"Swarm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... active. From their trenches seventy yards away a shower of hand grenades came bowling over toward the first French trench. Many of them fell short, and few did any damage; but hardly had this second plague come to an end when out from the trenches climbed a swarm of Germans rushing furiously toward the Frenchmen. At last the men in that first trench had something to do. They jumped to their loopholes and blazed magazine fire into this raging, tearing attack. Every bullet seemed to find its mark; it could hardly have done ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... found in many parts of the world where there are pools of water. They swarm along the rivers of the sunny south and by the lakes of the far north. The life of one of these troublesome little fellows is ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... at their feet. A swarm of bees filled the air! Priscilla, intent upon David, had not noticed the flat surface of the rock where the sun lay warm and bright. Warned by the strange sound, her terrified eyes saw the snake, coiled and ready ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... nor genius in their souls, had to confine themselves to imitation. As Charles Nodier says: "After the school of Athens, the school of Alexandria." Then there was a deluge of mediocrity; then there came a swarm of those treatises on poetry, so annoying to true talent, so convenient for mediocrity. We were told that everything was done, and God was forbidden to create more Molieres or Corneilles. Memory was put ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... coquetting; and coquetting, rejecting and rejecting, till at length she arrived at an age when she could reject no longer. She ceased to be an object to matrimonial adventurers, but to these succeeded a swarm of female legacy-hunters. Among the most distinguished was her companion, Mrs. Ingoldsby, whose character she soon discovered to be artful and selfish in the extreme. This lady's flattery, therefore, lost all its power to charm, but ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... population of Italy slowly disappeared. The actual inhabitants of the capital came to consist of a few thousand vastly wealthy families, who held all the power, a few thousand more of poorer citizens dependent on the rich, and then a vast swarm of slaves and foreigners, feeders on the crumbs of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... a stop, but the engine was still running, free from the gears. Now and then, as he saw an opening, the lad at the wheel would slip in his clutch and the car would advance a few feet. Then more of the school boys would swarm about it, and ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... Denny knew that there were to be two team captains who would choose from among the best men that the country boasted, the very pick of strength and endurance and daring. And these, when the word was given, would swarm up with mallet and lock-pin over their half of the allotted work, in the race to drive home the last spike and wedge into place the last scantling. For days now with a grave sort of satisfaction which he hardly understood himself, Young Denny had time after time put ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... affairs for a city that is constantly afflicted with epidemics and in which contagious diseases always prevail. The extension of the street car service would do something to relieve this congestion and scatter many of the people out among the suburbs, but the Orientals always swarm together and pack themselves away in most uncomfortable and unhealthful limits, and it will always be a great danger when the plagues or the cholera come around. Multitudes have no homes at all. They have no property except the one or two strips of dirty cotton which the police require them ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... allow these to be hung up with their rings;[95] but 'tis with an intent you have done this. Demos, take knowledge of his guilty purpose; in this way you no longer can punish him at your pleasure. Note the swarm of young tanners, who really surround him, and close to them the sellers of honey and cheese; all these are at one with him. Very well! you have but to frown, to speak of ostracism and they will rush at night to these bucklers, take them down and ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... changes consequent 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 ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... 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 multitudes, but each day brought a fresh disappointment, and each night the little old woman ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... cry. The firing continued for a few moments, then ceased. When the smoke cleared away, our own troops could be seen drawn up on the railroad and on the depot platform. The hill on the opposite side seemed to swarm with Yankees. Evidently they had expected to surprise the town, but, finding themselves opposed by a force whose numbers they were unable to estimate, they hastily retreated up the hill. By that time ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... A swarm of the thieves had approached the passenger coaches under the leadership of Frank, and dividing into several detachments, ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... a world explored in vain, And foes triumphant show but half my pain. Dissembling friends, each early joy who gave, And fired my youth the storms of fate to brave, Swarm'd in the sunshine of my happier days, Pursued the fortune and partook the praise, Now pass my cell with smiles of sour disdain, Insult my woes and triumph ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... amusing myself by watching the titmice, Harry, who had rambled on a little way, came running back to ask me what the funny thing could be that he had found. It was a mole that had been caught in a trap, and was dangling in the air with a swarm of bees around. I told Harry that the moles are blind, or nearly so, and that they live under the ground, and do great good to the farmers by eating the slugs and other things that destroy the corn; but that they turn up ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... water-closet. Into these we did but glance: the main cabin holding us. It was dark, for the sea-birds had obscured the skylight with their droppings; it smelt rank and fusty; and it was beset with a loud swarm of flies that beat continually in our faces. Supposing them close attendants upon man and his broken meat, I marvelled how they had found their way to Midway reef; it was sure at least some vessel must have brought them, and that long ago, for they had multiplied exceedingly. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... were gathered on the desert, Like pebbles on the shore, And they rushed upon the Christian With a shout like cannon's roar; Like the dashing of the torrent, Like the sweeping of the storm, Like the raging of the tempest, Came down the dusky swarm. From the scant and struggling brush-wood, From the waste of burning sand, Sped the warriors of the desert, Like the locusts of the land: They would crush the bold invader, Who had dared to cross their path; They were fighting for their prophet, In the might ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... from the friendly tribe; but Big Fox, Brown Bear, and The Bat, in accordance with the Indian nature, took no notice. It was only warriors and chiefs to whom they would condescend to speak, and they were silent and expressionless until the right moment should come. They passed straight through the swarm of old men, women, children, and dogs, toward the center of the village, where a long, low cabin of poles stood. An ancient and reverend figure stood in the doorway to meet them. It was that of Gray Beaver, head chief of the Miamis, an old, old man, gray with years ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was, was insufficient to enable her to understand their coarse jests. But their intention to insult her became obvious. The leaping, howling mob of strangely apparelled performers threatened to storm her balcony. Some climbed on each other's shoulders to get nearer her, others even began to swarm up the pillars supporting her balcony. To the delight of the audience the noisy mob eventually clambered up to the railing of the balcony and, jesting, laughing, uttering weird cries, perched on it and ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... her, and yet I know still better that it is not love, but hate I now feel." Her fragrance, floating in the sunshine, filled his nostrils, and involuntarily he glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to find a dropped handkerchief in the road. None was there—only a scattered swarm of butterflies drifting like ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... un pauvre malheureux, pour l'amour de Dieu, et de la Sainte Vierge." "Give a sous to a poor unfortunate, for the love of God and of the Holy Virgin." The crowds of these beggars upon the French roads, lead the stranger to apprehend that in Paris they will swarm to such an extent as to mar in a degree the pleasure of his residence there; he is, however, agreeably disappointed at finding in his perambulations through its streets, that they are completely free from them, in consequence of the admirable regulations of the police. It is worthy of remark, that ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... with the absent King, What with the injuries of a wanton time, The seeming sufferances that you had borne, And the contrarious winds that held the King So long in his unlucky Irish wars That all in England did repute him dead,— And, from this swarm of fair advantages, You took occasion to be quickly woo'd To gripe the general sway into your hand; Forgot your oath to us at Doncaster; And, being fed by us, you used us so As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo-bird, ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... of swing and you are likely to tumble over at any moment; you can never keep the blankets in position, and you expose your entire body to the stings of the mosquitoes, flies and other insects, and of the ants which crawl into your hammock by hundreds from the trees in which they swarm. It was not uncommon when we camped to hear during the night a crash, followed immediately after by oaths. The tree to which one of the hammocks had been fastened had suddenly broken and let the man down ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... movement and protection is one of the most difficult incidental operations of warfare—particularly in a country like Virginia, where the art of road making has attained no high degree of perfection, and where the forests swarm with guerillas. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Burmah, after fording a certain river, found his body covered all over by a swarm of small leeches, busily sucking his blood. His first impulse was to tear the tormentors from his flesh: but his servant warned him that to pull them off by mechanical violence would expose his life to ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... undulating country—to the southward the beginning of forest land, and to the south-east, where the beechwoods of South Lynch begin to creep up the rapid slope of chalk, there is delightful hunting ground; for bee orchis (Ophrys apifera) swarm; careful search may discover the brown velvet blue-eyed fly, Ophrys muscifera, the quaint MAN and DWARF orchis can be found; butterfly or honey-suckle orchis, Habenaria, as we are constrained to term it, is frequent; and where the beech-trees begin there are those curious parasites ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... passed through the waiting people I heard Dr. Grant's voice, and he spoke very angrily. I had never thought before that he could get quite so mad. There was a swarm of women in the house, some of them with babies in their arms, and a few children, among whom was Frenchy's little ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... regalia by ten o'clock in the morning. Through some awful error on the part of the Chicago costumer, Philo Gubb's regalia had not arrived in time for the first day of the Carnival, so he had absented himself rather than let the crooks and thieves who were supposed to swarm the grounds have an opportunity to become acquainted with his appearance and thus be put on their guard against ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... finding out what a boy expects to do, and then teaching him accordingly. My predestination plan contemplates the process of arranging such a course of study for him as will make him what we want him to be. A naturalist tells me that when a queen bee dies the swarm set to work making another queen by feeding one of the common working bees some queen stuff. He failed to tell me just what this queen stuff is. That process of producing a queen bee is what gave me the notion as to my treatise. If the parents want their boy to ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... out for the day. The gates of Novy Afon are open to all, even to the Mahometan or the Pagan. It was a beautiful cloudless morning when I arrived at this most wonderful monastery in the Russian world—a cluster of white churches on a hill, a swarm of factories and workshops, cedar avenues, orchards, vineyards, and, above all, tree-covered mountains crowned by grey towers and ancient ruins, the whole looking out on the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... 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 ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... isolated inland. The loom of the big fires disclosed buildings, roofs, black piles as far as he could see. It was an immense place. The fourteen desperate invaders lying flat behind the felled trees raised their chins to look over at the stir of that town that seemed to extend up-river for miles and swarm with thousands of angry men. They did not speak to each other. Now and then they would hear a loud yell, or a single shot rang out, fired very far somewhere. But round their position everything was still, dark, silent. They seemed to be forgotten, as if the excitement ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... hands of Little Turtle, who had over a thousand warriors. Colonel Hardin and Captain Armstrong had marched scarcely six miles, when in an open place they were completely ambushed. A swarm of Indians suddenly poured in a heavy fire from the brush on all sides; rose, and charged with ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... the horse in an instant, but before he could give a word of instruction to his men, there fell upon their ears a sound that appalled them,—the distant thunder of hundreds of bounding hoofs; the shrill, vengeful yells of a swarm of savage Indians; the crack! crack! of rifles; and, far down the trail along which Wells had ridden but a few moments before, they could see ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... acknowledged the superiority of the gray. The 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 ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... swifts were numerous, the martins especially, and it was beautiful to see them for ever wheeling about in a loose swarm about the building. They reminded me of bees and flies, and sometimes with a strong light on them they were like those small polished black and silvery-white beetles (Gyrinus) which we see in companies on the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... smooth or marked by characteristic surface—sculpture according to the species; the spore in germination gives rise to an elongated protoplasmic body, which exhibits amoeboid movements, and is known by the name of swarm-cell. The swarm-cells multiply by bipartition, which may be repeated through several generations; they then unite together to form the large motile protoplasmic bodies named plasmodia. The newly-formed plasmodium is distinguished by its greater size from the swarm-cells, while it exhibits essentially ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan
... they all shared the benefit of the harvests, paid their tax to the state, and all was well. If not, it swarmed like a community of bees to some wealthy neighbor's estate and sold its labor to him, and then if he proved too hard a taskmaster—even for a patient Russian peasant—they might swarm again and work ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... Amid the tremendous swarm of things beneath them, amid the unexpected din of the wings and the engine, in the immensity of the sky, in the infinity of the horizon, his eyes sought nothing but that, and his ears admitted no other sound than the hum of the invisible car. His were the mighty and brutal sensations of the hunter ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... great trouble with our country to-day is that we have but few statesmen. We have a great swarm, a great hoard of politicians; but it is only now and then that we find a man who is large enough truly to deserve the name—statesman. The large majority in public life to-day are there not for the purpose of serving the best interests of those whom they are supposed ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... full of bees, for they crowd in together in much the same way. As the gold fever attracted the Chinese to the Pacific coast, San Francisco was made a headquarters and the Orientals soon established themselves in a building on the side hill. As they continued to swarm over, gradually the American tenants were crowded out until a certain section was set apart for the Chinese residents and Chinatown became as distinct a section of the city as the Bowery in New York used to be, "where they do such things and say such things." ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... verandahs, the green lawn, the picture moved with life. A half-haze, precursive of the twilight, lent scenic softness to the forms of old men puffing their pipes before the doors, a maiden listlessly strolling on the sward, a swarm of children playing near the road, a distant toiler making his way home, bearing his scythe. The visitors went down into the place and Chrysler saw that the artistic shapes and ideal colors were worn with daily use, the men and women, serene-looking, were ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... seeing and feeling this boat, with all its light and life, speeding, twinkling on and on through the night like a swarm of stars, the thought came—and I was wishing I could share ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... of bustle and animation in this quarter of the Fort to engage the attention, but it seems silent and deserted when compared with the crowd of the more exclusively native portions. Here the streets literally swarm with life—men, women, children, and bullocks, filling them almost to suffocation. Ranges of open shops appear on each side, raised a foot or two from the ground, the occupant being seated upon a ledge in front, in the midst ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... the homes of Velasquez, Rubens, and Rembrandt. As art grew more pompous it became less emotional. Painters like Palma Giovine spoilt their ready, lively fancy by the vice of hurry. The nickname of "Fa Presto" was deserved by others besides Luca Giordano, and Venice was overrun by a swarm of painters whose prime standard of excellence was the ability to make haste. Grandeur of conception was forgotten; a grave, ample manner was no longer understood; superficial sentiment and bombastic size carried the day. Yet a few painters, though their forms ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... 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
... could him not amend In no degree, as all the people wend.* *weened, thought But evermore their moste wonder was How that it coulde go, and was of brass; It was of Faerie, as the people seem'd. Diverse folk diversely they deem'd; As many heads, as many wittes been. They murmured, as doth a swarm of been,* *bees And made skills* after their fantasies, *reasons Rehearsing of the olde poetries, And said that it was like the Pegasee,* *Pegasus The horse that hadde winges for to flee;* *fly Or else it was the Greeke's horse Sinon, That broughte ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... he sat, one on each side of the table, in the little sitting-room. The heat was insupportable and all three doors and the window were propped open, in the feeble hope of creating a draught. The lamp had attracted a swarm of flying things: giant moths beat their wings against the globe, or fell singed and sizzling down the chimney; winged-ants alighted with a click upon the table; blowflies and mosquitoes kept up ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... he had never remembered its being guarded before, by three belts of fighting machines. His first attempt to break through brought a veritable swarm of hornets about his ears. The air reverberated with Archie fire of a peculiar and unusual intensity long before he came within striking distance ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... Silver! I rejoice to see How I have spoil'd his thrift, by spending thee. Now thou art gone, he courts my wants with more, His decoy gold, and bribes me to restore. As lesser lode-stones with the North consent, Naturally moving to their element, As bodies swarm to th' centre, and that fire Man stole from heaven, to heav'n doth still aspire, So this vast crying sum draws in a less; And hence this bag more Northward laid I guess, For 'tis of pole-star force, and in this sphere Though th' ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... remains that the honey-bee is essentially a wild creature, and never has been and cannot be thoroughly domesticated. Its proper home is the woods, and thither every new swarm counts on going; and thither many do go in spite of the care and watchfulness of the bee-keeper. If the woods in any given locality are deficient in trees with suitable cavities, the bees resort to all kinds of ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... a monster o'er cottage and farm, Striking their inmates with sudden alarm; And they ran out like bees in a midsummer swarm. There were dames with their kerchiefs tied over their caps, To see if their poultry were free from mishaps; The turkeys they gobbled, the geese screamed aloud, And the hens crept to roost in a terrified crowd; There was raising of ladders, ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... very much like another. So many avenues, wide or narrow, where the little creatures swarm in strange confusion; these bustling by, important; these halting to pow-wow with one another. These struggling with big burdens; those but basking in the sun. So many granaries stored with food; so many cells where the little things sleep, and eat, and love; the corner ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... look after the pets in the morning. I feed the cats and the rooks, and I see that the canaries have fresh water and seed. And then the bees take up a lot of our time. We have twenty-two hives. Mrs. Norton says she ought to make five pounds a year on each. Sometimes we lose a swarm or two, and then Mrs. Norton is cross. We were out for hours with the gardener the other day, but we could do no good; we could not get them out of that elm tree. You see that long branch leaning right ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... came Miles' abrupt reply. "I'm hittin' rough stuff here, a swarm of meteors. See you on Titan. Be down there ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... waters are also very clear, and it has the advantage of several very picturesque islands; but the dead volcanoes, the wastes of volcanic sand and ashes covered only by interminable sagebrush, the bitter, alkaline, dead, slimy waters, in which nothing but worms live; the insects and flies which swarm on its surface, and which are thrown upon its shore in such quantities as to infect the air,—all these produce a sense of desolation and death which is painful; it destroys entirely the beauty of the lake ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... glorious. Day after day, after a sharp and frosty dawn, the sun swings up into a cloudless sky; and the hundred thousand troops that swarm like ants upon, the undulating plains of Hampshire can march, sit, lie, or sleep on hard, sun-baked earth. A wet autumn would have thrown our training back months. The men, as yet, possess nothing but the fatigue uniforms they stand ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... a pool, two rods square, that is haunted all winter by children,—clearing away the snow of many a storm, if need be, and mining downward till they strike the ice. I look this morning from the window, and the pond is bare. In a moment I happen to look again, and it is covered with a swarm of boys; a great migrating flock has settled upon it, as if swooping down from parts unknown to scream and sport themselves here. The air is full of their voices; they have all tugged on their skates instantaneously, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... fighting on the same side with the Russian people who have seen the Nazi hordes swarm up to the very gates of Moscow, and who with almost superhuman will and courage have forced ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... see that swarm of sharks crowding round the boat, Sir Edgar?" said I. "Take my word for it, there is a corpse—perhaps several—in her, and I am glad that the ladies are not on deck. Lay aft here, lads, to the main-braces, and back ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... the early part of its course into broad lakes, and in some places closely approaching the Atlantic coast. The southern point of Florida reaches to within twenty-five degrees of the equator, so that the vegetation is of a tropical character. Alligators swarm in the streams and pools; flowering shrubs of rare beauty clothe the banks of every river; and birds innumerable inhabit the forests, lakes, islets ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... swarm up on the other side. Again the bayonets drive these new foes down the rocky cliffs. No sooner do the redcoats retire, than up comes Shelby again at the head of his men, ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... these have little by little taken the place of the grotesque but harmless rites practiced at the Onon-hou-aroria. Amochol has made it sinister and terrible beyond words; and it is making of the Senecas a swarm of ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... of the adoration she excited. If a swarm of school-boys can not enter a country church without turning all their eyes toward one pew, is it not possible that, when a girl comes in and seats herself in that pew, the very focus of those burning glances, even Dr. Peewee may not entirely ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... with wood of a large and high growth, very straight, and without boughs, save only in the head or top, whose leaves are not much differing from our broom in England. Amongst these trees night by night, through the whole land, did shew themselves an infinite swarm of fiery worms flying in the air, whose bodies being no bigger than our common English flies, make such a show and light as if every twig or tree had been a burning candle. In this place breedeth ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty
... where the water runs rapidly close in-shore. If practicable, the constructor modifies his current artificially, banking it inward with large stones, so as to form a sort of sluice in which passing fish will be more completely at his mercy. At the season of their periodic ascent, salmon swarm in all the rivers of our Pacific coast; the Columbia and Willamette are alive with them for a long distance above the cascades of the one and the Oregon-City fall of the other. The fisherman stands, nearly or quite naked, at the edge of his scaffolding, armed with a net ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... nearing the southern shore; again she came about. Adair gave proof that he was a good seaman, and his crew in prime order, or it could never have been done. He was seen standing aft conning the brig; the topmen were in the rigging, ready to swarm aloft to shorten sail; a party of the hands stood on the forecastle with the second lieutenant and boatswain, ready to secure the hawsers. The rest of the hands were at their stations on deck. The work, to be done successfully, must be done smartly; everyone knew that. Rapidly ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... the breast."—Id. "Children's minds are narrow and weak."—Id. "I would not have little children much tormented about punctilios, or niceties of breeding."—Id. "To fill his head with suitable ideas."—Id. "The Burgusdisciuses and the Scheiblers did not swarm in those days, as they do now."—Id. "To see the various ways of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... collected to a vast amount, and an army had gathered which, including camp followers, was variously estimated at from three to five millions. A bridge of boats was built across the Hellespont, and the Oriental horde was prepared to ravage the Grecian valleys like a swarm of devouring locusts. A great storm arose and destroyed the bridge, and the Persian despot ordered the Hellespont scourged with whips in token of his displeasure. When the bridge was rebuilt, Xerxes, from a throne erected upon the shore, for seven days and nights, watched his mighty ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... the hear, they became aware of a curious humming sound in the air. The cause was soon apparent and the mystery that had puzzled them was solved when they reached the beast. The carcase was covered with bees while close above it hummed a swarm of others watching for an exposed place to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the morning right early, With their baskets o' jock on their arm; The bell is ting-tonging, ting-tonging, As they enter the mill in a swarm. ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... 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 dancing, or running in a ring. About seven miles to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... at all events, they seem to have found out the secret of perpetual motion, if we may judge from the experience of the first night we spent in the town. At half past nine, the principal street, which our hotel overlooked, began to swarm with heads. The whole population were on the alert, promenading during the greater part of the night; and such a busy hum arose from beneath the windows, which the heat obliged us to keep open, that ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... with the Sellers mansion. It was a two-story-and-a-half brick, and much more stylish than any of its neighbors. He was borne to the family sitting room in triumph by the swarm of little Sellerses, the parents following with their ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... exchange of big bundles of bank-bills, which takes place at five o'clock or later the next morning. Even if players and bills were duly shielded from observation, the mauvais quart d'heure would be accurately revealed by the sudden rush for the sledges, which have been hanging in a swarm about the door, according to the usual convenient custom of Vanka, wherever lighted windows suggest possible patrons. Poor, hard-worked Vanka slumbers all night on his box, with one eye open, or falls prone in death-like exhaustion over the dashboard upon his sleeping horse, while ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the senator, "I don't forget what happened in '70. I don't object to wading through a swarm of bees to get a little honey for a friend, but I think I'm entitled to know why ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... exclaimed Rebecca—"and they press the besieged hard upon the outer wall; some plant ladders, some swarm like bees, and endeavour to ascend upon the shoulders of each other—down go stones, beams, and trunks of trees upon their heads, and as fast as they bear the wounded to the rear, fresh men supply their ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... for Silius, and went so far as publicly to marry her paramour. It was the freedman Narcissus who made the outrageous truth known to Claudius, and practically terrorised him into striking. Half measures were impossible; a swarm of Messalina's accomplices in vice were put to death. To her, Claudius showed signs of relenting; but Narcissus gave the orders for her death without his knowledge. When they told Claudius that she was dead, he displayed no emotion, but went on with his dinner, and apparently ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... was a regular swarm of people to see the match. Old Parkhurst "bats," who had played in the first match, thirteen years ago, were there, with big beards, and very majestic to look at; Old Boys, now settled in life, were there with their wives and children; carriages full of our own and Westfield's fathers and ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... wasted and fell, as time, the bringer of new and strange things, wore away, before the thick and more thick coming of their greedy and pushing foes,—by their fire-water in peace and their bullets in war, till the many became few, the great small. What the bloody Church, with his swarm of picked warriors, had left after his four terrible comings with fire and slaughter, the bold Lovewell finished, on that black day when the great Paugus and all the flower of the tribe found red graves round their ancient stronghold and home,—their beloved ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... saw with my eyes around me in the world. I had to include it—I could not help it, Irene. I expanded the plinth—made it wide and spacious. And on it I placed a segment of the curving, bursting earth. And up from the fissures of the soil there now swarm men and women with dimly-suggested animal-faces. Women and men—as I knew them ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen
... was surprised by the windings of the bed; we seemed ever within hearing of the sea. Where a holm of rock and bush splits the course its waters swarm with fish, as shown by the weirs and the baskets, large and small; some of its cat-fish (siluri) weigh 10 lbs. Every shoal bred oysters in profusion, young mangroves sprouted from the submerged mollusk-beds, and the 'forests of the ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... dreams calmly above them. Once, I say, a Sleepy Hollow, but now alive with the tramp of soldiers and the rumble of artillery and transport; for Wellingsford is the centre of a district occupied by a division, which means twenty thousand men of all arms, and the streets and roads swarm with men in khaki, and troops are billeted in all the houses. The War has changed many aspects, but not my old friendships. I had made a home here during my soldiering days, long before the South African War, my wife being a kinswoman of Sir Anthony, and so I have grown into the intimacy ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... called the Burnt Column, and, like other imperial properties of the kind, it was an aggregation of buildings irregular in form and style, and more or less ornate and imposing. A garden stretched around it. The founder, wanting private harborage for his galleys and swarm of lesser boats, dug a basin just inside the city wall, and flooded it with pure Marmoran water; then, for ingress and egress at his sovereign will, he slashed the wall, and of the breach made the Port of Julian. [Footnote: Only ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... on the ground among the plantain stems, having by a reckless movement fallen out of the house. Thanks be there are no mosquitoes. I don't know how I escaped the rats which swarm here, running about among the huts and the inhabitants in the evening, with a tameness shocking to see. I turned in again until six o'clock, when we started getting things ready to go up river again, carefully providing ourselves with ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Naples comforted with the feeling that they have exhausted the attractions of the place. Certainly their reception in the town is not likely to inspire them with a wish to return, for the guides and touts swarm here more than in any other spot in Italy; "until he has spent half an hour in Pozzuoli," says the author of Dolce Napoli, "let no man say that he understands the signification ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... every door leading up this way, and shut out the gossipping blockheads who will come by hundreds, and, if we would let them, swarm into my room as thick as the frogs were in the houses of the Egyptians. Shut the doors, Charles, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... art Which, though it could the outward limbs deface, Yet had no force to change the heart. For all the force of men given by God's arm Lies hidden in their inmost part. The poisons therefore which within them swarm More deeply pierce, and with more might, For to the body though they do no harm, Yet on the soul they ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... fair, fleshy, lymphatic.' Mr. Froude could not see any difference between his countrymen at home and those who had settled down in this new and wider field of industry. 'The leaves that grow on one branch of an oak are not more like the leaves that grow upon another, than the Australian swarm is like the hive it sprung from.' Mr. Service, the Prime Minister of Victoria, fully shares the English predilections of his fellow colonists, but he appears to feel some irritation at the tone so frequently adopted by the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... I once lay in the grass and everything about me tossed and nodded, hummed and buzzed. Then there came a great swarm of little, myriad-footed, winged creatures, which lit upon my forehead and eyes and said, "Good day." Immediately my eyes smarted, and I cried to my mother, and she said: "Poor little one, how the gnats have stung him!" I could not ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... population fluctuates from place to place with a facility surprising to Europeans. It is only necessary to make a clearing in the jungle, and erect barracks for a few soldiers, and—as water rushes at once into hollows scooped in the damp sea-sand—so do the natives of India swarm into the clearing, and create a city.' To this new city of Amherst Mr. and Mrs. Boardman came in the spring of 1827, and joined Mr. and Mrs. Wade and Mr. Judson. It was bitterly painful to them to learn that the wife of the latter, that noble and beloved woman whose life had ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... of friendship, and bring his people in. Going out about half a mile from the village he gave a peculiar yell, at which between three and four hundred Indians arose simultaneously from the ground, and in answer to his signal came out of the tall grass like a swarm of locusts and soon overran our camp in search of food, for like all Indians they were hungry. They too, proved to be Pit Rivers, and were not less repulsive than those of their tribe we had met before. They were aware of the hostilities going on between the Rogue Rivers and the whites, but ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... Brahmana, while walking about hither and thither, kill numberless creatures lurking in the ground by trampling on them, and even men of wisdom and enlightenment destroy animal life in various ways, even while sleeping or reposing themselves. What hast thou to say to this?—The earth and the air all swarm with living organisms, which are unconsciously destroyed by men from mere ignorance. Is not this so? The commandment that people should not do harm to any creature, was ordained of old by men, who were ignorant of the true facts of the case. For, O Brahmana, there is not a man on the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... it will be remembered, was a trying one for the inhabitants of the United States. Every boat that arrived from England brought a fresh swarm of British lecturers to the country. Novelists, poets, scientists, philosophers, and plain, ordinary bores; some herd instinct seemed to affect them all simultaneously. It was like one of those great race movements of the Middle Ages. Men and women of widely ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... gentle smile, "I have. They wished no harm, it might be, to any one, but people stood in their way. It is as if you were going to the arbor after grapes, and there were a swarm of ants in the path. You have no malice against the ants, but you want the grapes,—so you walk on, and they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... of the victorious expedition caused the entire population of the village to turn out and swarm down to the small strip of beach which constituted the landing-place; so when Dick and Phil were lifted out of the canoes they beheld a crowd of some four or five hundred Indians, men, women, and children, crowded together to gaze upon and jeer at them. And jeer ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... At last the swarm of hungry Roaches was satisfied, and, according to Neale's report, the dinner went off very well indeed, save that his mother feared she would have to grease and roll Patrick Sarsfield before the fire to keep him from ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... to hear. He suddenly clapped his bonnet on his head and went out. He had an urgent errand on High Street, to buy grass and flower seeds and tools that would certainly be needed in April. It took him an hour or more of shrewd looking about for the best bargains, in a swarm of little barnacle and cellar shops, to spend a few of the kirk's shillings. When he found himself, to his disgust, looking at a nail studded collar for a little dog he called himself a "doited auld fule," and tramped back across ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... and ragged urchins, pursued us all over the city, incessantly whining "Signore! Padrone!" It was only on the threshold of the inn that I ventured to give them a few coppers, for I knew well that any public beneficence would raise the whole swarm of the begging population round us. Sitting later in the day upon the piazza of S. Domenico, I saw the same blind boy taken by his brother to play. The game consisted in the little creature throwing his arms about the trunk of a big tree, and running round and round it, clasping it. This ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... brings land into tillage in order to sell it again, and not to farm it: he builds a farmhouse on the speculation that, as the state of the country will soon be changed by the increase of population, a good price will be gotten for it. Every year a swarm of the inhabitants of the North arrive in the Southern States, and settle in the parts where the cotton plant and the sugar-cane grow. These men cultivate the soil in order to make it produce in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... increase the vitality of destructive protoplasm. At any rate such is the fact. In the presence of these minute quantities of alcohol, decomposition goes on more rapidly, and the micrococci and bacilli, thrive and swarm more abundantly. This is easily demonstrable by the more rapid, and thicker, cloudiness of any clear decomposable liquor in the course of a day or two, or in a few days, according to circumstances. But I have demonstrated the more rapid multiplication ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... swale, half up the 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 ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... that they did not say, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One," as they kissed the fringes. No, the Ghetto was all his world, and a mighty universe it was, full of everything that the heart of a child could desire. What an eager swarm of life in the great sunny square where the Venetian mast towered skywards, and pigeons sometimes strutted among the crowd that hovered about the countless shops under the encircling colonnade—pawnshops, old-clo' shops, butcher-shops, wherein black-bearded ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... leaving the bugle sounding in the rear and the gallant firemen still wrestling with their uniforms. They had nearly reached the fire when around a corner back of them, with frightful speed and clangor, came a modern automobile fire-truck, clinging to which was a swarm of little brown men in red shirts and helmets. They reminded the American of monkeys on a circus horse, and, although he had been counted a reckless driver, he exclaimed in astonishment at the daring way in which the chauffeur ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... vast province to another, traveling continually with the crude methods of transportation of that period, and busy night and day. Courts must be established. The compilation of the archives must be cared for. Records must be instituted to clear up the swarm of conflicts over land-titles. Scores of new duties arose, and scores of new remedies ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... half-sister too of June, and of that boy whom Fleur had just been looking at from under the pump-handle. If he didn't look out, she would come to know all about that old disgrace! Unpleasant things! They were round him this afternoon like a swarm ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... rustling of chitinous arms against white robes recalled him from his meditation. The swarm of priests, altar boys, and the rest of his retinue was still gathered around him, waiting until he should deign to notice them again. Really, God thought with annoyance, this ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... previously rehearsed were being acted before the eyes of the audience, the "prominent representatives" of the city and state began to swarm out from the wings and fill the chairs. Senators, judges, millionaires, popular preachers, all sunk to the dead level of a supporting chorus, an impressive illustration of the littleness of the locally great. To all those ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... form worked out of serpents, where there is no probability of serpents actually occurring. But there is a probability in Tintoret's conception. We feel that it is not impossible that there should come up a swarm of these small winged reptiles: and their horror is not diminished by their smallness: not that they have any of the grotesque terribleness of German invention; they might have been made infinitely uglier with small pains, but it is ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... longer. With what bitterness do they comment on the creed of money:—With gold one may have what he will; without it, impossible to have anything! They become pariahs, lepers, whom everyone shuns. Flies swarm round cadavers, men round gold. Take away the gold, nobody is there. Oh, it has caused tears to flow, this creed of gain! bitter tears, tears of blood, even from those very eyes which once adored the ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... brought to her Court, and more particularly attached to her person, a very pretty child, only daughter of the Marquis de Villette, and sister, consequently, of the Comte and of the Chevalier de Villette, whom I have previously mentioned. This swarm of nephews, cousins, and nieces garnished the armchairs and sofas of her chamber. They served as comrades and playfellows to the legitimate princes and as pages of honour to my daughter; and when the carriage of the Marquise came into ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... had only half a share in it; the other half belonged to Number Forty-five; and you couldn't rightly tell where Number Forty-five's share ended and his began. Still it wasn't as if anybody ever wanted to swarm up the pillar. But there was a party wall, and that was a serious thing. It was so low that a child could clear it at a stride. And when the postman and errand boys and tradespeople went their rounds, instead of going down Forty-five's front walk and up Granville's, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... down, Martin stopped the engine, and the Snark rounded to and the anchor rumbled down in three fathoms. Before we could catch our breaths a swarm of black Tannese was alongside and aboard—grinning, apelike creatures, with kinky hair and troubled eyes, wearing safety-pins and clay-pipes in their slitted ears: and as for the rest, wearing nothing behind ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... said he, lying down on the deck and looking through the window into the cabin where we were just beginning to breakfast, "how the deuce am I to get down there? If I stir outside of the tent, these black barbarians swarm round me. ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... fragrance. There is no market here, no commercial or social life, save a few greybeards discussing memories on some doorstep; the only mirthful note is a swarm of young boys playing hockey on the sand-heaps, amid ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Greek marine in this first expedition," says Mr. Gordon, "was not confined to merely spreading the insurrection throughout the Archipelago: a swarm of swift armed ships swept the sea from the Hellespont to the waters of Crete and Cyprus; captured every Ottoman trader they met with, and put to the sword, or flung overboard, the Mahometan crews and passengers; for the contest ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... skirmishing, harassing, terrifying, by their extraordinary shouts and their unbridled gallop. They were not able to hold out against a regular disciplined cavalry provided with bits and substantial arms. They were but a swarm of flies that always harasses and kills at the least mistake; elusive and perfect for a long pursuit and the massacre of the vanquished to whom the Numidians gave neither rest nor truce. They were ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... jail scarcely twenty minutes, when a swarm of slave traders, and agents for slave traders, flocked into jail to look at us, and to ascertain if we were for sale. Such a set of beings I never saw before! I felt myself surrounded by so many fiends from perdition. A band of pirates never ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... Beggars are allowed in Great Britain to suffer their Bodies to rust and consume with Laziness and Want? And besides Strowlers what Number of Poor are burdensom to most Parishes? How do our Streets and Highways swarm with Rogues, and how are we over-stocked (as they say) with vast Numbers of People of all Trades and Professions? But for all and more than these might Work enough be found in our Plantations, where they might be imployed in the Benefit of their Country, ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... in the trade with the coastal Indians, whom he was supposed to know. In spite of Mackay's warning that the Nootka tribes were notoriously treacherous and resentful towards white traders, Captain Thorn with lordly indifference permitted them to swarm aboard his vessel. Once when Mackay had gone ashore at Clayoquot, where Gray had wintered twenty years before, Thorn, forgetting that his ship was not a training-school, struck an old chief across the face and threw him over the rail. When Mackay heard what had happened, instead of ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... one good hearty cheer; no, stop, I should like them to be caught in their own traps. I know their plan. If they find the good people of Dorchester are awake, as the noise shows, they will swarm all over the neighbourhood like wasps after honey, to plunder the isolated houses and farms, and carry off all they can; and this place is too conspicuous—too much of a city on a hill—to be hidden. Well, we will be ready for them. Now, ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake |
