"Dormouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a washed-out specimen, but, I say, that fat fellow looks rather a sport. You know, the man like a dormouse." ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... all her powers for to-morrow," thought Jane's parent; and she was. She slept according to her custom, like a dormouse, and woke refreshed to put up the fight of her life. They got to it after breakfast, when the house-place was empty, and Warner soon found that, if he were to have his will, 'twould be needful to call on ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... regards to old Mr. John Taylor, Who "thinks he might pass as a dormouse," (Three years in bed ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... books. I was unconsciously affected by your example. You dared to stretch out both hands to life and grasp it; you accepted the spontaneous natural living wisdom of your instincts when I was rolled up like a dormouse in the dead wisdom of codes and formulas, dogmas and opinions. I never told you how I became a priest. I did not know until quite lately. I think I began to suspect my vocation when you ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... accustomed for hundreds of years, to perform prodigies of labor during two short periods of sowing and harvest, and to spend the immensely long and monotonous winter in a hibernation like that of the snake or the dormouse. There is a much greater difference between a Russian workman's normal output and that of which he is capable for a short time if he sets himself to it, than there is between the normal and exceptional output ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... Indian's thought is better even for us than any which we have framed for ourselves. Imagine yourself as a sportsman, spear in hand, pursuing the wild V.C. through fire and water, or patiently stalking the wary K.C.B., or laying snares for the gentle C.I.E.; or else as a humble industrious dormouse lining a warm nest for the winter of your life in Bath or Tunbridge Wells; or as a gay butterfly flitting from flower to flower while the sunshine of your brief day may last; or simply as a prisoner toiling at the treadmill because you must: the well in the garden is a pleasanter conception ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... much pleased with his nest, and forthwith curled himself up in it like a young dormouse, delighting in the conviction that no attendants despatched by his mother to capture him would ever find him here. Boys have been young pickles ever since the world began, and were just as full of pranks in the fifteenth ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... how delightful! I really will work, with such a dear beautiful box!" cried Kate, opening it, and again peeping into all its little holes and contrivances. "Here is the very place for a dormouse to sleep in! And who is the ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... until they got under way, when she discovered that a mail- steamer was a joke compared with the yacht in the matter of motion. In short, the unfortunate Agatha was soon reduced to her normal condition of torpor. Mildred always declared that she hibernated on board ship like a dormouse or a bear. She was not very sea-sick, she simply lay and slept, eating very little and ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... how he got his horses. He had, however, a very pretty knack of selling them, and certainly paid Mr. Horsball regularly. He was wont to vanish in April, and would always turn up again in October. Some people called him the dormouse. He was good-humoured, good-looking after a horsey fashion, clever, agreeable, and quite willing to submit himself to any nickname that could be found for him. He liked a rubber of whist, and was supposed to make something out of bets ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Sou'-West wind singing through Dallington Forest, and the woods below the Beacon. The children set out after dinner to find old Hobden, who had a three months' job in the Rough at the back of Pound's Wood. He had promised to get them a dormouse in its nest. The bright leaf Still clung to the beech coppice; the long chestnut leaves lay orange on the ground, and the rides were speckled with scarlet-lipped sprouting acorns. They worked their way by their own short cuts to the edge of Pound's Wood, and heard a horse's feet ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... a dormouse lived in the wood with his mother. She had made a snug little nest, but Sleepy-head, as she called her little mousie, loved to roam about among the grass and fallen leaves, and it was a hard task to keep him at home. One ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... defiance, and, with bright, black, determined eyes, sat lumped up in the distant corners of their dens, ready 'to die game,' if die they must. Gay-colored finches, the gold and the green, graced the window in little brown bob cages; while mice of all colors, from the burnt sienna-colored dormouse, who was more than half asleep within the skin of an apple which it had scooped out, to the matronly white mouse, who was sitting composedly amid a progeny of thirteen young ones, attracted groups of little gazers, every now and then dispersed by the larger terrier, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... mouldy, dreary, God- forgotten towns in the wide world, the chief. Sitting on this hillock where a bastion used to be, and where a noisy fortress was, in the time of the old Roman station here, I became aware that I have never known till now, what it is to be lazy. A dormouse must surely be in very much the same condition before he retires under the wool in his cage; or a tortoise before ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... include in this volume "The Awakening of the Dormouse," "The Purple Emperor," "The Harvest Mouse," and "The Trivial Fortunes of Molge," I have to thank the Editor of the Girl's Realm, and for "The Story of a Field Vole," and "The Passing of the Black Rat," I am indebted to the courtesy of ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... down to table, and the fairy rang the little brass bell twice, and the weeny dwarf brought in two boiled snails in their shells, and when they had eaten the snails he brought in a dormouse, and when they had eaten the dormouse he brought in two wrens, and when they had eaten the wrens he brought in two nuts full of wine, and they became very merry, and the fairyman sang "Cooleen dhas," and the dwarf sang "The little blackbird ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... filled and fragrant and potent with goodness will not let me procrastinate another minute, or I shall sink and deserve to sink into my dormouse condition. You are of the Anakim, and know nothing of the debility and postponement of the blonde constitution. Well, if you shame us by your reservoir inexhaustible of force, you indemnify and cheer some of us, or one of us, by charges ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... until midnight. In obedience to the directions of this saintly person, I kept myself awake as well as I could till eleven o'clock. I then got on my knees with great fervour, and I blush to confess it, immediately fell as fast asleep as a dormouse. This went on for several nights, when Father Deveaux finding that my midnight devotions were rather too much for me, was so obliging as to prescribe another species of pious exercise, in a letter which he wrote to me ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... cartoons. What, for example, could be more delightful than the picture, in "Alice in Wonderland," of the "Mad Tea Party?" Observe the hopelessly distraught expression of the March hare, and the eager incoherence of the hatter! A little further on the pair are trying to squeeze the dormouse into the teapot; and a few pages back the blue caterpillar is discovered smoking his hookah on the top of a mushroom. He was exactly three inches long, says the veracious chronicle, but what a dignity!—what an oriental flexibility of gesture! Speaking of animals, it must ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... and not even so much. Tell your little mother, just that. Then I shall see you at last, all I want to for two days. Do you know that you are INACCESSIBLE in Paris? Poor old fellow, did you finally sleep like a dormouse in your cabin? I would like to give you a little of my sleep that nothing, not even a cannon, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Gale Fairy Songs William Shakespeare Queen Mab Ben Jonson The Elf and the Dormouse Oliver Herford "Oh! Where Do Fairies Hide Their Heads?" Thomas Haynes Bayly Fairy Song Leigh Hunt Dream Song Richard Middleton Fairy Song John Keats Queen Mab Thomas Hood The Fairies of the Caldon-Low Mary Howitt The Fairies William Allingham The Fairy Thrall Mary C. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... suggestive of the fairy in Jerry as she tumbled through the door at that moment, Pepperpot held high in her arms and Bigboy leaping at her side. They rudely disturbed the Maltese—Dormouse, Jerry called her—and then occupied in sprawling fashion the strip of rug before ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... to use copyrighted material the authors and publishers express their indebtedness to The Independent for "Who Loves the Trees Best?" by Alice M. Douglas; to Oliver Herford and the Century Company for "The Elf and the Dormouse"; to the American Folklore Society for "How Brother Rabbit Fooled the Whale and the Elephant," by Alcee Fortier; to the Outlook for "Making the Best of It," by Frances M. Fox, and "Winter Nights," by Mary F. Butts; to Harper Brothers for "The Animals ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... large pop-gun, a football, a dormouse in a cage, a punchball on a stand, a large box of "curios," and a buckskin which was his dearest possession and had been presented to him by an uncle ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... the half-awake little passenger; but she was very good-natured, whipped off Eyebright's boots, hat, and jacket, in a twinkling, and tucked her into a little berth, where in three minutes she was napping like a dormouse. There was a great deal of whistling and screeching and ringing of bells when the boat left her dock, heavy feet trampled over the deck just above the berth, the water lapped and hissed; but not one of these things did Eyebright hear, nor was she conscious of the rock-ing motion of the waves. ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... Men were retching and groaning, cussing and growling. At last I found a coil of rope. It was a huge coil with a hole in the centre—something like a large bird's nest. I got into this hole and curled up like a dormouse. Here I did not feel the cold so much, and lying down I didn't feel sick. The moon glittered on the great gray billows. The cattle-boat heaved up and slid down the mountains. She pitched and rolled and slithered sideways down the ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... sun is to the flowers. If it were not for the spring before it, the flower-root would rot in the ground, the tree canker at the core; the bird would speed south never to return; the insect would not retreat under shelter in the rain; the dormouse would not hibernate, the ant collect its stores, the bee its honey. There could be no life without expectation; and a life without hope in man or woman is that of a machine—not even that of an animal. ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... two remarkably large and long front teeth, both above and below, and are destitute of canine teeth. Their feet have claws, and are formed both for bounding and running. They feed on vegetables. The genera are, the porcupine, cavy, beaver, bat, marmot, squirrel, dormouse, ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... droll to go running about en chemise, like the girl in the tale of the 'Midsummer Eve,' where she pulls the Saint Johns-wort flower, and has her wish to hear all the creatures talk. I liked it much, and Yvon slept so like the dormouse that he never heard me creep in and out. It was hard to bring much water, but the poor cabbages were so glad, and Mother Lobineau felt that ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... through the brass fretwork of the stove; and with admirable caution in such a little fellow he leaned out, drew the hay and straw together, rearranged the ropes, so that no one could ever have dreamed a little mouse had been at them. Then he curled himself up again, this time more like a dormouse than anything else; and, being safe inside his dear Hirschvogel and intensely cold, he went fast asleep as if he were in his own bed at home with Albrecht, and Christof on either side of him. The train lumbered on, stopped often and ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... on the wall, to which he now added the gate key; and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner division or recess. The whole had a slovenly, confined, and sleepy look, like a cage for a human dormouse; while he, looming dark and heavy in the shadow of a corner by the window, looked like the human dormouse for whom it was ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... riddled by sobs, that Hester could never take an interest in life again, could never raise herself even to a sitting position, nor dry her eyes on her aunt's handkerchief, unless she were allowed to go to tea with Rachel and see her dormouse. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... six months previously bought a dormouse in a cage at a bazaar, and after idolizing it for a week had forgotten all about it. Her husband had rescued it half starved; his assistant had fed it up in the laboratory, and they had tried a few experiments on it with ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... risen; because it would be too dangerous to cross the flooded valleys in the darkness of the night. And but for this consideration, I must have striven harder against the stealthy approach of slumber. But even so, it was very foolish to abandon watch, especially in such as I, who sleep like any dormouse. Moreover, I had chosen the very worst place in the world for such employment, with a goodly chance of awakening in a bed ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... him. Being asked next morning how he liked his attendant, his answer was, 'Not at all, Sir: the fellow's an ideot; he is as aukward as a turn-spit when first put into the wheel, and as sleepy as a dormouse.' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... dreamed of. Oh, mother! mother! Draw me close, hold me tight. Earth has no peace so holy as the blessed rest in a mother's clasping arms. After the long winter of separation, it is so sweet to bask in your presence, thawing like a numb dormouse in the sunshine of May. I knew I should find joy in the reunion, but how deep, how full, anticipation failed to paint; and only the blessed ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... you would make up your mind to stop with me; you would lose nothing by the change, believe me. The hostler who has just quitted me came here eight months ago all in tatters, and as lean as a shotten herring, and now he has two very good suits of clothes, and is as fat as a dormouse; for you must know, my son, that in this house there are excellent vails to be got ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a moment before either spoke. The old priest broke the silence. He was a gentle-faced old man, not unlike a very shrewd and wide-awake dormouse; and his white hair stood out in a mass beneath his biretta. But the words he used were ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. "Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse," thought Alice; "only as it's asleep, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... never doubted for one moment that he was, ma'am, when I found him," continued Nurse; "he was lying all crumpled up and stone-cold, for all the world like Miss Nancy's dormouse when she forgot to feed it for ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... whispered Long Allen to his mates; "by Saint Christopher, you will make our Dickon go beside himself, and we shall have his dagger presently fly at our costards. Leave him alone; in less than a minute he will sleep like a dormouse." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Steve boisterously. "Here, come out, you lazy old rascal; we're just going on a bit of a trip. Where are you? Oh, I say, you do like playing dormouse." ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... her to "Alice in Wonderland," Mr. Savile Clarke's play at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. The first act (Wonderland) goes well, specially the Mad Tea Party. Mr. Sydney Harcourt is a capital Hatter, and little Dorothy d'Alcourt (aet. 61/2) a delicious Dormouse. Phoebe Carlo is a splendid Alice. Her song and dance with the Cheshire Cat (Master C. Adeson, who played the Pirate King in "Pirates of Penzance") was a gem. As a whole the play seems ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... be nice, though they do say 'as fat as a dormouse.' It is not a wonder they are fat, sleeping all day, and only waking to eat all night. Listen. Last year I had four apricots—they stole one, I had one nectarine, only one—well, sir, they ate half of it on the wall; a splendid nectarine—I ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Read. I'm as predisposed as I can be toward anything conceived by that little dormouse of a person in ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... came out to find the Butterfly's Ball in full action. Fly had become a Butterfly by the help of a battered pair of fairy wings, stretched on wire, which were part of the theatrical stock. 'The shy little Dormouse' was creeping about on all fours under a fur jacket, with a dilapidated boa for a long tail, but her 'blind brother the Mole' had escaped from her, and had been transformed into the Frog, by means of a spotted handkerchief over his back, and tremendous leap-frog jumps. Primrose, in another pair ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are melted that cradle the mountain streams, Before the bear and the dormouse rouse from their winter dreams, Before the earliest linnet flutes forth his roundel clear, There comes an authentic moment that marks the turn of ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... said Septimus, and the door having closed behind Clem Sypher, he thrust the check beneath the bedclothes, curled himself up and went to sleep like a dormouse. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... see, I took up natural history and a whole lot of other subjects at the same time, and one can't remember everything, can one? I used to know the difference between the Sardinian dormouse and the ordinary kind, and whether the wry-neck arrives at our shores earlier than the cuckoo, or the other way round, and how long the walrus takes in growing to maturity; I daresay you knew all those sorts of things once, but I ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... page-master's voice; The saucy long-haired boys rejoice To do the manager's commands. At morn 'tis not with empty hands The country pays its call, but some Bring honey in its native comb, Or cones of cheese; some think as good A sleepy dormouse from the wood; And honest tenants' big girls bring Baskets ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... ostrich draws admiring throngs Whenever he sings his comic songs, And, really, it's no wonder! The dormouse has been highly rated (and justly) for ...
— Mouser Cats' Story • Amy Prentice
... so? What business had I to live to the brink of seventy-nine? And why should One litter the world at that age? Then, I thank God, I have vast blessings; I have preserved my eyes, ears, and teeth; I have no pain left; and I would bet with any dormouse that it cannot outsleep me. And when one can afford to pay for every relief, comfort, or assistance that can be procured at fourscore, dares one complain? Must not one reflect on the thousands of old poor, who are suffering ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... only knew who did this, yes, if I only knew, I would have the rascal put in the stocks. But you, you dormouse, yes you, you call yourself a man! you! Don't you wish to borrow my petticoat! To sleep when engaged in the noble art of hunting! To complain of fatigue! Fie upon such men! But can you not discover ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... I must not forget to tell you that a bat is like a dormouse in one respect: it does not fly away to a warm, country when the cold is coming, and the insects are getting scarce, but goes off to sleep in a barn, or belfry, or cave, and sleeps on all through the winter, needing neither food nor drink. There are many different kinds of bats ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... shew fauour to the youth in your sight, onely to exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in your Heart, and brimstone in your Liuer: you should then haue accosted her, and with some excellent iests, fire-new from the mint, you should haue bangd the youth into dumbenesse: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of the nature of a supper; and after this there was such a disposition for sleep exhibited by the whole of the party, not excluding the Squire himself, that Mrs Inglis very soon began to talk about bed; and toe had to talk very loudly, too, for Harry had curled himself up in the great easy chair, dormouse fashion; Fred was sitting at the table with a book, whose leaves he was keeping from flying open by resting his head upon them; while Philip was seated on a small ottoman by his father's knees, and resting against them, fast asleep, as ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... were quite overcome by the idea of the journey. Madame Bonaparte, mere, supported the fatigues of this memorable day with the greatest courage; but Madame Bonaparte, Consulesse, did not show any. The two young ladies who sat in the dormouse, Mademoiselle Hortense and Madame Lavallette, were rival candidates for a bottle of Eau de Cologne; and every now and then the amiable M. Rapp made the carriage stop for the comfort of his poor little ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... I've seen her sleep like a dormouse through prayers, sermon, and all at Pont de Dronne. Follette is she be, she belongs to the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... leading the life I do, how can that be possible? I rise at five o'clock, winter and summer; I go to bed at ten or eleven; I eat to satisfy my hunger, which is not very great, it is true; I sing like a lark all day, and at night I sleep like a dormouse: I have a mind free, joyful, and contented, with the certainty of plenty of work, because my employers are pleased with what I have done. Why should I be sick! What an idea! ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... across it in pencil. "Why, it's your name!" she said wonderingly, and held the piece of wood in her hand. The place was all wood. There was wood here to last her weeks. Mouse cages—white mouse cages and dormouse cages, a wooden ruler with idle scratches all over it and "P.S." in the corner—boxes and boxes of things he wouldn't want; he'd say if he saw them now: "Throw it away"—boxes of glass tubes he had blown when he was fifteen, boxes of ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... revive; there was no trace of warmth, or any apparent beating of the heart, and so it lay for some days, but on bringing it into a warm room it became as bright and active as ever. It seems a more intense form of hibernation than that of our squirrel and dormouse. ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... to the Imperial Edition Prefatory note to First Edition I An escort to the citadel II The master of the King's magazine III The wager and the sword IV The rat in the trap V The device of the dormouse VI Moray tells the story of his life VII "Quoth little Garaine" VIII As vain as Absalom IX A little concerning the Chevalier de la Darante X An officer of marines XI The coming of Doltaire XII "The point envenomed too!" XIII A little boast XIV Argand Cournal ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... effect of wind and current, they concealed themselves on deck under a black tarpaulin—that is to say, it had been black, but wind and weather had reduced it to a dirty brown—and there, adopting for the occasion the habits of the dormouse, the bear, the caterpillar, and other ephemeral productions, they lay torpid. But the moment the vessel touched the quay, profiting by the commotion, they emerged, and signed certificates with chalk on my portmanteau; then vanished in the crowd. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... earth were immediately put into a great commotion. They had no light. They called a council to debate upon the matter, and to appoint some one to go and cut the cord—for this was a very hazardous enterprise, as the rays of the sun would burn whoever came so near to them. At last the dormouse undertook it—for at this time the dormouse was the largest animal in the world. When it stood up it looked like a mountain. When it got to the place where the sun was snared, its back began to smoke and burn with the ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... a mathematical genius, had been able to pay his way through Cambridge University by the scholarships and prizes which he had won. One beautiful little dark-eyed daughter of seven was playing in a West End Theatre as the dormouse in "Alice in Wonderland." She was second fiddle to Alice herself, also, and could sing all her songs. Her pay was some five pounds a week, poor enough for the attraction she proved, but more than all the rest of the family put together earned. At that time I never went to theatres. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... been suppressed, like the dormouse in Alice's teapot. There is very little left of me. I had no idea your niece had such a taste for argument, Cunliffe. I take it rather unkindly that I was not warned ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... from side to side to try and discover where these words could come from, but he saw nobody. The donkeys galloped, the coach rattled, the boys inside slept, Candlewick snored like a dormouse, and the little man seated on the box sang ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... Sentronell? s'hart heele nod[119] presently: and he do not sleepe sitting upon the poynt of a Spanish needle, Dicke Bowyer's a very shittle-cocke. Nod! zounds, he is one of the nine sleepers, a very Dormouse: & I had a pageant to present of the seven deadly Sinnes[120], he should play Slouth; and he did not sleepe when he should speake his ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... Grove, "and in this way: before we begin the battle, I will come up to your worship fair and softly, and give you three or four buffets, with which I shall stretch you at my feet and rouse your anger, though it were sleeping sounder than a dormouse." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... brought from another part of the wood. This done, he lay down flat on his back, and looked dreamily up at the pretty green roof made by the juniper boughs overhead. "I dess I'll take a nappy now," he murmured, and in five minutes was sleeping as soundly as a dormouse. Two striped squirrels, which may or may not have been the same which he had seen in the early morning, came out on a bough not a yard from his head, chattered, winked, put their paws to their noses and made disrespectful remarks to each other about the motionless figure. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... soft bed and the blazing fire in his room—he stripped back the light-excluding curtains forgetful of Defence of the Realm Acts, and opened all the windows wide, to the horror of Peddle in the morning—slept like an unperturbed dormouse. When Peddle woke him, he lay drowsily while the old butler filled his bath and fiddled about with drawers. At last aroused, he ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... is now so good, that I dread it still. The rapid decline of my strength during the last winter, has made me hope sometimes, that I see land. During summer, I enjoy its temperature, but I shudder at the approach of winter, and wish I could sleep through it, with the dormouse, and only wake with him in spring, if ever. They say that Starke could walk about his room. I am told you walk well and firmly. I can only reach my garden, and that with sensible fatigue. I ride, however, daily; but reading ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... creation,—the one painful worker, in the midst of present trouble, for a state into which he is never to enter,—the befooled expectant of a happy future, which he is never to see? Assuredly no. He who keeps faith with all his humbler creatures,—who gives to even the bee and the dormouse the winter for which they prepare,—will to a certainty not break faith with man,—with man, alike the deputed lord of the present creation, and the chosen heir of all the future. We have been looking abroad on the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... was to her that his thoughts went. The child had grown into a fat young woman, heavy and white. Her intelligence, dull in the first instance, had become still more obscured through the inertia of a dormouse's existence, the carelessness of a father given over to business, the use of opium-saturated tobacco and of preserves made from rose-leaves, the torpor of her Flemish blood, re-enforced by Oriental indolence. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Arabs also regard as a dainty. There is a kindred animal in Siberia, called Alactaga, and a kind of Kangaroo-rat (probably the same) is mentioned as very abundant on the Mongolian Steppe. There is also the Zieselmaus of Pallas, a Dormouse, I believe, which he says the Kalmaks, even of distinction, count a delicacy, especially cooked in sour milk. "They eat not only the flesh of all their different kinds of cattle, including horses and camels, but also that of many wild animals which other nations ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... his painters; vainly had he fancied that thereby he might be remembered. A peach—a blushing, rich-flavored fruit, nestling in the trellis work on the garden-wall, hidden beneath its long, green leaves,—this little vegetable production, that a dormouse would nibble up without a thought, was sufficient to recall to the memory of this great monarch the mournful shade of the last surintendant ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of more modern date, I ought equally to doubt the co-existence of all the other living species, such as the red deer, roe, wild cat, wild boar, wolf, fox, weasel, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog, mole, dormouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones of which he had found scattered everywhere indiscriminately through the same mud with the extinct quadrupeds. The year after this conversation I cited Schmerling's opinions, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... was very hopeless. And all the time he courted the imperious rose, who should be peeping at him from her home in the hedge but as plump and as sleek a little Miss Dormouse as ever you saw, and her eyes ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... further than that? Why, you might as well stay at home. Really, my dear, it's a great pity you don't go about and see some of your old friends; you can't mean to shut yourself up like a dormouse for ever, ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... descended from an old Greek family, the Hypnotidae, who came to Pantouflia during the Crusades. They wanted, they explained, not to be troubled with the Crusades, which they thought very injudicious and tiresome. The Crest of the regal house is a Dormouse, dormant, proper, on a field vert, and the Motto, when translated out of the original Greek, means, Anything for a ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... dusty road Strewed acorns on the lea; And one took root and sprouted up, And grew into a tree. Love sought its shade at evening-time, To breathe its early vows; And Age was pleased, in heights of noon, To bask beneath its boughs. The dormouse loved its dangling twigs, The birds sweet music bore— It stood a glory in ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... of self-trance," says Dr. Paul. "In this state the Yogis, like the bat, the hedge-hog, the marmot, the hamster and the dormouse, acquire the power of supporting the abstraction of atmospheric air, and the privation of food and drink. Of Samadhi or human hibernation there have been three cases within the last twenty-five years. The first case occurred in Calcutta, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... person; and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boy's plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for a garden; and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief—at least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which she was forbidden to take. Such were her propensities—her ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... refreshingly. Awoke, and up an hour before being called; but dawdled three hours in dressing. When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation),—sleep, eating, and swilling—buttoning and unbuttoning—how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... dreamers that lie under the sod, of dormice and all that race of dormant creatures, which have such a superfluity of life enveloped in thick folds of fur, impervious to cold. Alas, the poet too is, in one sense, a sort of dormouse gone into winter quarters of deep and serene thoughts, insensible to surrounding circumstances; his words are the relation of his oldest and finest memory, a wisdom drawn from the remotest experience. Other men lead a starved existence, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Gascoyne, soothingly, "the little imp is as lazy as a dormouse and as mischievous as a monkey. I'll warrant the hiding was his due, and that more of the like would ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... address, which was delivered in her politest manner, Fanny left the room with an elegant and cheerful air—to tear up-stairs with a flushed face as soon as she was out of hearing, pounce in upon her sister, call her a little Dormouse, shake her for the better opening of her eyes, tell her what had passed below, and ask her what she thought ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... they are lively," burst from Nan at the far end of the table. "How is Kitty Lorrimer, and how is Boris? And have they got as many pets as ever? Oh, can you tell me, please, father, if the dormouse has awakened yet? It was fast asleep when I was home at Christmas, and Boris said it mightn't wake again until May. Boris was so sorry it wasn't quite dead, because he wanted to stuff it; but he couldn't if it was alive, could he? That would be ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... Madrazos, Villegas, Montenas, and the others are academic echoes or else feeble and mannered. There are some adroit water-colours by modern Frenchmen, and there is a seeming attempt to make the collection contemporary in spirit, but it is all as dead as the allegorical dormouse, while over at the Prado there is a vitality manifested by the old fellows that bids fair to outlast the drums, tramplings, and conquests of many generations. We have not more than alluded to the sculpture at the Prado; it is not particularly ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... stroke on stroke Striking, till, when he stopt, his back seem'd broke, And the strong arm dropt nerveless. What of that? There was a treasure hidden in his hat— A plaything for the young ones. He had found A dormouse nest; the living ball coil'd round For its long winter sleep; and all his thought As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of nought But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes, And graver Lizzy's quieter surprize, When he should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... was in a hurry to look at the invalid first. Razumihin informed him that Raskolnikov was sleeping like a dormouse. Zossimov gave orders that they shouldn't wake him and promised to see him ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... father seen spakin' was no use, he went on with his story.—By the same token, it was the story of Jim Soolivan and his ould goat he was tellin'—an' a pleasant story it is—an' there was so much divarsion in it, that it was enough to waken a dormouse, let alone to pervint a Christian goin' asleep. But, faix, the way my father tould it, I believe there never was the likes heerd sinst nor before for he bawled out every word av it, as if the life was fairly leavin' him thrying to keep ould Larry ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... faineant[Fr], dummy, sleeping partner; afternoon farmer; truant &c. (runaway) 623: bummer|!, loafer, goldbrick, goldbicker, lounger, lazzarone[It]; lubber, lubbard[obs3]; slow coach &c. (slow.) 275; opium eater, lotus eater; slug; lag|!, sluggard, slugabed; slumberer, dormouse, marmot; waiter on Providence, fruges consumere natus[Lat]. V. be inactive &c. adj.; do nothing &c. 681; move slowly &c. 275; let the grass grow under one's feet; take one's time, dawdle, drawl, droil[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... public banquet of M. Lespars are a plate of white worms, a bushel of grasshoppers, and a broil of magpies seasoned with the slugs that infest certain green berries. One regards this announcement with more or less incredulity; but little doubt seems to hang over the assertion that the dormouse has just been introduced into the list of French game-dishes. The puzzle for the cooks seems to be with regard to the proper sauce for the new delicacy; but this matter does not trouble the little chimney-sweeps, who find the animal so long ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... about him to see whence the words had come, but he saw no one. The donkeys galloped, the wagon rolled on smoothly, the boys slept (Lamp-Wick snored like a dormouse) and the little, fat driver ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... Civil Surgeon at Meridki, and we called him "Dormouse," because he was a round little, sleepy little man. He was a good Doctor and never quarreled with any one, not even with our Deputy Commissioner who had the manners of a bargee and the tact of a horse. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... It's nearly ten o'clock, and you let me sleep like a dormouse! Such a thing has never ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... the Zoological Gardens and ride on the big guinea pig and feed the rabbits and hear the dormouse asleep." ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... sallow skin without colour, dark, lank hair, and strong features. So much for her person; and not less propitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boys' sports, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy—nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rosebush. Indeed, she had no taste for a garden; and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief—at least, so it was conjectured ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... hid my head within a Convent, there Lay passive as a dormouse in mid winter. That was no life for me—I was o'erthrown But ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... ants demand a special coach If one ant-eater goes; The dormouse wants a sleeping car; The ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... before the death of her father and mother, and this event could not be expected to provide her with a wholly new emotion. She had been familiarised with sorrow through fine gradations of funereal tragedy, having witnessed the passing of her canary, her dormouse, and her rabbit. The end of these engaging creatures had been peculiarly distressing, hastened as it was by starvation, under most ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... animals, the squirrel, field mouse, and dormouse, are store-keepers by nature. The larder is placed at a convenient distance from the nest in which these little animals sleep, and if forgotten, or accidentally left unused, the nuts, seeds, &c., often taken root and grow. Many a spreading chestnut, sturdy oak, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... bum-gunshot at the walnut-tree taper, as is usual in his country of Mirebalais. Slacking, therefore, the topsail, and letting go the bowline with the brazen bullets, wherewith the mariners did by way of protestation bake in pastemeat great store of pulse interquilted with the dormouse, whose hawk's-bells were made with a puntinaria, after the manner of Hungary or Flanders lace, and which his brother-in-law carried in a pannier, lying near to three chevrons or bordered gules, whilst he was clean out ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... want a long sleep; I was wakened very early this morning, and there is so much of the dormouse about me, that if I am cheated out of a single half hour of my usual allowance, I am fit ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... was the third son of the Vicar of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, where he was born, May 17, 1749. Before he was nine years of age he showed a growing taste for natural history, in forming a collection of the nests of the dormouse; and when at school at Cirencester he was fond of searching for fossils, which abound in that neighborhood. He was articled to a surgeon at Sudbury, near Bristol, and at the end of his apprenticeship came to London, and studied under John Hunter, with whom he resided as a pupil for two years ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... Mr. John Dormouse was complained to, he stayed in bed, and would say nothing but "very snug;" which is not the way to carry on ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... Donakins! I say, old sport, do stir yourself and blink an eye! What a dormouse you are! D'you want shaking? Rouse up, you old ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... twenty-two years. He waited at table, groomed the mare, gardened, blacked the abbe's boots, went on errands, chopped the wood, drove the carriole, and fetched the oats, straw, and hay from Prebaudet. He sat in the antechamber during the evening, where he slept like a dormouse. He was in love with Josette, a girl of thirty, whom Mademoiselle would have dismissed had she married him. So the poor fond pair laid by their wages, and loved each other silently, waiting, hoping for mademoiselle's own ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... champagne, he drank punch, an after that he slept like a dormouse; unfortunately, sleep dissipated his exhilaration, and when he awoke his gaiety had left him. He had the fatal custom of reflecting; his reflections saddened him; he was revenged, but what then? He thought ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... speak, say abdicate, verdict *Dies day diary, quotidian Dignus worthy, fitting dignity, condign Do, datum give condone, data *Doceo, doctum teach document, doctor *Dominus lord dominion, danger *Domus house domicile, majordomo *Dormio sleep dormant, dormouse Duco lead traduce, deduction *Duo two dubious, duet Durus hard durable, obdurate Eo, itum go exit, initial Error, erratum wander erroneous, aberration Facio, feci, factum make, do manufacture, affect, sufficient, verify Fero, latum carry transfer, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... in the summer, comparatively speaking. Its nature is the reverse of that of the dormouse. Warm ambient air, loiterings abroad, gardenings, flowers to talk about, and preserves to make, soothed the wicked imp to slumber in the parish of Hollingford in summer-time. But when evenings grew short, and people gathered round ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and no signs of a budge!— And it isn't for want of "suggestion." I begin to suspect Hospitality's fudge, Meaning—mutually ruined digestion! He is such a bore, and his wife is so fat, And as fond of her bed as a dormouse. My girls say—in confidence—she is a cat; I'm sure he's a prig and a poor-mouse. I fancied he'd "influence," which he might use For DICK, our third son, who's a duffer. It doesn't come off, and I really refuse In DICK's interests longer to suffer. PAYN's right, and a Chamberlain ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... does put one in such uncomfortable situations occasionally. In fact, I think it would be quite as well if we could sometimes "sink the paternal," as Timon Croesus says. I suppose everybody has heard of the awful speech pa made in the parlor at Saratoga. My dearest friend, Tabby Dormouse, told me she had heard of it everywhere, and that it was ten times as absurd each time it was repeated. By the by, Tabby is a dear creature, isn't she? It's so nice to have a spy in the enemy's ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... an acquaintance with two dogs, three cats, a dormouse, and a tame starling, before she was considered intimate with the whole household, but after that she felt thoroughly ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... whose harum-scarum high spirits Mr. Hawbury's hospitality had certainly not produced a sedative effect. "Hear him, doctor! one would think he was ninety! Bed, you drowsy old dormouse! Look at that, and think of bed if ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... dirty-looking river dashing down behind, on the left; the beech boughs clad in dead leaves rustling on the slopes, in the opposite direction; and a few natives here and there, very untidy and sleepy-looking, as though with difficulty awaking from the "dormouse" state, complete the picture of Bareges, which we need hardly add is in itself a most desolate and dreary-looking place. In mid-summer, with the sun shining and the trees in full leaf, an improvement in the scene ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... The dormouse is a remarkable sleeper. Even in their ordinary sleep they can be taken from the nest and handled without waking them. Toward winter they acquire a great deal of fat, and stow away a vast amount of provision around ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... of Hunter's as "a project which, if realized, he expected would make his fortune."[4] With this not altogether admirable object in view, his experiments upon freezing animals were doubtless made. A dormouse, confined in a cold mixture, he tells us, "showed signs of great uneasiness; sometimes it would curl itself into round form to preserve its extremities and confine the heat, and finding that ineffectual, ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... Nonsense is that Fool talking? Will the Bell never ring for Prayers? We have an eminent Lady of this Stamp in our Country, who pretends to Amusements very much above the rest of her Sex. She never carries a white Shock-dog with Bells under her Arm, nor a Squirrel or Dormouse in her Pocket, but always an abridg'd Piece of Morality to steal out when she is sure of being observ'd. When she went to the famous Ass-Race (which I must confess was but an odd Diversion to be encouraged by People of Rank and Figure) it was not, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... need be for a year, and in the end you will find her normal and restored, of that I am convinced," he had said; and in these words her husband found his greatest comfort, as he tucked his little dormouse in and tip-toed from the ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... person should desire to fondle so prickly a creature as a hedgehog, or so diabolical a mammalian as the bloodthirsty flat-headed little weasel, seems very odd. Spiders, too, are uncomfortable pets; you can't caress them as you could a dormouse; the most you can do is to provide your spider with a clear glass bottle to live in, and teach him to come out in response to a musical sound, drawn from a banjo or fiddle, to take a fly from your fingers and go ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... was like a fairy dream to London-reared Inna; the lads showed her a squirrel or two, a dormouse not yet gone to its winter snooze, in its mossy bed-chamber. A snake wriggled past them, which made her shudder; frogs and toads leaped here and there in dark places. Then, oh, the whir and whisper of the autumn wind among the trees! the lights and shadows! Oh, for the ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... at last," said the elder Dormouse, as he took a nut from his store of provisions and cracked it, "and we may now leave our winter's bed." "I don't believe it," replied the younger. "The wind blows cold; I shall go ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... if you roll up when you sleep, or lie flat," Peter said, not feeling at all anxious to go. "Aunt Dorothy always called me a dormouse at night—" ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... I must pray you to tell Sarah we all had elder wine to finish our evening with, and I mulled it myself, and poured it out in the saucepan into the expectants' glasses, and everybody asked for more; and I slept like a dormouse. But, as I said, I am so stupid this morning that——. Well, there's no "that" able to say how stupid I am, unless the fly that wouldn't keep out of the candle last night; and he had some notion of bliss to be found in candles, and I've no notion ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... know what it is yet," grinned Elfreda. "The idea just came to me. I suppose," she continued reflectively, "we could have all the animals, like the March Hare, for instance, and the Dormouse. Then there's the Mock Turtle and the Jabberwock. No, that's been done to death. Besides, it's in 'Through the Looking Glass.' We could have the Griffon, though, and then, there's the Duchess, the King, the Queen, and the Mad Hatter. I'd love to do the Mad ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... that blink at you. She has a rather sleepy, rather drooping nose. Her shoulders droop; her small head droops, slightly, half the time. If she were not so slender she would be rather like a pretty dormouse half-recovering from its torpor. You insist on the determination of her little thrust-out underlip, only to be contradicted by her ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... thing about the Sleepyheads and the Dozy Pates. They very seldom know their own names—and even when they do they always deny that they are what they are. Why I really believe if I told Tom here that he was a Dormouse he'd deny it and ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... The American Dormouse is a more beautiful animal, striped down the back, and much resembling the squirrel ...
— Tame Animals • Anonymous
... dormouse. Look at the booby. I was wondering whether he resembled M. le Chevalier. Perhaps it was a momentary error—a fit of ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... went home and got supper, strained and skimmed milk, set a sponge for bread, and slept all night like a dormouse. George Tucker ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... go there, you will recognize Vigoureux by the loss of his finger. He will at once admit that the lad followed him, and remained in the troupe for ten months. He was a good enough lad, but as grand as a peacock, and as lazy as a dormouse. He made great friends with an old Alsatian, called Fritz, who was the conductor of the orchestra, and by-and-by both were so fond of each other, that one day they went off in each other's company. Now you want to know what has become of Fritz? I know Vigoureux will get tired ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... out after her from the corner of the big sofa, where he lay curled up like a dormouse, "if you would do your best on my dress, instead of making me wear this old suit, it would strike a better average in ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin |
