"Bat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a house, even of so orderly and perfect a house as Blackburn's, has enough worries without being saddled with a small brother. And on the previous afternoon young Billy Silver, going in eighth wicket for Kay's, had put a solid bat in front of everything for the space of one hour, in the course of which he made ten runs and Fenn sixty. By scoring odd numbers off the last ball of each over, Fenn had managed to secure the majority of the bowling in ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... went on. "You can sell at twelve hundred a week at least, and you can net eight hundred certain. Six weeks of the net pays for the turn, and you can book a hundred weeks right off the bat and have them yelling for more. Wish I was young and footloose. I'd take it out on the road myself and coin ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... Gower's list, e.g. Watte (Chapter I), Thomme, Symme, Geffe (Chapter VI), Wille, Jakke, are easily recognized. Bette is for Bat, Bartholomew, a name, which has given Batty, Batten, Bates, Bartle (cf. Bartlemas), Bartlett, Badcock, Batcock. But this group of names belongs also to the Bert- or -bent, which is so common in Teutonic names, such as Bertrand, Bertram, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... called, a lethargy of conscience. In vain Remorse rears her horrent crest, and rouses all her snakes; beneath the deadly fixed eye and leaden hand of Indolence, their wildest ire is charmed into the torpor of the bat, slumbering out the rigours of winter, in the chink of a ruined wall. Nothing less, Madam, could have made me so long neglect your obliging commands. Indeed I had one apology—the bagatelle was not worth presenting. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... attendants might repel the charge with honest indignation, but many a stout warrior slunk off in terror to bed from the sight of Sir Eustace, turning the pages of one of his heavy books by the light of the hall fire, and saw in each poor bat that flitted about within the damp depths of the vaulted chambers the familiar spirit which brought him exact intelligence of all that passed at Bordeaux, at Paris, or in London. Nay, if he only turned his eyes on the ground, he was thought ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... any wild cat's rent the peace of the night, and I believe that the child's black nurse took us, no doubt, for the devil himself. Then all the dogs howled and bayed, though not one approached us, and a great bat came fanning past, like a winged shadow, and again I heard the owl's hoot, and ever before us, like a white arrow, fled that white cat, and my horse followed in spite of me. Then, verily I speak the truth, though it may well be questioned, did that white cat lead us straight to the tomb which ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... or the other, you know, or you'll be like the bat in the fable who was neither bird nor beast, and so was out of all the fun on both sides. I may be prejudiced, but I advise you to be a cadets' lady. And you'd better decide now on account ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the origin of death. Australian story of the tree, the bat, and death. Fijian story of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... moon, and the lovers turned to go, all being still: even the noise of the waters still to their ears, as life that is muffled in sleep. They saw the cedar grey-edged under the moon: and Night, that clung like a bat beneath its ancient open palms. The bordering sward about the falls shone silvery. In its shadow was a swan. These scenes are but beckoning hands to the hearts of lovers, waving them on to that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wash off," he replied. "Well, we're shy a good woodsman and a cook, and I'll miss 'em both. But it might be worse. Here's where you go to bat, Stella. Get on your apron and lend me a hand in the kitchen, like a good girl. We have to eat, no ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... each star of summer hide, And fireless are the valleys far and wide, Where the brook brawls along the public [80] road Dark with bat-haunted ashes stretching broad, [81] Oft has she taught them on her lap to lay 265 The shining glow-worm; or, in heedless play, Toss it from hand to hand, disquieted; While others, not unseen, are free to shed Green unmolested light ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... whatsoever, they differ utterly from the genuine cactus, and closely resemble all their spurge relations. Adaptive likenesses of this sort, due to mere stress of local conditions, have no more weight as indications of real relationship than the wings of the bat or the nippers of the seal, which don't make the one into a skylark, or the other ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Cosmopolis who would send down a few trousers and what not in a kit bag. It was a priceless solution, thought Archie, as he made his way downstairs. Not even embarrassing, he meant to say. This chappie, living in a place like this, wouldn't bat an eyelid at the spectacle of a fellow trickling about the place in a bathing suit. They would have a good laugh ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... "My dear boy," I answered, laying one hand on his shoulder, "may I say the plain truth? A blind bat could see you are madly in love ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... cricket ball is a nice idea. Why not aim at the opposite extreme and try a ball "reinforced" with concrete? The tingling of the batsman's fingers which might result could be neutralised by the use of a rubber-faced bat. This reform would, we believe, have one happy consequence. People wouldn't be so keen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... his mother came in the chapel the Leivers's pew was always empty. He was anxious for fear she would not come: it was so far, and there were so many rainy Sundays. Then, often very late indeed, she came in, with her long stride, her head bowed, her face hidden under her bat of dark green velvet. Her face, as she sat opposite, was always in shadow. But it gave him a very keen feeling, as if all his soul stirred within him, to see her there. It was not the same glow, happiness, and pride, that he felt in having his mother in charge: ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... great! Of course, of course. Here, I'll kiss you again—you can answer my second question." He embraced her with hysterical enthusiasm. "Oh, when did it happen?" he begged. "How did you know? Since when have they been engaged? My! I have been a bat! Where were my eyes? Of all the jolly luck!" he leaped from the bench and ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... You le' me alone!' gasped Ted, struggling and writhing with all his power; but the flailing went on, bat—bat—bat—with blows that might have disturbed an elephant. Ted's feelings became too strong for words; he started to howl, and the night re-echoed with the cries of the outraged bushranger. The rest of the gang stood mute, staring at ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... laugh silently, so that his large eyebrows went up and down like the wings of a bat, upon the deep lines of his yellow forehead. "No one," ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... combine the advantages of all the professions though he only followed one. But Tom soon dropped from these sublime heights to more mundane considerations, and his last words concerned a new cricket bat which Nettie was to "screw out of the gov'nor" for him, a new pup which she was to bring up by hand under his special directions, and correspondence, which on her part at least, was to be regular, and not too much occupied ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... with their own fair hands; snuff we could get better than you could in "the old concern." But we had no hoop-skirts,—skeletons, we used to call them. No ingenuity had made them. No bounties had forced them. The Bat, the Greyhound, the Deer, the Flora, the J.C. Cobb, the Varuna, and the Fore-and-Aft all took in cargoes of them for us in England. But the Bat and the Deer and the Flora were seized by the blockaders, the J.C. Cobb sunk at sea, the Fore-and-Aft and the Greyhound were set fire to by their own crews, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... on in silence for about an hour, when suddenly Wade made out in the distance the great bulk of the plane, against the dull gray of the clouds, a mile or so above them. It seemed some monstrous black bat flying there against the sky, but down to the sensitive microphone on the side of the Solarite came the drone of the hundred mighty propellers as the great ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... Pipalee and Nip; and all three, leaving my lord treasurer amazed at their levity, whisked into the painter's apartment. Permitting them to throw the ink over their victim's papers, break his pencils, mix his colours, mislay his nightcap, and go whiz against his face in the shape of a great bat, till the astonished Frenchman began to think the pensive goblins of the place had taken a sprightly fit,—we hasten to a small green spot some little way from the town, in the valley of the Neckar, and by the banks of its silver stream. It was ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down the rear end of the cage. Behind him a hundred or more players in line slowly marched toward the slab of rubber which marked the batting position. Ken remembered that the celebrated coach always tried out new players at the bat first. It was his belief ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... made due allowance for them. It should be understood that the rule by no means applies to any part, however unusually developed, unless it be unusually developed in comparison with the same part in closely allied species. Thus, the bat's wing is a most abnormal structure in the class mammalia; but the rule would not here apply, because there is a whole group of bats having wings; it would apply only if some one species of bat had its wings developed in some remarkable ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... Holme saw a dark opening in the solid stone blocks on which the house was built. The boat glided through it into cover, and the arrow of light at the prow pierced ebon blackness, while the plash of the oars made a curious sound, full of sudden desolation and weariness. A bat flitted over the arrow of light and vanished, and the head of a swimming rat was visible for a moment, pursued by a wrinkle on ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... a living gem, poising on his wings, thrust his dark, slender, honey-seeking bill into the white blossoms of a little bush beside my window, I should have thought it no such bad thing to be a bird, even if one next became a bat, like the colony in our eaves, that dart and drop and skim and skurry, all the length of moonless nights, in such ecstasies of dusky joy." Was this weird creature, the bat, in very truth a bird, in some far primeval time? and does ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Bat Mark's picture shows us a King whose passion is to serve. The service which He draws out of His followers is drawn out by His warm serving spirit towards us. The words on the royal coat-of-arms are, "Not to be ministered unto, but to minister." And in the first meaning of the words He ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... door, you fool! I'm not a ghost!" shouted Gay, but the only response came in an hysterical babble of moans from the negro quarters somewhere in the rear and in the soft whir in his face of a leatherwing bat as it wheeled low in the twilight. There was no smoke in the chimneys, and the square old house, with its hooded roof and its vacant windows, assumed a sinister and inhospitable look against the background of oaks. His mother and his aunt, he concluded, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... there all night. The same evening that Thorodd went from home, it happened at Froda, when folk went to sit by the fires that had been made, that they saw a seal's head rise up out of the fireplace. A maid-servant was the first who came forward and saw this marvel; she took a washing-bat which lay beside the door, and struck the seal's head with this, but it rose up at the blow and gazed at Thorgunna's bed-hangings. Then one of the men went up and beat the seal, but it rose higher at ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... the festival!" boomed the Bee. "All must prepare to exhibit their best skill; the Toad, who can neither fly nor run, his brother the Bullfrog, with his band of musicians, and even the Flying-squirrel with the rest. Tanagela, the Humming-bird, will be the judge of beauty, and the Bat will judge your skilful performance in the air. That wise medicine-man, the Serpent, will also ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... Ceylon. The scenery in the neighbourhood is also magnificent. From the extent of the cocoa-nut groves, arrack is here largely distilled. The toddy or juice is drawn from the trees into bowls suspended to catch it, and numbers of the great bat Pteropus, called by Europeans the flying-fox, come and drink from them. They begin quietly enough, but by degrees the toddy takes effect, and, like human beings, they break into quarrels, and continue increasing their noise till it becomes ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Dinah'll miss me very much to-night, I should think!" (Dinah was the cat.) "I hope they'll remember her saucer of milk at tea-time. Dinah, my dear, I wish you were down here with me! There are no mice in the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that's very like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?" And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, "Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?" and sometimes, "Do bats eat cats?" for, you see, as she couldn't answer ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... friend Velasquez. He afterwards marched up the country to a place called Naco in a very populous district, which is all now laid waste. While here, he sent off various detachments in different directions, among which one was commanded by Briones, who had first instigated him to revolt; bat Briones now revolted from him in his turn, and marched off with all his men for New Spain. He was a seditious fellow, who had on some former occasion had the lower part of his ears cut off, which he used to say had been done ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... Mother Leeds gave birth to a son, whose father could have been no other than the Prince of Darkness. No sooner did he see the light than he assumed the form of a fiend, with a horse's head, wings of bat, and a serpent's tail. The first thought of the newborn Caliban was to fall foul of his mother, whom he scratched and bepommelled soundly, and then flew through the window out into the village, where he played the mischief generally. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... holds barred. Fight fair but don't f'rget th' other la-ad may not know where th' belt line is. No polisman in sight. A man's down with twinty on top iv him wan minyit. Th' next he's settin' on th' pile usin' a base-ball bat on th' neighbor next below him. 'Come on, boys, f'r 'tis growin' late, an' no wan's been kilt yet. Glory be, but ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... fineness and delicacy of its mechanism, the results attainable by the human eye seem far from adequate to the expenditure put upon it. We have flattered ourselves by inventing proverbs of comparison in matter of blindness,—"blind as a bat," for instance. It would be safe to say that there cannot be found in the animal kingdom a bat, or any other creature, so blind in its own range of circumstance and connection, as the greater majority ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... life. She seemed to gain fresh energy and vigour. Edinburgh was ready with a hearty welcome. Admiration was in danger of degenerating into adulation; as, for example, when a literary man, on his introduction to her, asked "whether a bat might be allowed to appear in the presence of a nightingale." On another occasion a man of eminence in the book world was honoured with a visit from her. Afterwards he was asked whether he had chanced to see the most distinguished English poetess of the ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... Sid Morton," he hazarded. "I kind o' seem to mind his sorrel with four white legs. He's comin' from the right direction, too. Guess his ranch is ten miles up yonder. Say, he's makin' a hell of a bat." ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... on for over a week at the Bat and Belfry Inn, as we all called it, and so, strange to say, did the duodenal couple, whom, indeed, we left there, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... then it's open order, an' we lights our pipes an' sings, An' we talks about our rations an' a lot of other things, An' we thinks o' friends in England, an' we wonders what they're at, An' 'ow they would admire for to hear us sling the bat. An' it's best foot first,... It's none so bad o' Sunday, when you're lyin' at your ease, To watch the kites a-wheelin' round them feather-'eaded trees, For although there ain't no women, yet there ain't no barrick-yards, So the orficers goes shootin' an' the men they ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... had never found time to plumb. She knew that the hour of dawn was always still, but she had never imagined a stillness so complete, so final as this. Nor was there any fresh lightness in the morning air. It seemed to press downward like an enormous invisible bat; or like the shade of buried cities, vain outcroppings of a vanished civilization, brooding menacingly over this recent flimsy accomplishment of man that Nature could obliterate ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... With them a few carnivorous animals are associated, among which are the Hyaenodon dasyuroides, a species of dog, Canis Parisiensis, and a weasel, Cynodon Parisiensis. Of the Rodentia are found a squirrel; of the Cheiroptera, a bat; while the Marsupalia (an order now confined to America, Australia, and some contiguous islands) are represented by ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... Bird-creature lay all spread upon the stones and the rock of that place; and surely it did be as that it were leathern, and made somewise as a bat doth be of this age, in that it did ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... compare them with the cattle men they tad known in Texas. They were a hardy lot, taciturn and solemn-faced. The most silent man in the bunch, was Noisy Cooper, who scarcely ever spoke a word unless forced to do so by an insistent question. Bat Coyne had been a cattle man down in Texas, while Mary Johnson —so called because of his pink and white complexion, which no amount of sun or wind could tarnish—was said to have come from the East. He had left there for reasons ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... deep, Under roofs of spidery stairs, Where the bat-winged nightmares creep, And a sheeted phantom glares Rushed we; ah, how strange it was Where no human watcher stood; Till we reached a gate of glass Opening on ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... upon the grass, while Henry, fresh and vigorous, takes your bat and engages in the game. He knows that you gave up to accommodate him; and how can he help liking ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... night fall. The dulled bronze jangle of cow-bells came soothingly to him. An owl called a little way off. Swallows flashed by in long graceful flights. A bat circled near, indecisively, as if with a message it hesitated to give. Once he heard the flute-like ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... come 'long back with me and keep company manners, do you know that, you disrepu'ble gad-abouts? You ain't never had no proper eddicatin' an' now it's a-goin' to begin for fa'r. You-all are goin' ter be larnt citified manners hot off the bat. So come 'long back to the paddock an' git your ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... astonished at his audacity, but yet no one prevented him. Throwing down the half-roasted bat, he placed several pieces of the other meat on leaves, which served them as plates, and came back to us with them in triumph. He then returned for some sago. With this food we made a tolerably hearty meal, and certainly felt our spirits a little ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... time to swing the Winchester about and grasp its barrel as the Jarmuthian, with a loud shout, sprang in, slashing viciously at Nelson's unprotected neck. Using the clubbed rifle like a baseball bat, the American struck out with the strength of despair. There came a resonant clang as blade and barrel encountered each other. Steel is ever stronger than bronze, so Nelson had the satisfaction ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... worse than a batsman hurrying out at a furtive trot, as if he were going to pawn his bat. When your turn comes to go in, take care to be just within the regulation two minutes, but school yourself to emerge from the pavilion at a leisurely stride with more than a suspicion of swagger in it. The bat should not be carried as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... with coastlines in the shape of a baseball bat and ball, the two volcanic islands are separated by a three-km-wide channel called The Narrows; on the southern tip of long, baseball bat-shaped Saint Kitts lies the Great Salt Pond; Nevis Peak sits in the center of its almost circular namesake island and its ball shape ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... boy, and once or twice I have seen the man go. There are more men lost in that way than passengers on ocean steamers ever learn of. I have stood looking over the rail on a dark night, when there was a step beside me, and something flew past my head like a big black bat—and then there was a splash! Stokers often go like that. They go mad with the heat, and they slip up on deck and are gone before anybody can stop them, often without being seen or heard. Now and then a passenger will do it, but he generally ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... scarcely anything in nature that is not interesting and in some way useful. Perhaps you will say "How about a bat?" As a matter of fact a bat is one of our best friends because he will spend the whole night catching mosquitoes. But some one will say "he flies into your hair and is covered with a certain kind of disgusting vermin." Did you ever know of a bat flying into any one's ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... was delivered, a chill, rigid silence held the onlookers in its grip. When Trigson, with the field collected round him, almost to be covered with a sheet, stonewalled the most tempting lob, the click of the ball on his bat was an intrusion on the stillness. And always it was followed by a deep breath of relief that sighed round the ring like a faint wind through a plantation of larches. When Bobby scored, the tumult broke out like a crash ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... that man is constructed on the same general type or model as other mammals. All the bones in his skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal. So it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels and internal viscera. The brain, the most important of all the organs, follows the same law, as shewn by Huxley and other anatomists. Bischoff (1. 'Grosshirnwindungen ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... years becomes a bat; this after seven years, a vampire; this after other seven years, a nettle; this after seven years more, a thorn; and this again after seven years is turned into a demon. If a man does not devoutly bow during the repetition of the daily prayer ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Scraggsy. Remember that. It's all right for you to say you're a man of peace and advise me and McGuffey to keep out of the track of trouble, but we know that away down low you're goin' around lookin' for blood, and that once you're up agin the enemy, you never bat an eyelash. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... say not nay, bat that all day It is bothe writ and sayde That womans fayth is as who saythe All utterly decayed; But neutheles, right good wytnes In this case might be layde; That they loue trewe, and contynew, Recorde the Nutbrowne ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... any man I have known; and, let the way be open to you, as little diffidence as any. But in this political mill of ours in England, a man cannot always find the way open to do things. It does not often happen that an English statesman can go in and make a great score off his own bat. But not the less is he bound to play the game and to go to the wicket when he finds that his time ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... there and I am guiltless of that whereof you suspectest me." So he sent for the Kazi Ab Ysuf and acquainted him of the case. The Judge raised his eyes to the ceiling and, seeing a crack therein, said to the Caliph, "O Commander of the Faithful, in very sooth the bat hath seed like that of a man,[FN121] and this is bat's semen." Then he called for a spear and thrust it into the crevice, whereupon down fell the bat. In this manner the Caliph's suspicions were dispelled,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... caves, Bat-like, the gloomy whisper flew; The lisping plash of Paphian waves Bathed every pulse in fiery dew: From Phoebus, on his cloven hill, A shaft of beauty pierced the air, And oaks of gray Dodona still Betrayed the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... wind began to blow, which was still worse for me, since it took me back to dread Charybdis. All night long I was tossed on the waves, and at dawn I drew near to Charybdis. As the monster was swallowing the salt brine, I caught hold of the fig-tree and clung to it like a bat till she should throw up my poor raft. I waited long, but at last the timbers were thrown out of the whirlpool, and I dropped down upon them, and sat on them and rowed with my hands. I floated about on the waters for nine long days, and on the tenth I came to Calypso's island. She welcomed ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... came a flash, a sharp report, a piercing scream as the lithe Mexican girl sprang forth from behind the blanket and hurled herself on Blake, a panther-like leap of the accused man under cover of the flash and smoke, a thwack like the sound of the bat when it meets a new baseball full in the middle, and Loring's fist had landed full on Higgins' jowl and sent him like a log ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... rivers —who will not keep their seats—who ply the bottle, and who will get home by and by and tell how wicked Sodom is; broad-brimmed, silver-braided Mexicans, too, with their copper cheeks and bat's eyes, and their tinkling spurred heels. Yonder, in that quieter section, are the quadroon women in their black lace shawls—and there is Baptiste; and below them are the turbaned black women, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Of the bat kind there is an extraordinary variety: the churi-churi is the smallest species, called vulgarly burong tikus, or the mouse-bird; next to these is the kalalawar; then the kalambit; and the kaluwang (noctilio) is of considerable size; of these I have observed very large flights occasionally ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... only ride it out quietly it 'ud be better," said George in a calm, as we climbed like a bat above them all. "But some skippers will navigate without enough lift. What does that Tad-boat think she is ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... abode of Satan. This was a region of eternal ice and a bitter wind blew on them, so cold and dreadful that Dante was half dead from it and it seemed that his numbed senses could not support life any longer. The wind, he saw, was caused by the bat-like wings of Satan himself—a gigantic and hairy monster, with only the upper half of his body protruding from the icy pit in which he stood. He had three heads, one red, one green and one white and yellow; and in his three ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... care as he noted nautical facts. We may take his paragraph on the wombat as an example. Bass was much interested in the wombats he saw, and with his surgeon's anatomical knowledge gave a description of it which the contemporary historian, Collins, quoted, enunciating the opinion that "Bass's womb-bat seemed to be very oeconomically made"—whatever that may mean. Flinders' description, which must be one of the earliest accounts of the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... and her board were on the bank of the Toucques. She threw a heap of clothes on the ground, rolled up her sleeves and grasped her bat; and her loud pounding could be heard in the neighbouring gardens. The meadows were empty, the breeze wrinkled the stream, at the bottom of which were long grasses that looked like the hair of corpses floating in the water. She restrained her sorrow and ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... dreamers who watch the wheeling flight of Spallanzani's bat, and who think they have found a sixth sense in nature. Such as nature is, her mysteries are terrible enough, her powers mighty enough—that nature which creates us, mocks at us, and kills us—without our seeking to deepen the ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... crooked and stiff. Here, you smash this other ball into the net. Hi! Look out! If you hit it that way you'll knock it over the hotel. Let the ball drop nearer to the ground. Oh, heavens, not on the ground! Well, it's hard to do it from the serve, anyhow. I'll go over to the other court and bat you some easy ones." ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... Masr," Yuhanna laughingly suggested, with a hand on the shoulder of the visionary. But Elias protested vehemently, swearing by Allah that he knew a crocodile when he saw one. The monster in dispute had been no crocodile, as witness its possession of two wings, like the wings of a bat, only fifty times larger, and a voice which could be heard for many miles. There was one blessing, however, about all such creatures; that they had power only over unbaptized people. This last touch pleased the majority of his audience, causing them to praise Allah, and inclining them ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... concerned. He saw a great deal of life in many varieties; like Scott in Liddesdale, "he was making himsel' a' the time." With his cousin R. A. M. Stevenson, Walter Ferrier, Mr. Charles Baxter, and Sir Walter Simpson (a good golfer and not a bad bat), he performed "acts of Libbelism," and discussed all things in the universe. He was wildly gay, and profoundly serious, he had the earnestness of the Covenanter in forming speculations more or less unorthodox. It is needless to dwell on the strain caused by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... extraordinary shapes, whether men or women, beings of this world or of another they could not tell, though they judged them the latter, flew past with wild whoops and piercing cries, flapping the air as if with great leathern bat-like wings, or bestriding black, monstrous, misshapen steeds. Fantastical and grotesque were these objects, yet hideous and appalling. Now and then a red and fiery star would whiz crackling through the air, and then exploding break into numerous pale phosphoric lights, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... have its vent; you will soon sober down again, and then—we shall see. As for you," he continued, with a furtive scowl at Johnson, whose face beamed with gratification, "you have had your day, and, blind bat as you are, you were beginning to see it just for a moment, but this fine speech of yours has thrown you off your guard again. You doubtless think that with a few empty boastful words you have recovered your lost position, but you are mistaken, my good friend, as you will find ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... of the word "batting" for "bowling" here, caused "the Nottingham Giant" to be credited with a novel cricketing performance, to which even he would hardly be equal. The proverbial Irish gun that could "shoot round a corner," would not be "in it" with a GUNN who could "bat against batting!" As a Correspondent (in slightly different ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... "I'm not going to—to turn into a bat and fly away. I'm just a poor devil of a doctor who's gotten himself into one unholy mess." There was no reason, he was thinking, to take out his own misery and despair by shouting at this poor kid. God knew what she'd been through with his irresponsible other self—Forth ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Life lifted up his head. The stars were looking down upon the image, and a bat had alighted upon the forehead, spreading its great wings upon each side. Chemanitou took the bat and held out its whole leathery wings (and ever since the bat, when he rests, lets his body hang down), so that he could try them over the head of the image. He then took the life ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... always look beautiful. If you see me with my face all black, don't be frightened. If you see me flapping wings like bat's wings, as big as the whole sky, don't be afraid. If you hear me raging, you must believe that I am just doing my work. Nay, Diamond, if I change into a serpent or a tiger, you must not let go your hold of me, for it will be I just the same. And ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... road in, an' farder in, Till he came to the chine; An' he road in, an' farder in, Bat never mare was seen. ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... was you, was it, you good-for-nothing boy? I thought it was a bat!" she said, and she broke out crying and ran into the house, and would not mind his father, who was calling after her, ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... "I use," says Ruskin, "in such a question, the test which I have adopted, of the connexion of war with other arts, and I reflect how, as a sculptor, I should feel if I were asked to design a monument for Westminster Abbey, with a carving of a bat at one end and a ball at the other. It may be there remains in me only a savage Gothic prejudice; but I had rather carve it with a shield at one end and ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... Northanton also came; and those of Eurowic and Bokingkeham, of Bed and Notinkeham, Lindesie and Nichole. There came also from the west all, who heard the summons; and very many were to be seen coming from Salebiere and Dorset, from Bat and from Somerset. Many came, too, from about Glocestre, and many from Wirecestre, from Wincestre, Hontesire, and Brichesire; and many more from other counties that we have not named, and cannot indeed recount. All who could bear arms, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... get in at the balls, and hit them away in a gallant style; yet, in this single feat, I think I have seen him excelled; but when he could cut them at the point of the bat he was in his glory; and upon my life, their speed was as ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Account; that as a sacred Plant, those of the Cyrenaic Africa, honour'd the very Figure of it, by stamping it on the Reverse of their [44]Coin; and when they would commend a thing for its worth to the Skies, [Greek: Bat-ou silphion], grew into a Proverb: Battus having been the Founder of the City Cyrene, near which it only grew. 'Tis indeed contested among the Learned Botanosophists, whether this Plant was ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... song for Caliban, The Owl is abroad, the Bat and the Toad, which one might suppose ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... against the roof of the cell and carrying under his wings—like a gigantic bat that is suckling its young—the Seven Deadly Sins, whose grinning heads ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... completely out of the atmosphere of modern writing as the popular ballad. No other form of verse has, therefore, in so great a degree, the charm of freshness. In material, treatment, and spirit, these bat lads are set in sharp contrast with the poetry of the hour. They deal with historical events or incidents, with local traditions, with personal adventure or achievement. They are, almost without exception, entirely objective. ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... declared, "is sufficient. I can assure you that it is a matter of eyesight, not of memory. In the dark I am always as blind as a bat." ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... very rare occasions, be fortunate enough to hear unexpected sounds, such as the rattle of a belted kingfisher, or the croak of a night heron; for these birds linger until every bit of pond or lake is sealed with ice; and when a thaw comes, a lonely bat may surprise us with a short flight through the frosty air, before it ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... with regard to man's place in the universe has been quite clearly and scientifically established by the modern theory of evolution. It appears from that, that you and I are descended from an ape, which in turn is a second-cousin-once-removed, so to speak, of the bat, the spider, and the shark. We are all animals together, slowly passing through different phases of evolution, and man owes his existence entirely to the accidental results of natural selection and survival of the ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... miss me to-night," Al-ice went on. (Di-nah was the cat.) "I hope they'll think to give her her milk at tea-time. Di-nah, my dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are no mice in the air, but you might catch a bat, and that's much like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats?" And here Al-ice must have gone to sleep, for she dreamed that she walked hand in hand with Di-nah, and just as she asked her, "Now, Di-nah, tell me the truth, do you eat bats?" ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... rather sheepishly. "Of course I didn't fly," said he. "No animal can fly but Flitter the Bat. ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... the sign of the Stuffed Owl, down in a basement bat cave of a place and in the dusk of the evening, that they found their man. To Ginsburg's curious eyes he revealed himself as a short, swart person with enormously broad shoulders and with a chimpanzee's arm reach. Look at those arms of his and one knew why he was called Stretchy. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... all things, we went so far as to suppose even that he who created us employed his limitless power in deceiving us in every way, we were conscious nevertheless of being free to abstain from believing what was not in every respect certain and undoubted. Bat that of which we are unable to doubt at such a time is as self- evident and clear as any thing we can ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... Pollnitz listened as a sly bat listens to the merry whistling of an innocent bird, and watches the propitious moment to spring upon her prey. It was an adagio which the king played upon his flute, and he was indeed a master in the art. Slightly trembling, as if in eternal ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... there is a brown mole on the nape of her neck? When she sings it resembles the croak of the crow. It is true that most of the Palace ladies are chosen for anything but beauty, yet she is the most ill-favored. And is it this—this bat-faced lady who is preferred to me! Would I had never been born: Yet even your Majesty's own lips have told me I ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... a single carving of it existed before the close of the fifteenth century. Life they knew, not only in all its varied forms, but as the soul. Sin they knew, and carved not merely in the full shame of the act but in the person of the father of sin, the devil, bat-winged and taloned, hovering over his prey on earth, or driving his victims after death into gaping Hellmouth where his torturers awaited them. But it was only when printing excited men's imaginations, when the first discovery of the ancient classics roused ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... were to happen in your bunch, doubtless when you got to knowing him every one of you would want him for a chum. He was the kind of fellow that real boys like: not a braggart and not a "sissy," but generally when it came to his turn to bat he smashed the ball for a clean hit. Or if he should happen to strike out, he didn't slam the stick to the ground, but with a smile stepped back and turned a handspring and lit on his feet rooting for the next man up. Of course, you know there was not any ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... "That old bat always makes me shudder," said Bianchon in a low voice, indicating Mlle. Michonneau to Vautrin. "I have studied Gall's system, and I am sure she ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... Bird! Lady Bird! fly away home— Good luck if you reach it at last: The owl's come abroad, and the bat's on the roam, Sharp ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... amusements lie? There is a country for you—every man a soldier, every worker an intellect. In England nowadays our young fellows seem to try and find out how little they can do. We live for minimums. We are only happy when we have struck a bat with a ball and it has gone far. We reserve our greatest honors for those who ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... be bad at cricket. You have bought a new bat, perfect in balance; a new pair of pads, white as driven snow; gloves of the very latest design. Do they let you use them? No. After one ball, in the negotiation of which neither your bat, nor your ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... snap you up before you could bat an eye. Is there a girl living that wouldn't? And I'm almost an old maid. Don't forget that. I'm to gather rosebuds while I may, because time's flying ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... actually bear the names of birds. There is a halting victualler, who styles himself the partridge; Menippus calls himself the swallow; Opontius the one-eyed crow; Philocles the lark; Theogenes the fox-goose; Lycurgus the ibis; Chaerephon the bat; Syracosius the magpie; Midias the quail;[325] indeed he looks like a quail that has been hit heavily over the head. Out of love for the birds they repeat all the songs which concern the swallow, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... married Harriett, daughter of James Pownall, of Wilmslow) gave up their time almost entirely to the invention of paper machinery. This invention was finished in 18O7, [Footnote: Dict. Nat. Biog. Vol. XX.] and then misfortune fell upon them: the misfortune that so often descends like the "black bat night" upon those who have spent all their money, thought, and labour on the effort to launch their self-designed ship upon ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... I am cross and cannot sleep, I begin an angry contest with the opinions I object to. Into the room they flop, those bat-like monsters of Wrong-Belief and Darkness; and though they glare at me with the daylight faces of bullying opponents, and their voices are the voices that often shout me down in argument, yet, in these nocturnal ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... was all in place. A trumpet and a gun that had made vain and perilous efforts to join the bat in the stocking leaned against the bed in expectant attitudes. A picture-book with a pink Bengal tiger and a green bear on the cover peeped over the pillow, and the bedposts and rail were festooned with candy and marbles in bags. An express-wagon with ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... a fair field, a singleminded, one-eyed umpire, and a score bulletin barren of goose-eggs if they earn it—and I judge they will and hope they will. Mr. James Whitcomb Chang Riley will now go to the bat. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... your base like that. Always keep a cool head. Look at me. If the ghost of my own dad was to pop out of that lamp chimbley there, noose and all, I wouldn't bat ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... scene the Boss never would fill in just as it came off the bat, but I managed to piece out that the brigandess, sizing us up for a couple of pikers, reckoned that we wouldn't pan out much cash, and that the Boss might be used some rough by the gang. That prospect not setting well on her mind, she rolls out the ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... to say right here I never did like brown hair—is Joy Blythe, Bill Derr's girl. Of course, Bill's a good feller and all that, and if he likes that style of beauty it ain't anything against him. But that other girl now. Swing, you purblind bat, when it comes to looks, she lays all over Joy Blythe like four aces over ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... to be made stronger, or it is to perish; and the sooner every man's position is defined, the better. If you are opposed to the war, say so, and step over to Secession, but do not falter and equivocate, croak and grumble, and play the bat of the fable. The manly, good, old-fashioned Democrats, at least, are above this, and are rapidly dividing from the copperheads. The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... presently. [This anecdote is thus confirmed in Chief Justice Treby's NOTES TO DYER'S REPORTS, FOLIO EDITION, p.188. b. "Richardson, Ch. Just. de C. Banc. al Assises at Salisbury, in summer 1631, fuit assault per prisoner la condemne pur felony; que puis son condemnation ject un brick-bat a le dit Justice, qui narrowly mist; et pur ceo immediately fuit indictment drawn, per Noy, [The Attorney-General.] eavers le prisoner, et son dexter manus ampute, and fix at gibbet, sur que luy meme immediatement ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... not, Adela," said Miss Lestrange, who, indeed, looked as charming as any Kitty Olive could ever have done. "Then there's another thing: fancy my having to sing a duet with Mr. Moore! It's all very well for you to sing a song off your own bat—" ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... leader and hunted prey of New York's underworld. From Now On is the unexpected story of a man after he comes out of prison; and Jimmie Dale, Fifth Avenue clubman, was, to Clancy, Smarlinghue the dope fiend; to the gang, Larry the Bat, stool pigeon; but to Headquarters—the ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... sweater, wrecked and weather-worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the "serviceable" brand. Dust, clinging to the moisture induced by free exercise, darkened wide areas of his face. "Smoky" carried a baseball bat, and a league ball that advertised itself in the rotundity of his trousers pocket. Haywood stopped and ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... by so many, and never a wife till a widow—fame, the fair daughter of fuss and caprice, may yet take the phantom of bold Robin Lyth by the right hand, and lead it to a pedestal almost as lofty as Robin Hood's, or she may let it vanish like a bat across Lethe—a thing not ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... beauty, wiping away the really starting tears with her white lace cloak. "I told you the elegant Constantine was the lord of my heart; and you have seduced him from me! Till you came, he was so respectful, so tender, so devoted! Bat I am rightly used! I ought to have carried my secret ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... have it that way. I suppose you'd use curved stays. Like a quarter barrel-hoop.... I guess it would be better to try to make a Chanute glider—just a plain pair of sup'rimposed planes, instead of one all combobulated like a bat's wings, like Lilienthal's glider was.... Or we could try some experiments with paper models——Oh no! Thunder! Let's make ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the eighty arches of entrance! And now, as we picked our way carefully through the decayed passages, or cautiously ascended some moldering flight of steps, or stood by the lonely walls—ourselves silent, and, for a wonder, the guide silent, too—there was no sound here but of the bat, and none came from without but the roll of a distant carriage, or the convent bell from the summit ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... extant; and the same writer reproduces as a frontispiece to his "opusculum" an old engraving bearing date 1743, in which the wicket appears as a skeleton hurdle about two feet wide by one foot high, while the bat is the Saxon crec or crooked stick, with which the game was originally played, and from which the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... goin' to scrap wid anybody," he said to Mr. Carstairs, "I'd as lief tie meself up wid dumb-bells as take to carry all this stuff on me. A man wid a baseball bat and swimmin' tights on could dance all around youse and knock spots out of one of these things. The other lad wouldn't be in it. Why, before he could lift his legs or get his hands up you cud hit him on his helmet, and he ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... in first, and Charlie himself went to the bat. The pitcher was Godfrey. He was really a fair pitcher, and considered himself very superior. Charlie finally succeeded in hitting the ball, but rather feebly, and narrowly escaped losing his first base. ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... mysterious curtain hung across the night. He passed round the back into the twilight of a wide yard, cobbled and partially grass-grown, vaguely flanked by the shadowy outlines of long, low farm-buildings. All was wrapped in darkness: somewhere overhead a bat fluttered, darting its ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... we are favoured with the portrait of a young gentleman upon a half-holiday—and, equipped with cricket means, his dexter-hand grasps his favourite bat, whilst the left arm gracefully encircles a hat, in which is seductively shown a genuine "Duke." The sentiment of this picture is unparalleled, and to the young hero of any parish eleven is given a stern expression of Lord's Marylebone ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... difference consisting chiefly in the degrees of elongation of the stomach and the sharpness of the distal curvature. In other cases the cardiac portion may be prolonged into a caecal sac, a condition most highly differentiated in the blood-sucking bat, Desmodeus, where it is longer than the entire length of the body. There are two cardiac extensions in the hippopotamus and in the peccary. In many other mammals one, two or three protrusions of the cardiac ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the implement. One may illustrate by a simple comparison. Suppose there is a need to dig a hole and that there is no spade available, a Fabian with Mr. Webb's gifts becomes invaluable. He seizes upon a broken old cricket-bat, let us say, uses it with admirable wit and skill, and presto! there is the hole made and the moral taught that one need not always wait for spades before digging holes. It is a lesson that Socialism stood in need of, and which henceforth it will always bear in mind. But suppose we want ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells |
