"Grasshopper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well-to-do of the city-dwellers of the Eastern States, have been accustomed to handle gun and rod from their childhood. The gun may at first have been a rusty old muzzle-loader, and the rod a "pole" cut from the bank of the stream with a live grasshopper for bait; and there are few better weapons to teach a boy to be a keen sportsman. The birds that he shot were game—duck or geese, turkeys, quail, grouse, or snipe—and the fish that he caught were mostly game fish—trout and ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... "jelick" she used—"as a Greek," (!) She'd the habit she got her bad fall in; She had e'en the blue moire antique That she opened Squire Grasshopper's ball in:— ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low; 5. Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: 6. Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. 7. Then shall the dust return to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... said, at last, and the breeze helped him to swing out his line until the grasshopper at the end of it dropped lightly and naturally into a dark little eddy, almost across that ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... literature which deals with the most undisputed and depressing facts. Men are not apparently so interested in murder and love-making as they are in the number of different forms of latchkey which exist in London or the time that it would take a grasshopper to jump from Cairo to the Cape. The enormous mass of fatuous and useless truth which fills the most widely-circulated papers, such as Tit-Bits, Science Siftings, and many of the illustrated magazines, ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... to the feelings of us both; it would naturally be so, skirmishing along like that ever since dawn and not a bite in the meantime; at least for me, though sometimes as she lay on her side fanning herself with a wing and praying for strength to get out of this difficulty a grasshopper happened along whose time had come, and that was well for her, and fortunate, but I had nothing—nothing the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to the grasshopper spring wagon and set out on our journey. It was a warm, hazy Indian-summer day in November. My uncle looked very stiff and sober in his "new" clothes. Such breathless excitement as that I felt when we were riding down the hills and could see the distant spires of Canton, I have never known since ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... that vicinity of country, his answer was, that he had seen them of such a magnitude that one would be a load for a man, and that when strung across the hunter's shoulder, one part was sure to be dragging on the ground. He then boasted that he had killed a grasshopper that, with his head cut off, weighed six ounces. Notwithstanding his love of talk, this old man had once been a brave and famous hunter; but no confidence could be placed in him, owing to his habituated want of regard ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Jud winked at Travis and Travis winked at the others. Then they sat around a table, all winking except poor Joe, who continued to weep at the thought of being a grasshopper. He did not quite understand how it was, but he knew that in some way he was to be changed into a grasshopper, with long green wings ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... in a few years agricultural innovation will scarcely leave, even in these wastes, a single furze-blossom for the bee or a tuft of green-sward for the grasshopper; but, however unpleasant the change may be for us foot-travellers, we must not repine at what they tell us is so sure a witness of the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me. I grabbed his ball from under a stage fur him, an' he never forgot it; an' he'd come down here, he would, with his mother or his nuss and he'd holler: 'Hello, Dick!' at me, as friendly as if he was six feet high, when he warn't knee high to a grasshopper, and was dressed in gal's clo'es. He was a gay little chap, and when you was down on your luck, it did you good ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... cease. No yearning gold would whisper to the scythe, Hunger at last would prove us of one blood, The shores of dream be drowned in tides of need, Horribly would the whole earth be at peace. The burden of the grasshopper indeed Weigh down the green corn and the tender bud, The plague of Egypt fall upon the wheat, And the shrill nit would batten in ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Dr. Bennett says: "I observed the bird, before eating a grasshopper, place the insect upon the perch, keep it firmly fixed by the claws, and, divesting it of the legs, wings, etc., devour it with the head always first. It rarely alights upon the ground, and so proud is the creature of its elegant dress that it never permits a soil to remain upon it, frequently ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... carry her, which wasn't very fast. The other children were far in front of her. Anna-Margaret stopped suddenly,—she heard a little biddie in distress. There was a mother hen darting through the grass after a fleeing grasshopper, and close behind her was the whole flock save one. Anna-Margaret watched them as the young chickens spread open their wings and hurried in pursuit of their mother. Far behind one little black, fuzzy biddie struggled ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... as much sensation in the corn-market as a flying machine would create at Charing Cross. The farmers crowded round it, women drew near it, children crept under and into it. The machine was painted in bright hues of green, yellow, and red, and it resembled as a whole a compound of hornet, grasshopper, and shrimp, magnified enormously. Or it might have been likened to an upright musical instrument with the front gone. That was how it struck Lucetta. "Why, it is a sort of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... like our teeth. Sometime you must see the mouth parts of the grasshopper under the microscope. They are ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... Sarnus, ere yet it wound amidst the evidences of luxury and power. Only through openings in the woods and vines were caught glimpses of the white and gleaming city, in which was heard in the distance no din, no sound, nor 'busiest hum of men'. Amidst the green banks crept the lizard and the grasshopper, and here and there in the brake some solitary bird burst into sudden song, as suddenly stifled. There was deep calm around, but not the calm of night; the air still breathed of the freshness and life of day; the grass still moved to the stir of the insect horde; ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... west frontage, leaving two holes that might have accommodated a chest of drawers, and carrying a window with it. Mrs. Nixey, the children, and the women of the staff inhabit a bombproof in the back-yard. The waiters have developed a grasshopper-like nimbleness, otherwise things go ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... jig it with her, but hobbled by my new dignity. I had no clear notion of an assistant aide-de-camp's duties, but felt that they required a certain solemnity of manner inconsistent with her ladyship's grasshopper ways. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... openly so that even a porcupine must notice them, hiding behind rocks and bushes and tufts of grass till the precise moment came, and then leaping with the swoop of a goshawk on a ptarmigan. A wolf that cannot catch a grasshopper has no business hunting rabbits—this seemed to be the unconscious motive that led the old mother, every sunny afternoon, to ignore the thickets where game was hiding plentifully and take her cubs to the dry, sunny plains on the edge of the caribou barrens. There for ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... advance of the main body, smaller columns would be pushed out. These smaller columns would generally first flush the cockroaches, grasshoppers, and spiders. The pursued insects would rapidly make off, but many, in their confusion and terror, would bound right into the midst of the main body of ants. A grasshopper, finding itself in the midst of its enemies, would give vigorous leaps, with perhaps two or three of the ants clinging to its legs. Then it would stop a moment to rest, and that moment would be fatal, for the tiny foes would swarm over ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... Which was wriggling along to a lark's low-built nest, To tear the soft young from the mother's warm breast. The sheep and the cow, in apparent dejection, Were quietly chewing the cud of reflection. The cavies and ermines were running a race, Armadillo was off to a grasshopper chace. The cat was surprised to see animals roam, And she purr'd when she thought of her ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... and narrower at the base—hung awkwardly on his long neck; awkwardness was expressed in the very pose of his hands, of his body, tightly clothed in a short black coat, and of his long legs with their knees raised, like the hind-legs of a grasshopper. For all that, it was impossible not to recognise that he was a man of good education; the whole of his clumsy person bore the stamp of good-breeding; and his face, plain and even a little ridiculous as it was, showed a ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... her. Every mornin' when the dew stood in beads on his net he told Ant Red they was tears he shed about her troubles, and she run up and down and all around, talkin' like a sawmill, but keepin' just off the web. And there was Old Grasshopper, he sided with Ant Red, and so did Miss Green Katydid. But all the beetles, and them bugs that lived under the bark of the old stump, they took up for Ant Black, 'cause she was handy. And the ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... seemed to be the most amazed and elated of them all. "Thet's the fust Englishman I ever seen! He's orful deceivin' to look at, but I know now why England rules the wurrld. Jest take a peek at thet bronco. His spirit is broke. Rid by a leetle English dook no bigger 'n a grasshopper! Fellers, if it hain't dawned on you yit, let Monty Price give you a hunch. There's no flies on Castleton. An' I'll bet a million steers to a rawhide rope thet next he'll be throwin' a gun as ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... in green; just now by the Speaker, now moved by the committee; in two minutes more he will be somewhere else, skipping backwards and forwards; what a grasshopper ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... would you rather see the incessant stir Of insects in the windrows of the hay, And hear the locust and the grasshopper Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play? Is this more pleasant to you than the whirr Of meadow-lark, and its sweet roundelay, Or twitter of little field-fares, as you take Your nooning in the shade ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... is in bloom, the Vine and the Laurel entwining— Here where the Turtle invites—here where the Grasshopper springs, Whose is this grave in the midst, which the Gods with life and with beauty Thus have circled and decked?—This is Anacreon's Tomb. Spring, and Summer, and Autumn, the joyous spirit had tasted, And from the Winter he hides ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... with staff and sandal-shoon, We travel brisk and cheery, But some have laid them down ere noon, And all at eve are weary; The noontide glows with no repose, And bitter chill the eve is, The grasshopper a burden grows, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Insects at the moment of their birth; but the series of changes is nevertheless analogous to that of the Butterfly, whose existence as Worm, Chrysalis, and Winged Insect is so well known to all. Take the Grasshopper, for instance: with the exception of the wings, it is born in its mature form; but it has had its Worm-like stage within the egg as much as the Butterfly that we knew a few months ago as a Caterpillar. In the same way certain of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Ludwig Huber, at that time the accepted lover of Dora Stock. Huber was three years younger than Schiller,—an impressionable youth, of some linguistic talent, who had his occasional promptings of literary ambition. But his soarings were mere grasshopper flights; steady effort was not his affair and he lacked solid ability. A doting mother had watched and coddled him until in practical affairs he was comically helpless. As the futility of his character became more apparent with the lapse of ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... and presently into the water and across to the other side, swimming strongly and well; then along a smaller dike, hugging the reeds as much as possible, and pursued by a running fire of abuse from the sedge and marsh and grasshopper warblers, from wagtails, meadow-pipits, reed-buntings, larks, and all the small-bird population of those parts, till he came to the sea-bank, called by the natives "sea-wall." This was a high, grass-bearded bank designed to constrain the waters of the estuary, and ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... this little yellow flower Among the stones has the taste of quinine. Things are strange to-day on the cliff. The sun shines so bright, And the grasshopper works at his sewing-machine So hard. Here's one on my hand, mother, look; I lie so still. There's one ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... finding here a grasshopper, which subsequently proved, however, a prize indeed,—but not quite so much of a prize as he hoped, being probably the young of a species previously known as Alpine, rather than an adult identical with one found on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... him a stronger imagination and a more delicate sensibility, which between them will ever engender a more ungovernable set of passions than are the usual lot of man; implant in him an irresistible impulse to some idle vagary, such as arranging wild flowers in fantastical nosegays, tracing the grasshopper to his haunt by his chirping song, watching the frisks of the little minnows in the sunny pool, or hunting after the intrigues of butterflies—in short, send him adrift after some pursuit which shall eternally mislead him from ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... when at Athens. The roof is supported by two massy fluted pilastres, which in size are calculated to bear the burthen of some prodigious dome. The muscular powers of Hercules seem to be here exercised in raising a grasshopper from the ground. The genius of Mons. le G——, unlike the world's charity, does not begin at home, but seems more disposed to display its most successful energies abroad. His roof, however, contains such a monument of his goodness and generosity, that I must not pass it over. This ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... handle consumed, and valued at 10/-, was sold for 3 pounds 3/-; the two carved griffins, holding shields of the City arms, facing the quadrangle, 35 pounds; the two busts of Queen Elizabeth, on the east and west sides, 10 pounds 15/-; the copper grasshopper vane, {27} with the iron upright, was reserved by the Committee; the alto relievo, in artificial stone, representing Queen Elizabeth proclaiming the Royal Exchange, 21 pounds; the corresponding alto relievo, representing Britannia seated amidst the emblems of Commerce, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. For now the noonday quiet holds the hill: The grasshopper is silent in the grass: 25 The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead The purple flower droops: the golden bee Is lily-cradled: I alone awake. My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love, 30 My heart ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the case where frogs of one colour reverse their order, leaving the blank space in the same position, and each frog is allowed to be moved in either direction (leaping, of course, over his own colour), see "The Grasshopper Puzzle" in A. in ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... fond of ants unless it is Old Mr. Toad. I like a few of them myself, but Yellow Wing just about lives on them when he can. You may have noticed that I go down on the ground myself once in a while. I am rather fond of beetles, and an occasional grasshopper tastes very good to me. I like a variety. Yes, sir, I certainly do like a variety—cherries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, grapes. In fact most kinds of fruit taste good to me, not to mention beechnuts and acorns when there ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... the whole sweep of devouring flame, the forms of men wither as in a furnace heat. The whole front goes down. For an instant the chirp of the cricket and grasshopper in the fresh-mown hay might almost be heard; then the groans of the wounded, then the shouts of impatient yeomen who spring forth to pursue, until recalled to silence and duty. Staggering, but reviving, grand in the glory of their manhood, heroic in restored self-possession, with steady ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... of a locust is similar in appearance to a large grasshopper. The females are of a dark brown colour, and the males of a light reddish-brown. The female extends the extremity of her body in the form of an augur, with which she pierces the earth to the depth of an inch, there to deposit ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... of outdoor pastimes requires for its enjoyment no elaborate or expensive paraphernalia: a rod cut on the spot, a cork float, an ordinary hook baited with angleworm, grasshopper, grub, may-fly, or any of a dozen other handy lures, will answer for most occasions. At the same time, the joys of fishing will often be increased if one possesses and learns how to use a light, jointed rod, with reel, fine line, and artificial ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... vegetation as the shores of the Dead Sea, sweltering hot an hour after sunrise, chilly cold an hour after sunset, populated by about four hundred Boers of the old narrow-minded ultra Dutch type with as much imagination as a grasshopper—that is ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... and Llewellyn, who had imprisoned a grasshopper in a paper cage, suddenly let it hop out. The first hop took it to the top of the pew; the second perched it on the shoulder of the stoutest lady. Duncan and Llewellyn tittered louder, and even Eric could not resist a smile. But when the lady, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... well be a grasshopper if I'm to skip round like this," she said, forgetting to feel tired out there in the pleasant garden, with the robins picking berries close by, and a cool wind lifting the leaves to show here the reddest and ripest ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... wall between the races. If I could do it, Jeff, I'd put a torch to every white college that a redman has ever set foot inside. Why don't you leave us alone,' he says, 'to our own ghost-dances and dog-feasts, and our dingy squaws to cook our grasshopper ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... ever see as well as hear a grasshopper? The locust is an insect of the same kind, and I have heard that African locusts in the first stage of their life are as green as grasshoppers, but wingless—though they afterwards have very pretty wings. They are described as crowding together, "standing upon each other in heaps ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... attached the air-vessel G, made of sheet-copper, and attached to the piece E by a screw. The exit-pipe H is attached to the under side of the casting E by a swivel. The valves at I are of brass, ground so as to be completely water-tight. The barrels K are of cast brass. The engine is set on four grasshopper springs M. The shafts or handles O, of the levers P, are of lancewood. The box S, under the driving seat, is used for keeping wrenches, cord, &c.; in the fore part of the cistern A, and the box B above ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... way and then that, very carefully, in order to see who had spoken, and at last she discovered a pretty grasshopper perched upon a long blade ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... can readily believe this, and we doubt very much whether any Christian parent would think of condemning a son to carry through life the burden of so unpleasant a title. That of Counsellor Heuschrecke—'Grasshopper'—though not offensive, looks much more like a piece of fancy-work than a 'fair business transaction.' The same may be said of Blumine—'Flower-Goddess'—the heroine of the fable; ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... wrinkled face, his pendant, yellow eyebrows, his thin limbs.... The little girl lay down on the floor, at his very feet, and fell asleep again. The Wolf sat by the table with his head propped on his hands. A grasshopper chirped in one corner..... The rain beat down upon the roof and dripped down the windows; we ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... 1. Grasshopper Green is a comical chap; He lives on the best of fare; Bright little jacket and breeches and cap, These are his summer wear. Out in the meadows he loves to go, Playing away in the sun; It's hopperty, skipperty, high and low, Summer's the time ...
— The Nursery, May 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... feeling lonely, or, if he has a gun, with a dog to help him kill something. It is a world which has sound in it, distant cries and penetrative calls, and low mysterious notes, as of insects and corncrakes, and frogs chirping and of grasshopper warblers—sounds like wind in the dry sedges. And there are also sweet and beautiful songs; but it is very quiet world where creatures move about subtly, on wings, on polished scales, on softly padded feet—rabbits, foxes, stoats, weasels, and voles and birds and lizards and adders ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... A lanky grasshopper with keeled back and pointed prow flew before me, settling on a leaf of blady grass, at once became fidgety and restless; flew to another blade and was similarly uneasy. It was bluff in colour with a narrow longitudinal streak of fawn, while ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... well of Nathar is very deep, and cut through rock as well as earth, but its water is extremely sweet and delicious. We usually find the best water running through rocky soil. En route, I observed no living creature, save a grasshopper, which had managed to get into existence amidst these herbless wilds. Think I also saw an ant near the foot of the camel. A few flies still follow our caravan, which we brought from Ghadames. These witless things have wisdom enough not to remain behind and perish in The ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... raise the hammer, and "mopstick" damper, was in great vogue, with but little alteration, for forty years; and that in spite of the manifest improvements of John Broadwood's wrest-plank and John Geib's "grasshopper." After the beginning of this century, the square piano became much enlarged and improved by Collard and Broadwood, in London, and by Petzold, in Paris. It was overdone in the attempt to gain undue power for it, and, about twenty ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old Dwelling and its princely gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that chirping about the grounds escaped his scythe only by my littleness. Ev'n now he is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... of them were kept, hearing some one among the engines, went in quietly and overheard Major Whistler, apparently conversing with the "crab," and saying: "No; you miserable, top-heavy, lop-sided abortion of a grasshopper, you'll never do to haul the trains over this road." His experience in Lowell was here of great value to him, and he had become convinced that the engine of George Stephenson was in the main the coming machine, and needed but to be properly proportioned and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... some still valley in the South, in midsummer. The slate-colored moth on the rock flashes suddenly into crimson and takes wing; the bright lizard darts timorously, and the singing of the grasshopper—" ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... gobbler does not lead his forces in the field, but goes behind them, like the colonel of a regiment, so that he can see every part of the line and direct its movements. This resemblance is one of the most singular things in natural history. I like to watch the gobbler maneuvering his forces in a grasshopper-field. He throws out his company of two dozen turkeys in a crescent-shaped skirmish-line, the number disposed at equal distances, while he walks majestically in the rear. They advance rapidly, picking right and left, with military precision, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Will, then, is it? Know him,—don't I, though? Like a book. Known him ever since he was knee-height of a grasshopper. I'd like to have that fellow"—shaking his fist toward the floating paper—"within arm's reach. Wouldn't I pummel him some? O no, of course not,—not at all. Only, if he wants a sound skin, I'd advise him, as a friend, to be scarce when I'm round, because ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... have my brains kicked out by a lame grasshopper if ebery one ob dem gooses didn't ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... deacon's beast, and put his on to her'n and tie the two critters together by the tail. This is old Mother Pitcher's waggon; her hoss kicks like a grasshopper. Lengthen the breechin', and when aunty starts, he'll make all fly agin into shavin's, like a plane. Who is that a comin' along full split there ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... up and say, "Tut, tut," and Aunt Kezzy would make a speech about wicked children breaking the Sabbath day. I remember once how my cousin Bill got into deep disgrace one Sunday by a roguish trick. He was just about to close his Bible with all sobriety, when snap came a grasshopper through an open window, and alighted in the middle of the page. Bill instantly kidnapped the intruder, for so important an auxiliary in the way of employment was not to be despised. Presently we children looked towards Bill, and there he sat, very demurely reading his Bible, with the grasshopper ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... she'd say. 'What do you call this—letter to a Hardware Merchant from His Nephew on Learning that His Aunt Has Nettlerash? You Eastern duffers know as much about writing love letters as a Kansas grasshopper does about tugboats. "My dear Miss Blye!"—wouldn't that put pink icing and a little red sugar bird on your bridal cake? How long do you expect to hold an audience in a court-room with that kind of stuff? You want ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... young man," said Professor Wiseman impressively fixing Billy with his gaze just as he would have impaled a bug or grasshopper, "and the tenth time they come so near the truth as ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... dismay of the settlers. The trees in many places were at the time covered with these destructive insects. I went on shore and procured several, with the intention of preserving them. They were beautiful creatures, about ten times the size of an ordinary field grasshopper, and, except that their hind legs were longer in proportion to their size, the exact shape of that harmless little insect. Their colours are brilliant green, slate, and flamingo red, beautifully lined and variegated. The humming noise produced by these insects is very disagreeable, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... first stage consists in bringing about the birth of the superhuman in the ascetic's person, which reaching perfection leaves the earthly body, like the grasshopper its sheath. This first stage attained, the Immortal travels at will throughout the universe, enjoys all the advantages of perfect health without dreading disease or death, eats and drinks copiously—nothing is wanting ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... instincts, from the inhabitants of England and other countries in which they live, as the spaniel from the greyhound, or as the cart-horse from the Arabian. Our instincts, propensities, or fit and necessary habits, seem to lead us, like the ant, to lay up stores; theirs, like the grasshopper, to depend on the daily bounties of nature;—we, with the habits of the beaver, build fixed habitations; and they, like the deer, range from pasture to pasture;—we, with an instinct all our own, cultivate arts; they ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... child's vexation for about two hours, Ruth forgot all about her, and it so happened that the little thing strayed off with Horace and his friend Gilbert, whom he called "Grasshopper," to a little clearing in ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... a notable housewife, said to me one day, "Now, my dear, we shall soon have plenty of eggs, for I have been buying a lot of young chickens." There they were, each one with as many feathers as a grasshopper, and a chirp not louder. Of course, we looked forward with pleasant hopes to the period when the first cackle should announce the milk-white egg, warmly deposited in the hay which we had provided bountifully. They grew finely, and one day I ventured ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... we were hidden from the eyes of the dry, staring plain, and the Lizard laughed to himself as he fastened a grasshopper to his hook and flung it into the broad, dark water of the pool ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... where's your girls? Who but a fool would take his left hand by his right, and say to himself, how d'ye do? Partners! I must have partners! Sicilian Sailor Aye; girls and a green! —then I'll hop with ye; yea, turn grasshopper! Long-Island Sailor Well, well, ye sulkies, there's plenty more of us. Hoe corn when you may, I say. All legs go to harvest soon. Ah! here comes the music; now for it! Azore Sailor ( Ascending, and pitching the tambourine up the scuttle.) .. Here you are, Pip; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... a Time Margaret Benson To a Mouse Robert Burns The Grasshopper Abraham Cowley On the Grasshopper and Cricket John Keats To the Grasshopper and the Cricket Leigh Hunt The Cricket William Cowper To a Cricket William Cox Bennett To an Insect Oliver Wendell Holmes The Snail William Cowper The Housekeeper ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... and he named certain regiments that he should take with him, those of the general's own command, adding: "Save some of the ships if you can, and afterwards cross the Nile in them with your men, and join yourself either to my force or to that of the lord Shabaka, according to what you see. May the Grasshopper give ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... lame-futted"; though Mrs. M'Gurk, who had seen him come down the hill, opined that "'twasn't the sort of lameness 'ud hinder the miscreant of steppin' out, on'y a quare manner of flourish he had in a one of his knees, as if he was gatherin' himself up to make an offer at a grasshopper's lep, and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a thin little woman, with movements as nervous and as graceless as those of a grasshopper. Her dun-colored garments seemed to have all the hue bleached out of them with wind and weather. Her face was brown and wrinkled, and her bright eyes flashed restlessly, deep in their sockets. Two front teeth were conspicuously missing; ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... Musick went with us both all the Wood thro', The Lark, Linnet, Throstle, and Nightingale too; Winds over us whisper'd, Flocks by us did bleat, And chirp went the Grasshopper under our Feet. But now she is absent, tho' still they sing on, The Woods are but lonely, the Melody's gone: Her Voice in the Consort, as now I have found, Gave ev'ry thing ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... as he was able to walk we decided that he must be got away. Twenty-five miles distant, at Grasshopper Falls, were a party of his friends. There he hoped one day to plant a colony. With the help of a few friends we moved him thither one night, but word of his whereabouts soon ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... now, of that heifer, look you, bones, that's all. She does not live on dewdrops, does she, like the grasshopper? ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... that it was a grasshopper, which is composed of seven animals; for it has the head of a horse, the neck of an ox, the wings of an eagle, the feet of a camel, the tail of a serpent, the horns of a stag, and the ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... hen-harrier, and the peregrine falcon. Among the regular visitors are included the white wagtail, the pied flycatcher, the nightjar, the black redstart, the lesser redpole, the snow bunting, the redwing, the reed, marsh, and grasshopper warblers, the siskin, the dotterel, the sanderling, the wryneck, the hobby, the merlin, the bittern, and the shoveller. As occasional visitors may be reckoned the wax-wing, golden oriole, cross-bill, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honour, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... vision the path he would tread. Let him feel that you are striving to solace his declining years, and to requite that love which was shed upon you, the earliest moment of your consciousness. Can you do less for him, now that desire fails and the grasshopper has become a burden and he must soon go to his long home? Of you may ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... a wonder; that's a fact! I don't seem to know as much about him as I thought I did. He's lived almost on the next farm to me since he was the size of a grasshopper,' says I, 'but this is the first time I ever heard that he belonged to Algonquin!' ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... darkened, and the clouds return after the rain, when the strong men bow themselves, and those who look out of the windows are dark; and he shall rise up at the voice of a bird, and fears shall be in the way, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. Think for yourselves. What would you wish your end to be— lonely, unhappy, without the love, the respect, the care of your ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the lead and a chocolate-coloured atom of two toddling at the tail of the procession. From time to time shrill squeaks went up from the rear when a startled partridge whirred over the pasture or a bare brown foot came down on a toad or a grasshopper. ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... sensible Christian youth. He was not the good boy we used to read about in the Sunday-school books, who mopes around, forever preaching a sermon whenever he opens his lips, and finding a "lesson" in everything, even the leap of a grasshopper. When those boys become so good that they can be no better, they generally lie down, call all their playmates around them, deliver a farewell sermon, and then depart. The mistake of that sort of life is that it makes ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... Tradesmen, Mechanics and others. The grand front in Cornhill has been under repair lately, and in its appearance, no doubt, is greatly improved. The steeple which is just raised, is a handsome dome, surmounted by the original grasshopper, rendered somewhat celebrated by a prophecy, that certain alterations would take place in men, manners, and times, when the grasshopper on the top of the Exchange should meet the dragon at the top of Bow Church; and strange ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... sisters went to angle in the brook, meaning to catch fish for dinner. As they were drawing near the water they perceived something, looking like a large grasshopper, springing towards the stream, as if it were going in. They hurried up to see what it might be, and found that it was the dwarf. "Where are you going?" said Rose-Red. "Surely you will ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... chicken his kindness and protection whenever he can. He has few, if any, greater allies, for during the rearing of the young and throughout the summer the food of the prairie chicken consists principally of insects, chiefly of the destructive grasshopper. During the winter they feed upon weed-seed and scattered grain. Of course, at times the prairie chickens make slight inroads upon the crops, but these are many times repaid by the noxious ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... results. A few anglers still practise the old style of dapping or "dibbling" after the manner advised by Izaak Walton. It is a deadly way of fishing small overgrown brooks. A stiff rod and strong gut are necessary, and a grasshopper or almost any large fly will ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... when she went on a grasshopper hunt the other day, as she ran through the meadow, she saw some lovely creatures all in blue, with gauze wings, flying about over the river, and sitting in the water-lilies. She thinks they may be fairies, and advises ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... was something irresistibly likable and comical in his awkward antics and eternal persistence, even though he was a pest. Johnny saw more in him than his companions could find, and had quite a little sport with him: he made fine practice for roping, for he was about as elusive as a grasshopper and uncertain as a flea. Johnny was in the same general class and he could sympathize with the irrepressible nuisance in its efforts to stir up a little life and excitement in so dull a crowd; Johnny hoped to be as successful in his mischievous ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... the low bank like a lame grasshopper, and screamed out, 'You hateful old thing! I will get on your back! see if I don't!' So he cut a stout branch from a tree, stripped it, made it whistle through the air, and with a spiteful chuckle advanced ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... for birds of beautiful plumage, especially birds of paradise, of which there are many kinds. Among the insects is one commonly known as the "praying" mantis. It is related to the grasshopper and is found also in many other parts of the world. In New Guinea the praying mantis is three or four inches long and at first sight seems to be nothing but a broken twig. In various parts of the world it is known as "preacher," "nun," "soothsayer," and "saint." It has ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... opposition, has been offered to the principle of the tax, and the policy of its imposition, by those on whom its pressure falls heaviest, namely, the great capitalists and landed proprietors of the kingdom. "The grasshopper," said Mr Burke, "fills the whole field with the noise of its chirping, while the stately ox browses in silence." The clamour against the income-tax comes mainly from those who are unscathed by it; those who suffer most severely from it, suffer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... and many corrections; a presentation copy of Flatman's 'Poems and Songs,' 1682, to Izaak Walton, who has inscribed his autograph in it; Gay's copy of Horace; some proof-sheets of Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets;' a copy of Keats's 'Lamia,' 1820, with an autograph inscription and a sonnet 'On the Grasshopper and the Cricket,' also in the poet's handwriting; Gray's copy of Locke's 'Essay concerning Human Understanding,' a copy of the 'Dunciad,' 1729, with the inscription 'Jonath: Swift, 1729, amicissimi autoris donum'; and Isaac Newton's copy of Wheare's 'Method ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... him declare his innocence? If so, it did not seem to have softened them. They were still crouching—silent, hidden, relentless—behind the currant bushes, their scouts signalling to one another, for no real grasshopper ever made so much noise as that. He must make a bolt for it, and take his chance of their arrows missing him. Over the open space of grey-green grass he scuttled, and actually succeeded in reaching the friendly shadow of the holly hedge unharmed; but that was probably because ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... mysterious: being struck in the eye by something invisible to them. They soon acquired such a terror of him that they would avoid him and run away whenever they saw his bill turned in their direction. He never would swallow a grasshopper even when it was placed in his throat; he would shake himself until he had thrown it out of his mouth. His 'best hold' was ants. He never was surprised at anything, and never was afraid of anything. He would drive ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... of a passing herd rang up the curtain, and I sat there all alone in the hush of the dying day and listened to a concert of nature's musicians who sing as God hath taught them to sing. The first singer that entered my stage was Signor Grasshopper. He mounted a mullein leaf and sang, and sang, and sang, until Professor Turkey Gobbler slipped up behind him with open mouth, and Signor Grasshopper vanished from the footlights forevermore. And as Professor Turkey Gobbler strutted off my stage with a merry gobble, the orchestra opened ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... what could you do if you lived under ground? You could ride Mr. Mole and go galloping round; You could hear the black cricket a-playing his fife, For to quiet the baby and please his dear wife. You could hear the green grasshopper frying his meat, Near the nest of the June-Bug under the wheat. You could get all the goobers and artichokes, too— You could peep from the ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... "You grasshopper, you!" said Mr. Norton, catching hold of him, "don't you think you'd better try a whole tree next time? There, let me break it for you." Father broke it up into short lengths, and then off ran Olly with his little skirts full to Aunt Emma, who was laden too with an armful of sticks. "That'll ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ear. It had not stopped. I jumped up and walked to the window, and I saw at once the reason why I had imagined that night had fallen. From east to west and from north to south a dense pall of cloud hung over the earth. Not a leaf moved, and except for the shrill chirp of a grasshopper, not a sound broke ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... woods, or in forsaken clearings, Where the charred logs were hid by verdure new, And the shy wood-thrush lighted; or on hills Whence counties lay outspread beneath our gaze; Or by some rock-girt lake where sandy margins Sloped to the mirrored tints of waving trees,— Could feel no burden in the grasshopper, And no unrest in the long summer day? Would I esteem Youth's fervors fair return For temperate airs that fan sublimer heights Than Youth could scale; heights whence the patient vision May see this life's harsh inequalities, Its rudimental good and full-blown ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... The Flea, the Grasshopper, and the Skipjack once wanted to see which of them could jump highest; and they invited the whole world, and whoever else would come, to see the grand sight. And there the three famous jumpers were ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... at Mrs. Gray Goose sadly; but she refused even to look at him, and after a time he waddled slowly away, stopping now and then to snap at a grasshopper that ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice
... odd figure. His worn, ill-fitting clothes, with their bulging pockets, the grasshopper slimness of his legs and arms, the peering, glancing look of his eternally restless eyes, were all of them displeasing to Enid Glenwilliam as she surveyed him. But she ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... experiences of the afternoon. While they were walking quietly along, several snakes—some of considerable length—wriggled out of their path, and Larry trod on one which twirled round his foot, causing him to leap off the ground like a grasshopper and utter a yell, compared to which all his previous shoutings were like soft music. Bunco calmed his fears, however, and comforted the party by saying that these snakes were harmless. Nevertheless, they felt a strong sensation of aversion to the reptiles, which it was not easy to overcome, ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... basis of growth the latest return falls nearly four millions short. One of the causes of this is "too obvious" (and too disagreeable) "to mention;" but it is inadequate. The sharp demarcation of the western frontier by the grasshopper and the hygrometer is another, which will continue to operate until, by irrigation, tree-planting or some other device, a new climate can be manufactured for the Plains. The teeming West, that of old needed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... celebrated by London bards. I cannot tell you how many delicious hours I have passed lying on the cocks of new-mown hay, on the pleasant slopes of some of those hills, inhaling the fragrance of the fields, while the summer fly buzzed above me, or the grasshopper leaped into my bosom, and how I have gazed with half-shut eye upon the smoky mass of London, and listened to the distant sound of its population, and pitied the poor sons of earth toiling in its bowels, like Gnomes in "the dark ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... summer, in all the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all the plagues of Egypt. He had seen it parched by drought, and sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the grasshopper years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones that the vultures have left. After the great fires he had seen it stretch for miles and miles, black and smoking as ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... lived in a hollow tree, was in the habit of feeding by night and sleeping by day; but her slumbers were greatly disturbed by the chirping of a Grasshopper, who had taken up his abode in the branches. She begged him repeatedly to have some consideration for her comfort, but the Grasshopper, if anything, only chirped the louder. At last the Owl could stand it no longer, but determined to rid herself of the pest by means of a trick. ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... think it right for man to be a beast of prey, slaughtering other animals to gratify his appetites, he did not hesitate to sacrifice the lives of creeping things to satisfy the intellectual needs of humanity. Even this he did with characteristic tenderness, never leaving a grasshopper to writhe on a pin for two days, but kindly giving him a drop of chloroform to pass him into the Buddhist's heaven of eternal repose. In the course of an hour or two he had adorned his hat with a variety ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... grasshoppers by oneself is one thing; to pursue them in the company of a fascinating schoolmarm is another; and when one has in his mind the thought that ultimately he and the schoolmarm may chance to fall upon the same grasshopper, the chase becomes a sport for ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... sound—and left only the silent universe with myself and this terribly beautiful thing in the midst of utter emptiness. And I loved it with a strange, desperate, tigerish love. It expressed itself so magnificently; and that is really all a man, or a waterfall, or a mountain, or a flower, or a grasshopper, or a meadow lark, or an ocean, or a thunderstorm has to do in this world. And it was doing it right out in the middle of a desert, bleak, sun-leprosied, forbidding, with only the stars and the moon and the sun and a cliff-swallow or two to behold. Thundering out its message ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... of the pueblo of Ganang, cut and destroyed the grasshopper basket of Dadaag, of the pueblo of Mayinit, and also slightly cut Dadaag with his ax, but did not attempt to kill him. The cause of the assault was this: Mowigas had killed a chicken and was having a ceremonial in his house at the time Dadaag passed with his basket of grasshoppers. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... more fruitful, And the passing of your footsteps 55 Draw a magic circle round them, So that neither blight nor mildew, Neither burrowing worm nor insect, Shall pass o'er the magic circle; Not the dragon-fly, Kwo-ne-she, 60 Nor the spider, Subbekashe, Nor the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena, Nor the mighty caterpillar, Way-muk-kwana, with the bear-skin, King of all the caterpillars!" 65 On the tree-tops near the corn-fields Sat the hungry crows and ravens, Kahgahgee, ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... to be hanged; place every thing in the most convenient position to be seized without trouble at a moment's notice; for be sure that in half an hour after sailing an infinite desperation will seize you, in which the grasshopper will be a burden. If any thing is in your trunk, it might almost as well be in the sea, for any practical probability of your getting ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... tell. You are getting into years. True. But you are getting out again. The bowed frame, the tottering step, the unsteady hand, the failing eye, the heavy ear, the tremulous voice, they will all be yours. The grasshopper will become a burden, and desire shall fail. The fire shall be smothered in your heart, and for passion you shall have only peace. This is not pleasant. It is never pleasant to feel the inevitable passing away ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... side stood a sleeping divan. On a movable bed was hung a leek-green gauze curtain, ornamented with double embroideries, representing flowers, plants and insects. Pan Erh ran up to have a look. "This is a green-cicada," he shouted; "this a grasshopper!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... they picked out hymns to fit ye! And always a drefful example and a visitation. And the rest o' the tune it was all gabble, gabble by the brothers and sisters about you. I reckon, Mr. Hamlin, that they know everything you ever did since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, and a good deal more than you ever thought of doin'. The women is all dead set on convertin' ye and savin' ye by their own precious selves, and the men is ekally dead set on gettin' rid o' ye on ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and think that men have suffered in relation to eternal things as a result of our lack of zeal or of faithfulness, or from some preventable defect in our dispensing of the word, must be a sad occupation for those years when the grasshopper has become a burden. The echo of our sermons will be in our ears at the last. That echo will be either a song of gladness to sing itself forever, or a lamentation to be soothed to ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... There, as she sat rocking up and down in the kitchen, the fall wind brought to her nose the odor of grapes ripening in the sun. The corn stood gathered in the fields, and in the yellow barley stubble the grasshopper, old and brown, leaped full of love upon his neighbor. Mrs. Grumble, beside a pile of Mr. Jeminy's winter clothes, sorted, mended, and darned, while the sun fell through the window, bright and hot across her shoulders. She kept one eye on the ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan |
