"Loon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... curved and slightly hooked, for a good hold on slippery little fish. The foot has three long toes in front and a foolish little short one behind. The web between the front toes goes down to the tips; but it makes only a small paddle, after all, and when it comes to swimming, the loon and the duck and several other birds can easily distance the gull. It is as a floater that he excels in water sports; he rides the waves more lightly and gracefully than any ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... 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 gave a low, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... "Assuredly the loon has lied unto you. Rejoiced should I be to see the unhappy youth, and to know that he yet lived. I but hold this place, faithful to his lord and mine, Edwy, King ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... red deer's hide Nokomis Made a cloak for Hiawatha; From the red deer's flesh Nokomis Made a banquet in his honor. All the village came and feasted; All the guests praised Hiawatha, Called him Strong-Heart, Soan-ge-taha! Called him Loon-Heart, Mahn-go-taysee! ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... 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
... gentlemen in flannel, with guns, are urging a little row-boat up toward the interior country. They will return at night laden with rail or reed-birds, with the additional burden perhaps of a great loon, shot as a curiosity. Others, provided with fishing-tackle, are going out for flounder. Laughing farewells, waving handkerchiefs and the other telegraphic signs of departure, are all very gay, but the tune may be changed when the great sailing-party ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... 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." ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... house were rid of his grim pranks, Moaning from banks Of pine trees in the moon, Startling the silence like a demoniac loon At dead ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... 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 in ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... as well go to live on the poor-farm! Aaron Boynton was a disrep'table hound; Lois Boynton is as crazy as a loon; the boy is a no-body's child, an' Ivory's no better ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... surprise awaiting them. For half an hour I had been watching from the point to anticipate their coming. There were some things that puzzled me, and that puzzle me still, in Ismaques' fishing. If he caught his fish in his mouth, after the methods of loon and otter, I could understand it better. But to catch a fish—whose dart is like lightning—under the water with his feet, when, after his plunge, he can see neither his fish nor his feet, must require some puzzling calculation. And I had set a ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... Williams, in his reflective tone. "If he was all right in his haid I could stan' it; but, jedge, he's crazier 'n er loon. Then when he looks like er devil, an' done skears all ma frien's away, an' ma chillens cain't eat, an' ma ole 'ooman jes raisin' Cain all the time, an' ma rent two dollehs an' er half er month, an' him not right in his haid, it seems like ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... scalp-yell of that damned loon, Francy McCraw!" he cried, fiercely. "Give it to 'em, b'ys! Shoot hell into ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... had 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 Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and Mr. Van Loon, from Poughkeepsie, addressed the people on the Sabbath; and also, on the same evening, a large concourse at the Court House. The day following, there were not less than ten thousand people assembled on the beautiful grounds, belonging to the village Academy-attentive ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... them, and she was the wife of the tyhee (chief) giving the feast. The medicine man had a large bird with white breast, called the loon. While dancing he picked the white feathers and scattered them on the heads of the others. The other squaws were sitting on the ground in long rows in front of the canoes reaching to the water's edge, ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... to swallow me; nor did I wholly without dread approach near enough to ascertain that the man-eater had already met his own death from some fisherman in the bay. In the same ramble, I encountered a bird,—a large gray bird,—but whether a loon, or a wild goose, or the identical albatross of the Ancient Mariner, was beyond my ornithology to decide. It reposed so naturally on a bed of dry sea-weed, with its head beside its wing, that I almost fancied it alive, and trod softly lest it should suddenly spread its wings skyward. But ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... loon!" exclaimed Slone, with impatience and disgust added to anger. "What's the use ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... all sorts o' pirds. 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
... said that the Indian languages possess no monosyllables. This remark is not borne out with regard to the Chippewa. Marked as it is with polysyllables, there are a considerable number of exceptions. Koan is snow, ais a shell, mong a loon, kaug a porcupine, &c. The number of dissyllables is numerous, and of trisyllables still more so. The Chippewa has no auxiliary verbs. The Chippewa primitive pronouns are, Neen, Keen, and Ween (I, Thou, He or She). They are rendered plural in wind and wau. They are also declined ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... 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' ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... tree replied, "It is the last time; I cannot get any higher." The waters continued to rise till they reached up to his chin, at which point they stood, and soon began to abate. Hope revived in his heart. He then cast his eyes around the illimitable expanse, and spied a loon. "Dive down, my brother," he said to him, "and fetch up some earth, so that I can make a new earth." The bird obeyed, but rose up to the surface a lifeless form. He then saw a muskrat. "Dive!" said he, "and if you succeed, you may hereafter ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... food," demanded Hazel. "It is of that we sing. Food, food! Isn't it good; a girl is a loon who can't eat what she could," sang Hazel, with more mirth ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... sound of the names of places, which I confessed to the reader on an earlier page: Wayland—Patchin's Mills—Blood's Depot—Cohocton. And to north and south of our route were names such as Ossian, Stony Brook Glen, Loon Lake, Rough & Ready, Doly's Corners, and Neil Creek. I confess that there was a Perkinsville to go through—a beautiful spot, too, for which one felt that sort of aesthetic pity one feels for a beautiful ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... too many Sunday-school picnics to forget your lessons, Captain. There's the Pine Point shoal next, and after you round that, you head her for the Cedars on the tip of Loon Island, and then straight as the crow flies for the ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... we've grabbed Oswald by the heels with evidence aplenty to send him to Atlanta for a term o' years. This night flight promises to be the happiest ever for the pair o' us. I know I'm actin' like a loon, partner, but I jest can't help it—such bully occasions are too few an' far between in our line. An' now I wonder where we'll be sent for the next big ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... him the whole mistake they had both of them fallen into. But the Englishman continued indignant: "Thou hast been selling, hast thou? Ay, ay—thou is a cunning lad for kenning the hours of bargaining. Go to the devil with thyself, for I will ne'er see thy fause loon's visage again—thou should be ashamed to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... believes 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
... beautiful sheet of placid water opened before them in a 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 by surprise, caught ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... gentle sounds died away as the little forms snuggled down beneath the blankets among the dogs and bales. Occasionally a loon called to us, or an owl swooped, ghost-like, overhead, and as we passed among pine-crested isles, those weather-beaten old monarchs just stood there, and whispering to one another, shook their heads as we ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... When he had done, I said to him, "Go to thy friends with their meat and drink, and I will await thy return. Then we will fare together." In this way I hoped to pour oil on troubled waters and to trick the accursed loon, so haply I might get quit of him; but he said, "Thou art cozening me and thou wouldst go alone to thy appointment and cast thyself into jeopardy, whence there will be no escape for thee. Now by Allah! ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... 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
... little flower amidst a weedy world, Where art thou now? In deepest forest shade? Or onward, where the sumach stands arrayed In Autumn splendour, its alluring form Fruited, yet odious with the hidden worm? Or, farther, by some still sequestered lake, Loon-haunted, where the sinewy panthers slake Their noon-day thirst, and never voice is heard Joyous of singing waters, breeze or bird, Save their wild waitings.—(A halloo without) 'Tis Tecumseh calls! Oh Iena! If dead, where'er ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... her handmaids alone, these her flagitious deeds, Citing fore-cited names for that she never could fancy Ever a Door was endow'd either with earlet or tongue. Further she noted a wight whose name in public to mention 45 Nill I, lest he upraise eyebrows of carroty hue; Long is the loon and large the law-suit brought they against him Touching a child-bed false, claim of a ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fishhawk sitting on a white-pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair-Haven. At most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the animals of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... mon wi' his money, Mistress Dobie says, ye'd niver wish to see," was his estimate of the newcomer. "He was treatin' the fellows wi' drams a' roond, the nicht he cam'; he wes sae glad to be bock i' the auld place. He wes a loon o' fafteen when him an' his farther went an' to mak' their fortune in ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... loon to ca' a minister," I heard Sam say as he went past. "But what could ye look ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... temperament he seemed able to generate a kind of atmosphere and texture in his daily life which was rich and warm, splendid really in thought (the true reality) if not in fact, and most grateful to all. Yet also, as I have said, always he wished to seem the clown, the scapegrace, the wanton and the loon even, mouthing idle impossibilities at times and declaring his profoundest faith in ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... ha!" he crowed. "Ah, ha! That's the answer. That's the one he's shakin' day-days to, that Fosdick girl. I've seen you 'round with her at the post office and the ice cream s'loon. I'm onto you, Al. Haw, haw! What's her name? Adeline? Dandelion? Madeline?—that's it! Say, how do you think Helen Kendall's goin' to like your throwin' kisses ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... of him, we would have brought him aboard, too." Sending my bear-hunting friend about his business for neglecting my orders to obtain fresh food for the crew, I afterward found out that on passing a small island between the "Pioneer" and the Loon Head, as the cliff was called, my boat's crew had observed a bear watching some seals, and it was voted immediately, that to be the first to bring a bear home, would ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... Whom hiding in the thickest shade He there proposed should lend him aid, By trumpeting so strange a bray, That all the beasts he should dismay, And drive them o'er the desert heath Into the lurking Lion's teeth. Proud of the task, the long-ear'd loon Struck up such an outrageous tune, That 'twas a miracle to hear— The beasts forsake their haunts with fear, And in the Lion's fangs expired: Who, being now with slaughter tired, Call'd out the Ass, whose noise he stops. The Ass, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... One day a loon flew over the hut, and, seeing the poor blind boy at the door, resolved to restore his eyesight. The bird perched on the roof and kept calling, "Quee moo! Quee moo!" which sounded to the lad like ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... yourself, you lazy loon!" retorted the lady Opossum. "If you disturb my dreams again this way, I'll make ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... that Cromwel was th' faudest limmer Loon that ever cam into lour Country, the faud Diel has tane him by th' Luggs for robbing our Houses ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... truly. Heralded by that long cry of the loon, the dawn began to reveal itself in clearness of perspective and a certain indefinable stir in the still, shrouded spaces of the woods. Details began to appear where heretofore all had been mass. Pearl ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... as we never could remember whether you were wedded under your maiden name or as Philippa Errand. Besides——' I was going to say that William, the White Groom (late the Sphynx), could show to her having been (as he once expressed it) as 'crazy as a loon,' but I remembered in time. William ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... 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 away till evening ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... forest, In the lodges of the beaver, In the hoof-prints of the bison, In the eyry of the eagle! "All the 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 Mushkodasa!" If still further you should ask me, Saying, "Who was Nawadaha? Tell us of this Nawadaha," I should answer your inquiries Straightway in such words as follow. "In the vale of Tawasentha, In the green and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... 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, ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... Gustavus Vasa had been seen to pass that way. Another moment and they might have become curious about the stranger sitting at the hearth, when the woman hastily turned round, and struck him on the shoulder with the huge spoon she held in her hand. 'Lazy loon!' she cried. 'Have you no work to do? Off with you at once and see to your threshing.' The Danes only saw before them a common Swedish servant bullied by his mistress, and it never entered their heads to ask any questions; so once again Gustavus ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... b'loon," states the accuser, fixing him with a pitiless eye. For the moment the object of this serious charge is too taken aback to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... drum. The Duck-people liked the music, and swam a little nearer to the shore, watching for trouble all the time, but OLD-man sang so sweetly that pretty soon they waddled up to the lodge and went inside. The loon stopped near the door, for he believed that what the gray goose had said was true, and that OLD-man was up to some mischief. The gray goose, too, was careful to stay close to the door but the ducks reached all about the fire. Politely, OLD-man passed ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... 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 gleamed white ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... the paper with the point 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 that this was not so—that ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... The New Testament is highly praised by some of the characters introduced into the poem, but a pardoner complains that his credit has been entirely destroyed by it and wishes the devil may take him who made that book. He further wishes that "Martin Luther, that false loon, Black Bullinger and Melanchthon" had been smothered in their chrisom-cloths and that St. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... blow heavy toward the moon. The edge of the storm will reach it soon. The kildee cries and the lonesome loon. ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... 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 of another—the science of civilization against that of the wilderness. Howland was trained in his art. For sport Jean had played with wounded lynx; his was the quickness of sight, of instinct—the quickness of the great north loon that had often played this same game with his rifle-fire, of the sledge-dog whose ripping fangs carried death so quickly that eyes could not follow. A third and a fourth time he came within distance and Howland ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... doubt that the sensational account of Lincoln's insanity was untrue, and he quoted from the House journal to show how it was impossible that, as Lamon says, using Herndon's notes, "Lincoln went crazy as a loon, and did not attend the legislature in 1841-1842, for this reason;" or, as Herndon says, that he had to be watched constantly. According to the record taken from the journals of the House sent us by Mr. Thornton, and which we have had verified ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... saw no human being on the plains; in the thrilling stillness of the night; in fierce storms in the woods, when his half-breed guides bent their heads to meet the wind and rain, and did not speak for hours; in the long, adventurous journey on the river by the day, in the cry of the plaintive loon at night; in the scant food for every meal. Yet what the pleasure would be he felt in the joyous air, the exquisite sunshine, the flocks of wild-fowl flying north, honking on their course; in the ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... 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, and therefore ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... 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 enough ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 has probably told him that I am a hakim, or a wonderful ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Therefore my case 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, ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... course to the river, joined with fatigue and long exposure to the sun and air, caused her 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 ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... Lu'u a 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
... "You loon! How could you tell what she ought to have looked like when her own mother never saw her try? Oh, Josiah," and the lines of hardship melted into possibilities, "wouldn't it have been ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... waters you may glide in a canoe, whose forest-clad shores seem never to have been marred by the axe of civilization. Here as the sun sinks to repose amid these purple mountains, and the last rays of light on their waters seem like sheets of fluid gold, and the lonely cry of the loon breaks the solitude, you too will feel that you do not need to go to Europe for natural mountain beauty when such glorious scenes lie spread ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... loon, whoever thou be! I'll warrant thee as much impudence in thy face as wind i' thy muzzle," said the disturbed seneschal. "Tarry a while, Hugo; ope not the gate without a parley, despite ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the portage, the surf roared so loud, it seemed frightful to launch the canoe in it; but Tommy praised R. as skookum (very strong) in helping to conduct it over. He seemed much more good-natured than the Indians we had travelled with before. He smiled at the loon floating past us, ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... started nervously. Her brain-picture resolved into the formless dark. From the black waters, almost at her feet, sounded, raucous and loud, the voice of the great loon. Frenzied, maniacal, hideous, rang the night-shattering laughter. The uncouth mockery of the raw—the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... is mad!" said Lynde to himself, "as mad as a loon; everybody here is mad, or I've lost my senses. So you are building a marble ship?" he added aloud, good-naturedly. "When it is finished I trust you will get all the inhabitants of this town into it, and ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... known him But for the colored folk That here obtain And ne'er in vain That wizard's art invoke; For when the Eye that's Evil Would him and his'n damn, The negro's grief gets quick relief Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam. With the caul of an alligator, The plume of an unborn loon, And the poison wrung From a serpent's tongue By the ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... 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 ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... it seemed to me that white specimens predominated; but possibly that was because they were so much more conspicuous. Sunlight favors the white feather; no other color shows so quickly or so far. If you are on the beach and catch sight of a bird far out at sea,—a gull or a tern, a gannet or a loon,—it is invariably the white parts that are seen first. And so the little white heron might stand never so closely against the grass or the bushes on the further shore of the river, and the eye could not miss him. If he had been a blue one, at that distance, ten to one he would ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... that while he was attending me I was as crazy as a loon, but that I was more lucid than the physician. Even with my little, shattered wreck of mind, tottering between a superficial knowledge of how to pound sand and a wide, shoreless sea of mental vacuity, I still had the edge on my physician, from an intellectual point of ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... dancing, William, Dance up and doon, Set to your partners, William, We'll play the tune! What! Wad 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 dead, my laddie! We ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... isn't such a loon as to get off the road on to Appleby's land just by mistake, or because it ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... 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
... me; they didn't like the curlin' tongs, as much as some folks do, and pigs' tails kinder curl naterally. But there was lawyer a-standin' up by the grove, lookin' as peeked and as forlorn, as an onmated loon. ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... that Pilgrim flock, The same that split old Plymouth rock, Their "Bay Psalm" when they tried to sing. Devoid of metre, sense, and tune, Who but a Puritanic loon Could have ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... seconds, realization 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 ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... and the Quarry-holes, and the Gusedub, ye fause loon!" answered Master George, speaking Scotch with a strong and natural emphasis; "it is such land-loupers as you, that, with your falset and fair fashions, bring reproach on our ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Thayer's arrival. He did not seem to be dazzled by her at all, and after his introduction had promptly retired to a corner with Major Hill, where they talked the whole evening about the trouble on the Indian reservation at Loon Lake. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... wind; and broad curves of silver bullets danced before them as they swept over the surface. All around the homeless shores the evergreen trees seemed to hunch their backs and crowd closer together in patient misery. Not a bird had the heart to sing; only the loon—storm-lover—laughed his crazy challenge to the elements, and mocked us with his long-drawn ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... reticent. She declared the four couple who had been 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 ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... cuntur (condor), or some other bird of prey." (2) According to Lewis Morgan, the North American Indians of various tribes had for totems the wolf, bear, beaver, turtle, deer, snipe, heron, hawk, crane, loon, turkey, muskrat; pike, catfish, carp; buffalo, elk, reindeer, eagle, hare, rabbit, snake; reed-grass, ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... beardless carle shall listen While I lash him with abuse, Loon at whom our stomachs sicken. Soon shall hear these words of scorn; Far too nice for such base fellows Is the name my bounty gives, Een my muse her help refuses, Making mirth of ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... speeches till she heard Nancy say to Mrs. Hunter, "Crazy as a loon, ain't she? I'm afraid it's ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... ye come to this?" cried Lucky Lapp, as she limped, still and ever lame with rheumatism, towards the third member of the procession. "Gin I had the loon that did it," she went on, fumbling, with a haste that defeated itself, at the knot that bound Hawkie's nose to the tail of the cadger's horse—"gin I had the loon 'at did it, I wad ding the sowl oot o' his ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Louis XIV., "a false loon of a grandfather to Philip, and one that might justly be called ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Ranild the loon, her sister’s son, Ranild who serv’d King Erik near, Tells him with art of hind and hart, And of silvan game to the ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... talk is good," replied the boy, smiling. "You make me feel like the laughing loon bird, when you tell your tales and smile and laugh yourselves. But I must leave you. I am to drive the missionary to-day. He goes to ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... the Abbot, "a bodle for thy ill-set tongue, false loon, dost think I did not hear him sing his fair and seemly orisons? I tell thee, rude out-land jabberer, that I am a Douglas, and have ears better than those of any Frenchman that ever breathed. For this thou shalt kneel six nights on the cold stone of the holy chapel house, and say ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... 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. The rippling melody of a mocking-bird deluged ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... farming was 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 ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... brought her strange gifts from strange lands. She said: 'Go and slay my enemies.' Tarhe went forth in his war paint and killed the braves who named her Smiling Moon. He came again to her and she said: 'Run swifter than the deer, be more cunning than the beaver, dive deeper than the loon.' ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the Royal River, proudly sweeping to the sea, Dark and deep and grand, forever wrapt in myth and mystery. Lo he laughs along the highlands, leaping o'er the granite walls: Lo he sleeps among the islands, where the loon her lover calls. Still like some huge monster winding downward through the prairie plains, Seeking rest but never finding, till the tropic gulf he gains. In his mighty arms he claspeth now an empire broad and grand; In his left hand lo he graspeth leagues ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... say ye are content to lend me as muckle siller as will stock and 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 your kindness; and my mother and me (she's a life-renter, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... their heads, and every oak was a choir with a hundred tiny voices piping from the shadow of its foliage. As they passed the lakes the heavy gray stork flapped up in front of them, and they saw the wild duck whirring off in a long V against the blue sky, or heard the quavering cry of the loon from ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Crazy as a loon, Johnson!" And he was chewing his lip red. "I know, because it was me that found the old man laying on Back Water Flats yesterday morning—me! And she'd been with him in the boat, too, because he had a piece of her jacket tore off, tangled in ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various |
