"Wren" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... laid the builder of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived more than ninety years, not for himself, but for the public good. Reader, if you seek ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... reechoing behind him. But at all times they were amazingly frank with each other. So now Clodia's eyes met his calmly enough as he said without any preface: "I have come to answer your note. I prefer that my wife should keep out of your circle. You used to have doves about you, who could protect a wren, but they are fluttering away now and your own plumage is appalling." With the phrase his eyes became conscious of her emeralds and her shimmering Cean silks and then travelled to the nude grace of Venus the Plunderer. He faced her violently. "Clodia," ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... cloud-climb rock, sublime and vast, That like some giant king, o'er-glooms the hill; Nor there the pine-grove to the midnight blast Makes solemn music! But the unceasing rill To the soft wren or lark's descending trill Murmurs sweet under-song 'mid jasmine bowers. In this same pleasant meadow at your will, I ween, you wander'd—there collecting flow'rs Of sober tint, and herbs ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... robin-redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole, To rear him hillocks that shall keep ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Comfort, George Fenner general[293] of the expedition, and William Bats master; the May-Flower, vice-admiral, William Courtise master; the George, John Heiwood captain, and John Smith of Hampton master; besides a small pinnace. Walter Wren, the writer of the narrative, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... and most common of our winter birds. There are some others sometimes seen, such as the Tree-Sparrow, Blue-Jay and Golden Crowned Wren, but space forbids an account of their ways and songs. I hope what I have told you of the winter birds will induce you to study and observe more closely their ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... wind and rain and sun How grieves her deck for the sailors whose hearty brawls are done! Only the wandering gull brings word of the open wave, With shrill scream at her taffrail deriding her alien grave. Around the keel that raced the dolphin and the shark Only the sand-wren twitters from barren dawn till dark; And all the long blank noon the blank sand chafes and mars The prow once swift to follow the lure of ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... the night we drifted slow, the rays From London's countless gas-jets starred the haze O'er which we darkly hovered. Broad loomed the bulk of WREN'S colossal dome Through the grey mist, which, like a sea of foam, The sleeping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... Johnson, Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and some other poets. Nay, he liked Beethoven, which places him higher in the musical scale than Scott, who did not rise above a Border lilt or a Jacobite ditty. The Wren songs, entitled The Window, were privately printed by Sir Ivor Guest in 1867, were set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and published by Strahan in December 1870. "A puppet," Tennyson called the song-book, "whose only merit is, perhaps, that it can dance to Mr Sullivan's instrument. I am sorry ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... France, therefore, legislation necessarily became the first business of the first settled government which rose on the ruins of the old system. The admirers of Inigo Jones have always maintained that his works are inferior to those of Sir Christopher Wren, only because the great fire of London gave Wren such a field for the display of his powers as no architect in the history of the world ever possessed. Similar allowance must be made for Cromwell. If he erected little that was new, it was because there had been no general ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane, where Killigrew acted in the days of Charles II. is famous for the number of times it has been rebuilt. The first house had been destroyed in 1674; and the one in which Garrick acted was built by Sir Christopher Wren and opened with a prologue by Dryden. In 1793 this was rebuilt. In 1809 it was burnt to the ground; and on its re-opening the Committee advertised a prize for a prologue, which was supposed to be tried for by all the poets and poetasters ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... was true of the family of Wren, Bishop of Hereford, besides many others. He was imprisoned eighteen years, refusing to accept any favour from the Usurper. He lived ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... market-place of Warwick stands the great church of St. Mary's: a vast edifice, indeed, and almost worthy to be a cathedral. People who pretend to skill in such matters say that it is in a poor style of architecture, though designed (or, at least, extensively restored) by Sir Christopher Wren; but I thought it very striking, with its wide, high, and elaborate windows, its tall tower, its immense length, and (for it was long before I outgrew this Americanism, the love of an old thing merely for the sake of its age) ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... is found by the alpine lakes and brooks on the mountains of the West. It is a modest-appearing bird, about the size of a thrush, and wears a plain dress of slaty blue. This dress is finished with a tail-piece somewhat like that of the wren, though it is not upturned so much. The bird seems to love cascades, and often nests by one. It also shows its fondness for water by often flying along the brook, following every bend and break made ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... stands on the west side of Fish Street Hill, a little to the northward of the bridge, and was erected by the legislative authority, in memory of the Fire, anno 1666, and was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. It has a fluted column, 202 feet high from the ground; the greatest diameter of the shaft 15 feet, and the plinth, or lowest part of the pedestal, 28 feet square, and 40 feet high; the whole being of Portland stone, except the staircase within, which is of black marble, containing 345 steps, ten ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... drawing-room is still inlaid with glazed blue and white Persian tiles of old design. In his time it was called Tudor House, but when the Rev. H. R. Haweis (d. 1901) came to live here, he resumed the older name of Queen's House. It is supposed to have been built by Wren, and the rooms are beautifully proportioned, panelled, ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... and whilst it is reckoned wicked to kill either of these (not but that there is an ancient custom of "hunting the wren" still kept up, we believe, in some parts of this country,) it is considered unlucky to kill a Swallow, or House-Martin. The King-fisher is the Halcyon of the ancients, who imagined that during ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... understand," he said aloud to nobody in particular, "why most birds don't know how a house should be built. Of all the birds in Pleasant Valley the only good nest-builder I know is Long Bill Wren. He must be a very sensible fellow, because he puts a ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... as Dorothy walked along, she felt happier than she had at any time since losing the Blue Admiral Inn. To be sure, it wasn't the easiest matter in the world to get along, for as the trees and the bushes and the blades of grass were all of the natural size and Dorothy was no bigger than a wren, she fell over a good many twigs and other small obstacles, and tumbled down a great many times. Then, too, she found it rather trying to her nerves, at first, to meet with rabbits as big as horses, to come suddenly upon quails ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... contracted, have they, for a house? And a nest is under way for little Mr. Wren? Hush, dear, hush! Be quiet, dear; quiet as a mouse. These are weighty secrets, and we ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... gravely, "that your change of dress betokens the neighbourhood of those pretty girls of whom you spoke in an earlier meeting. According to the Darwinian doctrine of selection, fine plumage goes far in deciding the preference of Jenny Wren and her sex, only we are told that fine-feathered birds are very seldom songsters as well. It is rather unfair to rivals when you ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Egyptian Hall in London reflects the influence of the ruined temples on the Nile; but it is a more difficult feat, even for a German professor, to prove the archaic structure of old Aryavarta a foreshadowing of the genius of the late lamented Sir Christopher Wren! The outcome of this paleographic spoliation is that there is not a tittle left for India to call her own. Even medicine is due to the same Hellenic influence. We are told—this once by Roth—that "only a comparison of the principles of ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... chavo; but, being a matter of fact kind of man—out of the region of romance, fantastical notions, enrapturing imagery, nicely coloured imagination, clever lying and cleverer deception, beautiful green fields, clear running rivulets, the singing of the wood songster, bullfinch, and wren, in the midst of woodbine, sweetbriar, and roses—with an eye to observe, a heart to feel, and a hand ready to help, I am led to contemplate, aye, and to find out if possible, the remedy, though my friends say it is impossible—just because it is impossible it becomes possible, as in the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... untaught Shepherds call Pixies in their madrigal, Fancy's children, here we dwell: Welcome, Ladies! to our cell. Here the wren of softest note 5 Builds its nest and warbles well; Here the blackbird strains his throat; Welcome, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... house. He showed me his work there—a manuscript on the table, and also some proofs. They were part of Our Mutual Friend, which was then appearing in monthly numbers; and on that morning a proof of one of the illustrations had arrived from Mr. Marcus Stone. It was the one in which 'Miss Wren fixes her idea.' I was then about sixteen or seventeen, and Dickens said, 'You are setting out in life; mind you always fix your idea.' He asked me what I was going to be, and I said a farmer. He said, 'Better be that than an author or ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... staircase to the second floor, the same subdivision into three chambers is continued, but these were lighted by larger loops, that have been converted into larger windows at the time of Sir Christopher Wren's renovations in 1663. The crypt of the chapel opens from the eastern chamber, and has in its north wall a singular dark cell eight feet wide and ten feet long, in the thickness of the wall, in which ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... we no residential parrot, though cockatoos are plentiful; no scrub turkey though the megapode scampers in all directions in the jungle; no common black crow, nor butcher bird, though other shrikes (the magpie for instance) come and go; no wren, no finch, no lark? Scrub turkeys (TALLEGALLA LATHAMI), mound builders like the megapode, are plentiful all along the coast, at certain seasons visiting the scrub which margins the opposite beach, but they are not found on these islands. The ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... reared upon the main, He "cherished, served, and laboured to maintain." And who will doubt the claim by this made good To neighbouring NELSON, and our COLLINGWOOD? His country holds her loyal son's remains; But here, whilst WREN'S huge dome rolls back the strains Of the great organ's golden mouths, or while Paean or requiem sounds along the aisle Sacred to mighty memories, DALLEY'S name Inscribed amongst our home-born heirs of fame Shall stand, and show to all our Island brood ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... was as enthusiastic as the girls; she climbed over fallen tree trunks, grubbed among dead leaves, jumped the brook and scaled fences with delightful energy. It was she who pointed out the heron sailing overhead, and noticed the gold-crested wren's nest hanging under the branch of a fir, a little battered with autumn rain, and too high, alas! to be taken, but a most interesting item to go down in the note-books. The girls could hardly be persuaded to tear ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... ourselves in another difficulty, and it makes the remedy as bad as the disease,—that of taking away the principal characteristic of a portico, (namely, the pediment), and destroying at once the august appearance which it gives to the building; we find in all the churches of Sir Christopher Wren the campanile to form a distinct projection from the ground upwards; thus assimilating nearer to the ancient form of building them entirely apart from the main body of the church. I should conceive, that if this idea was followed by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... 1694. The hospital itself accommodates upwards of 500 men, but a system of out-pensioning was found necessary from the outset, and now relieves large numbers throughout the empire. The picturesque building by Wren stands in extensive grounds, which include the former Ranelagh Gardens. A theological college (King James's) formerly occupied the site; it was founded in 1610 and was intended to be of great size, but the scheme was unsuccessful, and only a small part of the buildings was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... Sciences was directed, encouraged, and supported by the sovereign, there arose in England some men of superior genius, who were more than sufficient to cast the balance, and who drew on themselves and on their native country the regard and attention of Europe. Besides Wilkins, Wren, Wallis, eminent mathematicians, Hooke, an accurate observer by microscopes, and Sydenham, the restorer of true physic, there flourished during this period a Boyle and a Newton; men who trod with cautious, and therefore the more secure steps, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... before she can leave the scene. Her appearances are fitful; she keeps to the hearth when the grandees hold the floor. You see nothing of her at Holland House, which Tom may use as his inn, or at Bowood, if she can help herself, which in the country is his house of call. She is the Jenny Wren of this little cock-robin; she wears drab, too often mourning; but you find that she counts for very much with Tom. He loves to know her at his back, loves to remind himself of it. He is always happy to be home again in her faithful arms. Through all the sparkle and ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... farm-labourers at early morning or when the day's work was over. Hubert passed with a glance of recognition the bramble in which he had found his first spink's nest, the shadowed mossy bank whence had fluttered the hapless wren just when the approach of two prowling youngsters should have bidden her keep close. Boys on the egg-trail are not wont to pay much attention to the features of the country; but Hubert remembered ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... note at the hour of nine in the evening the students are summoned to their respective colleges. The upper part of the tower displays in the bracketed canopies and carved enrichments the skilful hand of Sir Christopher Wren, whose fame was much enhanced by the erection of the gorgeous turrets which project on each side of the gateway.{1} Not caring to endure a closer attack of the togati, who had now approached me, I crossed and entered ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... The decomposed or loose structure of these [tail] feathers, much resembling those of the emu, has suggested the colonial name of Emu-Wren for this species, an appellation singularly appropriate, inasmuch as it at once indicates the kind of plumage with which the bird is clothed, and the Wren-like nature ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Edw. Traitors, away! what, will you murder me, Of choke your sovereign with puddle-water? Gur. No, but wash your face, and shave away your beard, Lest you be known, and so be rescued. Mat. Why strive you thus? your labour is in vain. K. Edw. The wren may strive against the lion's strength, But all in vain: so vainly do I strive To seek for mercy at a tyrant's hand. [They wash him with puddle-water, and shave his beard away. Immortal powers, that know the painful cares That wait upon my poor distressed soul, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... type;" by which they mean that all living creatures, that can, by any process, be enabled to perceive moral and intellectual truths, are characterized by similar peculiarities of organization. They may differ from each other widely, but they still belong to the same class. An eagle and a wren are very unlike each other; but no one would hesitate to pronounce that they were both birds: so it is with the almost endless varieties of the monkey tribe. We all know that beasts, however sagacious, are incapable of abstract thought, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... following that dreary period, suffering alike from the silence of Cowper and the song of Hayley. You may accept the fact as natural, that Zwingli and Luther, without knowing each other, preached the same reformed gospel; that Newton, and Hooke, and Halley, and Wren arrived independently of each other at the great law of the diminution of gravity with the square of the distance; that Leverrier and Adams felt their hands meeting, as it were, as they stretched them into ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... has just been built. A stage ahead, architecturally, of the log meeting-house with clay-filled chinks, thatched roof, oiled-paper windows, earthen floor, and a stage behind the charming steeple style made popular by Sir Christopher Wren, and now multiplied in countless graceful examples all over New England, the Old Ship is entirely unconscious of the distinction which is awaiting it—the distinction of being the oldest house for public worship in the United States ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... college where he declined to learn, and where he only did harm by his riotous example. Indeed, I believe he nearly set fire to Nevil's Court, that beautiful new quadrangle of our college, which Sir Christopher Wren had lately built. He knocked down a proctor's man that wanted to arrest him in a midnight prank; he gave a dinner-party on the Prince of Wales's birthday, which was within a fortnight of his own, and the twenty young gentlemen then present sallied out after their wine, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... obtained great fame as an architect, as well as a dramatist. Among his most famous designs are Castle Howard, Blenheim Palace, and Dalkeith Palace. He was knighted by George I., was controller of the Royal works, and succeeded Wren as architect to Greenwich Hospital. In addition to the plays above mentioned V. wrote The Confederacy and The Country House. He was a handsome and jovial person, and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... an animal.—The custom of "hunting the wren," found over the whole Celtic area, is connected with animal worship and may be totemistic in origin. In spite of its small size, the wren was known as the king of birds, and in the Isle of Man it was hunted and killed on Christmas ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... to him. He could not bear to hear him speak with trembling voice and gleaming eyes of the grand mountains and the silent corries around Ben-Nevis, the red deer trooping over the misty steeps, and the brown hinds lying among the green plumes of fern, and the wren and the thrush lilting ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... [5913] The silly wren, the titmouse also, The little redbreast have their election, They fly I saw and together gone, Whereas hem list, about environ As they of kinde have inclination, And as nature impress and guide, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... State association and the College League. The State work was definitely launched by the appointment of the following committees: Finance, Mrs. J. A. Fouilhoux, Mrs. Elliott Corbet, Dr. Florence Manion; literature, Mrs. Louise Trullinger, Mrs. A. E. Clark, Miss Emma Wold, Miss Blanche Wren; ways and means, Dr. Florence Brown Cassiday, Mrs. Caroline ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... breakfast-table or perhaps for luncheon—it is a trifle heavy for breakfast: 'Since the sixteenth century, and despite the work of Inigo Jones and the great Wren (not Jenny Wren: Christopher), architecture has had, in England especially, no legitimate development.' This is the only cathedral with a Bishop's Throne ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... exclamation summed up all the reasons for his happiness. The boyish wood-craft which he had cultivated in order to encourage the same taste in his factory lads came to life in this sudden return to nature, and he redeemed his clumsiness in crossing the swamp by spying a marsh-wren's nest that had escaped Justine, and detecting in a swiftly-flitting olive-brown bird a ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... cares. Some of the deepest and most earnest minds vote the question, in general, a 'sham and a snare,' and whisper to each other confidentially, that Gothic art is beginning to be a 'bore,' and that Sir Christopher Wren was a very good fellow after all; while the middle classes look on the Art movement half amused, as with a pretty toy, half sulkily suspicious of Popery and Paganism, and think, apparently, that Art is very well when it means nothing, and is merely used to beautify drawing-rooms ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... rising above them in all directions, Before them, glittering white in the sunlight, rose the pinnacles of the magnificent fane of Saint Paul's, with its lofty dome—just then verging towards completion, to the satisfaction of its talented architect, Sir Christopher Wren—while beyond could be seen, winding on through meadows and green fields, and then amidst the houses and stores of London and Westminster, the city and the borough, the blue stream of the Thames, covered with numerous boats and barges. Keeping to the right, Long Sam led his companion round ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... were a Robin, A Robin or a little Wren, everywhere to go; Through forest, field, or garden, And ask no leave or pardon, Till winter comes with icy thumbs To ruffle ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... plumage of the jay, cardinal and goldfinch. We love the mellow notes of the woodthrush, and of the veery, the clear, rollicking outpourings of the bobolink, the musical love song of the brown thrasher, the cheerful scolding of the wren. We are fond of the birds who busy themselves taking the insects out from among our grain and from off our fruit trees. We can only understand the value of the bird to nature when he is valuable to us. So, because ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... began to shine today these birds appeared to be very gay and sung most inchantingly; I observed among them the brown thrush, Robbin, turtle dove, linnit goaldfinch, the large and small blackbird, wren and several other birds of less note. some of the inhabitants of the praries also take reffuge in these woods at night or from a storm. The whole of my party to a man except myself were fully peswaided that this ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... draw or prick their names therein, and veneficiously mischief their persons, they broke the shell, as Dalecampius hath observed." This is what Sir Thomas Browne tells us about eggshells. And Dr. Wren adds, "Least they [the witches] perchance might use them for boates to sayle in by night." But I, who have no fear of witches, would not break them,—rather use them, try what an untold variety of forms we may make out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... local name for Chelsea Hospital, a home for old and disabled soldiers. It was founded by Charles II and the buildings were designed by Wren.) ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... Mrs. Subtle, but who, with better luck than the housekeeper in the play, marries the old gentleman, and after an odd adventure at a masquerade, buries him in the Abbey Church, Bath. It is pleasantly told, and there are in it many genuine touches of humour. Miss Mitford has next Little Miss Wren, a beautiful trifle for old and young; and last is the Count of Trionto, as deep a piece of Italian romance as need accompany one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... from what I could remember of seven years before. Then there had still been left great open spaces where there should have been none; now it was a city once more; and even the Cathedral shewed its walls and a few roofs above the houses. The steeples too of Sir Christopher Wren's new churches pricked everywhere; though I saw later that there was yet much building to be done, both in these and in many of the greater houses. My man James rode with me; (for I had been careful not to form too great intimacies with the party ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... dead, but was dreadfully disfigured. For many days he hovered between life and death. Jennie Wren, the dolls' dressmaker, came, and she and Lizzie nursed him. As soon as he could speak he made them understand that before he died he wanted Lizzie to marry him. A minister was sent for, and with him ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... helpless by having no voice or ballot to protect herself. God never made an animal that he did not give it some means of defense. While I am writing this I am in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I find this a city of eighty-two thousand. The PRESIDENT of the board of education is P. W. Wren, who is president of the Connecticut Breweries and owner of one of the largest wholesale whiskey houses in the state. This is as consistent as if one were to start a ranch to raise chickens, ducks, pigs and calves and then place a wolf to guard them from harm, The business of the brewer ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... tax the goddess of a mean design To praise your parts by publishing of mine; That be my thought when some large bulky writ Shows in the front the ambition of my wit; There to surmount what bears me up, and sing Like the victorious wren perch'd on the eagle's wing. This could I do, and proudly o'er him tower, Were my desires but heighten'd to my power. Godlike the force of my young Congreve's bays, Softening the Muse's thunder into praise; Sent to assist ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... and the wren, We cannot harken these For dreadful thunder of the guns That echoes overseas; And evermore our vision turns To those who follow far The bright white light of Liberty Through the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Mercers' Hall, is a handsome stone-fronted house, built by Sir Christopher Wren. The houses adjoining the Hall were of similar ornamental character; although the unenclosed shop-fronts present a strange contrast with some of the improvements and superfluities of modern times. The Hall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... London, 1705, giving evidence of the edition being limited to 120 copies. This edition was done at the expense of the men named in this list. Note particularly "Isaac Newton, Esq.," Sir Christopher Wren and a few more names famous ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... such a good shaking that flight is practicable a moment after leaving the water. Certainly the water-thrushes (Seiurus ludovicianus, S. auricapillus, and S. noveboracensis) have taken many preliminary steps to becoming as aquatic as the dipper; and the winter-wren, and even the Maryland yellow-throat ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... a word could fall from the Spaniard about the Mediterranean but took root at once in right fertile soil. Besides, Master Edmund Hogan had been on a successful embassy to the Emperor of Morocco; John Hawkins and George Fenner had been to Guinea (and with the latter Mr. Walter Wren, a Bideford man), and had traded there for musk and civet, gold and grain; and African news was becoming almost as valuable as West Indian. Moreover, but two months before had gone from London Captain Hare in the bark Minion, for Brazil, and a company of adventurers ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... speaks for himself in Thompson's 'To an English Nightingale': "What do you think of me? Do I sing by rote? Or by note? Have I a parrot's echo-throat? Oh no! I caught my strains From Nature's freshest veins. . . . . . "He A match for me! No more than a wren or a chickadee! Mine is the voice of the young and strong, Mine the soul of the brave and free!" This self-appreciation is confirmed by the greatest authority on birds, Audubon: "There is probably no bird in the world that possesses all ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Jenny Wren came and picked enough cotton out of me to make a cute little cuddly nest in ...
— Raggedy Ann Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... in hand during the reign of Charles II., namely the palace he designed to build in rivalry of Versailles. Sir Christopher Wren was the architect. The grounds were intended to stretch over the downs to a great distance, and on the highest point was to stand a pharos, whose light would be visible from the Solent. Fountains were to be fed from the Itchen, and a magnificent ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... homely matter, the men who are bringing the globe up towards the Creator's imagination and purpose; and on this mission the leaders of mechanic art would go side by side with Shakespeare and Milton, Angelo and Wren, Newton and Cuvier. ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... without loss of blood or evident pain to the animal, and sometimes, as it would seem, from the effect of fear alone) within a little time, like the mutilated claw of a lobster, begins to renew itself. They are produced from eggs about the size of the wren's, of which the female carries two at a time, one in the lower, and one in the upper part of the abdomen, on opposite sides; they are always cold to the touch, and yet the transparency of their bodies ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the testator declared on his death-bed was null and void; who refused to come and keep house for a childless old man, who would have treated her in every respect as an honored guest; who flew off like a fussy little wren, when her affluent cousin offered to provide for her; and who, last of all, rejects one of nature's noblemen—the best match in the city—the deuce knows for what; I consider non compos mentis, and quite unable to ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... air for the wing of the sparrow, The bush for the robin and wren, But always the path that is narrow And straight for the children of men. ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Oh, de Wren and de Thrush go clackety-clack, Dey bofe talk at once an dey bofe talk back, Dey say: "Jim Crow, my but you is black!" 'Taint gwine to rain ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... these birds, to this day, calling them the Devil's servants, and killing them wherever they catch them; they teach their Children to thrust them full of thorns: you will see sometimes on holidays, a whole parish running like mad men from hedge to hedge a wren-hunting. ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... wren may be taken by striking the bough upon which it is sitting, sharply, with a stone or stick. The timid bird immediately drops to the ground, and generally dead. As their skins are tender, those who want them for stuffing will find this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... they had got more than a mile into the wood. The stream here was wide and deep. On one side of it there grew an old willow, and in one of the branches of this, they saw a wren's nest. As Tom was the stronger boy of the two, it was agreed that he should help John up to the branch, so that he might reach the nest. John got upon the branch, and he had put out his hand to take hold of the nest, when the branch broke off, and down he fell into the ...
— The Moral Picture Book • Anonymous
... of Europe not a nest of such a colony could have lived an hour within reach of such a population; for the baya bird has no peculiar respect paid to it by the people here, like the wren and robin-redbreast in England. No boy in India has the slightest wish to molest birds in their nests; it enters not into their pastimes, and they have no feeling of pride or pleasure in it. With us it is different—to discover birds' nests is ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... contracted, have they, for a house? And a nest is under way for little Mr. Wren?" "Hush, dear, hush! Be quiet, dear! quiet as a mouse. These are weighty secrets, and we must ...
— Confidences - Talks With a Young Girl Concerning Herself • Edith B. Lowry
... firmament." And then came in the goldfinch fresh and gay, And said this psalm with heartly glad intent, "Domini est terra;" this Latin intent,* *means The God of Love hath earth in governance: And then the wren began ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... first of the month we shall again be cheered by the songs of the catbird and wren. From a tree-top near the roadside a brown thrasher will sing a song of rejoicing. In the woods the wood thrush will ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... other philosophers had been occupied with the same subject. Sir Christopher Wren had many years before endeavored to explain the planetary motions "by the composition of a descent toward the sun, and an impressed motion; but he at length gave it over, not finding the means of doing it." In January, 1683-1684, Dr. Halley had concluded from Kepler's law of the periods and distances, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Armoniack," demonstrating thereby the chemical fixation of embryos as an aid to embryology. A year later, Walter Needham, a Cambridge physician who studied at Oxford in the active School of Physiological Research, which included such men as Christopher Wren and Thomas Willis, published a book reporting the first chemical experiments upon the developing mammalian embryo.[32] Needham's approach and goals are more dynamic than those of Browne, and he attempts ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... about it. The nuisance of it is, that the brute will go and put the Boers up to everything as to our strength, supplies, ammunition, and goodness knows what else. But, look here, I'm going on now to see how Sam Wren is." ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... display the red That lights his wings; The wren will know the sweet things said By him who swings And ducks and dips his crested head And sings ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... beside them ran the clear waters of the river, slightly murmuring as they rolled away to the land, which our nation gave to their good brother Miquon[C]. All was so hushed in the camp of the Unamis that the lowest note of the wren could have been heard ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... Lord of Suffolk comfort me? Came he right now to sing a raven's note Whose dismal tune bereft my vital powers, And thinks he that the chirping of a wren, By crying comfort from a hollow breast, Can chase away the first-conceived sound? Hide not thy poison with such sugar'd words; Lay not thy hands on me; forbear, I say! Their touch affrights me as a serpent's sting. Thou baleful messenger, out of my sight! Upon thy ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... birds, concerning which he was rabid. His liking for birds began with Miss Sally Ruth's pigeons and the friendly birds in our garden. And as he learned to know them his love for them grew. I have seen him daily visit a wren's nest without once alarming the little black-eyed mother. I have heard him give the red-bird's call, and heard that loveliest of all birds answer him. And I have seen the impudent jays, within reach of his hand, swear at him unabashed and unafraid, because ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... intellectual activity of the inventors of the steam engine will be fully seen. Then no monument will be required to keep green the memory of Watt, Corliss, or any other of these great men, but it will be said of them, as of Sir Christopher Wren in the epitaph in St. Paul's: "Seek you a monument, look about you!" Every wreath of steam rising to the heavens from factory, mill or workshop will be a reminder of Hero of Alexandria, every mine will possess a memorial to Papin, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... Margaret churchyard. Her husband returned to sea. I did invite her to go to dinner with me and my wife to-day. After all this to my Lord, who lay a-bed till eleven o'clock, it being almost five before he went to bed, they supped so late last night with the King. This morning I saw poor Bishop Wren ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... mother began anew where it stopped, and completed it. Then the young one resumed the tune and finished it. This done, the mother sang over the whole series of notes a second time with great precision; and a second of the young attempted to follow her. The wren pursued the same course with this as with the first; and so with the third and fourth. It sometimes happened that the young one would lose the tune three, four, or more times in the same attempt; in which case the mother uniformly began where ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... about eight inches thick and fifteen to eighteen inches in diameter, and is placed from a foot to two feet out of water among the heavy rushes. The Purple Gallinule is known to build as many as five or six sham nests, a trait which is not confined to the Wren family. From four to twelve smooth shelled and spotted eggs are laid, and the nestlings when first hatched are clad in dark colored down. On leaving the nest they, accompanied by their parents, seek a more favorable situation until after the moulting ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... for pride, as far as our gifts can ever be a cause for pride, who finds himself able, in a design of his own, to rival even the simplest arrangement of parts in one by Sanmicheli, Inigo Jones, or Christopher Wren. ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... even if he wished it, one thing, however, has been kept dark which should now be made public, and this is the relationship between the Freemasons and the * * *. "The * * * were in fact the Freemasons of their time." It seems probable from the context and from Falk's references to Sir Christopher Wren as the founder of the modern Order, that the asterisks denote ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... attention because it was not alone, being accompanied by a green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about here for a week and wondered where you would take up ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... you a story about the wren. There was once a farmer who was seeking a servant, and the wren met him and said: "What are ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... permitted to skirt the domains of the capacious cabbage, the aspiring pea, and the portly pumpkin. Each had its prolific little mansion teeming with children; with an old hat nailed against the wall for the housekeeping wren; a motherly hen, under a coop on the grass-plot, clucking to keep around her a brood of vagrant chickens; a cool, stone well, with the moss-covered bucket suspended to the long balancing-pole, according to the antediluvian idea of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... unacclimated to the suave altruism of fashionable circles. His literal eyebrows went up to an angle of forty-five degrees; he turned his belittling eyes on Mrs. Marable, as if she were a very inconsiderable species of wren, suddenly developing a capacity for disproportionate mischief. "Not at all, madam," he made haste to say. "He can be legally held for a witness, lest he get away and out of reach of a subpoena. It is ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... flight was manifest, for he could see now that the face of the country outside on the level was spread as with a tablecloth, its white surface undisturbed, ready for the impress of so light an object as a hopping wren. To make his way across it would be to drag his bonds behind him, plainly asking the world to pull him back. Obviously there must be a more tactical retreat, and without more ado he followed the river's course, keeping ever, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... beyond it, to the main entrance. This is part of the original palace as built by the cardinal. It leads into the first court. This, with the second or Middle Quadrangle, may all be ascribed to him, with some changes made by Henry VIII. and Christopher Wren. The colonnade of coupled Ionic pillars which runs across it on the south or right-hand side as you enter was designed by Wren. It is out of keeping with its Gothic surroundings. Standing beneath it, you see on the opposite side of the square Wolsey's Hall. It looks like a church. The towers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... who has so frequently, so carefully, so vividly described them. It is amazing, as we go through his work, to realise the largeness of his range in this matter, from the river-horse to the lizard, from the eagle to the wren, from the loud singing bee to the filmy insect in the sunshine. I give a few examples. Mortal man could not see a ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... plainer head and less bright colours of female chaffinch, the less red on the head and less clean colours of female goldfinch, the much less red on the breast of the female bullfinch, the paler crest of golden-crested wren, etc., have been acquired by them for protection? I cannot think so, any more than I can that the considerable differences between female and male house-sparrow, or much greater brightness of male Parus caeruleus (both of which build under cover) than of female Parus, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... honesty' after the taking of the San Jose," muttered Arden. "Yet we found a hawk where we looked for a wren's nest. Oh, I grant you there were explanations enough to stand between him and the yard-arm, and that Fortune, having turned her wheel in our favor, apparently left her industry and fell asleep! She ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... stalwart and broad-shouldered race. Our future generations must still tower proudly above the common herd in every respect; I want no plaything for a wife, but a woman, such as you yourself were in youth—tall, dignified and handsome. My heart goes forth to no gold-crested wren but to a really royal maiden.—Of what use to waste words! Paula, the noble daughter of a glorious father, is my choice. It came upon me just now like a revelation; I ask your blessing on my union ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... always imagine in the equatorial forest—the song that will set you dreaming while you are basking under palm trees—the actual traveller will find the greatest disappointment of all in that respect. With one or two exceptions, such as the Troglodytes fuscus, a small brown wren which emits sweet musical notes, most birds of the Amazon have grating voices and harsh piercing whistles, or monotonous deep repetitions of two or three funereal notes which are more apt to drive you insane than to fascinate you. Among the most unmusical singers ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... flew up out of the ground and caught Ricardo by the throat! In vain he strove to separate the teeth, when the crow, stooping from the heavens, became the Princess Jaqueline, and changed Dick into a wren—a tiny bird, so small that he easily flew out of the jaws of the Giant and winged his way to a tree, whence he watched ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... two after the supper of the wren pie, Max bought from a pedler a gray falcon most beautifully marked, with a scarlet head and neck, and we sent our squires to Hymbercourt, asking him to solicit from the duke's seneschal, my Lord de Vergy, permission to strike a heron ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... instrument, and took lessons of him in order to know better the handling of the keys and the resources of the instrument. In his company, Dr. Upham examined some of the best instruments in London. He made many excursions among the old churches of Sir Christopher Wren's building, where are to be found the fine organs of "Father Smith," John Snetzler, and other famous builders of the past. He visited the workshops of Hill, Gray and Davidson, Willis, Robson, and others. He made a visit to Oxford ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Shannon of Ohio, and Rigdon received a similar letter to the President, recommending him "as a man of piety and a valuable citizen," signed by Governor Carlin, United States Senator Young, County Clerk Wren, and leading business men of Quincy. Thus began that recognition of the Mormons as a political power in Illinois which led to concessions to them that had so much to do with finally driving them ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... is here," said Sir Walter, fixing his eyes upon Sir Christopher Wren. "It is possible that he may be of assistance in settling ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... me several good views. The bay-breasted warbler was reported in the evergreens up by the stone house, but he failed to report to me here at "The Nest." The female redstart, however, came several times to the gravel walk below me, evidently looking for material to begin her nest. And the wren, the irrepressible house wren, was and is in evidence every few minutes, busy carrying nesting-material into the box on the corner of the veranda. How intense and emphatic she is! And the male, how he throbs and palpitates ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... Not since Wren's Dome has whispered with man's prayer Have angels leaned to wonder out of Heaven At such uprush of intercession given, Here where to-day one soul two nations share, And with accord send up thro' trembling air Their vows to ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... M.E. Church, next arose, and said that he came there intending to say nothing, but the scene moved him to a few words. He remembered once standing in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, and seeing therein the name of the architect, Sir Christopher Wren, inscribed, and under it this inscription: "Stranger, if you would see his monument look about you." And the thought came to him that if you would see the monument of him who lies there, look about you and see it built ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Saint Hugh of Lincoln Was a boy in Avalon, He knew the birds and their houses And loved them every one, Merle and mavis and grosbeak, Gay goshawk, and even the wren,— When he took Saint Benedict's service It wasn't the least different then! "They taught me to sing to my Lord," quo' he, "And to dig for my food i' the mould And whithersoever my wits might flee, To come in ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... the last completed work of Dickens, was printed in 1865. Mr. Boffin, the Golden Dustman with the great heart, Silas Wegg, Mr. Venus, the Riderhoods, Jenny Wren, the Podsnaps, the Veneerings, Betty Higden, Mrs. Wilfer, and the "Boofer Lady," are as fresh and as original as are any of his creations, and show no ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... badge on lapel, stand on either side, ready—for a consideration—to direct our transatlantic ignorance into veritable "paths of pleasantness and peace." Access to the Middle Temple from Fleet Street is had by way of another gate-house, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1684, soon after the Great Fire. It is in the style of Inigo Jones, of reddish brick, with stone pointing. There are several other entrances,—many of them known only to the initiated,—through intricate courts and passages debouching on Fleet Street and the surrounding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... with their feathered tongues, made to brush the sweet essences from flowers: and the two following cases contain the remaining varieties of the slender-beaked family. Here are the Creepers of Europe; the Nuthatches of North America and Europe; varieties of the Wren; and the Warblers of Guiana and Patagonia. The visitor next approaches the varieties of the family known as the tooth-beaked perching birds. To this family our choicest songsters belong. They fill five ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... starting into life and action. Spent an hour looking over the books of prints in the library—Fanny particularly pleased with a Houbracken: Harriet with Daniel's Indian Antiquities: my father with Sir Christopher Wren's and Inigo Jones's designs. After dinner Richard Ruxton came in, and said my aunt and uncle had thoughts of coming up to see the balloon. In the evening at Astley's. The second day to see the elephant: how I pitied this ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... nation; these are the measuring periods for real achievement. But all this is on the human side. Correggio and Titian in painting; Bacon and Bailey in sculpture; Raphael and Michael Angelo in sculpture and painting; and Sir Christopher Wren in architecture,—the works of art of such as these elevate and purify one's thought and feeling. But the profoundest impressions that come to one from travel, come alone from the works of nature. The Crystal Palace in London can not compare ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... with King Obreon a many fairies, all attired in green silk; all these, with King Obreon, did welcome Robin Good-fellow into their company. Obreon took Robin by the hand and led him a dance: their musician was little Tom Thumb; for he had an excellent bag-pipe made of a wren's quill, and the skin of a Greenland louse: this pipe was so shrill, and so sweet, that a Scottish pipe compared to it, it would no more come near it, than a Jew's-trump doth to an Irish harp. After they had danced, King Obreon spake ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs, the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow through ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... a thing of jest And open scorn; the very pipits mock it; A jenny wren, I'm told, has built her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... could; but I will not stirre from this place, do what they can. I will walke vp and downe here, and I will sing that they shall heare I am not afraid. The Woosell cocke, so blacke of hew, With Orenge-tawny bill. The Throstle, with his note so true, The Wren and little quill ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... first come to him but the timidity, the uncertainty, had gone. Her eyes were deeper. They shone like jewels; the softened outlines of her profile were thinner, clearer; her beautiful mouth had grown firm and a bit of gray showed in her hair. She was altogether adorable, like a wee wren after a stormy day. The stilted phrases were slipping away. She spoke more alertly. Bits of Dulcie's lingo were creeping into her speech. But she still answered with a literalness that ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... scented danger. Twenty yards ahead a wren was perched on the topmost twig of a thorn-bush, chattering and scolding furiously. Now, there is no bird which gives prompter warning of an intruder than the wren. Whether the intruder be two-legged, man or boy, or four-legged, stoat, weasel, or pole-cat, the ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... wayfarers, and there must be one, full of food, and wine, and physic, and sweet, health-restoring cordials. And the birdies must have a breakfast daily. Dorothy, the cookmaid, must boil bread in skimmed milk, and throw it on the lawn; then Master Robin and Master Thrush and Mistress Jenny Wren will all feast together. I once saw the little princes, in King Edward's time, feed the birdies thus; and so did Willie Shakespeare, in Stratford town.' Alas, I thought, alas, all is now too plain. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... taken with Wyatt in 1554, slept in the recesses of the crypt of the Chapel, long known as Queen Elizabeth's Armoury. In 1663, and later years down to 1709, structural repairs were carried out under the superintendence of Sir Christopher Wren, who replaced the Norman window openings with others of a classical character. Remains of four old windows are visible on the river side. A few years ago some disfiguring annexes and sheds were removed, as well as an external staircase ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie
... utmost development. All this will be clearly and logically explained by the professors of the academies. They will further add that after the accession of the Stuarts the building art gradually declined, with only a few flashes of brilliant light in the works of Inigo Jones and Wren. The Commonwealth was prudish in art as in manners, and the Restoration was a reign of revel and wild license. The social worlds of William and Mary and of Queen Anne, stiff, starched, and formal, left ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... bonds, was actually found in the tool box of her own car. Then in the next volume, "The Motor Girls on a Tour," Cora again had the lines of the leading lady, for it fell to her lot to "keep the promise" that restored little Wren, the cripple, to her own, both in money and in health. In the third book of the series, "The Motor Girls at Lookout Beach," it was Cora again who had to ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... two gipsies were no mean antagonists. Then, too, the one with the cudgel wielded it skillfully. Time and again Jimsy avoided a heavy blow which, if successful, must have injured him seriously. The girls, screaming, rushed off, carrying "the Wren," as the woman called her, with them. They dashed at top speed back to the spot where the aeroplanes had been left, ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... Brown. "There were eighteen mounted policemen in here just now. I was talking to the Inspector—such a nice young man, an intimate friend of the late Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN, who, he informs me privately, did not kill ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... given us a wren-box, made by a child in a more advanced class as manual work. The children were delighted with the gift; they built a framework around a stout pole in the center bed and set the wren-box on the pole. They then suggested that ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... beauty, they felt sure; no such fishing anywhere, they believed; in fact, everything the country boy could wish for was to their hand. Collect?—I should think they did: eggs, from those of the birds of prey to the tiny dot of the golden-crested wren; butterflies and moths, from the Purple Emperors that were netted as they hovered over the tops of the scrub oaks, and hawk-moths that darted through the garden, the only level place about the bottom of the glen. Fishing too—the ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... foundation of fifteen generations of Kami, whose birth seems to have been essential to the "making of the land," though their names afford no clue to the functions discharged by them. From over sea, seated in a gourd and wearing a robe of wren's feathers, there comes a pigmy, Sukuna Hikona, who proves to be one of fifteen hundred children begotten by the Kami of the original trinity. Skilled in the arts of healing sickness and averting calamities from men or animals, this pigmy renders ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... letter from Christopher Wren, Esq., to Francis Peek, M.A. (author of the Desiderata Curiosa), it is thus stated, viz., 'that King Henry VII. had the title of Defender of the Faith, appears by the Register of the Order of the Garter in the black book, (sic dictum a tegmine), now in my hands, by office, which having been ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... cannot march half a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be had and lodging; whereas such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country that in many a direction for a thousand miles I will engage that a dog shall not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find an apology for breakfast."] miles— northwards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our Lombard Street friends at parting is exalted a hundredfold by a sort of visionary sympathy with the yet slumbering sympathies ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... on a dim and shadowy grandeur, very unlike what we see when we look within into our familiar and commonplace selves. Nor do Englishmen often plume themselves on their aesthetic or imaginative gifts. The achievements of Wren, or Purcell, or Keats may arouse in them admiration and pride, but never a sense of kinship. When they recognize themselves in the national literature, it is not Hamlet, or Lear, or Clarissa, or Ravenswood that holds up the mirror; but ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... self-contradiction, represented by that cross, has a necessary place at a certain evolutionary stage. But surely the cross is the lower development and the sphere the higher. After all it is easy enough to see what is really wrong with Wren's architectural arrangement." ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Dolly's, and made a conscience-stricken attempt to sit up and wave one paw in deprecation, doubtless prepared with a plausible explanation of his singular appearance, which much resembled that of 'Mr. Dolls' returning to Jenny Wren after ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... other bird whatsoever. All is silent and solitary. The poor birds are destroyed, or driven for refuge, into other countries, by the savage persecution of the people, who spare no pains to kill, and catch them for their own subsistence. Scarce a sparrow, red-breast, tomtit, or wren, can 'scape the guns and snares of those indefatigable fowlers. Even the noblesse make parties to go a la chasse, a-hunting; that is, to kill those little birds, which they eat as gibier, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... ourselves great architects, although opportunities for displaying their genius have been rare. This the fate and fortune of two Englishmen attest. Without the fire of London we might not have shown the world one of the greatest architects, in Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN; had not a St. Paul's been required by the nation he would have found no opportunity of displaying the magnificence of his genius, which even then was mutilated, as the original model bears witness to the world. That great occasion served this noble architect ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... with lights of blue and faint fresh rose; and over them the beautiful fold of her full eyebrow on the eyelid like a bending upper heaven. Those winter mornings are divine. They move on noiselessly. The earth is still, as if awaiting. A wren warbles, and flits through the lank drenched brambles; hill-side opens green; elsewhere is mist, everywhere expectancy. They bear the veiled sun like a sangreal aloft to the wavy marble flooring ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the oriole, The linnet and the wren— When shall I see their fairyships, And hear ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... a brown wren. "Her cheek was full and rosy and her song loud. This one sitteth all ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... Limes thirty years old were transplanted from neighbouring woods to shade the alleys. Artificial fountains spouted among the flower beds. A new court, not designed with the purest taste, but stately, spacious, and commodious, rose under the direction of Wren. The wainscots were adorned with the rich and delicate carvings of Gibbons. The staircases were in a blaze with the glaring frescoes of Verrio. In every corner of the mansion appeared a profusion of gewgaws, not yet familiar to English eyes. Mary ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nearer to the sturdier mediums employed in the making of pictures evolving a greater severity of form and a commendable rigidity of line. He has learned like so many moderns that the ruled line offers greater advantages in pictorial structure. You shall find his approach to the spirit of Christopher Wren is as clear and direct as his feeling for the vastiness of New England speechlessness. He has come up beyond the dramatisation of emotion to the point of expression for its own sake. But he is nevertheless to be included among the arrived water-colorists, because his gifts for expression have been ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... swaying in the wind, clothed only in its own scant and rusty leaves. A wren perched on a spray, ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... not a beggar, And Jenny Wren's a bride, And larks hang singing, singing, singing, Over the wheat-fields wide, And anchored lilies ride, And the pendulum spider Swings ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... can He who smiles on all Hear the wren with sorrows small, Hear the small bird's grief and care, Hear the ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... me: it is here.—(As he said these words, he produced a skull from his pocket, and placed it on the table to the great surprise of the company.)—This was the skull of Sir Christopher Wren. You observe this protuberance—(The skull was handed round ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... like the quail, there are some eccentrics, such as Jenny wren, which have despised their tails, and there are specialists also which require them for other purposes than flying. The woodpecker's tail is quite useless as a rudder, for he is a woodman and has altered ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... black-throated babbler or wren-babbler. This is another small bird. Its general hue is olive brown. The throat is black, as is the head, but the latter has ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... solemn Buddhas, and the crowds of cheerful worshippers. I walked down the empty nave and came under the dome. Then something happened—the thing that always happens when one comes into touch with the work of a genius. And Wren's dome proves that he was that. I sat down, and the organ began to play; or rather, the dome began to sing. And down the stream of music floated in fragments visions of my journey—Indians nude like bronzes, blue-coated Chinese, white robes and ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... can show something for it," said Fred; "they allow me a lark's diet instead of a wren's, I can hold up my head like other people now, and I actually made my own legs and the table's carry me to the window yesterday, which is what I call getting on. But I do not think it is so with mamma. A fortnight ago she used to be up by ten or ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... your pity on me, Sir Dreamer, for I need it not," retorted Dick. "Doubtless you take joy of your fancies; but realities are good enough for me, at least such realities as these. Look at that bird hovering over yonder flower, for instance; smaller, much smaller, than a wren is he, yet how perfectly shaped and how gloriously plumaged. Look to the colour of him, as rich a purple as that of your sunset cloud, with crest and throat like gold painted green. And then, the long curved beak ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... resembling each other nearly as closely, and only ceasing as the bird nears the earth again. We have many more melodious songsters; the bobolink in the meadows for instance, the vesper sparrow in the pastures, the purple finch in the groves, the winter wren, or any of the thrushes in the woods, or the wood-wagtail, whose air song is of a similar character to that of the skylark, and is even more rapid and ringing, and is delivered in nearly the same manner; but our birds all stop when the skylark has ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... my gun on a day of rain, as it darted across a field to avoid the windings of a brook. I also became a specialist at finding their nests. Birds are so conservative! They are at your mercy, if you care to study their habits. The golden-crested wren builds a nest which is almost invisible; once you have mastered the trick, no gold-crest is safe. I am sorry, now, for all those plundered gold-crests' eggs. And the rarer ones—the grey shrike, that buzzard of the cliff (the most perilous ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the wren thy myrtles shed On gentlest Otway's infant head, 20 To him thy cell was shown; And while he sung the female heart, With youth's soft notes unspoil'd by art, Thy turtles ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... wren is so called because he sometimes braves our northern winters, but it is rarely that one sees him at this season. I think I have seen him only two or three times in winter in my life. The event of one long walk, recently, in February, was seeing one of these birds. As I followed a byroad, ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... could guess what a snare for an artist's feet lay in those few words? How could Trenholme realize that "a pair of iron gates" would prove to be an almost perfect example of Christopher Wren's genius as a designer of wrought iron? Trenholme's eyes sparkled when he beheld this prize, with its acanthus leaves and roses beaten out with wonderful freedom and beauty of curve. A careful drawing was the result. Another result, uncounted by him, but of singular importance in its ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... the house, the languors of the fire drowsing on the hearth, the broad bar of sunshine across the puncheon floor, so slowly creeping away, the sense of the vernal lengthening of the pensive afternoon, the ever-flitting shadow of the wren building under the eaves, and its iterative gladsome song breaking the fireside stillness, partook of the serene beatitude of the season and the hour. The visitor's drawling voice rose again, and she was not ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... keep them out is to make the entrance doorway too small for them to enter. A hole an inch in diameter will admit a wren or chickadee and bar out a sparrow, but it will also keep out most of the other birds. The usual doorway should be two inches in diameter. It is surprising how soon after we build our bird house we find a tiny pair making their plans to occupy it and to take up housekeeping. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... been born in the first year of the present century I consequently can remember both the Plague and Fire of London. The latter is memorable to me as having been the cause of my introduction to Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN, an architect of some note, and an intimate friend of Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS, and the late Mr. TURNER, R.A. Sir CHRISTOPHER had but one failing—he was never sober. To the day of his death he was under the impression that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various |
