"Perch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter's Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... above it, thus forming a high winding gallery, along which the fisherman passes and makes his long casts with scarcely an interruption from branch or twig. In a few places he makes no cast, but sees from his rocky perch the water twenty feet below him, and drops his hook into it ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... have passed through rows of dead sheep standing upon their feet, motionless oxen that seemed ready to low, whole flocks of white hares appearing actually in motion, reindeer and elks on whose mighty horns the pigeons fearlessly perch!" ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... long as they are helpless and unfledged, and will not forsake them even though the tree on which they rest be enveloped in flames. When the Eaglets are ready to fly, however, the parents push them from the perch and trust them to the high atmospheric currents. They turn them out, so to speak, to ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... accosted me, and the thread of the other's talk was lost. When I moved off to dress he had already left his perch among the sand bags. I climbed the ladder, and had my coffee. Soon after came the scurry to stations. We were coming into the bay in the glory of that morning under hangings of amber and rose and feathery grey. The four-inch gun's crew were in their ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... Mart following hastily. Getting their shoes wet mattered little, for they would dry again in five minutes of walking in the blistering sand, and when they finally stood on the coral reef they soon had torn half a dozen good-sized oysters from their perch and waded in ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... be found swaggering so. I am sure if you could consult the Duke of York, who is impaled on his column between the two clubs, and ask his late Royal Highness whether he thought he ought to remain there, he would say no. A brave, worthy man, not a braggart or boaster, to be put upon that heroic perch must be painful to him. Lord George Bentinck, I suppose, being in the midst of the family park in Cavendish Square, may conceive that he has a right to remain in his place. But look at William of Cumberland, with his hat cocked ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... chanted Polly Adams in a vigorous crescendo, as she watched the retreating figure of her guest. Then climbing down from her perch on the front gate, she added to herself, "Mean old thing! I s'pose she thinks I care because she's gone home; but I'm glad of it, so there!" And with an emphatic shake of her curly head, ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... that. During the first twenty minutes I answered two false alarms. One was a gasoline truck going the wrong way and the other turns out to be an R. F. D. flivver with a baby's go-cart tied on the side. It was good and hot on the perch I'd picked out and I could feel the sun doing things to the back of my neck and ears, but I didn't dare climb down ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... "gambling hell" which formed a sort of center-piece around which revolved the whole life of the village. It was a poor, mean place, shapeless, evil-smelling in that pure mountain air. It was a mere shelter, a rough perch for the human carrion lusting for the orgy of gold which the time-worn carcass of earth should yield. What had these people to do with comfort or refinement? What had they to do with those things calculated to raise the human ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... of an eye they had made a complete volte-face, the waggon was lying on its side across the fairway, and its burden of logs had been distributed with a dull crash upon about a square perch of cobbles. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... Parliament could be regarded as a doing of something. And he had owned himself to be a man almost penniless; he had spoken of himself as being utterly reckless,—as being one whose standing in the world was and must continue to be a perch on the edge of a precipice, from which any accident might knock him headlong. Alice believed in her heart that this last profession or trade to which he had applied himself, was becoming as nothing to him,—that he received ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... pages carried two gerfalcons upon a perch, the other a hunting-horn, which he blew with a careless note at twenty paces from the castle. Every one about this listless prince did what he ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with squirts of tobacco juice, and a bit of lath with which he meditatively tapped the gunwale, the meantime, with some skill, casting pebbles into the water with his bare toes. "Ax'n yer pardon, ma'm!" he said, scrambling from his perch upon W——'s appearance; and then, pushing us off, he bowed with much Southern gallantry, and hat in hand begged we would come again to New ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... not perch, and tuck his head under his wing, and sleep like a bird. He has some hooks on his wings, and he just hangs himself up by those, and that's ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... When he reached the height of the window, the nearest pane, fortunately for him, the one near the bolt was two feet from his perch, at his left. That is why I suggest that he may be a left-handed man. He cut out the pane, opened the window, went in, killed Miller and then spent some time hiding his traces. Among these was replacing a pane of glass and using putty colored ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... their lofty perch, Miriam, who was keen-sighted, could see their separate armour and tell the colour of their horses. Eagerly she searched them with her eyes, for well she guessed that Marcus would be one of those who accompanied his general upon this service. That plumed warrior might be he, or that with ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... attentive survey of the wild slopes and hollow ravines a gesture of impatience escaped Eustacia. She vented petulant words every now and then, but there were sighs between her words, and sudden listenings between her sighs. Descending from her perch she again sauntered off towards Rainbarrow, though this time she did ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... cheerful hop from perch to spray, They sport along the meads; In social bliss together stray, Where ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... air of gloom seemed to pervade the garage, even the dog, the cat, and the parrot appeared to be affected by it. The dog stood listlessly by his master's side, the cat walked idly up and down, and the bird failed to greet Bob with his usual cheery "How do"; he sat limply on his perch, his feathers ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... morning, sitting quietly by my side or on the table for hours, watching the pen run over the paper, occasionally swinging his tail round for a blotter, and then going to sleep among the papers by the inkstand. Or, more rarely, he would watch the writing from a perch on my shoulder. Writing always interested him, and, until he understood it, he ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... now feel for a sober, steady-going, successful old hen, who raises brood after brood of downy darlings without mishaps! Her instinct is an inspiration. Kizzie liked to perch on my finger and catch flies for his dinner. How solemn, wise, and bewitching he did look as he snapped at and swallowed fifteen flies, uttering all the time a satisfied little note, quite distinct from his ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... turned over some sheets of music and then came across the room—floated across the room, and took her perch on the arm of the great chair in which he was sitting. Then he felt her fingers ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... And keep on foot the good old plan, As only clerk and sexton can! Nor less the sport, when Easter sees The daisy spring to deck her leas; Then, claim'd as dues by Mother Church, I pluck the cackler from the perch; Or, in its place, the shilling clasp From grumbling dame's slow opening grasp. But, Visitation Day! 'tis thine Best to deserve my native line. Great day! the purest, brightest gem That decks the fair year's diadem. Grand day! that sees me costless ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... From this lofty perch she would take her spirited part in the conversation of the 'faithful,' and would revel in all their fun; but, since the accident to her jaw, she had abandoned the effort involved in real hilarity, and had substituted a kind of symbolical dumb-show which signified, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... little sacristans in Venice. From altar to altar he bustles, fixing you in the best positions for light. The great picture here is the Cima behind the high altar, of which I give a reproduction opposite page 136. A little perch has been made, the better to see it. It represents "The Baptism of Christ," and must in its heyday have been very beautiful. Christ stands at the edge of the water and the Baptist holds a little bowl—very different scene from that mosaic version in S. Mark's where Christ is half submerged. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... swamp My wrath was never in the lurch; I've killed the picket in his camp, And many a pilot on his perch. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... time Grimme had descended from his perilous perch, having completed the reeving of the halyard. Without a moment's delay, he hastened to the spot where the angry man stood, and touched his ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... didn't stop to play?" asked Polly, from her perch where she sat sewing, giving him a ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... empty pistol on the girder beside him, he stripped as quickly as his precarious perch would permit. Then, using the pistol as a central core to give body to the bundle, he swathed it deep within the folds of the clothing, making a thick roll that he could hold in his right hand as ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... afternoon me and Pewt and Beany went up river fishing. we dident xpect to get ennything it was so lait in the fall but Hork and Spitt hadent been fed for 2 days. we got a lot of shiners and perch and jest befoar we come back we got the bigest snaping tirtle i ever see in my life. it was a ripper and the madest one i ever see. it snaped rite and left and wood throw his head rite back on his shell trying to grab us. we had hard wirk to get a peace of closeline round his hind ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... pathos: and nothing does or can, but some of the old Scotch ballads themselves. There is in them a still more original cast of thought, a more romantic imagery— the thistle's glittering down, the gilliflower on the old garden-wall, the horseman's silver bells, the hawk on its perch—a closer intimacy with nature, a firmer reliance on it, as the only stock of wealth which the mind has to resort to, a more infantine simplicity of manners, a greater strength of affection, hopes longer cherished ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Swat, the Nizan of Nowhere and the grand gyasticutus of Jimple- cute intimate that they may send a yaller-legged policeman across the Pacific in a soap-box to pull the tail- feathers out of the bird o' freedom if it doesn't crawl humbly back upon its perch. If a fourth-class power insults our flag we accept a flippant apology. If our citizens are wrongfully imprisoned we wait until they are starved, shot, or perish of blank despair in dungeons so foul that a hog would die therein of a broken heart; then humbly ask permission to investigate, report ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... counter, taking what was thrust into them, putting it out of sight as quickly as possible, while some one behind him was fighting for his place, and then following the path of least resistance, which led to the cashier's perch where the extent of his hasty appetite was checked up in so ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... and bolt the door," and then they sat round the hearth, and the mother took her spectacles and read aloud out of a large book, and the two girls listened as they sat and spun. And close by them lay a lamb upon the floor, and behind them upon a perch sat a white dove with its head ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... I feel as if I would like some fellow to be rude to her, that I might have the pleasure of knocking him down. She is like a little songbird, sir,—a tremulous, fluttering little linnet that you would take into your hand, pavidam quaerentem matrem, and smooth its little plumes, and let it perch on your finger and sing. The Sherrick creates quite a different sentiment—the Sherrick ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of a jutting crag Sit perch'd with book and pencil on their knee, And look and scribble, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... leg, and stretched him out on the doorstep to gloat over the treasure and stroke the glossy fur to his heart's content. His attention was taken away for a moment; then he had a dazed vision of a flying black animal that seemed to perch an instant on the log fence and vanish among ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... nor another Hart's, which was Cassio's; nor, indeed, Burt doing the Moor's so well as I once thought he did. Thence home, and just at Holborn Conduit the bolt broke, that holds the fore-wheels to the perch, and so the horses went away with them, and left the coachman and us; but being near our coachmaker's, and we staying in a little ironmonger's shop, we were presently supplied with another, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... rare art of giving way at all points without yielding an inch, saw his daughter slowly disappearing in the engulfing slush, her smeared face further distorted with the contortions of whimpering wonder, while from their perch on the pigsty roof the three children looked down with the cold unpitying detachment of the ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... Giles to keep her and her father in view till this time; but now he lost sight of them, and was obliged to follow by ear—no difficult matter, for on the line of their course every wood-pigeon rose from its perch with a continued clash, dashing its wings against the branches with wellnigh force enough to break every quill. By taking the track of this noise he ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Montano and Moustacho. At last, it coming to the turn of Jack with the Bear's Ear to sit at home, he remained whilst his comrades went forth in quest of game. Jack cooked and roasted everything, and having found in Baba Yaga's cabin a pot of honey he placed a post by the perch, and having split it at the top he thrust in a wedge and emptied the honey upon the post. He himself sat on the perch, concealing behind him the post whilst he prepared three iron rods. After the lapse of a little time arrived Baba Yaga ...
— The Story of Yvashka with the Bear's Ear • Anonymous
... that against my will, As Pompey was, am I compell'd to set Upon one battle all our liberties. You know that I held Epicurus strong, And his opinion: now I change my mind, And partly credit things that do presage. Coming from Sardis, on our former ensign Two mighty eagles fell; and there they perch'd, Gorging and feeding from our soldiers' hands; Who to Philippi here consorted us: This morning are they fled away and gone; And in their steads do ravens, crows, and kites Fly o'er our heads and downward ...
— Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... made them thieves for bread, And begot pretty children to live beggars. O conscience, how thou art stung to think upon't! My brothers unto shame must yield their blood: My babes at others' stirrups beg their food, Or else turn thieves too, and be chok'd for it, Die a dog's death, be perch'd upon a tree; Hang'd betwixt heaven and earth, as fit for neither. The curse of heaven that's due to reprobates Descends upon my brothers and my children, And I am parent to it—ay, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... tackle these abstruse subjects. I will come down from my lofty perch, Molly. What more can ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... steam, sir, if you can. As for me, with your permission I'll go perch on the bobstays under the bowsprit, and if we can get within a harpoon length, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... curtains were hung on the walls, or at least on that portion of the wall next the dais, and still more rarely a carpet was used for that part of the floor,—rushes or bare tiles being more general. A perch for hawks, and the grate of burning wood, sending its smoke up to the blackened open roof, completed the picture of the hall of a large establishment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... twittering and flitting about it, and you turn dull pain into shattering agony. The vicar's little study, with the rows of books he had made me know and love with some small measure of his own learning and passion, was the perch and seed-bowl of my cage, the things in it, after my sweet mother and saucy Kate, that made life possible, but still part of the cage, and it would have maddened me to hop and twitter there in sight ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... The perch aloft upon the box, Delightful for the view; The turnpike gates whose keepers stood Demanding each ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all, I sorrowed for him as we waited for her on the terrace of the Bertolini, that perch on the cliff so high that even the noises of the town are dulled and mingle with the sound of the thick surf ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... FROM my perch over the bay window of the library, I had heard Tom Thornton express his savage determination to crush out of me the information he wanted. Being forewarned, I was in a measure forearmed, and I did not intend to be caught in a vulnerable position. I decided to do ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... till he lost his breath and nearly tumbled off his perch. Then he flew away, still laughing. He thought it the ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... of food which these people eat at a meal is prodigious: I have seen one man devour two or three fishes as big as a perch; three bread-fruits, each bigger than two fists; fourteen or fifteen plantains or bananas, each of them six or seven inches long, and four or five round; and near a quart of the pounded bread-fruit, which is as substantial ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... often took us to his crow-hut, which was a hole in the ground covered with boughs and pieces of turf, where the hunters lay concealed. The owl, which lured the crows and other birds of prey, was fastened on a perch, and when they flew up, often in large flocks, to tease the old cross-patch which sat blinking angrily, they were shot down from loop-holes which had been left in the hut. The hawks which prey upon doves and hares, the crows and magpies, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... useful. On its shore enough grand old pines are left to dream under of forests primeval, of Indian wigwams, and of canoes on the bright water; for the red men knew very well the hiding places of the perch and of the pickerel. So did the white men who chose the region of the Merrimac for their new home. In the "Maids of Attitash" is ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... unavoidable duty to live on this perch, Heller?" demanded Father Higgins. "Me opinion is that in that case I shall get mightily tired av me mission. I'd about as lave be a parrot, an' sit ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... roach, six dace, three eels, seven perch, and a young pike, but he was so very young the miller asked us to put him back, and of course we did. 'He'll live to bite another day,' ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... mountain wolves of the largest and most dangerous kind, some reaching a length of seven feet. He watched them with a sort of fascinated awe, and long after he left the rock he still heard the growling. When it ceased he went back to his perch again and saw only the great skeleton of the bear, picked clean, ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... had gone, and he must do the best he could without it. From his perch in the tree he could obtain a clear view of the flood. The muddy water glistened in the bright sunshine, as though trying to ...
— The Island House - A Tale for the Young Folks • F. M. Holmes
... your approbation,' returned Fledgeby. 'It's a coincidence, Mr Twemlow;' here he descended from his perch, and sauntered towards him; 'that the friends I am standing by to-day are the friends at whose house I met you! The Lammles. She's a very taking ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... smelled of leaves. After a time I reached a point which jutted out directly over the tops of the trees growing on the debris pile below. These trees were as tall as masts, and as straight, though they were hardwoods, and from my rocky perch I looked through their upper tracery of budding twigs, as through a veil of faint green and red, out on the brown and green plains of Tennessee shining in the sun, or left and right across the canyons of the coves ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... in the trees that grow almost in the water, many of them having lost their balance and subsided into the lake, being supported in a horizontal position by their branches. The islands and the swampy margins form secure breeding-places for the countless water-fowl, and the lake abounds with pike, perch, eel, and roach. ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... adieu and left me, for he thought he saw some one through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left with the would-be periwinkle, who was reduced to Wuerzburger without further ability to voice his aspirations to perch, melodious, upon the summit ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... about my disliking Carfax," Olva went on. "And I think, altogether, it's about time I came off my perch. For one thing I'm going to take ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... other places; and by and by not only islands, but refulgent and revolving lights began to stud the darkness; light-houses of the mind or of the wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. At length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again from his unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed our destination. He was the only man of practice in these waters, our sole pilot, shipped for that end at Tai-o-hae. If he declared we had missed Takaroa, it was not for us to quarrel with the fact, but, if we could, to explain it. We had certainly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bare heels together and thinking idly of Major Dabney and certain disquieting rumors lately come to Paradise, when the tinkling drip of the spring into the pool at the foot of his perch was interrupted by ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... ground on the bill in this way, Salemina, on the next leisure evening, draws a large armchair under the lamp and puts on her eye-glasses. We perch on either arm, and, after identifying our own extras, we summon the butler to identify his. There are a good many that belong to him or to the landlady; of that fact we are always convinced before he proves to the contrary. We can never see (until he makes us see) why the breakfasts ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... everywhere. "They never failed," says the author of "Illustrious Women," "when she went to mass or took a walk, to await her return on the little terrace of Blois, which is still called the Perche aux Bretons. She gave it this name herself; for when she saw them she said, 'There are my Bretons on the perch waiting ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... saw the whole from his perch, but his meal was not at all disturbed, for he began eating again with apparent relish. Indeed, I was soon furnished with another of these unconscious protectors. This one came from the opposite direction to ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... spinning a web through which God himself—hush, don't think of God! How firm the stitches are! You must be proud of your darning. Let nothing disturb her. Let the light fall gently, and the clouds show an inner vest of the first green leaf. Let the sparrow perch on the twig and shake the raindrop hanging to the twig's elbow.... Why look up? Was it a sound, a thought? Oh, heavens! Back again to the thing you did, the plate glass with the violet loops? But Hilda will come. Ignominies, humiliations, oh! ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... shame, a little furtiveness, and more than any, a lifting sense of relief, freedom. The air was light, cool, and invigorating. There was a pleasant crunch of dry dusty cinders beneath his feet. And then he saw a venturesome bluebird come darting across the open fields to the west and perch for a moment on the top strand of the barbed-wire fence of the Plow Works, a few yards ahead of him. It sat there swaying and watching him and, as he approached nearer, it took wing and darted across the Plow Company's grounds eastward toward the city. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... knew that it was there. High up on the tops of the thorn, a couple of sparrows were silently perched. Perhaps, like myself, they had come there to listen. After I had been standing motionless, drinking in that dulcet music for at least five minutes, one of the two sparrows dropped from the perch straight down, and alighting on the bare wet ground directly under the nightingale, began busily pecking at something eatable it had discovered. No sooner had he begun pecking than out leaped the concealed cat on to him. The sparrow fluttered ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... were going in and out after these leaves, to pick them up and throw them out of sight, Mag kept hopping from one perch to another, wriggling her tail, twisting her head to one side and another, and crying, "Oh, pretty Mag!" "Mag's a hungry," in a voice more ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... go, too," said another young Swallow, springing away from his perch. He was a handsome fellow, with a glistening dark blue head and back, a long forked tail which showed a white stripe on the under side, a rich buff vest, and a deep blue collar, all of the finest feathers. ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... there more than a quarter of a minute, and I intended to have remained much longer, when I perceived, all of a sudden, the bear's head within a foot of me; he had climbed up after me, and I saw that he was very angry, so in a moment I threw myself off my perch, and down I went to the ground at the foot of the tree, a matter of near twenty feet, even faster than I went down inside of it. I was severely shaken with the fall, but no bones were broken; in fact, I was more frightened than hurt; I lay quite still for a little while, when the ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... a berth for you," he answered. "I'm from The Waif. The mate died on the run down from Sydney, and Captain Newmarch sent me ashore to hunt up some one for his perch. Do you want it?" ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... had drifted out over the Hudson at an altitude of 2,500 feet. Here Donaldson descended from the airy perch which he had been occupying since our start on the concentrating ring, when one of us asked how long he expected the cruise to last. He replied that he hoped to be able to sail the Barnum at least three ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... morning the wind changed; immediately an appalling cry was heard, concerning which the passengers, as well as myself, were equally ignorant. The whole crew were in motion. Some climbed the rope ladders, and seemed to perch on the extremities of the yards; others mounted to the highest parts of the mast; these bellowing and pulling certain cordages in cadence; those crying, swearing, whistling, and filling the air with barbarous and unknown sounds. The officer on duty, in his turn, roaring ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... moment until I get down from my high perch? Fane will help me; I feel rather helpless ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... into semi-position, fold the wings, if to be closed, and turn them sharply up over the back so that their under side is outward and elbows meet over center of back. Shake out the plumage a little by grasping the feet. Drill the perch and mount the bird upon it. Position the legs, body, and head, and set the tail as per Nature, to ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... suspected him of livin'.' The conning of the burial service, shortened to fit the passing of that tiny shade, gave him pleasurable sensation; films came down on his eyes; he listened like some old parrot on its perch, his head a little to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thought of the importance of taking Richmond. That, no doubt, would be a great advantage, but the loss of a recognized seat of government, with its diplomatic and other traditions, would have been of vastly more fatal consequence to us than the capture of their provisional perch in Virginia would have been to the Rebel authorities. It would have brought foreign recognition to the Rebels, and thrown Maryland certainly, and probably Kentucky, into the scale against us. So long as we held Washington, we had on our side the two powerful sentiments of permanence ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Robin," said the Slogger, on resuming his perch, "d'you know I've found traces o' that young gal as you took such a interest in, as runned away from the old 'ooman, an' was robbed by Brassey ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... a pugilistic frog, and boldly defied his enemies to "come on and be punched." At the commencement of the fight, Abbott coiled himself up under the table, and was seen no more; while Handiboe fled for safety to the cole-hole. The battle was at its height, and the bird of victory seemed about to perch upon the banner of the "Uncles and Nephews," when some reckless, hardened individual turned off the gas, thus producing total darkness. This made matters ten times worse than ever, for it was impossible to distinguish friends from foes. Suddenly, in ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... well, man!—they doubt us now, And they fear the duke's mysterious brow; He hath clomb too high for them, and fain Would they beat him down from his perch again. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the chair by anybody is a good thing. The convention is thus enabled to learn that Corkey is making a speech. A chair is held on top of another chair. On this conspicuous perch the hero of the docks ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... of silver twist, And a little hood of scarlet wool, And let her perch upon your wrist, And tell her ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... inmate of the house. Fluttering through the passages it follows the maids from room to room in the morning and shows the most lively interest in their work while beds are being made or tables dusted. It has the most perfect trustfulness, not merely allowing itself to be handled, but coming to perch on a wrist or shoulder as if it had belonged there from, time immemorial. It really is a pretty thing to have about the house, an embodiment of gentleness and kindness, and, so far as a mere human ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... the Volsung followed his flight, for he looked to see him fall On the fluttering folk of the doves, and he cried the backward call Full oft and over again; but the falcon heeded it nought, Nor turned to his kingly wrist-perch, nor the folk of the pigeons sought, But flew up to a high-built tower, and sat in the window a space, Crying out like the fowl of Odin when the first of the morning they face, And then passed through the open casement as an erne ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... certainly deserves to be called kingly. Although he will not allow any large bird to dwell in peace too near him, yet he never harms the little warblers who flutter round his nest. He will let them perch in safety upon it, and if they are attacked by any bird of prey, he is said even to fly ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... of perch and hood, My idle greyhound loathes his food, My horse is weary of his stall, And I am sick of captive thrall. I wish I were as I have been, Hunting the hart in forest green, With bended bow and bloodhound free, For that's the life is meet ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... stand below to catch her I think I shall be able to release her," called Harriet from her perch in the tree. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... chaffing they finally sat down to the fish-fry—and if there is anything more toothsome than perch, fresh from the water, and fried crisply in a pan with salt pork over the hot coals of a campfire, "the deponent knoweth not," as Frank Cameron ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... ladder, and sighed in helpless resignation. She had not yet descended from her perch, so that her face was almost on a level with Hector's own. The hazel eyes had lost their mocking gleam, and the peaked brows were furrowed with distress; it was a very forlorn and disconsolate but withal charming little Peggy who faltered ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... dominion over the mind; I cared little about the sultan's attentions to other women. Like the tamed bird which flies from its cage, and after wandering a short time, is glad to return to its home and reassume its perch, so did I consider it would be the case with the sultan. I never, therefore, wearied him with tears or reproaches, but won him back with smiles and good humour. I expected that this new face would detach him for a short time, and for ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... feather, waiting with the patience of Job for something to eat to come his way. Now and then he had made mistakes. Twice he had mistaken a lynx for a rabbit, and in the second attack he had lost a foot, so that when he slumbered aloft during the day he clung to his perch with one claw. Crippled, nearly blind, and so old that he had long ago lost the tufts of feathers over his ears, he was still a giant in strength, and when he was angry, one could hear the snap of his beak twenty ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor. But I would not be lachrymose: I dashed off the salt drops, and busied myself with ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... also because the box offered the most elevated seat, was nearest to the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by acclamation that the box was the imperial throne, and, for the scoundrel who drove,—he might sit where he could find a perch. The horses, therefore, being harnessed, solemnly his imperial majesty ascended his new English throne under a flourish of trumpets, having the first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on his left. Pekin ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... standard as many enthusiastic and promising young men, who infatuated and misguided, joined him during the period of his success. Many of them blindly seemed to entertain the opinion that no reverse could befall him, and all he had to do was to march along, and victory after victory would perch upon his banner. They couldn't even dream of a disaster or an end to his triumphs. Many of them have already sadly and dearly paid for their infatuation, while others are doomed to a similar fate. This remarkable raid, certainly the most ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... stick along another, Mr. Punch's father comes out and stands on that there sill under the clock; he's a little old man with a long white beard; and he stands there and puts his hand to his mouth and calls down here to Mr. Punch, and Mr. Punch climbs down off his little perch and goes over to that church, and climbs up the inside of that tower to the very top and meets his father! And I've heard tell that they have regular high jinks up there all by theirselves, and vittles! more vittles and ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... eternal sentinel, watching over the Jucar to exorcise the curse of the rancorous Saint Vincent! To be sure the river would rise and overflow its banks every year, reaching to the very feet of San Bernardo sometimes, and coming within an ace of pulling the wily saint down from his perch. It is also true that every five or six years the flood would shake houses loose from their foundations, destroy good farm land, drown people, and commit other horrible depredations—all in obedience to the curse of Valencia's patron; but the saint of Alcira was ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of Pulcher must have been regularly painted, since the birds are said to have attempted to perch on the tiles (Plin. H. N. xxxv. 4, 23; Val. Max. ii. 4, 6). Hitherto the machinery for thunder had consisted in the shaking of nails and stones in a copper kettle; Pulcher first produced a better thunder by rolling stones, which was thenceforth ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... am not going to help you feed those horrid pigs another time, Chicken Little Jane Morton. I've just been doing it to help you out. And I don't think it's a suitable occupation for girls—or company!" Gertie climbed down from her perch on the log pen ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... remain unless as a corpse. Though in the beginning, the tops of the Serapis had not been unsupplied with marksmen, yet they had long since been cleared by the overmastering musketry of the Richard. Several, with leg or arm broken by a ball, had been seen going dimly downward from their giddy perch, like falling pigeons shot ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... non mi posso dal cor dipartire La dolce vista del viso sereno, Perch'io mi sento senza lei morire, E 'l spirto a poco a poco venir meno. Or non mi vale forza, ne l'ardire Contra d' amor, the m' ha gia posto il freno; Ne mi giova saper, ne altrui consiglio: Il meglio ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... speed. Puss, too, by erecting her tail, and by every time raising her back to meet the caressing hand of her mistress, similarly expresses her gratification by certain muscular actions; as likewise do the parrot by awkward dancing on his perch, and the canary by hopping and fluttering about his cage with unwonted rapidity. Under emotions of an opposite kind, animals equally display muscular excitement. The enraged lion lashes his sides with his tail, knits his brows, protrudes his claws. The cat ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... is! Fire away, and don't miss!" cried Seth, hastily following Sol, who had climbed to the top of the dresser as a good perch from which ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Green, with what Mabel called "the most extraordinary people." "What you can find in that Mr. Fargus and that young Perch and his everlasting mother," she used to say, ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... effects, for here his true vocation asserted itself. He was wont, too, to hide in the belfry, and revel in the roaring orchestra of metal, when the chimes were rung. On one occasion a stroke of lightning precipitated him from his dangerous perch to the floor below, and the history of music nearly lost one of its great lights. The bias of his nature was intractable, and he was at last permitted to study music, at first under the charge of his uncle Joseph, the cure of Jesi, and finally at the Naples Conservatory, ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... reproachfully, "you never told me that you sat in the coal-scuttle. I know papa's perch, the mantel-piece, because he could get at the ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... very pleasant hour hooking shiners and chub, and an occasional perch that looked at a distance like a trout. The dominie, apropos of his friend's braces, told Alphonse Karr's story of the bretellier in the Jardin des Plantes, and the credulous sceptic who did not ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Cecil get on her narrow perch that night, for her sisters, in their dreams, were ever in a sinking ship, or struggling in the foam-driven rapids. Even her heart beat quicker when the paddle-wheels suddenly ceased, and ominous voices, indistinctly heard, appeared ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... became battle-fields of backbiting and mockery. The feuds were as bitter, if not as deadly, as those that flourished around the fountains in medieval Italian towns. Two girls would perch on the drug-store stools back to back, and bicker in pretended ignorance of each other's presence. Tudie Litton would order "sahsahpahrillah," which she hated, just to mock Amelie's manner; and Amelie, assuming to be ignorant of Tudie's existence, would retort by ordering "a strorrburry sody ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... shingles. I admire men who can climb high places and stand upright and unmoved at the gutter's edge. But their bravado forces on me unpleasantly how closely I am tied because of dizziness to Mother Earth's apron strings. These fellows who perch on scaffolds and flaunt themselves on steeple tops are frontiersmen. They stand as the outposts of this flying globe. Often when I observe a workman descend from his eagle's nest in the open steel frame ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... this is a map of Timber Run. This stream is the Perch River, and this is Bear Pond. The naming is in French, but that is the ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... day was to make one more attempt to communicate with the unhappy madman. Again he was visible on his perch; again he fled in silence. But food and a great cloak were at least left for his comfort; the rain, besides, had cleared away, and the night promised to be even warm. We might compose ourselves, we thought, until the morrow; rest was the chief requisite, that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson |
