"Scarecrow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do you take me for? A scarecrow, to keep people away from the house? That fine husband of yours, I'll have you know, is my husband's brother. You expect me to shut the door in his face and spit fire at him when he comes around? ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... young squadron commander, "I have in the second company a mustachioed scarecrow, Sergeant-Major Dobrzynski, who calls himself Sprinkler, but whom the Masovians call the Lithuanian bear. If you bid me, General, we will have him ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... heath came a jolly knave, Like a scarecrow, all in rags: It made me crow to see his old duds All abroad in the wind, like flags;— So up he came to the timber's foot And pitch'd down his ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Eureka this shouting of "Joe." It was the howl of a wolf for the shepherds, who bolted at once towards the bush: it was the yell of bull-dogs for the fossikers who floundered among the deep holes, and thus dodged the hounds: it was a scarecrow for the miners, who now scrambled down to the deep, and left a licensed mate or two at the windlass. By this time, a regiment of troopers, in full gallop, had besieged the whole Eureka, and the traps under their protection ventured ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... forth together, while Giles again hugged himself in his doleful conceit, marvelling how a youth of birth and nurture could walk the streets on a Sunday with a scarecrow such as that! ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... his comic, scarecrow pal who originated from the dark side of trouble, on Earth and out here, too, were ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... His personal appearance frightened me very much. He wore the whole of his beard, which was of iron-grey colour and reached down to his waist. His garb was composed of rags, tied to his body by the free use of rope. He once told my mother that he had more than once changed clothes with a scarecrow. Sometimes this queer person would never be seen by mortal man for months together, unless it were that I disturbed his solitude occasionally; but then, of course, I was only a boy. "Luke" had a bad name amongst us lads. I know people couldn't fairly make out where he lived; he was wonderfully "lucky," ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... to keep the sun from her pink cheeks and a pair of Wade's discarded gloves to save her hands. The gloves were very, very much too large for her, and, when not actually engaged in using her trowel, Miss Mullett stood with arms held out in scarecrow style so as not to contaminate her gown with garden mold, and presented a strange and unusual appearance. Every afternoon, as regular as clockwork, the Doctor came down the street and through the gate to lavish advice, commendation, ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... politics or ethics. There can be quite as little doubt that such an accusation of narrowness is itself almost grotesquely narrow. To take an example from comparatively current events: we all know that it was not uncommon for a man to be considered a scarecrow of bigotry and obscurantism because he distrusted the Japanese, or lamented the rise of the Japanese, on the ground that the Japanese were Pagans. Nobody would think that there was anything antiquated or fanatical about distrusting ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... entered that shabby little Montmartre restaurant, Janiaud chanced to be seated, at a table in a corner, sipping his favourite stimulant. He was deplorably dirty and suggested a scarecrow, and the English editor looked nervous when I offered an introduction. Still, Janiaud was Janiaud. The offer was accepted, and Janiaud discoursed in his native tongue. At midnight the Editor ordered supper. Being unfamiliar with the Cafe ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... she sobb'd, "Look here!" I saw it in the wheel entangled, A weather beaten rag as e'er From any garden scarecrow dangled.' I. 85, 86. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... Politique du Marechal Duc de Belleisle,' (1762) it is asserted that Charles was offered the leadership of the attack on Minorca (April 1756), and that he declined, saying, 'The English will do me justice, if they think fit, but I will no longer serve as a mere scarecrow' (epouvantail). In January 1756, however, Knyphausen, writing to Frederick from Paris, discredited the idea that France meant ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... A scarecrow of a figure appeared suddenly in the rays of the head-lights. It was Herbert, scratched, bleeding, dripping with water, and clad simply in a shirt and trousers. He dragged out his kit bag and fell into ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... and at the very right moment! What's this? Bring a light and throw it on him. Heavens! What a scarecrow! Where's your master, lad; and where ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... exactly, you brazen scarecrow,—what's your meaning?' retorted Quilp. 'Why do you talk to me of combining together? Do I combine? Do I ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... heard of my friend Paddy changing clothes with the scarecrow. I don't know which name is the most distinguished, that of the English bishop or the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... example. So that the best Fate which a Lady thus knowing, and singular, could expect, would be that hardly escaping Calumny, she should be in Town the Jest of the Would-be-Witts; tho wonder of Fools, and a Scarecrow to keep from her House many honest People who are to be pitty'd for having no more Wit than they have, because it is not their own Fault that they have no more. But in the Country she would, probably, fare still worse; for there her understanding of the ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... he was in somebody else's garments. He was so thin, and worn, and wasted, that the suit of clothes which one of the men had lent him hung upon him as on a scarecrow. I was almost ashamed of myself for having incurred a share of the responsibility of taking him out of bed. He seemed so weak and bloodless that I should not have been surprised if he had fainted on ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... said, pettishly. "I live on cream, and it's no good. Of course, I know I'm an object and a scarecrow; but I'd rather ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was thrown somehow, And gave his back a crick, And though that is his coat, 'tis now The scarecrow of a rick; You'll see when you get nearer - 'Tis spread out on ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... counted the passengers, found them all right, and, remounting the box, got the horses again into a gallop, in the perfect conviction that some villanous young scarecrow had raised ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... with her long fleshless fingers, and then later clasped and finally raised them above her upturned face, while her body swayed with the vehemence of her feelings. Her garb, too, lent a pathos, for it was naught but a faded calico dress that hung from her attenuated frame like the raiment of a scarecrow. It may have been the shadowy room or the mournful dirge of the nearby ocean that added an uncanny touch to her words and looks, but from the moment she arose until her utterance ceased, Albert was spell-bound. So ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... as not to seem to be in my company, old Grandfather Gregory took me to a—lunch counter ... bowing to numerous friends and acquaintances on the way ... once he stepped aside to a hurried conference, leaving me standing forlorn and solitary, like a scarecrow in ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... scarecrow, taking things as coolly as though he had always been used to having white men row him about a harbour," laughed Cabot, "and yet I don't suppose he was ever in a ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... safely in the air, they had time to breathe. Murray, with a gallantry that sat ill on the scarecrow figure he was, ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... a handbag of which she said that it contained the accumulated rubbish of 10 years. Aunt Alma's appearance was enough to give one fits, a tweed dress kilted up so high that one saw her brown stockings as she walked, and a hat like a scarecrow's. When I think how awfully well dressed Mother always was, and how nice she always looked; of course Mother was at least 20 years younger than Aunt Alma, but even if Mother had lived to be 80 she would never have looked like ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... That at the bottom of their hearts they bear Love for our tyrant? I should like to lay They've our hate for him in their pockets! Here, But that I turned in haste and broke away, I should have kissed a corporal, stiff and tall, And like a scarecrow stuck against ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... it seems unreal, that an incident so insignificant should scatter us and send us into flight like sparrows at whom a scarecrow has been shaken! But is this the first time that students have gone to prison for the sake of liberty? Where are those who have died, those who have been shot? Would you ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape till custom make it Their perch, and ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... was taken up by other people on the coach, and also by people on other coaches, and "Father Storm!" was thrown at the poor scarecrow as a missile from twenty quarters at once. Glory's colour was rising to her ears, and Drake was humming a tune to cover her confusion. But Betty was asking, "Who was Father Storm, if you please?" and Lord Robert was saying, "Bless my stars, this is something new, don't you know! Here's ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... isn't rags in the way of clothes. He entirely declined to take me across the river till I had rolled up my lace cloak and put it in a bush. And he won't really be friends with me again till we have both got back to the scarecrow garments we ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... minute and exact; because she is also a scourge and a blight. I shall say no more of her, nor expose what Chaucer has left hidden; let the young reader study what he has said of her: it is useful as a scarecrow. There are of such characters born too many for the peace ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... revolver from her. I fired pointblank, I fired again (the Colt's did not fail); they swept by, hooting, jostling; they thudded on; and rising I screeched and waved, as bizarre, no doubt, as any animated scarecrow. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... the dwelling and the wall had apparently once been a broad lawn, then had been plowed up for the planting of a patch of grain, and had at last been left as a neglected waste for weeds and brambles to flourish undisturbed. An old scarecrow still stood knee-deep in the tangled green, left there after the field had been abandoned, to drop slowly to pieces in the wind and rain. The grotesque figure, with its outstretched arms and hat set at a rakish angle, looked familiar for some incomprehensible reason. As Oliver clung to the ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... Phipps had no patience with Mrs. Lowme, living, as she did, on tea and broth, and looking as yellow as any crow-flower, and yet letting Pilgrim bleed and blister her and give her lowering medicine till her clothes hung on her like a scarecrow's. On the whole, perhaps, Mr. Pilgrim's reputation was at the higher pitch, and when any lady under Mr. Pratt's care was doing ill, she was half disposed to think that a little more active treatment' might suit her better. But without very definite provocation no one would ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... with a speculative eye as he worked, and thought he had never looked quite so unattractive as he did with an eight-days' growth of beard, his shirt stained with paint and petrol. His hands were grimy and nobody would have recognised in this scarecrow the elegant habitue of those fashionable ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... evening Goodwin walked back to the town with his guest, leaving him at the corner of the Calle Grande. As he was returning homeward one "Beelzebub" Blythe, with the air of a courtier and the outward aspect of a scarecrow, pounced upon him hopefully from the door ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... parliament member, a Justice of peace, At home a poor scarecrow, in London an asse, If Lowsie is lucy, as some volke miscalle it Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befalle it. He thinks himself greate Yet an asse in his state, We allowe by his ears but with asses to mate. If Lucy is lowsie, as some ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... disquieted about W. Thomson. Tell George from me not to sit upon you with his mathematics. When I threatened your tropical cooling views with the facts of the physicists, you snubbed me and the facts sweetly, over and over again; and now, because a scarecrow of xy has been raised on the selfsame facts, you boo-boo. Take another dose of Huxley's penultimate G. S. Address, and send George back to college. (383/2. Huxley's Anniversary Address to the Geological Society, 1869 ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... seems to have originally been an Ecce Homo, which was perhaps the ornament of some village church, then carried off by some unbeliever, and made more shapeless than its creator, not proficient in art, had made it. It has a greater resemblance now to a frightful scarecrow than to ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... already able to present the scarecrow of such an alliance to covetous princes, for we have a firm ally in Prussia, have we not?" ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... in six months before) was called "A Check." A country lout is sitting on a fence-rail shouting, and the hunt comes up. "Seen the fox, my boy?" asks the huntsman. "No, I ain't!" replies the lad. "Then what are you hollarin' for?" "Because," answers the scarecrow, "because I'm paid for it." This picture was a valuable introduction, procured through a friend who forwarded his drawing, for it brought him an invitation to illustrate "Romford's Hounds" and "Hawbuck Grange," as well as an established, though intermittent, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Faithful Story of the Astonishing Adventure Undertaken by the Tin Woodman, assisted by Woot the Wanderer, the Scarecrow of Oz, ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... his face into limitless dejection, and an inscrutable melancholy filled his small gray eyes. The few birds which had hailed Mr. Hamlin as their successful rival fled away before the grotesque and angular half-length of Mr. Bowers, as if the wind had blown in a scarecrow from ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... wasn't Freme," retorted Thayor. "This man was half the size of Skinner, and a regular scarecrow. Looked as if he hadn't had anything to eat for weeks—but he could handle a gun all right. That's what worried me; I was afraid he would use it on me until the old ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... associates: if he holds communion when a boy with Murtagh, the scarecrow of an Irish academy, he associates in after life with Francis Ardry, a rich and talented young Irish gentleman about town. If he accepts an invitation from Mr. Petulengro to his tent, he has no objection to go home with a rich genius to dinner; who then will say that he prizes a thing ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... can say," the other replied. "He's evidently a white man, and I fancy an Englishman. At home we should call him a scarecrow. He turned up from across the Ford just now, and tumbled down in the middle of the stream like a shot rabbit. Never saw such a thing before. He's not a ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... wonder that you ask," returned the man. "I must look like a scarecrow. I'm Barney Custer. Don't you remember me now? Who did you ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fit to be looked at, not to be touched. I had to mind what I was about,' said the wind. 'The cottage was allowed to stand for the sake of the stork's nest; in itself it was only a scarecrow on the heath, but the dean did not want to frighten away the stork, so the hovel was allowed to stand. The poor soul inside was allowed to live in it; she had the Egyptian bird to thank for that; or was it payment for once having pleaded for the nest of his wild black brother in the ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working—clothes, Joe was a well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than anything else. Nothing that he wore then fitted him or seemed to belong to him; and everything that he wore then grazed him. On the present festive occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe bells were going, the picture of misery, in a full suit of Sunday ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... not let anybody patch because you are too proud to wear patches, and those wretched faded trousers, out at the knees, and which have been turned up and hemmed at the bottom so often that they are six inches above your shoes, and your whole scarecrow appearance, I was so ashamed of you that I could not keep the tears out of my eyes. To tell a respectable gentleman like Doctor Wicker that you were my brother was more than I could bear; and I was glad when I saw you get up and sneak out of the way. I hate to talk to you in this way, Asaph, but ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... broad, topped by a shock of red hair, gave him a kind of intellectual charity that made his whole countenance shine with kindness. Yet his clothes belied the promise of his brow. They were ill-fitting, with an air of Sunday-bestness that gave him an incongruous scarecrow effect. It was easy to see why Market Street was beginning to call him that "Mad Adams." As he lifted his glance from the floor, his eyes met Laura Van Dorn's, then flitted away quickly, and the smile she should have had for her own, he gave to his audience. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... want you should know which leg you stand upon. We are nothing but a merchantman, and I don't suppose you are bound by the ship's articles to fight unless you see fit, but whether we fight or not, our fate is the same; if we are such d—d fools as to let that garlic-eating scarecrow make a prize of us without firing a gun, we shall be sent to the mines for life; but if we will only stand by each other, I'll be bail that we give him something that he can't eat. Now if you are all agreeable to that, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... indeed improved. His shore clothes, which, with grease, coal-dust, tar, salt-water, and the rents made by the fight with Monkey, were (as the boatswain said) "not fit for a 'spectable scarecrow to wear of a Sunday," were exchanged for a blue flannel shirt and a pair of trim white canvas trousers. A neat black silk handkerchief was knotted around his neck, and his battered "stiff-rim" replaced by a jaunty ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... she will return before two o'clock," said Hannah, knowing that her mistress, looking more like a scarecrow than a genteel lady, was still in the parlor, and seeing that the visiter was disposed to pass her by and make himself a temporary occupant of ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... stabling at the old "Benbow." I followed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat, bright doctor, with his powder as white as snow, and his bright black eyes and pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all, with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting far gone in rum, with his arms on the table. Suddenly he—the captain, that is—began to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Scarecrow Skitter Farmerettes Fancy Popcorn Waltz Orchard One-step Pumpkin Pie Walk Red Ear ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... a drier of animal tissue to a certain extent, but so are hundreds of other agents not so dangerous. It is also perfectly useless as a scarecrow or poison to those betes noire of the taxidermist, the larvae of the various clothes and fur eating moths of the genus Tinea, or the larvae of Dermestes lardarius, murinus, and other museum beetles. They simply ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... hate to see brave men imprisoned if only for a day; and braver men than those across yonder stream are not to be found. My officers and men are astonished. They seem so thin and worn as to be scarce able to lift a musket, their clothes are fit only for a scarecrow, they are indeed pitiful objects to look at; but the way in which they fight is wonderful. I could not have believed had I not seen it, that men could have charged as they did again and again across ground swept by ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... of the Forbes stood about half-way up Ben Sgurrach, the highest hill in the district, and the house was at least 1,000 feet above the sea. It was sheltered from the east wind by a clump of scarecrow-looking pine trees, and a spur of barren rock rose behind it on the north. I could imagine those trees, though I have never seen them; we have some such in our little wood behind the presbytery. Gaunt-looking figures they are indeed! Some have been twisted into uncouth shapes by ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... God only upon the word of those, who have no more idea of him than themselves. Our nurses are our first theologians. They talk to children of God as if he were a scarecrow; they teach them from the earliest age to join their hands mechanically. Have nurses then more true ideas of God than the children whom ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... somebody found out many many years ago, a bungling workman; he makes a creature pretty enough; then he daubs and trims and pares and pulls and squeezes the thing about, draws the nose and chin out of their sheaths, knocks in the cheeks, eats ruts into the forehead, till he has turned it into a scarecrow; and then at last he gets ashamed, smashes the whole wretched concern to pieces, and shovels it over with earth that all the world may not see his disgrace. Your cheeks too, smooth and polisht as they are, will ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... you want me to look like a scarecrow, and not get asked again, I've got a dress that'll do PERFECTLY," Undine threatened, in a ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... thousand pounds in the three-and-a-half per cents, the idea of which had been a comfort to me for many a long year, ready to forfeit the whole sum in exchange for the raggedest pair of pantaloons that ever dangled from a scarecrow, and ready, too, to go down upon my bare knees to any ministering angel of an old Jew who would propose the bargain. I grinned a despairing laugh at the thought of such an absurd compact, and then groaned aloud as the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... A conjuring book ne'r opened Without the reader's danger. 'Tis indeed A scarecrow set i'th world to frighten weak fools. Hast thou seen fields paved o'er with carcasses, Now to be tender-footed, not to tread On a boy's ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... Granting, indeed, that a man's arm is moved by a simple physical cause, then of course we may dispute about the various external influences which, when it changes its position, sway it to and fro, like a scarecrow in a garden; but to assert that the motive cause is physical, this is an assumption in a case, when our question is about a matter of fact, not about the logical consequences of an assumed premiss. And, in like manner, if a people prays, and the wind changes, the rain ceases, the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the palms of their hands—also in an old-fashioned manner. But when they had finished Thady gave a comparatively modern touch to the entertainment by lighting his pipe. He occupied the nearest place to the fire, in consideration for the scarecrow-like raggedness of his garments, which now began to weigh upon Judy's mind amid the comfort of ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... to tell, but, as you may imagine, the Professor's views on certain points are less clear cut than they used to be. His nerves, too, have suffered: he cannot even now see a surplice hanging on a door quite unmoved, and the spectacle of a scarecrow in a field late on a winter afternoon has cost him more than ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... "Are you men or a lot of 'artless canny-bals?"—"Don't take your shirt off for a word, shipmate," called out Belfast, jumping up in front, fiery, menacing, and friendly at the same time.—"Is that 'ere bloke blind?" asked the indomitable scarecrow, looking right and left with affected surprise. "Can't 'ee see ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... our American man,—how he holds himself cool and unquestioned master above all pains and bloody mutilation.... This, then, what frightened us all so long! Why, it is put to flight with ignominy—a mere stuffed scarecrow of the fields. Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... I am not! I arrived this mornin', in the steamer——, straight from Aspinwall, with this old scarecrow suit on, jest as you see me now. I was intendin' to take the railroad for Tioga County, and play off a leetle surprise on Gusty, and her relations up there. But, before goin', it 'curred to me to call on a Mr. Lambkin, who was raised in Tioga, and keeps ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... incompetent little beast," she whispered. "Bill ought to thump me, instead of being kind. I can't do anything, and I don't know much, and I'm a scarecrow for looks right now. And I started out to be a ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... voices. And here are similitudes of Nero and Domitian, bloody persecutors, my brethren; which shews that he loved tyrants, and would have made us fry a faggot, had not the light of my preaching broke in upon his darkness, and made him like a rat with a bell, a scarecrow to the unconverted. Touch not his books, dearly beloved, they will prove the Devil's bird-lime, teaching you to despise my godly ministry; they will teach you nothing but Pagan fables or Romish ceremonies. Can Aristotle preach the Gospel? Do those ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Godfrey," she exclaimed in a rather doubtful voice, "what is this that you have brought with you? Is it a scarecrow from the fields? Or is it a speerit of your own? If so, I should have thought that a young man would have liked better the lovely Eleanor than this ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... slowly up, and the boys, mustering their last run, caught it as it passed, and began clambering up behind, in which exploit East missed his footing and fell flat on his nose along the road. Then the others hailed the old scarecrow of a coachman, who pulled up and agreed to take them in for a shilling; so there they sat on the back seat, drubbing with their heels, and their teeth chattering with cold, and jogged into Rugby some forty minutes ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... have his attention fixed long enough to form a new habit. Find out how this can be done, and it may in many cases be the simplest and most mechanical thing in the world to cure him. Men have been frightened by a scarecrow into thorough repentance. "A question of a few vibrations of ether, more or less, makes for us all the difference between perception and non-perception," or between sight and blindness. Accustom any such moral invalid to being Suggested or willed a few times into a ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... nothing else. My real name's Jenkins; but if you or any one else were to ask for Isaac Jenkins, there's not a soul in these parts as'd know as such a man ever lived. No; they call me 'Old Crow.' Maybe 'cos I look summat like a scarecrow. But I cannot rightly tell. It's my name, howsever, and you must ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... maid speak of me as a dumpy old scarecrow? No, thank you!" and she calls the waiter to bring ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... laden with an assortment of tinware had stopped on the outskirts of the village. The owner, a bent scarecrow of a fellow, was effecting repairs to his nag's harness with a piece of string. Evening was setting in, and the south-east wind swept a grey haze across the coast road and sombre marshes. The tinker completed first-aid to the harness, and stood at the front of the cart to light his lamps. ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... monk, with a throne for wages, Stripped like the iron-souled Hindu sages, Draped like a statue, in strings like a scarecrow, His helmet-hat an old tin pan, But worn in the love of the heart of man, More sane than the helm of Tamerlane, Hairy Ainu, wild man of Borneo, Robinson Crusoe—Johnny Appleseed; And the robin might have said, "Sowing, he goes to ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... and though your landing might be soft enough, it would have a nameless horror, far more killing than a stony fall. The women stand about frowsy and unkempt, with wild Irish eyes, all wearing the shawl as a hood, many in picturesque tatters, like the cast-off rags of a scarecrow, rags and flesh alike unwashed and of evil odour. The children look healthy and strong, though some of them are almost in puris naturalibus. Their faces are washed once a week; one of them said so, but the statement lacks ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Aunt Peggy was dead! She who had been a kind of scarecrow in life, how terrible was the thought of her now! The severest threat to an unruly child was, "I will give you to Aunt Peggy, and let her keep you." But to think of Aunt Peggy in connection with darkness, and silence, and ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... spencer, which reaches over the hips, and from its size has a most unservicelike appearance: the bare legs and arms sticking out from under this puffed-out coat, like the sticks which support the garments of a scarecrow. Such was our incongruous and most inefficient array; yet with 300 men who would fight, nothing would have been easier than to take the detached defences of the enemy, none of which could contain above thirty or forty men. But our allies seemed to have little idea of fighting except behind a wall; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... the cataract of "hideous verse," Marvell invited the scarecrow to dinner, and waits while he dresses. As they turn to leave, for the room is so small that the man who comes in last must be the first to go out, they meet a friend of the poet on the stairs, who makes a third at dinner. After dinner ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, Tiktok, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger; Besides Other Good People too Numerous to Mention Faithfully ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... wisdom. It is astonishing what unteachable, untamable creatures men are. They learn wisdom about all the little matters of daily life by experience, but they do not seem to do so about the higher. Even a sparrow comes to understand a scarecrow after a time or two, and any rat in a hole will learn the trick of a trap. But you can trick men over and over again with the same inducement, and, even whilst the hook is sticking in their jaws, the same bait will tempt them once ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was born in Crown Office Row, in his exquisite way has sketched the benchers of the Temple whom he had seen pacing the terrace in his youth. Jekyll, with the roguish eye, and Thomas Coventry, of the elephantine step, the scarecrow of inferiors, the browbeater of equals, who made a solitude of children wherever he came, who took snuff by palmfuls, diving for it under the mighty flap of his old-fashioned red waistcoat. In the gentle Samuel Salt we discover ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... In his scarecrow-making the Japanese farmer seems to have great faith in the Western-style cap, felt hat, or even umbrella, if he can get hold of one. Ordinarily, the bogey man has a bow with the arrow strung. Occasionally a farmer seeks to scare birds by means of clappers which he places in the hands of a child ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the summit And drove along past orchards, past a field Level and green, kept like a garden, rich Against the coming harvest. Here we met A scarecrow man, driving a scarecrow horse Hitched to a wobbly wagon. And we stopped, The scarecrow stopped. The scarecrow and Hosea Talked much of people and of farming—I Sat listening, and I gathered from the talk, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... his little girl saw a strange man in the wood." He imagined it all so strongly that it almost seemed to happen. "Beg pardon, your honor, I don't rightly know as, it's wuth mentionin', but my lil' young 'un see'd a scarecrow sort of a feller not far from they rocks, the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... "No, last night. Then, if you like, you had. But yesterday morning? Fortune and you, scarecrow? Go ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... bough sat a scarecrow, which had been there since spring and which protected the leafless branches with ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... He would never condescend in his controversies to the coarse terms used by his adversaries. We may learn something of the temper of the times by observing that, in a single pamphlet, as quoted by Strauss, the epithets that the dignified Reuchlin applies to Pfefferkorn are: "A poisonous beast," "a scarecrow," "a horror," "a mad dog," "a horse," "a mule," "a hog," "a fox," "a raging wolf," "a Syrian lion," "a Cerberus," "a fury of hell." In this matter Reuchlin was finally triumphant. This triumph was loudly celebrated by his ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, country squires and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... Nurse gave him to understand that she was to marshal him to the altar, Balder, never more heroic than at that moment, offered her his arm, which she accepted with an air of scarecrow gentility. Either the change of costume had struck in, or it was the symbol of inward change. She seemed struggling against her torpor, her dimness and deadness. She tried, perhaps, to recall the day when that dress was first put on,—the day of Helen's marriage, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... taken eleven, on the third," said one. "He looks like a scarecrow. What does he mean by hanging around ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... of muddy ale was first of all a brilliant soldier, then a brilliant lawyer, then a brilliant historian. His doctor's degree—he was Doctor of Laws—was gained by fair hard work. Think of that, and then look at my picture of the sodden, filthy scarecrow! Yes; that man began my education, and had I only gone straight on I should not be loafing about The Chequers. You ask how he could have anything to do with my education? Well, long ago I was a little ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... haul th' Mex much farther, you ain't!" observed this scarecrow with a touch of relish in the relaying of bad news. "He's outta his head now, gonna be clean outta ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... cried, "I can't leave you in this dreadful place! You look like a ghost, and a scarecrow, too! I want you to go and get some decent clothes and come home ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... buy something to eat with his own money," said Martha; "all the better,—it is just so much saved. Isn't he stingy, the old scarecrow!" ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... "Friendship's Garland" with the imaginary letters of an imaginary Arminius (Germany in long-past happier days lent the world these playful philosophical spirits), so the later author invents an old village grandpapa, with the grandpapa-name of Altegans and a prose-poem printed in scarecrow duodecimo on paper-bag pages and entitled "Erster Schulgang," 'first school-going,' or 'first day ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... quarrelsome—and a bully because of his unquestioned physical courage. He was popular in a way with those of his fellows who looked upon a gunman—a killer—as a kind of hero. The foreman of the T-Bar-T found him valuable as a sort of animate scarecrow. Gary's mere presence often served to turn the balance when the T-Bar-T riders had occasion to substantiate a bluff or settle a dispute with some other outfit riding the high country. And because Gary imagined that Bailey of the Concho had deliberately sent ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Gowanus, had been selected for his trust on account of his pre-eminent goodness, which, as seems to be invariably the case, was associated with an absence of personal beauty trenching upon the scarecrow. Possibly an excess of strong and disproportionate carving in nose, mouth and chin, accompanied by weak eyes and unexpectedness of forehead, may tend to make the Evil One but languid in his desire for the capture of its human exemplar. This may help ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... scorns, and contumelious taunts, In open market-place produced they me, To be a public spectacle to all. Here, said they, is the terror of the French, The scarecrow that affrights our children so. Then broke I from the officers that led me, And with my nails digg'd stones out of the ground, To hurl at the beholders of my shame. My grisly countenance made others fly, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... scarecrow 'as got 'em bad!" said Ortheris. "Seems like if 'e comes any furder we'll 'ave ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... of Japan did the brow of Jonathan wrinkle more deeply. But every Briton swore that his kinsman would bar the yellow man's way to Hawaii, California, and the Philippines, and put him in the fields of Asia only as a terror to the Russians or a scarecrow to the Germans. A doubt remained, nevertheless; and we missed the chance of a strong insurance against Japanese encroachment. Stroked caressingly yesterday and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Parker the baker 'as 'is doubts of them; so I 'eard the Grinsons' maid tell Ford when I was in 'is shop this very day. And I'm sure you've only to look at 'Orace's coat and 'at to see they must be in debt: the poor boy looks a reg'lar scarecrow. It all comes, my dear, of Reginald's going off and leaving them. Oh, 'ow I pity them ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... if I was you," said Mrs. Talcott. "She's as silly as they make 'em, I allow, but it's all to the good if her silliness keeps her sticking to you through thick and thin. It's just as well to have someone around to drive off the vultures, even if it's only a scarecrow—and Miss Scrotton is better than that. She's a pretty brainy woman, for all her silliness, and she's pretty fond of you, too, only you haven't treated her as well as she thinks you ought to have, and it makes her feel kind of spry and cheerful to see that ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... a magpie, Zaidee, always croaking. It will get us into trouble, thy talking. I have but to set my foot outside the house and thy tongue wags like the clothing of a scarecrow." ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... the way to keep peas from the birds. I tried the scarecrow plan, in a way which I thought would outwit the shrewdest bird. The brain of the bird is not large; but it is all concentrated on one object, and that is the attempt to elude the devices of modern civilization which injure his chances of food. I knew that, if I put up a complete stuffed ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... calvaries against the sky. The grass resembled patches of fur on a mangy skin. The birds, which seemed to revel in the excitements of war, soared and swept over the devastated tableland. Northward from our feet stretched this plateau of scarecrow trees, till it began to incline in a gentle rise, and finally met the sky in the summit of Achi Baba. That was the whole landscape—a plateau overlooked by ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... phantasmal realms. It may have something to do with the children's excitement on that "frosty Berkshire morning, and the frost imagery on the enchanted hall window" or something to do with "Feathertop," the "Scarecrow," and his "Looking Glass" and the little demons dancing around his pipe bowl; or something to do with the old hymn tune that haunts the church and sings only to those in the churchyard, to protect them from secular noises, as when the circus parade comes down ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Supreme Court, who had shown partiality, it was claimed, in the trial of Fries and Callender five years before. The requisite two-thirds of the Senate did not vote him guilty, and this method of curbing the Judiciary failed. "Impeachment is not even a scarecrow," admitted the disappointed President. The enemy had retired into the stronghold of the Judiciary, as he said, to be fed from the treasury, and from thence to beat down Republicanism. "By a fraudulent use of the Constitution," he explained, "which has made judges irremovable, they have multiplied ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... was startled by the mad-looking, unshaven scarecrow of an officer that approached him, demanding in a near-scream, "What happened? What have you done? What did you DO to Project Hot Rod? No one should have tampered with it without my direct order! Captain, if that mechanism has been ruined, I'll have them nail ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... their own freedom. How can we expect him to be less offended with us, when much of the same folly shall be found yet remaining where it least ought, to the perishing of thousands? The greatest burden in the world is Superstition, not only of ceremonies in the Church, but of imaginary and scarecrow sins at home. What greater weakening, what more subtle stratagem against our Christian warfare, when, besides the gross body of real transgressions to encounter, we shall be terrified by a vain and shadowy menacing of faults that are not! When things indifferent shall be set ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the yacht and the French boat had ceased firing. The latter had only two guns, while the Bella Cuba had four, and, as he had said to Roger a few minutes (or was it years?) ago, she was but a poor "makeshift," rigged up more as a kind of "scarecrow" for forcats meditating escape than for actual service. Still, she must carry at least ten or twelve rounds of ammunition. Could it be that the little Bella Cuba had contrived to knock a hole in her hull, and that her men ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... ragged, "a mere scarecrow," still wearing the hat perforated with buckshot, with his arms bound to his sides, he was driven before the levelled gun to the nearest house, that of a Mr. Edwards. He was confined there that night; but the news had spread ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... my mind to-day after seein' yon scarecrow we met at Buckna cross roads, Robbie John aither mends himself or ...
— The Turn of the Road - A Play in Two Scenes and an Epilogue • Rutherford Mayne
... Fantasy-pieces; and Johannes Kreisler is the main figure in Kater Murr, Hoffmann's favorite but unfinished work. In the third and last volume, Kreisler was to end, not in composure and illumination, as the critics would have required, but in utter madness: a sketch of a wild, flail-like scarecrow, dancing vehemently and blowing soap-bubbles, and which had been intended to front the last title-page, was found among Hoffmann's papers, and engraved and published in his Life ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... a scarecrow that all these children desert me so suddenly!" exclaimed Miss Laura, looking helplessly about and lifting her skirts the higher to avoid the dirty suds which somebody was emptying ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... consigned when her Cardinal uncle had set eyes on her. "Let her have a year or two there," was his verdict, "and, who knows, she may blossom into a beauty yet. At any rate she can put on flesh and not be the scarecrow she is." And thus, while her more favoured sisters were revelling in the gaieties of Court life, Marie was sent to tell her beads and to spend Spartan days ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... turnings never met: His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings, As if he meant to fly with linen wings. But when I look, and cast mine eyes below, What monster meets mine eyes in human show? So slender waist with such an abbot's loin, Did never sober nature sure conjoin. Lik'st a strawn scarecrow in a new-sown field, Reared on some stick, the tender corn to shield, Or, if that semblance suit not every deal, Like a broad shake-fork with a slender steel. Despised nature suit them once aright, Their body to their coat both now disdight. ...
— English Satires • Various
... rather short with him, but he appeared not to mind it. We went the nearest way, without conversing much upon the road; and he was so humble in respect of those scarecrow gloves, that he was still putting them on, and seemed to have made no advance in that labour, when we got ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the worst case by far is Forde's little pony; he was reduced to a weight little exceeding 400 lbs. on his sledge and caved in altogether on the second part of the march. The load was reduced to 200 lbs., and finally Forde pulled this in, leading the pony. The poor thing is a miserable scarecrow and never ought to have been brought—it is the same pony that did so badly in the ship. To-day it is very fine and bright. We are giving a good deal of extra food to the animals, and my hope is that they will soon pick up again—but they cannot stand more blizzards in their present state. I'm ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... means restriction; and so does socialism. So far from being anarchy, it is the very antithesis of it. Anarchy is the goal of liberalism, if liberalism could ever be persuaded to be logical. So the scarecrow of anarchy, at least, need not frighten away any would-be convert to socialism. There remains, it is true, the other scarecrow, revolution; and that, I admit, has more life in it. Socialism is revolutionary; but so is liberalism, or was, while it was anything. Revolution ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... of incongruity I mean. The tragic solemnity of a man who might have changed clothes with the nearest scarecrow without a perceptible difference, and whose life was evidently not ordered by any excessive self-respect, falling back on the dignity of human nature in order to be rid of a companion as disreputable as himself, is what makes the scene so grotesque, and yet in a sense so impressive, ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Christian is about as much like the New Testament model of what he should be, as is the straw-stuffed scarecrow in the field, in the pockets of the costume of which the birds conceive it to be the latest joke to build. But I am digressing, I was beginning about the 'days of Noah' and their near future repetition ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... the pesky thing on your head, making you look so like a scarecrow, do you?" he said gently, as with a jerk he broke the strings and then threw the discarded ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes |
