster-sauce, she told Joe to hand it. The poor boy, wishing to obey quickly, forgot to give the bear-skin a wide berth, slipped on it, and in a moment had fallen full length, having in his fall deposited the contents of the sauce- tureen partly into a blue leather ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... at him, But never a word he said; The eldest Oyster winked his eye, And shook his heavy head— Meaning to say he did not choose To leave the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... after cannot be imagined to have possessed the slightest intellectual character. If a peculiar principle be supposed necessary to intelligence, it must exist throughout animated nature. The elephant approaches nearer to man in intellectual power than the oyster does to the elephant; and a link of sensitive nature may be traced from the polypus to the philosopher. Now, in the polypus the sentient principle is divisible, and from one polypus or one earthworm may be formed two or three, all of which become perfect animals, and have perception and volition; ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... like an oyster directly I get anywhere near it," replied the captain; "sticks to it that it is a yachting trip and that Tredgold is studying the formations of islands. Says he has got a list of them he ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... was to be spent in the crowded city, for his parents bought a country home on Long Island overlooking Oyster Bay. Theodore went there in the summer and had a chance to live out of doors. He tramped the woods, knew all the birds, hunted coon, gathered walnuts, and fished in pools for minnows. But even with all these outdoor pastimes he was far from well. Often he had choking ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... But his wife, the peerless Maree Jahann, perceiving the gravity of his countenance, said, "Why is my lord cast down and silent? Why are those rare and priceless pearls, his words, shut up so tightly between those gorgeous oyster-shells, his lips?" But to this he made no reply. Thinking further to divert him, she brought her lute into the chamber and stood before him, and sang the song and danced the dance of Ben Kotton, which is called Ibrahim's Daughter, but she could not lift the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... extra person," she replied. "I have come to see Mr. Noyes," and she displayed once more the large square envelope, her legacy from the lodger, the knife with which she proposed to shuck from its rough shell that oyster, the world. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... soup Beef soup Gravy soup Soup with Bouilli Veal soup Oyster soup Barley soup Dried pea soup Green pea soup Ochra soup Hare or Rabbit soup Soup of any kind of old fowl Catfish soup Onion soup To dress turtle For the soup Mock ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... Vegetables. Timballo alla Romana. Roman pie. Petto di Castrato alla salsa di burro. Breast of mutton with butter sauce. Verdure miste. Mixed vegetables. Crema rappresa. Coffee cream. Ostriche alla Veneziana. Oyster savoury. ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... nothing of the commercial traveler about him, thank goodness! And he's decidedly good-looking, too. But isn't he white and shaky! I wonder who and what he is? Now I come to think of it, he was about as communicative as an oyster, and left me to do all the palaver. You'll be glad to hear that he admired your voice, and that he inquired how you passed your time; also, that he was shocked when I told him that you whiled the dragging hours away by dancing the ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... Chapel, and the height Where Patent Shot they sell; The Tennis Court, so fair and tall, Partakes the ray, with Surgeons' Hall, The Ticket-Porters' House of Call, Old Bedlam, close by London Wall, {47} Wright's shrimp and oyster shop withal, And Richardson's Hotel. Nor these alone, but far and wide, Across red Thames's gleaming tide, To distant fields the blaze was borne, And daisy white and hoary thorn In borrow'd lustre seem'd ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... by a reader of canoe books, and next day we inspected the oyster-beds, and a curious corn-mill driven by tide-water confined in a basin—one of the few mills worked by the power of the moon. Also we wandered over the new sea fortifications, which are built and hewed by our Government one week, and the week afterwards if there comes a shower ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... island; the nearer John came to it the further it went from him. New trials upon new points still arose, new doubts, new matters to be cleared; in short, lawyers seldom part with so good a cause till they have got the oyster and their clients the shell. John's ready money, book debts, bonds, mortgages, all went into the lawyers' pockets. Then John began to borrow money upon Bank Stock and East India Bonds. Now and ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... the diet. On the fourth day, and from this on, the patient will have regular meals, but the diet must be a plain one. For breakfast, stale bread, a soft-boiled egg, fruit, and a cup of tea, not too strong. For dinner, which should always be given in the middle of the day, an oyster-stew or clam broth, a lamb chop, or a very small piece of beefsteak or chicken; but with these there must be no gravies or dressings; a potato baked in the skin; raw tomatoes, if in season; apple sauce or cranberry; celery; junket, plain corn-starch, lemon jelly, plain cup-custard. ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... dotted the bay, adding beauty to the scene and affording tempting attractions to those who are fond of pic-nics. One especially—"Island Casot," formed by the beautiful bayou of the same name—is shaded by immense live-oak trees, and lies just south on the border of the finest oyster bed (for flavor) in the South. We spent a whole day there, having first amply provided ourselves with every luxury, even to comforts and pillows to lounge on. Your grandfather admired this beautiful little island so much that he thought seriously of purchasing it, to improve ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... pint of oysters on the fire to boil in their own liquor; as soon as they boil drain them, and put the liquor again on the fire to boil; mix together in a sauce-pan over the fire one ounce of butter and one ounce of flour, as soon as it bubbles, gradually pour in the boiling oyster liquor, and stir with an egg whip until the sauce is quite smooth; season with half a teaspoonful of salt, an eighth of a saltspoonful of pepper, and the same of nutmeg; and add the oysters. Take up the fish, serve ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... Harwich parliamentary division of Essex, England, on a creek opening from the east shore of the Colne estuary, the terminus of a branch from Colchester of the Great Eastern railway, 621/2 m. E.N.E. of London. Pop. of urban district (1901) 4501. The Colchester oyster beds are mainly in this part of the Colne, and the oyster fishery is the chief industry. Boat-building is carried on. This is also a favourite yachting centre. The church of All Saints, principally Perpendicular, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... appearance, and Mr. Young cut up a red handkerchief into as many strips. These we tied around their regal brows, and they seemed exceedingly proud of themselves. Towards evening three or four more came to the camp; one had a large piece of pearl oyster-shell depending from a string round his neck, another had a queer ornament made of short feathers also depending from the neck; it looked like the mouth of a porte-monnaie. When I wished to examine it, the wearer popped it over his mouth, and opened that extensive feature to its fullest dimensions, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... contains fragments of them. Forchhammer, in Leonhard und Bronn s Jahrbuch, 1841, p. 8, says of the sand-hills of the Danish coast: "It is not rare to find, high in the knolls, marine shells, and especially those of the oyster. They are due to the oyster-eater [Haemalopus ostralegus], which carries his prey to the top of the dunes to devour it." See also Staring, De Bodem van Nederland, i., p. 821.] and they are also, usually somewhat ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... suppose we can think it in theory, but not in practice. I like almost everything Mr. Allen says or does; it is not necessary to go far in search of his good things; dredge up any bit of mud from him at random and we are pretty sure to find an oyster with a pearl in it, if we look it clearly in the face; I mean, there is sure to be something which will be at any rate "almost" practically unthinkable. But however this may be, when Mr. Allen wrote his article in "Mind" two years ago, he was in substantial agreement ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... time, was doing all he could to make hungry and handsome Miss Helen Bumpus happy, by giving her oyster salad, ice cream, frozen pudding, and cake, with plenty of champagne to wash it down; but his heart was with Ann Harriet, and many an anxious glance he bestowed on her, to see if she was well supplied with the niceties of the festive board. He thrilled with joy at seeing her behind ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... house, with its hospitable inmates, courteous guests, and no possibility of "bill transactions." I confess when I was young and inexperienced, wanting that wisdom which I am now happy to impart, I was a constant frequenter of taverns, eating-houses, oyster-rooms, and similar places of entertainment. I am old now, and have been persecuted by a brutal world, and am grown timid. But I was ever a peaceable man—hated quarrels—never came to words if I could help it. I do not recommend the tavern, eating-house, oyster-room system. These are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... d'appui, and our angle of sight. An isolated man is immensurable; he is also unpicturesque, unnatural, untrue. He is no longer the lord of Nature, animal and vegetable,—but Nature is the lord of him; the trees, skies, flowers, predominate, and he is in as bad taste as green and blue, or as an oyster in a vase of roses. The race swings naturally to clusters. It being admitted, then, that society is our normal state, where is it to be obtained in such perfection as at Paris? Show me the urbanity, the generosity in trifles, better than sacrifice, the incuriousness and freedom, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... do want to know, awfully, because I'm your pal, and care for you no end. Always did. Come, now, tell me a good yarn. I love scrapes. I'll be mum as an oyster if ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... foreign parts hath so far subverted some of them as to cause them turn public rebels against their state & kingdom, which God forbid should ever be found once so much as to appear in my breast." Why, then the world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open! Next we hear him on a point of military discipline at Salem. "It is this: how they have of their own appointment made them a captain, lieutenant & ensign, & after such a manner as was never heard of in any school ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... invisible. This curious subject deserves further investigation. See Dictamnus. The ceasing to shine of this plant after twilight might induce one to conceive, that it absorbed and emitted light, like the Bolognian Phosphorus, or calcined oyster-shells, so well explained by Mr. B. Wilson, and by T. B. Beccari. Exper. on Phosphori, by B. Wilson. Dodsley. The light of the evening, at the same distance from noon, is much greater, as I have repeatedly observed, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... the larger part of the fresh reading we live upon. We must have the latest thought in its latest expression; the page must be newly turned like the morning bannock; the pamphlet must be newly opened like the ante-prandial oyster. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the fishes of the sea, we strew the net and bring them in for our food; we hunt the whale for his oil and for the fringe of bone in his mouth; we dive into the sea after the oyster that we may extract from it the pearl, and we strip the shell of its rainbow-coloured scales to inlay ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... noblemen Lancelot had ever met who had aroused in him a thorough feeling of respect. He was always and in all things a strong man. Naturally keen, ready, business- like, daring, he had carved out his own way through life, and opened his oyster—the world, neither with sword nor pen, but with steam and cotton. His father was Mr. Obadiah Newbroom, of the well-known manufacturing firm of Newbroom, Stag, and Playforall. A stanch Dissenter himself, he saw with a slight pang his son Thomas turn Churchman, as ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... glass uneasily, and tapped his heel upon the floor. "And is that all thou hast to say—hast turned oyster? There's no R in May—nobody will eat thee! Come, don't make a mouth as though the honey of the world were all turned gall upon thy tongue. 'Tis the flood-tide of thy fortune, boy! Thou art to sing before the school to-morrow, so that Master Nathaniel Gyles ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... ones laid. Blunder 2d, five oysters to be laid on each plate, instead of which five were placed on platters at each end, making ten in all for the whole party! Ordered a change to the original order. Result, a terrific sound in the parlor of rushing feet and bombardment of oyster-shells. Dinner was announced from Dr. P., who asked, helplessly, where he should place Mrs. V——. Blunder 4th by Mrs. P., who remarked that she had got fifty pieces of shell in her mouth. Blunder 5th by Dr. P., who failed to perceive that the boiled chickens were garnished with ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... a stranger the Wilderness might not be very attractive. There were, of course, no flowers now, and Dickie had tumbled a barrowful of leaves on to the middle of Pennie's border, which was further adorned by a heap of oyster shells, with which David intended some day to build a grotto. It looked more like a rubbish heap than a garden, and the close neighbourhood of the well did not improve it. There was only one cheerful object ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... variety—the crust is greenish or blackish, is raised and more bulky, often conical and stratified, like an oyster shell—rupia; beneath the crusts may be seen rounded or irregular-shaped ulcers, having a greenish-yellow, puriform secretion. It is usually a late ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... you thought it merciful to choke me off, so I shut up like an oyster. And then there ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Zimmer, standing before one of the tables, dressed in black, with a grave air and penetrating glance, and near him the secretary Roth, with his red wig, imposing countenance, and large ears, flat as oyster shells. They paid no attention to my entrance, and this circumstance altered my resolution at once. I sat down in a corner of the room behind the big cast-iron stove, in company with two or three of the neighbors, who had run hither to see what was going on, and I ordered a pint of wine and a ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... pleaded the journalist. "If I fell from grace to-day, remember my unswerving loyalty since the hour we met on the platform at Knoleworth! Haven't I kept close as an oyster? And would any consideration on earth move me to publish an accurate and entertaining account of the roasting of Chief Inspector Winter by Wally Hart? Think what I'm sacrificing—a ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... one of these fine evenings, I won't answer for the consequences. Good-bye," said he, shaking Ellen's hand; "you needn't look sober about it; all you have to do is to let your Mamma be as much like an oyster as possible; you understand? Good-bye." And Dr. Green took ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... drifted, waterlogged, Till by trailing weeds beclogged: Drifted, drifted, day by day, Pilotless on pathless way. It has drifted till each plank Is oozy as the oyster-bank: Drifted, drifted, night by night, Craft that never shows a light; Nor ever, to prevent worse knell, Tolls in ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... is purely adventitious, or accidental. Nor need we be afraid to make this admission, if only we take a sufficiently wide view of the facts. For, when we do take such a view, we find that beauty here is by no means of invariable, or even of general, occurrence. There is no loveliness about an oyster or a lob-worm; parasites, as a rule, are positively ugly, and they constitute a good half of all animal species. The truth seems to be, when we look attentively at the matter, that in all cases where beauty does occur in these lower forms of animal life, its presence is owing to ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... John Bull bamboozled be If he's so fond of sells! Io Beacche! Hark the cheering! See him home in triumph bearing BOTH {27b} the oyster shells!'" ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... Now if She'd engaged you an' me to keep tab of things for Her, we'd have done a deal better. Those poor blamed sea-gulls, or whatever they are, would have been squatting around on elegant beds of moulted feathers, laid out on steam-heat radiators, feeding on oyster cocktails and things, and handing out the instructive dope of a highbrow politician working up a press reputation, and learning their kids the decent habits of folk who're yearning to keep out of ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... flatter and thinner in the shell, their flesh being slimy and not eatable, unless dried beforehand and afterwards boiled. Some shells contain twenty or thirty seed pearls, and others have one or two pearls of some size, lying at the head of the oyster, between the fish and the shell; but the inside of the shells have a brighter lustre than ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... sighed the Lory, and an old Crab took the opportunity of saying to its daughter "Ah, my dear! let this be a lesson to you never to lose your temper!" "Hold your tongue, Ma!" said the young Crab, a little snappishly, "you're enough to try the patience of an oyster!" ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... value of beauty is disregarded, and the cultivation of the sense of beauty is treated as of little worth, compared with the culture of what are styled the practical faculties. Our wealth is spent in the erection of extravagant stores and shops,—in the decoration of oyster-saloons, hotels, and steamboats,—in the lavish and selfish adornment of drawing-rooms and chambers. In the whole breadth of the continent there is not a single building of such beauty as to be an object of national pride, and few which will have any value in future times, except as historic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... into the post as the twelve o'clock call was going the rounds. Oh, they had had a blissful time! a glorious time! Such a delightful supper,—partridges and celery and all manner of dainties from Chicago, and such oyster patties! to say nothing of Roederer ad libitum. Then they had danced, and then they had more supper, and then started home. Willett would ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... only thing I could do, was just to take an opportunity to drop in at the College in the evening, where we had a quiet rubber of whist, and a little social and intellectual conversation, with maybe an oyster and a glass of punch, just to season the thing, before we separated; all done discreetly and quietly—no shouting nor even singing, for the 'superior' had a prejudice about profane songs. Well, one of those nights it was, about the first week in February, I was detained by stress of weather ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... oil of sesame and flavoured with a mixture of cinnamon and ginger, and the Professor did not appear to be making much progress with it. Ventimore himself would have infinitely preferred the original cod and oyster sauce, but that ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... with that, Ralph," said Peterkin, holding a large oyster to my lips. I opened my mouth and swallowed it in silence, and really it was ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... a large sample of the commercial gold in general use, and to pay for the same out of the money in his hands known as the "civil fund," arising from duties collected at the several ports in California. He consented to this, and Captain Folsom bought an oyster-can full at ten dollars the ounce, which was the rate of value at which it was then received at the custom house. Folsom was instructed further to contract with some vessel to carry the messenger to South America, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... for, to say the truth, on seeing something that suited her taste, she felt all the six months' appetite taking possession of her at once. To be sure, it was a very wretched-looking pomegranate, and seemed to have no more juice in it than an oyster-shell. But there was no choice of such things in King Pluto's palace. This was the first fruit she had seen there, and the last she was ever likely to see; and unless she ate it up immediately, it would grow drier than it already was, and ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... the making of the match and its consummation, impress him as a Sahara of tedious confabulation between the pair of turtle doves as to whether they have too many salt-cellars for their marital needs, and whether the exchange of a third set of oyster-forks without the knowledge of the donor would be a violation of the highest code of ethics. Presents, presents, nothing but presents, of every kind and degree, from the solid silver tea-set of exquisitely fluted pattern to the excruciatingly ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... oyster fair; the oysters from Lynn, called the Lynn channel, were the size of a horse's hoof, and were opened with a pair of pincers. At the bottom, in the Mead, next the river, was the coal fair; opposite which were the pottery and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... of the marshes swarm with fish of every sort, and there are oyster-beds containing large and toothsome bivalves. With 'possums and 'coons, fish and oysters, is it strange that Cuffie clung to his old home long after his master had left it? is it a matter of wonder that there yet remains a remnant of the old slave population, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... to a semi-private journey to Oyster Bay, in order that the Prince might place a wreath on the tomb of President Roosevelt. The Prince had several times expressed his admiration for the great and forceful American who represented so much of what was individual in the national character, and his visit to the burial-place was a tribute ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... refused to wear the episcopal vestments. Bishop Ridley, a martyr of still greater renown, pulled down the ancient altars of his diocese, and ordered the Eucharist to be administered in the middle of churches, at tables which the Papists irreverently termed oyster boards. Bishop Jewel pronounced the clerical garb to be a stage dress, a fool's coat, a relique of the Amorites, and promised that he would spare no labour to extirpate such degrading absurdities. Archbishop Grindal long hesitated about accepting a mitre from dislike of what he ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the sun was high enough for altitudes to be taken for the time keepers. Soon after daylight, the natives were with us again, in seven canoes; some of them came under the stern, and fifteen or twenty of the people ascended on board, bringing in their hands pearl-oyster shells and necklaces of cowries; with which, and some bows and arrows, they obtained more of the precious tooree. Wishing to secure the friendship and confidence of these islanders to such vessels as might hereafter pass ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... Funes* says, 'they only stopped when it was absolutely necessary for them to breathe.' Even the overpraised citizens of Athens at the time of Pericles, who must have been in all their ways so like the Athenians of to-day, were not more instant in the Agora or diligent in writing patriots' names on oyster-shells than the noisy mob of half-breed patriots who in the sandy streets of Asuncion were ever agitating, always assembling, and doing everything within their power to show the world the perfect picture of a democratic State. Strange that such ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... surprised to find one who is what is popularly known as a drunkard not so much ashamed of as interested in himself; isn't that it? Well, that comes of the introspective literary temperament. It is only the oyster fascinated by the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... the elder Mr. Weller, stirring a glass of brandy-and-water, of which one was placed before every gentleman when the oyster shells were removed—'Mr. Pell, Sir, it wos my intention to have proposed the funs on this occasion, but ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... "just tell me what was the last real, good, old-fashioned trick you ever played?" The old man cast a half-suspicious look at the smiling young man by his side, but made no reply. "Too bad you forget," said Ben, "but I'll bet an apple to an oyster you don't forget that last game ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... in having no fire-place and being not lathed. This latter room was destitute of furniture, unless a work-bench, on which were a few tools; a chopping-block, made of the segment of the body of a large tree; a cooper's horse; a couple of oyster rakes and some fishing-rods, could be called such. In two of the corners stood bundles of hickory poles, and on the floor were scattered a quantity of withes, designed, apparently, for basket-making. These articles had, probably, some connection with the pursuits ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams |
