"Bats" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the nights seem peopled with the ghosts of warriors and cardinals, and there on festal mornings the spirits of Petrarch and his Laura walk abroad, the ramparts, which bade defiance to Goth and Vandal and Saracen hordes, now giving shelter to bats and owls, but the atmosphere ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... true, William. Your heart is in t'other old church among the bats and foxes, where Aunt ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... perfect. So Mr. Phillip had a suit for every purpose—for football, cricket, tennis, bicycle, shooting, dining, and strolling about. In the same way he possessed a perfect armoury of athletic and other useful implements. There were fine bats by the best makers for cricket, rods for trout fishing, splendid modified choke-bores, saddles, jockey caps, and so on. A gentleman like this could hardly long remain in the solitary halls of learning—society must claim him for parties, balls, dinners, and the usual round. It was ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... that they should do so for a lifetime—even for a century!—a thing absolutely incredible. Especially you must have been impressed by the nine-inch wall, in which every other course at least consists of bats and closures. You will have marvelled that so large a percentage of bricks can appear to have been delivered broken; but this you would have been able to account for had you watched the builder at work, noting ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... bat flew into the apartment where the Court was; the King immediately cried out, "Where is General Crillon?" (He had just left the room.) "He is the General to command against the bats." This set everybody calling out, "Ou etais tu, Crillon?" M. de Crillon soon after came in, and was told where the enemy was. He immediately threw off his coat, drew his sword, and commenced an attack upon ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... and dilapidated den, whose badly plastered walls are ornamented here and there, at the present day, with some wretched yellow engravings representing the facades of cathedrals. I presume that this hole is jointly inhabited by bats and spiders, and that, consequently, it wages a double war ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... tree that contributes so largely to the conveniences of English life as the Willow. Putting aside its uses in the manufacture of gunpowder and cricket bats, we may safely say that the most scantily-furnished house can boast of some article of Willow manufacture in the shape of baskets. British basket-making is, as far as we know, the oldest national manufacture; ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... you must forgive me. Now we are upon the subject of old castles, do you remember my retailing to you, at second hand, a description of my father's visit to the Marquis de la Poype's old chateau in Dauphiny, with the cavern of bats and stalactites? A little while ago my father received a letter in a strange hand, which I copy for my aunt and you, as I think it will please you as it did us, to see that this old friend of my father's remembers ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... mark of a foot had been impressed since the last high water. Large fires were burning three or four miles off but no human beings were seen. As our gentlemen proceeded up the river a large flight of bats flew over the boat. Very few birds were observed but a cry like that of the Ardea antigone was heard; Mr. Roe killed a small snake ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... the elm avenue, beyond the square lawn and pepper-pot summer-houses, and pitied men who made such mistakes in the matter of matrimony as his brother William obviously had. The rose of the sunset faded in the west. Bats began to flit forth, hawking against the still warm ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... no furniture to interrupt him, and because, too, no one ever came there. It was a room in the Bishop's Tower that had once, many hundreds of years ago, been used by the monks as a small refectory. Many years had passed now since it had seen any sort of occupation save that of bats, owls and mice. There was a fireplace at the far end that had long been blocked up, but that still showed curious carving, the heads of monkeys and rabbits, winged birds, a twisting dragon with a long tail, and the figure of a saint holding up a crucifix. Over the ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... and likewise paying divine honours to serpents, and even to trees. The Saracens have conquered the whole of this land, and are themselves under subjection to king Daldili[4]. In this country there are great numbers of black lions; apes and monkies are also very numerous, and their bats are as large as our pigeons. They have rats also, as large as the dogs in Italy, which are hunted by means of dogs, as cats are unable to cope with them. In this country every one has a bundle of great ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... simple copper weapon was found. With the body were also buried slate palettes for grinding the green eye-paint which the Egyptians loved even at this early period. These are often carved to suggest the forms of animals, such as birds, bats, tortoises, goats, etc.; on others are fantastic creatures with two heads. Combs of bone, too, are found, ornamented in a similar way with birds' or goats' heads, often double. And most interesting of all are the small bone and ivory figures of men and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... moon went under a cloud and the wind began to moan around the turrets. The black night hawks in the forests flapped their wings warningly, and the black bats flitted low ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... house is supposed to be haunted, and the present tenant is not loth to admit that he sometimes hears strange noises, a fact, if such it be, at which one can scarcely wonder, seeing that the wind and the bats have undisputed sway. The Townhall, in the Market Square, built in the place of the one destroyed during the civil wars, is thus noticed in the "Common Hall Order Book" of the Corporation: "The New Hall set up in the Market Place of the High Street ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... things!" he breathed. "Jumping, they were, and leaping, and flying on their leather wings like a lot of black bats out o' hell! And I'm thinkin' that's where they've taken Chet Bullard, and never again will he hold a ship like 'twas in the hollow of his hand, and him settin' ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... flitted round the groups to take instructions, and, if so might be, to extract the balances of extortionate bills out of their departing masters. Dog-fanciers were there also, holding terriers; and scouts from the cricketing grounds, with bats and pads under their arms; and hostlers, and men from the boats, all on the same errand of getting the last shilling out of their patrons—a fawning, obsequious crowd for the most part, with here and there a ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... knock the 'off' leader down if he bats an eyelash when the train pulls in, I'll be much obliged ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... native heights but that his father had died, and left his mother and young brothers helpless. He was an honest soul, and I gave him two florins, which I had tacitly appointed him over and above the bargain, with something for the small Brick-bats at home, whom he presently brought to kiss our hands at the ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... was. You heard the cropping of the goats, the jaws' champ when they chewed the crisp leaves; the flicker of the bats' wings. In the marsh, half a mile away, the chorus of frogs, when it swelled up, drowned all nearer noise; but when it broke off suddenly, those others resumed their hold upon the stillness. It was a breathless ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... connected with a prominent church. The team was recently challenged by a rival club. The pastor gave a special contribution of five dollars to the captain, with the direction that the money should be used to buy bats, balls, gloves, or anything else that might help to win the game. On the day of the game, the pastor was somewhat surprised to observe nothing new in the club's paraphernalia. He called the captain ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... the other pupils, the diplomatic spinster requested that the boy be removed from her school—all this according to the earnest biographer. The facts are that the boy had so much energy and restless ambition; was so full of brimming curiosity, mischief and imagination—introducing turtles, bats and mice on various occasions—that he led the whole school a merry chase and wore the nerves of the ancient maiden to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... both teams and consulted with them for a moment or two. Directly Eliot sought the body protector and mask, and Bert Dingley, standing at the end of the bench on which the visitors had seated themselves, began swinging two bats. There was a rustling stir among the spectators as they settled themselves down to watch the opening of the contest. The Oakdale players took their positions on the field, Rodney Grant going into right, while Chub Tuttle remained on the bench as spare man. Phil Springer had ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... introduced to us a philosophical mouse who praised beneficent Deity because of his great regard for mice: for one half of us, quoth he, received the gift of wings, so that if we who have none, should by cats happen to be exterminated, how easily could our 'Heavenly Father,' out of the bats re-establish ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... thing that seemed to occur to those in command was that there would be serious fighting; men marched forward to their deaths as though they were going on a shooting-party, or to a picnic. I even saw cricketing bats and wickets occupying some of the ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... Alsatian belief tells us that bats possessed the power of rendering the eggs of storks unfruitful. Accordingly, when once a stork's egg was touched by a bat it became sterile; and in order to preserve it from the injurious influence, the stork placed in its nest some branches of the maple, which frightened away every intruding ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... targets, say the bells of St. Marg'-ret's; Brick-bats and tiles, chime the bells of St. Giles'; Halfpence and farthings, ring the bells of St. Martin's; Oranges and lemons, toll the bells of St. Clement's; Pancakes and fritters, say the bells of St. Peter's; Two ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... legs are made Well mortised and finely laid; It was the master of his trade It curiously that builded; The windows of the eyes of cats, And for the roof, instead of slats, Is covered with the skins of bats, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... fell with the dews at even— Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide. After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, "The night is dreary— He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, weary, I would that I ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... entered the tunnel. It led down and straight before him. The air was damp and chilly, but in breathing he now found no difficulty. Nor, at first, was his path in any way impeded. His torch showed him solid walls, white and discolored, and in places dripping with water. But of the bats, ghosts and vampires, for which Peter had cheerfully prepared him, there was no sign. Instead, the only sounds that greeted his ears were the reverberating echoes of his own footsteps. He could not tell how far he had come, but the ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... houses, the black-browed village maid, tossing on her lonely couch, dreams with heaving bosom of some hussar's spurs and moustache, and how the moonlight smiles upon her cheeks. I would describe how the black shadows of the bats flit along the white road before they alight upon the white ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... growth of live oak, cedar, magnolia, and palmetto. And on these courts a very gay company of young people in white were playing or applauding the players while the snowy balls flew across the nets and the resonant blows of the bats rang out. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... and the underground stream was lit by a faint ruddy glow. The channel, covered by a semicircular arch, was just wide enough for one boat to pass through, with oars out. The black water flowed silently by in a sluggish, Stygian stream. Bats, startled by the light, fluttered in their faces, and then ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... know. You meet quite a few people in the theater who are bats on numerology, they use it to pick stage-names. But I'd never have guessed it of Martin. He always struck me as the ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... were proclaiming the festival of the ensuing day. The ravine was overshadowed by fig-trees, vines, and myrtles, and the outer towers and walls of the fortress. It was dark and lonely, and the twilight-loving bats began to flit about. At length the soldier halted at a remote and ruined tower apparently intended to guard a Moorish aqueduct. He struck the foundation with the buttend of his spear. A rumbling sound was heard, and the solid stones ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... bats that live in cool countries, do not harm any one. But there is a big bat, called the Vampire bat, that will do a good deal of mischief, if he ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... put on a thin green linen coat for supper, which he left unbuttoned to mark that he was off duty, and we sat round the table till it was starlight. Owls hooted in the forest across the road, and bats darted about our heads. Also there were mosquitoes. A great many mosquitoes. Herr Bornsted told me I wouldn't mind them after a while. "Herrlich," I said, ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... the organisation of a cricket club, into which he was putting a great deal of energy. As the bats and balls and other necessary articles were to be paid for out of his own pocket, he found no difficulty in getting recruits, and the list of members was fast filling up. Bert had heard a good ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... was one not easily to be forgotten. A younger man, tall and vigorous, clad in a thin suit of blue serge, walked by his side. They were followed by a shouting troop of small boys who overran the pavements, and some of whom were armed with baseball bats. The big trolley car was hailed by a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... for if any spring of water or damp arises in the malt-house floor, or walls so placed, the injury to the malt is very great, and should be carefully guarded against. It is also very important to lay a solid foundation for your lower floor with stones, brick bats, or coarse gravel, which should be solidly compacted by ramming for the whole length, then levelled off by stakes, with a ten-foot level, to the thickness you would wish to give your floor—say three or four inches: ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... the old man as he was in death, pursued from room to room by two frightful hags, as gaunt, blear, sightless as himself. Dreadful were the cries of the dead man as the harpies fastened upon him, descending from above like two huge bats. These scenes took place usually at the eighth hour (1 A.M.), not to cease until dawn. As for the men servants, they took their leave in the days following, asking formal dismissal (itoma) with recommendation to another House. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... hottest night I ever felt in my life. When I went to bed I didn't think I was going to sleep a wink, and I wouldn't if I'd stayed awake and thought about it. The mosquitoes were perfectly awful. Biggest things I ever saw. I thought once there were bats in the room. Sakes alive! that reminds me I haven't ordered a thing for dinner! I didn't intend to stay here a minute; just stopped by on my way to Mr. Blick's, and here it is after one o'clock! I get so tired of those everlasting three meals a day that I almost ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... variabilis or timidus) replaces the common hare (Lepus europaeus) in the higher regions; though absent from the intervening plains it again appears in the north of Europe and in Scotland. Among the Insectivora, the alpine shrew (Sorex alpinus) is restricted to the Alps. Of the Cheiroptera (bats) only Vesperugo ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... this burg," said the lame man thoughtfully, "I landed all there—except a leg, but I never carried my brains in my legs. I hadn't got any bats in my belfry. But I'm getting 'em. I'm getting 'em so bad that when I hear some folks talk bughouse these days it pretty near listens like good sense to me. Why, kid, I'm nut enough now to dangle over the edge of believing you know what you're ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... extreme caution, I paused a moment, for the whole air appeared to be filled by a clatter, as if ten thousand bats' wings were striking against glass. This was evidently within the convent, while, without, the wind howled even louder than ever. My hand rested on something, I knew not what. At first I did not even know whether I was in the open air, or not, for I felt the wind, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Nature was suddenly stricken with this ethereal shame, if the trees grew with their roots in the air and their load of leaves and blossoms underground, if the flowers closed at dawn and opened at sunset, if the sunflower turned towards the darkness, and the birds flew, like bats, by night. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... was predestined to descend into, till the death of the body released it. He was, however, now willing to believe that the souls of all the wise men mentioned in the books of Moses were sent down to earth as to a colony; great souls could not abide like bats in the darkness, but are ever desirous of contemplation and learning. And on pursuing this thought in the Greek language, which lends itself to subtle shades of thought, he discovered that there are three zones: the first zone is reason, the second passion and the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... it out? or buried it? To whom hast thou preached these seven months? to bats and owls? Hast buried it in one hole with thyself and thy ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... at intervals, for the night was partially clouded. There seemed to be nobody stirring, though his attention was unusually awake, and he could hear the whirr of the bats overhead, and the pulsating croak of the frogs in the distant pools and marshes. Presently he detected the sound of hoofs at some distance, and, looking forward, saw a horseman coming in his direction. The moon was under a cloud ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in their kilts, and they didn't wear pads, and they had their bats all made of iron, and the ball was iron, too. It was a cannon-ball, and they fired it out of a cannon, and the wickets was a mile and a half apart—no, a mile and a quarter—and one man hit the ball, and the other men shouted, "Run it out!" and he ran sixty-four runs. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... housing problem. Many animals were in the habit of sleeping in a dark cave. Man followed their example and searched until he found an empty grotto. He shared it with bats and all sorts of creeping insects but this he did not mind. His new home kept him warm ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon
... painters, and above all of the Florentine painters, who surpassed all the rest in subtlety of wit. Chiefly they reproached them with representing them under a hideous guise, with the heads of bird and fish, serpents' bodies and bats' wings. This sore resentment which they felt will come out plainly in the history of ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... young men, who have levelled nobility almost as much as the mobility in France have, have confounded all individuality. Besides, if I did go to public places and assemblies, which my going to roost earlier prevents, the bats and owls do not begin to fly abroad till far in the night, when they begin to see and be seen. However, one of the empresses of fashion, the Duchess of Gordon, uses fifteen or sixteen hours of her four-and-twenty. I heard her journal ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... thought I heard the jubilee of deliverance, and out of the red billows of blood emerged the heads of the fettered demons: monsters of legendary horror, crocodiles with bats' wings, snakes with stags' horns, monkeys with shells on their heads, seals with long patriarchal beards, women's faces with one eye, green camels' heads, all staring with cold, crafty eyes, and long, fin-like claws grasping ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... at Bouley Bay and St. Catherine's Head rendered the further occupancy of the old martello tower at Rozel Head unnecessary, and only a few rats and bats now resented Alaric Hobbs' sequestration of the second story. He meditated a comparative memoir upon the "Tides of Fundy Bay, and the Channel Islands," with a treatise upon "Contracted Ocean Surface Currents." Astronomer, hydrographer, geologist, and all-round savant, his lank form was already ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... from which point the wind blows; like a maukin, fit only to scare away birds; like a nest left to swing upon a bough when the bird is flown: these are uses to which we cannot without a mixture of spleen and contempt behold the human carcass reduced. We string up dogs, foxes, bats, moles, weasels. Man ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... an imposing building a warm glow of light issued out and spread itself fanwise across the ill-paved street. In this—like bats about a lamp—flitted the black figures of gaping urchins and other stragglers, and into this I now passed, having taken leave ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... comprehensive scheme seemed rather remote. It was commonly referred to as "Worcester's dream," and one of my friends in the army medical corps probably quite correctly voiced public sentiment when he said, "Poor Worcester has bats in his belfry." However, he laughs best who laughs last! After the lapse of a good many years my dream came true. The three great institutions which I hoped might sometime be established are to-day in existence, and are doing ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... the Temple's innermost Shrine is set, Where the bats and shadows dwell, The worn and ancient Symbol of Life, at rest In its oval shell, By which the men, who, of old, the land possessed, Represented their Great Destroying Power. I cannot forget That, just as my life was touching its fullest flower, ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... know,' she said. 'There might be—well, bats and owls and things like that, and then there'd be feelings. You'd be sure to fancy there were people or things there, and it wouldn't be half so frightening if you could get into a pew with a carpet, and make a bed of the cushions ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... the love you mean." Her voice trailed to silence; and in a lull of the storm they heard the thin patter of rats on the floor below, the stir of bats among the rafters. ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... opportunity had of late years been denied her of learning to be undignified, for she lived lonely. Isolation on a heath renders vulgarity well-nigh impossible. It would have been as easy for the heath-ponies, bats, and snakes to be vulgar as for her. A narrow life in Budmouth might have completely ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Baby, hush that little cry! Light is dying, Bats are flying, Bees to-day with work have done; So, till comes the morrow's sun, Let sleep kiss those bright ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... was rather pleasantly situated on rising ground by the side of the blow; behind us, sheer cliffs of conglomerate, worn and weathered into queer little caves, the floors of which were covered inches deep by the droppings of bats and small wallabies; and, stretching away to the South, an open plain enclosed in an endless sea of scrub. Every morning we witnessed the strange phenomenon of a lake appearing in the sky to the South, miles away, above the scrub, a lake surrounded by steep white cliffs. ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... the privateer; the torches in the launch threw a glare upon the water and sky. They lit up something struggling between both at the tip of the rocking yard-arm. It was the effigy of a man, bound and suspended, around which swept timidly the bats and gulls, and the sea wind beat it with ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... means meadows and a lapse of cuddles with cheese and nearly bats, all this went messed. The post placed a loud loose sprain. A rest is no better. It is better yet. ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... continued Samentu. "I went no more into caves, for I meditated greatly. 'Osiris,' said I, 'creates lions, elephants, horses, and Set gives birth to serpents, bats, crocodiles; the monster which I met is surely a creation of Set, and since it exceeds everything known by us under the sun, Set is a ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... carried by the strong wings into the castle if the nearest monsters had not happened to awake and hear the noise of talking and swum to the shore to give battle. The fight was long and hard, and when the king at last beat back his foes another struggle awaited him. At the entrance gigantic bats, owls, and crows set upon him from all sides; but the dragon had teeth and claws, while the queen broke off sharp bits of glass and stabbed and cut in her anxiety to help her husband. At length the horrible creatures flew away; a ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... and smooth tesselated marble; pools of mud, the hanging fruit of an orange tree, and dark, scurrying shapes of monstrous rats bolting across from house to house. The old man held the lanthorn higher; and instantly bats flying against it would have beaten out the light but for the thin protection ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... asserted by evolutionists that wings as organs of flight have been independently evolved in at least four different lines—namely, in insects, the fossil pterodactyls, birds and bats. That an organ so highly specialized as any one of these wings could be evolved seems improbable; while the evolution of the four different kinds, independently of each other, only increases the improbability. ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... that sudden accession of new knowledge may compel him to cast his former idols to the moles and to the bats. But it must be some very miraculous interposition indeed which can justify him in quitting the religion of his forefathers; and, assuredly, it must be an unwise interposition which provokes him ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... fails, take the hat and lock it up, and let it stay locked-up, though the heavens fall. The same with a child's playthings, tennis racquets, base-balls, bats, etc. As a rule one application of the rule cures. This is immeasurably more sensible than nagging, for it produces the required result almost instantly, and there is little irritation to either person concerned, while nagging is never ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... accede to her demands. Then he arose in sudden wrath, cursing her roundly and vowing she should not leave the room alive if she persisted in such threats. He told her that she was in a cave beneath the ruins of an old church, long the haunt of robbers, now the home of snakes and bats. Indeed, as he spoke a flittermouse scurried through the air within a ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... more I saw of Marmaduke, the less I thought about the bats. Get under the surface, and he wa'n't nutty at all. He just had a free flow of funny thoughts and odd ways of expressin' 'em. Most of us are so shy of lettin' go of any sentiments that can't be had on a rubber stamp that it takes a mighty small ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... myself. Poultry is one of those things which no person can get to the bottom of, there is so much of it and such variety. It is just wings, and wings, and wings, till you are weary: turkeys, and geese, and bats, and butterflies, and angels, and grasshoppers, and flying-fish, and—well, there is really no end to the tribe; it gives me the heaves just to think of it. But this one ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... and has been used in shipbuilding and carpentery, and especially for small ware, cricket-bats and toys. Full-grown willows of all kinds are picturesque and very graceful trees. The growth of the tree kinds when young ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... The next of solitariness, A portraiture doth well express, By sleeping dog, cat: Buck and Doe, Hares, Conies in the desert go: Bats, Owls the shady bowers over, In melancholy darkness hover. Mark well: If't be not as't should be, Blame the bad ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... bird life of our island is plentiful and varied, mammalian is insignificant in number. The echidna, two species of rats, a flying fox (PTEROPUS FUNEREUS) and two bats, comprise the list. Although across a narrow channel marsupials are plentiful, there is no representative of that typical Australian order here, and the Dunk Island blacks have no legends of the existence of either kangaroos, wallabies, kangaroo rats or bandicoots in times past. But ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... arbor, and even a great, wide, cool-looking tent. But as far as human life was concerned the whole place looked absolutely deserted. The pigeons cooed languidly, and the dogs yapped and yawned, and made ferocious snaps at audacious and troublesome flies. But no one handled the tennis bats, nor took up the croquet mallets; no one stopped to admire the roses, and no one entered the cool, inviting tent. The whole place might have been dead, as far as human life was concerned; and although the smoke did ascend straight up from the kitchen chimney, a vagrant or a tramp might have ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... have done so by now, they either could not, or would not free it from the trap. Shann dozed again, untroubled by any dreams, to awake hearing the shrieks of clak-claks. But when he studied the sky he was able to sight none of the cliff-dwelling Warlockian bats. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... world and his lukewarm love of the world to come, had unfortunately all descended to his daughter, till we find her actually reviling Christiana on that decisive morning, and returning to her dish of tea and tittle-tattle with Mrs. Bats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs. Light-mind, and ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... nothing corresponding at all to the extravagances instanced in my early reading of Colburn's; such as a frigate's watch—say one hundred and fifty men—on liberty in Portsmouth, England, buying up all the gold-laced cocked bats in the place, and appearing with them at the theatre. Many, however, who have seen a homeward-bound ship leaving port, the lower rigging of her three masts crowded with seamen from deck to top, returning roundly the cheers given by all the ships-of-war present, foreign as well as national, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... decided to go and explore one of the islands that studded Cambridge Gulf, in search of a kind of shell mud-fish which I was very partial to. I also wanted to make the acquaintance of the bats or flying foxes I had seen rising in clouds every evening at sunset. I required the skins of these curious creatures for sandals. This would perhaps be a year after my advent amongst the blacks. As usual, Yamba was my only companion, and we ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... where De-Wolf Hopper, Digby Bell and other prominent comic opera stars were playing in "The May Queen." The boxes that we occupied that night were handsomely decorated with flags and bunting, while from the proscenium arch hung an emblem of all nations, a gilt eagle and shield, with crossed bats and a pair of catcher's gloves and a ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... raise the spirits, though to my mind last night they took enough to raise more than they expected—ha, ha, ha! They thought they were attacked by ghosts and goblins, when in reality only a number of bats flew out against them after the foul air had already damped their ardour. The place swarms with the vermin. By the by, if the Senor, my master, will give me the key of the vault, I will get up that beast of a dog, and bury him or hang him up to feed ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Tablets, or in clean white Gloves: Some of Platonic, some of carnal Taste, Hoop'd, or un-hoop'd, ungarter'd, or unlac'd. Thus thick in Air the wing'd Creation play, When vernal Phoebus rouls the Light away, A motley race, half Insects and half Fowls, Loose-tail'd and dirty, May-flies, Bats, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I'm a crow, especially when I stand a'top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! Ain't I a crow? And where's the scare-crow? There he stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into the sleeves of an ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the surreptitious midget you feel yourself to be, up those long and steep inclines of polished stone, watching the gloomy darkness of the narrow walls, the far-off pinpoint of light borne by the Bedouin who guides you, hear the twitter of the bats that have their dwelling in this monstrous gloom that man has made to shelter the thing whose ambition could never be embalmed, though that, of all qualities, should have been given here, in the land it dowered, a life perpetual. Now you know the ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... suppose), which are always glaring in dark corners after our wonderful little Dick. Keeping the house open at all points, it is impossible to shut them out, and they hide themselves in the most terrific manner: hanging themselves up behind draperies, like bats, and tumbling out in the dead of night with frightful caterwaulings. Hereupon French borrows Beaucourt's gun, loads the same to the muzzle, discharges it twice in vain, and throws himself over with the recoil, exactly ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... such as birds and bats and flying insects, the ocean forms far less of a barrier than it does to quadrupeds, to reptiles, and to fresh-water fishes. Hence Australia has, to some extent, been invaded by later types of birds and other flying creatures, who live on there side by side with ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... collection of mineralogical specimens was deposited with Professor M. H. N. Story-Maskelyne. The spirit-specimens of zoology filled three large canisters: and the British Museum also received a hare and five birds (Mr. R. B. Sharpe); four bats (Rhinopoma) and a mouse; six reptiles, five fishes, thirty-five crustaceans, and about the same number of insects; five scorpions, six leeches, sixty molluscs, four echinoderms, and three sponges. Dr. A. Gunther (Appendix III.) determined and named two new species of reptiles. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... avidly. 'I should have liked to see that. I have often oiled their bats for them. Careless lads, they always forget. Was that nice German ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... pride we laid aside, And we cast the vessel ashore On the Gulliby Isles, where the Poohpooh smiles, And the Rumbletumbunders roar. And we sat on the edge of a sandy ledge And shot at the whistling bee; And the cinnamon-bats wore water-proof hats As they ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... birds, and carries the subject further than it had ever been taken before, even if it does at times contradict John Burroughs. Book Eleven is on insects, bugs and beetles, and tells, among other things, of bats that make fires in caves to keep themselves warm. Book Twelve is on trees, their varieties, height, age, growth, qualities and distribution. Book Thirteen treats of fruits, juices, gums, wax, saps and perfumes. Book Fourteen is on grapes and the making of wine, with a description ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... seemed incredible that in all that huge expanse of sand he should be the only moving, living being, yet, though he knew that there were living creatures in the desert—jackals and other prowling things, and a whole host of bats and tiny insects—they gave no sign of their presence, and it seemed to him that he was the only live thing in ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... purpose; a place which the hounded bear and deer had avoided even when hard driven, and inviting only to copperhead, skunk, and fox. About it lay "laurel-hells" thick-matted and gnarled, briars that were like entanglements of barbed wire, and woods so black of recess that bats flew through their corridors of pine at midday. But these men had cut, and used familiarly, tortuous and hidden zig-zags of entry and exit, and they came separately from ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... associations cluster thick. School-books shut up; Ovid and Virgil silenced; the Rule of Three, with its cool impertinent inquiries, long disposed of; Terence and Plautus acted no more, in an arena of huddled desks and forms, all chipped, and notched, and inked; cricket-bats, stumps, and balls, left higher up, with the smell of trodden grass and the softened noise of shouts in the evening air; the tree is still fresh, still gay. If I no more come home at Christmas-time, there will ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... hot that I have shifted my quarters out of my fine room to the south-west into one with only three sides looking over a lovely green view to the north-east, with a huge sort of solid veranda, as large as the room itself, on the open side; thus I live in the open air altogether. The bats and the swallows are quite sociable; I hope the serpents and scorpions will be more reserved. 'El Khamaseen' (the fifty) has begun, and the wind is enough to mix up heaven and earth, but it is not distressing like the Cape south-easter, and, though hot, not choking like ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... where there is no fall or spring, simply drop their leaves when they are tired of keeping them on, and put out others when they feel like it? What, when you pretend that in the absence of serpents there are centipedes a span long, and spiders the bigness of bats, and mosquitoes that sweetly sing in the drowsing ear, but bite not; or that there are swamps but no streams, and in the marshes stand mangrove-trees whose branches grow downward into the ooze, as if they wished to get back ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the blacks, mostly women and small children; who, squatting on old mats below, or perched above in the dark dome, on the elevated seats, were descried, some distance within, like a social circle of bats, sheltering in some friendly cave; at intervals, ebon flights of naked boys and girls, three or four years old, darting in and out of the ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... Sabbath the Devil himself sometimes appeared as a goat, and the witches were attended by cats, owls, bats, and cuckoos, because these creatures had once been sacred to Freya. At the feast horse-flesh, once the food of the gods at banquets, was eaten. The broth for the feast was brewed in a kettle held over the fire by a tripod, like that which supported the seat of Apollo's ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... into the hands of the British; was sent prisoner to New York, and was detained in captivity for the greater part of the war. In the mean time, the Roost remained a melancholy ruin; its stone walls and brick chimneys alone standing, blackened by fire, and the resort of bats and owlets. It was not until the return of peace, when this belligerent neighborhood once more resumed its quiet agricultural pursuits, that the stout Jacob sought the scene of his triumphs and disasters; rebuilt the Roost, and reared again on high ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... lighted up; the good burghers smoking their pipes on the sidewalks; the young girls in their red skirts, with their pitchers under their arms, laughing and chatting around the fountain "Saint Sebalt." Insensibly all this faded away, the bats commenced their rapid course, and I retired to my mattress in ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... effort pour gagner le combat et fut rudement secoue, de sorte que, regardant Smiley comme pour lui dire:—Mon coeur est brise, c'est to faute; pourquoi m'avoir livre a un chien qui n'a pas de pattes de derriere, puisque c'est par la que je les bats?—il s'en alla en clopinant, et se coucha pour mourir. Ah! c'etait un bon chien, cet Andre Jackson, et il se serait fait un nom, s'il avait vecu, car il y avait de l'etoffe en lui, il avait du genie, je ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... few inhabitants are stowed away in the one or two odd rooms of the old mansions that remain; being now reduced to such poverty that they have had neither spirit nor money to build for themselves; and probably finding it more congenial to the present spirit of their fortunes to roost among the bats and owls, rather than in trim streets. One occurrence gave us much pleasure, because it gave the lie to a story which has many abettors. It is said that when the garrison in the fortress, and the fleet before the town, were promoting the havoc, the English consul, from some punctilio ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... visible by moments under the gloomy sky, were enemies whom I well knew by experience. Many a fine insect specimen have I lost, when the bats were near me in search of ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... already twinkling in the sky. The moon must have been rising on the further side of the monastery, for the sky was clear, soft, and transparent. Bats were flitting noiselessly ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... is fearful! Indeed it is strange that no animal can be induced to stay in that house; not even a cat. Bats and mice are ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... my boy, but he lives between the heavens and the earth, and can not get up to the one or down to the other. Poets are beggars, in some way or other. They live in garrets among the mice and bats. Their country is the imagination, and that is the next door to nowhere. You a poet! What ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... ought to look out for Scraggy. She goes 'bout the lake doin' nothin' but hollerin' like a hoot-owl, and she don't have enough to eat. But she's been gone now goin' on two weeks, disappearin' like she's been doin' for a few years back. Scraggy allers says she has bats in ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... blackness, and the agitation of the cord alone told us that anything was going on below. At last the rope ceased shaking and a faint shout came rumbling up the well, announcing Ali's safe arrival. Then, far below, a tiny star of light appeared. He had lit the candle, thereby disturbing hundreds of bats that flitted up in an endless stream and as silently as spirits. The rope was hauled up again, and now it was my turn; but, as I declined to trust my neck to the hand-over-hand method of descent, the end of the cord was made fast round ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... to stop now. Please pull up over there, in front of that shop with the cricket bats ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of our own interests will make us as blind as bats to the most radiant beauty of truth; aye, and to Christ Himself, if the recognition of Him and of His message seems to threaten any of these. They tell us that fishes which live in the water of caverns come to lose their eyesight; and men that are always ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... is a number of halls, in deep shadow and massive as so many fortresses. They were used formerly for mysterious and complicated rites, and in them, as everywhere else, there is no corner of the wall but is overloaded with figures and hieroglyphs. Bats are asleep in the blue ceilings, where the winged discs, painted in fresco, look like flights of birds; and the hornets of the neighbouring fields have built their nests there in hundreds, so that they ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... (later versions introduced the wounded wumpus, which got very angry). Unfortunately for players, the movement necessary to map the maze was made hazardous not merely by the wumpus (which would eat you if you stepped on him) but also by bottomless pits and colonies of super bats that would pick you up and drop you at a random location (later versions added 'anaerobic termites' that ate arrows, bat migrations, and earthquakes that randomly changed ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... leaf stirred, and everything seemed to have dozed off to sleep in the quiet sunshine. Old Ned Brown, the cobbler, and general "handy-man" of the village, who, in days gone by, had often bound bats and done other odd jobs for "Miss Fenleigh's young nevies," laid down his awl, and gazed out of the window ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery |
