"Wild duck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... names: "Green-head," "Wild Duck." Adult male, in fall, winter, and spring, beautifully ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in Hamlet and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild—the mallard—thought, which 'mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... lake, which is studded with wooded islets, the largest of which is named Talim, the gun is called into requisition, as the immense flocks of wild duck breeding here afford a constant sport, and the advantages of their acquisition are not likely to be overlooked either by the gourmand or the hungry tourist. They are, however, rather wild, and the best mode of shooting them appears to be to ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... calmly jubilant, as was his way when a stiff fight went well. He was by her side now, firing and aiming too, for the Dyaks broke cover recklessly in running for shelter, and one may do fair work by moonlight, as many a hunter of wild duck can testify by the rheumatism in ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... veritable birds of prey, whose rapacity is continually questing for plunder. But some of them have merely the magpies' and jackdaws' thievish propensity for picking up what lies temptingly in their way. And some few are so honest that they pass by as harmlessly as a wedge of high-flying wild duck. And I have heard it said that to places like Lisconnel their pickings and stealings have at worst never been so serious a matter as those of another flock, finer of feather, but not less predacious in their habits, who roosted, for the most part, a long way ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... wear the cap of rushes, And shall hear that day All the wild duck and the heron And the curlew say. You shall taste the wild bees' honey That since life began They have hidden for their master— For ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... tomatoes, which had gone to seed or been remorselessly hoed out from the beginning of Berande, were foraged for salads, soups, and sauces. The chickens, which had always gone into the bush and hidden their eggs, were given laying-bins, and Joan went out herself to shoot wild duck and wild pigeons ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... foundation of the old mill. Betty could still hear the great wet wheel lumbering round. She thought that she never had found a more delightful place, so much business was going on all about her and yet it was so quiet there, and as she looked under a young alder what should she see but a wild duck on its nest. Even if the shy thing had fluttered off at her approach, it had gone back again, and now watched her steadily as if to be ready to fly, yet not really frightened. It was a dear kind of relationship to be in this wild little ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... sheer walls of granite, where the dim and narrow pack trail was crossed and recrossed with the footprints of bear and deer and the snowy-coated mountain goat. The spring weather held its own, and everywhere was the pleasant smell of growing things. Overhead the wild duck winged his way in aerial squadrons to the vast solitudes of ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... astern into the gray of snow out of which blew the favouring wind. He even paused beside me to gossip for a moment about the French restaurants of San Francisco and how, therein, the delectable California fashion of cooking wild duck obtained. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... excellenz': They are not due till November, but the winter will be cold and they started early. In March they will start back. Why? How should I know? Who sends the wild duck, for that matter? I have seen a half-mile of them at one flight bound for this place. It may be the good God warns them ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... barren as far as the point which closed Union Bay, and which had received the name of Cape South Mandible. Nothing could be seen there but sand and shells, mingled with debris of lava. A few sea-birds frequented this desolate coast, gulls, great albatrosses, as well as wild duck, for which Pencroft had a great fancy. He tried to knock some over with an arrow, but without result, for they seldom perched, and he could not hit them ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... reached the road he found it was very broad, and banked on either side, and went straight as the flight of a wild duck right across the moor, and never swerved by the hills or pools, but went over everything in its way. And as he stood marvelling what mighty men had builded it, he heard a strange rattling sound behind him, and, turning, he saw three men on horseback, and the sun shone from ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... there, and shallow, since there had been no rain, and it ran in ripples over the sparkling sand. Under the overhanging willows of the opposite bank there was an inlet where the water was deeper and flowed so slowly that it seemed to sleep in the sun. In this little bay a single wild duck was swimming and diving and preening her feathers, disporting herself very happily in the flickering light and shade. They sat for a long time, watching the solitary bird take its pleasure. No living thing had ever seemed to Alexandra as beautiful ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... all the breeds of poultry have proceeded from the common wild Indian fowl (Gallus bankiva). In regard to ducks and rabbits, the breeds of which differ considerably from each other in structure, I do not doubt that they have all descended from the common wild duck and rabbit. ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... punt at the bulrushes, in the corner where it looked most open, and with all our might heaved it over the weeds and the mud, and so round the islet into the next pool, and thence into the open water. It was a wild duck, and was ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... anything to shoot in all the bush, though you may be sure I kept my eyes about me. I was beginning to grow disheartened. At length I made my way down to the creek. Just as I got near it, I heard a whirr-r-r over my head, and looking up, I saw a flock of wild duck. They seemed to pause a moment, and then dropped downwards. I couldn't see where they alighted, but of course I knew it must be ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... dangerously. Larry and Jack saw it all, but they said nothing, only relieved the Chippewa of all the work they possibly could, so that, should necessity demand that Fox-Foot must lose rest and food, he would be well fortified for every tax placed upon him. Jack took to cooking the meals, as a wild duck takes to the water, insisting that Fox-Foot rest after paddling, and the Indian accepting it all without comment, and sleeping at a moment's notice—seemingly storing it up against future needs. But the evening came when the laughing river gurgled into ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... of the added superficies of enmeshed and immolated flies. So things went on almost till New Year's Eve. The flats of the Upper Thames, where the floods get out up the ditches and tributaries, and the wild duck gather on the shallow "splashes" and are stalked with the stalking-horse as of old, were as dry as Richmond Park, and sounded hollow to the foot, instead of wheezing like a sponge. The herons could not ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... describes it; or rather, if it were carried out on some exceptionally large and well-equipped stage, the feat of the mechanician would eclipse the invention of the poet. On the other hand, the abode of the Wild Duck in the play of that name is a conception entirely consonant with the optics of the theatre; for no detail at all need be, or ought to be, visible, and a vague effect of light is all that is required. Only in his last melancholy ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... reflected in the calm water; at its edge, on stone steps and amongst the reeds, little copper-coloured women in rich colours stooped and washed brightly coloured clothes. The surface of the water was speckled with wild duck, which splashed and swam about making silvery ripples break into the warm reflection, and a faint smoke from the village softened the whole effect. White draped figures passed to and fro on the bund under the trees, sometimes aglow with rays that shot between the tree trunks, or again silhouetted ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... food was what has been already named. The meat was venison, bear, raccoon, wild turkey, wild duck, and pheasant; the drink was water, or rye coffee, or whisky, which the little stills everywhere supplied only too abundantly. Wheat bread was long unknown, and corn cakes 10 of various makings and bakings supplied its place. The most delicious morsel of all was corn ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... described, which were brought for sale, were never met with alive; but we saw a single small one, about the size of a canary-bird, of a deep crimson colour; a large owl; two large brown hawks, or kites; and a wild duck. The natives mentioned the names of several other birds; amongst which we knew the otoo, or blueish heron; and the torata, a sort of whimbrel, which are known by the same names at Otaheite; and it is probable, that there are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... I was very glad to roll myself in my blanket as soon as supper was over, and to fall fast asleep. I should, I believe, have slept on far into the next day, had I not been aroused by my father, who handed me a mug of coffee, some wild duck, and corn-cake for breakfast. Directly afterwards, the march was resumed. We were unable to obtain any game during the first part of the day, and were truly glad when, in the afternoon, we came in sight of the thickly-growing trees of an extensive ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... have much of this sense developed at all. This is notoriously the case in some of those whose ancestors for several generations have been criminals, insane or drunkards." Again (p. 331) "We know that some of the children of many generations of thieves take to stealing, as a young wild duck among tame ones takes to hiding in holes, and that the children of savage races cannot copy at once our ethics nor our power of controlling our actions. It seems to take many generations to redevelop an atrophied conscience. There is no doubt that ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... looked with eyes untaught to care for beauty, but with a certain love of the home scenes, tempered by youth's impatience for something new. The nightingales sang, the thrushes flew out before them, the wild duck and moorhen glanced on the pools. Here and there they came on the furrows left by the snout of the wild swine, and in the open tracts rose the graceful heads of the deer, but of inhabitants or travellers they scarce saw any, save when they halted at the little hamlet of Minestead, where a small ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dark, lonely pool, covered with pond-lilies, peopled with bullfrogs and water snakes, and haunted by two white cranes. Oh! the terrors of that pond! How our little hearts would beat as we approached it; what fearful glances we would throw around! And if by chance a plash of a wild duck, or the guttural twang of a bullfrog, struck our ears, as we stole quietly by—away we sped, nor paused until completely out of the woods. Then, when I reached home, what a world of adventures and imaginary terrors would I have to relate to my ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Foals and the Ducks are Princes over whom that fate has come by the power of a witch or a Troll, to whom an unwary promise had been given. Thoroughly mythic is the trait in 'The Twelve Wild Ducks', where the youngest brother reappears with a wild duck's wing instead of his left arm, because his sister had no time to finish that portion of the shirt, upon the completion of which his ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... weaves a perfect matting of its poisonous garlands, and my remembrance of its prevalence in the woods and hedges of England did not reconcile me to its appearance here. How much of this is mere association I cannot tell; but whether the wild duck makes its nest under its green arches, or the alligators and snakes of the Altamaha have their secret bowers there, it is an evil-looking weed, and I shall have every ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... laid an egg and was telling the world about it. The world answered with a breath of real spring—spring that flooded the stuffy car and drove us out on the platform to snuff and sing and rejoice and pluck squashy green marsh-flags and throw them at the colts, and shout at the wild duck that rose from a jewel-green lakelet. God be thanked that in travel one can follow the year! This, my spring, I lost last November in New Zealand. Now I shall hold her fast through Japan and the summer into New ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... all the breast with slices of bacon, large and thin. Grease with oil and salt moderately when the cooking is almost complete. If you have a wild duck grease with butter, as the ...
— The Italian Cook Book - The Art of Eating Well • Maria Gentile
... feet lies a slender bone that cannot be anything but the backbone of a squirrel. Beyond it are two other bones, which came from the same body. We know as certainly that it was a squirrel as we know that the Great Bear ate first a wild goose, and then a wild duck. But it is a good camp that those two great men made, and, as the night is coming, we ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the Governor shall not withhold his consent—and there are bear and deer—quail, wild duck—your excellency will enjoy that beautiful wild country as I have done." Arguello was enchanted at the prospect of fresh adventure in the company of this fascinating stranger. "But we are once more at our poor abode, senor. I beg ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... confident young gentleman she had run away from without so much as a knowledge of his name. She cried, and the afternoon came, a blush of fire and flowing gold upon the hills, the purple of the steeps behind her darkened; upon Big Fox behind, some wild duck floated and gossiped. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... you are a friend of Monsieur le Cure!" he exclaimed. "You would not be Monsieur le Cure's friend if you were not a good shot. Sapristi!" He paused, ran his hand over his rough jowls, and resumed bluntly: "It is something to kill the wild duck; ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... overnight. But, as it hadn't much to do with such plot as there is, we cut it out. It came cheaper. Here comes your father back from his walk with that lunatic, Young WERLE—you had better go and play with the Wild Duck. [HEDVIG goes. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... waited there, on the height, listening to horses whinnying in the distance, to the cries of wild duck beyond the river, and to a thousand other elusive, indefinite sounds from the woods at evening which floated mysteriously through the air. Then as behind him he heard steps rapidly approaching, and the rustling of a dress, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... Plants, I, 8) cites this passage and argues that Varro's advice to cover the duck yard with netting to keep the ducks from flying out is evidence that in Varro's time ducks were not entirely domesticated, and hence that the modern domestic duck is the same species as the wild duck. It may be noted, however, that Varro gives the same advice about netting the chicken yard, having said that chickens had been domesticated ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... and consideration, a J.P. and a landed proprietor. Donnithorpe is a little hamlet just to the north of Langmere, in the country of the Broads. The house was an old-fashioned, wide-spread, oak-beamed, brick building, with a fine lime-lined avenue leading up to it. There was excellent wild duck shooting in the fens, remarkably good fishing, a small but select library, taken over, as I understood, from a former occupant, and a tolerable cook, so that it would be a fastidious man who could not put in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... work's progress. Scarcely a day had passed that had not strung a few interesting beads of incident to brighten the necklace of its routine monotonies—the squealing, kicking baby rabbit which Anderson, the head chainman, had captured; the wild duck which they had cornered in a thicket and which Bayley, the marker, had insisted upon decorating with his white paint before he would let it go; the occasional mess of speckled trout for which they angled; the fresh baked pies and cakes they were sometimes ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... other, and breaking out into great commotion every time the gate is hoisted—the otter is now and then seen gliding in the farther nooks—and a quick eye may catch, particularly about the dam, where he generally burrows, a glimpse of the musk-rat as he dives down. Now and then too the wild duck will push his beautiful shape with his bright feet through it—the snipe will alight and "teter," as the children say, along the banks—the woodcock will show his brownish red bosom amongst the reeds as he comes to stick his long bill ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... spear, and he grew strong, and as beautiful as a child of the Fairy Folk. If he were in the same field with a hare he could run so that the hare could never leave the field, for Demna was always before it. He could run down and slay a stag with no dogs to help him, and he could kill a wild duck on the wing with a stone from his sling. And the Druidess taught him the learning of the time, and also the story of his race and nation, and told him of his right to be captain of the Fianna of Erinn when his ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... feathers on the floor. The young archer swung the magic bird to the foot of the throne before the Tzar; and the Tzar was glad, because since the beginning of the world no Tzar had seen the fire-bird flung before him like a wild duck caught in a snare. ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... presence of aluminum pontoons under the body of the contrivance also told him that for the first time in his life he was looking at a hydro-aeroplane, capable of alighting on the water and starting up again, after the manner of a wild duck. ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... of the fuselage a face appeared, a white dot framed in a khaki flying hood. An arm was thrust out, something dropped from it. There was a quick wave of a hand, then with the speed of a frightened wild duck, the plane shot away, came round in a finely banked curve, and disappeared in ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... the lives and habits of the commoner wood folk, such as the crow, the rabbit, the wild duck. The book is profusely illustrated by Charles ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... of the old rebel Milburn stock, I know. She takes it all in like a wild duck diving for ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... benefit what has always been to me the most beautiful poem in the world, possibly because it was the first I read for myself, or else because it is so intimately associated with those happy days. Under an engraving of a wild duck (after Bewick, I believe) were quoted W.C. Bryant's lines "To a Water-fowl." They charmed me then and charm me now as nothing else has quite charmed me; I become a child again as I think of them, with a child's virgin ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... our drivers thought likewise, we spent the day resting with the old skipper and his wife, warmly housed and faring sumptuously on wild duck, while the storm outside seemed to shake the world to its ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... know how virtue and happiness are brought about, in the sense that he professes to know how our modern sexual tragedies are brought about. Falsehood works ruin in THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY, but truth works equal ruin in THE WILD DUCK. There are no cardinal virtues of Ibsenism. There is no ideal man of Ibsen. All this is not only admitted, but vaunted in the most valuable and thoughtful of all the eulogies upon Ibsen, Mr. Bernard Shaw's QUINTESSENCE OF IBSENISM. Mr. Shaw sums up Ibsen's teaching in ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... heard a confusion of sounds, twittering and little shrill cries which announced an awakening to life. Looking out of the window, she could see the birds picking at the humid earth with their beaks, snapping at the worms. Over the pond floated a light mist. A wild duck, far prettier than the tame ducks, was swimming on the water, surrounded with her young. She tried to keep them beside her with continual little quacks, but she found it impossible to do so. The ducklings escaped from the mother duck, scurrying off amongst the reeds to search for ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... Good Spirit with every thing they needed, became very numerous. There was not a pleasant spot on the island, from which did not arise the smoke of a cabin fire; nor a quiet lake, in which, in the months of flowers and fruits, you would not see Indian maidens laving their dusky limbs. The wild duck found no rest in his sunny slumber on the banks of Menemshe, the pokeshawit could no longer hide in the sedge, on the banks of his favourite Quampeche, and the deer, that went to quench his thirst in the Monnemoy, found the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... red-faced youth in white cap and blouse turned the spit and basted the browning fowls from a long, deep trough which caught all of the drippings. And so it happened that the turkeys borrowed delicacy from the pigeons; and the chickens, flavor from the wild duck, etc. And the gravy: Oh that gravy! All the perfumes of Araby could not equal it. The Browns were carried away by their discovery of this wonderful place. They immediately purchased a fine fat hen and monsieur, ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... these are extras: its profession is rat-catching and mousing, and only those who have a very intimate personal acquaintance with it know how peculiarly its equipment and methods are adapted to this work. The falcon gives open chase to the wild duck, keeping above it if possible until near enough for a last spurt; then it comes down at a speed which is terrific, and, striking the duck from above, dashes it to the ground. The sparrow hawk plunges unexpectedly into a group of little birds and nips up one with a long outstretched ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... and no other person knows how to make fast the ropes and chains so that they shall not slip. Higginbotham, as usual, is very energetic. Colonel Abd-el-Kader, who is my only reliable Egyptian officer, has been diving all day like a wild duck, and bringing up heavy boxes of rivets which few men but himself can lift. Altogether the men have worked ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... poop and forecastle left but short waist-room; her waist-ribs limited the height of her "between decks;" while the "perked up" lines of her bow and stern produced the resemblance noted, to the croup and neck of the wild duck. That she was low "between decks" is demonstrated by the fact that it was necessary to "cut down" the Pilgrims' shallop—an open sloop, of certainly not over 30 feet in length, some 10 tons burden, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... instead, and she valued what others found useless, and held aloof from what others found good. She had powers which had ever been the admiration of Guidon Hill. Birds and animals were her friends—she called them her kinsmen. A peculiar sympathy joined them; so that when, at last, she tamed a white wild duck, and made it do the duties of a carrier-pigeon, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... A wounded wild duck suddenly develops much cunning in escaping from the gunner—swimming under water, hiding by the shore with only the end of the bill in the air, or diving and seizing upon some object at the bottom, where it sometimes remains till life ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... in the world, and there was Grosvenor, ruddy, frank, tenacious, eager to learn all the lore of the woods. Yes, he could see them and he was glad that he was serving Christmas food to them as well as to himself. Willet loved wild duck and so he gave him an extra portion. Tayoga was very partial to cakes of flour and so he gave him a double number, and Grosvenor, being an Englishman, must love beef, so he helped him often ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and the wild duck flutters Where beds of lilies blow: A loon his long, weird lamentation utters, And Echo feels ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... the carcass then thoroughly squeezed in a press. The resultant liquid is seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon and paprika, and poured hot over the meat. This method of roasting insures the maximum tenderness and flavor in the bird. The longer the wild duck is roasted, the dryer and tougher ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... they could be transported to Dartmouth, would make a second Bath of it. The whole of our force were bidetizing here all day long. Being so directly under the hills, we found it rather warmer than we liked. There were some large lakes here, full of wild duck, and capital partridge-shooting, and we were cracking away all the time. On the march to this place I had the misfortune to lose a very nice little bull-terrier bitch, about a year old, which I had from a pup, at Belgaum, and which had followed my fortunes ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... the East will soon be red, The wild duck westward fly, And make above my anxious head, Triangles ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... innumerable nooks of quiet which have a class of scenery and inhabitants altogether their own. As the chaloupe glides around some unsuspected corner, the crane rises heavily at the splash of a paddle, wild duck fly off low and swiftly, the plover circle away in bright handsome flocks, the gorgeous kingfisher leaves his little tree. In the water different spots have their special finny denizens. In one place a broad deep arm of the river—which throws off a dozen such arms, each as large as London's ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... the sun, joyful with the almost careless joy that is born of a health made perfect by labour. The desolation before them to him seemed a land of promise, for he was entering it with Ruby, and in it there were thousands of wild duck, and jackals that slunk out by night among the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... But this, like many another resolution of our life, has been broken; and here is Nick, the Newfoundland, lying sprawled on the mat. He has a jaw set with strength; an eye mild, but indicative of the fact that he does not want too many familiarities from strangers; a nostril large enough to snuff a wild duck across the meadows; knows how to shake hands, and can talk with head, and ear, and tail; and, save an unreasonable antipathy to cats, is perfect, and always goes with me on ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... random and ran, doing no injury. "Now" said the old heroine to her undaunted daughter "we must leave." Accordingly with the rifle and the axe, they went to the river, took the canoe, and without a mouthful of provision except one wild duck and two black birds which the mother shot, and which were eaten raw, did these two courageous hearts in six days arrive among the old French settlers at St. Louis. A party of about a dozen men crossed over into Illinois—and after an unsuccessful search returned without finding either Parker or ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... sign, the vocation of which my body is the symbol. Guess, to begin with, at my destiny from my shape, and see how, curved like a sort of living hunting-horn, I am as much formed for sound to turn and gain volume within me, as the wild duck is formed to swim!—Wait!—Mark the fact that, impatient and proud, scratching up the earth with my claws, I appear always to be seeking something ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... one knew of my journey. I came bare alone. I threw a shell in the sea and made a boat of it, and took the track of the wild duck across the mountains of ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... characterizes his nature verse. He wrote "To a Waterfowl" in 1815. When he had completed his study of law, he set out on foot to find a village where he might begin work as a lawyer. He was poor and without friends. At the end of a day's journey, when he began to feel discouraged, he saw a wild duck flying alone high in the sky. Then the thought came to him that he would be guided aright, just as the bird was, and he wrote "To a Waterfowl," the most artistic of all his poems. The poem is suitable for the seventh ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... The opposite side was more homely and less grand in outline, but still very lovely. The low hills were broken by extensive tracts of undulating or flat land, where flocks of sheep or herds of cattle grazed, bordered by sedges and marshes with flocks of wild duck in all the enjoyment of an ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... glistening streamers waved and danced, The wanderer's eye could barely view The summer heaven's delicious blue; So wondrous wild, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream. Onward, amid the copse 'gan peep A narrow inlet still and deep, Affording scarce such breadth of brim, As served the wild duck's brood to swim; Lost for a space, through thickets veering, But broader when again appearing, Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face Could on the dark blue mirror trace; And farther as the hunter stray'd, Still broader sweep its channels made. ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... with an old muzzle-loader of mine, he made incessant warfare against them, and his gun could be heard as early as five o'clock in the morning, while the shots would often come pattering down harmlessly on my greenhouse. There came a time when some thieving carrion crows were robbing my half-tame wild duck's nests of their eggs, and Jarge was, of course, detailed to tackle them. Weeks elapsed without any result; the depredations continued, and the men began to chaff him; finally Bell "put the lid on," as people say nowadays, by the following sally: "Ah, Jarge, if ever ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... There was a wild duck roasting in the hub of coals—from the burning spokes came the smell of cedar. The Indian girl majestically broke a segment of koonti bread and proffered it to her companion. With faultless courtesy Diane accepted and presently partook with healthy relish ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Lathrope's turn, a wild duck flying right over his head; but, somehow or other, "Colonel Crockett's rifle" didn't happen to be just ready in time, and the duck would have escaped but for Mr Meldrum's bringing it down with his right barrel. It was really ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... the fens, where with nets and snares he caught the fish which swarmed in the sluggish waters; or, having covered his boat with a leafy bower until it resembled a floating bush, drifted close to the flocks of wild-fowl, and with his bow and arrows obtained many a plump wild duck. Smaller birds were caught in snares or traps, or with bird-lime smeared on twigs. Eldred seldom joined his son in his hunting excursions, as he was busied with his brother the abbot in concerting the measures of defence and ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... the sun and the rain, and the surgeon was sent to superintend their conduct, and give his advice if it should be wanted. It happened that walking out with his gun, after he had seen the sick properly disposed of in the tent, a wild duck flew over his head, which he shot, and it fell dead among some of the natives who were on the other side of the river. This threw them into a panic, and they all ran away; when they got to some distance ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... apart. Saturdays and Sundays they walked sometimes for miles across the frost-bound marshes, in the quickening atmosphere of the darkening afternoons, when the red sun sank early behind the hills, and the twilight grew shorter every day. They watched the sea-birds together and saw the wild duck come down to the pools; felt the glow of exercise burn their cheeks; felt, too, that common and nameless exultation engendered by their loneliness in the solitude of these beautiful empty places. In the evenings they often read together, for ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... buy the last of the presents, visit the shops or buy their Christmas dinner, for many left it till then. Turkey might not have been within their reach, but geese, wild or tame, took their place. Sucking pig was my favorite dish. Wild duck and grouse (fifty cents per pair), with fine roasts of beef. Of course plum pudding was in evidence with poor as well as rich, although eggs at Christmas ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... is made with thorns, In leafless tree or hedge; The wild duck and the water hen Build ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... enclosing this park is a kind of common interspersed with marshland through which a small stream flows, and there I have bagged as many as ten couple of snipe in an afternoon, with an occasional wild duck. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... an additional interest over the story,—that Talbot had a pair of beautiful English hawks, such as were most prized in the sport of falconry, and that these were the companions of his exile, and were trained by him to pursue and strike the wild duck that abounded, then as now, on this part of the river; and he thus found amusement to beguile his solitude, as well as sustenance in a luxurious article of food, which is yet the pride of gastronomic science, and the envy of bons ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... The wild duck's nest is usually placed on the ground in some sheltered spot close to still or running water, and the ducklings swim like corks, soon learning the proper use of their flat little bills in gobbling up floating insects and other waterlogged food. ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... Origin of Species (p. 8 of the sixth edition), he says respecting the inherited effects of habit, that "with animals the increased use or disuse of parts has had a more marked influence;" and he gives as instances the changed relative weights of the wing bones and leg bones of the wild duck and the domestic duck, "the great and inherited development of the udders in cows and goats," and the drooping ears of various domestic animals. Here are other passages taken from the ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Squam is as beautiful as water and island can be. But Winnipesaukee, it is the very 'Smile of the Great Spirit.' It looks as if it had a thousand islands; some of them large enough for little towns, and others not bigger than a swan or a wild duck swimming on ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... bridge below the lake where the woods divided to right and left at the foot of the great home-park. A cold fog lay over the water and the reedy islands where the wild duck and moorhens were just beginning to stir, but above it a glint or two of sunshine touched the wintry boughs, and while it grew and ran along them and lit up their snowy upper surfaces as with diamonds, a full morning beam smote on the facade of the house itself, high above ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to utilize every resource possible was a novel scheme for chicken-raising. One morning the children came in greatly excited over finding a wild duck's nest in the nearby "slough." Mrs. Henderson told them to be very careful not to frighten the bird, but to go back and search every foot of the grassy edges and try to discover other nests. They succeeded in finding three. That day a neighboring English ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... his snow shoes, and, going to the thick bushes at the edge of a creek, he has taken out his hidden canoe. He has been in it some time, and with mighty sweeps of the paddle, that he knows so well how to use, it flies like a wild duck over the water. Now he passes from the creek into a river flowing eastward, and swollen by the floods to a vast width. The rain has poured upon him, but he does not mind it. The powerful exercise with the paddles dries his body, and sends the pleasant ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lie pretty far apart. From the main road by the Clayton Arms there runs a gravel path up to the church, which stands on higher ground, half a mile from the green, and by the path lies a very fine pond, broad and deep, edged with willows and bulrushes, where wild duck swim, and on the far side opening into a shallow bay in which you may watch plovers bathe ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... The long drooping ears filled with very large grains, black outside and white within, shook down their contents into the silt at bottom with every movement which waved their seven-feet stems. Arthur knew it as a noted haunt of wild duck, a cloud of which ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... glided through the mysterious moonlit world of silent villages, shadowy woods, and wind-swept bays and inlets, from which, as the car rattled over the planks of the bridges, the wild duck rose in noisy circles, they alone were ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... Dr. R, who lived here several years after he "came out" from England, tells us that the mackerouse, a wild duck, is found here; and, as it subsists upon fish, the people are allowed to eat that bird on Fridays. He also says that the pigs wade out into the mud at low tide to root for clams; while the crows, following in their tracks, steal the coveted shell fish ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... of light, until the approach of meridian day, were admirably represented. Serpents were seen crawling in the grass. A little sportsman entered with his fowling-piece, and imitated all the movements natural to his pursuit; a tiny wild duck rose from a lake, and flew before him. He pointed his gun, changed his situation, pointed it again, and fired. The bird dropped; he threw it over his shoulders, fastened to his gun, and retired. Waggons, drawn by horses about four inches high, passed along; groups of peasantry followed, exquisitely ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... spools, compared to the activity of a great machine within. He grasped that A. V. stood for Alfred Vernon, the girl's cousin, a young man recently from England. . . . Yes, A. V. had occasionally gone into the jungle with a light rifle. Sometimes he had brought in a wild duck, or a grey marhatta hare; once a black-horned gazelle, but usually a parrot, a peacock or a jay. . . . Yes, sometimes he had been gone for hours. . . . Yes, she had told him about the evil and also the danger of ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... Although wild duck offers no special attraction for a genuine sportsman, still, through lack of other game at the time (it was the beginning of September; snipe were not on the wing yet, and I was tired of running across the fields ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... "in my youth I have shot many a snipe and wild duck with the Herr Baron's father. But Eva should spread the table; the gentlemen will certainly take supper, and a glass of good punch the Herr Baron will certainly not despise, if he is like ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... overhanging crags; or while with his deft hunter's hands he dragged himself by slow, noiseless degrees through the ferns and tufts of rank weeds to the water's edge, that he might catch a shot at the feeding wild duck. A leather belt around his waist supported his powder-horn and shot-pouch,—for his accoutrements were exactly such as might have been borne a hundred years ago by a hunter of Old Bear Mountain,—and his gun leaned against the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... knew a thousand small things concerning it—secrets of the soil, of the tides, of the sand drift—voices of the wind, varying colours of the sea, and what weather they foretold—where this moss grew, that bird nested—in what week the wild duck arrived, on what wind the geese might be looked for, and what feeling in the spring air announced that the guillemots were due. He had learnt these things unconsciously, and was quite unaware of his knowledge, having never an occasion to review it or put it into words. Moreover, it was ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... or snow's on the ground. I don't mind, because the water runs off me, same as it would off a wild duck; and as for the frost and snow, I could roll in 'em like a dog. But such a chap as your friend—it'd kill him in no time. He'd be catching colds and sore gullets, and having ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... would have called it. But he did know that warm and angry glow for the reflection of London's light and life; he could not forget he was in London for a moment. Her mighty machinery with its million wheels throbbed perpetually in his ears; and yet between the beats would come the quack of a wild duck near at hand, the splash of a leaping fish, the plaintive whistle of water-fowl: altogether such a chorus of incongruities as was not lost upon our very impressionable young vagabond. The booming strokes of eleven recalled him to a sense of time and ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... imbecile, and a black sheep all in one, and yet—how you hate him and how you long to see some brave young David come along and hit him with a sling shot! Such a man as he, is fitted to bring the average human to the dust as quickly and as surely as a well aimed bullet brings down a wild duck. ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... the loss; wherefore he started and cried out, "Thou art caught." But little it availed, for wings could not outstrip fear. The one went under, and the other, flying, turned his breast upward. Not otherwise the wild duck on a sudden dives when the falcon comes close, and he returns up vexed and baffled. Calcabrina, enraged at the flout, kept flying behind him, desirous that the sinner should escape, that he might have ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... observed a wild duck swimming on the waves,a single solitary wild duck! It is not easy to conceive how interesting a thing it looked in that ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... killing anything. I had no long-range rifle in my hands, coming up against the wind toward an unsuspecting creature hundreds of yards away. This was no wounded leopard charging me; no mother-bear defending with her giant might a captured cub. It was only a mother-bird, the size of a wild duck, with swift wings at her command, hiding under those wings her own and another's young, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... from life, all properly tinted—of choir boys in robes, with beautiful eyes; pensive young girls in pink gowns, with flowing yellow hair, drooping over golden harps; a coloured reproduction of "Rouget de Lisle, Singing the Marseillaise," and two "pieces" of wood carving, representing a quail and a wild duck, hung by one leg in the midst of game bags and ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... got the one I shot at, I don't care." They had wild duck at supper that night, for Chetwoof plucked the birds and roasted them on a hot stone over the spruce logs, and Ted, tired and wet and hungry, thought he had never tasted such a delicious meal in ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... the marshy lakes. It was now the hunting season. Indian men, with bows and arrows, were wading waist deep amid the wild rice. Near by, within their wigwams, the wives were roasting wild duck ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... in the cane-fields came to us at night-time as we watched the shimmer of the fireflies. We sat so silently that the only thing to tell us that the wild duck sought his mate amidst the grass, was the swaying of the reed stems, or the rising of ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... was low, flat, and overgrown. Only a gentle ripple crossed the surface of the lake, for almost no air at all was stirring. Out of a near-by cove a flock of young wild geese, scarcely able to fly, started off, honking in excitement; and here and there a wild duck broke the surface into a series of ripples; or again a fish sprang into the air, as it went about its own breakfast operations for the day. It was an inspiring scene for all, and for the time the Young Alaskans paused, taking ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... A flight of wild duck crossed our bows at some little distance, a wedge-shaped phalanx of craning necks and flapping wings. I happened to be steering while Davies verified our course below; but I called him up at once, and a discussion began about our chances of sport. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... and seated themselves on the rush mats that lay upon the ground. About them were carelessly disposed some dressed skins of the beaver and otter, a brace of wild duck, fishing tackle, and the accoutrements of the chase, a rifle, powder-horn and shot pouch. The chief himself, in his buckskin garment, tightened by a wampum belt, his deer-skin moccasins, scarlet cloth leggings and blanket, was not the least picturesque object of the interior. Usually reticent, ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... this side of Mexico is arid and flat, and where the waters of the Lagunas, covered with their gay canoes, once surrounded the city, forming canals through its streets, we now see melancholy marshy lands, little enlivened by great flights of wild duck and waterfowl. But the bleakness of the natural scenery was concealed by the gay appearance of the procession—the scarlet and gold uniforms, the bright-coloured sarapes, the dresses of the gentlemen (most, I believe, Spaniards), ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the midst of this entrancing valley, and surrounded by the peons' grass houses, was the owner's home. Here the flyers partook of an excellent repast, garnished with the best the island could afford, including tender wild duck from the surrounding lagoons and savory turtle soup. Then followed songs by their host, and jolly college melodies by themselves, accompanied by the sweet strains of a guitar in the hands ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... were brandishing huge drums and slender lances. It lacked a glass, and was set in a frame ornamented with bronze fretwork and bronze corner rings. Beside it hung a huge, grimy oil painting representative of some flowers and fruit, half a water melon, a boar's head, and the pendent form of a dead wild duck. Attached to the ceiling there was a chandelier in a holland covering—the covering so dusty as closely to resemble a huge cocoon enclosing a caterpillar. Lastly, in one corner of the room lay a pile of articles which had evidently been adjudged unworthy of a place on the table. Yet what ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... beauty. The sky to-day is windrowed with flat-bottomed cumulus-clouds, tier beyond tier above a level plane of light, marking off the infinite distance like receding mile-stones on a world turned over on its back. Occasionally the outstretched head of a wild duck, pumping north with a black throb of wings, melts away to a speck in the opaline air. Back among the muskeg reeds the waders are courting and chattering, and early this morning I heard the plaintive winnowing call-note of the Wilson snipe, and later the punk-e-lunk love-cry ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... and I are going to have a great time to-night, as I told you, pippies and wild duck, and tea and damper, and after that is over you shall be tucked up in my blankets, and sleep until we hear the bell-birds calling ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... she murmured to herself, 'and this is a wild duck's, and this is a pigeon's. Ah, they put pigeons' feathers in the pillows—no wonder I couldn't die! Let me take care to throw it on the floor when I lie down. And here is a moorcock's; and this—I should know it among a thousand—it's a lapwing's. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... arrival of some sentimental little chit of a girl, who is nevertheless coquette enough to keep him waiting for half an hour. And again, with what disdain and contempt you regard such birds as pigeons, turtle-doves, buzzards, wild duck, and teal; hares and foxes, too, which make their appearance from time to time,—to kill ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... look forward to a heaven of illimitable hunting-ground, partridge and deer and wild duck more than plentiful, and the hounds never off the scent, and the guns never missing fire. But the geographer has followed the earth round, and found no Homer's elysium. Voyagers have traversed the deep in all directions, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... hallowed it as no other spot in all the universe—the place where their first love had nursed them in its tenderness, where they had sat hand in hand in the gathering dusk, drinking the ripple of the water and the whirr of the wild duck's wing; where she had gone down into the valley of the shadow and their little children had come into their arms. And it was gone. He had sold it. Without so much as by-your-leave from the partner of his labours and his life he had sold it and left ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... to make the best of our journey, rising at dawn, and pulling to seven and often to nine o'clock. I allowed the men an hour from half-past eleven to half-past twelve, to take their bread and water. This was our only fare, if I except an occasional wild duck; but these birds were extremely difficult to kill, and it cost us so much time, that we seldom endeavoured to procure any. Our dogs had been of no great use, and were now too weak to have run after ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... brave fellow, for know that I have been enchanted these many years under the form of a wild duck, because of the enmity of three malicious demons. You can restore me permanently to my human shape if you choose to show only ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... arms of the winter woods remained unclad. But wild duck and geese were on the wing, sweeping up from the south in search of the melting sloughs and flooded hollows, pastures laid open to them by the rapid thaw. The birth of the new season was accomplished, and the labor of mother earth ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... a group of Mrs. Holmes' pets—several young rabbits and a kitten, romping together in the utmost good fellowship. The rabbits had been rescued from a watery grave in an irrigation ditch and carefully nursed back to life. We helped her search for a lame wild duck that had spurned the offer of a good home with civilized ducklings, and had taken to the sage-brush. Mrs. Holmes' love of wild animals, however, failed to include the bald-headed eagle that had shown such an appetite for her ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... meadow floods the wild duck clamours, Now the wood pigeon wings a rapid flight, Now the homeward rookery follows up its vanguard, And the valley mists are curling ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... eye out for that big 'gator we scared off the bank a while back," warned Jack, wickedly, "he might think it was a wild duck splashing, and try to pot ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... am, and with a wild duck waiting for me at good Mistress Odam's, I saw that there was nothing for it but to yield to these good people, and prove me a man of Somerset, by eating a dinner at their expense. As for the churchyard, none would hear of it; and I grieved for ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... than to their ears; the effect of precepts, is, therefore, slow and tedious, while that of example is summary and effectual." Says Franklin: "None teaches better than the ant, and she says nothing." "Not the cry" say the Chinese, "but the flight of the wild duck, leads the flock to fly ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... teats of a sow au naturel; they were cut as soon as the animal had littered; wild boar's head (this was the main dish); sow's teats in a ragout; the breasts and necks of roast ducks; fricasseed wild duck; roast hare, a great delicacy; roasted Phrygian chickens; ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... crowding upwards in the mere Where, gold and white, the wild duck preens himself Safe hidden till the sun-drawn, lingering mists melt. I know the secret den where bruin dwelt. I see him now sun-basking on a shelf Of windy rock. He looks down on the deer, Who flit like flowing light ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... sense of shame that never yet My foot on that old shore was set, Though prodigal in wandering, Arose; and with a tingled cheek, Like some late wild duck on the wing, I started down the Chesapeake. The morning sunlight, silvery calm, From basking shores of woodland broke, And capes and inlets breathing balm, And lovely islands clothed in palm, Closed round ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... sizes; some are a quarter of a mile long and half as wide. They are built up of things that the hunters and fishermen threw away: oyster and mussel and periwinkle shells; bones of the wolf, the hyena, the dog; of wild duck, swan, and grouse; of cod, herring, flounder, and other deep-sea fish. Many of the bones had been split open for the purpose of extracting the marrow. Besides bones, there are also pieces of burnt wood; and there is sea plant, ...
— The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone • Margaret A. McIntyre
... wild duck and would have shot it, but the duck called to him, "Do not shoot me, dear Prince. Take me with you, and I will be a faithful servant. The time may come when ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... sitting in trees and ivy, and whispering in the dark. He asked them one by one for news of the golden ball. Some had last seen it on a neighbouring hill and others in trees, though none knew where it was. A heron had seen it lying in a pond, but a wild duck in some reeds had seen it last as she came home across the hills, and then it was ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... were not less numerous. Chief among these were eagles and vultures of uncommon size, the wild goose, wild duck, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... to wild duck is the precisely timed 18 minutes in a quick oven! And celery salad, which goes with all game, need ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... what? Yah! tough beef, woolly mutton and stringy chicken. And to think that but for the Boers, the beastly Boers, we should have had the finest teal, wild duck, venison, goslings, asparagus, French beans, best Welsh mutton, and real turtle soup every day au choix!! But what did the Boers do? Why, they ascertained that skins and feathers, and shells, were valuable, whereupon they went to work, shot ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... you distinctly see every stone-pebble or shell at the bottom. Here and there an opening in the forest reveals some tributary stream, working its way beneath the gigantic trees that meet above it. The silence of the scene is unbroken but by the sudden rush of the wild duck, disturbed from its retreat among the shrubby willows, that in some parts fringe the left bank, or the shrill cry of the kingfisher, as it darts across the water. The steam-boat put in for a supply of fire-wood at a clearing ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... swims across it, or a fish rises, or the current plays round a stone, reed, or other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to get the curves of these lines true; the whole value of your careful drawing of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single false curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if you are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more unity and delicacy: if your reflections are only soft and gradated enough, they are nearly sure to give you a pleasant effect.[35] When you are taking pains, work the softer reflections, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... eye and the handsome aquiline beak marked characteristics of his classic features, but in temperament and habit he bore a singular resemblance to the king of all the falcons. Who more delighted in striking down the partridge or the wild duck? What more assiduous destroyer of ground game and vermin ever existed than Tom Peregrine? There never was a man so happily named and so eminently fitted to fulfil the destinies of ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... from Boulogne. Here is a venerable abbey of Benedictines, well endowed, with large agreeable gardens prettily laid out. The monks are well lodged, and well entertained. Tho' restricted from flesh meals by the rules of their order, they are allowed to eat wild duck and teal, as a species of fish; and when they long for a good bouillon, or a partridge, or pullet, they have nothing to do but to say they are out of order. In that case the appetite of the patient is indulged in his own apartment. Their church is elegantly contrived, but kept in a ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... think, abhors blatant uxoriousness. So do I. And I fear the Most Wonderful Man on Earth is blatantly uxorious. I honour him for a certain sadness in his voice when he speaks of unrequited love. But his constant reference to Ibsen's motif in the "Wild Duck," though it fails in its primary object of convincing me that he is familiar with Ibsen's plays, does in truth tell me that some fair one ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee |
