"Snipe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a sea-snipe, or trumpet-fish, but, oho, without a tooth! He made me think of a scorpion that has ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... Christian" poker-player and red-light habitue has the supernal gall to ask us to make him lord over many things,—to accord him political promotion for dereliction of duty! In the name of Balaam's she-ass, does this snub-nosed little snipe suppose that we are all hopeless idiots? You are the state's hired hand, Charlie boy—duly employed to remain at Austin and display your anserine ignorance in the governor's office. The people don't care two whoops in hades what ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... old man is unnecessarily excited. I won't go far, I'll only just bring him down like a snipe. [Takes out his scent-bottle and scents his hands] I've poured out a whole bottle of scent to-day and they still smell... of a dead body. [Pause] ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... that the earth was once covered with water and the sky alone was inhabited, until God sent his only begotten daughter in the form of a kuri, or snipe, to look for dry land. She found a spot, and brought down to it earth, and a creeping plant, which grew and decomposed into worms, and, lo! the worms ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... head, and hurried once more onward to keep the line, to hear soon afterwards scape, scape, uttered shrilly by a snipe which darted off in ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... from a musical point of view, have their wing feathers or tails peculiarly developed and stiffened, and are able to produce with them a strange snapping or cracking sound. Thus several species of snipe make drumming or "bleating" noises—something like the bleat of a goat—with their narrowed tails as they descend in flight.[74] Magpies have a still more curious method of call, by rapping on dry and ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... the road, and saw him mount his bicycle and zig-zag like a snipe down the hill towards Achranich. Then I set off briskly northward. It was clear that the faster I ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... a smoothbore. How can he possibly get a correct aim with "ball" out of a smoothbore, without squinting along the barrel and taking the muzzle-sight accurately? The fact is, that many persons fire so hastily at game that they take no sight at all, as though they were snipe-shooting with many hundred grains of shot in the charge. This will never do for ball-practice, and when the rifle is placed in such hands, the breech-sights naturally bother the eye which is not accustomed ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... of laughter that followed this was not in proportion to the depth but the unexpectedness of the joke, and John Adams went on his way, chuckling at the impudence of what he called the precocious snipe. ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... roses and water. Our fire once started, and the dogs craftily disposed to wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the snipe would gather in winter. ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... MUTTON. To make mutton taste like venison, provide for it the following gravy. Pick a very stale woodcock or snipe, and cut it to pieces, after having removed the bag from the entrails. Simmer it in some meat gravy, without seasoning; then strain it, and serve it ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... shot several snipe and a fat turkey, when, as we were clambering up a bank, being somewhat before my companions, I was not a little surprised to see, within four paces of me, the huge head of a black bear, peering over the tops of the palmetto to ascertain what was approaching. I mechanically raised my rifle to ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... partridge in November, when, with a rush of wings like an embryo whirlwind, he gets up under your feet, and brushes the dew from the underbrush with his whizzing wings. It is not every amateur that can kill woodcock in close cover, or well-grown snipe on a windy day; but there are few, who can do these things, who can kill with both barrels in their first goose-shooting. The size and number of the birds, the wary and cautious manner of their approach, the nice modulations necessary to "call" them successfully, and the reckless sweep ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... on a month's leave,' Charlie wrote, 'shooting; the sport will be mostly snipe and other small game, but there's a chance of tigers. Now, I know you ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... I lie concealed, I see the birds, late banished by my form, Appearing once more in their usual haunts Along the stream; the silver-breasted snipe Twitters and seesaws on the pebbly spots Bare in the channel—the brown swallow dips Its wings, swift darting round on every side; And from yon nook of clustered water-plants, The wood-duck, slaking its rich purple neck, Skims out, displaying through the liquid glass Its ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the excessive roughness of the weather, our passage from Rio Janeiro to the Bay of Conception afforded us but few opportunities to add to our collections. A snipe blown out to sea from the Rio de la Plata, a specimen of Diomedea Albatros at Terra del Fuego, a large Salpa, and a Lepas, were all we were able to obtain. The Bay of Conception presents a rich field to the ornithologist. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... and before the fire, whole hecatombs of fragrant victims, which needed neither frankincense nor myrrh; Clovelly herrings and Torridge salmon, Exmoor mutton and Stow venison, stubble geese and woodcocks, curlew and snipe, hams of Hampshire, chitterlings of Taunton, and botargos of Cadiz, such as Pantagruel himself might have devoured. And Jack eyed them, as a ragged boy eyes the cakes in a pastrycook's window; and thought ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... may be drawn from my paper game bags. In our markets, especially in those of the South, the game is hung unprotected from the hooks on the stalls. Larks strung up by the dozen with a wire through their nostrils, thrushes, plovers, teal, partridges, snipe, in short, all the glories of the spit which the autumn migration brings us, remain for days and weeks at the mercy of the flies. The buyer allows himself to be tempted by a goodly exterior; he makes his purchase ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... trees, where they form their nests. The birds were also very numerous, large flocks of black cockatoos, cockatoo parrots, galaas, budgerygars or grass parrots ('Melopsittacus Undulatus, Gould'), and some grey quail were frequently seen, and on one of the lagoons a solitary snipe was found. Another cow was abandoned to-day. The total day's stage was 8 miles. The party camped in the sandy bed of the river. A little rain was experienced at night. (Camp XXV.) Latitude 16 degrees ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... "Miserable snipe," demands BUMSTEAD, eyeing his trophy gloomily, and giving him a turn or two as though he were a mackerel under inspection, "what are you ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... beholders, should be a profound and an everlasting lesson. "Just look at 'im, 'ee knows what's what—never fear!" he exclaimed now and then, flourishing a hand hard and fleshless like the claw of a snipe. Jimmy, on his back, smiled with reserve and without moving a limb. He affected the languor of extreme weakness, so as to make it manifest to us that our delay in hauling him out from his horrible confinement, and then that night ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... cat would run to the marshes or the fields, and when the fowlers had brought down a blackbird, a snipe, or a lark, she caught it up and presented it to the King with the same message. She repeated this trick again and again, until one morning the King said to her, "I feel infinitely obliged to this Lord Pippo, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... throughout the great states now involved in his meshes, could have any possible bearing upon the question of peace or wax. The world was governed by other influences. The wiles of a cardinal—the arts of a concubine—the snipe-shooting of an ambassador—the speculations of a soldier of fortune—the ill temper of a monk—the mutual venom of Italian houses—above all, the perpetual rivalry of the two great historical families who owned the greater part of Europe between them as their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... renowmed souldier, 240 Epaminondas (as good authors say) Had no more suites then backes, but you two shar'd But one suite twixt you both, when both your studies Were not what meate to dine with, if your partridge, Your snipe, your wood-cocke, larke, or your red hering, 245 But where to begge it; whether at my house, Or at the Guises (for you know you were Ambitious beggars) or at some cookes-shop, T'eternize the cookes trust, and score it up. Dost ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... questions of the fairer sex, I am yet to see why it is allowable to render the female bird a bereaved widow, but totally forbidden to make the male a widower! Or why it is permissible to slay a minute bird such as a snipe, while a titlark is on no account ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... clans of the Iroquois were as follows: Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Tortoise, Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk. (Morgan, 79.) The clans of the Snipe and the Heron are the same designated in an early French document as La famille du Petit Pluvier and La famille du Grand Pluvier. (New York Colonial Documents, IX. 47.) The anonymous author of this document adds a ninth clan, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... deep, clear, green water. He kept hold of the cable, however, and seemed determined not to put himself in harm's way, until a little wicked urchin, who used to wait on the warrant—officers mess, a small meddling snipe of a creature, who got flogged in well—behaved weeks only once, began to taunt my little ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... into the gulf of time as I sit in my grandfather's chair and listen to the tick of my grandfather's clock I see a smaller but more picturesque London, in which I shot snipe in Battersea Fields, and the hoot of the owl in the Green Park was not yet drowned by the hoot of the motor-car—a London of chop-houses, peg-top ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... desolate eerie morasses, The haunts of the snipe and the hern - (I shall question the two upper classes On aquatiles, when we return) - Why, I see on them absolute ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... the ban," she exclaimed. "Look at the Marsh of the Discontented Soul. It fairly swarms with teal and coot, and see the snipe on the sand." She stood up and watched the sandy strip they were nearing. They were a goodly distance out from the shore, but Pepi poled nearer midstream. "The pity of it," she sighed; "but I doubt not the place ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... They saw a light grey fox; and a spotted white and black animal, somewhat larger than the weasel, with short ears, and a long tail. The island abounds with small snipes, similar to the English jack-snipe. The ducks were hatching their eggs, and many wild geese ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... heart spring straight up into my New England mouth; but the foreign snipe wasn't speaking to me, so I sat still and listened for what that young creature ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... the eye of the sportsman—and the Lancashire gentlemen of the sixteenth century were keen lovers of sport—the country had a strong interest. Pendle forest abounded with game. Grouse, plover, and bittern were found upon its moors; woodcock and snipe on its marshes; mallard, teal, and widgeon upon its pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might follow the wolf ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... nide of pheasants, A wisp of snipe, A flight of doves or swallows, A muster of peacocks, A siege of herons, A building of rooks, A brood of grouse, A plump of wild fowl, A stand of plovers, A watch of nightingales, A clattering of choughs, A flock of geese, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... I mine own gained knowledge should profane Were I to waste myself with such a snipe But for my sport ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... from the days when he wore knee pants, and his keen observing eyes and knowledge of the habits of wild life were a revelation to Billy. This part of the country was too settled for large game, but Billy kept Saxon supplied with squirrels and quail, cottontails and jackrabbits, snipe and wild ducks. And they learned to eat roasted mallard and canvasback in the California style of sixteen minutes in a hot oven. As he became expert with shotgun and rifle, he began to regret the deer and the mountain lion he had missed ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... unpretending hotel, the cookery would not discredit the Hotel de Bristol itself, everything being of the best. I was served with a little bird which I ate with great innocence, and no little relish, supposing it to be a snipe, but, on asking what it was, I found, to my horror, the wretches had served up a thrush! I am sorry to say a tremendous slaughter of migratory birds goes on at this time of the year; not only thrushes, but larks, linnets, and other sweet little songsters supplying the general dinner ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... biped, quadruped. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae[Lat]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock[obs3], duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. [domesticated mammals] horse &c. (beast of burden) 271; cattle, kine[obs3], ox; bull, bullock; cow, milch cow, calf, heifer, shorthorn; sheep; lamb, lambkin[obs3]; ewe, ram, tup; pig, swine, boar, hog, sow; steer, stot[obs3]; tag, teg[obs3]; bison, buffalo, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... divers, sawbills, black ducks, and teal; but the prince of ducks (the canvas-back) is not there. In spring and autumn the whole country becomes musical with the wild cries and shrill whistle of immense hosts of plover of all kinds—long legs, short legs, black legs, and yellow legs—sandpipers and snipe, which are assisted in their noisy concerts by myriads of frogs. The latter are really the best songsters in Hudson Bay [see note 2]. Bitterns are also found in the marshes; and sometimes, though rarely, a solitary crane finds its way to ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... one be more entirely lost than I? When the gun fired, how should I dare to go down to the boats among those fiends, still smoking from their crime? Would not the first of them who saw me wring my neck like a snipe's? Would not my absence itself be an evidence to them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? It was all over, I thought. Good-bye to the Hispaniola; good-bye to the squire, the doctor, and the captain! There was nothing left for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with growing prosperity. Visions of a title hovered in his brain, and being a man of resource, he hit upon an ingenious method of converting them into realities. Close to his house there was an extensive bil (marsh) peopled in season by swarms of wild-duck, teal and snipe. It was visited occasionally by Europeans from Calcutta, who are always on the alert for a day's sport, but they were inconvenienced by the total lack of accommodation. So Samarendra built a neat bungalow, equipped it with European furniture, and placed an old Khansama (Mohammadan butler) in ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... still keeping watch, when Harpstenah was called by her mother to assist her. The father's morning meal was prepared early, for he was going out to hunt. Wild duck, pigeons, and snipe, could be had in abundance; the timid grouse, too, could be roused up on the prairies. Larger game was there, too, for the deer flew swiftly past, and had even stopped to drink on the opposite shore of ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... Birds abound on Exmoor; snipe and woodcock, partridge and black-game, plover and wild-duck. Nothing could more exactly express the loneliness and wildness of this great open country than, when you are walking solitary, to hear the harsh, melancholy cry of the bittern ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... These sea chests being made of cheap materials, have seldom been preserved. There would appear to be in addition to the various chests already named, a hanging chest. In 1737 Sir William Pepperell wrote to England for "4 dozen pair Snipe bills to hang small chissts." This may possibly refer to snipe-bill hinges to ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the young officers, and is not the less inclined to be so of one who is so dear and near to you. I wish he would have stayed longer, and hope that he shall come again. We have not much to offer in the way of amusement, but in January and February there is good snipe shooting. ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... clash, telling that I was utterly incapable of any such thing, being a man of a guileless heart, and a spiritual simplicity, that would be ornamental in a child. We then had the latheron summoned before the session, and was not long of making her confess that the father was Nichol Snipe, Lord Glencairn's gamekeeper; and both her and Nichol were obligated to stand in the kirk: but Nichol was a graceless reprobate, for he came with two coats, one buttoned behind him, and another buttoned before him, and two wigs ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... Reybold. I suppose you do not have the snipe in the North. It is the aristocratic fowl of the Old Dominion. Its bill is only shorter than its legs, and it will not brown at the fire, to perfection, unless upon a silver spit. Ah! when the Jedge and myself were young, before his land troubles overtook ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... circumstances was watched. Cats and monkeys were most carefully scrutinised. At all moments Darwin seized upon and recorded the passing emotion and its associated movements. "I remember once seeing a boy who had just shot his first snipe on the wing, and his hands trembled to such a degree from delight, that he could not for some time reload his gun;" an instance of an ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... like coveys of snipe in a bog, rose shoals of fish, of the genus monoptera, which have no other fins but their tail. I recognized the Javanese, a real serpent two and a half feet long, of a livid colour underneath, and which might easily be mistaken for a conger ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... his female friends. Sir William Temple's wife, Dorothea, became Dorinda; Esther Johnson, Stella; Hester Vanhomrigh, Vanessa; Lady Winchelsea, Ardelia; while to Lady Acheson he gave the nicknames of Skinnybonia, Snipe, and Lean. But all was taken by them in good part; for his rather dictatorial ways were softened by the fascinating geniality and humour which he knew so well how to employ when he used to "deafen them ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... for the West, and at daybreak I was ready to observe the beautiful country through which we passed. I had made no provision for breakfast, but one of my fellow travellers, who came from Tokio, had the courtesy to offer me two snipe with bacon, which tasted ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... plenty; wild ducks that swam across the lake at terrific speed as we approached; plover-snipe, tiny gray birds with long bills and white breasts, feeding along the edge of the lake peacefully at our very feet; an eagle carrying a trout to her nest. Brown squirrels came into the tents and ate our chocolate and wandered over us fearlessly at night. Bears left ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... seems to indicate a serious turn of mind. He is sending to Murray Bay The Lady of the Lake and The Lay of the Last Minstrel whose middle-aged author was just turning from poetry to win unprecedented success as a writer of fiction. In the spring he goes out shooting for snipe nearly every day; and he sends to Murray Bay for his fishing tackle. When a fellow officer falls ill he sends him down to Murray Bay ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... BORKIN. Roast snipe are good too, but they must be cooked right. They should first be cleaned, then sprinkled with bread crumbs, and roasted until they will crackle between ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... drawback to the comfort of a hunter in wild countries, it is quite impossible to avoid the difficulty, as there is no rifle that will combine the requirements for a great variety of game. As the wild goose demands B B shot and the snipe No. 8, in like manner the elephant requires the heavy bullet, and the deer is contented ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... of long distances by windy roads, with scarcely ever a village as a focus for gossip, news flew fast. The next morning Ned Cromarty had set out with his gun towards a certain snipe marsh, but while he was still on the high road he met a man on a bicycle. The man had heard strange news and stopped to pass it on, and the next moment Ned was hurrying as fast as his long legs could take ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... unconvinced, so we went on. The rushes were shining in the moonlight, and one flake of mist was lying on the river. We looked into one bog-hole, and then into another, where a snipe rose and terrified us. We listened: a cow was chewing heavily in the shadow of a bush, two dogs were barking on the side of a hill, and there was a cart far away upon the road. Our teeth began to chatter with the cold of the bog air and the loneliness of the night. I could see ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... of the birds of Tasmania to distinguish them from those of other countries; there are, however, some peculiar forms, but they are not of such a nature as to strike the eye. Many of the birds of Europe are represented here, as the hawks, owls, swallows, snipe, ducks, &c., and not a few have received English names, from the real or fancied resemblance which they bear to their British prototypes, as the magpies, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... A wretch like poor Nancy, So teazed day and night By a Dean and a Knight. To punish my sins, Sir Arthur begins, And gives me a wipe, With Skinny and Snipe:[2], His malice is plain, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... French furniture, so identical are they in every detail with the carved woodwork of Picau, of Cauner, or of Nilson, who designed the flamboyant frames of the time of Louis XV. Others have more individuality. In his mirror frames he introduced a peculiar bird with a long snipe-like beak, and rather impossible wings, an imitation of rockwork and dripping water, Chinese figures with pagodas and umbrellas; and sometimes the illustration of Aesop's fables interspersed with scrolls and flowers. By dividing the glass unequally, by the ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... euer make my Foole, my purse: For I mine owne gain'd knowledge should prophane If I would time expend with such Snipe, But for my Sport, and Profit: I hate the Moore, And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets She ha's done my Office. I know not if't be true, But I, for meere suspition in that kinde, Will do, as if for Surety. He holds ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the days gone by, when my naked feet were tripped By the honey-suckle's tangles where the water-lilies dipped, And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink, And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry And the splashing of the swimmer, in ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... man of Bombay, Who pulled at a pipe made of clay, But a long-legged snipe Flew away with the pipe Which vexed that ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... The American Snipe has some of the nocturnal habits of the Woodcock, and the same habit of soaring at twilight, when he performs a sort of musical medley, which Audubon has very graphically described in the following passage:—"The birds are met with in meadows and low grounds, and, by being on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of its plumage. But nowhere could a spot be found where the ship's boat could approach without extreme danger. The water was shallow everywhere, and the breakers were heavy. Fish of many kinds—more especially mullets,—geese, snipe, teal, and other birds of excellent flavour, were caught ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... from a day after snipe and teal, he found himself instinctively allotting the pick of his 'bag' to Miss Arden; just a complimentary attention; the sort of thing she would appreciate. Having refused a ride with her because of this outing, it seemed ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... follern' 'em up. Enny man that'll do that is little enough to crawl through a knot-hole without rubbing his clothes." Says I: "I suppose you made her think the moon rose in your head and set in your heels. I daresay you acted foolish enough round her to sicken a snipe, and if you makes fun of her now to please me, I let you know you have got ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... dining tete-a-tete with Keene on the previous evening after a hard day's snipe shooting, and bore evident traces about him of a heavy night—a fact which he lost no time in alluding to, not without a certain pride, like the man in Congreve's play, who exults in having "been drunk in excellent company." "We had a very big drink," he ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... but had no rats till lately that an American vessel brought them. There is a rabbit-warren on the north-east of the island, belonging to the Duke of Argyle. Young Col intends to get some hares, of which there are none at present. There are no black-cock, muir-fowl, nor partridges; but there are snipe, wild-duck, wild-geese, and swans, in winter; wild-pidgeons, plover, and great number of starlings; of which I shot some, and found them pretty good eating. Woodcocks come hither, though there is not a tree upon the island. There ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Nor were the old familiar ones away—Flicker, Sapsucker, Hairy Woodpecker, Kingfisher, Least Flycatcher, Alder Flycatcher, Robin, Crow, and Horned Owl were here to mingle their noises with the stranger melodies and calls of Lincoln Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Snipe, Rusty Blackbird, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... surrounding villages the creatures use the most strange disguises. A dead old gentleman robs the cabbages of his own garden in the shape of a large rabbit. A wicked sea-captain stayed for years inside the plaster of a cottage wall, in the shape of a snipe, making the most horrible noises. He was only dislodged when the wall was broken down; then out of the solid plaster ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... youngest brother, James Edward, born 1696, became the famous philanthropist, General Oglethorpe, governor of Georgia, patron of the Wesleys, and, in extreme old age, the 'beau' of Hannah More, and the gentleman who remembered shooting snipe on the ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... to convey any idea of the pleasant family life in that isolated spot tucked away amongst the Tyrone mountains; of the long tramps over the bogs after duck and snipe; of the struggles with big salmon; of the sailing-matches on the lakes; of the grouse and the woodcocks; of the theatrical performances, the fun and jollity, and all the varied incidents which make country life so fascinating to those ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... well! He looks that peanut headed snipe straight in the eye all the time after that and takes what's comin' to him without turnin' a hair. It was "Yes, Mr. Piddie," and "No, Mr. Piddie"; but nothin' else. And the cooler and politer he was, ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... on exhibition in 47. There was "Shorty," for instance. "Shorty" was a jolly, ugly open-handed, four-eyed little snipe of a roughneck machinist who had lost "in the line of duty" two fingers highly useful in his trade. In consequence he was now, after the generous fashion of the I.C.C., on full pay for a year without work, providing he did not leave the Zone. And while "Shorty," like the ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... or Lesser Tell tale sometimes called Yellow-leg Snipe, and Little Cucu, inhabits the whole of North America, nesting in the cold temperate and subarctic districts of the northern continent, migrating south in winter to Argentine and Chili. It is much rarer in the western than eastern province of North America, and is only accidental in Europe. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... him enough, an' that girl just sparks around an' acts real entertainin', evenin's. I shouldn't wonder, with such a smart ma, if she caught a beau. I do wish, Janet, since you ain't got no one but Billy,—an' every one knows he's got 'bout as much gumption as a snipe,—I do wish you could land one of these boarders. They must be real ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... fragrance in the spiced vinegar heating for pickles, a reminder of winesap and rambo in the boiling cider, while the newly opened bottles of grape juice filled the house with the tang of Concord and muscadine. It seemed to me I never got nicely fixed where I could take a sly dip in the cake dough or snipe a fat raisin from the mincemeat but Candace would say: "Don't you suppose the backlog is halfway down ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... art, literature, and life. But, as I have remarked elsewhere in this volume, the Strindbergs and Wildes and Gorkis are having their day in Germany just now, and beneath this again is this large distribution of the lawless and sooty literature, frankly intended as a debauch for the gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the coarse, and in no line squeamish, Rabelais wrote that, "Science sans conscience n'est que ruine ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... others, was in a quiver of excitement. He stumbled along, shifting Sid Northcutt's rifle from one shoulder to the other, and listening open-mouthed to Jack Carter's directions. "You know, Bud," said that young gentleman, gravely, "it ain't every man that gets a chance to go on a snipe-hunt. And if ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... ecstasy of all the dogs, and, indeed he was surprised to find himself fully alive to the delight of forcing his way through a furze-brake, hearing the ice in the peaty bogs crackle beneath his feet; getting a good shot, bringing down his bird, finding snipe, and diving into the depths of the long, winding valleys and dingles, with the icicle-hung banks of their streamlets. He came home through the village at about half-past three o'clock, sending the keeper to leave some of his game at the parsonage, while he went himself ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eleven days in all carrying the Pipe to the Miami villages, and though they fed us well at the towns where we stopped, we were as thin as snipe at the end of it. It was our first important running, you see, and we wished to make a record. We followed the main trails which followed the watersheds. Between these, we plunged down close-leaved, sweating tunnels of ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... shoot snipe from horseback," I said sharply. "You're mixing up shooting and hunting, my lad. And in any case there are reasons, special reasons, why I ride Toby—reasons ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... frequently, one could not help noticing these things, and remembering them when reading Lyell's "Geology," or Maury's book on the sea, or the innumerable treatises bearing on the same interesting questions. Whether en route for the rabbit-ground, or looking for water-fowl, or later for snipe, I never passed by without finding something, often a fragment of fossil washed from the gravel or sand by ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... patience. I had never practised shooting with ball; I had frightened a few snipe, and wounded a few partridges, but that was the extent of my experience. I knew, however, that I could not by any possibility shoot worse than every body else had done, and might by accident ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... motionless, his pipe unlighted, his gun beside him, a spaniel worked below in the sere sedges at the water's margin. Presently the dog barked, a moor-hen splashed, half flying, half swimming, across the larger lake, and a snipe got up and jerked crookedly away on the wind. The dog stood with one fore-paw lifted and the water dripping along his belly. He waited for a crack and puff of smoke and the thud of a bird falling into the water or the underwood. But his master did not fire; he did ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... to a crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the corner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the neighbours and the police coming down ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... and kind. All round us, like a hedge, is the glossy green foliage, sometimes brushing our boat on either side. And we scare up multitudes of water fowl, unused to such invasion of their solitudes. Wild duck, teal, grey snipe, shags, and many kinds that no one on board knows the names of, start from under our very bows. Not gay plumaged birds, though, for the most part; only now and then a pair of kingfishers, flashing green and orange as ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... God in the Highest, and on earth, peace and goodwill towards men.' So no great shells were fired into the Boer entrenchments at dawn, and the hostile camps remained tranquil throughout the day. Even the pickets forbore to snipe each other, and both armies attended divine service in the morning and implored Heaven's blessing on their righteous causes. In the afternoon the British held athletic sports, an impromptu military tournament, and a gymkhana, all of which caused much merriment and diversion, and the Boers ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... a bold sportsman may find game to his liking, and willing natives to guide him in his search after tigers, wild hogs, the huge boa, deer, snipe, and quail. In pursuit of the last, too many a fever is caught, through the imprudence of young men in staying out too late in the day, and in keeping on their wet and soiled clothes and shoes during their ride or drive home. A little attention to such apparent ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... (the only man who has asked me) was in the smoking-room the night I was fool enough to tell that Snipe and Rhinoceros Story of PEYTON's in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... Mr. Reybold. I suppose you do not have the snipe in the Nawth. It is the aristocratic fowl of the Old Dominion. Its bill is only shorter than its legs, and it will not brown at the fire, to perfection, unless upon a silver spit. Ah! when the Jedge and myself were young, before his ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... was in a fine rage. A situation, unique in his forty years of experience as a lumber and shipping magnate, was confronting him, with the prospects exceedingly bright for Cappy playing a role analogous to that of the simpleton who holds the sack on a snipe-hunting expedition. He summoned Mr. Skinner into his private office, and glared at the latter over the rims of his spectacles. "Skinner," he said solemnly, "there's the very devil ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... honeysuckle, lupines—not yet quite in bloom—the sweetbrier and increasing quantities of the wild rose gave life to the always changing scene. Wild game of every sort was unspeakably abundant—deer and turkey in every bottom, thousands of grouse on the hills, vast flocks of snipe and plover, even numbers of the green parrakeets then so numerous along that latitude. The streams abounded in game fish. All Nature was easy ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... his advantage, and raises his gun, quick as for the shooting of a snipe. The crack comes; and, simultaneous with it, Richard Darke is seen to drop out of his saddle, and fall face foremost on the plain— his horse, with a wild ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... the footpath on the bank and walks on through the rye; then comes the sugarcane field and he disappears into the narrow lane cutting through the tall stems of sugarcanes; then he reaches the open meadow where the cricket chirps and where there is not a single man to be seen, only the snipe wagging their tails and poking at the mud with their bills. I can feel him coming nearer and nearer and ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... and astir with life. After a short rest they proceeded towards Lake Winnipeg, and soon were moving slowly down its low-lying eastern shore. Here they had their first glimpse of the prairie country, with its green carpet of grass. Out from the water's edge grew tall, lank reeds, the lurking place of snipe and sand-piper. Doubtless, in the brief night-watches, they listened to the shrill cry of the restless lynx, or heard the yapping howl of the timber wolf as he slunk {53} away among the copses. But presently the boats were gliding ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... will hunt the loamy swale And trail The snipe, their cunning wiles o'ercoming; And oft will flush the bevied quail, And hear the partridge slowly drumming Dull ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... riding-cloak around him and settled down squarely into the saddle. The desolate plains with the crying wind held the loneliness of the damned. Occasionally a wolf howled in the distance, or a wandering snipe cried as it lost itself among the stiffening reeds about the swampy levels, and through all he could hear the hoarse roar of the Kofn in flood, as it rushed down from its rocky bed, swollen with the melted snows of yesterday. Another interval passed while the gray outlook changed to ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... Elijah's day, July 20th—I came to stay with my brother and did not find him at home: he had been ordered off for a whole week somewhere. I did not want to go back to Petersburg; I sauntered about the neighbouring marshes, killed a brace of snipe and spent the evening with Tyeglev under the shelter of an empty barn where he had, as he expressed it, set up his summer residence. We had a little conversation but for the most part drank tea, smoked pipes and talked sometimes ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... priests' holes had offered to the persecuted clergy of old times the choice between being grilled erect behind a chimney, or of lying flat in a chamber about the size of a coffin near the roof, where the martyr Jesuits lived on suction, like the snipe, absorbing soup from a long straw passed through a wall into ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... prey or food requires a certain aim or action in one direction, have bills quite straight in form, as the heron and snipe; while those which are intended to come in contact with hard substances, as breaking shells, have the bills gently curved, in order that the shock may not be communicated to ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... there were nests, and where there were nests there were eggs. The birds congregated here in such numbers, because rocks provided them with thousands of cavities for their dwelling-places. In the distance a few herons and some flocks of snipe indicated the ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... sat there in silence, Snipe Man, a little old fellow, came to them and asked, "Where do ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... like a wild snipe flying up into a birch-tree, and again flew on in a straight line. Instead of grass, we caught glimpses of tree-tops just under our feet. It was strange to see the forest from above, its bristling back lighted up by the moon. It looked like some huge slumbering wild beast, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... low-lying islands of the Ellice, Kings-mill and Gilbert Groups, a species of snipe are very plentiful. On the islands which enclose the noble lagoon of Funafuti in the Ellice Group, they are to be met with in great numbers, and in dull, rainy weather, an ordinarily good shot may get thirty or forty in a few hours. One day, accompanied by a native lad, I set ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... are different. They are just as courageous, but they take a wheelbarrow and push it from New York to San Francisco, or they starve forty days and forty nights and then eat watermelon and lecture, or they eat 800 snipe in 800 years, or get an inspiration and kill somebody ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at the top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock, 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 ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... was not coarse, but rich, and of excellent flavour—and so fat that the flakes fell into crumbs when fried. This day a bird of a new species was shot by Roach. It was of a swallow kind, about the size of a snipe, of a leaden colour, with dark head ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell |
