"Duck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... calling—a punching bag, small dumb-bells, a skipping rope, boxing gloves. Here the neophyte had been taught the niceties of feint and guard and lead, of the right cross, the uppercut, the straight left, to duck, to side-step, to shift lightly on his feet, to stop protruding his jaw in cordial invitation, to keep his stomach covered. He proved attentive and willing and quick. He was soon chewing gum as Spike Brennon chewed it, and had his hair clipped in Brennon manner. He lived his days and his nights ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Eagle. I am told he is very fond of Rabbit. In fact he is very fond of fresh meat of any kind. He even catches the babies of Lightfoot the Deer when he gets a chance. He is so swift of wing that even the members of the Duck family fear him, for he is especially fond of fat Duck. Even Honker the Goose is not safe from him. King he may he, but he rules only through fear. He is a white-headed old robber. The best thing I can say of him is that he ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... to the value of this experiment three animals were sent up in a basket attached to the balloon. These were a sheep, a cock, and a duck. All sorts of guesses were made as to what would be the fate of the "poor creatures". Some people imagined that there was little or no air in those higher regions and that the animals would choke; others said they would be frozen to death. But when the balloon ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... to swim," pleaded Dolly, who took to water like a duck. So Mr. Rose gave her her first lesson and she was so promising a pupil that he declared she would soon learn ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... her to tea with you, Eleanor," replies Mrs. Mounteagle, feeling she is conferring an immense honour on Mrs. Roche. "Mind you use that duck of a service, and wear your heliotrope gown. You look so distingue in it, and dear Lady MacDonald ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... hungry herself than that any one related to her should suffer, even a little. Just think of that beast being installed in their home. Every time he thinks it necessary to stir up a little extra sympathy he'll start that old gag of coughing to work again. Oh! I feel as if I could willingly help duck him in Hobson's Mill-pond, or give him a ride out of town on a rail some ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... creek seldom if ever flowed, except in a very wet season. It was a permanent waterhole—Murwidgee, fed by springs, and the white cockatoos and screaming corellas came there and bathed in its waters, and the black swans, and the wild duck, and teal rested there on their way south, when summer had laid his iron hand ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... was both deep and wide, being some twelve feet across and duck-boarded throughout, raised on wooden stakes to prevent the water reaching the level of the pathway. At short intervals shafts led down to the spacious dug-outs beneath, which were all connected and linked up with one another. In fact, practically speaking, one could walk from ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... Bertha went on, "my folks have always been purty poor, and I've lived in jay towns all my life; and when I came here I didn't know any more about life in a city than a duck does of mining. I had it all to learn, and they's a whole lot yet that I don't know." She smiled quaintly, then grew sober. "And what's worse, I haven't any one to tell me—except Mr. Congdon, and he's such a josher I don't trust him. He did ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... out of the dead man's house and left him to his long silence, the black wings of night were lifted, the storm was past, and a rose-red dawn veiled in silver bedecked the sky. The hills were tender with pearl and azure. The earth smelled sweet and freshly washed. A flock of wild duck rose from the dam and went streaking across the horizon like in a Japanese etching. All the land was full of dew and dreams. It was almost impossible to despair in such an hour. Christine felt the wings of hope beating in her breast, and an unaccountable trust in the goodness ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... ring was on the lady's hand, The gift of that dumb-founder'd lover— In scorn she pluck'd it from her hand, And flung it far the waters over— Far beyond the power of any Duck ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... figgerhead like a henhawk. He enjoyed himself here at the Cape. He fished, and loafed, and shot at a mark. He sartinly could shoot. The only thing he was wishing for was something alive to shoot at, and Brown had promised to take him out duck shooting. 'Twas too early for ducks, but that didn't worry Peter any; he'd a-had ducks to shoot at if he bought all the poultry in ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... be if I follow this beginning. Well my dear Brother, if I scape this drowning, 'tis your turn next to sink, you shall duck twice before I help you. Sir I cannot drink more; pray let me have ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... he has come to this correspondence by original creation or by slow adjustment, he certainly does now correspond in his whole physical and mental structure to the limited and special surroundings of his life,—the seal itself or the eider-duck ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... ducks flying by the lake," he said. "I am going to hide in the long grass and watch for them. If they come again, they shall feel my arrows. To-night we eat roast duck." ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... Cyril," says I. "You're fired. Not for failin' to duck the roast, understand, but ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... of the boisterous wind out of our ears. We have all got colds more or less. I am among the less; for rough weather has never been an enemy to me, and at home I have always been used to splashing about in the wet, with the native relish of a young duck. Mrs. Huntley is (despite the fly) among the more. She does not appear until late—not until near luncheon-time. Her cold is in the head, the safest but unbecomingest place, producing, as I with malignant joy perceive, a slight thickening and swelling of her little thin nose, and a ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... was moaning under her crown, and her mother, an old Normandy woman with round cheeks, who, having lost all her teeth, smiled with her eyes. She seemed very attractive to me. While we were eating roast-duck and chicken a la creme the good lady told us some very amusing stories, and, in spite of what her grandson had said, I did not observe that her mind was in the slightest degree affected. On the contrary, she seemed to be the life of ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... summer season, when the cloudy sky Upon the parched ground doth rain down send, As duck and mallard in the furrows dry With merry noise the promised showers attend, And spreading broad their wings displayed lie To keep the drops that on their plumes descend, And where the streams swell to a gathered lake, Therein they ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... look and motion is an apology for her existence. She was a Dix, or paid nurse. The ladies snubbed her; we had no room for her hoops; and she spent her time in odd corners, taking care of them and her hair, and turning up her eyes, like a duck in a thunder-storm, under the impression that it looked devotional. If I had killed all the folks I have felt like killing, she would have gone from that boat to ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... preserved an almost childish freshness of complexion. He did not know what it was to be ill, in spite of all his excesses; the vigour of his constitution was not affected in a single instance. Where any other man would have fallen dangerously ill, or even have died, he merely shook himself like a duck in the water, and became more blooming than ever. Once—that also was in the Caucasus.... This legend is improbable, it is true, but from it one can judge what Misha was regarded as capable of doing.... So then, once, in the Caucasus, when in ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... pipe as calm as duck-ponds, and explain that the proof-press in which the galley lies is too deep. It takes two thicknesses to force the sheet down on the face of the types and get a good impression. The boss is only a politician, not a printer, so ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... said Kathleen. "I'd have loved her just as much if she hadn't put a penny in. She is a duck, though! I can't think why I care so much about her, for she's ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... how it happened. There was a rush, a scramble, a backward sliding, a great deal of shouting, and the Connemara filly was couched in the narrow ditch at right angles to the fence, with the water oozing up through the weeds round her, like a wild duck on its nest; and at this moment Mr. Rupert Gunning appeared suddenly on the top of the bank and inspected the scene with an amusement that he made ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... with a distaste for simplicity which she felt to be unworthy. For breakfast there was a whole loaf on a platter, three breakfast rolls hot from the baker, and the family toast-rack full of tough, damp toast. A large pale-green duck's egg sat heavily in an egg-cup, capped, but not covered, by a strange red flannel thing representing a cock's head, which Pamela learned later was called an "egg-cosy" and had come from the sale of work for Foreign Missions. A metal ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... living at Harrodsburg (or Harrod's Station as it was then called), gives the following account: "I had come down to where I now live, about four miles from Harrodsburg, to turn some horses on the range. I had killed a small blue-winged duck that was feeding in my spring, and had roasted it nicely by a fire on the brow of the hill. While waiting for the duck to cool, I was startled by the sudden appearance of a fine, soldierly-looking man. 'How do you do, my little fellow? ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank
... seized Daphne and was embracing her in a burst of violent affection. "Oh, Miss Heritage, darling," she cried, "you do look such a duck in that dress—doesn't ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... bit—jes' skeert mos' into a duck fit. Thought a cannon ball had knocked my whole dang face down my throat! Nothin' but a handful o' splinters in my poorty count'nance, makin' my head feel like a porc'-pine. But I sort o' thought I heard somepin' ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... hearth, and then replenished the pile of logs for burning during the night. Isabel, cuddling in a large chair, watched Antonia, as she went softly about putting on the table such delicacies as she could find at that hour. Tamales and cold duck, sweet cake and the guava jelly that was Isabel's favorite dainty. There was a little comfort in the sight of these things; and also, in the bright silver teapot standing so cheerfully on the hearth, and diffusing through the room a warm perfume, at ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... treacherous forest, stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs, or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees, startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a firm piece of ground, which ran like a peninsula into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... Sancho Panza, "if I were a king by some of those miracles your worship mentions, Joan Gutierrez, my duck, would come to be a ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... that a duck had built herself a warm nest, and was not sitting all day on six pretty eggs. Five of them were white, but the sixth, which was larger than the others, was of an ugly grey colour. The duck was ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... Bruno answered, very dolefully, "'cause it won't say what it would like to do next! I've showed it all the duck-weeds—and a live caddis-worm—- but it won't say nuffin! What—would oo like?' he shouted into the ear of the Frog: but the little creature sat quite still, and took no notice of him. "It's deaf, I think!" Bruno said, turning ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... he was sore tempted one day, when he bought her a cream-colored pony, and she flung her arms round his neck before Mr. Bartley and kissed him eagerly; but he was so bashful that the girl laughed at him, and said, half pertly, "Excuse the liberty, but if you will be such a duck, why, you must take ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... houses. No boat I have ever tried runs so lightly as a well-made tulip pirogue, or dug-out, and nothing under heaven is so utterly crank and treacherous. Many an unpremeditated plunge into cold water has one caused me while out fishing or duck-shooting on the mountain-streams of North Georgia. If you dare stand up in one, the least waver from a perfect balance will send the sensitive, skittish thing a rod from under your feet, which of course leaves you standing on the water without the faith to keep you from going under; and usually ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... from ornamental pedestals spring conventional representations of the sacred tree of Buddha, delicately wrought in iron. Tall flagstaffs, 60 or 80 feet high, surmounted by emblematical figures or representations of the Brahminy duck, float their long streamers in the wind, while the sound of tinkling bells descends from the "tis" with which every pinnacle is crowned. Surrounding all is a broad platform fringed with shops and other buildings, for the ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... it was a face that rarely smiled, though there was plenty of life in the deep-set, gray-blue eyes, together with a force of cautious, reserved, and possibly timid, sympathy. Of the middle height and slender, with hair just turning from iron-gray to gray, immaculate in white duck, and wearing a dignified Panama, he stood looking at Strange—who, tall and stalwart in his greasy overalls, held his head high in conscious pride in his position in the shed—as Capital might look at Labor. It seemed ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... lake shore. The exhibit showed live deer, wild cat, mountain lion or panther, coyote, gray wolf, red fox, gray fox, opossum, raccoon, beaver, rabbit, fox and gray squirrel, mink, wild turkey, wild geese, wild duck, quail, black wolf, bald eagle, horned owl, and four varieties of pheasants, all the varieties of game to be found in Missouri forests. As showing the chief varieties of fish, were exhibited rainbow trout, lake trout, brook trout, large-mouthed black bass, crappie, ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... which she had been so wickedly deprived,—namely, gravity. whether this was owing to the fate that water had been employed as the means of conveying the injury, I do not know. But it is certain that she could swim and dive like the duck that her old nurse said she was. The way that this alleviation of her misfortune was discovered, was as follows: One summer evening, during the carnival of the country, she had been taken upon the lake by the king and queen, in ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... life? A painter, something of a genius in his line, but erratic and unstable in his character,—known more or less for several "affairs of gallantry" which had slipped off his easy conscience like water off a duck's back,—not a highly cultured man by any means, because ignorant of many of the finer things in art and letters, and without any positively assured position. Yet, undoubtedly a man of strong physical magnetism and charm— fascinating in his manner, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... General Officer addressed as 'dear' before? "'My Love,' i' faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!' "Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... fight duels nowadays," remonstrated the puzzled miner. "Anyhow, what's he want to fight about? I reckon you didn't duck him for nothing, did you? ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... complain. Some soldiers taking part in the manoeuvres had helped themselves to two of his chickens and a duck. He seemed beside himself, ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... I to do with it? Did I make their investments? Do you think I have time to attend to every poor duck? Why don't people look where they put ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... high-faluting bird of Paradise for him and you ain't a thing in the world but a meadow dove. But there comes Bettie scooting through the rain with little Hoover under her shawl. Providence folks have got duck blood, all of 'em, and the more it pours out they paddles. Come in and shake ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... deadly, in the eddy of a turbid water. Perhaps trout would take caviare, which is not forbidden by the law of the land. Any unscrupulous person may make the experiment, and argue the matter out with the water-bailie. But, in my country, it is more usual to duck that official, and go on netting, sniggling, salmon-roeing, and destroying sport in the sacred ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... the woman who had been willing to sing without tune. "But I can't give beans no longer. I can give beet greens and duck." ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... fortifications on the sea-coast, and substitute in their place wooden Martello towers! This would be very much like building 120 gun ships at Pittsburg and Memphis, for the defence of the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, and sending out duck-boats to meet the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... to Bernard, as you never will do. We've got such a Mr Green down here, Grace. He's such a duck of a man,—such top-boots and all the rest of it. And yet they whisper to me that he doesn't ride always to hounds. And to see him play billiards is beautiful, only he can never make a stroke. I hope you play billiards, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... shaded kiosk where a band was playing. Presently from under her parasol Florence caught sight of a familiar figure. Leaning against the door of an open livery carriage, a tall man in straw hat and white duck suit was chatting with the occupants, one a middle-aged woman, with a gentle, motherly face, the other a slender girl in deep mourning, reclining languidly as though propped on cushions. Allison, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... were almost half way across the pond, when Lulu and Alice Wibblewobble, the duck girls, came out of their pen. They had just washed their faces and their yellow bills, and had put on their new hair ribbons, so they looked ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... Poor Man's Pie Rice and Lentil Mould Roman Pie Rice (Casserole) Rissoles Rolled Oats Savoury Brick Sausages, Sausage Rolls Scotch Haggis Scotch Stew Tomato and Rice Pie Toad-in-a-Hole Vegetable Goose Vegetable Roast Duck Vol-au-Vent ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... expression of the carter, "hott-ho" ("tt," instead of Haut (the skin), i. e., "left," in contrast with "aarr"—Haar, Maehne (the mane)—i. e., "right"), are spoken for the child by the members of his family. Some names of animals, like kukuk (cuckoo), also kikeriki (cock) and kuak (duck, frog), are probably formed often without having been heard from others, only more indistinctly, by German, English (American), and French children. Ticktack (tick-tick) has also been repeated by a boy of two years for a watch. On the other hand, ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... things pertaining to an animal. Cranes seemed to have multiplied rapidly. Impudently tame, they lined the gravel-bars, and regarded us curiously as we fought our way past them. Now and then a flock of wild ducks alighted several hundred yards from us. We had only a rifle. To shoot a moving duck out of a moving boat with a rifle is a feat attended with some difficulties. Once we wounded a wild goose, but it got away; which offended our sense of poetic justice. After crane soup one would seem to deserve ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... the wild that attracts us. Dulness is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in "Hamlet" and the "Iliad," in all the Scriptures and Mythologies, not learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild—the mallard—thought, which 'mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... headland, and, if there is any wind, getting a tossing for a few minutes, the fjord just here being wide and open. The head of a seal may occasionally be seen bobbing up and down, and large flocks of duck are always swimming about at a respectful distance from the steamer. And what a view we have across the expanse of water! The never-ending mountains stretch away one behind the other, to be crowned in the distance by the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... my dear?" said she. "Is that a face to bring in to your little Duchess? I will not be your Duchess any more, monsieur, no more than I will be your 'little duck,' ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... The duck houses are simply long, low sheds—with the exception of the one where the breeding stock is wintered, which is inclosed—placed on the slope a few rods back from the water. They were built of refuse lumber, and the cost was comparatively trifling. Connected ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... them marked down like birds. When he said they were beside dead trees or behind boulders, sure enough there they were! But, as I have said, the dinner-hour is always slack, and even when we came to a place where a section of trench had been bashed open by trench-sweepers, and it was recommended to duck and hurry, nothing much happened. The uncanny thing was the absence of movement in the Boche trenches. Sometimes one imagined that one smelt strange tobacco, or heard a rifle-bolt working after a shot. Otherwise they were as still ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... went on rolling out words complacently. But something strange was working in Luke's blood, and other voices were sounding faintly in his ears. He heard the lisping of the leaves on the little poplar-trees, the whistle of the black duck's wings as he circled in the air, the distant drumming of the grouse on his log, the rumble of the water-fall in the River of Rocks. The spray cooled his face. He saw the fish rising along the pool, and a stag feeding among ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... the man who inherits a desire to steal from a kleptomaniac, or a tendency to benevolence from a Howard, is, so far as he illustrates hereditary transmission, comparable to the dog who inherits the desire to fetch a duck out of the water from his retrieving sire. So that, evolution, or no evolution, moral qualities are comparable to a "kind of retrieving;" though the comparison, if meant for the purposes of casting obloquy on evolution, does not ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... before the present series of public schools was established, the evidence goes to show that they were of the dame school order, remembered best in after years, not by the amount of erudition acquired, but by some of the elder boys who went little errands over the way to the "Fox and Duck" (now the house occupied by Mr. H. Clark, Market Hill), and from the facts that the article they returned with having, by special injunction, to be placed behind the door, that the worthy dame soon afterwards repaired to that corner of the room, the more ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... rope, and in that way get money to buy food. Walking a little farther, he found a gun leaning against a fence. This gun, he supposed, had been left there by a hunter. He was glad to have it, too, for protection. Finally, while crossing a swampy place, he saw a duck drinking in the brook. He ran after the duck, and at last succeeded in catching it. Now he was sure ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... shrubs. Far to the right lay what had once been called horresco referens the duckpond, where—"Dulce sonant tenui gutture carmen aves." But the ruthless ingenuity of the head-artificer had converted the duck-pond into a Swiss lake, despite grievous wrong and sorrow to the assuetum innocuumque genus,—the familiar and harmless inhabitants, who had been all expatriated and banished from their native waves. Large poles twisted with fir branches, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pretty, that's all's the matter with you. But just wait. Hush! There's that crowd of nifty-nice, preachy, snippy scout girls. Duck, or they'll be on our trail," and she dragged her companion around the corner of the high fence, where, in the shadow of its bill-posted height they crouched, until the laughing, happy girls of True Tred Troop, just out from their early evening ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... and I (You by your art and I by luck) Have pulled the pheasant off the sky Or flogged to death the flighting duck; But never yet—how few the chances Of pouching so superb a swag— Have we achieved a feat like France's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... 'Hark'ee, my duck, do you marry that 'ere chap, that Mr. Lovell what's a courting you, and the sooner the better, for if you don't it will be the worse for you and for him, and for some one as shall be nameless. It will be the saving ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... manufacture. The games and sports which amused the people in these poorer quarters were not so refined as the ball-throwing of the princes and courtiers. In the name Balls Pond Road, Islington, we are reminded of the duck-hunting which was one of the sports of ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... the Martha, being thus called in compliment to her owner's sober-minded, industrious and careful wife. She (the sloop, and not Mrs. Betts) was nearly all cabin, having lockers forward and aft, and was fitted with benches in her wings, steamboat fashion. Her canvas was of light duck, there being very little heavy weather in that climate; so that assisted by a boy and a Kannaka, honest Bob could do anything he wished with his craft. He often went to the Peak and Rancocus Island in her, always doing something useful; and he even made several ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... slaves to get drunk on Christmas and New Years Day; no one was whipped for getting drunk on those days. We were allowed to have a garden and from this we gathered vegetables to eat; on Sundays we could have duck, ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... suitable for packing, connected by hinges, the different sections folding into so small a compass as to be conveniently carried upon mules. The frame is covered with a sheet of stout cotton canvas, or duck, secured to the gunwales with a cord running diagonally back and forth through eyelet-holes in ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... also a "crater" which was to be bombed and stormed. And that was about all we did see. The rest was chiefly hearing, because we had to take shelter behind such slight eminences as a piece of ordinary waste ground can offer. Common wayfarers were kept out of harm by sentries. We were instructed to duck. We ducked. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!—Bang! Then the mosquito-like whine of bits of projectile above our heads! Then we ventured to look over, and amid wisps of smoke the bombers were rushing a traverse. Strange to say, none of them was ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... trot, but it was some time before I could coax them to go to the bushes where the swan had fallen. I did not blame them much, for when the big bird came down, it seemed as if the very heavens were falling. We supplied our friends with ducks several days, and upon our own dinner table duck was served ten successive days. And it was just as acceptable the last day as the first, for almost every time there was a different variety, the cinnamon, perhaps, being ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... to the piper danced, Of tatterdemalions all, Till the corpulent butler drove them off Beyond the manor wall. The raggedy piper shook his fist: 'A minstrel's curse on thee, Thou lubberly, duck-legg'd son of a gun, For ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... one has to take birth as a vile vermin. By stealing a piece of silken cloth, one becomes a Krikara. By stealing a piece of cloth made of red silk, one becomes a Vartaka.[515] By stealing a piece of muslin one becomes a parrot. By stealing a piece of cloth that is of fine texture, one becomes a duck after casting off one's human body. By stealing a piece of cloth made of cotton, one becomes a crane. By stealing a piece of cloth made of jute, one becomes a sheep in one's next life. By stealing a piece of linen, one has to take birth as a hare. By stealing different kinds of colouring matter ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... pine-boarded wall, was slightly raised above the floor. This last individual was as fat and unctuous looking as his confederate, the Look-out, was thin and sneaky; moreover, he bore the sobriquet of The Sidney Duck and, obviously, was ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... Chinese style. The first man by had a dried duck over his shoulder, the next a smoked ham, the third a jar of pickled cabbage, none too savoury, while all the attaches and servants were equally weighted down by pieces of outlandish baggage from which nothing in the world ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... amongst mammals as regards their dermal covering; having been classed {175} with lizards by early naturalists on account of their clothing of scales, yet their mouth is like that of the hairy ant-eaters of the New World. On the other hand, the duck-billed platypus of Australia (Ornithorhynchus) is the only mammal which has teeth formed of horn, yet its furry coat is normal and ordinary. Again, the Dugong and Manatee are dermally alike, yet extremely ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... who opposed the young man, defending threatened civilisation and giving terrifying particulars concerning what he called the army of devastation and massacre. The others, while partaking of some delicious duck's-liver pate, which the house-steward handed around, continued smiling. There was so much misery, said they; one must take everything into account: things would surely end by righting themselves. And the Baron ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... only mode of discovering that fervid love of decimation which I know you to possess would be to tender you an oath "against that damnable doctrine, that it is lawful for a spiritual man to take, abstract, appropriate, subduct, or lead away the tenth calf, sheep, lamb, ox, pigeon, duck," etc., etc., etc., and every other animal that ever existed, which of course the lawyers would take care to enumerate. Now this oath I am sure you would rather die than take; and so the Catholic is excluded from ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... in the swirling death-mist of poison gas—heroic ranks which, rent asunder, shattered, torn, yet swung steadily on through smoke and flame, unflinching and unafraid. As if to make the picture more real, came the thunderous crash of a shell behind us, but this time I forgot to duck. ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... given out by the orderly sergeants at four in the afternoon. At 4.03 every one in camp had heard the news. Scores of miniature hand laundries, which were doing a thriving business down by the duck pond, immediately shut up shop. Damp and doubtfully clean ration bags, towels, and shirts which were draped along the fences, were hastily gathered together and thrust into the capacious depths of pack-sacks. Members of the battalion's sporting contingent broke up their games of tuppenny ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... figured on bein' any travelin' inspector when I took this executor job; but as J. Bayard sends out the S O S so strong I can't very well duck. Besides, I might have been a little int'rested to know what ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... in the mid-channel of the Yellowstone River opposite the mouth of Duck Creek; thence running in a southwesterly direction along the mid-channel of the Yellowstone River to a point 1-1/2 miles below the mouth of the Clarks Fork River; thence in a southwesterly direction along a line parallel to and 1-1/2 miles ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... in the first race, he fairly whistled through the air like a wild duck in the second. Before he had run the length of the platform he had gained on the train, his nose almost even with the brass railing over which the girl leaned, the handkerchief in her hand. Midway between the platform and the ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... and the trap of the poacher, who works in and out of season, threaten to exterminate all wild creatures; unless, indeed, the Government should, as they threatened in the spring of 1869, put in force some adaptation of European game-laws. But they are lukewarm in the matter; a little hawking on a duck-pond satisfies the cravings of the modern Japanese sportsman, who knows that, game-laws or no game-laws, the wild fowl will never fail in winter; and the days are long past when my Lord the Shogun used to ride forth with a mighty company to the wild places about Mount Fuji, there camping out ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... As we steeped ourselves in the delicious idleness, he began to murmur some half-forgotten lines from Thomson's "Seasons," which he said had been favorites of his from boyhood. While we lay there, hidden in the grass, we heard approaching footsteps, and Hawthorne hurriedly whispered, "Duck! or we shall be interrupted by somebody." The solemnity of his manner, and the thought of the down-flat position in which we had both placed ourselves to avoid being seen, threw me into a foolish, semi-hysterical fit of laughter, and when he nudged me, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... cane, with generally a stronger thwart midships. When new, and the stitches of yellow cane regular and bright, the canoe represents about the neatest and nattiest of the few constructive efforts of the blacks, and is as buoyant as a duck. The seams are caulked with a resinous gum, "Tambarang," of the jungle tree known as "Arral" (EVODIA ACCEDENS), and is prepared by being powdered on a flat stone previously moistened with water. The powdered resin is melted by heat, allowed to solidify, and pounded and melted ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... put him out of business!" echoed Drayton. "Why, good Lord, man, isn't that what they've all been trying to do for the last six months? They call him every name in the calendar, and it all rolls off him like water off a duck's back. He seems to get nourishment out of abuse that would kill any other man. He thrives on it, if I'm any judge. I believe a hiss is music to his ears and a curse is a hushaby, lullaby song. Put ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... roared the skipper. "Now hold her steady, and she will ride it out like a duck." He grabbed up a pail and began bailing with all his might. Jane did likewise, then Miss Elting lent her assistance. Tommy was clinging to the cabin ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... to me: I've known ye sence ye was knee-high to a duck, ain't I? Yer paw an' me was thicker ner molasses. Yer paw would 'a' made a brilliant man, Hiram, if he'd 'a' had th' chanct. You've ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... silence. Then the door flew open abruptly and a figure appeared impatiently on the threshold. It was that of a miner recently returned from the gold diggings—so recently that he evidently had not had time to change his clothes at his adjacent hotel, and stood there in his high boots, duck trousers, and flannel shirt, over which his coat was slung like a hussar's jacket from his shoulder. Kane would have uttered an indignant protest at the intrusion, had not the intruder himself as quickly recoiled with an astonishment and contrition that was beyond the effect of ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... called him, but, owing to his weight, he walked most dignified and slow, waddling like a duck, as you might say, and looked much too proud and handsome for such a ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... chair to the bottom of the boat. Inasmuch as their interest was centred on one side of the boat, they crowded each other a little. They removed their headgear and permitted only their crowns to show a few inches above the rail as they peered over. They held themselves ready at the same time to duck into complete invisibility. ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... clay in the modeling room made me simply ache to get my hands into them. I was enchanted the moment I came in here with you this morning, never dreaming that I should be so lucky as to be one of the illustrious band myself. You're a perfect duck, Norn, to let me ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... and three days before the ball Denry Machin was seated one Monday alone in Mr Duncalf's private offices in Duck Square (where he carried on his practice as a solicitor), when in stepped a tall and pretty young woman, dressed very smartly but soberly in dark green. On the desk in front of Denry were several ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... with salt, capsicum, and turmeric. To these, people in more easy circumstances add oil or ghiu; and those who are rich add a great deal of animal food. Even the poorest are able occasionally to sacrifice a pigeon, a fowl, or a duck, and of course they eat these birds. No Hindu eats any meat but the flesh of sacrifices; for he considers it as a sin to kill any animal for the purpose of indulging his appetite; but, when a sacrifice has been ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... a skipping-rope and did marvellous things with it. Then he smashed lustily at a punch-ball, left, right, left, right, duck, bing! "Here, Harry!" he cried. His sparring partner approached, bruised but beaming. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... and scrubbing brushes; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water, insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers like unto a duck; but this I look upon to be a mere sport of fancy, or, what ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of tar, bilge water, tobacco and rum warned him that his expected visitor was approaching. And an instant after the door was opened, and a short, stout, dark man in a weather-proof jacket, duck trousers, cow-hide shoes, and ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the meadow floods the wild duck clamours, Now the wood pigeon wings a rapid flight, Now the homeward rookery follows up its vanguard, And the valley mists are curling ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrel boys, might ask Uncle Wiggily to go after hickory nuts with them, or maybe Lulu, Alice or Jimmie Wibblewobble, the duck children, would want their bunny uncle to ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... voice of the coon, or the call and clang of wild geese and ducks, or the war-cry of savage tribes, is this true; but not true in the same sense of domesticated or semi-domesticated animals and fowls. How different the voice of the common duck or goose from that of the wild species, or of the tame dove from that of the turtle of the fields and groves! Where could the English house sparrow have acquired that unmusical voice but amid the sounds of hoofs and wheels, and the discords of ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... breeze, but flapping away, half paddling and half flying, as we came toward them, they managed to keep a long gun-shot off; but having laid in at the last port a turkey of no mean proportions, which we made shift to roast in the "caboose" aboard, we could look at a duck without wishing its destruction. With this turkey and a bountiful plum duff, we made out a dinner ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... no crop, like a great many carnivorous birds. The passage leading from the mouth goes directly to the gizzard, something like the duck. The duck has no crop, yet the passage leading from the mouth to the gizzard in the duck becomes considerably enlarged. In the crow there is no enlargement of this passage, and everything passes directly into the gizzard, where it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... of the design catches the eye, the reflection in the water is as real as the reality. The Plaza, monstrous tons of steel and stone, floats between two elements. Then darkness gathers, the reflected lights in the blackening water grow more golden, and suddenly, perhaps, a duck swims across a tenth story window and sets it dancing in golden ripples. You may fare far among the ancient and "picturesque" cities of the earth without finding a rival for this strange bit of beauty in New York, an ethereal sky-scraper in white and gold gazing at its own reflection in ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... small skin canoes the Alaskan natives use. And it's touchy as a duck; comes bobbing up here and there, but right-side up every time. And it's frail looking, frail as an eggshell, yet I would stake a bidarka against a lifeboat in a surf. Do you know?"—he went on after a moment—"I would like to see you in one, racing ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... joint influence of the following things: the fatally arisen rupture between corporal and spiritual desires, - the sharp contrast between English purity and English lewdness that, with its incomprehensible contradiction, has as exciting an effect as the dog in the duck-yard, who decoys the inquisitive ducks into the mouth of the strangler, - and finally the accursed self-contempt that makes one say: "There's nothing lost with ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... bounces off of that woman like water from a duck's neck," Leon said, "which every five minutes she comes up here and talks to me in French high speed with the throttle wide open like ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... pace, while Vane, with a naturalist's eye, noted the different plants on the banks, the birds building in the water-growth—reed sparrows, and bearded tits, and pointing out the moor-hens, coots, and an occasional duck. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... Mohunsleigh would have had to give us things, of course; but in America, it appears that the bridegroom makes presents to the best man and the ushers; so it was from Carolyn that I got a duck of a brooch, like an American flag, with stripes of diamonds and rubies, and the blue part sapphires. Mohunsleigh said that, as he was awfully hard up, it was bad luck for him to have to provide each ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... immediately after the 'First Part,' succeeding which I suppose Lohengrin will sing his Duck Ditty, while the Boy Scout, dressed as Uncle Tom's Cabin, after biting the triggers off all the guns, and pulling his wig well down over his eyes"—imitating the action—"will sally forth into the limpid limelights, and after he has been shot once in the face by a 16-inch howitzer and has been ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... you rascal, do you intend to throw me into a perspiration by way of curing my hunger? or do you take me for a goose or a duck, that you intend stuffing me with sage? Begone, get out, you little deformed fellow! [Exit WAITER.] I shall perish in this barbarous land—bear meat, 'possum fat, and sage tea! O dear St. James! I wish I was snug in my old ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... was in much pleasanter waters, and the air was quite warm and balmy, the boys going around in lighter clothing than before, wearing mostly white flannel or duck, canvas shoes and caps, and no waistcoats, some wearing only white trousers and shirts, and belts around their waists, so as to get the most ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... the odours of the choicest autumn dishes—roast duck with apples and a grape-cake, such as she alone knew how to prepare. Two bottles of precious Rhine wine stood in the cool without the window. She did not want to welcome him with champagne. The memories of its subtle prickling, and of much else ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... am a goot man. For dwendy-three hours and fifty-eight minutes in a tay I am as bure-minded as a child; then, in the ott dwo minutes somepoty tells me a dirdy sdory. I laugh, and I go avay, and I think of my blays and my boedry and my pusiness. It is water on a duck's pack.' ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... recommending such and such things to the Company, ever allowing these Points to be disputable; insomuch that I have often carried the Debate for Partridge, when his Majesty has given Intimation of the high Relish of Duck, but at the same time has chearfully submitted, and devour'd his Partridge with most gracious Resignation. This Submission on his side naturally produc'd the like on ours; of which he in a little time made such barbarous Advantage, as in all those Matters, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of electric lights made it bright. At the various desks or in the aisles were perhaps fifty men, most of them young, none of them beyond middle age. They were in every kind of clothing from the most fashionable summer attire to an old pair of cheap and stained duck trousers, collarless negligee shirt open all the way down the front and suspenders hanging about ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... We duck into our little Y M C A dugout, just under the crest of the ridge. It is an old, deserted German pit for deadly gas shells, which even now are lying about uncomfortably near, in heaps still unexploded. Here the men going to ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... with a bechamel or white sauce, are appropriate and generally liked. A fish course, an entree, one meat, a salad and a sweet course should follow next in order, concluding with coffee. The entree and the meat may form one course, if a slice of duck with olives, fried chicken or some such dish ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... the twentieth of September, two alcatrazes came near the ship about two hours before noon, and soon afterwards a third. On this day likewise they took a bird resembling a heron, of a black colour, with a white tuft on its head, and having webbed feet like a duck. Abundance of weeds were seen floating in the sea, and one small fish was taken. About evening three land birds settled on the rigging of the ship and began to sing. These flew away at day-break, which was considered a strong indication of approaching the land, as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... much now as long as I can have a place to sleep and enough to eat. If you can put me in the way of some work, Charlie, I'd be much obliged. You see, that's what I want—work. I don't want to run any bunco game. I'm an honest man—I'm too honest. I gave away all my money to help another poor duck; gave him thousands, he was good to me when I was on my uppers and I meant to repay him. I was grateful. I signed a paper that gave him everything I had. It was in Paris. There's where my bonds went to. He was a ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris |
