"Loon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plenish the Heugh-foot, I am content, on my part, to accept the courtesy wi' mony kind thanks; and troth, I think it will be as safe in my hands as yours, if ye leave it flung about in that gate for the first loon body to lift, forbye the risk o' bad neighbours that can win through steekit doors and lockfast places, as I can tell to my cost. I say, since ye hae sae muckle consideration for me, I'se be blithe to accept ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... beets, an' sich, Ef dey ain't some one to tell you, you cain't 'stinguish which is which. Wen I t'ought I 's eatin' chicken—you may b'lieve dis hyeah 's a lie— But de waiter beat me down dat I was eatin' rabbit pie. An' dey 'd t'ink dat you was crazy—jes' a reg'lar ravin' loon, Ef you 'd speak erbout a 'possum or a piece o' good ol' coon. O, hit's mighty nice, dis trav'lin', an' I 's kin' o' glad I come. But, I reckon, now I 's willin' fu' to tek my way back home. I done see de Crystal Palace, an' I 's hyeahd dey string-band play, ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... wagtail is out in search of food, advancing in little spurts, trim and pert with its pointed beak and swift little flick of a tail; after a while it flies up to perch on a fence and sing with the rest. But when the sun has set, may come the cry of a loon from some hill-tarn; a melancholy hurrah. That is the last; now there is only the grasshopper left. And there's nothing to say of a grasshopper, you never see it; it doesn't count, only he's there gritting his resiny teeth, as ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... you saw the snow Drifted down from the maple tree (Oh, the wind that is sobbing so! Weary and worn and old are we)— Only the snow and a wounded loon— Rest and sleep, 'twill be ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... and all the animals were floating around on a large raft. One day Old Man told the beaver to dive and try to bring up a little mud. The beaver went down, and was gone a long time, but could not reach the bottom. Then the loon tried, and the otter, but the water was too deep for them. At last the muskrat dived, and he was gone so long that they thought he had drowned, but he finally came up, almost dead, and when they pulled him ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... "Base loon!" cried the stranger, starting to his feet, "ye shall rue that blow." And he flung off his bonnet as if to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... man-of-war, this semi-savage, wandering about the gun-deck in his barbaric robe, seemed a being from some other sphere. His tastes were our abominations: ours his. Our creed he rejected: his we. We thought him a loon: he fancied us fools. Had the case been reversed; had we been Polynesians and he an American, our mutual opinion of each other would still have remained the same. A fact proving that neither was wrong, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... blankets had not been disturbed. Then for a few moments he sat very still, listening, and wondering if the cry had been real. As he sat tense and still in the half daze of the sleep it came again. It was the shrill laughing carnival of a loon out on the lake. More than once he had laughed at comrades who had shivered at that sound and cowered until its echoes had died away in moaning wails. He understood now. He knew why the Indians ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... enchantment, a violent sorcery, and over it the blue-white, flooding shine of the moonlight seemed to take on some sinister significance. The seconds lengthened out as a nightmare, till at last the stupendous stillness was broken by the wild clamour of a loon, far down on the lake. As the distant cry shrilled up the mountainside, the white bull stirred, shook his antlers, and blew loudly through his nostril. It was a note of challenge—but in it the bear divined a growing hesitancy. ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... ups and does something nobody else can do, if they'd bust their biler tryin', then he is sot down as bein' crazy as a loon ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... passed within a quarter of a mile but received a volley; not a loon that showed his distant head above water but went down under the fire of a platoon; and not a frightened duck darted overhead but heard the air behind him torn with whistling shot enough to have exterminated ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... across this swamp, thou senseless loon," said the cardinal, "and I will give thee ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... loon?' I whispered. 'Can't you see he's three sheets in the wind? And you haven't told him what Kelly ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... they finished passing through; and beyond there were interminable, misty meadows of wild grass to be crossed. Garth could no longer distinguish any sign of a trail; but the breed bent steadily ahead. Once or twice an owl whirred suddenly low over their heads; and somewhere far off a loon guffawed insanely. In the end their guide, to cheer his own soul, lifted up his voice in the strident, unearthly chant of the Crees; and it only needed this to add the last touch of unreality to their eerie journey. They began to feel ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... given him a home here along with that first woman of Brother Tench's. The crazy loon has been bothering me all week ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... from Wodin, and that a son should, as natural, succeed his father, were old rules: but the barons would, as all history shews, make little of crowning a younger son instead of an elder, if the younger were a hero, and the elder an 'arga'—a lazy loon; and little, also, would they make of setting aside the whole royal family, and crowning the man who would do their business best. The king was, as this preface and these laws shew, the commander in chief of the exercitus, the militia, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... waterfowl to be found helpless in the streets or fields of a region in which they are ordinarily unknown. These birds have become exhausted during the storm of the night before, or have been injured by striking telephone or telegraph wires, an accident which often happens. Once I picked up a Loon after a stormy night. Apparently it had recovered its strength after a few hours' rest, but, as this bird can rise on the wing only from a body of water, over the surface of which it can paddle and flap for many rods, and as {78} there was no pond or lake in all the neighbouring country, the Loon's ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... these strange speeches till she heard Nancy say to Mrs. Hunter, "Crazy as a loon, ain't she? I'm afraid it's water on ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... fear. Woodland ponds, whose placid waters have never reflected the dark lines of a canoe, lie like jewels in their setting of green hills; ponds where soft-eyed deer come down to drink at twilight, and where the weird laughter of the loon floats through the morning mists. Toward the south, however, man is fast penetrating the secrets of the forest, blazing dim trails and leaving fear and destruction in the wake of his ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... he said, with a heave of his big chest, "I reca' as yestreen the night Maxwell cam aboord. The sun gaed loon a' bluidy, an' belyve the morn rose unco mirk an' dreary, wi' bullers (rollers) frae the west like muckle sowthers (soldiers) wi' white plumes. I tauld the captain 'twas a' the faut o' Maxwell. I ne'er cad bide the blellum. Dour an' din he was, wi' ae girn like th' ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a case of drawers and stood before it, supporting himself by the handles of the second drawer. "Yes," he reflected, "the revolver's in that drawer." He released the handles and staggered back to his chair. "I'm crazy," he muttered, "crazy as a loon. I ought ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... of pains in his bones, Christabel as is common, Roger well, Mary making o' candles," replied Tabitha rapidly. "As for yon ill-doing loon of a husband of yours, he's eating cakes and supping ale at ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... the grey rocks of the grim old mountains that so stubbornly held their secret of what lay beyond, we had a good supper of trout and were happy, though through the gulch the creek roared defiance at us, and off in the night somewhere a loon would break out at intervals in derisive laughter. At the base of the mountains the narrow lake reflected a million stars, and in their kindly light the snow and ice patches on the slopes above us ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... sight," she said, very low, "and from my father's house! Forth with you for a mocker and a gangrel loon!"—speaking in our common Scots,—"and herd with the base thieves from whom you came, coward ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... whitewashed and clean. The tables, chairs, and benches were all homemade. On the floor were magnificent skins of wolf, bear, musk ox, and mountain goat. The walls were decorated with heads and horns of deer and mountain sheep, eagle's wings, and a beautiful breast of a loon, which Gwen had shot and of which she was very proud. At one end of the room a huge stone fireplace stood radiant in its summer decorations of ferns and grasses and wildflowers. At the other end a door opened into another room, smaller, and richly furnished with ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... daggurs—Ile let his bowels out," or wurds to that effeck—I say, this is awl, strickly, propper I spoze? That Jack Fawlstarf is likewise a immoral old cuss, take him how ye may, and Hamlick is as crazy as a loon. Thare's Richurd the Three, peple think heze grate things, but I look upon him in the lite of a monkster. He kills everybody he takes a noshun to in kold blud, and then goze to sleep in his tent. Bimeby he wakes up and yells for a hoss so ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... what the Indian said to the missionary who had been talking to him of heaven. "Is it like the land of the musk-ox in summer, when the mist is on the lakes, and the loon cries very often?" These lakes are not charted, and the Indian heard the loon's call in his memory; but we could not better describe the delectable lands through which we have roamed. "When the mist is on ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... saw and heard, the peddler attempted to question her, but failing to obtain any satisfactory answers he finally left, mentally pronouncing her "as crazy as a loon." This opinion was confirmed by the people on whom he next called, for, chancing to speak of Hagar, he was told that nothing which she did or said was considered strange, as she had been called insane for years. This satisfied Martin, who made no further ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... my bottle drink, And cease this scurvy rune." But the raven flapped its wings and laughed Loud as the water loon. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... gyrated past me with force enough to brain an elephant had it struck him. It was good fun, though, in old times to go out and see them raise the nets, for they often came up heavy with fish. Strange to say, a loon was once pulled up with the shad. Driven by fear, it must have dived so vigorously as to entangle itself, for there it hung with its head and one leg fast. I suppose that the last moment of consciousness that the poor bird had was one ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... wandering round crazy as a loon, seeing three big lions with eyes like coals of fire stalking him night and day, and him always trying to dodge 'em. He says at last they came nearer and nearer until he stumbled and fell, and then he felt their hot breath on his cheek, and ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... of his twig when a low, wild peal of laughter broke out at a measureless distance away, and growing ever louder, seemed approaching ever nearer; a soulless, heartless, and unjoyous laugh, like that of the loon, solitary by the lakeside at midnight; a laugh which culminated in an unearthly shout close at hand, then died away by slow gradations, as if the accursed being that uttered it had withdrawn over the verge of the world whence it had come. But the man felt ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... him with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he. "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!" ...
— The Rime of the Ancient Mariner • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... nae mischance, praised be Heaven,' said Willie, 'but the absence of the lazy loon Rob the Rambler, my comrade, that didna come to meet me on the Links; but I hae gotten a braw consort in his stead, worth a dozen of him, the ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... back toward the house, and I laughed at my momentary confusion as I rode on through the deepening shadow, for though it is strangely mournful the loon's shrill call was nothing unusual in that land. Still, mere coincidence as it was, remembering Grace's shiver it troubled me, and I should have been more uneasy had I known how we were to keep that ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... the bare back weel eneuch for a fisher loon," said Malcolm; "but I never was upon a ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... scarcely perceptible blending of two circles of the sun. A kildee timidly chirped good-night; the full, rich throat of a robin proclaimed good-morrow. From an island on the breast of the Yukon a colony of wild fowl voiced its interminable wrongs, while a loon laughed mockingly back across a ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... turban he wears a broad green kammer bund and a green undergarment; he is in fact very green indeed. Then a crazy person pushes his way forward and wants me to cure him of his mental infirmity; at all events I cannot imagine what else he wants; the man is crazy as a loon, he cannot even give utterance to his own mother-tongue, but tries to express himself in a series of disjointed grunts beside which the soul-harrowing efforts of a broken-winded donkey are quite melodious. Someone ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... know that country? It's a great country for lakes. You can canoe for days an' days without a portage. We have a camp on Big Loon Lake. We used to have some wonderful times there...lived like wild men. I went for a trip for three weeks once without seeing a house. ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... grow. He wasted half his income on the lewd and the low. He would trade engender for the red bar-tender, He would homage render to the red bar-tender, And in ultimate surrender to the red bar-tender, He died of the tremens, as crazy as a loon, And his friends were glad, when the end came soon. There goes the hearse, the mourners cry, The respectable hearse goes slowly by. And now, good friends, since you see how it ends, Let each nation-mender flay the red bar-tender,— Abhor The transgression Of the red bar-tender,— ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... out the wish that dwells therein, * And cut that short which threatens thee with sore risk oversoon: An to such talk thou dare return, I bid thee to expect * Fro' me such awful penalty as suiteth froward loon: I swear by Him who moulded man from gout of clotted blood,[FN34] * Who lit the Sun to shine by day and lit for night the moon, An thou return to mention that thou spakest in thy pride, * Upon a cross of tree for boon ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... think I ever saw them flying. I shall always recognize one again. They are regular double-enders, pointed at both ends. Is it the same sort of loon that we see on ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... much; first to be cheated by a swindling loon, and then made game of by a flunkie; and, in my desperation, I determined ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... a shudder. "I'll never go near that awful place! I'd rather see a perfectly good ghost, or a loon, or a lunatic any day ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... ill-mannered loon," Cuthbert said angrily. "Were you in any other presence I would ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... out in my canoe alone looking for a loon's nest, one midsummer day, when the fresh trail of a bull caribou drew me to shore. The trail led straight from the water to a broad alder belt, beyond which, on the hillside, I might find the big brute loafing his time ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... e-a. To dive and then come up to take breath, as one does in swimming out to sea against the incoming breakers, or as one might do in escaping from a pursuer, or in avoiding detection, after the manner of a loon.] ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... the shoemaker awoke, he went to see what work Ivan had done; but, perceiving him still fast asleep, he flew into a rage, and exclaimed: "Up, you lazy loon! have I engaged you only to sleep?" Ivan, stretching himself slowly, replied: "Have patience, master; first go to the workshop, and see what you shall find." So the shoemaker went to the shop; and what ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... with Big Bear and his flight from Frenchman's Butte, where he had a strong and well-fortified position, Major Steele, with his mounted detachment, had made a rush to Loon Lake, where, in a rattling encounter during which Sergeant Fury was severely wounded, he completed the defeat of Big Bear. Two days or so afterwards our scouts crossed Gold Lake in birch canoes and secured ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... I defy. His impudence, his politics, His dirty designs, his rascally tricks, No stain of abuse on me shall fix. Justice and right, in his despite, Shall aid and attend me, and do me right: With these to friend, I ne'er will bend, Nor descend To a humble tone (Like his own), As a sneaking loon, A ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of grass decorated with feathers of duck or of ptarmigan. The men in the Totem Dances also wear handlets which are carved and painted to represent the particular totem they seek to honor. These too are fantastically decorated with feathers, usually of the loon. The central feather is stripped, and crowned with a tuft of white down. Both men and women wear armlets and fillets of skin or feathers according to the animal character they represent. When in the full swing of the dance with fur and feathers streaming they present a pleasing spectacle, a ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... to water, and the beaver's overbold, The net is in the eddy of the stream; The teepee stars the vivid sward with russet, red and gold, And in the velvet gloom the fire's a-gleam. The night is ripe with quiet, rich with incense of the pine; From sanctuary lake I hear the loon; The peaks are bright against the blue, and drenched with sunset wine, And like a silver bubble is ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... twa kinds of Scot in the land since the Reformation, and there will be twa to the end of the chapter, and they'll never agree till the day of judgment, and then they'll be on opposite sides. There was Queen Mary and there was John Knox, there was that false-hearted loon Argyle, that ye gave a grand nip at the fire last nicht, and there was the head o' your hoose, the gallant Marquis—peace to his soul. Now there's the Carnegies and the Gordons and the rest o' the royal families in the Northeast, and the sour-blooded Covenanters down in the ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... private garden. I saw a crab in one of them; five-fingers too. From the edge of the rocks, you may look off into deep, deep water, even at low tide. Among the rocks, I found a great bird, whether a wild-goose, a loon, or an albatross, I scarcely know. It was in such a position that I almost fancied it might be asleep, and therefore drew near softly, lest it should take flight; but it was dead, and stirred not when I touched it. Sometimes a dead fish was cast ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... me and old Fred on the other, so I felt secure indeed. The night had many voices there in the deep wood. Away in the distance I could hear a strange, wild cry, and I asked what it was and Uncle Eb whispered back, ''s a loon.' Down the side of the mountain a shrill bark rang in the timber and that was a fox, according to my patient oracle. Anon we heard the crash and thunder of a falling tree and a murmur that followed in the wake ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... contamination. There is no sound to break the silence of ages save the song of river rapids, the thunder of mighty falls, or the whisper or moan of wind in the tree tops; or, perchance, the distant cry of a wolf, the weird laugh of a loon or the ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... three-quarters of a mile away. His wife heard it, and paused in her work of felling a tree; the children heard it, and the neighbors heard it; and they all knew it meant business. The Beaver dived like a loon and swam for dear life, and he did not come to the surface again till he had reached the farther end of the pond and was out of sight behind a grassy point. There he stayed, now and then striking the water with his tail as a signal that the danger was not yet ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... northern diver, Colymbus glacialis. A bird about the size of a goose, which frequents the northern seas, where "as straight as a loon's leg," is a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... little way back in these hundred and fifty years, lies the primeval forest, trodden no longer now by the wasting redman, but untamed yet, almost unhandselled. And still, as the holidaymakers leave it, winter closes down on the lake-side and wraps it in silence, broken by the loon's cry or the crash of a snow-laden tree deep in the forest—the same sounds, the same aching silence, endured by French and English garrisons watching each other and the winter through in Fort ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... estimated at about three hundred souls, thus forming the nucleus of a very promising settlement, now, of course, at its wits' end for gristing. Vermilion seemed to be a very favourable supply point in starting other settlements, being in touch by water with Loon River, Hay River, and other points east and north, where there is abundance of excellent land. For the present, and pending railway development, it was plain that the great and pressing requirement of the region was a good waggon road by way of Wahpooskow to Athabasca Landing, a distance of ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... of a Volume of Keats's Poems Apples of Hesperides Azure and Gold Petals Venetian Glass Fatigue A Japanese Wood-Carving A Little Song Behind a Wall A Winter Ride A Coloured Print by Shokei Song The Fool Errant The Green Bowl Hora Stellatrix Fragment Loon Point Summer "To-morrow to Fresh Woods and Pastures New" The Way Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha} Roads Teatro Bambino. Dublin, N. H. The Road to Avignon New York at Night A Fairy Tale Crowned To Elizabeth Ward ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... to the Lake a mile west, and there made drawings of some tracks, took photos, etc., and on the lake saw about twenty-five pairs of ducks, identified Whitewinged Scoter, Pintail, Green-winged Teal, and Loon. I also watched the manoeuvres of a courting Peetweet. He approached the only lady with his feathers up and his wings raised; she paid no heed (apparently), but I noticed that when he flew away she followed. I saw a large garter ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Moreover, Tougall, she got into a bog after wan o' the peasts, an' I thought I wass goin' to lose him altogither. 'Shames Tougall,' says I, 'don't you go anither step till I come to you, or you're a lost man,' but Shames went on—he was always an obstinate loon—" ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... Pirate's Cave, they presently descended to the water's edge once more. The cliffs rose to a distorted height in the dimness; sprays of withered grass nodded along the edge, like Ossian's spectres. Light seemed to be vanishing from the universe, leaving them alone with the sea. And when a solitary loon uttered his wild cry, and rising, sped away into the distance, it was as if life were following light into an equal annihilation. That sense of vague terror, with which the ocean sometimes controls the fancy, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... westerly directions to strike the highway at different points. Seymour, as the fast racer, was given the northmost route; Rolf took the middle. Their signals were arranged—in the woods the barred-owl cry, by the water the loon; and they parted. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... at the red ball of the sun slipping down behind the shoulder of the world. A wind came out of the North, cool and sweet and balsamic with hope. I heard a loon cry. And then the earth ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... love, you loon!" said Von Barwig to Poons in German, "you have caught your fish. Don't dangle it ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... chock full o' mischief lookin' round fur to see some poor soul to play a prank on. It do feel strange-like to have him a-sittin' by my elbow today. Many's the tale I could tell o' his doin' an' our sufferin'. Why, I mind a poor lump of a 'prentice as I wunst had, a loon as never could raise a keek: poor soul, he bin underground this many year. Well, as I were sayin', this 'prentice o' mine were allers bein' baited by the boys o' the grammar school. I done my best for him, spoke them boys fair an' soft, but, bless ya, 'twas no good; ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... somewhat surprised and gratified by the sight of some splendid gardens around a seat of Prince Woronzow. Little did our countrymen think that these gardens were the work of a Scotchman, and a Moray loon; yet such was the case." The history of the personage in question is a somewhat singular one: "Jamie Sinclair, the garden boy, had a natural genius, and played the violin. Lady Cumming had this boy educated by the family tutor, and sent him to London, where he was well known in 1836-7-8, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... dule to ilka Scot, that sells his conscience and his vote.' — He discharged a third sarcasm at a person very gaily dressed, who had risen from small beginnings, and made a considerable fortune at play. — Filling his glass, and calling him by name, 'Lang life (said he), to the wylie loon that gangs a-field with a toom poke at his lunzie, and comes hame with a sackful of siller.' — All these toasts being received with loud bursts of applause, Mr Fraser called for pint glasses, and filled his own to the brim: then standing up, and all his brethren following his example, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... night I heard the diabolic screech of a loon somewhere down the river, while closer by rose the pathetic song of the whippoorwill. Strange contrasts and each very welcome in my ears. I was awake with the first rays of the sun mottling the bark and mold before the low entrance to my retreat. ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... the young White Father. The ways of the Great Spirit are many as the fluttering leaves; they are strange and secret as the flight of a loon; White Eyes believes the redman's happy hunting grounds need not be forgotten to love the palefaces' God. As a young brave pants and puzzles over his first trail, so the grown warrior feels in his understanding of his God. He gropes blindly through ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... at length to fall asleep. The last rosy light of the setting sun was dyeing the waters with a glowing tint when she awoke; a soft blue haze hung upon the trees; the kingfisher and dragon-fly, and a solitary loon, were the only busy things abroad on the river,—the first darting up and down from an upturned root, near the water's edge, feeding its younglings; the dragon-fly hawking with rapid whirring sound for insects; and the loon, just visible from above the surface of the still stream, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... said, sitting, as Mr. Dix expressed it afterwards, like a tiger about to spring, "that you've been listening to that crazy loon, Crawshay." ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all were happy. The farm was made fast by another rope put round the town pump. Then the villagers all went to bed. They were happy in having rescued a runaway farm, and they expected a good "loon" (reward) from the rich old Ryer, who, in the barroom, had ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... columns moved out of the trenches, with the utmost silence, bearing scaling ladders, and crept stealthily over the plain toward the apparently slumbering fort. Dark clouds hung low, and the only sounds heard were the melancholy cry of the loon and the measured dash of the waves upon the shore. At length the American picket discovered the approach of the British columns and gave the alarm. The bugles rang shrill in the ear of night. Every embrasure of the seemingly sleeping fort flashed forth its tongue of flame, revealing the position ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... loon is found in all the Northern States. It is a very awkward bird on land, but a graceful and rapid swimmer. It is a remarkable diver, and it is thought that no other feathered creature can dive so far beneath the surface ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... cleared his throat. 'See you,' he began. 'So I should have said in the old days. These fellows then we could slush open to bathe our feet in their warm blood when we came tired-foot from hunting. Now it is otherwise. Such a loon may be a ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... out in sharp and bold relief, on whose tops the beams of the descending sun lie like a mantle of silver and gold. Glad voices are ringing; sounds of merriment make the evening joyous with the music of the wild things around us. Hark! how from away off over the water, the voice of the loon comes clear and musical and shrill, like the sound of a clarion; and note how it is borne about by the echoes from hill to hill. Hark! again, to that clanking sound away up in the air; metallic ringing, like the tones of a bell. It is the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... girls who like true tales of adventure. "A Short History of Discovery From the Earliest Times to the Founding of the Colonies on the American Continent," written and done into colour by Hendrik Willem van Loon. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... far-reaching vista to the northwest. On either side of the narrow lake rose towering cliffs of granite, their dark faces lighted at intervals by brooklets tumbling in cascades from the heights above. A loon laughed weirdly in the distance, and from the hills above a wolf sounded a dismal howl. It was a scene of rugged, primeval grandeur, and Shad, taken completely ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... thy woodlands hide the hare, The shy loon sound his trumpet-note, Wing-weary from his fields of air, The wild-goose on ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... was interned at my house for ten days, till his bruises lost their purple glow and he looked a little less like a bad case of erysipelas. Then he started out again, crazy as a loon! I didn't hear from him for nearly two years. Then I got a letter telling about his life of adventure down on the Border. It seems he'd got in with a good capable stockman down there and they was engaged in the cattle business. The business was to go over into Mexico, attracting as little notice ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... "Ye ill-faured loon, stan' awa'," yelled Scoodrach, as Max laid his hand on Kenneth's shoulder; and they went down together to the boat, while the bailiff and his man walked muttering ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... wild-fowl sang them to him, In the moorlands and the fen-lands, In the melancholy marshes; Chetowaik, the plover, sang them, Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa, The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, And the grouse, ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... and it was the beginning of Peter's first September. The days were still hot, but at night there was a bracing something in the air that stirred the blood, and Peter found a sharp, new note in the voices of the wild. The wolf howled again in the middle of the night. The loon forgot his love-sickness, and screamed raucous defiance at the moon. The big snowshoes were no longer tame, but wary and alert, and the owls seemed to slink deeper into darkness and watch with more cunning. And Jolly Roger knew the human ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... the loon that did it, Sworn I have as well as said it, Though a' the warld should forbid it, I wad gie his neck a thra': I never met wi' sic a turn As this sin' ever I was born, My Ewie, wi' the crookit horn, Silly Ewie, stown awa'; My Ewie wi' the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... along at a pretty good jog, when we heard some body hallooing after us, and we held up. Looking around, we saw a man running down from the house standing upon the side-hill, a little away from the road. May be you remember the house up there? Well, he was hallooing like a loon, and we waited till he came up. Soon as he got near ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... right before they got any further, Mr. Rose. It sounded nasty, for a while. The mechanician struck his head in the upset, I fancy; I've seen a man run half a mile across country, crazy as a loon, after being pitched out on his head in a sand-bank. They'd better get Jack Rupert into bed and keep him quiet; he'll wake up to-morrow sane as ever. Nice way your son ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... diver the Snake Bird is the most wonderful of all the Ducks. Like the Loon it can disappear instantly and noiselessly, swim a long distance and reappear almost in an opposite direction to that in which naturally it would be supposed to go. And the ease with which, when alarmed, it will drop from its perch and leave scarcely a ripple on ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... "Not yet, you Scotch loon!" said Boyd gently. "I'll live to pepper your kilted tatterdemalions so they'll beg for the mercies ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... crisp evening in October and the Winnebagos were having their Work Meeting at the Bradford house, as the guests of Dorothy Bradford, or "Hinpoha," as she was known in the Winnebago circle. Here were all the girls we left standing on the boat dock at Loon Lake, looking just the same as when we saw them last, a trifle less sunburned perhaps, but just as full of life and spirit. Scissors, needles and crochet hooks flew fast as the seven girls and their ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... lass!—But what's this aboot Francie?' 'Ow naething, father, worth mentionin! The daft loon wud hae bed me promise to merry ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... counts with you just now," said the doctor. "You come with me at once, or I'll throw up the case. 'You're as loony as a loon." ...
— Options • O. Henry
... sir," returned the keeper; "there's Ian Anderson an' Tonal' from Cove, an' Mister Archie an' Eddie, an' Roderick—that's five. Oo, ay, I forgot, there's that queer English loon, Robin Tips— he's no' o' much use, but he can mak' a noise—besides three o' Mr ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... road presses northward through the Colville Valley to the Columbia, and thence to the international boundary line, having previously passed at Deer Park the Arcadia orchard, largest commercial apple orchard in the world; Loon Lake, a summer resort; Chewelah, a mining town surrounded by a dairying country; and Colville, county seat of Stevens county and largest city in this section. A pleasant contrast is this northern extension, ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... of my kind; A reckless cuss in leather chaps, an' tanned an' blackened so You'd think I wuz a Greaser from the plains of Mexico. I never learnt to say a prayer, an' guess my style o' talk, If fired off in a Sunday School would give 'em all a shock; An' yet I got a-mopin' round as crazy as a loon An' actin' like the story kid ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... I grant He was a man we weill culd want, And we'll forget him sune; But yet I think the sooth to say, Although the loon is weill away, The deed was ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... s'loon," said the cabby, promptly and huskily. "I know a place I could take money in with both hands. It's a four-story brick on a corner. I've got it figured out. Second story—Chinks and chop suey; third floor—manicures and foreign missions; fourth floor—poolroom. If you was thinking of putting ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... ye stop the pipers? Nay, 'tis ower soon! Dance, since ye're dancing, William, Dance, ye puir loon! Dance till ye're dizzy, William, Dance till ye swoon! Dance till ye're deid, my laddie! We ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... selected as performers to be the happy, fortunate ones of the season. Mrs. Montacute Jones was a nasty old woman for not having asked her. Of course there was a difficulty, but there might have been two sets. "And Jack is such a false loon," she said to Lord George, "that he won't show me one ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... exclaimed, sitting down for the first time in years "at the first table." "If this don't beat Crawberry and them boarders, I'm crazy as a loon. Pour the coffee, Sister—and don't be stingy with the milk. Milk's only five cents a quart here, and it's eight in town. But, gracious, child! ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... shrill-voiced as such ragged little urchins are, would run after this big man with the streaming white hair and the tattered cloak, calling him names or tapping their brown little foreheads with their dirty fingers to show that even they knew that he was "as crazy as a loon." ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... get drunk if he likes. That's Shakespeare, Cruttendon. I'm with you there. Shakespeare had more guts than all these damned frogs put together. 'Hang there like fruit my soul,'" he began quoting, in a musical rhetorical voice, flourishing his wine-glass. "The devil damn you black, you cream-faced loon!" he exclaimed as the wine washed over ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the wild celery that grows beneath the sound. In yonder tree the bald eagle was starting out upon his Algerine work of vehemence and piety, to intercept the hawk and steal his cargo. The wild swan might be those faint, far birds flying so high over Kedge's Straits, in the south, and the black loon, spreading his wings like a demon, disappears close to the cat-boat, and rises no more till memory has ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... a petticoat Menekahnekah, adv. seedy Mejenahwayahdahkahmig, n. pity Mahmahdahwechegawenebun, it was a strange custom Menesenoo, n. a hero Mesquahsin, n. brick, which signifies, red stone Mesahowh, that is Moosay, n. a worm Moong, n. a loon Meene, n. a kind of fruit Mahjekewis, adj. the eldest Meskoodesemin, n. a bean Mategwahkezinekaid, n. a shoe-maker Menahwenahgowd, v. look pleasant Meneweyook, v. be fruitful Megeskun, n. a hook Mezesok, n. a horse-fly Mahwahdooskahegun, n. ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... doog-win Nin dinaindoon—" "Loon's wing I thought it was In the distance shining. But it was my lover's paddle ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... workin' there this week. So it disna belong tae neen o' the gair'ners, if it's there ye fund't," repeated Malcolm. "There's been nae work deen on that bed for the last fortnicht or mair. I was thinkin' o' sendin' a loon ower't wie a hoe in a day or twa. Ye see, wie the murrder it's been impossible tae get ony work done; apairt fay that we've been busy wie the fruit and ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... was brought here, two months ago, and fancies that he has been in a trance since the time of Noah and the Ark. He has a strange hallucination that he can be awakened from his protracted nap by a kiss from a certain female, whom he describes as Arletta the Beautiful. Although he is as crazy as a loon, yet some of his utterances are really remarkable for the depth of logic they contain. The case has its amusing side also, for every woman by the name of Arletta who visits this hospital cannot ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... at morn; To skirt with deafened ears and brain o'erborne Some foam-filled rapid charging down its rocks With iron roar of waters; far away Across wide-reeded meres, pensive with noon, To hear the querulous outcry of the loon; To lie among deep rocks, and watch all day On liquid heights the snowy clouds melt by; Or hear from wood-capped mountain-brows the jay Pierce the bright morning with his ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... fishing village they went, the familiar landmarks about them looming grotesque and mystical in the low-hanging fog. At length the acrid air of the sea assailed their nostrils and the silence of the night was broken by the noisy splashing of a marsh-loon. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Flagg. "I'll ride to the head of the drive in this chair. Even with both sides of me paralyzed I'll be worth more than you are, you lallygagging, love-cracked loon! Get out of here!" ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... of that damned loon, Francy McCraw!" he cried, fiercely. "Give it to 'em, b'ys! Shoot hell into the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... fast all the while; and the balloons were wafted gently away, our little friend solemnly protesting, long after they were reduced to mere specks in the air, that he could still distinguish the white hat of Mr. Green. The gardens disgorged their multitudes, boys ran up and down screaming 'bal-loon;' and in all the crowded thoroughfares people rushed out of their shops into the middle of the road, and having stared up in the air at two little black objects till they almost dislocated their necks, walked slowly ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... compelled to pay attention to them, his capacity for self-hate was multiplied. In despair, he declared that he was not like those others. He now conceded it to be impossible that he should ever become a hero. He was a craven loon. Those pictures of glory were piteous things. He groaned from his heart and went ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... whose Christian name was Joshua, however, had a medal struck of Joshua stopping the sun in his course, inferring that this miracle was operated by his little republic. The medal itself is engraven in Van Loon's voluminous Histoire Medallique du Pays Bas, and in Marchand's Dictionnaire Historique, who labours to prove against twenty authors that the Dutch ambassador was not the inventor; it was not, however, unworthy of him, and it conveyed to the world the high feeling ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... "Was that a loon, Allan," asked a quiet voice near him; and turning, the Maine boy saw the acting scout-master poking his head out from under the canvas ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... far from dark. In the northern heavens a rosy glow proclaimed the midnight sun. Somewhere in the willows a robin was chirping, and from the wide bosom of the river, like the thin howl of a wolf, came the mocking cry of a loon still pursuing its finny prey. And in his little canvas tent, sitting just inside, so as to catch the smoke of the fire that afforded protection from the mosquitoes, Hubert Stane still watched and waited for the coming of his promised visitor. He was smoking, and from the look upon his face ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... to oversee Ye'll note I've little time to burn on social repartee. The bairns see what their elders miss; they'll hunt me to an' fro, Till for the sake of — well, a kiss — I tak' 'em down below. That minds me of our Viscount loon — Sir Kenneth's kin — the chap Wi' Russia leather tennis-shoon an' spar-decked yachtin'-cap. I showed him round last week, o'er all — an' at the last says he: "Mister M'Andrew, don't you think steam spoils romance at ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... alone was nearly forty. The number of their wounded could never be ascertained. They were led in battle by the perfidious Winamac, who had always professed to be the friend of the Governor, and by White Loon and the ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... tongue, ye cowardly loon," said the mother, "and layna the wyte on me; if you and thae thowless gluttons, that are sitting staring like cows bursting on clover, wad testify wi' your hands as I have testified wi' my tongue, they should never harle the precious ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the green wood, come away, The floor with grass and flowers is gay! There ’neath no tree shalt thou descry In churlish guise old jealousy. Fear not my love, afar is now The loon, thy tiresome lord, I trow; To all a jest amidst his clan He choler deals in Cardigan. Here, nestled nigh the sounding sea, In Ifor’s bush we’ll ever be. More bliss for us our fate propounds On Taf’s green ...
— The Brother Avenged - and Other Ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... Why! do you remember the old chap I told you about—that old prospector who lives at Loon Lake?—you will come across him, unless he has gone to the mountains. For thirteen years that man has hunted the gulches for mines. There are your mines," waving his hand again, "and you are our prospector. Dig them up. Good-bye. God bless you. Report to me ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... eyes of Louis Laplante, gazing out of the dusk with an expression of rakish amusement, the amusement of a spider when a fly walks into its web. Taken unawares I have ever been more or less of what Mr. Jack MacKenzie was wont to call "a stupid loon!" On discovering Laplante I promptly sustained my reputation by letting the door fly to with a sharp click that startled the whole room-full. Whereat Louis Laplante ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... my little Boat, "Was ever such a homesick [11] Loon, Within a living Boat to sit, And make no better use of it; A Boat twin-sister of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... tools, an' don't stan' laffin' like a loon, ye bloody Irishman," he said to Chips, and the carpenter disappeared quickly. He returned in a moment with a brace and bit, a cold chisel, and ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... flashed all through him, and he threw his head still higher and opened wide his shapeless trap of a mouth, and out across the lake he sent skittering and rolling his cry. And in his cry was the laugh of a loon, and the croaking bellow of a frog, and the bay of a hound, all the compounded night noises of the lake. And in it, too, was a farewell and a defiance and an appeal. The heavy roar of the duck ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... was not like some others. He had an idea, of course, that though I had collected and mounted birds, and knew their names and habits, I probably knew little about their anatomy. At any rate the first thing he did was to give me a badly mutilated old loon, from old alcohol, telling me to prepare the skeleton. This I did so well and so quickly that he expressed regret that he had not given me some better bird with unbroken bones. He gave me next a blue heron, but it being spring, I 'went collecting' in the vicinity, following my usual inclination, ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... wide to give us room; We stole with her a frightened look At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, The fame whereof went far and wide Through all the simple country-side; We heard the hawks at twilight play, The boat-horn on Piscataqua, The loon's weird laughter ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... astonishment The count thinks himself insulted The snow was quite deep Two by two The snow man's house Puss-in-the-corner To the rescue "I'll put this right in your face and—melt you!" Letitia stood before uncle Jack School children in Pokonoket Pokonoket in stormy weather Toby and the crazy loon Toby ran till he was out of breath The patchwork woman The patchwork girl Julia was arrested on Christmas Day Julia entertains the ambassador through the keyhole The grandmothers enjoy the Chinese toys "Six"—she began feebly "What!" ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... extra long run and he paddled to Arkansas City without leaving the water, a distance of one hundred and sixty miles in thirty one hours, which was the longest continuous run he ever made up to that time. That night on the lonesome stretches of the river, he frequently started a loon from its resting place and it would fly off into the darkness with a wild, unearthly shriek, so ghostly in its echoing cadences that with a nervous start, Paul would glance around for that "dead man ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... that night rose late; and the air was chill as the sisters stood on a rock waiting until its rays should silver the placid waves. Overhead ran a strange, broad, coruscating band of magnetic light, meteors flashed down the sky, a solitary loon sent a wild, despairing cry athwart the lake, and for the first time did our travellers feel they were alone, eighteen hundred feet above the Hudson, far away from other human habitation. A truly feminine shudder ran through their hearts, as they turned toward the house and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... it? Did she ever use to want to go to such things? Down in Trumet did she ever want to go? I bet she didn't! But now she does. And she's goin' to join the thing—join it, herself! As if one loon—I mean as if one Chapter member in the family wasn't enough. I thought when Gertie come home she'd probably keep her ma from goin' off the course altogether. I thought, with her level head, she'd swing us back into the channel again. But she didn't—she didn't. John, Gertie's got the Chapter disease ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln |
