"Nest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from her saddle and is in the reception room where he finds you grouped and gazing at him in a manner rather trying even to his soldierly gravity, and decidedly amusing to the wise fairy, who glances at him with a laugh and betakes herself to her own little nest. ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... Wake from thy nest, robin red-breast! Sing, birds, in every furrow! And from each bill let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cocksparrow, You pretty elves, among yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow! ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... neighborhood sent word to General Harmar, begging him to break up this nest of plunderers. Accordingly he started after them, with his regular troops. He was joined by a number of Kentucky mounted riflemen, under the command of Col. Charles Scott, a rough Indian fighter, and veteran of the Revolutionary War, who afterwards ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the advice you did. This makes it evident that I have laboured under a mistaken idea! Had I not made this discovery the other day, I wouldn't be speaking like this to your very face to-day. You told me a few minutes back to take bird's nest congee; but birds' nests are, I admit, easily procured; yet all on account of my sickly constitution and of the relapses I have every year of this complaint of mine, which amounts to nothing, doctors have had to be sent for, medicines, with ginseng and cinnamon, have had ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of a place, so sheltered that it is like a nest of all lovely things. Really; it has its own climate, through certain favouring circumstances; and it is a hidden little ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... partridge is a species of grouse, larger than the English or French partridge. We refer our young readers to the finely arranged specimens in the British Museum, (open to the public,) where they may discover "Louis's partridge."] from her nest, and the eggs were soon transferred to Louis's straw hat, while a stone flung by the steady hand of Hector stunned the parent bird. The boys laughed exultingly as they displayed their prizes to the astonished Catharine, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... many do. There is a pretty little thing called a harvest-mouse. It makes a nest like a bird's, and hangs it up on ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... and where through branch and twig the stir of summer crooned a restful lullaby. Often a squirrel on a low limb clasped its forepaws on a burgher-fat stomach, and gazed impudently down, chattering excitedly at the invalid. From its hanging nest, with brilliant flashes of orange and jet, a Baltimore oriole came and ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... affection. I only say that as a fact she behaves in a way which is at once injurious to her own chances of individual survival, and absolutely necessary to the survival of the species. The abnormal bird who deserts her nest escapes many dangers; but if all birds were devoid of the instinct, the birds ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... think I would not have burned Peterborough minster over your head before now, had it not been for Uncle Brand's sake? See that I do not do it yet. See that when there is another Prior in Borough you do not find Hereward the Berserker smoking you out some dark night, as he would smoke a wasps' nest. And I will, by—" ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... to thumb his nose casually at the entire audience, and then amid shouts and hisses sat down at the piano and began to play "Love Nest." ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... mustn't fall into any hen's nest, as you did once in our barn, and get your dress all egg," ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... a home by pure love blest, Clasping their souls in a calmer rest, Like woodland birds in their leafy nest. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... thrust. He knew that then the victim would have been taken back, helpless and motionless as the spider was, to be laid side by side with other helpless but still conscious victims in the fetid depths of the wasp's nest. And he knew that finally an egg would have been laid on the victim's chest; an egg that would eventually hatch and deliver a bit of life that would calmly and leisurely devour the ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... sort of way, to keep me from that stunt if she could, and she had said, 'If I do, remember you said I might.' So you see, she was within her rights, in a way, and beside, I tell you I don't want to stir up a hornets' nest about it. The incident is beneath notice; and, do you know, I can't help admiring ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... neglected children of Giles, as much as he blamed the wicked parents. He one day picked up Dick, who was far the best of Giles' bad boys. Dick was loitering about in a field behind the parson's garden, in search of a hen's nest, his mother having ordered him to bring home a few eggs that night, by hook or by crook, as Giles was resolved to have some pancakes for supper, though he knew that eggs were a penny apiece. Mr. Wilson had long been desirous of snatching some ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... for her, but that Mrs. Cat was taking her home to make a luncheon upon her. But Tabby carried her very carefully, so as not to rumple her smooth coat of fur nor break any of her tiny bones. When Tabby reached home, she dropped the mouse into the warm nest where lay her kitten, and immediately began to wash off the dust of travel, just as she daily bathed Kitty. Mousey liked this so well that she remained very quiet and quickly ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... thy nest, thou pretty songbird?" he said. "Had I known, I should scarce have dared to invade it ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the death of Isabella, Mazalquivir, a nest of pirates on the Barbary coast, had been captured by an expedition organized by the energetic Ximenes. He quickly set in train a more difficult enterprise, one directed against Oran, a Moorish city of twenty ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... whenever it was cold, and always in the evening. The walls of this room were very dirty, and it took our ladies several days to cover all the unsightly places with wreaths and hangings of evergreen. In the performance Baby took an active part. Her duties consisted in sitting in a great nest of evergreen, pulling and fingering the fragrant leaves, and occasionally giving a little cry of glee when she had accomplished some ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... theorize about building its nest, or boast of it when built? All good work is essentially done that way—without hesitation, without difficulty, without boasting; and in the doers of the best, there is an inner and involuntary power ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... Broom of Molly the housemaid. And then, the tiny insect, the ant—that living, silent monitor to unregarding men—doth it not make its own galleries, build with toilsome art its own abiding place? Does not the mole scratch its own chamber—the carrion kite build its own nest! Shall cuckoos and Members of Parliament alone ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Some well-known experiments show that it is quite possible to accumulate the solar heat by a simple apparatus, and thus to obtain a temperature which might be economically important even in the climate of Switzerland. Saussure, by receiving the sun's rays in a nest of boxes blackened within and covered with glass, raised a thermometer enclosed in the inner box to the boiling point; and under the more powerful sun of the Cape of Good Hope, Sir John Hershel cooked the materials for a family dinner by a similar process, using however, but at single box, surrounded ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... we are sitting, let us think of summer days elsewhere. Let us think of them listlessly, that we may the more enjoy the quiet here: as a child on a frosty winter night, snug in his little bed, puts out a foot for a moment into the chilly expanse of sheet that stretches away from the warm nest in which he lies, and then pulls it swiftly back again, enjoying the cozy warmth the more for this little reminder of the bitter chill. Here, where the air is cool, pure, and soft, let us think of a hoarding round some ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... fellow-creatures, will study all sides of all questions, however dangerous. Sheila was doing her best to entertain the stranger, and he, in a dream of his own, was listening to the information she gave him. How much of it did he carry away? He was told that the gray goose built its nest in the rushes at the edge of lakes: Sheila knew several nests in Borva. Sheila also caught the young of the wild-duck when the mother was guiding them down the hill-rivulets to the sea. She had tamed many of them, catching them thus before they could fly. The names ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... sort of thing was when I went to the Battle Creek Sanitarium to investigate hydrotherapy, and found myself in a nest of Seventh-day Adventists. Three generations or so ago some odd character hit upon the discovery that the Christian churches had let the devil snare them into resting on the first day of the week, whereas the Bible states distinctly ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... where once flashed a little brook that "set the silences to rhyme" is now a silvery lake framed in rich green foliage. Up in the hill where swayed the old hemlock with the eagle's nest for a crown rises an observatory. From the top one gazes in summer into a billowy sea of green in which the spire of the Methodist church rises like a far distant ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... Fuller said that it could not be put in execution but by a military force; to which Lord North answered, "I shall not hesitate to enforce a due obedience to the laws of this country." Another added, "You will never meet with proper obedience until you have destroyed that nest of locusts." Lord George Germain, speaking of revoking the Massachusetts charter, said, "Whoever wishes to preserve such charters, I wish him no worse than to govern such subjects." The act passed both houses without a division, and Gage was appointed military governor, in place of Hutchinson, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Then Chick had picked up a gay feather that had floated down from a scarlet bird that sang in the tree-tops, and tore off silk from a cocoon. So, bit by bit, they gathered their treasures, until many a woodland and meadow creature and plant had had a share in the softness of a nest worthy of eight dear white eggs with reddish-brown spots upon them. It was such a soft nest, in fact, with such dear eggs in it, that Chick brooded there cosily himself part of the time, and was happy to bring food to his mate ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... in question, will be able to conjecture which fleet was most favored with these delicate attentions. The American gull follows the steamers up the Mississippi, and has been shot 1,500 miles from the sea.] There is a familiar story of an English bird which built its nest in an unused block in the rigging of a ship, and made one or two short voyages with the vessel while hatching its eggs. Had the young become fledged while lying in a foreign harbor, they would of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... Old Islay!" she repeated, turning her face from him to hide its sudden remorse. "Islay, Islay," she repeated to herself. He noticed the hand she leaned upon, so soft, so white, so beautiful, trembled in its nest among the heather. He was so taken up with it there among the heather, so much more beautiful than the fairest flower, that he did not notice how far he had given ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... again, and fell into a sleep "sweeter than a nest of nightingales." And with her last waking thought she thanked God the round red sun was not worn out yet, and the world had not ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... bird's nest, and leave a lake in North America. 2. Behead a marine map, and leave a wild animal. 3. Behead a sail vessel, and leave a small narrow opening. 4. Behead a plant, and leave space. 5. Behead a basket or hamper, and leave standard or proportion. 6. Behead a sharp bargainer, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... I was in Buenos Ayres a very pleasant young English civil engineer begged me to visit the family with whom he was boarding, assuring me that I should find the most amusing nest of cranks there. These people had come originally from the Pacific Coast, I cannot recall whether from Bolivia or Ecuador. As their revolutionary tendencies and their constant efforts to overthrow the Government had rendered ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... sat up. "Done got into nest ob snakes," he declared, "reckon I killed fifty of 'em, but more and more kept coming so I had to run. Golly, I 'spect thar was mighty nigh a hundred chased me most to camp. Dat's ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... list of extra charges—treats, medical attendance, little comforts of all kinds, from old port to lamb's-wool sleeping-socks. Orphans of this kind were the pigeons whose tender breasts furnished the down with which that experienced crow, Miss Pew, feathered her nest. She had read the Australian's letter over three times before evening service, and she was inclined to think kindly of the human race; so when Miss Palliser asked if she too—she, the Pariah, might go to St. Dunstan's—she, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... than any web on Earth—and rather fearfully looked for the monster that could string thirty-foot cables as thick as fishing-twine. Then he found that it was not a snare at all. It was a construction at whose center something undiscoverable had made a nest, with eggs in it. Some creature had made an unapproachable home for itself where its young would not be assailed ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the attention of the family by its pictures. It showed two very pretty little birds building themselves a home; and Marija had asked an acquaintance to read it to her, and told them that it related to the furnishing of a house. "Feather your nest," it ran—and went on to say that it could furnish all the necessary feathers for a four-room nest for the ludicrously small sum of seventy-five dollars. The particularly important thing about this offer was ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... fisherman, who had taken his smack to an isolated village on the Nova Scotian coast. Here the fisherman did well, and before the boy was half grown owned the finest cottage in the village—which he bought cheap because it was perched on the crest of the hill, exposed to every storm that blew, a nest that none but a sailor could live in. With increasing prosperity he installed a big base-burner, good for the anaemic boy, but ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... infinite good-humour of the heedless youngster, enabled him to bear all this domestic tyranny without open rebellion. It was evident that the doctor and his housekeeper were preparing to beat the poor youth out of the nest, the moment his term should have expired; a shorthand mode which the doctor had of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... other English fungi* [One of great size, growing in large clumps, is the English Agaricus comans, Fr., and I found it here at 12,500 feet, as also the beautiful genus Crucibulum, which is familiar to us in England, growing on rotten sticks, and resembling a diminutive bird's nest with eggs in it.] grew amongst ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... body of Indians, who from this point of vantage directed a particularly galling fire at the loop-holes in the palisades. By it several of the defenders were wounded, until finally a cannon was brought to bear upon the hornet's nest, and a quantity of red-hot spikes were thrust into its muzzle. A minute after its discharge flames burst from the buildings, and the savages who had occupied them were in precipitate flight, followed by jeering shouts and a parting volley ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows, The young flowers are blowing toward the west. But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... nest group to arrive was the Water family. Their chief begins the story of their ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... thou art a child of innocence and without history. The salt held not the bird for the net of thy anger, Nuncio; so it is meet that other ways be found. David the ancient put a stone in a sling and Goliath laid him down like an egg in a nest—therefore, Nuncio, get thee to the quarry. Obligato, which is to say Leicester yonder, hath no tail—the devil cut it off and wears it himself. So let salt be damned, and go ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... special nerves of smell distributed in chambers of the nose—acquires its attractive or its repulsive quality only as the result of mental association with what is beneficial (suitable food, mates, friends, safety, home, the nest), or with what is injurious (unsuitable food, poison, enemies, danger, strange surroundings, solitude). Hence it is intelligible that the man accustomed to garlic or onions in his food is strongly attracted by their smell. So too the man whose tribe or companions have ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... sir, that an ordinary robin is perfectly aware that while squirrels and cats are able to ascend the perpendicular trunk of a tree, they cannot climb the painted pillar of a piazza; and consequently it is perfectly safe to build a nest at the top of ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... way were also mine! O noble poet! thou whose heart Is like a nest of singing-birds Rocked on the topmost bough of life, Wilt thou, too, from our sky depart, And in the clangor of the strife Mingle the music ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... a most peculiar little city and very attractive in its peculiarity, being crowded snugly into a depression between a number of steep pine-wooded hills, which gives an appearance suggestive of a bird's nest securely located among the forks of a branching tree, and as is the case in a nest, business is chiefly transacted at the lowest depth of the enclosure. As the busy center of a great gold-mining region, the metropolis of the Hills, and the outgrowth of an exciting ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives. His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest; In the nice ear of Nature which song ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... setting of vines and mosses. If the ferns are numerous, charming the eye with delicate and graceful beauty, the birds are more so, delighting the ear with their rich and varied melodies. Here one catches the cheerful strain of the Maryland yellow throat, a bird whose nest Audubon never chanced to discover. The Baltimore Oriole now and then favored us with rich notes and displayed his plumage of black and orange, the colors of the coat of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... summer and separated in St. Louis. Abraham walked in company with John Johnston from St. Louis to Coles County, and spent a few weeks there with his father, who had made another migration the year before. His final move was to Goose Nest Prairie, where he died in 1851, [Footnote: His grave, a mile and a half west of the town of Farmington, Illinois, is surmounted by an appropriate monument erected by his grandson, the Hon. Robert T. Lincoln.] ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the brush of a small yew, and exclaimed; for there, neatly set in the angle of the bough, was a brown cup with three blue eggs in it. I saw all this, and tried my best to get back to it; but I was not there. I saw it clearly—the late shower glittered on my coat and on the yew with the nest in it—but it was a scene remote as a memorable hour of a Surrey April of years ago. I could not approach; so I went ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... to know a very large number of persons of a certain kind before one can evolve a type. Each he or she contributes a twig, and the author weaves them into a nest. I have no doubt that I must have taken such a twig from nearly every clergyman I met who had a soupcon of Mr. ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... a nest snug and cozy gave her a tiny pang over the abandoned home. The dust of many months would gather on the empty chairs and shelves. Still it was only a passing absence. They would come back, with treasure wrested from the strong ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... big, and Kapchack's nest is in the middle, no one can see even it from the outside, nor can any boys fling a stone and hit it; nor, indeed, could any one shoot at it, because the boughs are all round it. Thus Kapchack's palace is protected with a high wall, by the boughs, by its ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... mare's nest, I fancy," he continued. "At any rate, before we made any really important discoveries I had to go back to Jo'burg. Had no option, so to speak. Then, in connection with the same business, I penetrated into German South-West Africa. I was in Bersheba ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... at first of dawning, or maybe at eventide, must Laila go!— My heart at the word lay helpless, as lies a Kat[a] in net night-long, and struggles with fast-bound wing. Two nestlings she left alone, in a nest far distant, a nest which the winds smite, tossing it to and fro. They hear but the whistling breeze, and stretch necks to greet her; but she they await—the end of her days is come! So lies she, and neither gains in the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... between man and all other animals. Man alone seems to be capable of laying up what may be termed an external store of intellectual wealth. Other animals in the state of nature make, so far as we know, no intellectual advances. The bee constructs its cell, the bird builds its nest precisely as its progenitors did in the earliest dawn of history. There is a possibility that some advance, though a very small one, may be made by animals brought under the control of man. It is said, for instance, that a ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... has become second nature with us, as the saying is. Three years ago this summer I discovered a place, oh! such a spot. Oh, dear, dear! In the shade, eight feet of water at least and perhaps ten, a hole with cavities under the bank, a regular nest for fish and a paradise for the fisherman. I might look upon that fishing hole as my property, Monsieur le President, as I was its Christopher Columbus. Everybody in the neighborhood knew it, without making any opposition. They would say: 'That is Renard's place'; and nobody would ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Daughter, Nest, by whom he had a Son, called Walter. This Son, being upbraided with his illegitimate Birth, by one of his Companions, slew him, and fled to Scotland, where in time he became Lord Steward of that Kingdom; and all the Families ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... divided into several compartments. In one, the startled editor beheld a nest of tall glasses; in another, a number of interesting flasks lying in a porcelain container among chipped ice. In the lid was an array of straws, napkins, a flat tray labeled CLOVES, and a bunch of what looked uncommonly like mint leaves. Mr. Bleak did not speak, ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... the Germans had fallen back from Trugney and Epieds, our Forty-second Division, which had been brought over from the Champagne, relieved the Twenty-sixth and, fighting its way through the Foret de Fere, overwhelmed the nest of machine guns in its path. By the 27th it had reached the Ourcq, whence the Third and Fourth Divisions were already advancing, while the French divisions with which we were cooperating were moving forward ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... and die sword in hand. Sir Walter Manny found the king inexorable. The strict laws of war in those days justified the barbarous practise of putting to death the garrison of a town captured under such circumstances. Calais had been for many years a nest of pirates, and vessels issuing from its port had been a scourge to the commerce of England and Flanders, and the king was fully determined to punish it severely. Sir Walter Manny interceded long and boldly, and ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... even to the farms outlying on the hills—and the enervated garrison marched out to take the field!" He made a violent gesture toward the north. "I should fling every man and gun pell-mell on that rebels' rat-nest called West Point, and uproot and tear it from the mountain flank! I should sweep the Hudson with fire; I should hurl these rotting regiments into Albany and leave it a smoking ember, and I should tread the embers ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland; in this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented crow's-nest of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet's good craft. He called it the Sleet's crow's-nest, in honor of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... himself. He had recognized her as a lady whose outward trappings, poor though they might be, were suited to the seclusion in which she lived. But now, although it was only to Ennis that she had come from her nest among the rocks, she seemed to be unfitted for even so much intercourse with the world as that. And in the demand which she reiterated over him she hardly spoke as a lady would speak. Would not all they who were connected with him at home have a right to complain if he were to bring such ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... seemed set upon it, Finn cheerfully endeavored to forget the foxy smell, busied himself in securing a fresh, rabbit for supper, and generally behaved as a good mate should in the matter of helping to make a new home. And that is the plain truth in the matter of how Desdemona found her nest. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... one of those young ladies who seem born mistresses of the art of self-defense. Deriving the art not from experience, but from instinct, they are as adroit at seventeen as they are at twenty-seven; so a last year's bird constructs her first nest as cunningly as can a veteran ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... cottage within which were a wooden man and woman seated at table, and a wooden dog beneath, all the size of life; on pressing a spring, the woman commenced spinning, and the dog barked furiously. On the lake were wooden swans, painted to the life; some floating, others on the nest among the rushes; while a wooden sportsman, crouched among the bushes, was preparing his gun to take deadly aim. In another part of the garden was a dominie in his clerical robes, with wig, pipe, and cocked hat; ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... absent meditative air, as of a man who discusses the most indifferent subject possible. "I hope he may. It would be a pity for such a place to fall into such hands. She would make it a phalanstery, a nest for ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... described as meeting a priest carrying the Host, on the bank of a foaming mountain torrent somewhere among the Alps where the ruins of the Habsburg still show against the sky like an abandoned hawk's nest; the name probably derives from Habichts Burg, Hawk's Castle. Rudolph dismounted, placed the priest on his horse and humbly, cap in hand, led it across the stream. Years after this picturesque event the priest, carefully disguised, attended the Council ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... hovels, when the guttering dip burns low, the passionate need which then comes upon one to wreak justice, to revolt, as from a sense of duty, in order that one may save wife and children from consumption, in order that they also may have a warm nest where life shall be a possibility! Ah! the want that shivers with the bitter cold—therein lies the excess of social injustice, the most terrible of schools, where the poor learn to realise their sufferings, where they are roused to indignation, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... we're doing all we can; and I don't think it's right for him to talk against the work of the Lord." The reverend gentleman resumed his seat with the satisfied air of a school boy who has just succeeded in hitting a hornet's nest, and devoutly wishes that someone would come along to share ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... He's got no - no constructiveness, but that's the egg-meat of his plan, and you must understand that I'm in with it, an' so are you. We'll want oceans of beer to convince us - firmaments full. We'll give him talk for his money, and one by one all the boys'll come in and he'll have a nest of nine hundred mutineers to squat in an' give ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... application to Decoration and Manufacture (1859); "Ariadne Florentina" (1873), a monograph on Italian wood and metal engraving; "Aratra Pentelici" (1872), on the elements and principles of sculpture; and "The Eagle's Nest" (1872), on the relation of natural science to art. Still pursuing his delightful methods of interpreting nature and teaching the world instructive lessons, even from the common things of mother earth, we have a series of three eloquent discourses, entitled (1) "Proserpina," studies of Alpine ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... impertinence, and, reaching up to a hunting-trophy on the wall, he seized a stout boar-spear, and cried out in a loud voice—"Traitor, base traitor, thou art not fit to live, thou hast slandered thy master and fouled thy nest! Die!" ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... sleep, but she lay awake thinking of her troubles. Of her husband carried home dead from his work one morning; of her eldest son who only came to loaf on her when he was out of jail; of the second son, who had feathered his nest in another city, and had no use for her any longer; of the next—poor delicate little Arvie—struggling manfully to help, and wearing his young life out at Grinder Bros when he should be at school; of the five helpless younger children asleep ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Millesimo, Dego, Mondovi, and Cherasco were ever dear to Bonaparte, and stand in a high place on his greatest monument. The King of Sardinia was the father-in-law of Louis XVIII, and his court had been a nest of plotting French emigrants. When his agents reached Paris they were received with coarse resentment by the Directory and bullied into an alliance, though they had been instructed to make only a ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... that soils her own nest! As though they had not suffered enough of mortification and defeat at the hands of the enemy, the Parisians have succeeded in emptying the cup of disgrace to the dregs by dragging down the monument of their military glory, amid hoots and hisses, and ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... for it if it turns out a mare's nest," said Vigo, in a low, meaning voice to me. But I hardly heard him. I passed him and Lucas, and flew down ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... themselves in strange ways, moving busily about on the branch; after a few minutes three of them flew away, the other remaining quietly behind. There are several kinds of hornbills; they are peculiar birds in that the male is said to close with mud the entrance to the nest in the hollow stem of the tree, thus confining the female while she is sitting on her eggs. Only a small hole is left ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... the state as a visible effort to correct evils, atone for neglects, and compensate for wrongs. It comes to do, in part at least, what the family, the school, the press, the library, the Sabbath, have nest yet perfectly accomplished. As these agencies partially failed, so will this; but, as the law of progress exists for all, because perfection with us is unattainable, we may reasonably have faith in human improvement, and trust that the life ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... dusty leaves and thirsty little flowers would be for all the bright drops that were falling on them. She told him how the bees, that had been so busy all the week, must take a rest to-day, and how warm and dry the little birds would be in their nest in the pear-tree, for all the driving rain. Setting him in his favourite chair by the window, she amused him with talk like this, as she went about putting things in order in the room. While she comforted him ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... Interview with Natives. Coral Reefs. Discover Beagle Bank. Arrival at Port George the Fourth. Examination of Collier Bay in the boats. Brecknock Harbour. The Slate Islands. Freshwater Cove. An Eagle shot. Its singular nest. Rock Kangaroos. A Conflagration. Sandstone Ridges. Doubtful Bay. Mouth of the Glenelg. Remarkable Tree. Fertile Country near Brecknock Harbour. Return to the Ship. Meet with Lieutenant Grey. His sufferings and discoveries. Visit the Encampment. Timor Ponies. Embarkation of Lieutenant ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... a boy of about the same age, nearly as tall, but more stoutly built, and as light in complexion as the other was dark. The two were standing at the top of the road that wound down the side of the mountain from the town of Creston, which was perched, like the nest of some great bird, in a hollow ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... Derby Railway, and though the Foreign Things did admirably and the Nottingham and Derby declined with the steady dignity of which only Home Rails are capable, Mrs. Munt never ceased to rejoice, and to say, "I did manage that, at all events. When the smash comes poor Margaret will have a nest-egg to fall back upon." This year Helen came of age, and exactly the same thing happened in Helen's case; she also would shift her money out of Consols, but she, too, almost without being pressed, consecrated a fraction of it to the Nottingham and Derby Railway. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... I am puzzled to understand why he should trust himself in that hornets' nest again. Most certainly the description covers him, but we shall probably hear more details later. I wonder where the Turkish gentleman went whom 'Le Ver' seems to have followed. He could not have gone to the Cabaret Noir in ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... time when, on both coasts of Long Island, pirates and smugglers made their headquarters and came and went unmolested. In fact, the officials of that day were in league with the rascals, and there was at least one governor of the Province of New York who feathered his nest nicely by having an interest in ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... them at Fort Providence in December last. On the seventh day after I had joined the Leader, &c. &c., and journeying on together, all the Indians, excepting Petit Pied and Bald-Head, left me to seek their families, and crossed Point Lake at the Crow's Nest, where Humpy had promised to meet his brother Ekehcho[16a] with the families, but did not fulfil, nor did any of my party of Indians know where to find them; for we had frequently made fires to apprize them of our approach, yet none appeared in return as answers. This disappointment, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... But all that didn't prevent him from worshipping his wife—such a pretty lady, who, had she wished, might have easily gone wrong, but had given up such ideas long ago. Their home was quite a turtle-doves' nest now. Had madame paid them a visit yet? They were certain to be at home; she had but a few moments previously observed that the shutters were open in the Rue Vineuse. They had formerly had such regard for madame that surely they would be delighted to ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... such a nest of vultures," she exclaimed, excitedly, when Madeline had completed her story. "Why, it's worse than a chapter out of a French drama. Goodness gracious, Madeline Payne, I only wish I could help you deal out justice to these ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... a sad voice, "to keep in possession our beautiful home. As for myself, I can go back into busy life again. I am yet in the prime of manhood, and can tread safely and successfully the old and yet unforgotten ways to prosperity. Toil will be nothing to me, so the home-nest remain undisturbed, and my beloved ones suffer not ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... is but vanity,—it has no definite aim, it plays with a thousand toys. As with one passion, so with the rest. In youth, Love is ever on the wing, but, like the birds in April, it hath not yet built its nest. With so long a career of summer and hope before it, the disappointment of to-day is succeeded by the novelty of to-morrow, and the sun that advances to the noon but dries up its fervent tears. But when we have arrived at that epoch of life,—when, if the light fail us, if the last rose ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... senses is not rescued from his sinful acts by either the Sama or the Rig, or the Yajus Veda. The Vedas never rescue from sin the deceitful person living by deceit. On the other hand, like newfledged birds forsaking their nest, the Vedas forsake such a person at ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... not yet fledged, that hath hopped out of his nest to be chirping on a hedge, and will be straggling abroad at what peril soever. His backwardness in the university hath set him thus forward; for had he not truanted there, he had not been so hasty a divine. His small standing, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... the life of animals and even plants, we find that all adapt themselves to the demands of nature. This is the original primitive condition. But already the bird building its nest for greater comfort and protection of its young, interferes with nature's original conditions. No doubt, mankind once lived under primitive adaptation, and possibly the idealistic thought of paradise may be the echo of those far away days. When, however, mankind began ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer
... been with us even these few days," Ourieda said, "that the harem of an Arab Caid isn't a nest of wives, as people in Europe who have never seen one suppose! My father has laughed when he told me Christians believed that. Now, Aunt Mabrouka and I and our servants are the only women in my father's harem; but when I was a little girl, ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... Written out with much toil and pain; Take it, O Lord, and let it be As something I have done for Thee! How sweet the air is! how fair the scene! I wish I had as lovely a green To paint my landscapes and my leaves! How the swallows twitter under the eaves! There, now, there is one in her nest; I can just catch a glimpse of her head and breast, And will sketch her thus, in her quiet nook, For the margin of ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... do him justice, he has a truly ghost-like head and shoulders of his own. What horror to the "small birds rejoicing in spring's leafy bowers," fast-locked we were going to say in each other's arms, but sitting side by side in the same cosy nuptial nest, to be startled out of their love-dreams by the great lamp-eyed, beaked face of a horrible monster with horns, picked out of feathered bed, and wafted off in one bunch, within talons, to pacify a set of hissing, and snappish, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... was repaid for his services with some of those vague compliments and promises which cost so little to the cold heart, the easy temper, and the ready tongue of Charles, and quietly withdrew to his little nest, as he ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bill into every berry; often ruining a fine bunch, or a number of them, in a short time. I have therefore been compelled to wage a war upon some of the feathered tribe, although they are my especial favorites, and I cannot see a bird's nest robbed. However, there are some who do not visit the vineyard, except for the purpose of destroying our grapes, and these can not complain if we "won't stand it any longer," but take the gun, and retaliate on them. The oriole, the red bird, thrush, and cat bird ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... and rushed after it. Gradually I gained on it; with a final rush I made for it—and met unexpectedly bodily resistance. We fell on the ground, and a man became visible under me. I understood at once. The man must have had the invisible bird's nest, which he dropped in the struggle, thus ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... all; only a nephew by marriage," replied the lawyer, pulling up his collar. "He may feel much obliged to Mr. Stanley for feathering his nest so well. But Hazlehurst is a very good fellow; I always liked him from the time he was a ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... of a dozen, which Benito had bought and given her on her coming to his home, a few days after they were married, to over one hundred. These hens had been the source of no small profit, and by their means Benito was able to put aside a little nest egg each year. And now they must begin again! It was hard, and both felt there was no relief for them. The little they had saved during the first few years had to be used for the summer sowing, and ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... build her nest: Here, give my weary spirits rest, And raise my low-pitch'd thoughts above Earth, or what poor mortals love: Thus, free from law-suits and the noise Of ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... down, to charm thy curious eye; On twinkling fins my pearly nations play, 20 Or win with sinuous train their trackless way; My plumy pairs in gay embroidery dress'd Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest, To Love's sweet notes attune the listening dell, And Echo sounds ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... oats for his horses, and a box of bread and cheese for himself. He did not know whether Franco was to go with him, or not; but he arranged the bags in such a way, that he could easily make a warm nest for him in one corner, if the farmer should allow ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... my bosom like a bee, Doth suck his sweet; Now with his wings he plays with me, Now with his feet. Within mine eyes he makes his nest His bed amidst my tender breast, My kisses are his daily feast; And yet he robs me of my rest? 'Ah, wanton! ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... brier and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... much interested in the unique habitation, which resembled nothing so much as a huge wasp's nest built around the bole of a tree well ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... again: The little township that was all the world I knew of then— The meeting-house upon the hill, the tavern just beyond, Old deacon Packard's general store, the sawmill by the pond, The village elms I vainly sought to conquer in my quest Of that surpassing trophy, the golden oriole's nest. And, last of all those visions that come back from long ago, The pretty face that thrilled my soul when I ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... heard him come quivering down from heaven's gate, fluttering, sinking, trilling self-complacently, springing aloft in one bar, only to sink lower in the next, and call more softly to his brooding mate below; till, worn out with his ecstasy, he murmured one last sigh of joy, and sank into the nest. The picture flashed through Elsley's brain as swiftly as the notes did through his ears. He breathed more freely when it vanished with the sounds. He strode hastily in, and down the little ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... set sail solemn sacrifices were offered to the gods on the sea-shore, when suddenly a serpent was seen to ascend a plane-tree, in which was a sparrow's {289} nest containing nine young ones. The reptile first devoured the young birds and then their mother, after which it was turned by Zeus into stone. Calchas the soothsayer, on being consulted, interpreted the miracle to signify that the war with Troy would last for nine years, and that ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... pleasant in watching the old hen as she sits so patiently on her nest, and to see the little birds issue from the eggs, with the proud but careful mother strutting by them, and scratching and toiling to obtain them food; and nothing is more touching to a sensitive mind than to behold her at the least chill of air, or overcasting of the clouds, calling her young ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... preceding generations until time reached backwards to the sturdy savage who asked no questions of any kind, but knocked down the primeval great-grandmother of all, and carried her off to his hole in the rock, or into the tree where he had made his nest. Why should not the coming question announce itself by stirring in the pulses and thrilling in the nerves of the descendant ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... he carried nothing whatever with him except a small copy of God's Word printed in the language of the islanders. This, as the boat drew near to shore, he fastened on his head, among the bushy curls of his crisp black hair, as in a nest. ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... billows swallowed him up. And Halcyone saw him drowning, and leapt into the sea to him; but in vain. Then the Immortals took pity on them both, and changed them into two fair sea-birds; and now they build a floating nest every year, and sail up and down happily for ever upon the ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... I do not like hornets. When I see them, they remind me of the story of a donkey told me by a man in these parts. He in his youth saw an unlucky ass that, quietly browsing, unconscious of indiscretion, disturbed a hornets' nest. Suddenly the animal showed symptoms of unusual excitement, which became rapidly more violent, until, after some amazing antics, first on his front-legs and then on his hind-legs, he rolled over on his back, and kicked violently at ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... would be over, but—Lord, that's when they begin! You see, if I was bright an' knew what slick people is up to, I'd be all right; but—Why, I'm like a settin' hen. I can feel the eggs under me, but how am I goin' to keep the skunks away when they smell the nest? I'm 'most tempted to turn everything I got over to some honest man an' let him han'le it. Some ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... he slept none the less. After he came back from the Opera, he and the Duchess had gone to a voluptuous retreat, where they often spent a few hours together after the most brilliant court balls and evening parties and gaieties. Appearances were very cleverly saved. Their love-nest was a garret like any other to all appearance; Mme. de Maufrigneuse was obliged to bow her head with its court feathers or wreath of flowers to enter in at the door; but within all the peris of the East had made the chamber fair. And now that the Count was on the brink of ruin, he had longed to ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... life! It adds a new touch of interest to the forbidding cactus to know that the cactus wren builds her nest between its leaves. The spines probably serve to protect the bird from her enemies. But are they not also a menace to her and to her young? But this "procreant cradle" of a bird in the arms of the fanged desert growth softens its ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... plants of the glossy tropical-looking bird's- nest fern, or Asplenium Nidus, which makes its home on the stems and branches of trees, and brightens the forest with its great shining fronds. I got a specimen from a koa tree. The plant had nine fronds, each one measuring from 4 feet 1 inch to 4 ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... districts of Northern Persia; and, before their suppression by the Mongols, 170 years later, the power of the quasi-spiritual dynasty which Hassan founded had spread over the Eastern Kohistan, at least as far as Kain. Their headquarters were at Alamut ("Eagle's Nest"), about 32 miles north-east of Kazwin, and all over the territory which they held they established fortresses of great strength. De Sacy seems to have proved that they were called Hashishiya or Hashishin, from their use of the preparation ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... offenses with regard to your property during your absence," said Steingall, "but they were of slight account as compared with your own extravagances. Let me warn you not to say too much before de Courtois. Even taking your version of events, Mr. Curtis, Lord Valletort will probably raise a wasps' nest about your ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... and she saw that he was deeply touched. "Well, I'm trusting to them now," he responded. "They have led me between two extremes, and it looks as if they had led me into a nest of hornets. I've got them all against me, but it isn't over yet, by Jove! It is a long road that ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow |
