"Catcher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was keen on baseball and particularly ambitious to make his mark as a catcher. Any hint, however small, was welcomed if it helped on his advance in his department of the game. When he began to have trouble with his hands, and somebody suggested soaking them in salt water to harden the skin, he quickly followed ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... sullenly in the court-yard of a parish-union, or working in his frieze jacket on some parish-farm; a boatman, a road-side stone-breaker, a quarryman, a journeyman bricklayer, or his clerk; a shepherd, a drover, a rat-catcher, a mole-catcher, and a hundred other things; in any one of which, he is as different from the sheepish, straw-hatted, and ankle-booted, bill-holding fellow of the print-shop windows, as a cockney is from a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... ten minutes to win her smiles and make you a declared favorite. What is it you have about you, old fellow, which wins on every one? It makes one believe in the old fable of the rat-catcher." ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... grotesque, or fanciful, or so descriptive that their mention is sure to provoke a grin, occur with pleasing frequency. Who can help but smile at "Hairpin Catcher," "Hearts and Gizzards," or "Tangled Garters?" Other grotesque ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... is an adroit fly-catcher, for though it kills numbers of fire-flies and other insects, flies are always preferred, possibly because they are so little encumbered with wings, and are also more easily devoured. It occasionally captures insects on the wing, but the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... seems we might have made this noted bandit prisoner if we had only known!" exclaimed Lawrence, who seemed more distressed at missing the chance of becoming an amateur thief-catcher than at misdirected charity. "But do you really think the fellow was Conrad ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... had been studying birds in the Park. Berkeley was written all over him. A thin, pure type. He was dressed in field glasses and a bag full of green weeds and stout walking boots. There was an ecstatic glint in his eye which meant that he had discovered a long-billed, yellow-tailed Peruvian fly-catcher, "very rare in ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... ball delivered was a fairly good one, although rather low. Jack swung at it, and high into the air spun the sphere, well back of the catcher's head. ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... knew by heart and from the living Spanish, to Joseph Andrews, the Spectator, Goldsmith and Swift, Miss Austen, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Ferrier, Galt and Sir Walter,—he was as familiar with, as with David Crockat the nailer, or the parish minister, the town-drummer, the mole-catcher, or the poaching weaver, who had the night before leistered a prime kipper at Rachan Mill, by the flare of a tarry wisp, or brought home his surreptitious gray hen or maukin from the wilds of Dunsyre or the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... as a trap for them by turning them into elliptical orbits and thus making them prisoners in the solar system. Jupiter, owing to his great mass and his commanding situation in the system, is the chief "comet-catcher;'' but he catches them not for himself, but for the sun. Yet if comets do come originally from without the borders of the planetary system, it does not, by any means, follow that they were wanderers at large in space before they yielded to the overmastering attraction of the sun. Investigation ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... from the United States," Lord Ashleigh reminded him, "so your criticism doesn't affect him. By-the-by, Middleton, I heard this morning that you'd been airing your opinions down in the village. You seem to rather fancy yourself as a thief-catcher." ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a rod 'n' line 'n' reel, whether it's with flies, spoons, or minnows, castin' or trollin', or spearin' or nettin', Warry's th' expertest fish-catcher that ever waded the rapids or paddled th' lakes o' this old Province o' Quebec. But it's gettin' a leetle hard for Warry late years—fish 's come to know him so well that after he's made a few casts 'n' hooked one or two that's got away, they know his tricks so well ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... to sit on the cow-catcher in order to get a better view of the canon. The engineer refused at first, but gave in at last. He said it was ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... Meaning of Infancy," Chapter 1, says: "The bird known as the fly-catcher no sooner breaks the egg than it will snap at and catch a fly. This action is not very simple, but because it is something the bird is always doing, being indeed one of the very few things that this bird ever does, the nervous connections needful for doing it ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... right of the post with the red tie, is the son of an ostler. He commenced betting thousands with a farthing capital. The man next him, all teeth and hair, like a rat-catcher's dog, is an Honourable by birth, but not very honourable in his nature." "But see," cried Mr. Jorrocks, "Lord—— is talking to the Cracksman." "To be sure," replies Sam, "that's the beauty of the turf. The lord and the leg are reduced to an equality. Take my word for it, if you have ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... her, and restored her, not to life, it is true, but to the consciousness of some dreadful suffering. I meanwhile walked up and down the path behind the house, weeping, and doubting my success. I only wished to give up this part of the bird-catcher which I had so rashly assumed. Madame Gobain, who came down and found me with my face wet with tears, hastily went up again ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... liberty, and say to this bloody Moloch, Away! Sir, the world has never furnished so great a congregation of hypocrites as those that formed the Constitution, if they designed to make it the greatest slaveholder, slave-breeder and slave-catcher on earth. He is a great slaveholder that has a thousand slaves; but if this law is a true exponent of the Constitution, this Government, ordained for justice and liberty, holds four ...
— Speech of John Hossack, Convicted of a Violation of the Fugitive Slave Law • John Hossack
... of him on the wall hung a large photograph of Billy's base-ball nine in full uniform. He could have drawn it from memory, afterwards. Billy, he remembered, was a great catcher. He held hard ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... sent," replied Sam, "with the intention of converting uncle Rik into a thief-catcher. That stupid waiter told me only this morning that the time he followed Stumps to the harbour, he overheard a sailor conversing with him and praising a certain tavern named the Tartar, near London Bridge, to which ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... gwan home and put dese greens on. (looks off stage left) Here come Mayor Clark now, wid his belly settin' out in front of him like a cow-catcher. His name ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... replied the hostess, really deeply interested in the "fly catcher." "I have always wanted to see ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... Ven de pinition vas feenish you vas det." He shows where the Water-torture was practised. "Nottice 'ow de vater vas vork a 'ole in de tile," he chuckles. "I tink de tile vas vary hardt det, eh?" Then he points out a pole with a spiked prong. "Tief-catcher—put'em in de tief's nack—and ged 'im!" Before a grim-looking cauldron he halts appreciatively. "You know vat dat vas for?" he says. "Dat vas for de blode-foots; put 'em in dere, yass, and light de vire onderneat." No idea what "blode-foots" may be, but from the relish in BOSCH's tone, evidently ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... for they saw the hardships and the difficulties between the slave and his goal and, worst of all, an iniquitous law,—liberty's compromise with bondage, that rose like a stone wall between him and hope,—a law that degraded every free-thinking man to the level of a slave-catcher. There it loomed up before him, formidable, impregnable, insurmountable. He measured it in all its terribleness, and paused. But on the other side there was liberty; and one day when he was away at work, a voice came out of the woods and whispered to him "Courage!"—and on that night ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the name of a bird, whereupon all of the players who bear that name run from the forest to the nest, but the bird catchers try to intercept them. Should a bird be caught by the bird catcher, it is put in the cage, but a bird is safe from the bird catchers if it once reaches the nest and the mother bird. The players should be taught to make the chase interesting by dodging in various directions, instead of ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... Black-bellied Plover Golden Plover Semi-palmated Plover Belted Piping Plover Wilson Plover Piping Plover Killdeer Willett Greater Yellow Legs Summer Yellow Legs Turnstone Red Phalarope Northern Phalarope Avocet Oyster Catcher Long-billed Curlew Jack Curlew Hudsonian Godwit Sanderling Black-necked Stilt Dowitcher Knot Stilt Sandpiper Solitary Sandpiper Spotted Sandpiper Red-backed Sandpiper White-rumped ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... upon which he played with a somewhat specious but effective art. He did not try to make you forget his ugliness; he flaunted it in your face and made it part of the charm of his speech. Shutting your eyes, you would have trailed after this rat-catcher's pipes at least to the walls of Hamelin. Beyond that you would have had to be more childish to follow. But let him play his own tune to the words set down, so that if all is too dull, the art of music may ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... to the law, and even to remedy evils which the law cannot reach; to detect fraud and treason, abase insolence, mortify pride, discourage slander, disgrace immodesty, and stigmatise ingratitude, but the infamous part of a thief-catcher's character I disclaim. I neither associate with robbers and pickpockets, knowing them to be such, that, in being intrusted with their secrets, I may the more effectually betray them; nor shall I ever pocket the reward granted by the legislature to those by whom robbers are brought to conviction; ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... don't care for me a bit," she said once. "I am only another form of 'ze sensation'—like going up in a balloon or riding on the cow-catcher." ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... they had left they met another man, a bird catcher from the uplands of Olaa;[53] he asked, "Where ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... vile submission! Alla stoccata carries it away. [Draws.] Tybalt, you rat-catcher, ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... am the best little sparker that ever sent an S. O. S. over the blue between drinks of salt water, while swimming on my back around the wireless room chased by a man-eating shark. And as for a catcher, why, my boy, I can receive while eating a ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... family when they were all together, before the papa locomotive got drowned. He was very fond of the little Pony Engine, and told it stories at night after they got into the car-house, at the end of some of his long runs. It would get up on his cow-catcher, and lean its chimney up against his, and listen till it fell asleep. Then he would put it softly down, and be off again in the morning before it was awake. I tell you, those were happy days for poor No. 236. The little Pony Engine could just remember him; it ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... used is that shown in Fig. 151. It consists of an upper cylindrical part, usually 5 or 8 inches in diameter, at the inside of the rim, with its bottom closed by a funnel. The lower cylindrical part holds a glass catcher into which the funnel delivers the water for storage until the time when it will be measured in a graduated glass. The upper part makes a good fit with the lower, in order to reduce evaporation ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... edgewise in the oesophagus, and are best removed by means of an instrument known as a "coin-catcher", which is passed beyond the coin, and on being withdrawn catches it in a hinged flange. In emergencies a loop of stout silver wire bent so as to form a hook makes an excellent substitute for ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Ministers from every quarter. Caricatures of them were stamped even on handkerchiefs and calico aprons. The Duke was mostly represented in the livery of an old hackney coachman, while Sir Robert Peel figured as a rat catcher. The King no longer concealed his dislike of Wellington, who in former days had mortally offended him by his support of Admiral Cockburn, resulting in the resignation of the Prince as Lord High Admiral of England. As soon as Parliament ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... horns, skilfully twisted. Hugh had just gone triumphantly through the whole list, "a sneezing elephant, a punch in the head, a rag, a tatter, a good report, a bad report, a cracked saucepan, a fuzzy tree-toad, a rat-catcher, a well-greaved ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... grapes and the berries of the Virginia creeper—sometimes also seen busily scooping out a big hole on the rosy side of a tempting apple in the orchard. Some observers say the catbird eats the eggs of the fly-catcher and other birds, but this must be ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... to throw them into the air, but such a car was efficient in any open place clear of high buildings or trees. Human aeronautics, Graham perceived, were evidently still a long way behind the instinctive gift of the albatross or the fly-catcher. One great influence that might have brought the aeropile to a more rapid perfection had been withheld; these inventions had never been used in warfare. The last great international struggle had occurred before ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... discernment, sagacity, skill and directing ability, the twirler would make a pitiful show of himself. There are pitchers who recognize this fact and have the generosity to acknowledge it; but in most cases, especially with youngsters, no matter how much he may owe to the catcher, the slab-man takes all the credit, and fancies ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... Acorn Balaninus, the only one among her victims that wears a long pipe-stem. I leave to evolutionism, atavism and other transcendental "isms" the honour and also the risk of explaining what I humbly recognize as being too far beyond my grasp. Because the son of the bird-catcher who imitates the call of his victims has been fed on roast Robins, Linnets and Chaffinches, shall we hastily conclude that this education through the stomach will enable him later, without other initiation than that of the spit, to know his way about the ornithological ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... into the places best suited to each player and then elected Bill manager and Sadler captain. The big fellow and Dixon had discarded their suits for plain shirt and trousers, and a small collection was taken up for pants and some extra gloves. Mr. Gay gave them a catcher's ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... bad, Stoliker; and I really believe there's some grit in you, if you are a man-catcher. Still, you were not in very much danger, as perhaps you knew. Now, if you should want this pistol again, just watch where it alights." And Yates, taking the weapon by the muzzle, tossed it as far as he could ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... and some call them ichneumon," said the man. "Snake-catcher is what I call them, and Teddy is amazing quick on cobras. I have one here without the fangs, and Teddy catches it every night to please the folk ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the South knew more about the multitudinous varieties of fish inhabiting Florida waters. He was not only an authority on them, but he was also recognized as a most skillful catcher of fish. For over an hour that evening he told them absorbing stories of the habits of Gulf Stream denizens, and recited stirring tales of battles with some of the biggest of them. And when he finally ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... overrun, they plucked up courage, and approaching him, requested that he should follow them before the king. Puss complied willingly enough, and the end of the matter was that he was installed rat-catcher to the king, and a large salary bestowed upon him. The faithfulness with which Puss discharged his duties raised him high in the royal regard, and a circumstance soon occurred which advanced him still further. The king took his ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... Oxford man who had just taken his M.A., an ensign of infantry in his first uniform, a clerk in Somerset House, and a Manchester man who had been visiting a Whig Lord,—and returned third-class, with a tinker, a sailor just returned from Africa, a bird-catcher with his load, and a gentleman in velveteens, rather greasy, who seemed, probably on a private mission, to have visited the misdemeanour wards of all the prisons in England and Scotland; we preferred the return trip, that is to say, vulgar and amusing to dull and genteel. Among other ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... and the Cranes fed in the same meadow. A bird-catcher came to ensnare them in his nets. The Cranes, being light of wing, fled away at his approach; while the Geese, being slower of flight and heavier in ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... Mr. Ballard, and two to Miss Josephine Trescott. One ran thus, "Success seems assured. Rejoice with me. J. B. C." The other was as follows: "In game between Railway Giants and Country Jakes here to-day, visiting team wins. Score, 9 to 0. Barslow, catcher, disabled. Crick in neck looking at high buildings. Have Mrs. B. prepare porous plaster for Saturday next. Sell Halliday stock short, and buy L. & G. W. And in name all things good and holy don't ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... never before seen anything like it, and wondered if it could be an observatory on wheels, until we noticed that in the forepart of the train was a snow-plough, such as is to be seen on every engine in Norway during mid-winter, a plough which closely resembles an American cow-catcher. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... genus of birds is seldom seen amongst the numerous descriptions of wild fowl, which, in the winter seasons, wing their flight to our marshes. The most striking part of the Oyster-catcher is its bill, the colour of which is scarlet, measuring in length nearly four inches, wide at the nostrils, and grooved beyond them nearly half its length: thence to the tip it is vertically compressed on the sides, and ends obtusely. With this instrument, which in its shape ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... dames of high degree. He traces his lineage in unbroken line to that haughty Johann Jakob who came to America in the steerage, wearing a Limburger linsey-woolsey and a pair of wooden shoes. Beginning life in the new world as a rat-catcher, he soon acquired a gallon jug of Holland gin, a peck of Brummagem jewelry, and robbed the Aborigines right and left. He wore the same shirt the year 'round, slept with his dogs and invested his groschens in such Manhattan ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... were old, and Lady Bearcroft would have thrown them aside; but Lord Davenant observed that, if they have lasted so long,—they must be good, because their humour only can ensure their permanence; the personality dies with the person: for instance, in the famous old print of the minister rat-catcher, in the Westminster election, the likeness to each rat of the day is lost to us, but the ridicule on placemen ratters remains. The whole, however, is perfectly incomprehensible to foreigners. "Rats! ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... that the salt-water catcher and pitcher are ahead of you two!" protested Durville ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... "Cow-catcher," I suggested eagerly, and we continued in this ecstatic duet for some time. Then I asked him what it was all about, and he told me. He explained the thing eloquently ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... yellow, scrambled with a rattle like dead men's bones across the rails to be crushed by the hundreds under the wheels of the Juggernaut; great lizards ran from sunny rocks at the sound of their approach, and a deer bounded across the tracks fifty feet in front of the cow-catcher. MacWilliams escorted Hope out into the cab of the locomotive, and taught her how to increase and slacken the speed of the engine, until she showed an unruly desire to throw the lever open altogether and shoot them off the ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... No wild animal can leap ten yards, and they all make a high trajectory in their leaps. Now, think of the speed of a ball thrown, or rather pitched, with just sufficient force to be caught by a person ten yards off: it is a mere nothing. The catcher can play with it as he likes; he has even time to turn after it, if thrown wide. But the speed of a springing animal is undeniably the same as that of a ball, thrown so as to make a flight of equal length and height ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... strong as the weak Des Grieux, but Madame MRAVINA apparently not strong enough. "What made author-chap think of calling her Manon?" asks languid person in Stalls. WAGSTAFF, revived after an iced B.-and-S., is equal to the occasion. "Such a bad lot, you know—regular man-catcher; hooked a man on, then, when he was done with, hooked another man on. Reason for name evident, see?" The Cavalleria Rusticana is the favourite for Derby Night. All right ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... absorption. The moisture of which the air is never deprived penetrates them slowly; it dilutes the thick contents of their tubes to the requisite degree and causes it to ooze through, as and when the earlier stickiness decreases. What bird-catcher could vie with the Garden Spider in the art of laying lime-snares? And all this industry and cunning for the capture ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... bosom and not be burned?" Can a man aid in executing such a law without defiling his own conscience? Yet does this profligate statute, with impious arrogance, command "ALL GOOD CITIZENS" to assist in enforcing it, when required so to do by an official slave-catcher! ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... trucks upon the platform, the great yellow cat that belonged to the agent dozed complacently, her paws tucked under her body. Three flat cars, loaded with bright-painted farming machines, were on the siding above the station, while, on the switch below, a huge freight engine that lacked its cow-catcher sat back upon its monstrous driving-wheels, motionless, solid, drawing long breaths that were punctuated by the subdued sound of its steam-pump clicking ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... that it is illogical that a ground stroke behind the diamond should be a no-ball, and yet, should that ball be in the air and caught, the striker should be out. I thought it an odd example of lenience to allow the batsman as many strokes behind the catcher as he chanced to make. But the more baseball I see the more it enchants me as a spectacle, and these ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... rights. It was rare indeed that anything of this kind called for action in Canada, the only case of any importance that arose being that of the Negro, Anderson, whose return to Missouri was sought on a charge of killing his master in 1853. A slave catcher from Missouri recognized him in Canada in 1860 and had him arrested. The case was fought out in the courts, twice going against the Negro and then being appealed to the English Court of Queen's Bench, which granted a writ of habeas corpus. Anderson was defended ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... head? But between you, you pushed the car off the track in a jiffy. And Mrs. O'Burke's new bonnet was all smashed in the ditch, an' the bloody snort of Number Five knocked you senseless. Who would have thought that boost of the cow-catcher was jist clear good luck? And you moped about with a short draw in your chist, and seemed bound to be a grouty old man in the chimney corner that could niver lift a stroke for your childer, ah' ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... the game first made its appearance is a matter of great uncertainty, but the general opinion of the historians seems to be that by some mysterious process of evolution it developed from the boys' game of more than a century ago, then known as "one old cat," in which there was a pitcher, a catcher, and a batter. John M. Ward, a famous base-ball player in his day, and now a prosperous lawyer in the city of Brooklyn, and the late Professor Proctor, carried on a controversy through the columns of the New York newspapers in 1888, the latter claiming that base-ball ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... much resembling whalebone), which forms the core of the loop. Provided with several sets of these nooses, a trained bullock and a shield-like cloth screen dyed buff and pierced with eye-holes, the bird-catcher sets out for the jungle, and on seeing a flock of pea-fowl circles round them under cover of the screen and the bullock, which he guides by a nose-string. The birds feed on undisturbed, and the man rapidly pegs out ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... former achievements, continued to magnify, among themselves his present imprudence; and we are told by Fray Antonio Agapida that they sneeringly gave the worthy cavalier the appellation of count de Cabra the king-catcher. ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... one inch higher, nothing could have saved their train from wreck, because, being so dark and small, it was not noticed till too late to stop. However, it was a little too low to hook in the bars of the cow-catcher, as I intended. ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... Killam took a chance on showin' himself. And Rupert, he was wise to the situation. He couldn't help being. He takes it hard, too. All his chesty, important airs are gone. He skulks around like a stray pup that's dodgin' the dog-catcher. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... minister to the Lord of Chao, took occasion to speak— seriously to his royal master as to the latter's perennial little wars with Yen.* "This morning as I crossed the river," said he, "I saw a mussel open its shell to the sun. Straight an oyster-catcher thrust in his bill to eat the mussel; which promptly snapped the shell to and held the bird fast.—'If it doesn't rain today or tomorrow,' said the oyster-catcher, 'there'll be a dead mussel here.'—'And if you don't get out of this by today or tomorrow,' said the mussel, 'there'll ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... curious invention, made by Dr. Hull, of Alton, Ill., for the purpose of jarring off and catching the curculio from trees infested by this destructive insect. It is a barrow, with arms and braces covered with cloth, and having on one side a slot, which admits the stem of the tree. The curculio catcher, or machine, is run against the tree three or four times, with sufficient force to impart a jarring motion to all its parts. The operator then backs far enough to bring the machine to the center of the space between the rows, turns round, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... three Court-ladies began Their trial of who judged best In esteeming the love of a man: Who preferred with most reason was thereby confessed Boy-Cupid's exemplary catcher and cager; An Abbe crossed legs ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... I am at present about will consist, if I live to finish it, of a series of Rembrandt pictures, interspersed here and there with a Claude. I shall tell the world of my parentage, my early thoughts and habits, how I become a sap-engro, or viper-catcher: my wanderings with the regiment in England, Scotland, and Ireland, in which last place my jockey habits first commenced: then a great deal about Norwich, Billy Taylor, Thurtell, etc.: how I took to study and became a lav-engro. What ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... the Russian and French armies during the campaign from Moscow back to the Niemen were like those in a game of Russian blindman's bluff, in which two players are blindfolded and one of them occasionally rings a little bell to inform the catcher of his whereabouts. First he rings his bell fearlessly, but when he gets into a tight place he runs away as quietly as he can, and often thinking to escape runs straight ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... any respect, comes to be sung about the streets, known by everybody, turned into polkas and quadrilles and in fact to become for the time one of the institutions of this great and intelligent country. I remember how, a year or two since, that contemptible Rat-catcher's Daughter, without a thing to recommend it, with no music, no wit, no sentiment, nothing but vulgar brutality, might be heard in every separate town of England and Scotland, sung about the streets ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... herons, mud-hens, sandpipers, and curlews are marsh and shore birds that feed and wade in the shallow salt water, and nest on the banks or, like the heron, in trees near the bay. The heron is a frog-catcher, and he will stand very still on his long legs and patiently wait till the frog, thinking him gone, swims near. Then one dart of the long bill captures froggy, and the heron waits for another. You know the red-head, green mallard, canvas-back, and small teal ducks, no doubt, ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... of her poor were present and which absent, she was surprised to see the carpenter Cawood, with his wife and little ones, his eyes resting on the young girl at her side, and it made her glad to think that she had not perhaps angled in vain for this catcher of silly fish. ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... ways these unhappy slaves, the aggressive South forced upon a passive North a law whose enormity passes description. Every man at the beck of the Southern kidnapper, by its provisions was obliged to play the part of a Negro catcher. So great was the passiveness of the North that her most eminent orator, instead of decrying the proposition as unworthy of humanity, even lifted up his voice in its defense. Virgil inveighed against ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe
... with the girl, whose butter he was determined to have even if he must pay her own price for it. Like the Reeve in the Canterbury Tales, who "ever rode the hinderest of the rout," being such a rogue and such a rogue-catcher that he could not bear anybody behind his back, Bruce, when about the business that his soul loved, eschewed the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... gleefully to himself and said: "The would-be catcher is caught. I thought Viola Martin would duck him if anybody could. Tell me about these smile-proof bachelors. When once they are struck, they fall all ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... lowering his head, charged the oncoming train. The impact was tremendous. Such was the impetus of the great pachyderm that the engine was partially derailed, the front of the smoke-box shattered as far as the tubes, the cow-catcher was crushed into a shapeless piece of iron, and other damages of minor importance were sustained. The train was going thirty-four miles per hour, and the engine alone weighed between forty and ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... continued the bear-catcher, shaking the ashes out of his pipe, and putting it into his hat, "I'll let ye see how we do it ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... its croolty to animiles to drag a young feller like me along, too. I've got his number. Just you wait, Cele! Remember, Mr. Stone, he played spook-catcher to Miss Ames. ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... Mandy Ann was utterly absorbed in her enchanting task. So quiet she was over it that every now and then a yellow-bird or a fly-catcher would alight upon the edge of the bateau to bounce away again with a startled and indignant twitter. The woodchuck, having eaten his carrot, curled up in the sun ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... add a word of explanation, if not of defence. (Pause.) When she was fifteen, Maria fell into the hands of a man who seemed to have made it his business to entrap young girls, much as a bird-catcher traps small birds. He was no seducer, in the ordinary sense, for he contented himself with binding her senses and entangling her feelings only to thrust her away and watch how she suffered with torn wings and a broken heart—tortured ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... Plonny, slowly, "I wouldn't give the job of dog-catcher to a man you couldn't trust ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of an older writer. The new concept, which Theobald owed largely to Richard Bentley as primate of the classical scholars, was of course the narrower one—implicit in it was the idea of specialization—and Theobald's opponents among the literati were quick to assail him as a mere "Word-catcher" (cf. R.F. Jones, Lewis Theobald, ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... At the end of the third inning, with the score standing five to four in favor of the sophomores, a radical change was made. The batter was blindfolded and compelled to stand upon an upturned barrel, which was substituted for the home plate. The pitcher and catcher were each also to stand upon a barrel and the pitcher was ordered to throw the ball with his left hand. Naturally it was impossible for the batter to hit the ball, since he was blindfolded, and when ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... course, such confidence makes them an easy prey to the biscacha catcher; for there are men who follow taking them as a profession. Their flesh is sweet and good to eat, while their skins are a marketable commodity; of late years forming an article of export to England, and ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... them. With a golden chime and a golden flute, thou art both safe. The music of these things shall charm the wicked heart and soothe the savage breast. So, fare ye well, both." And away went the two strange adventurers, Papageno and Tamino, one a prince, the other a bird-catcher. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... ebony tree and singing some song which he could not clearly catch; and as she danced she called out "The Pig's fat is overflowing: brother-in-law Ramjit come here to me." When she called out like this the quail catcher quietly crept nearer still to her. Although the woman repeatedly summoned him in this way the Bonga would not come out because he was aware of the presence of the onlooker; the woman however got into a passion at his non-appearance and stripping off her clothes she danced naked ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... celebrities in soldierships, the arts, letters, etc., and we stop there. But that is a mistake. Rank holds its court and receives its homage on every round of the ladder, from the emperor down to the rat-catcher; and distinction, also, exists on every round of the ladder, and commands its due of deference ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he was a somewhat shy-looking, open-faced, fresh-coloured young man, still under thirty, modest of demeanour, given to smiling, who might from his general appearance have been, say, a professional cricketer, or a young commercial traveller, or anything but an expert criminal catcher. ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... highly elated at the chance to further his secret ambition of developing into a catcher, put on a big mitt and Jack pitched all sorts of curves to him. Then he took his bat and tried to straighten out the elusive, ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... minutes East, promising a view of the interior, we went to visit it. There was less surf on the beach than we expected, and we landed without much difficulty. Our old friend, the black and white red-bill, or oyster-catcher, was in readiness to greet us, accompanied by a few families of sanderlings, two or three batches of grey plovers, and a couple of small curlews. Crossing the beach, a line of reddish sandstone cliffs, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... fortunate, thus far, as to win the confidence of the commanding generals. It has, during the last week, served as a sort of a cow-catcher for Negley's division. At Elk river General Thomas rode up, while I was making my dispositions to attack the enemy, and approved what I had ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Rat-catcher was supposed to have the art of drawing rats after him by his whistle, like a ...
— Faust • Goethe
... so much; from the other houses, but they're good pieces. The water pitcher was traded by Cap Kiefer, catcher of the nine, you know. But there's one article," said Doc, pointing melodramatically, "that's worth the whole lot. Only I'll have to put ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... species of game was devised in which the players batted in turn, and when not batting or base-running were always on the "out" side. Harris developed considerable ability as a pitcher, throwing the powerful straight ball which in those days was a greater menace to the bare hands of the catcher than to the batter at the plate. On the occasion of his monthly visits the missionary, who was an ardent ball-player, generally contrived to reach Morrison's by Saturday afternoon, and so was able to take part in the Saturday night game. ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... I believe, identical with the oyster-catcher of the Cornish coast. It has a long orange bill, and orange feet, and is black ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... that, considering the noble hospitality and manly character of Nathan Johnson—black man though he was—he, far more than I, illustrated the virtues of the Douglas of Scotland. Sure am I that, if any slave-catcher had entered his domicile with a view to my recapture, Johnson would have shown himself like ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass
... them the word of salvation." Will it not, therefore, be the duty of the Southern clergy to extend those blessings to new millions of Africans, and thus carry out the "plans of Divine Providence?" Is the whole tendency of this argument not to elevate the horrible trade of the slave-catcher to the same high level with the noble office of the missionary? Proclaiming as they do that the capture of Africans and their removal into slavery in the Southern States is God's own missionary plan, the Confederate clergy and people will consider it as much ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... were old Mrs "Ratty" Kemp, widow of the Rat-catcher; {31} old one-eyed Mrs Bond, and her deaf son John; old Mrs Wright, a great smoker; and Mrs Burrows, a soldier's widow, our only Irishwoman, from whom Monk Soham conceived no favourable opinion of the Sister Isle. Of people outside the Guildhall I will ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... return he successfully played the parts of a nonjuring clergyman, dispossessed of his living for conscience' sake; a Quaker—here is a good example of his wonderful gift—in an assembly of Quakers; a ruined miller; a rat-catcher; and, having borrowed three children from a tinker, a grandmother. Carew once wheedled a gentleman, who boasted that he could not be taken in by beggars, into giving him liberal alms twice in one day—in the morning as an ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... lighting lamps and drawing shades or meeting the masculine population at front gates with babies in their arms or beau-catcher curls set on their cheeks with deadly intent. Negro cooks were hustling suppers on their smoking stoves, and one of the doves that lives up in the vines under the eaves of my home moaned out and was answered by one from under the vines that grow over ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... And a thrush may be singing as high as ever its voice can go, and then, just at its highest pitch, the note breaks suddenly at a right angle; clear and clean as if cut with a diamond; then softly and sweetly down the scale once more. Along the shore, too, there is life; guillemot, oyster-catcher, tern are busy there; the wagtail is out in search of food, advancing in little spurts, trim and pert with its pointed beak and swift little flick of a tail; after a while it flies up to perch on a fence and sing with the rest. ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... thrown into the Styx. In consequence of this they obtain damages from the city. The city then decides to bring suit against the state. The bench consists of Apollyon himself and Judge Blackstone; Coke appears for the city, Catiline for the state. The first dog-catcher, called to testify, and asked whether he is familiar with dogs, replies in the affirmative, adding that he had never got quite so intimate with one as he ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... swam as long as I could. Just as I lost strength, my hand touched a cask lashed to a grating that must have fallen from some vessel, or been thrown from it. That held me up till morning. By that time I was about all in. But just then a sloop—a turtle catcher she was—bore down on me, sighted me, and answered my frantic appeal, and picked me up. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... Cabinet says, that "In presence of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, while the philosophers were making elaborate dissertations on the danger of the poison of vipers, taken inwardly, a viper catcher, who happened to be present, requested that a quantity of it might be put into a vessel; and then, with the utmost confidence, and to the astonishment of the whole company, he drank it off. Everyone expected the man instantly ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... not a common butterfly which can be caught by any one who takes out a net at the proper season. I have never seen it around our village or in the solitude of my grounds during a residence of twenty years. It is true that I am not a fervent butterfly-catcher; the dead insect of the collector's cabinet has little interest for me; I must have it living, in the exercise of its functions. But although I have not the collector's zeal I have an attentive eye to all that flies ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... new car and the trip to California was to come from. Perhaps that was where the fifteen hundred dollars had come from, too. But she had paid it back. She had just barely shaken the bird-catcher's lime from her wings. She shivered and ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... more than a thousand quails lived together in a forest in India. They would have been happy, but that they were in great dread of their enemy, the quail-catcher. He used to imitate the call of the quail; and when they gathered together in answer to it, he would throw a great net over them, stuff them into his basket, and carry them away to ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... trades which Giles professed, he sometimes practised that of a rat-catcher; but he was addicted to so many tricks, that he never followed the same trade long, for detection will sooner or later follow the best-concerted villany. Whenever he was sent for to a farm-house, his custom was to kill a few of the old rats, always taking care to leave a little stock ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... find many curious things among the ruins, and are, it should be said to their credit, particularly punctilious about leaving them alone. One man picked up a baseball catcher's mask under a great pile of machinery, and the decorated front of the balcony circle of the Opera House was found with the chairs still immediately about its semi-circle, a quarter of a mile from ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... the kingbird, the great crested fly-catcher, has one well-known peculiarity: he appears never to consider his nest finished until it contains a cast-off snake-skin. My alert correspondent one day saw him eagerly catch up an onion skin and make off with it, either deceived ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... confirmed commuter I have sprained three watches and two of my legs trying to catch trains that are wild enough to dodge a dog-catcher. ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... act to be invalid. And without relying on any principle, without any discussion of, or the slightest allusion to, any authorities or the great fundamental questions involved in that issue, he coolly depicted the inconveniences the slave-catcher might be subject to in States where there was but one District Judge, and how essentially he would be aided by the State legislation; and pointed out to his brethren those "consequences" which they did "not contemplate" and to which they "did not suppose the opinion they had given would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... grass fire after all!" Jones, the left-end gasped, as he ran lightly along close beside Hemming, the right guard, who had also been a substitute catcher in the baseball days when Steve Mullane held out behind the bat like a ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... I think is very plain, that the fugitive has the same natural right to defend himself against the slave-catcher, or his constitutional tool, that he has against a murderer or a wolf. The man who attacks me to reduce me to slavery, in that moment of attack alienates his right to life, and if I were the fugitive, and could escape in no other ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... had popped up from. And so we passed her particularly Britannic Majesty's ships Anson, Rodney, Camperdown, Curlew, and Howe, and dropped our kedge overboard (at the end of the main halliards) close inside the torpedo-catcher Speedwell. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... pleasant Ratcatcher, with a tenor voice) did this because he knew no better. Try to realise that even a Ratcatcher knows St. George of England was not black, and did not kill the Dragon with an umbrella. The Rat-catcher is not under this delusion; any more than Paul Veronese thought that very good men have luminous rings round their heads; any more than the Pope thinks that Christ washed the feet of the twelve in a Cathedral; any more than the Duke of Norfolk thinks the lions on a tabard ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... looking stranger concerning his business in Philadelphia; and he, being ashamed to acknowledge himself a slave-catcher, returned very evasive and unsatisfactory answers. He was accordingly committed to prison, to answer at the next court of Sessions. It was customary to examine prisoners before they were locked up, and take whatever was in their pockets, to be restored to them whenever they were discharged. David ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... eight feet of stature, as he stood erect, he went cautiously forward, and at once was caught by his left paw in an enormous Bear-trap. He roared with pain and slashed about in a fury. But this was no Beaver-trap; it was a big forty-pound Bear-catcher, and he was ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... you suppress the organ-grinder after this? What are the limits of a man's domicile? How much of the coast does he own beyond his area-railings? Is No. 48 to be deprived of the 'Hat-catcher's Daughter' because 47 is dyspeptic? Are the maids in 32 not to be cheered by 'Sich a gettin' up stairs' because there is a nervous invalid in 33? How long may an organ-man linger in front of a residence to tune or adjust his barrels—the dreariest of all discords? ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... I watched the oyster-catcher, as he flew from point to point, and cautiously waded into the shallow water; and the patient heron, that pattern of a fisherman, as with retracted neck, and eyes fixed on vacancy, he has stood for hours without a ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the public as a golfer, Holabird was catcher on the school baseball team, half-back on the eleven, held the gold medal for the inter-class track meet, and, in fact, excelled in all athletic sports. As a scholar he always ranked high. He was devotion itself to his parents, his brothers and sisters, respectful ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... species of the alauda trivialis, or rather perhaps of the motacilla trochilus) still continues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods. The stoparola of Ray (for which we have as yet no name in these parts) is called in your zoology the fly-catcher. There is one circumstance characteristic of this bird which seems to have escaped observation, and that is, it takes its stand on the top of some stake or post, from whence it springs forth on its prey, catching a fly in the air, and hardly ever touching the ground, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... Steve, "if all our smart traps go begging, and he gives us the merry ha! ha! every time, wouldn't you try that monkey-catcher trick the circus man ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... this journey that a spotted fly-catcher, sitting on a gatepost, made a Euclid figure at her in midair as she passed. She had not power to fight the bird's beak, and her poison-dagger was useless here; nor do fly-catchers often miss. This, however, was an occasion when one of them did—by an eighth of an inch—and only some electric-spark-like ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... play an important part. It is Nera, for instance, the lord of the plague, who declares war against mankind in order to punish them for having despised the authority of Anu. He makes Babylon to feel his wrath first: "The children of Babel, they were as birds, and the bird-catcher, thou wert he! thou takest them in the net, thou enclosest them, thou decimatest them—hero Nera!" One after the other he attacks the mother cities of the Euphrates and obliges them to render homage to him—even Uruk, "the dwelling of Anu and Ishtar—the town of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... not altogether satisfactory to be nursed by a professional rat-catcher, and some of the patients are already complaining ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... by some grand seignor in the Middle Ages, when the rich thought no more of the poor than we do of flies, or they'd have run over every one who didn't get out of their way on the instant. They'd have had a sort of cow-catcher fitted on to their cars, to keep themselves from coming to harm, and they'd have dashed people aside, anyhow. In these days, no matter how hard your heart may be, you have to sacrifice your inclinations more or less to decency. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... the sense that an architect and an archaeologist begin with the same series of letters. The world must remain in a reverent doubt as to whether he would, on the same principles, have presented a diplomatist to a dipsomaniac or a ratiocinator to a rat catcher. He was a big, fair, bull-necked young man, abounding in outward gestures, unconsciously flapping his gloves ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... Clementina's mind the dog-catcher suggested awful possibilities. "Oh!" she said, "what can ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... (to which attention has lately been recalled) we cull the following extracts, premising that the observations mostly relate to a third species, Sarracenia adunca, alias variolaris, which is said to be the most efficient fly-catcher of ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray |
