"Perch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assiduously hidden from the lady beside him, would be revealed. Jean's mouth was already open to speak. He waved her aside. She adhered to her post. He shouted to the postilion, and the huge, lumbering vehicle was set in motion. At the first turn of the wheels, Jean slipped from her perch, her dress caught in the spokes, and ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... and threw him down now one of her eggs, and then one of her young ones. Having done so, for some time, with a great deal of grief and sorrow, and the Fox continuing still to demand it of her, she, at last, made her complaint to the Raven, who chanced to come and perch herself on the same tree; grievously bemoaning her fate, that she, like a good mother, to provide for her children, was at last obliged to make them a sacrifice to such a villain. But the Raven, who was not so timorous as ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... scared away by what is called exact intelligence from the tall forest of great personalities, they contrive to live humbly clinging to such bare plain stocks and poles (Tis and Jack and Cinderella) as enable them to find a precarious perch. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Transit slip where they said the water was sixty feet deep, only it wasn't. An' once, on a Thursday, we dug a lot of clams together, an' played hookey Friday to peddle them. An' we used to go out on the Rock Wall an' catch pogies an' rock cod. One day—the day of the eclipse—Cal caught a perch half as big as a door. I never seen such a fish. An' now he's got to wear the stripes for twenty years. Lucky he wasn't married. If he don't get the consumption he'll be an old man when he comes out. Cal's mother wouldn't let 'm go swimmin', ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... flowered draperies, and of exquisite order. There was a business-like heap of mail on Harriet's big desk; there were flowers everywhere; fan- tailed Japanese gold fish moved languidly about in a tall bowl of clear glass, and Nina's emerald-green parrot walked upon his gaily painted perch, and muttered in a significant and chuckling undertone. Glass doors were open upon a square porch, and the sweet afternoon air stirred ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... section of the mountains, or had his whereabouts been unknown, his situation would have been hopeless. The bear might settle down to a siege of many days, and he had powerful allies in sleep and hunger. If wearied nature should assert her rights and Bert in a moment of drowsiness topple from his perch, or if, driven by starvation, he should make a last despairing effort to escape, the chances would be all against him. The instinct of the grizzly told him that, if not interfered with, time alone was all that was necessary to bring his foe within ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... was so accustomed to his master, indeed, that he allowed himself to be taken from the perch without a single squawk, and the boy took his captive beyond the pen. Once, when the big rooster canted his head and looked into his face, the boy had to wink away the tears; but he thought of the man so near death in the attic, he felt the clumsy ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... a bird, probably a falcon, on his left wrist. This figure is supposed to represent Alcfrid himself. Immediately below the falcon is an upright piece of wood with a transverse bar at the top, possibly meant for the bird's perch. On the east side there are no runes, but a vine is sculptured in low relief within a border. Dr. Haigh observed that the design on this side was the same as on the two sides of the Ruthwell Cross.* The north and the south sides are in a state ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... perch!" says I. "Ain't you makin' extra money on this? And when you fetch up at the club, do it like you was used to stoppin' at ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... sat upon his precarious perch trying to reassume the posture which insured a good balance, clinging to the trunk with one hand and to ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... birds on our way; among them the white ibis, the white heron, the snake-bird, and vulture. We found a bluff, with deep water below it, into which we had scarcely thrown our lines when we each hooked a large black bass; after which we caught several bream, cat-fish, and perch, until we had as much as ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... an accurate picture does the creative pencil of our great poet present to the mind's eye! The epithet lofty has fallen through the sieves of all the commentators excepting Theobaldus Secundus. It obviously alludes to the high roosting perch of that valiant bird; nor is the mythological imagery in this sentence to be passed by without its merited eulogium. Lingo, by way of agreeable surprise, informs us that the cock is the bird of Pallas—Pallas ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... wayfarer for the cries of hawks and crows, or the bleating of the mountain flocks. After they had reconnoitred the neighborhood, and finished their singular discourse, they descended from their airy perch, and returned to their prisoners. The captain posted three of them at three naked sides of the mountain, while he remained to guard us with what ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... life is bound up with the welfare of plants and animals and lies at the mercy of rivers that overflow or skies that withhold the rain. To such people nature-myths and sacred animals appeal with a force that Europeans rarely understand. The parrots that perch on the pinnacles of the temple and the oxen that rest in the shade of its courts are not intruders but humble brothers of mankind, who may also be ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... rooms were quickly counted in Redman's Farm, he found her chamber small, neat, simplex munditiis. Bright and natty were the chintz curtains, and the little toilet set out, not inelegantly, and her pet piping-goldfinch asleep on his perch, with his bit of sugar between the wires of his cage; her pillow so white and unpressed, with its little edging of lace. Were slumbers sweet as of old ever to know it more? What dreams were henceforward to haunt it? Shadows were standing about that lonely bed already. I don't ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was joined by the old crow, who had flown down from his perch unnoticed by Hiranya, and now addressed him ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell
... I'm going to ask you to take it back to your mistress; and then no doubt you'll be reading it on the sly. Here, I must sit down: suppose you let me perch myself on the top bar of the gate. Also, it would be kind of you to put up an arm and ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... your perch, Eugene," he said, "and tell us how you came to drive Count Vassilan's taxi, and where ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... exactly at this moment that the Squire, who opened his letters in the library before breakfast, was accustomed to enter the room, and, with a word of greeting to his assembled family, perch his gold-rimmed glasses on his fine straight nose, and with the help of two book-markers find the places in the Bible and book of prayers to which the year in its diurnal course had brought him. The ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... bravely wear Their beauty, recognize a woman's own, Than Clara Mercome. Gilbert Wynne has sown His wild oats for her sake; yet he delays, And with my Lady Bond divides his days. Who bets on beauty, hedges in on age; Which tries the flight to perch in Lord Wynne's cage? Will Lady Bond or Clara be the queen? For Lady Bond is certain of her lien." He heard this talk while standing by a beech— Hugh Wynne—and planned how he might overreach Gilbert and Clara, break the pride of both, ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... swaying over the frightful abyss. But there was nothing upon which to rest his feet. He did not wish anything, and, swinging sideways, threw one leg over the ledge beside his hands, and, half-rolling over, raised himself securely for the time on his perch. ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... ridiculed, are the law-courts, the interminable length of lawsuits, the covetousness and injustice of the judges, and so forth. Among such productions are: "The Tale of Judge Shemyak" (Herring), "The Description of the Judicial Action in the Suit Between the Pike and the Perch"; or, applying personal names to the contestants, "The Story of Yorsha Yorshoff (Perch, the son of Perch) and the Son of Shtchetinnikoff (the Bristly)." A similar production is "The Story of Kura (the Cock) ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... she ventured to open one door—it was the old Laird's dog-kennel, now deserted, unless when occupied, as one or two tubs seemed to testify, as a washing-house. She tried another—it was the rootless shed where the hawks had been once kept, as appeared from a perch or two not yet completely rotten, and a lure and jesses which were mouldering on the wall. A third door led to the coal-house, which was well stocked. To keep a very good fire was one of the few points ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... immediate danger, the road being both good and clear, but as they went on, their pace, instead of subsiding, seemed to increase. The carriage was not of the low build of these days, and the servant hesitated to risk a jump from his perch at the back. Meantime a corner was in sight, which it would be hazardous to turn at this pace. Mary sat, pale and terrified, only just sufficiently mistress of herself not to scream when suddenly, two men appeared coming towards them round the dreaded corner. In another moment the adventure was ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... the Captain in a fatherly tone, "lemme tell you something. While I've been a-roostin' up here in my perch, I've been a-watchin' you boys; a-watchin' an' a-worryin'. What have you been a-doin'? You've been a-raisin' hell, you have. Son, you ain't a rote a word, have yer? An' you, Whinney—boy, you ain't ketched a bug nor ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... old red stage stopped at Enos Devon's door, and his niece crossed the threshold after a cool handshake with the master of the house, and a close embrace with the mistress, who stood pouring out last words with spectacles too dim for seeing. Fat Ben swung up the trunk, slammed the door, mounted his perch, and the ancient vehicle swayed with premonitory symptoms ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... finite hands may not meddle. The problem has but one solution—adjustment. Hedged in by the iron bars of circumstance as surely as a bird within his cage, it remains for the individual to choose whether he will beat his wings against the bars until he dies, or take his place serenely on the perch ordained ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... goat, had leaped down from her high perch, and was now taking a drink from a little sparkling mountain rill ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... saw-toothed mountains cut, to the east, by a stupendous gorge. We stood silent with awe, when we first climbed a winding, white trail to the summit of the mountain and gazed into the abysmal depths. My eye followed an eagle which floated across the chasm to its perch on a projecting crag; thence, down the sheer face of the cliff a thousand feet to the stream which has carved this colossal canyon from the living rock. Like a shining silver tracing it twisted and turned, foaming over rocks and running in smooth, green sheets between vertical walls of granite. ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... Homes of England, Though tenantless ye stand, With none content to pay the rent, Through all the shadowy land, Now, Science true will find in you A sympathetic perch, And take you all, both Grange and ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... at him; he rose and bowed quite gravely. She deliberately put down thimble, scissors, work; descended with precaution from her perch, and curtsying with unspeakable seriousness, said, "How ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... her with curious eyes, wondering where she was. Not in England, of that she was sure—there was a different feel in the air, colours were brighter, scents were stronger, and that radiant parrot would never perch itself so tranquilly upon an ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... Fire away, and don't miss!" cried Seth, hastily following Sol, who had climbed to the top of the dresser as a good perch from which ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... might have halted to make sure of his scent. He was circling on the trail of the stallion, with cunning intent of ambush. The end of this slow, careful stalk of the lion, as told in his tracks, came upon the edge of a knoll where he had crouched to watch and wait. From this perch he had made a magnificent spring—Slone estimating it to be forty feet—but he had missed the stallion. There were Wildfire's tracks again, slow and short, and then deep and sharp where in the impetus of fright he had sprung out of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... friends went down—"Big Jack" David, and Wresmak, the Bohemian, Klowoski, the Pole, and finally Jerry Minetti. Little Jerry waved his hand from his perch on Hal's shoulder; while Rosa, who had come out and joined them, was clinging to Hal's arm, silent, as if her soul were going down in the cage. There went blue-eyed Tim Rafferty to look for his father, and black-eyed "Andy," the Greek boy, whose father had perished in a similar disaster ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... of the 9th the game was thus lost to the Germans. Their armies of the right and of the center were beaten and the retreat followed. The Imperial Guard left in the marshes of St. Gond more than 8,000 men and almost all its artillery. Victory henceforth began to perch on the Allied banners over all the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the British. It's near about the prettiest sight I know of, is one of our first class Frigates, manned with our free and enlightened citizens all ready for sea; it's like the great American Eagle, on its perch, balancing itself for a start on the broad expanse of blue sky, afeared of nothin' of its kind, and president of all it surveys. It was a good emblem that ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... anxiously, as he threw in his bait, and their delight was immense, when a half hour's effort was rewarded with a half dozen perch, of fair ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... An insecure perch for the radiant wanderer. The inhospitable saurian dives with embarrassing suddenness and dips the airy visitor into the "rank water." The butterfly finds no charm in the gloomy place and flies away, which less ethereal wanderers might likewise be fain to do. Now ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... ran in between the rocks, its shore spread with grey sand, smooth and trackless. At least so Gimblet imagined it at first, as his eye roved casually over the beach. Then suddenly, with a smothered ejaculation, he leaped down from his perch of observation, and made his way to the margin of ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... soon beyond his depth, and we were at once alarmed and diverted at seeing his rider, with surprising adroitness, draw her feet from the stirrups and perch herself upon the top of the saddle, where she held her position, and navigated her little refractory steed ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... them a farthing. How generous he is! The colossus which is the pedestal contemplates the pigmy which is the statue. How great is this myrmidon! he is on my back. A dwarf has an excellent way of being taller than a giant: it is to perch himself on his shoulders. But that the giant should allow it, there is the wonder; and that he should admire the height of the dwarf, there is the folly. Simplicity of mankind! The equestrian statue, reserved for kings alone, is an excellent figure ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Fletcher made a dive in the direction of the offender, and in a moment the whole gathering was in a state of confusion. The majority of those present siding with "Rats," began to hustle Fletcher, while two gentlemen having dragged Bibbs from his perch, jumped up in his stead, and ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... must not make a scare-crow of the law, Setting it up to frighten birds of prey; And let it keep one shape till custom makes it, Their perch and ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... program of postmortem entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will still be burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes down from his perch. ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... it seems me many multiplied of fishes. Let us amuse rather to the fishing. Here, there is a wand and some hooks. Silence! there is a superb perch! Give me quick the rod. Ah! there is, it is a lamprey. You mistake you, it is a frog! dip again it in ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... number of nightingales, goldfinches, canary birds, larks, and other rare singing birds, and the vessels that held their seed were of the most sparkling jasper or agate. The sun went down, and I retired, charmed with the chirping notes of the multitude of birds, who then began to perch upon such places as suited them for repose during the night. I went to my chamber, resolving on the following days to open all the rest of the doors, excepting that ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... hedge and repeated her answer to my lady herself, with a great deal more which need not be recorded. Suffice it to say, my lady thought it necessary to pull up the glass, against which Matty threw a handful of mud; the servant jumped up on his perch behind the carriage, which was rapidly driven away by the coachman, but not so fast that Matty could not, by dint of running, keep it "within range" for some seconds, during which time she contrived to pelt both coachman and footman with mud, and leave her mark on their new ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... voice suddenly shouted: "Fire! Fire! Fire!" Hannigan had flung his pipe frenziedly from him because his lungs demanded room. He tumbled down from his perch, swung over the fence, and ran shouting towards the front-door of the Trescotts'. Then he hammered on the door, using his fists as if they were mallets. Mrs. Trescott instantly came to one of the windows on the second ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... found near Cardiff, and the color of this petrified fish is very similar to the Cardiff giant stone. Mr. W.B. Kirk, of this city, when living at Cardiff many years ago, found near there a good sized Perch, that was perfectly petrified. Third—Five miles further down the valley, at what is known as the Onondaga Valley Cemetery, in taking up a human body for removal some years ago, it was found to be solid stone; still further north, ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... resolutions, we shall here insert them for his satisfaction. The committee resolved, that the ell ought to contain one yard and one quarter, according to the yard mentioned in the third resolution of the former committee upon the subject of weights and measures; that the pole, or perch, should contain in length five such yards and a half; the furlong two hundred and twenty; and the mile one thousand seven hundred and sixty: that the superficial perch should contain thirty square yards and a quarter; the rood one thousand two hundred and ten; and the acre four thousand eight ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... art the centre, in whose close embrace, From all the wild circumference, each line Directly runs to find its resting-place: Upon their swiftest wings, to perch on thine Ennobling breast, which is their only butt, The arrows of all high ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of the things that have puzzled you about me. Oh! I know they did; you needn't look apologetic. I don't wonder, or blame you. I am a very queer bird for the perch I have lit on; I know that as well as anybody. The only wonder is that you ever took the trouble to try to lime me. Now have another glass of toddy. Why! it is near twelve. I must have one pipe and turn in. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... long they had him on the grill; but it couldn't have been more'n half an hour, for along about three o'clock I strolls into the audit department, and there's old Dudley back on his perch ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... and seems very happy and contented, swinging there on his perch. He likes to be talked to, and can answer very plain. If you say to him, "How do you do, Poll?" he will answer you, "Quite well, thank you, and how are you?" Poll is quite a ...
— Child-Land - Picture-Pages for the Little Ones • Oscar Pletsch
... discovery of three or four dead perch, floating belly up, round and round in an eddy, gave him no clue to the total destruction of all life. He did not understand even yet that the terrific conflagration, far more stupendous than any ever known in the old days, had even heated the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... friend has quieted down very much indeed. It is a little wider, and it may be it is a little deeper, but it flows along very placidly between its low banks. It is doubtful if we should find any trout in it now, but there may be cat-fish and perch, ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... the tiny victim, hurled from its high perch—after making several somersaults in the air—falls right into the jaws of that hungry savage at the bottom of the tree. Wolf makes his ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... mine, who was going out of town for a few days, intrusted his parrot to me with the request that I would take care of it during his absence. The bird, feeling strange in my house, had climbed, helping himself with his beak, to the very top of his perch, and looking pretty well bewildered, rolled round his eyes, that resembled the gilt nails on arm-chairs, and wrinkled the whitish membrane that served him for eyelids. Madame-Theophile had never seen a parrot, ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... the refuge of tempted faith. What was Hezekiah to do with the crafty missive? It was hoped that he would listen to reason, and come down from his perch. But he neither yielded nor took counsel with his servants, but, like a devout man, went into the house of the Lord, and spread the letter before the Lord. It would have gone hard with him if he had not been to the house of the Lord many a time before. It is not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... and she feared evidently to avail herself of opiates, lest in her heavy slumber, perhaps, I should escape. In her normal condition this seemed impossible, for she slept habitually as lightly as a cat, or bird upon its perch, yet lying, and with her key beneath her head (never dreaming of other outlet) she felt at ease. I had already learned that since her illness there were additional precautions taken to insure my safety, and, as she ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... perch of churchyard clay All the soil he now possesses; Heavily its burthen grey On his pulseless ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... time to begin and knock these birds from their perch," said the thrall, "for that is an awkward corner for our folk to turn with Whitefire and the axe of Skallagrim ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... all had calling-over or prayers, or something of the sort, when the locking-up bell rang? Well, I declare," said Arthur, looking up seriously into Tom's laughing eyes, "I do think he was right. Since I've been lying here, I've watched them every night; and, do you know, they really do come and perch, all of them, just about locking-up time; and then first there's a regular chorus of caws; and then they stop a bit, and one old fellow, or perhaps two or three in different trees, caw solos; ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... the danger he ran in coming to visit him. To an outsider, calmly reflecting, it did not seem a very good bargain for Stubbs, but still very much better than that of Perry, his friend and present companion, who kept a hawk, and vainly endeavoured to teach the bird to know him and perch on his wrist. But Perry was fond of hawks, and much regretted that the days were gone by when hawking ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... came upon me, and through the sleep a dream Of the Frenchman who once was my master by the side of the willowy stream; And he talked and told me tales of the war unwaged as yet, And the victory never won, and bade me never forget, While I walked on, still unhappy, by the home of the dark-striped perch. Till at last, with a flash of light and a rattle and side-long lurch, I woke up dazed and witless, till my sorrow awoke again, And the grey of the morn was upon us as we sped through the poplar plain, By the brimming streams and the houses with their grey roofs warped and bent, ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... their black titles below, were in the order he had taught Mrs. Bolton to replace them in after dusting; the stuffed owl on a shelf above the mantel looked down with a clear solemnity in its gum-copal eyes, and Mrs. Bolton took it from its perch to show Miss Kilburn that there was not a moth on it, nor the ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... enough to take the end of a two-by-six plank four or five feet long with a single grab-nail in the end,—the springboard of the Pacific coast logger, whose daily business lies among the biggest timber on God's footstool. Each then clambered up on his precarious perch, took hold of his end of the long, limber saw, and cut in to a depth of a foot or more, according to the size of the tree. Then jointly they chopped down to this sawed line, and there was the undercut complete, a deep notch on the side to which the tree would fall. That done, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... ha!" cried Otter again from his airy perch. "Treachery! treachery! And what if the slaves are loosed? And what ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... quite know why I feel like that, but I fancy it must be on account of some serene and peaceful quality in your poems. Here, then, there are sixty-four little pages of restfulness for those whose minds are troubled. You don't plunge into the deep of metaphysics and churn it into a foam, but you perch on your little bough and pipe sweetly of gorse and heather and wide meadows and brightly-flashing insects; you sing softly as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... that ran through the meadow behind the barn, was one of their haunts. They fished in it for minnows and little perch; they made dams and bathed in it; and sometimes they played pirates ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... vehicle of scientific precision, and the use of a dead language saves your nomenclature from being confounded with your common talk. The use of a Greek derivative gives notice that you are scientific. If you speak of an acanthopterygian, it is plain that you are not discussing perch in reference to its roasting or boiling merits; and if you make an allusion to monomyarian malacology, it will not naturally be supposed to have reference to the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... heels together and thinking idly of Major Dabney and certain disquieting rumors lately come to Paradise, when the tinkling drip of the spring into the pool at the foot of his perch was interrupted by a ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... history of all the odd litter about the room, and how it came there. I wondered whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers's family, and, if he were so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such ill-looking relations, why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the blacks and flies to settle on, instead of giving them a place at home. Of course I had no experience of a London summer day, and my spirits may have been oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the dust and grit that lay thick on ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... been, it must be recollected, too, that since its first fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it. "Fly from steeple to steeple" the eagles of the former did actually, and according to promise perch for a while on the towers of Notre Dame. We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the Emperor, the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for a mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech, pronounce themselves ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... food which these people eat at a meal is prodigious: I have seen one man devour two or three fishes as big as a perch; three bread-fruits, each bigger than two fists; fourteen or fifteen plantains or bananas, each of them six or seven inches long, and four or five round; and near a quart of the pounded bread-fruit, which is as substantial as the thickest unbaked custard. This is so extraordinary that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... streamed in the indolent ripple; beneath them the lake, lucid as some dark crystal, sheeted with olive transparence a bottom of yellow sand; here a bream poised on slowly waving fins, as if dreaming of motion, or a perch flashed its red fin from one hollow to another. The shadow lifted a degree, the eye penetrated to farther regions; a bird piped warily, then freely, a second and a third answered, a fourth took up the tale, blue-jay and thrush, catbird and bobolink; wings ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... and hardly larger than the cup that belies its reputation and dances drunkenly whenever another guest joggles our elbow,—which happens so often that we suspect conspiracy,—the old-fashioned saucer affords no reasonably secure perch for a sandwich; responds with delight to the law of gravitation if left to itself; and sets us wishing, those of us who think scientifically, that evolution had refrained from doing away with an extension by which alone we could now hope to manage it. We mean a tail! If ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... to speak, then settled by our forefathers, they were driven again and again. Now and then they would meet the English with something like equal numbers, and then the eagle of victory would proudly perch upon the stripes and stars. And so they went on as best they could, hoping and fighting until they came to the dark and sombre ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... Olga, smiling with supreme ease, lowered Peggy from her perch, and dropped into the vacant seat beside her. Daisy passed on with a smile to join the Bradlaws. Peggy remained, glued to her ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... light, (as I found upon landing on one of the islands) than from a smoke hole, or from an aperture in the wall, closed at night with a tuft of grass. The calf and pig were seen as inmates, while the little furniture that appeared, was either festooned with strings of dried fish, or crossed with a perch for the fowls ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... lofty wood, that skirts the wild. A vagabond and useless tribe, there eat Their miserable meal. A Kettle Slung between two poles, upon a stick transverse, Receives the morsel: flesh obscene of hog, Or vermin; or, at best, of cock purloined From his accustom'd perch. Hard faring race, They pick their fuel out of every hedge, Which kindled with dry leaves, and wood, just saves The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawney skin, The vellum of the pedigree ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... absolutely nothing alive in that inviting nullah. I had walked Moolah Bux slowly along, looking down from the margin of the ravine, and upon arrival at Berry's perch I took him up behind me in the rear compartment of the howdah. I felt almost sure that, although we had drawn a blank up to the present time, the tigress would be lying somewhere among the numerous deep but narrow nullahs which drained into the main channel that we had just examined. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... accepted the flying noose that came shooting straight toward him, placed it under his arms, made sure that his gun was still fast to his back, and then fearlessly dropped off his perch. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... running, side by side, the brigand holding Chiquita by the hand, so as to give her all the aid and support he could, and they quickly passed out of sight. No sooner had they departed than the crows came swooping down from their perch in the nearest tree, and fell to fiercely upon their horrible feast, in which they were almost directly joined by several ravenous wolves—and they made such good use of their time, that in a few hours nothing remained of the poor old horse but his bones, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... bait is the more alluring and dangerous. But when once the hook has been swallowed and struck, then the Academician takes no more notice of the victim, but leaves him to struggle and dangle at the end of the line. You are an angler; well, when you have taken a fine perch or a big pike, and you drag it along behind your boat, what do you ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... bespoke neither political influence nor the backing of rich friends. Nobody, really, had ever wanted his place. If they did they never dared ask for it—not above their breath. They would as soon have thought of ousting the old clock from its perch in the rotunda, or moving one of the great columns that faced the street. So he just stayed on ticking away at his post, quite like the old clock itself, and getting stiffer and stiffer in the line of his duty—quite like the columns—and getting more and more covered ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... smoke O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild. A vagabond and useless tribe there eat Their miserable meal. A kettle, flung Between two poles upon a stick transverse, Receives the morsel—flesh obscene of dog, Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race, They pick their fuel out of every hedge, Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unqueuched The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin, The vellum of the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the country and the lessons we should learn from the Central and South American republics, are really points of a very simple nature and easily deduced. How strange that among all this large number of politicians and scholars, who are as numerous as the trees in the forest and the perch in the stream, should have failed for all these years to notice these simple points; and now suddenly make a fetish of them because they have come out of the mouth of a foreigner. Is it because no one except a foreign doctor can discover such facts? Why even ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... it carefully in his mouth, deposited it at the feet of the little girls, seating himself before them with an air of deep interest. Bab and Betty picked it up and read it aloud in unison, while Ben leaned from his perch ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... executed under the tree would have frightened even an African lion. Tom hesitated, showed his white fangs, returned to his first perch, and from there climbed as far as he could. The forked branch on which ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... rolled bodily out of the square by the stream, others ran wildly with their arms over their heads. The air was full of leather hats, spinning as the water struck them. Every now and then the hosemen elevated the nozzle and gave Colonel Gideon Ward his share. A half-dozen times he nearly fell off his perch and flapped out like a rag ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... to accept of a Jack, which is the best I have caught this Season. I intend to come and stay with you a Week, and see how the Perch bite in the Black River. I observed with some Concern, the last time I saw you upon the Bowling-Green, that your Whip wanted a Lash to it; I will bring half a dozen with me that I twisted last Week, which I hope will serve you all the Time ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... issue of this momentous contest, he turned to where Rosalind sat, and reining up at the foot of her perch, dismounted. ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... out of springs and wheels so marvellous a butterfly, that the seeming creature shall not only fly and move its antennae, and fold and display its wings like the living insect, but shall even surpass the living insect by showing a fine sense of human character, and refusing to perch on the hand of those who had not a genuine sentiment of beauty. The novelist shall put what springs and wheels he pleases into his mechanism, but the springs and wheels he places in the mechanist himself, must be those of genuine humanity, or the whole fiction falls to the ground. Now ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... foul child. The asphalt burns. The garrulous sparrows perch on metal Burns. Sing! Sing! they say, and flutter with their wings. He does not sing, he only wonders why He is sitting there. The sparrows sing. And I Yield to the strait ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... "The house will perch on top of this little hill. Back of it, you see, on top of the ridge, it's quite flat and the garden will be there. I was talking about it ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... old Dimsted in the House used to tell us boys all about it, and how he used to catch jack and eels, and roach and perch, in the river." ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... hungry and bethinking myself that it must be getting toward noon, I descended from my perch of observation, and made my way homeward, although it did not seem very much like home to me as yet. The tramp had done me good in the way of satisfying ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... for the donkey. While he did so a woman who wore a white cap, a grey bodice, a thick woollen red petticoat, under which her bare lean legs showed, came to the door, waving the yellow hen off her perch. ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... the perch," he invited, and reached forth a long, muscular arm, drawing her up close betide him on ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... soon attempt to entice a star To perch upon my finger; or the wind To follow me like a dog—as try to make Some ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... is only rough work; we will first put up a perch or two for them, and then close in the side, and thatch the roof with cocoa-nut branches; but there's Juno taking in the dinner, ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... Though Sir Hubert is delighted to see her, the mention of dinner throws him into a state of great perplexity, as he has nothing in the house which they can make a meal of. Going out of doors, "he espies his hawk upon the perch, which he seizes, and finding it very fat, judges it might make a dish not unworthy of such a lady. Without further thought, then, he pulls his head off, and gives it to a girl to dress ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... but I believe the notion of fixing the attention by keeping the room empty, is a wholly mistaken one: I think it is just in the emptiest room that the mind wanders most; for it gets restless, like a bird, for want of a perch, and casts about for any possible means of getting out and away. And even if it be fixed, by an effort, on the business in hand, that business becomes itself repulsive, more than it need be, by the vileness of its associations; and many a study appears dull or painful to a boy, when ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... and gentry—there is nothing of the kind whatever.' (He paused a moment, probably to allow me to observe the choiceness of his diction.) 'They positively visit each other but seldom. Every one sits like a pigeon on its perch. And so it comes to pass that visitors have simply nowhere ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... aviary, where handsome brass cages of various shapes showed through their burnished wires snowy cockatoos, gaudy paroquets, green and gold canaries, flaming red and vivid blue birds, and one huge white owl, whose favorite perch when allowed his freedom, was a bronze Pallas on ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the parrot on the back with the perch which he used as a baton. Blinking and muttering, the bird performed his tricks, and was duly rewarded and returned to his home of iron. "She'll be wanting to take you home with her, but you're not ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... given to her more than she needed for herself. So she was able to be nearly as kind to the children as she wished, and to feed extravagantly certain small animals. Birds nested in her temple, and ate from her hand, and learned not to perch upon the heads ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... in a crowning state of ecstasy. Rigdum Funnidos was in a hutch in the small garden under the cliff, Begum and two small gray kittens were in a basket under the kitchen stairs, Aga was purring under everybody's feet, Cocky was turning out the guard upon his perch—-in short, Il Lido was made as like Silverfold as circumstances would permit. Aunt Ada with Miss Vincent was sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, with a newly-worked cosy, like a giant's fez, over the teapot, and ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the worst of tempers, having been just incensed by a boy who had declared that two gills equalled one pint, two pints one quart, and two quarts one rod, pole, or perch. So, when I brought my sum up and giggled at the answer, he looked at me as if he neither liked me nor desired that I should ever like him. Then he indulged in cheap sarcasms. This he was wont to do, and, after emitting them through his silky beard, he would draw in his breath ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... we have certainly grounds for hope that we have got it all to ourselves. One thing I am anxious to find is some sheltered spot or cave where we can pass the rainy season. The place where we now are is charming in such weather as this, that is for ten months in the year; but it is not a perch I should choose in such a gale as that which ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... Harrison was very sick, as a person is sea-sick; and for a long time he clung to his precarious perch without attempting to move. Johansen, however, continued violently to urge him on to ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... fellow in the mizzen-top, my lord, Who made it his affair to wing you thus, We took good care to settle; and he fell Like an old rook, smack from his perch, stone dead. ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... he climbed the tower of the old North Church, By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the somber rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade; By the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town, And the ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... child in the organ loft. Was it possible, they asked themselves, that a child could produce such beautiful music? They remained rooted to the spot, till Wolfgang happened to see them and crept meekly down from his perch. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... flew all around, Till Colin he found, Then perch'd on his head with the prize; Whose heart, while he reads, With tenderness bleeds, For the pigeon that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... about sundown to fish, and on Sundays an hour or two to sail quietly without fishing-rod or gun when the lake was calm. Therefore we gradually learned something about its inhabitants,—pickerel, sunfish, black bass, perch, shiners, pumpkin-seeds, ducks, loons, turtles, muskrats, etc. We saw the sunfishes making their nests in little openings in the rushes where the water was only a few feet deep, ploughing up and shoving away ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... came for us at ten o'clock, when, had I been at Gorse Bush, I should have been fast asleep on my perch,—as Drinkwater says, for he loves to plague me about being a Linnet. My Cousin was beautifully attired; he wore a most superb cravat, of a deep ruby colour, and an under-waistcoat of the brightest amber; but, in fact, he always attracts admiration; and I think, without vanity, ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... rarely given trout to eat here in the hotels. A lake fish, called "ferras," a large species of the salmonid genus Coregonus, to which the skelly, powan, and vendayce of British lakes belong, is the commonest fish of the table d'hote, and not very good. A better one is the perch-pike or zander. It is common in all the larger shallow lakes of Central Europe, and abounds in the "broads" which extend from Potsdam to Hamburg, though it is unknown in the British Isles. It is quite the best of the European fresh-water ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... sliding slowly down from his perch on the camping outfit. He emptied the pipe he had been comfortably smoking. "Time enough," he answered. Naki was a man of ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... of wit, realized too late the intention of his tormentor. He scrambled to escape, but the ape-man gave the rope a tremendous jerk that pulled Taug from his perch, and a moment later, growling hideously, the ape hung head downward thirty feet ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hives are governed by a long lever in the shape of a hen-roost, so that the hives may all be closed seasonably and regularly, by the crowing and cackling tribe, when they go to bed at night, and opened at once when they fly from their perch, to greet the merry morn. Alas! that so much ingenuity should be all in vain! Chickens are often sleepy, and wish to retire sometime before the bees feel that they have completed their full day's work, and some of them are so much opposed ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... to come home at eventide to the small but cosy cottage in that green lane, far, far away in the pleasant country; and she used to stand at the gate to watch for his coming, sometimes running half-way up the lane to meet him, and he would perch her on his shoulder, where she felt, oh! so safe, and bring her home to mother. Or she would climb his knee as he sat by the fire, and watch dear mother get the nice supper; but father was dead now. She had seen the pretty daisies growing above his grassy grave in that distant churchyard; ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... myself at the large gate of New Square, Lincoln's Inn, so I knocked until the porter opened it, and drove in as straight as I could. When I got to the corner of the square, by No. 7, I pulled up, and, tumbling off my perch, walked quietly along to the Portugal-street wicket. Here the other porter let me out, and I found myself in Lincoln's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... The old way was to carry the overflow down a pipe in the centre through its surface opening, but an improvement on this system is for the leakage to be at the bottom of the tank and the inflow at the top. Young perch are beautiful too,—and tench, and dace, and roach,—and all are hardy. Feeding them is very simple. The shop from which you buy the fish will keep you supplied with the proper food. The American catfish, with its curious ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... sitting there like a hen on a perch? What did your wife tell you to do? You just get ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... the room looking for a place to perch, trying to find a footing against the wall, slipping down, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... some high perch Of freedom, and lofty flight? You smile; oh, little wild bird, You are ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... discovery to his companions. The report spread up and down the Rue Mouffetard like wild-fire. In a few minutes two or three hundred ragpickers had assembled about the door of the cabaret, and as many as could get in crowded about the wonderful actor whom they had seen from their perch in the gallery of the theatre. They pressed him to drink with them; they poured out their compliments and praises on him; they wanted to carry him in triumph through the streets. Not relishing the idea of such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... perch, the music-stool, and swung himself gently to and fro while he mildly upheld the virtues of the ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... warn him, or do anything except let out a horrified "Oh-h!" he had leaped lightly from his high perch and was standing in front ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... from Trot's high perch seemed like a magnificent painted picture—was a rosy glow such as we sometimes see in the west at sunset. In this case, however, it was not in the west ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... people to look at him: but Dawson, for some unaccountable reason, was usually suspicious of advice from that quarter; so he "stooped to conquer" and lost all. The shako tumbled from its precarious perch, and hung ignobly suspended by the cap-lines. A lancer with a pair of grey spectacles, and a shako hanging round his neck, would have been a very fancy dress indeed: so he was endeavouring, at the risk of choking himself, to disentangle, by main force, the complication ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... contributed an article to Forest and Stream a few years ago, in which he stated that in the salmon no less than sixteen kinds of parasitic worms have been discovered, and undoubtedly many others remain unknown; four species were tapeworms, and four, roundworms. The yellow perch is known to be infested with ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Green, with what Mabel called "the most extraordinary people." "What you can find in that Mr. Fargus and that young Perch and his everlasting mother," she used to ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... dingy three-balled tomb of so many hopes and keepsakes. He sketched her in charcoal, dressed (he would have it) in black, with a Spanish comb in her hair and the guitar on a broad ribbon of strange deep Chinese blue; behind her, on an aerially slender perch, stands a gaudy Mexican parrot. It does not look like her to us who know her well (though, curiously enough, all strangers consider it an extremely fine likeness) but as a tour de force it is remarkable, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... directed Delorier to repair with his cart to the place of meeting, we came again to the fort to make some arrangements for the journey. After completing these we sat down under a sort of perch, to smoke with some Cheyenne Indians whom we found there. In a few minutes we saw an extraordinary little figure approach us in a military dress. He had a small, round countenance, garnished about the eyes with the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... tree in sight, and walked across them until we came to a very rough road—possibly the track which we expected to find leading from Malham. Malham Tarn was not in sight, but we had learned that the water was about a mile in length and the only things to be seen there were two kinds of fish—perch and trout—-which often quarrelled and decimated each other. The weather was dull, and we had encountered several showers on our way, passing between the Parson's Pulpit to the left, rising quite 1,700 feet, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... to this last construction, men seem to have thought that the species should follow; consequently, the regular plurals of some very common names of fishes are scarcely known at all. Hence some grammarians affirm, that salmon, mackerel, herring, perch, tench, and several others, are alike in both numbers, and ought never to be used in the plural form. I am not so fond of honouring these anomalies. Usage is here as unsettled, as it is arbitrary; and, if the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... it was a splendid place. Carmichael and Robinson caught a great quantity of fish with hook and line. I called these Middleton's Pass and Fish Ponds. The country all round was open, grassy, and fit for stock. The next day we got plenty more fish; they were a species of perch, the largest one caught weighed, I dare say, three pounds; they had a great resemblance to Murray cod, which is a species of perch. I saw from the hill overhanging the water that the creek trended south-east. Going in that direction we did not, however, meet ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... it be true, as was mentioned in the World last week, that Mr. Justice WRIGHT has "climbed down," only to be placed upon a higher perch, will any change of name follow on the Knighthood? Will he be known as Sir ROBERT RONG, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... the archbishop's despair at the catastrophe—and feeling the while a proud personal interest in it all. Ah, what good days those were, roaming about knee-deep in heather, catching the rare moths, chasing the squirrels that whisked up the fir stems and mocked us from their high perch, searching the hollow trees for woodpeckers' nests, eating the beech-nuts or pricking our fingers as we tried to open the husks of the Spanish chestnuts that grew by the lake! From among the bulrushes the coots sailed out at our approach, and the tiny dabchick dived so deep that we thought, "This ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... which all life appeared to be suspended, while the little village of Roussainville carved in relief upon the sky the white mass of its gables, with a startling precision of detail. A gust of wind blew from its perch a rook, which floated away and settled in the distance, while beneath a paling sky the woods on the horizon assumed a deeper tone of blue, as though they were painted in one of those cameos which you still find decorating the walls of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... perch on this rocky wall these great birds would soar away, looking like a cloud in the sky, to seize a reindeer from a passing herd and bring it to their young. Or, again, they would circle out with a noise like thunder from their shaking wings, and drop down upon a fisherman in his ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... strange enough in shape to be credited with strange actions: but ichthyologists say positively no: that the noise (at least along the coast of the United States) is made by a Pogonias, a fish somewhat like a great bearded perch, and cousin of the Maigre of the Mediterranean, which is accused of making a similar purring or grunting noise, which can be heard from a depth of one hundred and twenty feet, and guides the fishermen to ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... you will know. But come down from your perch—the dining-room door will not be open again for some time—and I will show you about the rooms upstairs. This is a larger house than Mrs. Petherwin's, as you see. Just come and look at ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy |
