"Swarm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swarm they come From the chambers beyond that misty veil; Some hover in air awhile, and some Rush prone from the sky like summer hail. All, dropping swiftly, or settling slow, Meet, and are still in the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... longer be called dark: the little flush of dawn had spread and overpowered the glow of the aurora australis, which had greatly decreased since I last saw it; evidently it was near its end. Now the four-footed band began to swarm out, darting like rockets from the tents. Here were all colours-grey, black, red, brown, white, and a mixture of all of them. What surprised me was that they were all so small; but otherwise they looked splendid. Plump ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... with irresistible violence, upon the capital of a fruitful region, that was rolling under them. Even this valley, the retreat of princes, the abode of happiness, might be violated by the sudden descent of some of the naked nations, that swarm on the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... were hard at work sending shots at the Spanish gunboat, which was in lively action a short distance away, we became aware of a peculiar whirring noise—a sound like the angry humming of a swarm of hornets. It would rise and fall in volume, then break off short with a sharp crash. Suddenly, while glancing through the port, I saw something strike the surface, sending up a great spurt ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... another like a scattering swarm of locusts, to the right and left; this phenomenon lasted until daybreak; people were thrown into consternation and cried to God, the Most High, with ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... What shall I gain by that? Let me tell you, it is these minor troubles that send a man to Bedlam. One breeds another, till they swarm and buzz you distracted, and sting you dead. 'Petit maiheur!' it is a greater one than you have ever encountered since you have ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... the mother of your four children or not? I would like to ask. I suppose you cannot deny that, whatever else you deny which is true, and you tell me to choose my language! Da, I will choose my language, in truth! Da, I will choose out such a swarm of words as ought to sting your ears like hornets, if you had not such a leathery skin and such a soft brain inside it. But why should I? It is thrown away. There is no shame in you. You see nothing, you care for nothing, you hear no reason, you feel no argument. I will go home and make soup. ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... all, could the secular clergy be paid out of this spoliation, or in any other way? The Regulars would rise in consequence of their degradation; and where would be the influence that could keep them from mischief? They would swarm over the country to prey upon the people still more than they now do. In all the reasonings of the friends to this bribing scheme, the distinctive character of the Papal Church ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... rejected as soon as it was born, and instead, I endeavoured to imagine our approach to the pier. My boat hung on the starboard side; that would be the side away from the quay, and the tide would be low. I could swarm down the davits during the stir of arrival, drop into the sea and swim the few yards across the dredged-out channel, wade through the mud to within a short distance of the Dulcibella, and swim the rest. I rubbed the salt out of my eyes and ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... burst about fifty yards away and threw a shower of dirt over us. There was a precipitate flop, a falling backwards and forwards and all became messed up in an intricate jumble of flesh, equipment, clothing and rifles in the bottom of the trench. A swarm of "bees" buzzed overhead, a few dropped into the trench and Pryor who gripped one with his hand swore under his breath. ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... there, looking long and long at the swarm of stars upon the screen, thinking of the unseen worlds about them—the worlds ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... troublesome children: at the same period, some of the larger families of Longicorns abound, and one of them, Hamaticherus moschatus, musks your finger if you lay hold of him. In the July and August evenings, fire-flies scintillate on a thousand points around you, and swarm along the hedges, lighting each other to bed, till about midnight, which is their curfew; for you seldom meet one of these lantern-bearers later, though you may still, in returning from a late party, be stopped with momentary admiration at beholding a magnificent glow-worm burning her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Once, I say, a Sleepy Hollow, but now alive with the tramp of soldiers and the rumble of artillery and transport; for Wellingsford is the centre of a district occupied by a division, which means twenty thousand men of all arms, and the streets and roads swarm with men in khaki, and troops are billeted in all the houses. The War has changed many aspects, but not my old friendships. I had made a home here during my soldiering days, long before the South African War, my wife being a kinswoman ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... head ached so sore that it seemed like to split, and no wonder. Nor might she find place either to lie or to stand on the floor of the roof, but ever went to and fro, weeping. Besides which there stirred not the least breath of wind, and flies and gadflies did swarm in prodigious quantity, which, settling upon her excoriate flesh, stung her so shrewdly that 'twas as if she received so many stabs with a javelin, and she was ever restlessly feeling her sores with her hands, and cursing herself, her life, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... beyond doubt, a dozen, and coming this way, and these, too, have a couple of horses. Can they have overpowered his men, ambushed and murdered them, then secured their mounts? Is the whole Chiricahua tribe, reinforced by a swarm from the Sierra Blanca, concentrating on him now? The silence about him is ominous. Not an Indian has shown along the range for half an hour, and now these fellows to the east are close to the copse. In less than twenty minutes there will be five ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... it to them!" declared Jim. "I wouldn't be put upon and called baby and a mollycoddle and have that Perkins crowding me off the line and losing marks. I'd give him such a right-hander his head would hum like a swarm of bees." ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... on a mother s breast, Tenderly nourished, cared for, caressed Watched with a mother's love and pride Dreams of the future warm and bright, High hopes ambitions in rainbow light Clustered around him a fairy swarm Of tender fancies sweet and warm, As she hung over his cradle bed, In all this world there's none so bright, So clever as mother's heart s delight My child ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... crucifixes There is a meeting of hands Reaching from black mantles. Sighing embraces, bold investigations, Hide in confessionals, Sheltered by the shuffling of feet. Gorgeous—barbaric In its mail of jewels and gold, Saint Mark's looks down at the swarm of black masks; And outside in the palace gardens brown leaves fall, Flutter, Fall. Brown, And ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... pay to send out a swarm of 100,000 idle paupers[17] who, for two generations, had been fed at the public charge from the corn-bins of Rome, simply in order that a like number of honest peasants, who had been not only self-supporting but had paid a large ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... seats away, surrounded by a swarm of men in evening dress, sat a grey-haired woman, watching the fight with interest through a gold-rimmed lorgnette. Her eyes twinkled as heavy blows were delivered, and when one of the men began to bleed copiously from the nose, she uttered an exclamation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... although they may gain successes at first, it always ends in the harrying of their lands, and the burning of their castles and villages. They have been quiet for some years. But they are always like a swarm of bees. They will work, quietly enough, till they take offence at something; then they will pour out in a fury, attacking all they come across, and caring nothing about death, so that they can but prick an ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... a long, sharp knife, boldly attack a shark, and rip open his bowels at the moment when he turns on his side to give the deadly bite. But on that coast this dreaded fish appears singly; it is rare to see two of them together; while Santiago harbor seems to swarm with them, the dark dorsal fin of the threatening creatures just parting the surface of the sea, and betraying their presence. Lying at anchor between our ship and the shore was a trig Spanish corvette,—an American-built vessel, by the way, though belonging ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... swarm of "Busy Bees," in Dover, N.H., have been making honey for the needy children in one of the missions of our Association. Their gift, amounting to sixty-five dollars, has been used to furnish a Reference Library for the school at Wilmington, N.C. Special rates ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... and have been seen at sunset to cluster upon the trunk of a gigantic cypress like a swarm of bees. One after another slowly crawls through a hole into the cavity until it is filled up, while those who are not so fortunate as to obtain entrance, or reserved seats, cling to the outside of the trunk with their ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... art sad; And I am weary, ladye—I am mad! They bring no food to feed us, and I feel A frost upon my vitals, very chill, Like winter breaking on the golden year Of life. This bark shall be our floating bier, And the dark waves our mourners; and the white, Pure swarm of sunny sea birds, basking bright On some far isle, shall sorrowfully pour Their wail of melancholy o'er and o'er, At evening, on the waters of the sea,— While, with its solemn burden, silently, Floats forward our lone bark.—Oh, Agathe! ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... keep from falling, they had to hold fast to the iron posts supporting the ceiling. After their eyes had grown accustomed to the twilight always reigning in the steerage, they saw a swarm of human beings rolling on the floor, groaning, whimpering, wailing, shrieking. The weather did not permit of the opening of the port-holes, and the exhalations of about twenty Russian-Jewish families, with bag and baggage and babies, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the higher classes use, are really more tasty without it. In many of the smaller towns, our visits to the restaurant would sometimes result in considerable damage to its keepers, for the crowd would swarm in after us, knocking over the table, stools, and crockery as they went, and collect in a circle around us to watch the "foreigners" eat, and to add their opium and tobacco smoke ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... steps, looking for a cab and swearing at the narrowness of the Rue Montmartre, where the inadequate pavements forced the foot passengers to overflow on to the roadway, which was choked with costermongers' carts, heavy motor-buses, and all that swarm of vehicles which gives a Paris street an air of bustle unequalled in any other capital in the world. As he was about to pass the corner of the Rue Bergere, a porter laden down with sample boxes, strung on a hook, ran into him, ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... the afternoon and tried to sleep; but her brain was inexorably alert, and she lay making inventory of all the pleasant things she was to leave for that ugly fate she had insisted on. A swarm of fancies gave every detail of the parting dramatic intensity. Amidst the poignancy of her regrets, her shame for her ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... to steal away from the maelstroom of an overgrown metropolis, to glide into scenes of "calm contemplation and poetic ease;" although much of the journey lies through avenues of bricks and mortar, and trim roads that swarm with busy toil. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... winterers from the Northern regions. The geological formation is a concrete of shells of enormous thickness, which has hardened to the only semblance of rock which the coast affords, and the low dunes have shut off from the Atlantic long lagoons which swarm with life, marine and aquatic creatures occurring in numberless species and orders; alligators lie in wait for their prey, and schools of porpoises come in by the inlets in pursuit of other schools of fat mullet which swarm in the water. Such teeming life I had never before any conception of. In ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... came with it; and once more Teddy Bear's head was in a swarm of little darting, piercing flames. But his blood was up. He held onto that chunk of bee tree. A big piece of comb, dripping with honey and crawling with bees, was sticking to it. Whimpering and pawing at his face, he crunched ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... south he knew he had the troopers of the New York State Constabulary to deal with, and in addition every game warden and fire warden in the State Forests, a swarm of plain clothes men from the Metropolis, and the rural constabulary of every town along the edges of ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... dazzling cortege, up the steep steps of the narrow streets, swarm other groups—the medieval pilgrim host that rushes into cathedral aisles, and that climbs the ramparts to watch the stately procession as it makes its way toward ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... if a play previously rehearsed were being acted before the eyes of the audience, the "prominent representatives" of the city and state began to swarm out from the wings and fill the chairs. Senators, judges, millionaires, popular preachers, all sunk to the dead level of a supporting chorus, an impressive illustration of the littleness of the locally great. To all those thousands of intent eyes these were merely the background upon ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... at sea until the screw begins to revolve. There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy. Mail bags, so I understand, are being put on board. Stewards, carrying cabin trunks, swarm in the corridors. Passengers wander restlessly about or hurry, with futile energy, from place to place. Pushing men hustle each other at the windows of the purser's office, under pretence of expecting letters or despatching telegrams. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... Germans. When the Cimbrians and Teutonians came into contact with the Romans, in 113 B. C., is the beginning of all things for these people. In that year the inhabitants of the north of Italy awoke one morning to find a swarm of blue-eyed, light-haired, long-limbed strangers coming down from the Alps upon them. The younger and more light-hearted warriors came tobogganing down the snow-covered mountain-sides on their shields. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... clothed with camel's hair, ate "locusts and wild honey" in the arid wastes of Palestine. Although kept in partial bondage for six thousand years, the ruling propensity of the bee is to seek a home and shelter in the forest, when it emerges in a swarm from the parent hive; and no amount of domestic accommodation, or kindness of treatment, will induce it willingly to migrate from its nursery habitation to another by its side, although provided with the choicest comforts to invite its entrance. ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... a little wildly. "I do see we've been damn fools. There'll be trouble. You're right—there will be trouble; but it won't be ours. I'm through—through with this miserable little atom and its swarm of insects." He gripped the Doctor by both shoulders. "My God, Frank, can't you understand? We're men, you and I—men! These creatures"—he waved his arm back towards the city—"nothing but insects—infinitesimal—smaller than the smallest thing we ever dreamed of. And we take ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... before their attention was awakened by the tapping of a cask of rum, which with many more had been washed out of the hold. This beverage presented a powerful attraction; the ship was soon, in some measure, deserted, and the mob concentrated like a swarm of wasps round the casks. All distinctions were now at an end; the better sort of farmer or shopkeeper, scrambled with the pauper for a cup or cap (or shoe) full of the mellow liquid; while the supercargo and his men, aided by myself ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... an object lying on the rock beside him; he thought it moved. It was a small dog, apparently in the last agony of death from thirst. Its tongue was out, its jaws dry, its limbs extended lifelessly, and a swarm of black ants were crawling about its lips and throat. Its eye moved to the bottle which Hans held in his hand. He raised it, drank, spurned the animal with his foot, and passed on. And he did not know how it was, but he thought that a strange shadow had suddenly ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... arrived on the 21st October 1631, and landed at Columbo. He marched immediately against the enemy, though then the rainy season, and was soon forced to desist, as the country was mostly overflowed, and at this season the trees swarm with leeches, which drop down upon the men as they pass, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... said to have made overtures to Colman mac Luachain of Lann (now Lynn, Co. Westmeath)—a remarkable feat in itself, as Colman died about a century after his time—but not only did Colman refuse, but he sent a swarm of demons in the shape of wasps to repel Ciaran and his followers, who were journeying towards him. Ciaran then made a more moderate offer, which Colman again refused.[26] Lann was in the territory of the Delbna, who, ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... blind boy, led by his brother, both frightfully ugly and ragged urchins, pursued us all over the city, incessantly whining 'Signore Padrone!' It was only on the threshold of the inn that I ventured to give them a few coppers, for I knew well that any public beneficence would raise the whole swarm of the begging population round us. Sitting later in the day upon the piazza of S. Domenico, I saw the same blind boy taken by his brother to play. The game consists, in the little creature throwing his arms ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... he thought—and swarmed the thicker the farther he went south. And now, as the two started down the hill, he could see in the dusty road that ran through the old battlefield Southern interest and sympathy taking visible shape. For a hundred miles around, the human swarm had risen from the earth and was moving toward him on wagon, bicycle, horseback, foot; in omnibus, carriage, cart; in barges on wheels, with projecting additions, and other land-craft beyond classification or description. And the people—the American Southerners; rich whites, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... nature's undisputed sway. They were members of a tribe, and the fragmentary existence of the single individual was of no importance when it clashed with the welfare of the clan. The family—centred round the mother—and the tribe were the real individuals, in the same way as the swarm of bees, and not the individual bee, makes the whole. They lived in complete harmony with nature; they had no spiritual life, no history, for civilisation and the creation of intellectual values which are the foundation of history depend on the rise of a community above primitive ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... are sometimes yet less valuable. In the Last Day he hopes to illustrate the reassembly of the atoms that compose the human body at the "trump of doom" by the collection of bees into a swarm at the tinkling of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... about me that an honest fellow can't pray in my company?" cried the earl. "I will pray myself, in spite of the whole swarm of them, big and little!—O God, save me! I don't want to be damned. I will be good if thou wilt make me. I don't care about it myself, but thou canst do as thou pleasest. It would be a fine thing if a rascal like me were to escape the devil through thy goodness ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Boston and Neddie Benson shrank back against the taffrail as a multitude of moving brown figures seemed to swarm about us. Then I saw Roger leap forward, his arms high in air, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... not enough that you plunged to the chin in this hot swarm of feathers, for discretion, in an attempt to ward off from you all snuffling rheums, coughings, hackings and other fleshly ills, required you before kicking off the final slippers to shut the windows against what were believed to be the dank humors of the ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... am passing some weeks here, and am studying the erratic phenomena, and especially the formation of the many small lakes which literally swarm in this region, and are connected in various ways with the glacial epoch. The journey which I have just completed has furnished me with a multitude of new facts concerning the glacial period, the long continuance of which, and its importance with reference to the physical ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... in the sky, No cry, like Pan's, along the seas, Nor hovered round his baby mouth The swarm of classic bees. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... omens were, first, a wolf had stolen into the camp of the Romans, and cruelly mangled some of the soldiers, without receiving the least harm from those who endeavoured to kill it: and secondly, a swarm of bees had pitched upon a tree near the Praetorium or general's tent. Liv. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... came fiddling A dillar, a dollar As I was going to St. Ives As I was going up Pippen Hill A swarm of bees in ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor
... party approached the palisaded house of Madundun they stopped for twenty minutes to perform a ceremony called anting-anting. "An old man waved his shield and a cloth, meanwhile repeating mysterious words. Then each man was given a chew of betel-nut and was well rubbed with a charm." "At Tuli a swarm of bees passed over the house just as the party was ready to start. This was taken as a sign that some of the party would be killed by the arrows of the enemy, hence they refused to go." "Likewise, if the dove limokan ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... been quite a stride toward reform among them. Instead of killing the widow on the death of the husband, the husband takes such good care of his health and avoids all kinds of intellectual strain or physical fatigue, that late years there are no widows, but widowers just seem to swarm in the Shoshone tribe. The woods are full ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... each corner, and that they did not say, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One," as they kissed the fringes. No, the Ghetto was all his world, and a mighty universe it was, full of everything that the heart of a child could desire. What an eager swarm of life in the great sunny square where the Venetian mast towered skywards, and pigeons sometimes strutted among the crowd that hovered about the countless shops under the encircling colonnade—pawnshops, old-clo' shops, butcher-shops, wherein black-bearded men with yellow turbans bargained ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of a stupid age, a bad crop of men, I have been told that the taste in writing was never so false as at present. If it is really so, it may perhaps be owing to a prodigious swarm of insipid trashy writers: amongst whom there are some who pretend to dictate to the public as critics, though they hardly ever fail to be mistaken. But their dogmatic impudence, and something like ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... a shawl, and tiptoed out. Annina, her bosom friend, had no troubles. She was half undressed, but she too slipped a shawl over her head and went peering into the alley. There she met Ippolita, and joined hands. Flaring torches, a swarm of eager black heads, whispers, grunting, the archers' plumed helmets—"Madonna! What's all this?" cried the two girls together in a stew of curiosity. A dead Jew? A murdered Jew? O Gesu! They borrowed ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... kind. Twenty-eight boatmen are attached to my single person. A big junk may have a crew of two hundred. When the wind is not fair they must row or tow; and towing is not like towing along the Thames! Suddenly you see the men leap out and swarm up a precipice. Presently they appear high above, creeping with the line along a ledge of rock. And your "boy" remarks nonchalantly, "Plenty coolie fall here. Too high place." Or they are clambering over boulders, one or two told off to disentangle the line wherever it catches. Or they are struggling ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... of those fine spring mornings, when the leaves, although unfolded, are not yet green, when the sun begins to gild the roofs, and the sky is blue, when the population of Paris issues from its cells to swarm along the boulevards, glides like a serpent of a thousand coils through the Rue de la Paix towards the Tuileries, saluting the hymeneal magnificence which the country puts on; on one of these joyous days, then, a young man as beautiful as the day itself, dressed with taste, easy ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... had happened. He caught another glimpse of the Taube rushing away like a huge carnivorous bird that had already seized its prey, and then he ran swiftly down the street. The bomb had burst in a swarm of fugitives and a woman was killed. Several people were wounded, and a panic had threatened, but the soldiers had restored order already and ambulances soon took the wounded ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... three reasons, ordinarily, why one cannot bathe in the African rivers. In the first place, they are nearly all disagreeably muddy; in the second place, cold water in a tropical climate causes horrible congestions; in the third place they swarm with crocodiles and hippos. But this river was as yet unpolluted by the alluvial soil of the lower countries; the sun on its shallows had warmed its waters almost to blood heat; and the beasts found no congenial haunts in these clear shoals. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... were fast leaving Spring, we were moving towards Niagara and home. We alighted in a pleasant wood towards the middle of the day, dined on a fallen tree, and leaving our best fragments with a cottager, and our worst with the pigs (who swarm in this part of the country like grains of sand on the sea-shore, to the great comfort of our commissariat in Canada), we went forward ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... acts as one of the great lights of his age was the part he was called upon to perform as a powerful intercessor with barbaric kings. When Attila with his swarm of Mongol conquerors appeared in Italy,—the "scourge of God," as he was called; the instrument of Providence in punishing the degenerate rulers and people of the falling Empire,—Leo was sent by the affrighted emperor to the barbarian's camp ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... the Chasseurs of the Guards, and the line of cafes all filled with uniforms. I caught a glimpse as I went by of the blue and gold of some of my comrades, amid the swarm of dark infantry coats and the light green of the Guides. There they sat, sipping their wine and smoking their cigars, little dreaming what their comrade had on hand. One of them, the chief of my squadron, caught sight of me in the lamplight, ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... an education somewhat higher than was afforded him by the raw "seminaries" and "academies" of his native Ohio. True, his own sect, the "Disciples' Church," had got up a petty university of their own, "Bethany College"—such self-styled colleges swarm all over the United States; but James didn't much care for the idea of going to it. "I was brought up among the Disciples," he said; "I have mixed chiefly among them; I know little of other people; it will enlarge my views and give me more liberal feelings if I try a college elsewhere, conducted ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... home walk two and two orderly (for which men will praise you); don't run in heaps like a swarm of bees like boys ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... had not anticipated an attack on this side, and had not expected that the Celts, disregarding the Roman fortresses on the east coast and the protection of their own kinsmen, would venture to advance directly against the capital. Not very long before a similar Celtic swarm had in an exactly similar way overrun Greece. The danger was serious, and appeared still more serious than it really was. The belief that Rome's destruction was this time inevitable, and that the Roman soil was fated to become the property of the Gauls, was so generally diffused among ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... "I must help them find his Majesty or they will swarm here like bees. Yet I must see my Nell again to-night. You have bewitched me, wench. Sup with me within the hour—at—Ye Blue Boar Inn. ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... was pushed back. And now there was no more silence nor quiet The busy swarm poured out of the supper room; the men to lounge or tackle their horses, the women to gather up the bathing dresses from the fence, to look round, laugh, and go in again to pack up the dishes. It would seem that this last might be a work of time, each had to find her own through such a ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... bodyless entities, of course—but you denied their existence in your smug world of precise tidy detail. I'm a bodyless entity. I'm one of a swarm. We come from a dimension your mind wouldn't accept even if I explained it, so I'll save words. We of the swarm seek unfoldment—fulfillment—even as you in your stupid, blind world. Do you want ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... who had recently become a mother, Chitrangada, and other ladies of the royal house-hold, all proceeded with the old monarch. The wail they uttered on that occasion, O king, from grief, resembled the loud lamentations of a swarm of she-ospreys. Then the wives of the citizens,—Brahmanas and Kshatriyas and Vaisyas and Sudras,—also came out into the streets from every side. At Dhritarashtra's departure, O king, all the citizens of Hastinapore became as distressed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... sometimes much more. Their height of flight has been variously estimated at from forty to two hundred feet. "A dropping from the clouds" is a common expression used by observers when describing the apparition of a swarm. ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... of a curious humming sound in the air. The cause was soon apparent and the mystery that had puzzled them was solved when they reached the beast. The carcase was covered with bees while close above it hummed a swarm of others watching for an exposed place to plant ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... knighthood when, upon some hill Washed by the silver fringes of the sea, Amidst the purple heather he lies and reads Of Arthur and Avilion, like a star His love's pure face looked down. There Doughty came, Half fearful, half defiant, with a crowd Of jostling half-excuses on his lips, And one dark swarm of adders in his heart. For now what light of chivalry remained In Doughty's mind was thickening with a plot, Subtler and deadlier than the serpent's first Attempt on our first sire in Eden bower. Drake, with a countenance ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... little Machiavel—"a pantomime from head to foot," said Diderot—the gay Neapolitan punchinello, given the freedom of Paris, that "capital of curiosity," is at once wit, cynic, thinker, scholar, and buffoon. These, again, are but examples from an epistolary swarm. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... higher state of thought and feeling, so as to be enabled to value the benefits conferred through you. Could we begin so, there would be hope of our really becoming the instructors and guardians of this swarm of souls which come from their regions of torment to us, hoping, at least, the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a swarm of terror-stricken people were seen flying towards this cliff and clambering up its steep sides. They were probably some of the more courageous of the inhabitants who had summoned courage to return to their homes after the passage of the second wave. Their shrieks and cries could ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... sharp-pointed knife, and on seeing any of these fish above them, present the point over their heads, and stick it into the fish's belly. They are also subject to great danger from alligators, which swarm in this part of the sea; and some of us fancied we saw one swimming below the surface near Mariato Point, only a few leagues from hence. This island has a great variety of birds, also great numbers of black monkeys and guanoes, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... to know. They clambered on board by the ladder; Thorgils dragged the bridegroom out to the gunwale, and Cormac cut him down then and there. Then he dived into the sea with Steingerd and swam ashore; but when he was nearing the land a swarm of eels twisted round his hands and feet, so that he was dragged under. On which he made ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... and I rashly indulged in a nap after supper, expecting to wake up in time for the spectacle. But by ten o'clock, when I went to the beach again, all was over, and everybody had gone home. Over the water I saw something like a long swarm of fire- flies,—the lanterns drifting out to sea in procession; but they were already too far to be distinguished except as points of colored light. I was much disappointed: I felt that I had lazily missed an opportunity which might never again return,—for these old Bon-customs are dying ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... been said to indicate clearly the hopelessness of looking for any analogies between Mercury and the earth which would warrant the conclusion that the former planet is capable of supporting inhabitants or forms of life resembling those that swarm upon the latter. If we would still believe that Mercury is a habitable globe we must depend entirely upon the imagination for pictures of creatures able to endure its extremes of heat and cold, of light and darkness, of instability, swift vicissitude, ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... to get away. Driscoll glanced up the street whence the two had come. At the next corner, before a cafe, he saw things more promising. A ranchero with a drawn revolver was holding off a young officer in sky-blue uniform, while around them a swarm of natives and ten or eleven sailors were circling uneasily, as if waiting for some sign to begin hostilities. The joy of battle ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... me, and prevented me from thinking of aught else. From the day in May when my ill-luck began I could so clearly notice my gradually increasing debility; I had become, as it were, too languid to control or lead myself whither I would go. A swarm of tiny noxious animals had bored a way into my inner ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... on about its great work without complaint, a noisy minority maintains an uproar of demands for special favors for special groups. There are pests who swarm through the lobbies of the Congress and the cocktail bars of Washington, representing these special groups as opposed to the basic interests of the Nation as a whole. They have come to look upon the war primarily as a chance to make profits for themselves at the expense of their ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... that when there is abundance of rich timber-land from which to clear new fields? and as to economizing labor, that is the last thing a planter cares about, for what are the negroes to do? None are ever sold, the "picknies" who swarm around every cabin growing up to stock the plantations bought for each child as he or she "comes of age or is married," and work has to be made for them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... in a limited number of cases, I trust. In a degraded community like this there will always be some who had a different childhood from that of the crowds of young heathen who swarm its courts and alleys; some who in early life had religious training, and in whose memories were stored up holy things from Scripture; some who have tender and sweet recollection of a mother and ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... hour the Government clerks begin to swarm homewards. The choice of this hour by the police to arrest the women would enable them to have a large crowd passing the White House gates to lend color to the fiction that ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... the window, and had a fierce sting of heat in it, for it was warm though only May, and I was in a high fever by reason of my wounds. And another thing which served to hale me back to acquaintance with my fixed estate of life was a great swarm of flies which had entered at that same window, and were grievously tormenting me, and I was too weak to disperse them. All my wounds were dressed and bandaged and I was laid comfortably enough upon ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... A swarm of men were racing up the steps that led to the bridge and the pilot house. One lay with arms outstretched, face down on the deck. Another was sliding down the rail of the steps, his ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... found all the enchantments of fairyland and its illusions there united. The temple, situated in the midst of the lake, was splendidly illuminated, and the water reflected its columns of fire. A multitude of beautiful boats furrowed this lake, which seemed on fire, manned by a swarm of Cupids, who appeared to sport with each other in the rigging. Musicians concealed on board played melodious airs; and this harmony, at once gentle and mysterious, which seemed to spring from the bosom of the waves, added ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... The dust was only from another swarm of those hateful Saracens. I knew it would be so. Pah! it has made my tongue more like old boot leather than ever. Have no more drops been squeezed from the well? It's ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now a woman ageless because she is famous. She is surrounded by a swarm of lovers and possesses a great many beautiful things. She has more than one Ming jar in the library at her country place; yards upon yards of point de Venise in her top bureau-drawer. She is able to employ a very pleasant, wholesome woman, whose sole duty it is to keep her clothes ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... p. 6 f.) relates that on a certain occasion when his party was driven from its wagons by a swarm of bees, a Nandi man appeared, announced that he was of the bee totem, and volunteered to restore quiet, which he did, going stark naked into the swarm. His success was doubtless due to his knowledge of ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... something without any risks, you know," said Margery sagely. "You would have to buy ground for the silkworms, and set out the mulberries, and then a swarm of horrid insects might happen along and devour the plants before ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... smiles, cried, "Lieber Gott! is it not good-life?" It was not a question Swithin could undertake to answer. The band began to play a waltz. "Now they will dance. Lieber Gott! and are the lights not wonderful?" Lamps were flickering beneath the trees like a swarm of fireflies. There was a hum as from a gigantic beehive. Passers-by lifted their faces, then vanished into the crowd; Rozsi stood gazing at them spellbound, as if their very going and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fleet is in sight, heading to the westward, and therefore evidently meaning to reach the Atlantic by the north of the Shetlands. There are twelve large battleships, about twenty-five cruisers of different sizes, eight of them very large, and a small swarm of torpedo-boats being towed by the larger vessels, I suppose to save their coal. I see no signs of the Lucifer at present, but from what we have learnt she will be on the deck of one of the large cruisers. ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... puttin' poison grease on the bullets. Dat was de reason de wound wouldn't get well. Dey feared Mars Sam goin' to die an' a short time atter dat letter come I sure knowed it was so. One night just erbout dusk dark, de screech owls, dey come in er swarm an' lit in de big trees in de front of de house. A mist of dust come up an' de owls, dey holler an' carry on so dat old mars get he gun an' shot it off to scare dem erway. Dat was a sign, Boss, dat somebody gwine to die. I just knowed it ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... placed. He was asleep—sleeping for once peacefully with little trace of pain upon his features, as he had slept the previous night. She saw that his face and chest had not been touched by the stinging insect-swarm; he was doubly screened by a shirt hung above him dexterously on some ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... manifold as to make their hardihood astounding. It was not merely a matter of small vessels with a few men and boys daring distant voyages and the mischances of foundering or stranding, but of facing an incessant plague of privateers, French and Spanish, Dutch and English, or a swarm of freebooters under no flag at all. Coasts were unlighted, charts few and unreliable, and the instruments of navigation almost as crude as in the days of Columbus. Even the savage Indian, not content with lurking ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... relationships, and prejudices. Who advances a new idea, a reformatory movement, disturbs the status quo, stirs up the human bees in that great hive called society, and that lesser one called the church, and he must needs expect to have the swarm about ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... B'noor is famous for its sales of slaves and horses,[15] but I remember it best by its swarm of blue rock-pigeons and sparrow-hawks, that seemed to live side by side in the walls surrounding the saint's white tomb. For reasons best known to themselves they lived without quarrelling, perhaps because the saint was a man of peace. ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... A swarm of small white animals ran wildly past them from behind, and after them came a howling, laughing, scrambling mob that filled the street. Someone had loosed a few score rabbits for the ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... Sieur, you mistake. It is not all woods and water. This mighty Baie des Chaleurs teems with fish. We filled our boats as we passed along; and did all Europe take to a fish diet that one bay could supply them. And the woods, Sieur! They swarm with animals. Mink, otter, beaver, fox, are as plentiful there as sheep and goats are with us, and as easily captured. There would be no trouble to get their skins, or time lost in hunting them either. The ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... midst of the now risen battalion. They bore him forth into the June sunshine without. They surged about him under the trees and along the roadway, his halted classmates gazing back from the brow of the bluff, a swarm of spectators looking on, a stupefied group surging out from the officers' mess, conceiving that fire alone could account for the tumult. Then, over the uproar, could be heard the orders of the new captain. "Form your companies!" the shouts of ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... restlessness. The Gallo-Romans were artistic, literary, idle, and luxurious. They fell, first to milder but heretical foes; then to the fierce but orthodox Frank; and the story of succeeding years was a chronicle of wars. Like a great swarm of locusts, the Saracens—conquerors from India to Spain—came upon the South. They took Narbonne, Nimes, and even Carcassonne, the Invulnerable. They besieged Toulouse, and almost destroyed Bordeaux. Other cities, perhaps as great as these, were razed to the very earth and even ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... estimation of a friend. I saw everything with new eyes, and could only marvel at my former blindness. How was it possible that I had not before observed A's false hair, B's selfishness, or C's boorish manners? I and my companion, methought, walked the streets like a couple of gods among a swarm of vermin; for every one we saw seemed to bear openly upon his brow the mark of the apocalyptic beast. I half expected that these miserable beings, like the people of Lystra, would recognise their betters and force us to ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your company come?" Jeff asked Mildred. Cousin Ann had joined them on the front porch, where the family awaited the summons to dinner. "Mildred and Nan are having a swarm of guests," he explained ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... get something temporary out o' it in the way o' pleasure, as rabbits, or mayhap bad smelling water for the rheumatics. (It was the waters Lunnon swells came for down on the old estate.) To my thinkin' these pleasure colernies is bad things; they settles as senseless as a swarm of bees, just because their leader's lit there first; and when they've buzzed themselves out and moved on, like as not some sillies as has come gapin' too close is bit ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... community in general. In point of fact they seldom rise to such a lofty height of disinterestedness. Legislation is usually a mad scramble in which the final result, be it good or bad, gets evolved out of compromises and bargains among a swarm of clashing local and personal interests. The "consideration" may be anything from log-rolling to bribery. In American legislatures it is to be hoped that downright bribery is rare. As for log-rolling, or exchange of favours, ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... best climber among us, having been compelled, when living with the Indians, to swarm up the highest trees to cut cocoa-nuts for them. We all carried long sheath-knives in our belts, which were useful for a variety of purposes. Putting down his gun, Harry was quickly at the top of the tree, and, ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... Katharine made rules, and the children knew that these must be obeyed, and were never relaxed unless for some very good reason. One of these rules applied to the number of pets, which had once threatened to become overwhelming. Cats especially began to swarm in such multitudes in the garden and house, that Aunt Katharine was obliged to take severe measures to reduce them. That done, she made a rule. Madam, the favourite old cat, was to be kept, but ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... it was very similar to that made by him to the Commodore of the Yacht Club, and may also be found in all the newspapers. And now, when these ceremonies were over, the major bethought him of his horse and pig, the former of which he found surrounded by a swarm of unruly boys, whom the strange figure he cut, with the holsters and saddlebags mounted, afforded much amusement. The latter was quietly lying down in his cage, but came forward to render homage as soon as ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... names which have been bestowed upon this species are sufficiently, or at all, descriptive of it. Passenger, the English expression, and Migratoria, the Latin name, fall equally short, inasmuch as every known pigeon is to a greater or less extent migratory as well as this one. The "swarm" pigeon, the "flood" pigeon, or even the "deluge" pigeon would be a more appropriate appellation; for the weight of their numbers breaks down the forest with scarcely less havoc than if the stream of the Mississippi ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Then, with a swarm of followers, he pushed around the corner. Here, to be sure, there did seem to be less of smoke and blaze, owing to the direction ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... Personal freedom was restricted by innumerable decrees. Freedom of speech, formerly great in Wuertemberg, was strictly repressed; all social confidence was annihilated. A swarm of informers ensnared those whom the secret police were unable to entrap. The secrecy of letters was violated. Trials in criminal cases were no longer allowed to be public. The sentence passed upon the accused was, particularly ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... occupied after his leave, and other officers being away, he was detained at Avoncester, and meantime Bessie Keith took all hearts by storm with her gay good humour and eager sympathy. By the end of the first morning she had been to the stable with a swarm of boys, patted, and learnt the names of all the ponies; she was on the warmest terms with the young spaniel, that, to the Curtises' vexation, one of the officers had given Conrade, and which was ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of things filthy, pervaded the space, made for it an atmosphere precious and disgusting. The Narcissus came gently into her berth; the shadows of soulless walls fell upon her, the dust of all the continents leaped upon her deck, and a swarm of strange men, clambering up her sides, took possession of her in the name of the sordid earth. She had ceased ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... besieged my castle on the next day but one, with the punctuality of locusts, and despite all of my precautions, all of my devices, all of my objections, effected an entrance and over-ran the place like a swarm of ants. The feat that could not have been accomplished by an armed force was successfully managed by a group of pedagogues from Ohio, to whom "Keep off the Grass" and "No Trespass" are signs of utter impotence on the part of him who puts them up, and ever shall be, world without end. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... custom, from the earliest ages, to rub the inside of the hive with a handful of salt and clover, or some other grass or sweet-scented herb, previously to the swarm's being put in the hive. We have seen no advantage in this; on the contrary, it gives a great deal of unnecessary labour to the bees, as they will be compelled to remove every particle of foreign matter ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... approach before we arrived. The people naturally expected to see the commanding general the oldest person in the party. I was then forty-one years of age, while my medical director was gray-haired and probably twelve or more years my senior. The crowds would generally swarm around him, and thus give me an opportunity of quietly dismounting and getting into the house. It also gave me an opportunity of hearing passing remarks from one spectator to another about their general. Those remarks were apt to be more complimentary to the cause than to the appearance of the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... lights were stationary, showing that the vessels to which they belonged were at anchor, but some of them were in motion, and hardly had we come slowly to a standstill and dropped anchor before we were besieged by a swarm of launches and sampans all clamoring for passengers to ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... a public profession of faith, by the fear of 'the enemies,' or persecutors, properly called the devil's scarecrows. 'Today,' refers to the time in which this encouraging treatise was written. Then persecutors and informers were let loose upon the churches, like a swarm of locusts. Many folks were terrified, and much defection prevailed. But for such a time God prepared Bunyan, Baxter, Owen, Howe, and many others of equal piety. Thus, when the enemy cometh in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... have recourse to a series of desperate expedients. He turned strolling player; but his face and figure were ill suited to the boards even of the humblest theatre. He pounded drugs and ran about London with phials for charitable chemists. He joined a swarm of beggars, which made its nest in Axe Yard. He was for a time usher of a school, and felt the miseries and humiliations of this situation so keenly that he thought it a promotion to be permitted to earn his bread as a bookseller's ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... disregard of the comfort of the slaves, in little things, can scarcely be conceived by those who have not been a component part of slaveholding communities. Take a few particulars out of hundreds that might be named. In South Carolina musketoes swarm in myriads, more than half the year—they are so excessively annoying at night, that no family thinks of sleeping without nets or "musketoe-bars" hung over their bedsteads, yet slaves are never provided with them, unless it be the favorite old domestics who get the cast-off pavilions; and yet these ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... The wood, my love, is full of woes. Hunger afflicts him evermore: The nights are black, the wild winds roar; And there are dangers worse than those: The wood, my love, is full of woes. There creeping things in every form Infest the earth, the serpents swarm, And each proud eye with fury glows: The wood, my love, is full of woes. The snakes that by the rives hide In sinuous course like rivers glide, And line the path with deadly foes: The wood, my love, is full of ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... can he at present, I think," answered the lad. "It was at my entreaty that he brought you on board here; otherwise you would have been thrown overboard to the crocodiles that swarm in the creek just here. He said that prisoners were only a useless encumbrance and an embarrassment; but somehow I liked your looks as you lay, white and still, upon the French schooner's deck, and I begged him so hard to ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... vessel went Alexander Mackay to help in the trade with the coastal Indians, whom he was supposed to know. In spite of Mackay's warning that the Nootka tribes were notoriously treacherous and resentful towards white traders, Captain Thorn with lordly indifference permitted them to swarm aboard his vessel. Once when Mackay had gone ashore at Clayoquot, where Gray had wintered twenty years before, Thorn, forgetting that his ship was not a training-school, struck an old chief across the face and threw him over the rail. When Mackay heard what had happened, instead of applauding ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... mushrooms. In a few days after the fungus has been removed from the dung-bed on which it grows, it becomes the habitation of myriads of insects; and, if even the saleable mushroom be attentively examined, it will frequently be found to swarm with life. ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... Dr. Wallace puts forward a theory of his own. He contends that after Mars had cooled to a state of solidity, a great swarm of meteorites and small asteroids fell in upon it, with the result that a thin molten layer was formed all over the planet. As this layer cooled, the imprisoned gases escaped, producing vents or craterlets; and as it attempted ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... affect the courtier's life too much, Whose art is to forget, And that has wrought this seeming change in him, That was by nature noble. 'Tis these court-plagues, that swarm about our house, Have done the mischief, making his fancy giddy With images of state, preferment, place, Tainting ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... wherever they settled there will be always found some reference to their antient history, and religion. As they were particularly styled Ophitae, or Hivites, many places whither they came, were said to swarm with [1168]serpents. Rhodes was under this predicament, and had the name of Ophiusa: which name was given on account of the Hivites, who there settled, and of the serpent-worship, which they introduced. But the common notion was, that it was so called from real serpents, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... Temple's essays are perfectly good to-day. Of course the terms "Runic" and "Gothic" were misused, but so were they a century later. Odin is "the first and great hero of the western Scythians; he led a mighty swarm of the Getes, under the name of Goths, from the Asiatic Scythia into the farthest northwest parts of Europe; he seated and spread his kingdom round the whole Baltic sea, and over all the islands in it, and extended ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... into the main channels. He was "shepherded" into Lynn River or Wisbeach River or Boston River, according as he found the water shoaler to one side or other of his boat. So must have come the first Saxon pirates from the mainland: so (hundreds of years later) came here our portion of that swarm of Pagans, which all but destroyed Europe; so centuries before either of them, in a time of which there is no record, the ignorant seafaring men from the east and the north must have come right up into our island, as the sea itself creeps right up into the land through these curious ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... was called upon for unceasing vigilance. The Conemaugh makes its channel through a narrow valley between high ranges. Numerous streams drain the surrounding mountains into its current. Along its course swarm frequent hamlets busy with the wealth dug from the seams of the earth. The chief of these towns, the seat of an immense industry, lies in a little basin where the gap broadens to take in a converging stream and then immediately ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... House to the Valcour apartment had, of course, only insured his finding Flora not at home, all its evening except the very end was passed with her, Flora, in her open balcony overlooking the old Place d'Armes. His head ringing with a swarm of things still to be done and ordered done, he had purposed to remain only long enough to tell his dire news manfully, accept without insistent debate whatever odium it might entail, and decently leave its gentle recipients to their grief and dismay. What steps they should ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... observe that it was not yet destroyed. The mud hovels, like huge beehives, in which the Kafirs dwelt, were not yet burnt, and the only smoke visible was that which rose from cooking fires. But it was quite plain that the people, who in the distance seemed to swarm in and about the place like black ants, were ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... Forde! You mean the squatters, the sugar-planters, the land-devouring swarm of 'Christians,' who think that a bullock's hide, worth twenty shillings, is of more moment than the welfare of thousands of poor, naked savages, whose country we have taken, and yet of whom we make beasts of burden—hewers ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... left that saloon it had become crowded, and I slipped in unobserved. Strange was it, grotesque yet pathetic, to mark the old soldier in the midst of that gay swarm. He towered above all like a Homeric hero, a head taller than the tallest; and his appearance was so remarkable that it invited the instant attention of the fair. I, in my simplicity, thought it was the natural tenderness of that amiable and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... what money he could; kept us assuredly from Popery and wooden shoes. I, for one, would have been on his side in those days. Cynical, and selfish, as he was, he was better than a king out of St. Germains with the French king's orders in his pocket, and a swarm of Jesuits ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Chimes stopped. Instantaneous change! The whole swarm fainted! their forms collapsed, their speed deserted them; they sought to fly, but in the act of falling died and melted into air. No fresh supply succeeded them. One straggler leaped down pretty briskly from the surface of the ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens |
