"Beak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strong bills can drill a hole in a man's skull in a moment. We shouted at the top of our voices, but the man could not hear us. Fortunately he saw the bird coming, and whipping off his shoe he held it in his hand to defend himself. Down swooped the albatross, when seizing the shoe in its beak off it flew again, and did not drop it for a minute or more. A boat was lowered, and the man picked up not much the worse; and the surgeon of the ship, who had got his rifle ready, shot the same albatross some minutes after. It measured, I mind, fourteen feet and a few inches from tip to ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... petrel wheeled somewhere between deepening carmine and paling blue, and it took my thoughts off at an earthy tangent. I thanked God there were no big sea-birds in these latitudes; no molly-hawks, no albatrosses, no Cape-hens. I thought of an albatross that I had caught going out. Its beak and talons were at the bottom with the charred remains of the Lady Jermyn. But I could see them still, could feel them shrewdly in my mind's flesh; and so to the old superstition, strangely justified by my case; and so to the poem which I, with ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Turky Bustard, is of the size and shape of a Turky-cock; his head is covered with red flesh, and his plumage is black: he has a hooked beak, but his toes are armed with very small talons, and are therefore very improper for seizing live game, which indeed he does not chuse to attack, as his want of agility prevents him from darting upon it with the rapidity of a bird of prey. Accordingly he lives only upon the dead beasts that he ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... hope,—the illusion, ridiculous or sublime, which kept her going,—that they would have stamped out on the instant, with the whole Garnet pack behind them to make extinction sure. All, except, perhaps, Miletus Poppas. He was a vulture of the vulture race, and he had the beak of one. But I always felt that if ever he had her thus at his mercy,—if ever he came upon the softness that was hidden under so much hardness, the warm credulity under a life so dated and scheduled and "reported" and generally exposed,—he would ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... indigo; feathers heightened by brown ochre and white; beak and claws saffron, shaded with bistre; eyes vermilion, heightened with masticot ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... flies. He leaves the gates, he leaves the wall behind: Achilles follows like the winged wind. Thus at the panting dove a falcon flies (The swiftest racer of the liquid skies), Just when he holds, or thinks he holds his prey, Obliquely wheeling through the aerial way, With open beak and shrilling cries he springs, And aims his claws, and shoots upon his wings: No less fore-right* the rapid chase they held, One urged by fury, one by fear impell'd: Now circling round the walls their ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... on my rugs in the shade. Presently I had some visitors in a flock of urracas, or magpies, as they are called in the vernacular, or Guira cuckoos; a graceful, loquacious bird resembling a magpie, only with a longer tail and a bold, red beak. These ill-mannered birds skulked about in the branches over me all the time I remained in the wood, scolding me so incessantly in their intolerably loud, angry, rattling notes, varied occasionally with ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... swallow stopt as he hunted the bee, The snake slipt under a spray; The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak, And stared, with his foot on the prey; And the nightingale thought, 'I have sung many songs, But never a one so gay; For he sings of what the world will be When the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... inches in height. At that moment some rays of the setting sun broke through the gray clouds and shone full upon it, lighting up the defiant scalp lock interwoven with the brilliant red feather, the eagle face with the curved Roman beak, and the mighty shoulders and chest of red bronze. It was a genuine king of the wilderness, none other than the mighty Timmendiquas himself, the great White Lightning ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... attic window, and looked down into the areas, remaining in this position a considerable time. Now it has taken a flight, and alighted on the roof of this house, directly over the window at which I sit, so that I can look up and see its head and beak, and the tips of its claws. The roofs of the low out-houses are black with moisture; the gutters are full of water, and there is a little puddle where there is a place for it in the hollow of a board. On ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prejudice could find, whether that prejudice was inspired by a lofty zeal for what it conceived to be the highest interests of humanity, or by a crafty policy which saw in the new doctrine a blow to the coming renewed supremacy of the Church. To us, now, it may seem that Huxley had "sharpened his beak and claws" with the spirit of a gladiator rather than with that of the mere defender of a scientific doctrine; but a very short study of contemporary literature will convince anyone that for a time the defenders ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... farmyard. In less than five minutes the huge bird was encompassed in a cloud of flying sand, and working her long neck, great thick legs, and outspread toes exactly as an ordinary fowl. Then, having thoroughly covered herself with sand from beak to tail, she rose, shook herself violently, and stalked away up the bank again, where her companion soon followed her, and I lost sight of the pair as they strode through the thick ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... no regular diploma—has mastered the simpler elements of Materia Medica, and does in reality effect cures. I class him among what are popularly known as humbugs, however, for he is a pretender to more wisdom than he possesses. It was to me a strange and suggestive scene—the bald, beak-nosed, coal-eyed charlatan, standing in the market-place, so celebrated in history, peering through his gold spectacles at the upturned faces below him, while the bony skeleton at his side swayed in the wind, and the grinning skulls below, made grotesque faces, as if laughing ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... quite dead; the other struggled violently as Robin seized it by the neck, and tried to dart its beak at him, very nearly upsetting the canoe. As soon as Martin and I had hauled the other bird on board, we went to his assistance, Martin holding the poor bird tight round the neck till its struggles ceased, when we also ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... broad yellow collar; the wings were green, changing to violet towards the edges, and while the feathers on its thighs were of a lovely azure, those of the tail were scarlet, banded with black and tipped with yellow. Its beak which by its shape showed that the bird was a species of parrot, was ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... and fifty miles in a day and a night. These boats were about one hundred and twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide. They could be rowed in shallow water, but were not high enough to ride heavy seas safely. They had a sharp beak, which, driven against an enemy's ship, would break in its sides. The Greek grain ships and freight boats were heavier and more capable of ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... cock may be known by his muscular carriage, his red comb, a beak short, strong and sharp, eyes tawny or black, wattles a whitish red, neck spotted or tinged with gold, the second joint of his legs well covered with feathers, short legs long spurs, a heavy tail, and profuse feathers, also by ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... began to retreat. Instantly Ba-ree's indecision had flown to the four winds. With one sharp excited yelp he flew at the defiant bird. For a few moments there was a thrilling race, and Ba-ree's sharp little teeth buried themselves in the jay's feathers. Swift as a flash the bird's beak began to strike. The jay was the king of the smaller birds. In nesting season it killed the brush sparrows, the mild-eyed moose-birds, and the tree-sappers. Again and again it struck Ba-ree with its powerful beak, but the son of Kazan had now reached ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... dying. His face was quite blue. After a few seconds of immobility, he tried to breathe: he put out his lips, opened his poor mouth, like a little bird opening its beak to get a last mouthful of air. And ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... is staying with me. Yesterday evening I went out with him shooting. He shot at a snipe; the bird, shot in the wing, fell into a pool. I picked it up: a long beak, big black eyes, and beautiful plumage. It looked at me with surprise. What was I to do with it? Levitan scowled, shut his eyes, and begged me, with a quiver in his voice: "My dear fellow, hit him on the head with the butt-end ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... front in order to win a battle. The woman of fashion ceases to be a woman; she is neither mother, nor wife, nor lover. She is, medically speaking, sex in the brain. And your Marquise, too, has all the characteristics of her monstrosity, the beak of a bird of prey, the clear, cold eye, the gentle voice—she is as polished as the steel of a machine, she touches everything ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... entrance. All parliamentary bodies are swayed by a few persons—the working members are the exception. The horse-racing and cockfighting contingent in the House of Commons is well represented; the blear eyes, the poddy pudge, the bulbous beak—all these are in evidence. If one man out of ten knows what is going on, it is well; and this is equally true of Washington, for our representatives do ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... had but little opportunity of observing him, for he had ridden all the way wrapped up in his great common soldier's cloak with its big collar turned up until it obscured every feature but his eyes and the mere point of a beak-like nose. Now, as he lay in an attitude of exhaustion, I went to assist him to a position of more comfort. I took the hook-and-eye which fastened the collar of the cloak and drew them apart; and such a countenance revealed itself ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... and that I can. 'Twas a quist a-cooing in the tree one time—and then—she did recollect herself and did sharpen up her tongue and 'twas another sort of bird what could drive its beak into the flesh of ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... now, there was great war between Lir of Sidhe Fionnachaidh and Ilbrec of Ess Ruadh. There used a bird with an iron beak and a tail of fire to come every evening to a golden window of Ilbrec's house, and there he would shake himself till he would not leave sword on pillow, or shield on peg, or spear in rack, but they would come down on the heads of the people of the house; and whatever they ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... a few seeds and began to coax the bird, until it, in point of fact, performed various tricks, on the stage, clasping in its beak a mask ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... evening from an hole under the garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident the creature languished ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... of his ship extricated himself with such address as to get clear, though only by a moment. From the velocity of their motion they struck against each other with such violence that they were both excessively injured by the shock; the beak, indeed, of one of them being broken off, the whole ship was ready to founder, which circumstance being observed, the ships of Brutus's fleet, which were nearest that station, attack them when in this disorder ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... quiet below. A woodpecker on a fir tree raps lightly and flies farther on and vanishes; it has hidden, but does not cease to tap with its beak, like a child when it has hidden and wishes to be sought for. Nearer sits a squirrel, holding a nut in its paws and gnawing it; its tail hangs over its eyes like the plume over a cuirassier's helmet: even though thus protected, it keeps glancing about; ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... of the bones are thickened, and the soft tissues of the terminal segments of the digits hypertrophied. The fingers come to resemble drum-sticks, and the thumb the clapper of a bell. The nails are convex, and incurved at their free ends, suggesting a resemblance to the beak of a parrot. There is also enlargement of the lower ends of the bones of the forearm and leg, and effusion into the wrist and ankle-joints. Skiagrams of the hands and feet show a deposit of new bone along the shafts of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... said the youth, 'and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet; Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak— Pray how did you manage ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... firing high explosive shells. They fired the guns backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and rammed with the beak. That was the theory, you know, but they had never been fought. No one could tell exactly what was going to happen. And meanwhile I suppose it was very fine to go whirling through the air like a flight of ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the device of this ancient property, which was formerly called "Schwanstein", is represented in every possible manner and material in the adornment of the castle. Swans are pictured upon the armorial bearings at the entrance-gate; a bronze swan spouts water from its uplifted beak in the garden fountain; while below, upon the two lakes that enclose the park, groups of living swans are floating about, as if to testify to the abiding characteristics of the place. Within the building not only is the swan a prominent figure in the frescoed story, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... QUESTION.—Why does a toper—especially when "before the beak"—always say that he was "in drink," when he evidently means that the drink was in him? The only soaker on record who could rightly be said to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... of her standard, sprinkled by mendicants with holy water, she had had a dove painted, holding in its beak a scroll, whereon were written the words "in the name of the King of Heaven."[1176] These were the armorial bearings she had received from her Council. The emblem and the device seemed appropriate to her, since she proclaimed that God had sent her, and since ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... strange capers. The winged lion of Venice looked as if trying to fly away home; the Chinese dragon appeared to brandish his forked tail as he clawed at the Burmese peacock; the double-headed eagle of Russia pecked at the Turkish crescent with one beak, while the other seemed to be screaming to the English royal beast, "Come on and lend a paw." In the hurry of hoisting the Siamese elephant got turned upside down, and now danced gayly on his head, with the stars and stripes waving proudly over him. A green flag with ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... chase he was musing one day sorrowfully over his disappointed hopes, ashamed to go back to his village, to which he had never returned without success before, when, suddenly, a man of majestic presence stood before him. His nose was like the beak of an eagle, and his eyes resembled fires in a dark night. Strange feathers, of brilliant colors, were woven into his scalp-lock; a magnificent robe of skins depended from his shoulders; and in his hand he held a long spear, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... she—or, at least, like her—her full face displayed, her bosom uncovered, with her hair hanging loose, and with a purse of red velvet in her hands, while behind her a peacock leaned his beak over her shoulder, covering the wall with his immense plumage in ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... mouth parts prolonged into a sharp beak with which they puncture the skin or bark, instead of chewing the leaves, as do beetles. Flies, gnats, and other similar insects do not usually injure vegetation so much as do some other classes of insects, the principal damage being done to fruits; but they have been found to be the cause of ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... high-road, while horses, coachman, and carriage flew past in wild career. The lark rose up carolling from the field, twittering her morning lay over the coffin, and presently perched upon it, picking with her beak at the straw covering, as though she would tear it up. The lark rose up again, singing gaily, and I withdrew ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the hunters for its whelps? For universally the love of animals for their offspring makes timid ones bold, and lazy ones energetic, and greedy ones unselfish. And so the bird in Homer, feeding its young "with its beak, with whatever it has captured, even though it goes ill with itself,"[50] nourishes its young at the cost of its own hunger, and when the food is near its maw abstains from it, and holds it tightly ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... row a goddess sits in the rain: her head is prolonged into that of a bird, holding a fish in its beak. The central picture shows Chac in his boat ferrying a woman across the water from the East. The third illustration depicts the familiar conflict between ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... plant, and whid no more of that [19] Budg a beak the crackmas & tip lowr with thy prat [20] If treyning thou dost feare, thou ner wilt foist a Ian, [21] Then mill, and wap and treine for me, [22] A gere ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... I shrieked, upstarting: "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... bare twig, far from the ground, feeling safer at that giddy height than nearer earth, preening pinions, polishing beak and uttering the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... untruthfully:—"Now, young hobstacle, clear out o' this! Boys ain't allowed on bridges;" and in another that of Michael Ragstroar, who said, "Don't you let the Company see you carryin' off their property. They'll rip you open as soon as look at you. You'll be took afore the Beak." Dave was not yet old enough to see what a very perverted view of legal process these words contained, but his blue eyes looked mistrustfully at the speaker as he watched him pass up the street towards the Wheatsheaf, swinging a ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... report concerning her uncle's health-"I met seven—there were neither more nor less; for seven is the best of numbers—seven snow-white doves, which all flew swiftly towards the right. The fairest of all came first, bearing in its beak a little basket which contained the power that will keep Antony's son away from us. Don't look at me in such amazement, you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that there was a horny beak, like a parrot's, in the mouth, and that on the under side of the head was ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... him now in the green leaves, but where the sky was clear he saw a sudden, dark shadow against the blue. He sprang up in an instant and raised his rifle. But it was too late for the eagle to stop. The heavy figure with the tearing beak and claws swooped downward, and there was silence and terror among the green leaves. But before the eagle could clutch or rend, Henry's rifle spoke with unerring aim, and the body fell to ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "Keep that for the beak," said the policeman; "he is sure to believe it. Come, my bloke. I knew who was my bird the moment I clapped eyes on the two. 'Tain't his first job, gents, you take my word. We shall find his photo in some jail or other in time for ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... the heifer dead and bleeding fresh And sees fast by a butcher with an axe But will suspect 't was he that made the slaughter? Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest But may imagine how the bird was dead, Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak? Even so suspicious is ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... turned out to be a sort of glorified Dutch sea-going house-boat) that she was fired with sudden enthusiasm for our cruise. And the thing really is a delectable craft—stout, with a square-shouldered bow, and a high, perky nose of brass, standing up in the air as one sees the beak of a duck sometimes, half-sunk among its feathers and pointing upward. "Waterspin" (which means "water-spider") is the creature's name, and she is a brilliant emerald, lined and painted round her windows with an equally brilliant scarlet. This bold scheme of color would be no less than shocking ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... presence of an overlapping premaxillary beak bearing teeth that are slanted posteriorly requires that the mandible be drawn back in order to be depressed. Conversely, during closure, the jaw must be pulled forward to complete full adduction. The quadrate-articular ...
— The Adductor Muscles of the Jaw In Some Primitive Reptiles • Richard C. Fox
... philosophers and rulers. As you are a man of pleasure, you will not have forgotten how indiscriminate lovers are in their attachments; they love all, and turn blemishes into beauties. The snub-nosed youth is said to have a winning grace; the beak of another has a royal look; the featureless are faultless; the dark are manly, the fair angels; the sickly have a new term of endearment invented expressly for them, which is 'honey-pale.' Lovers ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the youth, "and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet: Yet you eat all the goose, with the bones and the beak— Pray, how did you manage ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... good points," says Roth, "such as the blending of the two bell forms into the common handle, the happy tapering of the ornamentation into the Normian bird's beak; the increasing size of the side cups as they rise to correspond to the enlarged opening of the bell form; the truthfulness to nature in an essential like the bust of the Negro, all of which betoken a fair amount of artistic feeling. The craftsman ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Boulevards suddenly unveiled this spirit. They saw it such as it really was: the ridiculous nicknames "Big-beak," "Badinguet," vanished; they saw the bandit, they saw the true contraffatto ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... I; 'I saw them all at the council in the Emperor's tent. There is Ney with the red head. And there is Lefebvre with his singular mouth, and Bernadotte with the beak of ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... king was William III.?" inquired another examiner. "He had an aquiline nose, sir," said a boy. "What does that mean?" said the examiner. "It means," answered the boy, "that William III.'s nose was turned up at the point like the beak of an eagle!" "What right had William to the English throne?" continued the examiner, changing his ground. "No right under heaven," was the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... day. This bird men see often flying in those countries; and he is not much more than an eagle. And he hath a crest of feathers upon his head greater than the peacock hath. And his neck is yellow, after the color of an orial, that is a stone well shining. And his beak is colored blue, and his wings are of purple color, and his tail is yellow and red. And he is a full fair bird to look upon against the sun; for he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... a duck quacked to them, "You thieving folks, who bade you go to my nut-hill? Well, you shall suffer for it!" and ran with open beak at the cock. But the cock also was not idle, and fell boldly on the duck, and at last wounded her so with his spurs that she also begged for mercy, and willingly let herself be harnessed to the carriage as a punishment. The ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... that could be seen of his body—legs, arms and chest—was as hairy as the skin of an ape; his hands and feet were crooked, like the claws of a tiger. As to his visage, nothing more fantastic and frightful could be imagined. Amid a thick, bristling beard, a nose like an owl's beak and a mouth whose corners were drawn by a wild-beast-like rictus were just discernible. The eyes were half hidden by his thick, bushy, curly hair. Each curl ended in a spiral, pointed and twisted like a gimlet, and on peering ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... perches on the lower boughs of the trees, and fishes in the ponds. A small-winged woodpecker, and a large red-headed species, climb up and down the trees in sequestered places, and a thrush with a yellow beak and black head utters a sweet note among the bamboo groves and thickets; while owls, falcons, eagles and other ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... nobles was sometimes seen at Christmas and other festive seasons a peacock pie, but so costly was the dish that it was only the very wealthy who could face such extravagance. At one end of the pie the peacock's head, in all its plumage and with beak richly gilt, appeared above the crust, while at the other end the tail with feathers outspread made a brave show. The dish, however, was regarded more in the light of a superb ornament to the table, for it was ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... petted bird has a crooked beak And eyes like live coals set in its head, A gray breast dappled with glowing red— DABBLED—not dappled, I should have said, From a fancy it has of which I ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... in the Zoo To a white cockatoo: "Your beak is uncommonly strong!" Said the white cockatoo To the ape in the Zoo, "And your tail is ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... more pronounced colours than female robins. The beak is yellower, the breast is brighter, the back and the top of the head are darker. Robins both run and hop. The sense of sight of the robin is very acute, but its sense of hearing is even more keen. The bird may be observed turning its head ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... too perfect for truth of nature. Hence his countenance, swarthy and strongly marked with the Italian origin indicated by his name, had an expression of singular rigidity, to which his features, now become angular, his piercing glance, and his nose like the beak of a bird of prey, did not afford ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... seemed somewhat undecided as to what to do. Like the rest of her class she was fitted at the bow with a powerful beak or ram, just level with the surface of the water, the office of which was to pierce an enemy's ship about the water-line and so cause such a serious leak as to effectually distract the attention of the defenders. But in the present case there appeared to be some hesitation ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... captured in the royal chase, near the Prado, the king (Philip III.) gave orders to Pantoja to paint its likeness, which he did with such truthfulness that the royal bird, on seeing it, mistook it for a real eagle, and attacked the picture with such impetuosity that he tore it in pieces with his beak and talons before they could secure him. The indignant bird was then tied more carefully, and the portrait ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... towards the poor, hospitable creature who presented it. Still I hesitated, till he said, "Take it, Miss, and a thousand welcomes,—take it, agrah, from poor Pat." I took it with infinite delight; and holding it in my claws, and peeling it with my beak, began to mutter "Poor Pat! poor Pat!" "Oh, musha, musha! oh, by the powers!" He cried, "but that's a great bird, any how—just like a Christian—look here, boys." A crowd now gathered round my cage, and several exclamations, which recalled my old friends of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... them well, let them to their Kennel, and wash their Feet with Beer and Butter, or some such thing, and pick and search their Cleys, for Thorns, Stubs, or the like: If it is in Winter, let a Fire be made, and let them beak and stretch themselves for an hour or so at the fire, and suffer them to lick, pick, and trim themselves; hereby to prevent the Diseases incident to them, upon sudden Cooling, as the Mange, Itch, ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... what his crime? Or what ill planet crossed his prime? Heart too soft and will too weak To front the fate that crouches near,— Dove beneath the vulture's beak;— Will song dissuade the thirsty spear? Dragged from his mother's arms and breast, Displaced, disfurnished here, His wistful toil to do his best Chilled by a ribald jeer. Great men in the Senate sate, Sage and hero, side by side, Building for their sons the State, Which ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... they Left, the Lych to devour, The Sallow kite and the Swart raven, Horny of beak,— and Him, the dusk-coated, The white-afted Erne, the corse to Enjoy, The Greedy war-hawk, and that Grey beast, The Wolf of the Wood. No such Woeful slaughter Aye on this Island Ever hath been, By edge of the Sword, as book Sayeth, Writers ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... cannot send the goat away." Then an old man tried his luck, with no better success. At last a little bird came by and promised for three bushels of millet to drive the goat away. When the goat made its usual declaration, the little bird replied: "And I with my beak will peck your brains out." The goat was frightened and ran away, and the boy had to pay the little ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... plentiful, and I quickly discovered that they might also aptly be termed limpet-pickers, for they seemed to take these shell fish as their staple food. The modus operandi of feeding is to pounce down upon a rock which the receding tide has left bare, and with a single sharp blow with its beak, detach a limpet, and turning it mouth upward, pick out the fish at its leisure. If it failed to detach the limpet at once it would go on to another, knowing that when once disturbed the limpet requires great force to detach it. Oysters lie in deep waters where they ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... Cray-fish. ASTACUS QUINQUE-CARINATUS, t. 3. f. 3.—Carapace smooth, rather convex, and with three keels above; the beak, longly produced, ending in a spine, simple on the side and produced into a keel on each side behind; the central caudal lobe rather narrow, indistinctly divided in half, and like the other lobes flexile at the end, the lateral lobes with a central keel ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... which are lower in the scale than mammals, pass through a stage in which they resemble mammals in certain respects much more than they do when adult, for in an embryonic condition they agree with mammals in having no feathers, no air sacs, no pneumatic sacs in the bones, no beak. Their brain also resembles that of mammals more in an earlier stage than it does later. So, too, myriapods and hydrachnids have at birth three pairs of feet, and resemble at this stage adult insects, which form a ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... on his beak, The airy assassin disarming, Unspurred him, and rendered him weak, By blunting ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... lookout for tricks. I am told that a live albatross standing on the deck of the ship is a very handsome bird. His back is white, his wings are brown, he has a fine head, carries himself with great dignity, and has a grand eye and countenance. The bird has a pink beak and pretty streaks of a rose color on the cheeks. After death these colors disappear, and are not to be seen in the stuffed specimens such as are found in museums. A good-sized albatross weighs about twenty pounds, though, as before stated, he looks ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the speaker and looked full upon the beak nose, cleft cheek and bristling red moustache of an old friend. "Good Lord, The Beachcomber!" I breathed. He started, peered at me and growled, "Captain Dawnay-Devenish, if it's all the same ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... with three daughters peered alternately into the guide book, and out of the loophole in the awning, in evident terror lest something they ought to see should slip by them. Escaping from the jam, we made our way to the bow, carrying stools, umbrellas, and books, and there, on the very beak of all things, we had a fine view. Duly and dutifully we admired Bingen, Cob-lentz, Ehrenbreitstein, Bonn, Drachenfels, and all the other celebrities, and read Childe Harold on the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... attempt at self-justification repeated that she was a holy terror, and sank his pick into her grave up to the handle. At that moment a raven, which had silently settled upon a branch of the blasted tree above his head, solemnly snapped its beak and uttered its mind about the matter ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... periods. One pet toad is mentioned by a Mr. Arscott as having attained, to his knowledge, the age of thirty-six years; and a greater age still might have been recorded of this specimen, but for the untoward treatment it sustained at the hands, or rather beak, of a tame raven. In all probability it may be safely assumed that, when the conditions of life are favorable, these creatures may attain a highly venerable age—regarding the lapse of time from a purely human and interested ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... sea, and again over the sea; thou shalt know grief and hardship and losses, and the dove shall be driven from its nest. And the dove's heart shall become like the eagle's, that flies alone, and fleshes her beak in the slain. Beat on, though the poor wings be bruised by the tempest, and the breast be sore, and the heart sink; beat on against the wind, and seek no shelter till thou find thy resting-place at last. The time will ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... at his right hand was an immense bird, whose body seemed almost as big as that of a horse. Its wide-open, curving beak was set with rows of pointed teeth, and the talons held against its breast and turned threateningly outward were more powerful and dreadful ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... you should go to the Zoo. It is a curious creature, with its great beak ending in a hook. . . . It eats all day long. . . . Well, Mademoiselle Artemise, etc. . ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... would speak of him as the Red Boatman. But he could not be depended on, for he was often absent. His boat was of a curious shape, not like any other boat seen on the Arun. Its prow was curved like a bird's beak. And when folk wished to go across to the Amberley flats that lie under the splendid shell which was once a castle, Harding would carry them, if he was there and neither too busy nor too surly. And when they asked the fee he ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... institution was a brisk, nervous sort of person, a shrewd fellow, and given to much flourishing with a pen, which was to him much mightier than any sword. He could whirl off a scroll-winged eagle on a blank sheet of foolscap, in a twinkling—a royal bird, with a banner in his beak, on which was inscribed "Go to —— college," and which the king of birds was bearing towards the sun for advertising purposes. He could also add a column of figures with wonderful rapidity, and occasional accuracy! He was a believer in lightning methods and processes ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... a lightning-like movement, it turned, for the fraction of a second, toward us, and was instantly averted again. It made my nerves creep to look at it. The nose was immense, resembling a huge curved beak, and the eyes, as black and glittering as jet, were roofed with shaggy brows, and seemed capable of ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... cautiously and see an animal about the size of a large cat, with bright black and white markings, lying harmlessly on a pile of harness. It has no sting, no formidable claws or beak, and yet it is able to keep any number of men from disturbing it while it chooses to lie on their possessions. No god could receive more respect from his believers. It is after tea-time when you, creeping to report, ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... he had been allowed to march about for many years, unreproved, in Aunt Katharine's stable-yard. Maisie had been very much afraid of him in the days when she wore socks, for he had a way of digging at her little bare legs with his cruel beak whenever he could get near her. She was not frightened of him now that she was older, especially when Dennis was with her, but still she did not trust him, and took care this morning not to cross his path on her way to ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... then we had the blue-winged teal, a maroon-red duck which ranges from Patagonia to California; the ringed teal, with salmon-coloured breast and velvet-black collar; the Brazilian teal, a lovely olive-brown and velvet-black duck, with crimson beak and legs. There were two pintails, one of which was the most abundant species in the country; also a widgeon, a lake duck, a shoveller duck, with red plumage, grey head and neck, and blue wings; and two species of the long-legged whistling or tree duck. Another common species was the rosy-billed ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... walks and breathes His active body, and in fury wreathes His comely crest, and often with a sound, He whets his angry beak upon the ground. This done, they meet, not like that coward breed Of Aesop; these can better fight than feed: They scorn the dunghill; 'tis their only prize TO DIG FOR PEARLS ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Bearing an eagle's nest: and thro' the tree Rush'd ever a rainy wind, and thro' the wind Pierced ever a child's cry: and crag and tree Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest, This ruby necklace thrice around her neck, And all unscarr'd from beak or talon, brought A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying took, Then gave it to his Queen to rear: the Queen But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms Received, and after loved it tenderly, And named it Nestling; so forgot herself A moment, and her cares; till that young life Being smitten in mid-heaven ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... turkey caught them up at last, And read them both a lecture; And how he served them with his beak, ...
— Naughty Puppies • Anonymous
... disposed. Before entering I looked above the door, and perceived that the double eagles carved there are reversed. Instead of having body to body, and wings and beaks pointed outwards, as in the arms of Austria and Russia, the bodies are separated, and beak looks inward to beak. ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... well armed for battle and plunder. The beak is powerful, and bent like a hook, with edges as sharp as a knife. The feet are furnished with four terrible toes, which have long and sharp nails, called talons. The eyes are piercing, and ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... jet black, its curving legs, three to a side, chrome yellow. The round head ended in a sharp beak and it had large, many-faceted eyes. The wings, which lazily tested the air, were black and touched ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... forth beside the snake's body, and turned it over with his beak. Finally he spread his wings and began to ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... snob (somewhere he defends the snob in an essay): rich food ("half-mourning" [artichoke hearts and truffles], "filet of reindeer," a cygnet in its plumage bearing an orchid in its beak, "heron's eggs whipped with wine into an amber foam," "mashed grasshoppers baked in saffron"), rich clothes, rich people interest him. There is no poverty in his books. His creatures do not toil. They cut coupons ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... had taken me in hand, and went on asking question after question; the more we parleyed the less we understood each other, until at last we both grew angry, and I actually thought the Signor would have liked to peck me with his hooked beak, until the maids, who had been listening to our confusion of tongues, laughed heartily at us. I put down my knife and fork and went out of doors; for in this strange land I, with my German tongue, seemed to have sunk down fathoms deep into the sea, where all sorts of unfamiliar, crawling creatures ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... central tower without transepts. A small S. chantry projects from the nave. Features to be noted are: (1) the Norm, doorway mentioned above, a little to the right of main entrance. The capitals are richly carved, and support an arch ornamented with deeply cut chevron and grotesque bird's beak mouldings. The tympanum bears in relief the curious device of some winged creatures devouring a tree. Above is a roundheaded niche containing the figure of our Lord, with hand uplifted in blessing. (2) Tub-shaped Norm. font, bearing inscription, Hoc fontis ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... As two lions [1806] on either side of a slain deer spring at one another in fury, and there is a fearful snarling and a clashing also of teeth—like vultures with crooked talons and hooked beak that fight and scream aloud on a high rock over a mountain goat or fat wild-deer which some active man has shot with an arrow from the string, and himself has wandered away elsewhere, not knowing the place; but they quickly mark it and vehemently do keen battle about it—like these they ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... was enough to last for twenty-nine days, when they hoped to reach Timor. That afternoon some noddies came so near the boat that one was caught. These birds are about the size of a small pigeon; it was divided into eighteen parts and given by lot. The men were much amused when they saw the beak and claws fall to the lot of the captain. The bird was eaten, bones and all, with ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... set to, and tried to spread the clothes on the bed with her beak; but as fast as she pulled them up one side, they slipped off the other, and at last she gave ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... look in his restless, wild-animal eyes, smoky like the rest of him, and a surliness about his long, high-ridged nose which came down over his mustache like a beak. He wore a cloth cap with ear flaps, and they were down, although the heat of summer still made the September air lively enough for one with blood beneath his skin. He regaled himself with fierce defiance, like a captive eagle, and had no word ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... took George round the back of the hill and they mounted the crest from the reverse side. They came over it and there at their very feet lay one of George's best bullocks, with tongue protruded, breathing his last gasp. A crow of the country was perched on his ribs, digging his thick beak into a hole he had made in his ribs, and another was picking out one of his eyes. The birds rose heavily, clogged and swelling with gore. George's eyes flashed, his gun went up to his shoulder, and Jacky saw the brown barrel rise slowly for a moment as it followed ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... might as well have held a wildcat, or captured with his bare hands a wild eagle, strong of talon and beak. She tore and ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... to Montevideo no incident occurred, but upon the Plata, during a storm, the Etoile was run down by a Spanish vessel, which broke her bowsprit, her beak head, and much of her rigging. The damages and the shock increased the leak of the ship, and forced her to return to Encenada de Baragan, where repairs were more easily managed than at Montevideo. It was impossible therefore to leave the river ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open, Like some iron door; To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base And reach your skinny little neck And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage, Alone, small insect, Tiny bright-eye, ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... his knife, and by a superhuman effort succeeded, at the moment the rope was giving way, in catching hold of it with his right hand above the cut made by the beak of the bird. But, powerfully as he held it in his iron grasp, he could feel it ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... hailstones were so large and so hard that neither man nor beast could live through that storm, for they would have slain them, so fiercely did they beat. And the way that I escaped was this. I placed the beak of my shield over the head and neck of my horse, while I held the upper part over my own head. Thus did we withstand the storm, though the flanks of my horse ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... decomposition of crystalline rocks. Mounting to a high llano, we shot a pair of curious birds, which looked like water-birds, but were living in a dry place and were able to run with great speed. They were of the size of a hen, and had a long beak, long legs and four flat though not webbed toes. At the end of this high llano, we passed the Hacienda of Agua Blanca, a property belonging to the jefe of Juchitan. From here, we descended rapidly over a poor road, coming ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... with much apparent difficulty, drew out its crimsoned head, and, after eyeing us for a moment as if stupefied, arose lazily from the body upon which it had been feasting, and, flying directly above our deck, hovered there a while with a portion of clotted and liver-like substance in its beak. The horrid morsel dropped at length with a sullen splash immediately at the feet of Parker. May God forgive me, but now, for the first time, there flashed through my mind a thought, a thought which I will not mention, and I felt myself making a step ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... weak, Intolerant yet self-distrusting, There could not well have been a "beak" Less fitted for the nice adjusting Of his peculiar point of view To that of forty-odd years later, Less eager to acclaim the New, Less apt for Georgian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... mollusc or fish of small size which came within their reach, and uttering every instant loud and discordant cries. Lejoillie told us that they were of the gull tribe, about twenty inches in length. The peculiarity of their beak consists in the lower mandible being considerably longer than the other into which it shuts. It is of an orange-red at the base, and deepens into black at the tip. To prevent the water rushing into its throat as it skims the surface with its beak, the bird is provided with a very small gullet. ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... was by birth an Italian of very low degree; a man of crouched stature, and of an uncomely physiognomy, being yellow-skinned and black-haired, with a beak-nose, and little quick eyes of a free and familiar glance, but shrewd withal, and possessed of a pleasant way of winning facetiously on the ladies, to the which his singular skill in all manner of melodious music helped not a little; so that ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... and, as soon as they had kissed her, her father enquired after poor Cherry. "He is very well," said Nancy, a little confused, and then ran to fetch him some seed and water. Alas! poor little Cherry was no more; he was lying upon his back, with his wings spread, and his beak open. Nancy screamed out, and wrung her hands, when all the family ran to her, and were witnesses of ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... on being summoned, brought in first some dry biscuits in deep tin boxes, those crisp, insipid English cakes which seem to have been made for a parrot's beak, and soldered into metal cases for a voyage round the world. Next she fetched some little gray linen doilies, folded square, those tea-napkins which in thrifty families never get washed. A third time she came in with the sugar basin and cups; then she departed ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... of some droll old court officer in an illustrated nursery story-book, and yet all these fat features instinct with meaning, the fat lips curved and compressed, the nose combining somehow the dignity of a beak with the good nature of a bottle, and the very double chin with an air of intelligence and insight. And all these portraits are so pat and telling, and look at you so spiritedly from the walls, that, compared with the sort of living people one sees about the ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... last. The thing I had wished for in my boat, all those months ago, was a new flag. And here was the flag, made for me in secret by Mary's own hand! The ground was green silk, with a dove embroidered on it in white, carrying in its beak the typical olive-branch, wrought in gold thread. The work was the tremulous, uncertain work of a child's fingers. But how faithfully my little darling had remembered my wish! how patiently she had plied the needle over the traced lines of the pattern! how industriously she ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... Eastern idea. The Hindu Angelina might be vacuous, vain, papilionaceous, silly, or even a mere doll, but if her hair hung down "like the tail of a Tartary cow," [96] if her eyes were "like the stones of unripe mangoes," and her nose resembled the beak of a parrot, the Hindu Edwin was more than satisfied. Dr. Johnson's "unidead girl" would have done as well ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... grace 1859, he is fifty-three years of age. He presents the appearance of a well-preserved man. His frame is slight and robust, and his constitution is that of a mountaineer. The breadth of his forehead, the brilliancy of his eyes, his beak-like nose, and all the upper part of his face inspire a certain awe. His countenance, of almost Moorish hue, is at times lit up by flashes of intellect. But his heavy jaw, his long fang-like teeth, and his thick lips ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... hen for twenty-two days, instead of eating it in the shell as we might have done, and we view it as a matter of course. Yet we do not say here that the bird may not have come down the conjuror's sleeve, or the hen may not have brought it from under her wing. It was really in the egg, and its own beak tapped against the shell from ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... hollowed out in the snow a burrow with two entrances. Two of these birds having recognised his presence, one entered one hole in order to dislodge the hare, the other awaited him at the other opening to batter his head with blows from his beak and kill him before he had time to gain presence ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... told her (so as to give her no further excuse for hanging about me) that in future she was to take her orders from Price—an announcement which caused my maid to stand several inches taller in her shoes, and sent the housekeeper hopping downstairs with her beak in the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... about at the bottom?" I see; it is a water-scorpion, a very common insect in these drains on the moors,—indeed, it is common everywhere; let us catch him and take him home for examination. He is a queer-looking creature, with a small head and pointed beak; his forearms are something like lobster's claws; his prevailing colour blackish-brown, like the mud upon which he crawls; his body is very flat, and ends in two long stick-like projections; underneath these horny covers of the creature may be seen his two wings. He is an aquatic murderer; ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... After the builder has fastened many lines to opposite twigs, their ends hanging free, she proceeds to span the little gulf by weaving them together. She stands with her claws clasped one to each side, and uses her beak industriously, looping up and fastening the loose ends. I have stood in the road under the nest looking straight up till my head swam, trying to make out just how she did it, but all I could see was the bird standing astride the chasm she was trying to bridge, and busy with the hanging strings. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... would have filled her mind for a long time, but she was interrupted by the dismal croaking of a raven overhead. Lifting her eyes, she saw in the dim light a large raven on the point of swallowing a frog which it held in its beak. 'Though I have no hope of help for myself,' she said, 'I will not let this unfortunate frog die, if I can save it; though our lots are so different, its sufferings are quite as great as mine.' She picked up the first stick which came to hand, and made the raven let go its prey. ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... the rock, that modern Prometheus, Captain Lysander Sprowl, like his mythical prototype, felt the vulture's beak in his vitals. Chagrin devoured his liver. An overflow of southern bile was the result, and he turned yellow to the ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... beasts,—closest to his feet the irredeemable boar; then lion and bear, tiger, unicorn, and fiery dragon closest to his head, the flames of its mouth mingling with his breath as he sings. The audient eagle, alas! has lost the beak, and is only recognizable by his proud holding of himself; the duck, sleepily delighted after muddy dinner, close to his shoulder, is a true conquest. Hoopoe, or indefinite bird of crested race, behind; of the other three no clear certainty. The leafage throughout such as only Luca ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... had taken from an old woman, candles at two francs each, a very reasonable price, as she repeatedly said. And on being paid, the old creature, who had an angular face, covetous eyes, and a nose like the beak of a bird of prey, returned profuse and mellifluous thanks: "May Our Lady of Lourdes bless you, my beautiful young lady! May she cure you of your complaints, you and yours!" This enlivened them again, and they set out once more, all three laughing, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... branch of the tree at which Mudge and several others were looking up. Taking out his boomerang, he stepped a few paces back; then away it flew till it took a course upwards and penetrated amid the boughs, and the next instant down came a large bird, with a black head and a peculiarly strong beak. ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... up the grave with the earth they had turned up, they flew away, but returned in a few minutes, bringing with them the bird that had committed the murder, one holding one of its wings in its beak, and the other one of its legs; the criminal all the while crying out in a doleful manner, and struggling to escape. They carried it to the grave of the bird which it had lately sacrificed to its rage, and there killed it in just ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... follow the girls about, and stalk up to the house of their own accord to be fed, their food always being placed in water, as they never feed by picking upon the ground, for which, indeed, the peculiar construction of their beak is entirely unfitted. They were perfectly fearless of the dogs, which, on their part, were too well trained to touch them; and their funny way and their extreme tameness were a source of constant amusement to ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... a time, when all the earth was flooded, two birds were hanging above the water. They were clinging to the sky with their beaks. The larger bird was gray with a long tail and beak, but the smaller one was the tiny bird that builds a nest shaped like an olla, with only a very small opening at the top. The birds were tired and frightened. The larger one cried and cried, but the little bird held on tight and said, "Don't cry. I 'm littler than you are, ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... small hand, warm, and rather capable-looking. Miriam watched. He held the corn to the hen. The bird eyed it with her hard, bright eye, and suddenly made a peck into his hand. He started, and laughed. "Rap, rap, rap!" went the bird's beak in his palm. He laughed again, and ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... about her, she paddled through the slush towards the gate, supremely disregarding the fact that a gander, having nerved himself and his harem to the charge, had caught the ragged skirt of her dress in his beak, and being too angry to let go, was being whirled out of the yard in ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... that of an old man, so old that the head was quite bald and the wrinkled face entirely devoid of hair; but the deeply sunken eyes glowed like those of a leopard in the dark, the forehead was broad and high, the nose thin and crooked like the beak of an eagle, the mouth a mere straight slit, and the thin lips were drawn back in a sort of incipient snarl. But it was the expression of the face that particularly arrested my attention, for never before had I beheld ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... hostilities on his part were about to be opened, he, as if just for fun, dropped his own dear brown self on the branch below him, flapped his wings, and soon perching himself on a tree a little further off, gravely re-opened his beak and ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... the barn-yard is never received with great cordiality. He must win his place and his power with his beak and his spurs. We all of us had enough to do before this fellow came along. We are a little jealous of him, we are all uneasier because he is about, and he has done so well at our games, now that he has indeed hung up philosophy, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... the Jewish types in England. There is (1) the sallow Jew with a beak; (2) the same without a beak; (3) the "hammy" Jew, with pink face like a cochon-a-lait. The Florentine type, with fair hair and beautiful clear face, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... were all quiet, peaceful people who dreaded altercation; it made our hearts beat too fast. Taking it altogether, we felt very much as if some great, overgrown bird of another species had gotten into our village nest, and we were in the midst of an awful commotion of strange wings and beak. Still we agreed that Mrs. ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... painted in flat color, without especial sheen or iridescence, and when I finally analyzed it, I found it to be a delicate calamine blue. It actually had the appearance of a too strong color, as when a glistening surface reflects the sun. From beak to tail it threw off this glowing hue, except for its chin and throat, which were a limpid amaranth purple; and the effect on the excited rods and cones in one's eyes was like the power of great music or some majestic passage in the Bible. You, who think my ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... truth I tell thee, Kai, that there is neither man nor beast that could endure that shower and live. For not one of those hailstones would be stopped either by the flesh, or by the skin, until it had reached the bone. I turned my horse's flanks towards the shower, and placed the beak of my shield over his head and neck, while I held the upper part of it over my own head. And thus I withstood the shower. When I looked on the tree, there was not a single leaf upon it, and then the sky became clear; ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... jade, you've all but driven a twenty-pound rooster clean through it—beak, spurs and tail feathers—that's why!" bawled the doctor. "Gad! I shall be black and blue for a fortnight! I'm colicky now: I ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... day was gone, and the night so near, that in the shadows of the tree all was dusky and dim. But there was still light enough to discover that in a niche of the tree sat a huge horned owl, with green spectacles on his beak, and a book in one foot. He took no heed of the intruders, but kept muttering to himself. And what do you think the owl was saying? I will tell you. He was talking about the book that he held ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... the eyes, pits partially filled with dried ointments of a bituminous color. The monarch had yielded his life in its full ripeness, for the white hair and beard still adhered in stiffened plaits to the skull, cheeks, and chin. The nose alone was natural; it stood up thin and hooked, like the beak of an eagle. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... contentment, and then started up in remembrance of the occasion of our being in this place as the shadow of Mother Borton fell across the table. Her keen eyes fixed on me and her sharp beak nodding toward me gave her the uncanny aspect of a bird of prey, and I felt a sinking of courage as ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott |
