"Swarm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hills of Jarvis lies a village of some two hundred wooden houses, where an isolated population lives like a swarm of bees in a forest, without increasing or diminishing; vegetating happily, while wringing their means of living from the breast of a stern Nature. The almost unknown existence of the little hamlet is readily accounted ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... that surrounded me, as to absent myself from the party. So, after snatching an interval of rest, to relieve my aching head, I dressed myself with unusual care, and repaired to the brilliantly lighted rooms. They were already filled, and murmuring like a swarm of bees, although, as one of the guests remarked, there were more drones than workers in the hive. I was now no drone, certainly, and that was some consolation. When I entered, Laura was conversing with a group of dashing ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... lean, lank, saffron-hued, erst-while clay-eaters have received such an unromantic name has been variously accounted for. Some say the name was suggested by the fact that when not otherwise employed, they are constantly cracking the lice which swarm in their never-combed hair; others ascribe it to the frequent cracking of their rifles and long whip-lashes as they pursue their game or drive their cattle. An ex-slave of one of them tells me that they are called "Crackers," because they are all ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... the prosaic outer world by the vast and towering masses of Skiddaw and Blencathara—a world of one's own, as it were, a world steeped in romance and poetry, dear to the souls of poets. There are many such honeymoons every summer; indeed, the mountain paths, the waterfalls and lakes swarm with happy lovers; and this land of hills and waters seems to have been made expressly for honeymoon travellers; yet never went truer lovers wandering by lake and torrent, by hill and valley, than those two whose brief honeymoon was now drawing to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the Oxford carrier had brought the news that the players of the Lord High Admiral were coming up to Stratford out of London from the south, to play on May-day there; and this was what had set the town to buzzing like a swarm. For there were in England then but three great companies, the High Chamberlain's, the Earl of Pembroke's men, and the stage-players of my Lord Charles Howard, High Admiral of the Realm; and the day on which they ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... swarm of visitors," Betty said. "I know the minute I get on that stage I'll forget every one of my lines," she added, as she looked critically at herself in the glass. She was playing the part of Shylock, and her long ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... where there had once been marshy ground. Gnats are, however, less common generally—exclusive, of course, of those places where there is much water. All things are local, insects particularly so. On clay soils the flies in summer are most trying; black flies swarm on the eyes and lips, and in the deep lanes cannot be kept off without a green bough. It requires the utmost patience to stay there to observe anything. In a place where the soil was sand, with much heath, on elevated ground, there was no annoyance from flies. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... smiled a little wanly. His breath was still coming hard. Presently they would scour the lane—when they found that their quarry was not in the house. What a racket they were making! The whole district seemed roused like a swarm of ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... neck it broke loose again. De Yankees had been puttin' poison grease on the bullets. Dat was de reason de wound wouldn't get well. Dey feared Mars Sam goin' to die an' a short time atter dat letter come I sure knowed it was so. One night just erbout dusk dark, de screech owls, dey come in er swarm an' lit in de big trees in de front of de house. A mist of dust come up an' de owls, dey holler an' carry on so dat old mars get he gun an' shot it off to scare dem erway. Dat was a sign, Boss, dat somebody gwine to die. I just knowed it was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... "squawk" which he intends for a song. And it is a song, and a very successful one, for a visit to the same pond a week or two later, will show you—not the Cat's-eye or his mate, they have gone a-tunnelling—but a swarm of little black pin-like tadpole Cat's-eyes, born and bred in the glorious sunlight but doomed and ready, if they live, to follow in their parents' tracks far underground. Sure proof that the song did win a mate, and was crowned ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... suddenly a real benevolent fairy, in a bright brick- red gown, were to rise in the midst of the red bricks, and to tap the heap of them with her wand, and say, "Bricks, bricks, to your places!" and then you saw in an instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red bees, and—you have been used to see bees make a honeycomb, and to think that strange enough, but now you would see the honeycomb make itself!—You want to ask something, Florrie, by the ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... P. M. the chapel-bell rings, and at once the huts swarm. We follow the crowd. They enter the chapel by a door at the end nearest their dens, and seat themselves, the women at the farther, the men at the hither extreme, all facing a raised desk at the middle of one side. Behind them, opposite this pulpit, is an organ. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... I? I was never up-stairs in the house in my life," said Maria. Again she gazed away from Lily at the snow-covered hills. Her face wore an expression of forced patience. It really seemed to her as if she were stung by a swarm of platitudes ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Bruce to turn. Instantly he raised his rifle, and pulled the trigger. The result was merely a snap. The gun had not been loaded. He snatched Kathlyn's rifle, but this, too, was useless. The brigands yelled exultantly and began to swarm up the ragged cliff. Bruce flung aside the gun and turned his attention to a boulder. Halfway up the chasm had a width which was little broader than the shoulders of an ordinary man. He waited till he saw ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... liberty. If we find nothing obnoxious in universal regimentation; if we feel that life would have as much savor when all of us were told off to our tasks, or at least circumscribed and supervised in our activities, by a swarm of officials carrying out the benevolent edicts of a paternal Government; if we hold as of no account the exercise of individual choice and the development of individual potentialities which are the very lifeblood of the existing order of ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... cottonwoods showered silken floss till the cabins and grass were white; the birds returned to the oasis; the sun kissed warm color into the cherries, and the distant noise of the river seemed like the humming of a swarm of bees. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... slopes, broken up by an occasional conical peak detaching itself from the mass, and tinted from base to summit with richly-variegated hues, in which deep purple, yellow, green, grey, and crimson by turns predominate. Dotting these slopes like a swarm of huge ants are a crowd of men, women, and children, intent on stripping the vines of their luscious-looking fruit. The men are mostly in blue blouses, and the women in closely-fitting neat white caps, or wearing old-fashioned unbleached straw-bonnets of the ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... most approved, she chose them all, Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan, But well compensating her sickly looks With never cloying odours, early and late, Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods, That scarce a loaf appears, mezereon too, Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset With blushing wreaths, investing every spray, Althaea with the ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... stump, and began to run, screaming and brushing away the bees, that still followed him, buzzing in his hair, and stinging him where they could. He did not stop until he had run half across the fallow, and the last of the angry swarm that pursued him had ceased ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... were open, and as John entered he was aware of an odour of drugs and saw Dr. McGregor sound asleep in an armchair, a red silk handkerchief over his bald head, and a swarm of disappointed flies hovering above him. In the back room the clink and rattle of a pestle and mortar ceased as ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... knife cut the hair rope which bound the captive white man and he was free. There was no time for thanks or congratulations. Sax had stopped swinging the luringa; the voice of Tumana had ceased. Already the natives were reassembling, and it was only a matter of moments before they would swarm down on the rescue party, outnumbering it by fifteen to one. A flight of spears fell from the rocks above, doing no harm, but warning the white men ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... in her lap, got a seat. But Ravenel and Colonel Proudfit had to stand up beside Fannie and Barbara. Thus it fell out that when everyone laughed at a moonshiner's upsetting on a pile of loose telegraph poles, Ravenel, looking out from over the swarm of heads, saw something which moved him to ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... knot it, and the log-fire lights up as magnificent a set of venerable heads as painter or sculptor would desire to see,—heads, full of—what? They have no history, their traditions are scarcely worthy the name, they claim descent from a dog, their houses and persons swarm with vermin, they are sunk in the grossest ignorance, they have no letters or any numbers above a thousand, they are clothed in the bark of trees and the untanned skins of beasts, they worship the bear, the sun, moon, fire, water, and ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... earn sufficient in three or four days, to support themselves throughout the week. During the remainder of the time, the sober and industrious man employs himself in building a house; but I am sorry to say that the generality repair to the vast number of public houses that swarm on every side, and get drunk. This is evident from the annual revenue derived from rum, which in 1839 was 190,000 pounds, amounting to more than seven gallons for every ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... appears they swarm round him as he makes his way into the middle of the grass plot where the food ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... of the repast, appeared six violin-players, resplendent in tinseled garb; also nine nymphs of a marvelous beauty; a swarm of musicians accompanied them, disguised ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... of the week was the visit of President Lincoln to the city of Richmond. He had been tarrying at City Point, holding daily consultations with General Grant, visiting the army and the iron-clads at Aiken's Landing,—thus avoiding the swarm of place-hunters that darkened the doors of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... start at once, you'll be there by daylight if not before. That will get you back here by nine or ten o'clock. I don't want him taken to San Mateo; that would stir up a swarm of inquiries and might even send some of the curious up to the spot. Let the trail get cold, so to speak. People aren't half as curious about a thing three or four days after it happens as at ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... is sure of his fate, the man who can look with unfailing eye at the morrow? Does he who toils on the field know that rain is not under his power, and that not he shows its way to the locust swarm? Does the merchant who gives his wealth to the winds, which come he knows not whence, and his life to the waves on that abyss which swallows all, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... Like a queen she stood,—behind her towered a giant palm, and at her feet were strewn roses and lotus-lilies. On either side of her, seated on the ground, were young girls gorgeously clad and veiled to the eyes in the Egyptian fashion, and as the staring, heated and impetuous swarm of "travelling" English and Americans came face to face with her in her marvellous beauty, they were for the moment stricken spellbound, and could scarcely summon up the necessary assurance to advance and take the hand she outstretched to them in welcome. She appeared ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... you might try," said Daphne. "We want them to swarm awfully, and they might actually swarm on you. ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... drowned in the chorus of acclamation. Now Borrow complained that he had had the honour of being rancorously abused by every unmanly scoundrel, every sycophantic lacquey, and every political and religious renegade in the kingdom. His fury was that of an angry bull tormented by a swarm of gnats. His worst passions were aroused; his most violent prejudices confirmed. His literary zeal, never extremely alert, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... there sounded a rush of feet—and down the gallery came a swarm of the strangest beings any of them had ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... become one of the ship's company, I told him to go aloft, to give him some experience before we got to sea. "What, to the top of them big sticks that grow out of the ship? They be plaguey high, Master Hurricane!" said he, looking up doubtingly, at the same time preparing to swarm up by the foremast itself. When he found that he might go up by the shrouds he seemed to think it a very easy matter, and before many days were over he could go aloft as quickly as any lad in the ship. I got an old seaman, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... They take as much genuine pleasure in building a barricade as they do in cutting a throat or shoving a friend into the Seine. It is these savage-looking ruffians who storm the splendid halls of the Tuileries occasionally, and swarm into Versailles when a king is to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... at the flask of water. "Three drops are enough," he thought; "I will just cool my lips." He was lifting the flask to his lips when he saw something beside him in the path. It was a small dog, and it seemed to be dying of thirst. Its tongue was out, its legs were lifeless, and a swarm of black ants were crawling about its lips. It looked piteously at the bottle which Hans held. Hans raised the bottle, drank, kicked at the animal, and ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... a confederation of self-governing republics and will seek the privilege of being admitted within its safe and happy bosom, transferring with themselves, by a peaceful and healthy process of incorporation, spacious regions of virgin and exuberant soil, which are destined to swarm with the fast growing and fast-spreading ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... long elliptical or parabolic orbits round the sun at great velocities. They seem to consist partly of glowing vapours, especially hydrogen, and partly of meteoric stones. 'Shooting stars,' that is to say, stones which fall to the earth, are known to swarm in their wake, and are believed to be as plentiful in space ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... mighty sea has also in its arctic region, that is in the north, a great island named Scandza, from which my tale (by God's grace) shall take its beginning. For the race whose origin you ask to know burst forth like a swarm of bees from the midst of this island and came into the land of Europe. But how or in what wise we shall explain hereafter, if ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... called. Every German sniper within range sent shot upon shot after the flying figure. The enemy's trenches took up the hunt and fairly blazed with rifle and machine gun fire. The bullets hummed in Throckmorton's ears like a swarm of savage hornets. They snarled and bit at the turf about his feet like a pack ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... a number of scaling ladders, with stout ropes and hooks. The first who got up with the ladders were to fix on the hooks, so that the others might swarm up, and we might ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... a good one; the fuel oak and ash and beech. The flames made a silky, rustling sound; now and then a coal fell with a softly agreeable crash and a swarm of golden sparks whirled up the chimney, snapping, scintillating, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... them twenty. Paris is divided into Sixty Districts; each of which (assembled in some church, or the like) is choosing two Electors. Official deputations pass from District to District, for all is inexperience as yet, and there is endless consulting. The streets swarm strangely with busy crowds, pacific yet restless and loquacious; at intervals, is seen the gleam of military muskets; especially about the Palais, where Parlement, once more on duty, sits ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... fields and orchards, as if nature had engaged to make an expression of the iniquity of the place. Suddenly death came upon Lizon. A pit was dug near his tavern and he was placed in a coffin, but as the box was lowered it was felt to grow lighter, while there poured from it a swarm of fat and filthy snakes. The fog that overspread the earth that morning seemed to blow by in human forms, the grave rolled like a wave after it had been covered, and after darkness fell a blue will-o'-the-wisp danced over it. A storm set ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... resembles the worse parts of the Welsh mountains. But scanty as the pasture appears, about six hundred sheep, many goats, a few cows and horses, all thrive well on it. Of native animals, land-crabs and rats swarm in numbers. Whether the rat is really indigenous, may well be doubted; there are two varieties as described by Mr. Waterhouse; one is of a black colour, with fine glossy fur, and lives on the grassy summit, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the Slav swarm, into the range of the German trenches, with wild yells and never a waver. Russian battle flags—the first I had seen—appeared in the front of the charging ranks. The advance line thinned and ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... way here, boys, and let's see what's the matter with this damned bell-cord," he continued, elbowing his way through the swarm about the door. Once fairly within, he threw a quick glance along the aisle. The left sections of the car were deserted. Out of almost every window on the right side poked a head and pair of blue ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... virtue only; but to have been a good hunter, brave in war, &c., are the merits which entitle them to this paradise, which they, and the other American natives, figure as a delightful country, blessed with perpetual spring, whose forests abound with game, whose rivers swarm with fish, where famine is never felt, and uninterrupted plenty shall be enjoyed ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... of the hospitals, for the infinite details necessary for an army in need of everything. Misery and privations increase sickness, and enfeeble the army continually; whilst, on the other side, the bands that swarm on all sides seize every day upon small parties or isolated men, who venture into the open country with extreme imprudence, notwithstanding the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... had given a signal to half the population of West Cornwall, the roads were beginning to swarm with people. They poured down from the north and up from the south, they spread over the fields and lined the hedges. They carried no weapons, they made no demonstration of anger. There was no attempt to hustle or even to jeer at the ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... find Arrowhead Village a good deal changed since you left it. We are discovered by some of those over-rich people who make the little place upon which they swarm a kind of rural city. When this happens the consequences are striking,—some of them desirable and some far otherwise. The effect of well-built, well-furnished, well-kept houses and of handsome grounds always maintained in good order about them shows itself in a large circuit around the fashionable ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... return was prompt; a sparrow led the way, a jay followed, and then the whole swarm was back at work. And the abbe could walk up and down, close his book or open it, and murmur: "They'll not leave me a ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... passengers wash their children's clothes. It was, he thought, rather a striking scene—the great train standing in the rugged wilderness, the wide stretch of gleaming water running back among the firs, and the swarm of jaded immigrants splashing bare-footed along the beach. Their harsh voices and hoarse laughter broke discordantly on the silence of ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... poor Tom did hope that we might get through without any further trouble. We met at Ballinamona, and we drew Blake's coverts without a word. We killed our fox too and then went away to Pulhaddin gorse. I'll be blest if all the county weren't there. I never saw the boys swarm about a place so thick. Pulhaddin is the best gorse in the county. Of course it was no use drawing it; but as we were going away on the road to Loughrea the crowd was so thick that there was no riding among them. ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... along certain lines of Plank's battle front; the adjournment of the legislature emptied Albany. Once it was rumoured that Plank had passed an entire morning with the Governor of the greatest State in the Union and that the conference was to be repeated. A swarm of newspaper men settled about the Governor's summer cottage at Saratoga, but they learned nothing, nor could they find a trace of Plank's tracks in the trodden trails of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... A swarm of the little gauzy things, so slight and ephemeral that they seemed rather a symbolism of life than life itself, whirled before the boy's wild, tearful eyes, and he moved aside and looked down, and then cried ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... something to watch for now, and some thoughtful boy stopped all the whooping and hurraing as they came near the house on the bridge. Some other stopped the coach, and they all came dropping off it like a swarm of black flies, and tumbling into the shop, where Mrs. King and her daughter had need to have had a dozen pair of hands to have served them, and they did not go till they had cleared out her entire stock of sweet things and gingerbread; nay, some of them would have gone off without their ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as one of the great lights of his age was the part he was called upon to perform as a powerful intercessor with barbaric kings. When Attila with his swarm of Mongol conquerors appeared in Italy,—the "scourge of God," as he was called; the instrument of Providence in punishing the degenerate rulers and people of the falling Empire,—Leo was sent by the affrighted emperor ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... the school and desecrating the shrine of Henry's holy shade. The poor man, already overpowered by struggling with refractory colonists from Heligoland to New Zealand, was of malice prepense stirring up this additional swarm of hornets. I can hardly suppose, however, that this ingenious theory had much influence. Mr. Coleridge also says that the masters connived at the systematic bullying of the town boys. I can believe that they ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... could," Robertson replied, "but it looks as if he did. How could a man swarm a post with a sleeping ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... at us like a swarm of assailants, swooping downhill on us, swerving, recoiling, and falling away, rising swiftly above us again for a charge, and then careering at us with abandon on the next declivity of glass. A boat would hesitate above us, poised and rocking on the ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... was only just before the sun left us that my roaming eyes made out beyond the highest ridge of the principal islet of the group something which did away with the solemnity of perfect solitude. The tide of darkness flowed on swiftly; and with tropical suddenness a swarm of stars came out above the shadowy earth, while I lingered yet, my hand resting lightly on my ship's rail as if on the shoulder of a trusted friend. But, with all that multitude of celestial bodies staring down at one, the comfort of quiet communion ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the village are excellent. The river affords great numbers of perch, black bass, pike, and muscalonge; and the numberless little streams that intersect the country fairly swarm with trout, and the woods abound in game. This attracts sportsmen from other places; and the Julia Burton, the little steamer that plies up and down the river, frequently brings large parties of amateur hunters and fishermen, who sometimes spend ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... ignorant man; for he believed the story of Papias just quoted, and many others equally absurd. He however furnishes this important intelligence, that in the second century, the Christian world was overrun with heresy, and a swarm of apocryphal, and spurious Books were ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... is yet that which thou wilt not get. Honey that is nine times sweeter than the honey of the virgin swarm, without scum and bees, do I require to make ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... across the north of England. In these straits the British invited help from the Angles and Saxons, who soon engaged the northern tribesmen and defeated them. The feebleness of the Britons having become well known among the continental peoples, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes began to steadily swarm across the North Sea in powerful, armed bands. Having for a time assisted the Britons they began to seek excuses for quarrels, and gradually the Britons with brief periods of success were beaten and dispossessed of their lands until ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... [1167]Cadmonites, Hermonians, Ophitae, and wherever they settled there will be always found some reference to their antient history, and religion. As they were particularly styled Ophitae, or Hivites, many places whither they came, were said to swarm with [1168]serpents. Rhodes was under this predicament, and had the name of Ophiusa: which name was given on account of the Hivites, who there settled, and of the serpent-worship, which they introduced. But ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... turned homeward across the meadows, where I stopped awhile to look at a large flock of starlings which kept flying about at no great distance. I could not tell at first what to make of them; for they rose all together from the ground as thick as a swarm of bees, and formed themselves into a kind of black cloud, hovering over the field. After taking a short round, they settled again, and presently rose again in the same manner, I dare say there ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... stayed at any houses, but she was at some hotel where they have it, so she didn't see why not. If you ring a bell, dozens of these helpless-looking, white-headed creatures in black and yellow simply swarm from every direction, like great insects when you've poured hot ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... so many others, this thought, like a pebble flung into the bosom of a lake, was lost in the abyss of his tumultuous thoughts. Nevertheless, in spite of himself the author was compelled to investigate, and eventually there was gathered within his mind, little by little, a swarm of conclusions, more or less just, on the subject of married life. Works like the present one are formed in the mind of the author with as much mystery as that with which truffles grow on the scented plains of Perigord. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... thou that driest the tears of the meanest among weeds And dost of a dead flower make a living butterfly— Thy miracle, wherever almond-trees Shower down the wind their scented shreds, Dead petals dancing in a living swarm— I worship thee, O Sun! whose ample light, Blessing every forehead, ripening every fruit, Entering every flower and every hovel, Pours itself forth and yet is never less, Still spending and unspent—like ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... hot days in the early summer, usually in a tree, but sometimes in a room, if the window is open, and often in a bush, quite close to the ground. When they swarm in a tree you would think a black snow-storm was raging all around it. Every moment the cluster of bees grows larger and larger, until, after half an hour or so, it is quiet. Then the swarm has to be taken. This is the most ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... probably, it is often much less, it is sometimes much more. Their height of flight has been variously estimated at from forty to two hundred feet. "A dropping from the clouds" is a common expression used by observers when describing the apparition of a swarm. ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... naturalist would have delighted in the ever-changing varieties of insect life. Of the latter, cockroaches were, I think, the most objectionable, for they can inflict a nasty poisonous bite. Oddly enough, throughout Siberia I never saw a rat, although mice seem to swarm in every building, old or new, which we entered. The Lena post-house has a characteristic odour of unwashed humanity, old sheep-skins and stale tobacco. Occasionally, this subtle blend includes a whiff of the cow-shed, which ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... it is impossible for opulence to have genuine friends, but rich people, I fear, must ever have at their heart cankering suspicion to hint that the friendship and love lavished upon them is merely self-interestedness and sham, the implements of trade used by the fawning toadies who swarm around wealth. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... curses light on you You swarm here like locusts, and like them you come but to devour. Take my counsel: turn your faces the other way, and off to the desert again! I give you no welcome, for one. Now pass on—if on you still will go—and take the curse of Hassan the Arab along ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... body of branched or unbranched cell-filaments, the segments of which separate as swarm-cells (Gonidia). ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... which the Hopes and Fears of Eternity are display'd to guard us against the Temptations of Sin; has been not only rejected, but treated with a malicious Scorn; and all our Hopes in Christ represented as Delusions and Impositions upon the Weakness of Men. How has the Press for many Years past swarm'd with Books, some to dispute, some to ridicule the great Truths of Religion, both natural and revealed. I shall mention no particular Cases, there is no need for it; the Thing is notorious. I wish the Guilt in this Instance was confined to the Authors only, and that no body else was answerable ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock
... fresh and decomposing vegetable matter, teeming with fish, larvae of insects, Daphniae, worms and axolotl. These breed in the beginning of February. The native fishermen know all about them; how the eggs are fastened to the water plants, how soon after the little larvae swarm about in thousands, how fast they grow, until by the month of June they are all grown into big, fat creatures ready for the market; later in the summer the axolotls are said to take to the rushes, in the autumn they become scarce, but none have ever been known to leave the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... children stayed with the little old woman in her tiny cottage on the edge of the river. Each morning they crossed the bridge and stationed themselves by the Antwerp road to watch the swarm of sad-faced Belgians as they hurried through Boom on their way to the frontier and to safety in Holland. Each day they hoped that before the sun went down they should see their mother among the hurrying ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... "blue-gray," and then they disappeared, and I recovered my senses. Frequently, during my delerium and unconsciousness, I would feel my mouth pulled open, and hear a spoon chink against my teeth, and I would taste something bad going down my neck, and then my head would buzz as though a swarm of bees had taken up their abode where my brain used to be. Sometimes I would hear the clanking of a saber and a pair of Mexican spurs, and feel a great big hand on my head, and I knew that was Jim, but I couldn't move a muscle, or say a word. "I guess ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... tones of suppressed anger, his face all ablaze with excitement, "If I could choose who should be thus carried off, I would do the Commonwealth a service by ridding her of a swarm of ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... with the melting snows; and at ten in the evening under a golden sunset, amid screaming whistles, they anchored in the roadstead of Nome. Before the rumble of her chains had ceased or the echo from the fleet's salute had died from the shoreward hills, the ship was surrounded by a swarm of tiny craft clamoring about her iron sides, while an officer in cap and gilt climbed the bridge and greeted Captain Stephens. Tugs with trailing lighters circled discreetly about, awaiting the completion of certain formalities. These over, the uniformed gentleman ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... smells or to seek another lodging place. So after a hasty supper out of our tinned food, we put up our cots and went to bed, Mr. Chalfant making a few pleasant remarks about the bedbugs that always swarm in such a building, the centipedes that sometimes crawl into the ears or nostrils of sleepers and the scorpions that occasionally fall from the millet-stalk ceiling on to the bed or scuttle across the floor to bite the person who unwarily walks in his bare feet. Under the ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... decided upon by men of no exceptional power, mere mouthpieces of this vast concourse: similar and exactly parallel decisions over the whole countryside from the great towns to the tiny mountain villages. It is the spirit of a swarm of bees. One incident in the affair was the most characteristic of it all: fearing they would be ordered to fire on men of their own district the private soldiers and corporals of the 17th of the Line mutinied. So far so good: mutinies are ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... Howard, Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, and other noted captains, were ready to receive them. With their fast-sailing cruisers they sailed around the unwieldy Spanish warships, firing four shots to the enemy's one, and "harassing them as a swarm of wasps worry a bear." Several of the Spanish vessels were captured and one blown up. At last the commander sailed for Calais to repair damages and take a fresh start. The English followed. When night came on, Drake sent eight blazing fire ships to drift down among the Armada as it ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... with his swarm of agents, burst into the Questor's study, and laid hands on everything. The first papers which he perceived on the middle of the table, and which he seized, were the famous decrees which had been prepared in the event of the Assembly having ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... incident that the superstition arose that the bees were engendered by the decaying flesh of the animal; and Virgil, in the following story, shows how this supposed fact may be turned to account for renewing the swarm when it has been lost ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... he had underestimated his worshippers. He had thought at first that the helmets were meant merely for ornament and decoration. He learned better one day when a swarm of creatures like flying lizards swept down out of a group of trees in a fierce attack. He had not known that such creatures existed here, and now that he saw them, he realized how fortunate it was that they were not more numerous. They had sharp teeth ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... of the Name of the Gauls, that several Kings (not in the least threatned by them) of their own accord, purchased their Peace with large Sums of Money—. And in the following Book, he says,—So great was the Fruitfulness of the Gauls at that time, that like a Swarm they fill'd all Asia. So that none of the Eastern Kings either ventured to make War without a mercenary Army of Gauls, or fled for Refuge to other than the Gauls, when they were driven out of their Kingdoms." And thus much may suffice concerning their warlike Praises and Fortitude, which ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... vessels. This river we called Granville's River, and to the westward of it is a point, to which we gave the name of Ferrer's Point. From this point the land forms a large bay, and near it is a town of great extent, which seemed to swarm like a bee-hive: An incredible multitude came out of it as the ship passed by, holding something in their hands which looked like a wisp of green grass, with which they seemed to stroke each other, at the same time ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... have heard my father tell how in the heat of that year a great red comet burned in the sky, even as that we now see, my friend. God forbid that this portends blood. But in the coming spring the French conscripts filled our sacred land like a swarm of locusts, devouring as they went. And at their head, with the pomp of Darius, rode that destroyer of nations and homes, Napoleon. What was Germany then? Ashes. But the red embers were beneath, fanned by Father Jahn. Napoleon ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mighty lord! Low on his funeral couch he lies! No pitying heart, no eye, afford A tear to grace his obsequies. Is the sable warrior fled? Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born? Gone to salute the rising morn. Fair laughs the Morn, and soft the Zephyr blows, While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; Regardless of the sweeping Whirlwind's sway, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the whole philosophy of substantial forms had taken its rise? Is the wholeness of a living thing the mere resultant of the orderly operations of its parts? Is a bee no more essentially one than a swarm is? Is the life of a living animal indistinguishable from the rhythm of a going watch, except in degree of complication and subtlety of contrivance? And if an animal's body, say my own, is simply an agglomerate of minute interacting material units, and its wholeness is merely accidental ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... pine-capped hill, Stands the old farmhouse with its clump of barns— The old red farmhouse—dim and dun to-night, Save where the ruddy firelights from the hearth Flap their bright wings against the window panes,— A billowy swarm that beat their slender bars, Or seek the night to leave their track of flame Upon the sleet, or sit, with shifting feet And restless plumes, among the poplar boughs— The spectral poplars, standing at ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... arrested frenzy of the dancers, the sunrise turning burnished armor to fire, the clanking of swords, {17} the wheeling of the soldiers as they fall in place, helmets doffed, round the council fire! Women swarm from the long houses. Children come running with mats for seats. Bedridden, blind, maimed are carried on litters, if only they may touch the garments of these wonderful beings. One old chief with skin like crinkled leather and body ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... that followed was almost painful. In that place it seemed the most unnatural of prodigies. Brokers, speculators and spectators were as surprised as I, and a long-drawn "Ah-h!" followed by a buzzing as of a great swarm of bees greeted his appearance. The stillness and the buzzing seemed to take an hour, but it could not have been as much as a minute when the voice of Doddridge Knapp rang like a trumpet ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... the men go away; the women swarm out more grudgingly and come to a standstill together; then all the buzzing ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... among standing pools in all directions; the atmosphere is poisoned by the effluvia from these, and laden and darkened by the smoke of a dozen tall factory chimneys. A horde of ragged women and children swarm about here, as filthy as the swine that thrive upon the garbage heaps and in the puddles. In short, the whole rookery furnishes such a hateful and repulsive spectacle as can hardly be equalled in ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... time to turn around. He was quite too far into enemy territory to feel comfortable, and that swarm of planes made him unusually homesick, even though they were far ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... bears a rich harvest of life, but only at the surface. The Ocean, on the contrary, though more richly peopled in its upper layers, which swarm with such innumerable multitudes of living creatures that they are, so to say, almost themselves ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... cell repose, Where Greenland odours feast the stranger's nose— "Scouts, porters, shoe-blacks, whatsoe'er your trade, All, all, attend, your master's fist to aid!" They heard his voice, and, trembling at the sound, The half-breech'd legions swarm'd like moths around; But, ah! the half-breech'd legions, call'd in vain, Dismay'd and useless, fill'd the cumber'd plain; And while for servile aid the Doctor calls, [41]By P——t subverted, prone to earth he sprawls. [42]E'en then were heard, so Brazenose students sing, The grass-plot chains ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... others, and then in turn to assist them to get up beside him. Louder and louder rose the shouts of the pirates, but the knights did not glance back until they reached the top of the hill; then they turned and looked round. A swarm of men were climbing after them, and were already ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... "Some managed to swarm up by the cable on to the bows, but three men who were stationed there disposed of them before enough could gain a footing to be dangerous. The captain had been keeping the guns in reserve in case the proa that had dropped behind at first should come on, but he now saw that ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... forward. Around the wagon is hung a multitude of household articles—pans, pails, kettles, brooms, and what not; and on a heap of beds, bedding, quilts, striped blankets, &c., is the old woman, the daughter, about eighteen, and a perfect swarm of white-headed little ones. The father, and his two stalwort sons, are busy in the forest close at hand. How merrily the echoes ring out at each blow of their axes, and how the earth groans with the shock of the falling trees. The two largest of the woodland giants are ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... of bells in the air, an all-pervading sense of jester's noise, and the flaunting vividness of royal colors; the streets swarm with humanity,—humanity in all shapes, manners, forms,—laughing, pushing, jostling, crowding, a mass of men and women and children, as varied and as assorted in their several individual peculiarities as ever a ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... wish to rest in our huts; we wish to get milk for our children; our wives wish to till the land; but your troops cover the plains, and swarm in the thickets, where they cannot distinguish the men from the women, and shoot all. You wish us to submit to Gaika; that man's face is fair to you, but his heart is false; leave him to himself; make peace with us: let him ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... window frame; so she leapt her goat through the window into the gallery, snapped up the head, and set off with it. After her came the witches to try to get the head again, and they flocked about her as thick as a swarm of bees or a nest of ants; but the goat snorted, and puffed, and butted with his horns, and Tatterhood beat and banged them about with her wooden spoon; and so the pack of witches had to give it up. So Tatterhood got ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... leaving a big gap in the ranks they left. Had they succeeded in carrying the place with the rush, this would not have mattered; but it could not be done. Tap a bee-hive smartly with your stick on a mild May day, and see the inhabitants swarm out at you, and you may form some idea of how the Hadendowas flew over the parapet at their assailants. Every one of them fixed his eye on an enemy, and went straight at him. Every soldier found himself with two or three opponents, and, instead of pressing on ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... upon it, awoke the spirit and incited the hope of every man to whom the absence of inherited wealth supplied an impetus to labour; and the populated portions of these States became as a hive thronged with an active, money-seeking swarm, by which the idle and the inert were thrust aside before they became awake to their changed condition, or heard a murmur of the tide whose waves were encircling them about ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... stand in the valley of this river and even (some of them) upon its very banks. Thus there are the three principal towns of this part, Midhurst and Petworth and Pulborough: but these have been dealt with and written of in so many great books and by such a swarm of new men that I have no business further to describe their merits and antiquity. But this I will add to all that is known of them. Midhurst takes its name from standing in the middle, for it is half-way between the open ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc |
