"Shrew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the old days on the road from Manfaloot. Seti and his bobtailed Arab, two shameless ones, worked their way to the front. Not Seti's strong right arm alone and his naboot were at work, but the bobtailed Arab, like an iron-handed razor toothed shrew, struck and bit his way, his eyes bloodred like Seti's. The superstitious Dervishes fell back before this pair of demons; for their madness was like the madness of those who at the Dosah throw themselves beneath ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... re-enact a modern edition of 'The Taming of the Shrew.' Y'u'll find me, sweet, as apt at the part as old Petruchio." He paced complacently up the room and back, and ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... actor, (better known from the urbanity of his manners, by the familiar name of Billy Havard) had the misfortune to be married to a most notorious shrew and drunkard. One day dining at Garrick's, he was complaining of a violent pain in his side. Mrs. Garrick offered to prescribe for him. "No, no," said her husband; "that will not do, my dear; Billy has mistaken his disorder; his great complaint ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... directly after dinner, Alvina went out. She entered the shop, where sheets of lead and tins of paint and putty stood about, varied by sheets of glass and fancy paper. Lottie Witham, Arthur's wife, appeared. She was a woman of thirty-five, a bit of a shrew, with ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... will never get a clean shirt to my back; how my coat will always be out at the elbows; and how I never will get my breeches to stay up. I am thinking how I will be married to a shrew of a wife, who will beat me every evening and morning, and sometimes in the middle of the day. I am thinking what a d——d w—— she will be, and how my children will be most of them hanged, and ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... young crows, all of which died, not from inattention, but because I did not know how to care for them. Again, I have come across animals that I could not find a name for. For instance, last summer I came across two animals, one that resembled a shrew, another that looked somewhat like a mouse. Now if I had had a book like this proposed one on hand, I would simply have looked up its habits, would have found its name, would have known how to tame and feed it, and would have had a new ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... King makes it, invitus amabo! as the man said who married the shrew." Bigot laughed mockingly. "We must make the best of it, Des Meloises! and let me tell you privately, I mean to make a good thing of it for ourselves whichever ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... hitch. Arline and Elfreda, being sure of themselves, did not take part in it. Kathleen West's clever one-act play, "In the Days of Shakespeare," was worthy of her genius. It presented the scene from the "Taming of the Shrew," where Petruchio ridicules Katherine's gown and berates the tailor. This scene was enacted in accordance with the Elizabethan age, when the nobility were permitted to take seats on the stage with the actors, the latter being obliged to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... she was miraculously meek and dumb; all the scold was quelled within her; the word "blood" was the Petruchio that tamed that shrew; she could see a plenty of those crimson spots, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... starring tour under the personal direction of Charles Frohman, Miss Adams combined with a revival of "Quality Street" a clever skit by Barrie called "The Ladies' Shakespeare," the subtitle being, "One Woman's Reading of 'The Taming of the Shrew.'" With an occasional appearance in Barrie's "Rosalind," it rounded out her stellar career ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... and will continue to do to the end of time. The leg was broken in two places between the knee and thigh. Emil, helped by his frightened playmates, managed to drag himself to the front sidewalk, where he fainted. The children of the neighbourhood were afraid of the hard-featured shrew who presided over the Bartell house; but, summoning their resolution, they rang the bell and told Ann Bartell of the accident. She did not even look at the little lad who lay stricken on the sidewalk, but slammed the door and went back to her wash- tub. The ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... of great decay, and notwithstanding the magnificence of its public edifices, we found more than the usual amount of Galician filth and misery. The posada was one of the most wretched description, and to mend the matter, the hostess was a most intolerable scold and shrew. Antonio having found fault with the quality of some provision which she produced, she cursed him most immoderately in the country language, which was the only one she spoke, and threatened, if he attempted to breed any disturbance in her ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... sometimes wondered with what regularity—that is, for a shrew of my impatient temper—I have been able to keep this Journal. The use of the first person being, of course, the very essence of a diary, I conceive it is chiefly vanity, the dear pleasure of writing about the best of good fellows, Myself, which gives me perseverance to continue this ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... large as a rat, and had soft brown fur, paler beneath and on the face, with a black stripe on each cheek. This made the third species of marsupial rat I had so far obtained— but the number of these animals is very considerable in Brazil, where they take the place of the shrews of Europe; shrew mice and, indeed, the whole of the insectivorous order of mammals, being entirely absent from Tropical America. One kind of these rat-like opossums is aquatic, and has webbed feet. The terrestrial species are nocturnal in their habits, sleeping ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... surrounding neighbourhood that a company of dramatic performers will appear tonight at the Fleece Inn Garret. The performance to commence with Shakespeare's comedy, 'Katharine and Petruchio; or, The Taming of the Shrew;' to be followed by 'Ali Pasha; or, The Mussulman's Vengeance,' and tricks by the monkey, and comic sketches." These were the words Billy had written on his paper, but through some misunderstanding these were the words I heard him cry out: he gave them in broad Haworth dialect:—"This is ta gie ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... share in it. Consequently I am made use of, and the fortune is placed in my hands with instructions to hasten to lay it at the feet of this 'fair lady.' Nothing seems easier or more natural. But suppose the 'fair lady' should be ugly, hunchbacked, a shrew, or a troublesome coquette. In this case, you know, with my ideas about women and marriage, I should feel myself bound to ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... herself her point of view had been changing; a group of white foxgloves, like ghost-flames, that she had seen in a coppice, the creeping of a bright eyed shrew mouse through last year's leaves at her feet, the hundreds of little rabbits with curved-in backs that ran with their curious rocking action over the dewy fields at evening—all these things gave her a shock ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... get along, but at snail's pace. There followed five years of economy so rigid as to make the past seem profligate. Etta, the acid-tongued, the ferret-faced, was not the sort to go off without the impetus of a dowry. The man for Etta, the shrew, must be kindly, long-suffering, subdued—and in need of a start. He was. They managed a very decent trousseau and the miracle of five thousand dollars in cash. Every stitch in the trousseau and every penny in the dowry represented incredible sacrifice and ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... have brought that sour-faced shrew, who walks about the house all day repeating the rosary and poking her long nose into what does not belong to her. But I am not afraid of the Signor Giovanni. I will tell the housekeeper that your mantle has been stolen, and all the women's belongings shall be searched before dinner, ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... from the couch where they had laid her. But she would not speak or tell them what had happened and it was only when they had gotten her off in a cab with a motherly, big hearted woman who played shrew's and villainess' parts always on the stage but was the one person of the whole cast to whom every one turned in time of trouble that the rest searched the paper for the clew to the thing which had made Tony look like death itself. It was not far to seek. Tony ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... Shrew, was the eldest daughter of Baptista, a rich gentleman of Padua. She was a lady of such an ungovernable spirit and fiery temper, such a loud-tongued scold, that she was known in Padua by no other name than Katharine the Shrew. It seemed very unlikely, indeed impossible, that any ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... the rustic little beauty. He bade the dryads mourn and the river-nymphs deplore her. As her father followed the calling of Vulcan, he said that surely she was like a daughter of Venus, though Sievewright's wife was an ugly shrew, as he remembered to have heard afterwards. He made a long face, but, in truth, felt scarcely more sorrowful than a mute at a funeral. These first passions of men and women are mostly abortive; and are dead almost before they are born. Esmond ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Taming of the Shrew."—I cannot help thinking that Christopher Sly merely means that he is fourteenpence on the score for sheer ale,—nothing but ale; neither bread nor meat, horse ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... the meat which he held, and walked over to comfort her. She, however, turned on him like a veritable little shrew. ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... America, called implacental Mammals. Now the placental mammals are subdivided into various orders, amongst which are the flesh-eaters (Carnivora, i.e. cats, dogs, otters, weasels, &c.), and the insect-eaters (Insectivora, i.e. moles, hedgehogs, shrew-mice, &c.). The marsupial mammals also present a variety of forms (some of which are carnivorous beasts, whilst others are insectivorous), so marked that it has been even proposed to divide them into orders parallel to ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... hear, O my lord?" she cried, in tone and manner more the European shrew than the submissive Eastern slave. "Is Sakr-el-Bahr to go upon this expedition against the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... annals of kings and emperors. What famous beauty embellished the court of Elizabeth or either Mary? Even Anne's Mrs. Masham was not a shining personality, and her Sarah of Marlborough was only a brilliant shrew. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... are. I'd like to see you do it. But the part of Katherine would be the thing for you—fascinating shrew that ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... is hooded; I could hear but that floweth The great hood below its mouth:" then the bird made reply. "If they know not, more's the pity, for the little shrew-mouse knoweth, And the kite knows, and the eagle, and the glead ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... was not good, and she did not see his lips pucker as for a long whistle. But he did not whistle. He replied very humbly; and so sweetly that Murguia quailed for the little shrew. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... beech in the morning a shadow stretches to a bridge across the brook, and in that shadow my trout used to lie. The bank under the drooping boughs forms a tiny cliff a foot high, covered with moss, and here I once observed shrew mice diving and racing about. But only once, though I frequently passed the spot; it is curious that I did ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... nursing his knee and looking about him. "Let that pass for a moment. You have the prettiest woodland parlor, child! Tell me, do they treat you well over there?" with a jerk of his thumb toward the glebe house. "Madam the shrew and his reverence the bully, are they kind to you? Though they let you go like a beggar maid,"—he glanced kindly enough at her bare feet and torn gown,—"yet they starve you not, nor beat you, nor ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... back to th' lass. And, now that I think o' th' lass, comrade, I am not so sure that a scolding wife is not well paid for by a duteous daughter. Nay, I am sure o't. Methinks I would 'a' been wed twice, and each time to a shrew, could I but 'a' had my Keren o' one o' 'em. ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... 'All's Well that Ends Well,' which may be tentatively assigned to 1595. Meres, writing three years later, attributed to Shakespeare a piece called 'Love's Labour's Won.' This title, which is not otherwise known, may well be applied to 'All's Well.' 'The Taming of The Shrew,' which has also been identified with 'Love's Labour's Won,' has far slighter claim to the designation. The plot of 'All's Well,' like that of 'Romeo and Juliet,' was drawn from Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure' (No. xxxviii.) The original source is Boccaccio's 'Decamerone' (giorn. iii. nov. 9). ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... will be excluded, and the house will still smell fusty and unwholesome. In any case, there must be a cleanly woman to superintend the affairs of the house; and she cannot be made so by Act of Parliament! The Sanitary Commissioners cannot, by any "Notification," convert the slatternly shrew into a tidy housewife, nor the disorderly drunkard into an industrious, home-loving husband. There must, therefore, be individual effort on the part of the housewife in every working man's Home. As a recent writer ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... curb her mad and headstrong humor. He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him speak; 'tis charity to ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... was broken. The person of the house was the person of a house full of sordid shames and cares, with an upper room in which that abased figure was infecting even innocent sleep with sensual brutality and degradation. The doll's dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew; of the world, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... called Badger, and he tried. She called Shrew, and he failed. She called Wolf, and ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... might obtain a wider reverence if the nome they belonged to rose to greater power. Animals of every size and kind were worshipped in Egypt. Besides the large animals we have mentioned, the ape, the dog, the little shrew-mouse, each had its local sacredness; also snakes, frogs, and various kinds of fishes. The beetle (scarab) can by no means be left without mention; and a number of trees and shrubs were also sacred,[1] but, very curiously, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter cricket thou; Braved in my own house by a skein of thread! Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant!" (Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, Sc. 3.) ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... monstrously: Neither does any man, no more than he; Only to hinder wives, it serveth nought; - A good wife, that is clean of work and thought, No man would dream of hindering such a way. And just as bootless is it, night or day, Hindering a shrew; for it will never be. I hold it for a very foppery, Labour in vain, this toil to hinder wives, Old writers always say so, in ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... take my word for it, young unmarried gentlemen, a wife is a very much harder pack to the back than the biggest heifer in Smithfield and, if I can prevent one of you from marrying, the 'Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.' will not be written in vain. Not that my Lady was a scold or a shrew, as some wives are; I could have managed to have cured her of that; but she was of a cowardly, crying, melancholy, maudlin temper, which is to me still more odious: do what one would to please her, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... those forces it filleth all the mountain ghyll, and there is no foothold for man, nay for goat, save at a hundred foot or more above the water, and that evil and perilous; and is the running of a winter millstream to the beetles and shrew-mice that haunt the greensward beside it, so is the running of that flood to the sons of Adam and the beasts that serve them: and none has been so bold as to strive to cast a ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... was cudgel'd one day by his wife, He took to his heels and fled for his life: Tom's three dearest friends came by in the squabble, And saved him at once from the shrew and the rabble; Then ventured to give him some sober advice- But Tom is a person of honor so nice, Too wise to take counsel, too proud to take warning, That he sent to all three a challenge next morning. Three duels he ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... progress of the ceremony, she was asked if she willingly received Henry of Bourbon for her husband, she pouted, coquettishly tossed her proud head, and was silent. The question was repeated. The spirit of Marguerite was now roused, and all the powers of Europe could not tame the shrew. She fixed her eyes defiantly upon the officiating bishop, and refusing, by look, or word, or gesture, to express the slightest assent, remained as immovable as a statue. Embarrassment and delay ensued. Her royal brother, Charles IX., fully aware of his sister's indomitable resolution, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... human figure; it fell, perhaps finally, for English drama. That manner of man—Arlecchino, or Harlequin—had outlived his playmates, Pantaleone, Brighella, Colombina, and the Clown. A little of Pantaleone survives in old Capulet, a little in the father of the Shrew, but the life of Mercutio in the one play, and of the subordinate Tranio in the other, is less quickly spent, less easily put out, than the smouldering of the old man. Arlecchino frolics in and out of the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare, until he thus dies in his lightest, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... thing!" said the imperious voice of the queenly shrew. "We will have neither trials nor anything else until after supper, which has already been delayed four full minutes. My lord chamberlain, have the goodness to step in and see ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... really so!" exclaimed old lady Chia. "I always said that that girl wasn't anything like that artful shrew! Well, in that case, she is to be pitied, for she has had to bear the brunt of her anger, and all through no fault of hers!" Calling Hu Po to her, "Go," she added, "and tell P'ing Erh all I enjoin you; 'that I know that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... call that shriveled-up shrew, consented at once," answered Straws. "Her parental heart was filled with thanksgiving at the prospect of one less mouth to fill. Go and say good-by, however, to the old harridan; I think she has a few conventional tears to shed. But do not let her ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... triumph of the voluptuous, of the love of pleasure and the power of giving it, over every other consideration. Octavia is a dull foil to her, and Fulvia a shrew and shrill-tongued. What a picture do those lines give ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... sickly from other treatment. He'd been forced to remove her inflamed tonsils a few months before. She'd whined and complained because he couldn't spend all his time attending her. She was a nag, a shrew, and a totally selfish woman. But that was her husband's worry, ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... 4. Herman Goetz's opera "The Taming of the Shrew" given in New York City (in English) by the American Opera Company, Theodore Thomas conductor, at the Academy of Music. At this performance Pauline ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... coquettes,—the most delicious in allurement, the swiftest in retreat. One day she seems to pour her whole heart out to us, and we think she is ours once and for all; next day she pelts us with sleet; buffets, freezes us; she—nay, she is gone, and we never shall see her again; it is the sourest shrew in the whole sisterhood of the year that has come in her stead! But the true lover thinks not so. He knows her woman's heart,—coying it a little, holding back her treasure till she sees if her worshiper be faithful, to pour it out all unstinted at the last, when May's perfect bridal day shall usher ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... the Scriptures say, all wives should do. But the lust of brandy overcame wifely obedience, and Brinsden, hoping for the best, was constrained to cut a hole in her skull. The next day she was as impudent as ever, until Matthias rose yet more fiercely in his wrath, and the shrew perished. Then was Thomas Pureney's opportunity, and the Sunday following the miscreant's condemnation he delivered unto him and seventeen other malefactors the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... musk-Ox, with his long scented hair, And John Bull just arrived on his travels, were there; Messrs. Martin, Hare, Squirrel, the Ermine, and Stoat, And the rock-mountain sheep, with his cousin, the goat; Then the sociable marmot, and tiny shrew mouse, The raccoon and agouti from hollow-tree house. Chinchilla the soft, musk and Canada rats, Hounds, mastiffs, wolves, foxes, and wild tiger cats; Jerboa just roused from his long winter nap, Opossum, with four little babes in her lap. ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... They seem to be the production, as they are the heritage, not of man but of humanity. It is essential to the permanence of humour that it should refer to large classes, and awaken emotions common to many. If Socrates and Xantippe, the philosopher and the shrew, had not represented classes, and an ordinary connection in life, we should have been little amused ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... had, I'm afraid, a shrew of a wife—shrill, vehement, and fluent. 'Rogue,' 'old miser,' 'old sneak,' and a great many worse names, she called him. Good Mrs. Irons was old, fat, and ugly, and she knew it; and that knowledge made her natural ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... or the Irish Channel, to graze anew over deposits in which the bones and horns of their remote ancestors had been entombed long ages before, the feat would have been surely far beyond the power of such feeble natives of the soil as the mole, the hedgehog, the shrew, the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... own way—in benevolent objects—as men who set up to be clever are for selfish ones. Mrs. Hartopp was certainly a good woman, but a made good woman. Married to another man, I suspect that she would have been a shrew. Petruchio would never have tamed her, I'll swear. But she, poor lady, had been gradually, but completely, subdued, subjugated, absolutely cowed beneath the weight of her spouse's despotic mildness; for in Hartopp there was a weight of soft quietude, of placid oppression, wholly irresistible. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be perils dire and deadly. O bethink thee, lest she change thee into a swine, or black dog, aye, or even a small shrew-mouse—I've heard of such ere now—or blast thee with fire, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... plumojn. Mound remparo, digo. Mount supreniri. Mount monteto. Mountain monto. Mountaineer montano. Mountainous monta. Mountain-range montaro. Mountebank jxonglisto. Mourn malgxoji, ploregi. Mournful funebra. Mourning (dress) funebra vesto. Mouse muso. Mouse, shrew soriko. Mouse-trap muskaptilo. Moustache lipharoj. Mouth busxo. Mouth (of river) enfluo. Movable movebla. Move movi. Move (furniture) translogxigxi. Move in (dwelling) enlogxi. Move out (dwelling) ellogxigxi. Move (feelings) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the camp Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain, Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow and moth; Insatiate skill in water or in air Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss; The while, one leaden got of alcohol Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, Orchis ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... as a review of the work of his predecessors. There is a great deal of information in his books about his own life. He was born at Pergamos in A.D. 130 in the reign of Hadrian. His father was a scholar and his mother somewhat of a shrew. Galen, in his boyhood, learned much from his father's example and instruction, and at the age of 15 was taught by philosophers of the Stoic, Platonist, Peripatetic, and Epicurean schools. He became initiated, writes Dr. Moore, into "the idealism of Plato, the realism of Aristotle, the scepticism ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... their tails behind them in the most aggressive fashion, exactly reproducing the threatening action of an angry scorpion. Now, as a matter of fact, the devil's coach-horse is quite harmless, but I have often seen, not only little boys and girls, but also chickens, small birds, and shrew-mice, evidently alarmed at his minatory attitude. So, too, the bumble-bee flies, which are inoffensive insects got up in sedulous imitation of various species of wild bee, flit about and buzz angrily in the sunlight, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Rip was a real personage, and the Van Winkles are a considerable family at this day. An idle, good-natured, happy-go-lucky fellow, he lived, presumably, in the village of Catskill, and began his long sleep in 1769. His wife was a shrew, and to escape her abuse Rip often took his dog and gun and roamed away to the Catskills, nine miles westward, where he lounged or hunted, as the humor seized him. It was on a September evening, during a jaunt on South Mountain, that he met a stubby, silent man, of goodly girth, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... under heaps of rich velvets, costly brocades, and other profitable returns to his foreign adventures. But, alas!—and whose heart holdeth not communion with that word!—Cornelius was unhappy. He had one daughter, whom "he loved passing well;" yet, as common report did acknowledge, the veriest shrew that ever went unbridled. In vain did his riches and his revenues increase; in vain was plenty poured into his lap, and all that wealth could compass accumulate in lavish profusion. Of what avail was this outward ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... on a lodging for Claire in a freshly painted but otherwise rather decrepit lodging-house, just north of the ferry-slip. Its chief advantage was that it seemed quite too stagnant to be anything but respectable, and the suppressed grumbling of the old shrew whom they routed out confirmed their estimate. She didn't approve of couples who dragged God-fearing old women out of bed at unholy hours in the morning, and it was only the generous tip from Stillman and the assurance ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... clergy,'" exploded the younger man; "that mediaeval bonanza isn't to be mentioned in the same week with the ministerial half-rates, donations, and hold-ups we moderns put up with. This pulpit pounder's shrew pays me no more than she pays the doctor, the grocer, the butcher, and the rest. What a ukase I could issue if I were Czar of these ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... for romantic plays in which no very searching character-study is attempted. The Taming of the Shrew no doubt passed for a light comedy in Shakespeare's day, though we describe it by a briefer name. Its rapid, bustling action is possible because we are always ready to take the character of a shrew for granted. It would have been a very different play had the poet required to account for Katharine's peculiarities of temper by a retrospective study of her heredity and upbringing. Many eighteenth-century comedies are single-adventure ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... you sleepy-face! you abominable shrew! why, you don't know so much as how to begin weaving: and as to going on with it, you haven't ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... changes made by marriage upon men's minds and humours. One might wear any passion out of a family by culture, as skilful gardeners blot a colour out of a tulip that hurts its beauty. One might produce an affable temper out of a shrew, by grafting the mild upon the choleric; or raise a jack-pudding from a prude, by inoculating mirth and melancholy. It is for want of care in the disposing of our children, with regard to our bodies and minds, that we go into a house and see such different ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... If the head be naught, a spendthrift, a drunkard, a whoremaster, a gamester, how shall the family live at ease? [700]Ipsa si cupiat solus servare, prorsus, non potest hanc familiam, as Demea said in the comedy, Safety herself cannot save it. A good, honest, painful man many times hath a shrew to his wife, a sickly, dishonest, slothful, foolish, careless woman to his mate, a proud, peevish flirt, a liquorish, prodigal quean, and by that means all goes to ruin: or if they differ in nature, he is thrifty, she spends all, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... four children, she died. Within a month the widower came to his father-confessor by night and obtained leave to be married next morning. His new wife was a middle-aged lady of no charms—indeed she seems to have been a regular shrew—who served him as a capable housekeeper and looked after his children while they were young. But she never engaged his affections; and it was his eldest daughter, Margaret, who became the chosen partner of his joys and ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... Influence Sanguine Turmoil Sinecure Waist Shrew Potential Spaniel Crazy Character Candidate Indomitable Infringe Rascal Amorphous Expend Thermometer Charm Rather Tall Stepchild Wedlock Ghostly Haggard Bridal Pioneer Pluck Noon Neighbor Jimson weed Courteous Wanton Rosemary Cynical Street Plausible ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... scatter, sdegno, sdrucciolo, sfavellare, [Greek: sphinx], sgombrare, sgranare, shake, slumber, smell, snipe, space, splendour, spring, squeeze, shrew, step, strength, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... by without comment. "The Unknown Woman is brimful of possibilities to a bushman," he went on; "for although she MAY be all womanly strength and tenderness, she may also be anything, from a weak timid fool to a self-righteous shrew, bristling with virtue and indignation. Still," he added earnestly, as the opposition began to murmur, "when a woman does come into our lives, whatever type she may be, she lacks nothing in the way of chivalry, and it ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... that too casually Hath left mine arm: it was thy master's. Shrew me If I would lose it for a revenue Of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wrath, rage, indignation, ire, frenzy; virago, termagant, shrew, vixen, beldame, Xantippe; agitation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... forces, suddenly insisted that he must go out no more until he was cured. In the fight Constance was scarcely recognizable. She deliberately gave way to hysteria; she was no longer soft and gentle; she flung bitterness at him like vitriol; she shrieked like a common shrew. It seems almost incredible that Constance should have gone so far; but she did. She accused him, amid sobs, of putting his cousin before his wife and son, of not caring whether or not she was left a widow as the result of this obstinacy. And she ended ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... live in peace." "The great difficulty was to compel them to pay their debts." "To strengthen our virtue God bids us trust in him." "I made no bargain with you to live always drudging." "To sum up all her tongue confessed the shrew." "To proceed my own ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... making me a slave, and making yourself a laughing-stock. Its not fair. You get me the name of being a shrew with your meek ways, always talking as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. And just because I look a big strong woman, and because I'm good-hearted and a bit hasty, and because you're always driving me to do things ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... me, you minx! Fair, I wish that my dear friend, your father, were alive. Well, well, patience does it, and the Lord knows, Unity, he's been patient! Oh, you black-eyed piece, you need a bit and bridle! Here's Edward! Edward, the shrew's tamed at last! Such a wedding as ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... know how to lie, so, although trembling with terror when he saw the rage of the old shrew, he tried to ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... taste, And eaten well a good repast, And supped of the BREWIS [Broth] a sup, Slept after and swet a drop, Through Goddis help and my counsail, Soon he shall be fresh and hail.' The sooth to say, at wordes few, Slain and sodden was the heathen shrew. Before the king it was forth brought: Quod his men, 'Lord, we have pork sought; Eates and sups of the brewis SOOTE,[Sweet] Thorough grace of God it shall be your boot.' Before King Richard carff a knight, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... both at every step. Their conversations were embittered by a thousand personalities, they instinctively knew how to hurt each other; a look from Clarence could crush his poised and accomplished wife into a mere sullen shrew, and she knew that it took less than a look from her—it took the mere existence of her youth and health and freshness—to infuriate him sometimes. At best, their relationship consciously avoided hostility. Rachael was silent, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... not stop midway the furrow to listen and laugh at a droll story or tell one? If he might not go a-fishing when all the forces of nature invited and the jay-bird called from the tree and gave forth saucy banter like the fiery, blue shrew that ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... sleep had I, rather I lay that I might watch her (furtively, beneath my arm) where she sat head aloft, cheeks flushed and bosom tempestuous. And (despite her beauty) a very termagant shrew I thought her. Then, all at once, I saw a tear fall and another; and she that had sung undaunted to the tempest and outfaced its fury, sat bitterly weeping like any heart-broke maid, yet giving due heed ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... inspect a new piece of furniture several times; are attached to houses, and are extremely fond of scents, especially certain kinds emanating from plants. They seldom eat the rats which they kill, although they devour mice. If they should swallow a shrew, which is very rare, they almost immediately reject it. They will sit hour after hour watching at the mouth of a hole, and after seizing their prey, bring it to their favourites in the house to show their prowess, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... the winepress, the old woman desirous of a young husband, the slattern Catherina Meigengra, the market-woman who plays the pandero in the market-place, the peasant girls with pretentious names coming down to market basket on head from the hills, the shrew Branca and the timid wife Marta, the two irrepressible Lisbon fishwives, the voluble saloia who sells milk well watered and charges cruel prices for her eggs and other wares, the country priest's greedy 'wife' who eats the baptism cake and is continually roasting chestnuts, the mystical ingenuous ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... great deal from him. There was nothing which Mrs. Carbuncle would not endure from Sir Griffin,—just at present; and, on behalf of Mrs. Carbuncle, even Lizzie was long-suffering. It cannot, however, be said that this Petruchio had as yet tamed his own peculiar shrew. Lucinda was as savage as ever, and would snap and snarl, and almost bite. Sir Griffin would snarl too, and say very bearish things. But when it came to the point of actual quarrelling, he would become sullen, and in his sullenness ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... velvety body of the butterfly to her hole under the roots. She was no more than just in time, for no sooner was she out of sight than along came a fierce-eyed little shrew-mouse, the most audacious and pugnacious of the mouse tribe, who would undoubtedly have robbed her of her prey, and perhaps made a meal of her at the same time. He nosed at the wings of the butterfly, nibbled at them, decided they were no good, and then came ambling over to the Child's ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... were, as a rule, addressed to the young man or the old, the latter of whom soon grew into an object of local compassion as "a harmless, dacint, poor crathur," while his son came in for the frank-eyed looking-down-upon which is the portion of an able-bodied man, shrew-ridden through sheer supineness and "polthroonery." But what Lisconnel often said that it "thought badder of" was the stepmotherly treatment which seemed to be the lot of the little girl Katty. Of course the situation was ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... greatest friend and was notable for three things, his enormous size, his surpassing skill on the violoncello and his devoted attachment to the veriest shrew of a little sharp-boned wife that ever crossed from Germany into England. For all these things Peter loved him, but Herr Lutz was never very actively conscious of Peter because from the moment that he entered Herr Gottfried's attic ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... from this, escapes from all terms, as anything purely and merely passional must. He had seen from the first that she was a cat, and so far as youth forecasts such things, he felt that she would be a shrew. But he had a perverse sense of her beauty, and he knew a sort of life in which her power to molest him with her temper could be reduced to the smallest proportions, and even broken to pieces. Then the consciousness of her money entered. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that, if the truth was known, I know where the blame would lie—your daughter will not be the shrew and scold to him that my blister was to me—upon my credit ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... disquiet of the inhabitants, to see Yan Yost Vanderscamp seated at the helm, and his man Pluto tugging at the oars! Vanderscamp, however, was apparently an altered man. He brought home with him a wife, who seemed to be a shrew, and to have the upper-hand of him. He no longer was the swaggering, bully ruffian, but affected the regular merchant, and talked of retiring from business, and settling down quietly, to pass the rest of his ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... no doubt about the little shrew being thoroughly game, and yet her act was less striking as evidence of her bravery, than as testifying her confidence in the chivalry of the rough men before her. And, indeed, it was comical to see the dumbfoundered and chop-fallen expression on their flushed ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... land is mine, he will pay; or if he does not pay, he will go—and tilled acres and a cabin will not harm me. Valencia, if he marries the daughter of Carlos (as the senora says will come to pass), will be glad to have a cabin to live in apart from the mother of his wife, who is a shrew and will be disquieting in any man's household. Therefore, Senor Hunter, you may order the peons to assist the big hombre and his beautiful senora, that they may soon have a hut to shelter them ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... most humorous and effective contradictions of the popular judgment is that episode in Njla, where Kari has to trust to the talkative person whose wife has a low opinion of him. It begins like farce: any one can see that Bjorn has all the manners of the swaggering captain; his wife is a shrew and does not take him at his own valuation. The comedy of Bjorn is that he proves to be something different both from his own Bjorn and his wife's Bjorn. He is the idealist of his own heroism, and believes in himself as a hero. His wife ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... grandmother of yours, and when a man has that there's never any knowing where it will break out, or what dance it will lead him, especially when it comes to this love-making business. You are just as likely as not to lose your head over some little fool or shrew for the sake of her outward favour and make yourself miserable for life. When you pick you a wife please remember that I shall reserve the right to pass ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... would wear her Sabbath face, putting off the mask of the shrew, which hid not from him the angel countenance. To-night he could in very truth call his wife (as the Rabbi in the Talmud did) "not wife, but home." To-night she would be in very truth Simcha—rejoicing. A cheerful warmth glowed at his heart, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 1 Is of the right vse of things indifferent. { 2 Sheweth what comfort Poperie affordeth in time of daunger. The { 3 Is betweene a good Woman and a Shrew. { 4 Is of the conversion of a Harlot. { 5 Is of putting forth Children to Nurse. { 6 Is of a Popish Pilgrimage. { 7 Is ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... There is a rat found only in the Cinnamon Gardens at Colombo, Mus Ceylonus, Kelaart; and a mouse which Dr. Kelaart discovered at Trincomalie, M. fulvidiventris, Blyth, both peculiar to Ceylon. Dr. TEMPLETON has noticed a little shrew (Corsira purpurascens, Mag. Nat. Hist. 1855, p. 238) at Neuera-ellia, not as yet ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... The shrew turns on her heel, truculent: "Would you have me ruin myself by this miserable war? I've about enough of losing money all ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... poet laureate, and professor of Hebrew in Wittenberg: I had finished this work long since, but that inter alia dura et tristia quae misero mihi pene tergum fregerunt, (I use his own words) amongst many miseries which almost broke my back, [Greek: syzygia] ob Xantipismum, a shrew to my wife tormented my mind above measure, and beyond the rest. So shalt thou be compelled to complain, and to cry out at last, with [5816]Phoroneus the lawyer, "How happy had I been, if I had wanted a wife!" If this which I have said will not suffice, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... victim of the agricultural labours of spring, a Shrew-mouse, Field-mouse, Mole, Frog, Adder, or Lizard, will provide us with the most vigorous and famous of these expurgators of the soil. This is the Burying-beetle, the Necrophorus, so different from the cadaveric mob in dress and habits. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... I have got a shrew of a wife shut up there. For by that name I formerly falsely called myself, in order that you might not chance indiscreetly to blab it out of doors, and then my wife, by some means or other, might ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... one, "here is an old dotard shrew to have so goodly a crutch! Use the leg that God hath given you, man, and do not bear ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... couldn't have left New York; but now, now that I am safe, why should I stay here, flatting with a shrew, provoking the Van Dams, to whom I owe some gratitude, wasting my life for a man who—who said he didn't ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... there were who would not take even that hint. One was a shrew-mouse, thirsting for blood, but who got poison instead, and next morning was found running about with his mouth somewhere concealed behind his ear, if one may be pardoned the expression, in consequence; and the other was a carnivorous beetle, in black, purple-shot ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... hard-paced nag, that he might be in time to preach his first sermon at St. Paul's. And was not this, the hastier of his journeys, the most unlucky in his life, seeing that it brought him acquainted with that foul shrew, Joan, his wife, who made his after-days as bitter to him, patient and godly though he were, as wormwood and coloquintida? Are not these goodly examples, Christian and Heathen? Let the Train rush along, you and I will travel ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... husband. Pirkheimer wanted a set of antlers which had belonged to Durer and which he thought the wife should give him after Durer was dead, but Agnes thought otherwise and would not give them up. Then, full of rage, the old man wrote the most outrageous letters about poor Agnes, saying that she was a shrew and had compelled Durer to work himself to death; that she was a miser and had led the artist an awful dance through life. This is the only evidence against her, and that so sane and sensible a man as the artist ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... little body stuffed, and propped him up with wire in the way they thought he looked nicest, and wrote a brand new ticket for him—SOREX MINUTUS. The lesser shrew. The ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... rise to a repugnance which often changes into fear. It is quite wrong to have any dread of them; as a matter of fact, the bird you have just seen is, like all its species, more useful than injurious to man, for it destroys a vast number of small mammals—jerboas, shrew-mice, dormice, and field-mice, which ravage the farmer's crops. You will recollect that the owl, among the ancient Greeks, was the bird of Minerva; with the Aztecs it ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... leave of Heinz, and then rode on with him; but as soon as a portion of the road intervened between her and the countess the young Bohemian exclaimed: "We must certainly try to save Sir Heinz from this disagreeable shrew!" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Darragh, "I've given my wife her first American friend and I've done a shrew stroke of business in nabbing the best business associate I ever ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... contented personage in his early married life. His wife, while not a shrew, had undoubted force of character, but there was not much attrition; and his little daughter was, in John's estimation, the fairest child upon the continent. Personally, he was content with all the world, though his wife was somewhat less so. John ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... Then one day I was talking on natural history subjects to my publisher, and he told me that his son, just returned from Oxford, had developed a keen interest in osteology and was making a collection of mammalian skulls from the whale and elephant and hippopotamus to the harvest- mouse and lesser shrew. This reminded me of the long-forgotten skull, and I told him I had something to send him for his boy's collection, but before sending it I would find out what it was. Accordingly I sent the skull to Mr. Frank E. ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... squire was, for, if the husband went too often to the ale-house, she always laid the fault on the wife, and said, "No man would go out of doors for his comforts, if he had a smiling face and a clean hearth at his home;" whereas the squire maintained the more gallant opinion that "If Gill was a shrew, it was because Jack did not, as in duty bound, stop her mouth with a kiss!" Still, notwithstanding these more obnoxious notions on her part, and a certain awe inspired by the stiff silk gown and the handsome ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the structure which determined the habits of life, and the general place of each being in the economy of nature, would be of very high importance in classification. Nothing can be more false. No one regards the external similarity of a mouse to a shrew, of a dugong to a whale, of a whale to a fish, as of any importance. These resemblances, though so intimately connected with the whole life of the being, are ranked as merely "adaptive or analogical characters;" but to the consideration ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... her most regal array, seemed to have left her dignity downstairs with her opera cloak, for with skirts gathered closely about her, tiara all askew, and face full of fear and anger, she stood upon a chair and scolded like any shrew. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... and in which I had always seen cleanliness and honest comfort. Here I found myself ill-treated, scolded, although it did not seem possible that any blame could be attached to me. At last the old shrew tossed a shirt in my face, and an hour later I saw a new servant changing the sheets, after which we ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... my ecstasies, do, Kind critic, your "tongue has a tang" But—a sage never heeded a shrew In the ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... as 'a Hesper among the dead;' and was imposingly introduced to me, by a quasi near 'relative,' as being only too happy to learn that she was one half of the eternal unit of which I was the complement. I began to be as lordly and self-satisfied as the bewildered sot in the 'Taming of the Shrew.' After exhausting my small stock of writing paper, I concluded to allow my new friends to spend their loquacity on some old college note books, the handiwork of a relative—every other page being blank. The venerable professors of Columbia College would have had their dignity and propriety quite ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... my happy child, ('Twas thus the mother sung;) The shrew, Experience, has not yet With envious gesture flung Aside the enchanted veil which hides Life's pale and dreary look; An angel lurks in every stream, A heaven ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... confidence in any race, and if it had been permissible would have implored the Creator for a new one, but not daring to trouble Him about such trifles, did not know whom to choose, and was thinking that his wealth would be a great trouble to him, when he met in his path a pretty little shrew-mouse of the noble race of shrew-mice, who bear all gules on an azure ground. By the gods! be sure that it was a splendid animal, with the finest tail of the whole family, and was strutting about in the sun like a brave shrew-mouse. It ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... after groaning to think that he was dependent on this shrew and under the thumb of a peasant of the Vosges, was bewitched by her coaxing ways and by a maternal affection that attached itself solely to the physical and material side of life. He was like a woman who forgives ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... thee. Would to heaven That it had pierced thy heart, and thou hadst died! So had the Trojans respite from their toils 465 Enjoy'd, who, now, shudder at sight of thee Like she-goats when the lion is at hand. To whom, undaunted, Diomede replied. Archer shrew-tongued! spie-maiden! man of curls![14] Shouldst thou in arms attempt me face to face, 470 Thy bow and arrows should avail thee nought. Vain boaster! thou hast scratch'd my foot—no more— And I regard it as I might the stroke Of a weak woman ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... foole, thar't a foole, bee rulde by mine host, shew thy self a brave man, of the true seede of Troy, a gallant Agamemnon; tha'st a shrew to thy wife, if shee crosse thy brave humors, kicke thy heele ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... English Mysteries Noah's wife is an untamed shrew, who refuses to enter the ark. In the York collection, Noah being ordered by "Deus" to build his boat, wonders ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... ornament, is bold and vigorous in style, and, when devoted to satire, is keen and vehement. The ballad of "Watty and Meg," though exception may be taken to the moral, is an admirable picture of human nature, and one of the most graphic narratives of the "taming of a shrew" in the language. Allan Cunningham writes: "It has been excelled by none in lively, graphic fidelity of touch: whatever was present to his eye and manifest to his ear, he could paint with a life and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... study of philosophy, for which he had a natural bent. In person he was far from fulfilling the Athenian ideal of beauty, being short of stature, corpulent, with protruding eyes, upturned nose, large mouth, and thick lips. His domestic life was not happy, his wife, Xantippe, being a noted shrew. His failure to provide for the material welfare of his family, though quite natural in a man to whom all material things seemed unessential, must have sorely tried her patience. But Socrates bore her scolding with resignation. Indeed, he seemed ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... died; a happy thing to do, When fifty years united to a shrew. Released, he hopefully for entrance cries Before the gates of Brahma's paradise. "Hast been through purgatory?" Brahma said. "I have been married!" and he hung his head. "Come in! come in! and welcome, too, my son! Marriage and purgatory are as one." In bliss extreme ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... Nipe had time to spare, his victims would be an annoying problem in identification when found, for there would be nothing left but well-gnawed bones. And "time to spare," in this case meant twenty or thirty minutes. The Nipe had, if nothing else, a very efficient digestive tract. He ate like a shrew. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... home again. Thereafter, till such time as she finally goes to live with him, she makes brief visits for festivals or on other social occasions, or to help her mother-in-law, if her assistance is required. If the mother-in-law is ill and requires somebody to wait on her, or if she is a shrew and wants some one to bully, or if she has strict ideas of discipline and wishes personally to conduct the bride's training for married life, she makes the girl come more frequently and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... long, indeed, as Fletcher's grandson kept to Fletcher's level, it was possible that the companionship would continue as harmoniously as it had begun. In the store he found Tom Spade and his wife—an angular, strong-featured woman, in purple calico, who carried off the reputation of a shrew with noisy honours. When he asked for Will, the storekeeper turned from the cash-drawer which he was emptying and nodded toward the half-open door ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... managing of the little shrew," he would say. "Neither man nor devil can bend or break her. If I smashed every bone in her carcass, she would die shrieking hell at ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that some time, since bold Robin Hood ranged through Sherwood Forest, at all events between his days and ours, there dwelt within it, some ten miles away, a worthy knight and his dame. The better half of the knight was a shrew, and led him a wretched life. He had a son, on whom he bestowed all the affection which his wife might have shared. At length death relieved him of his tormentor. The dame died and was buried. He had a wonderfully heavy stone put on ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... I looked for beauty! Pish!—I wasn't such a fool. Nor for temper; I don't care about a bad temper: I could break any woman's heart in two years. What I wanted was to get on in the world. Of course I didn't PREFER an ugly woman, or a shrew; and when the choice offered, would certainly put up with a handsome, good-humored girl, with plenty of money, as any honest ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... means to this class only) of a strapping and handsome footman is a commonplace of satire with eighteenth-century writers, both French and English. It is exercised possibly on both sisters, though the elder is a shrew; certainly on the younger, and also on their elderly bonne, Catherine. But it necessarily leads to trouble. The younger, Mlle. Habert (the curious hiding of Christian names reappears here), wants to retain Jacob in the joint service, and Catherine at least makes ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... without washing, for fear of mouldiness. In Italy they arm the tops of long poles with nails and iron for the purpose, and believe the beating improves the tree; which I no more believe, than I do that discipline would reform a perverse shrew: Those nuts which come not easily out of their husks, should be laid to mellow in heaps, and the rest expos'd in the sun, till the shells dry, else they will be apt to perish the kernel: Some again preserve them in their own leaves, or in a chest made of walnut-tree wood; others ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... not to understand. The forehead of the shrew unknotted a bit, and a look of satisfaction animated ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Lord, you use this dalliance to excuse Your breach of promise to the Porcupine: I should have chid you for not bringing it, But, like a shrew, you first ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... species of mammals treated may have something to do with this, the skins of carnivorous animals bearing exposure better than those of the rodentia—hares, rabbits, squirrels, etc, and insectivora—bats, shrew-mice, and moles—indeed, the latter animals must be skinned almost as soon as they are dead, or the skin turns "green" and goes bad in a very short time. No doubt the vegetable and insect food consumed by these cause fermentation after death, with the resultant putrefaction of ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... a disputatious crew Each evening meet; the sot, the cheat, the shrew; Riots are nightly heard:—the curse, the cries Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies, While shrieking children hold each threat'ning hand, And sometimes life, and sometimes food demand; Boys, in their first-stol'n rags, to swear begin; And girls, who heed not ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger |
