"Feathering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... witness, they're going to grab your claim. Them government officials is the crookedest bunch that ever made fuel for hell-fire. You won't get a square deal; they're going to get the fat anyhow. They've got the best claims spotted, an' men posted to jump them at the first chance. Oh, they're feathering their nests all right. They're like a lot of greedy pike just waiting to gobble down all they can. A man can't buy wine at twenty dollars per, and make dance-hall Flossies presents of diamond tararas on a government salary. That's what a lot of them are doing. Wine ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... for our own safety, and that of the brigantine, my men;" said the Skimmer, springing into his boat and seizing the tiller—"A quick stroke, and a strong!—here is no time for holiday feathering, or your man-of-war jerk! Give way, boys; give way, with ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... John, stringing his bow, and then carefully selecting an arrow from the quiver at his back. This arrow he drew two or three times through his hand so as to smooth the feathering and make the web lie straight, before fitting the notch to ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... yon dew-steep'd roses, yours be yon Thick-clustering ivy, maids of Helicon: Thine, Pythian Paean, that dark-foliaged bay; With such thy Delphian crags thy front array. This horn'd and shaggy ram shall stain thy shrine, Who crops e'en now the feathering turpentine. ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... used but the arrow frequently varies from the regular fighting arrow in being heavier, thicker, and not provided with feathering. An arrow with a forked point is occasionally used for small birds, while for hornbills sharp spikes of palma brava are used at times to perforate their tough skins. Dart arrows are favorite for monkeys. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... for every man," Dr. Hector Macpherson remarked, drawing himself up; "but if I took a fancy to a fellow who had command of ready cash, I might choose to put him in the way of feathering ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... ten yards I discharged an obsidian-pointed arrow and a steel-pointed arrow from a weak bow. The two missiles were alike in size, weight, and feathering, in fact, were made by Ishi, only one had the native head and the other his modern substitute. Upon repeated trials, the steel-headed arrow uniformly penetrated a distance of twenty-two inches from the front surface of the box, while the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... hundred tongues, exaggerated the turbulence of the people, and invented wild tales of violence. It was said at the palace, and the King believed, that there was in Boston a regular committee for tarring and feathering; and that they were next, to use the King's expression, 'to pitch and feather' Governor Hutchinson himself. The press was also employed to rouse the national pride, till the zeal of the English people for maintaining English supremacy became equal to the passions of the Ministry. Even the merchants ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... of the hearthstone, the beneficence of man's cooking place. Tira's mind was on the night, the warmth of it, the moist cool breath bringing the hylas' peeping. It made her melancholy as spring nights always had, even when she was most happy. She thought of the willows feathering out on the road to her old home, and how the sight of them against the sky, that and the distant frogs, made her throat thick with the clamor of a rising fear. The river road was the one she would take when she was ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... belonged to the Pemberthys, and had descended from father to son from days lying too far back to reckon up just now; and a rare, exclusive, conservative, bad-tempered, long-headed race the Pemberthys had always borne the reputation of being, feathering their own nests well, and dying in them ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... top; while in open ground the head is broad-spreading, hemispherical, with numerous rather equal, long and slender branches, and a fine spray with drooping tendencies. In the sunlight the silvery-yellow feathering and the metallic sheen of trunk and branches make the yellow birch one of the most attractive trees ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... they precipitate themselves below. In this position, with the swift, clear, but not deep waters before you, forcing their passage through the rocky bed, with the waving trees on each side, their branches feathering to the water's edge, or dipping and rising in the stream, you might imagine yourself far removed from your fellow-men, and you feel that in such a beauteous spot you could well turn anchorite, and commune with Nature alone. But turn ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of the avenger, and when day broke he drank from the waters of the river, and followed the trail that led to the lodge of his mighty enemy. Outside the door sat Black Star of the Bear Clan; astride a fallen tree he lounged arrogantly; his hands, still red with last night's horrors, were feathering arrows. His savage face curled into a sneer as the boy neared him. Then a long, taunting laugh broke over ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... joined in the conversation when they planned their great estates in the mythical state of Negosha, or in Texas, or even in California. I grew hot with anger as I began to realize what a humiliation this tarring and feathering would be to her—and I kept wondering, as I have said, where she could be, even as I felt the thrill a man experiences when he sees that he must fight: and just as I felt this thrill, one of our men closed with the old ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... is "to look after the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising, and general behavior of these hundred chicks. An honest, ignorant woman, she could not have passed an examination in the youngest class."—Oliver Wendell Holmes ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the mad rush of water deflected by the boulders swung her here and there, and the channel was studded with foam-lapped masses of stone. Gazing forward, intent and strung-up, he checked her now and then with a feathering backstroke of the paddle, while the boulders flashed up toward her out of the spray, and the pines ashore reeled by. The foam stood high about the hollowed, upswept bow, and at times boiled a handbreadth above the depressed waist, but, while the canoe swept ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... white on Friday morning, and to a dark, strange day of steady snowing. Now, on Saturday, dirty snow was banked and heaped in great blocks everywhere, and still the clean, new flakes fluttered and twirled softly down, powdering and feathering every little ledge and sill, blanketing areas in spotless white, capping and hooding every unsightly hydrant and rubbish-can with exquisite and lavish beauty. Shovels had clinked on icy sidewalks all the first day, and even during ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... to confide to me. He had strong reason to believe that Tooke, the managing clerk at Bristol, was carrying on a course of peculation, and feathering his nest at the expense of the firm. What a grand discovery, thought I, for such a youth to have made. The firm would be infinitely obliged to him, and his fortune would be secured. He shook his head, and said that was all my ignorance; the man, Tooke, was greatly trusted, especially by Mr. Frith ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... premeditation. The Loyalists, many of whom had returned from Great Britain with the hope of receiving back their estates, or of being allowed to remain in the country, soon found they could expect no generous treatment from the successful republicans. The favourite Whig occupation of tarring and feathering was renewed. Loyalists were warned to leave the country as soon as possible, and in the south some were shot and hanged because they did not obey the warning. The Loyalists, for the most part, had no other course open to them than to leave the country they still loved and where ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... Ireland presents scenery of the most beautiful and romantic character. Here grey peaks rise up amidst verdure of emerald green; trees of varied hue come feathering down close to the water; yellow sands line the shores of many lonely bays; dark rocks of fantastic shape extend out into the ocean, while deep blue lochs mirror on their bosoms the varied forms of the surrounding heights. On the south-west part of ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... River is just lovely. All the trees along its banks were budding and feathering out with greenness. We passed by a town. Then a great round heap of stone walls, that they called the Fort. The grass was green around it, and some soldiers came out on the walls to look at ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... but the old bridge and a few cottages at the foot of Whalley Nab, with their thin blue smoke mounting into the pure morning air, gave life and interest to the picture. Hence, from base to summit, Whalley Nab stood revealed, and the verdant lawns opening out amidst the woods feathering its heights, were fully discernible. Placed by Nature as the guardian of this fair valley, the lofty eminence well became the post assigned to it. None of the belt of hills connected with it were so well wooded as their leader, nor so beautiful in form; while some of them were overtopped ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Isabel's was comfortable in a shabby way and faced south and west over the garden: an autumn garden now, bathed in westering sunshine, fortified from the valley by a carved gold height of beech trees, open on every other side over sunburnt moorland pale and rough as a stubble-field in its autumn feathering of light brown grasses and seedling flowers aflicker in a west wind. Tonight however Isabel saw nothing of it, she lay as if asleep, her face hidden in her pillow: she, the most active person in the house, who was never tired like Val nor lazy like Rowsley! ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... air was white with sea-gulls flying and circling, rising and descending, shooting up straight into the air; their bodies smooth and long like the body of a babe in white samite, their feathering tails spread like a fan, their wings expanding on the ambient air. In the tall cliffs were the nests of dried seaweed, fastened to the edge of a rocky bracket on lofty ledges, the little ones within piping to the little ones without. Every point of rock had its ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The feathering buckets of the paddle wheels began to turn; and La Luz, long, low, narrow, and a racer, moved noiselessly out into the bay. A few yards only, and the loungers on the wharf could neither see nor hear ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... wooden sashes. The high-pitched roof is of red tiles, and has deep projecting eaves, forming, in fact, a bold wooden cornice running along the whole length of the building, which is some two or three stories high. At the left extremity stands a clump of ancient cedars of Lebanon, feathering in evergreen beauty down to the ground. The hall is large and lofty; the floor is of polished oak, almost the whole of which is covered with thick matting; it is wainscoted all round with black oak; some ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... carrying on scandalous flirtations; till it becomes a happy thing, if the certain ruin she is bringing on her husband's head is cut short by the needful interference of Sir Cresswell Cresswell? There are cases in which tarring and feathering would soothe the moral sense of the right-minded onlooker. And even where things are not so bad as in the case of which we have been thinking, it remains the social curse of this age, that people with a few hundreds a year determinedly act in various respects as if they had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... to their value to him, got a passion for freedom into their heads, and have taken themselves away. In addition to this, he is much put out, as he says, at being compelled to forego the pleasure held out on the previous night, of tarring and feathering two northerners suspected of entertaining sentiments not exactly straight on the "peculiar question." A glorious time was expected, and a great deal of very strong patriotism wasted; but the two unfortunate individuals, by some means not yet discovered, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the shore, then leaning, toppling, curling, self-undermined, hurled forth at once all the sound that was in them in a falling roar of defeat. Every wave was a complex chord, with winnowed tones feathering it round. He paced up and down the sand—it seemed for ages. Why he paced there he did not know—why always he turned and went ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... passed Rensselaer's Estate all the way to Troy. The cause of dispute is the doubt the farmers have that one of the Dutch kings did not give and covenant the seestates, which the Van Rensselaer can prove by parchment: thus the tarring and feathering is done. Troy population is 40,000: a nice town, with a splendid arsenal, 156 miles from New York. The Hudson is navigable no farther. We took a chaise to the Shaker Village of Watervleit, where we found a Shaker ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... Carolina Literary and Commercial Journal,' of January 20, 1838, published at Elizabeth City, devotes a column and a half to a description of the lynching, tarring, feathering, ducking, riding on a rail, pumping, &c., of a Mr. Charles Fife, a merchant of that city, for the crime of 'trading with negroes.' The editor informs us that this exploit of vandalism was performed very deliberately, at mid-day, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Clarke. At that show she had seven beautiful kittens, and they all reposed in a dainty white and yellow basket with the mother, delighting the hearts of all beholders. She now belongs to Mrs. Brian Brown, of Brooklyn. She is a well-bred animal, with a pretty face and fine feathering. One of the kittens who won the silver bowl in 1895 took the second prize for long-haired white female in New York, in March, 1896. She is a beautiful creature, known as Princess Dinazarde, and belongs to Mrs. James S.H. Umsted, ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... person unusually gifted to deny Christianity; such a denial and haughty abjuration could not but carry itself more profoundly into the reflective mind, even of servants, when the arrow came winged and made buoyant by the gay feathering of so many splendid accomplishments. This general fact was appreciable by those who would forget, and never could have understood, the particular arguments of the infidel. Yet, even as regarded these particular arguments, 2dly, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... "plumage-stitch," or, which is more misleading, "feather-stitch," when they radiate so as to follow the form, say, of a bird's breast. The bodies of the birds in Illustrations 40 and 85 are in plumage-stitch so called. This adaptation of stitch to bird or other forms gives the effect of fine feathering perfectly. But why apply the term "satin-stitch" exclusively to parallel lines of stitches all ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... almost purple by the setting sun, and nestling among the carved beams and far-projecting balconies of wooden houses that overhung the canal, gilding the water itself where the broad-bladed oars struck deep and churned it, and swept aft, and steered with a poising, feathering backstroke, or where tiny waves were dashed up by a gondola's bright iron stem. Slowly the water turned to wine below, the clear outlines of the palaces stood out less sharply against the paling sky, the golden cloudlets, floating behind the great tower of Saint Mark's presently faded ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... pictures and jewelry, ordered and sent off furniture, with the air of an absolute master; amusing himself meanwhile with running a French romance with the handsome mistress of the establishment. As a consequence, he had not only opportunities for much quiet feathering of his own nest, but the eclat of always having the use of the Follingsbees' carriages, horses, and opera-boxes, and being the acknowledged and supreme head of fashionable dictation. Ladies sometimes pull caps for such charming individuals, as we have seen in the case ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... down through Nickols' sunken garden to the two oldest of all the poplars that now seemed to be standing sentinel to prevent any raid from me on the little stone meeting house over the lilac hedge. "You dear old graybeard," I said to the one on my left, as I looked up and saw a faint feathering of silver on its branches. And as I spoke I took the old trunk into my embrace and laid my ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Standing Armies. They therefore it seems a few days after vented their passion on a poor simple Countryman the state of whose Case is drawn up by himself and sworn to before a Magistrate as you will see by the inclosd. Thus you see that the practice of tarring & feathering which has so often been exclaimd against by the Tories, & even in the British House of Commons, as inhuman & barbarous, is at length revivd by some of the polite Gentlemen of the British Army, stationd in this place, professedly to ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams |
