"Wasp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Scrap. It killed the one man she felt safe with, whom she would have married, and it finally disgusted her with love. Since then she had been embittered. She was struggling as angrily in the sweet stuff of life as a wasp got caught in honey. Just as desperately did she try to unstick her wings. It gave her no pleasure to outdo other women; she didn't want their tiresome men. What could one do with men when one had got them? None of them would talk to her of anything but the things of ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... pinched in so unnaturally, that I said to myself, 'Where on earth does this idiot put her liver?' Did you ever read of the frog who burst, trying to swell to an ox? Well, here is the rivalry reversed; Mrs. Vivian is a bag of bones in a balloon; she can machine herself into a wasp; but a fine young woman like you, with flesh and muscle, must kill yourself three or four times before you can make your body as meagre, hideous, angular, and unnatural as Vivian's. But all you ladies are mono-maniacs; one might as well talk sense to a gorilla. It brought ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... ever SEE anything, Liff Hyatt?" she assailed him, as he stood before her with the look of a man who has stirred up a wasp's nest. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... Professor's, his heart beating high with expectation. The company was both numerous and brilliant. Olimpia was richly and tastefully dressed. One could not but admire her figure and the regular beauty of her features. The striking inward curve of her back, as well as the wasp-like smallness of her waist, appeared to be the result of too-tight lacing. There was something stiff and measured in her gait and bearing that made an unfavourable impression upon many; it was ascribed to the constraint ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... at the end of the street. On the snow that bound the horizon, his tall and wasp-like uniformed figure outlined itself; he walked, knees apart, with that motion particular to soldiers who are anxious not to soil their ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... his listless posture, and spoke with earnest unction. "Thou knowest that I do not much busy myself in lay schemes; when I do, the object must be great. Now, Montagu, I have of late narrowly and keenly watched that spidery web which ye call a court, and I see that the spider will devour the wasp, unless the wasp boldly break the web,—for woman-craft I call the spider, and soldier-pride I style the wasp. To speak plainly, these Woodvilles must be bravely breasted and determinately abashed. I do not mean ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans! For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... rare difference, outlaw—for whereas her tongue (honoured relict!) is tipped with gall, wormwood, henbane, hemlock, bitter-aloes and verjuice, and stingeth like the adder, the asp, the toad, the newt, the wasp, and snaky-haired ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... centre of one of each pair, and not near the end, and it is not so active as the other species. It is also rather scarce; but when it does occur, it occupies the whole tree, to the exclusion of the other. The glands on the acacia are also frequented by a small species of wasp. I sowed the seeds of the acacia in my garden, and reared some young plants. Ants of many kinds were numerous; but none of them took to the thorns for shelter, nor the glands and fruit-like bodies for food; for, as I have already mentioned, the species that attend on the thorns are not found ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... almost ships of the line in disguise, and that their superior size and armament carried an unfair advantage. The same plea could not be offered in explanation of the victories won by American sloops, in the case of the American Hornet and British Peacock, of about equal strength, while the American Wasp was considerably inferior in guns and weight of metal to the British Frolic. Master-Commandant James Lawrence, of the Hornet, captured the Peacock in eleven minutes from the beginning of the action, the American guns being fired so rapidly that ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... "Thus despatched by her elder brother, the far-famed daughter of king Matsya, adorned with a golden necklace, ever obedient to her brother and possessed of a waist slender as that of the wasp,[36] endued with the splendour of Lakshmi herself,[37] decked with the plumes of the peacock of slender make and graceful limbs, her hips encircled by a zone of pearls, her eye-lashes slightly curved, and her form endued with every grace, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... our cast-iron beak in the side of the Cumberland. Like the wasp, we could sting but once, leaving ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... left the traveller standing in a world that seemed to be made up in equal parts of rock garden, chicken coops, and whiskey advertisements. The station-master, who appeared also to act as emergency porter, took Yeovil's ticket with the gesture of a kind-hearted person brushing away a troublesome wasp, and returned to a study of the Poultry Chronicle, which was giving its readers sage counsel concerning the ailments of belated July chickens. Yeovil called to mind the station-master of a tiny railway town in Siberia, ...
— When William Came • Saki
... reproves him, and his father chides him as "a wasp-stung and impatient fool," who will only talk and not listen. But again Hotspur breaks forth, and again his anger paints him ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... expedition. On the 11th the Committee congratulated the "gallant commander, brave officers and men concerned in it throughout the whole cruise." He was informed that the "Alert" would be purchased for a cruiser, her name changed to the "Wasp," of which he was to take command or bestow it on some brave, active and prudent officer on a cruise on the coast and off Cape Henlopen, so as "to descry the enemies' vessels coming and going." Barry's "well-known bravery and good conduct" were ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... work, “Out-door Life in England,” 1896) its diet is mainly vegetarian, and what animal food it indulges in is mice, frogs, an occasional hedgehog, with beetles, snails, and worms; and especially it is very partial to the grubs of the wasp. It is very cleanly in its habits; sometimes occupying the same “earth” with the fox, to the great advantage of the latter, as it clears away the putrid matter brought in by Reynard, and so prevents his contracting the mange, to which he is very liable, from his own untidy propensities. {53a} ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... his ears.] Oh, be not deceived by his size! Evil makes his models first on a tiny scale. The soul of a cutlass dwells in the pocket-knife; blackbird and crow are of the selfsame crape, and the striped wasp ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... him by the bank, with a feeling of peaceful delight. As the years of his generosity rolled on, he avoided reading it at all—"like most optimists," remarked the cure, "he did not wish to know the truth." At forty-six he married the niece of an impoverished old wasp, a gentleman still in excellent health, owing to de Savignac's generosity. It was his good wife now, who read the ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... call nor haul ought was odd raw for fault bought watch cot want corn cause sought wasp got walk cord pause caw wash hop salt short caught saw drop dog hall storm naught paw spot fog draw horse naughty draw talk ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... tell you that these ants are much larger than any we have here. Some of the tropical ants are an inch long, and as large as a large wasp; so you may imagine that a whole army of them is not ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... dreaming always of it, and wishing nothing less than the death of the fair washerwoman of Portillon and often would cry out "I will eat her flesh! I will cook one of her breasts, and swallow it without sauce!" It was a tremendous hate of good constitution—a cardinal hate—a hate of a wasp or an old maid. It was all known hates moulded into one single hate, which boiled itself, concocted itself, and resolved self into an elixir of wicked and diabolical sentiments, warmed at the fire of the most flaming furnaces of hell—it was, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... had built their comb in the hollow trunk of an oak. The Drones asserted that it was their doing, and belonged to them. The cause was brought into court before Judge Wasp. Knowing something of the parties, he thus addressed them: "The plaintiffs and defendants are so much alike in shape and color as to render the ownership a doubtful matter. Let each party take a hive to itself, and build up a new comb, that from the shape of the cells and the taste of ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... devoutly borne, in bringing God closer to us, belongs to it, whether it be great or small; whether it be, according to the metaphor of an earlier portion of this psalm, 'a lion or an adder'; or whether it be a buzzing wasp or a mosquito. As long as anything troubles me, I may make it a means of bringing God closer ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... from all quarters that mischief was in the wind. Still it was impossible to believe the peril to be a real one. Cicero, to whom Rome owed its existence, to be struck at by a Clodius! It could not be. As little could a wasp hurt ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... great variety of beatles common to the Atlantic states are found here likewise. except from this order the large cow beatle and the black beatle usually alled the tumble bug which are not found here. the hornet, the wasp and yellow wasp or yellow jacket as they are frequently called are not met with in this quarter. there is an insect which much resembles the latter only a vast deel larger which are very numerous particularly in the rocky mountains ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... immediately felt: New England shared in it; British naval prestige had received a damaging blow; and the Navy Department could no longer hope to keep the navy at home for police duty. Meantime the sloop-of-war "Wasp" had captured the British brig "Frolic" of equal force; and Decatur, in the frigate "United States", on October 25 took the British frigate "Macedonian". A few weeks later the frigate "Constitution" captured the British ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... creeping into a vial filled with honey, that was hung on a fruit tree, said thus: "Why, thou sottish animal, art thou mad to go into that vial, where you see many hundred of your kind there dying in it before you?" "The reproach is just," answered the wasp, "but not from you men, who are so far from taking example by other people's follies, that you will not take warning by your own. If after falling several times into this vial, and escaping by chance, I should fall in again, I should then but ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... after vainly purring against grandmother's stool, had jumped on the window-sill in pursuit of a belated wasp, and Sarah, rushing to the rescue of her flowers, cuffed the animal soundly and placed her in grandfather's lap. He was a lover of cats—a harmless fancy which was a source of unceasing ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... morning, hearing the now familiar "put-put-put" of machine guns up above, we looked up to see one of our large observing biplanes engaged with a very small but fast enemy plane. The boche had all the best of it and soon our plane was seen to slip and stagger and begin to descend. The little "wasp" came swooping down after it, firing all the while until, when a few hundred feet from the ground, our machine turned its nose straight downward and crashed to earth, well behind our lines, both occupants being instantly killed, or perhaps they had ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... South Carolinian, and won renown by a remarkable cruise in the Wasp. The Wasp was a stout and speedy sloop, carrying twenty-two guns and a crew of one hundred and seventy men, and in 1814 she sailed from the United States, and headed for the English Channel, to carry the war into the enemy's country, after the fashion of Paul Jones. ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... ever. The moments seemed long while she and Death stood gazing up into the air, waiting to know whose prize the prince would be. Suddenly they both caught sight of a tiny speck no bigger than a wasp, right up in the blue. Was he coming straight? No! Yes! But as he was nearing the city, a light wind sprang up, and swayed him in the direction of the wall. Another second and he would have fallen half over it, when the queen sprang forward, seized him in her arms, and flung him into the castle. ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... some vast yellow body and the unfortunate spider. Then the spider, suddenly as immobile as a lump of stone, was drawn up into the heavens by the roaring yellow thing, and disappeared. A wasp had struck, and had obtained ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... can effect a compromise. The lawsuit will be ugly, and probably ruinous. He has a right to claim six years' arrears—that is above L100,000. Make yourself his father-in-law, and me his uncle-in-law; and, since we can't kill the wasp, we may at least soften ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Harry?" said his mother reproachfully; "thou know'st thou wast set on it last fall, like a wasp on sugar. Why scarce a day past but thou wast up to the Rectory, to see the Doctor about it; and now thou'rt like to get th'lotment thou'lt ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... were directed at making a display before Madame Marneffe, and to playing Jupiter to this middle-class Danae. A man could not expend more activity, intelligence, and presence of mind in the honest acquisition of a fortune than the Baron displayed in shoving his head into a wasp's nest: He did all the business of his department, he hurried on the upholsterers, he talked to the workmen, he kept a sharp lookout on the smallest details of the house in the Rue Vanneau. Wholly devoted to Madame Marneffe, he nevertheless attended the sittings of the Chambers; he was everywhere ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... called the Wasp, issued at Nauvoo under Mormon editorship, had been succeeded by a larger one called the Neighbor, edited by John Taylor (afterward President of the church), who also had charge of the Times and ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... together, made a cluster at crossroads, gathered into a town in which all the buildings were the same shape and size, like the cells of a wasp nest. Raf wondered if those who had built them had not been humanoid at all, but perhaps insects with a hive mind. And because that thought was unpleasant he resolutely turned his attention to ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... sitting down at the roots of a tree, and immediately springing up, brushing the seat of his pants vigorously. Examination showed that he had set down on a nest of little brown scorpions. Something like a crawfish in shape, with tails turned up over their backs, with a sting like a wasp's in the end of the tail. The laugh of the ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... of hilarity which had penetrated to the outer hall, and, merely waving the playwright toward Tinker, swept the same gesture upward to complete it by resting a cordial hand upon the departing guest's shoulder. This personage, a wasp-figured, languorous youth, with pale plastered hair over a talcum face, flicked his host lightly upon the breast with a pair of ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... was he himself who had made the ladder. The construction of such ladders, and afterwards the climbing of them, were the most essential branches of his calling—which, as already stated, was that of a bee-hunter. His account of the matter was as follows. A large wasp-like bee, which is called lanyeh, builds its nests upon these tall tapangs. The nest consists of an accumulation of pale yellowish wax—which the bees attach to the under-side of the thick branches, so that these may shelter the hive ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... straight northward, keeping his keen, steady eyes fixed upon the road for shell holes. Over to the east he could hear the thundering boom of artillery and once the air just above him seemed to buzz as if some mammoth wasp had passed. But he rode steadily, easily, without ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... was scarcely a wind at all to stir the harsh grasses. Far and near was silence and warmth, an immense, cheerful peace. Across the sky a few light clouds sailed gently on a blue so vast that the eye failed before that horizon. A few bees sounded their deep chant, and now and again a wasp rasped hastily on his journey. Than these there was no sound of any kind. So peaceful, innocent and safe did everything appear that it might have been the childhood of the world as it was of ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... on which they were to open fire a large turn out of F.O.O.'s collected in the O.P.'s to watch the enemy get a surprise. They did considerable damage, but, at the same time, were largely responsible for stirring up a veritable wasp's nest of hostile heavies which had been lying dormant for ages, and consequently our front again ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... bodies, or perhaps it is thought that from their burrowing habits they may serve to hollow out a grave for the soul under the earth, the quarter to which the shaman consigns it. In other similar ceremonies the dirt-dauber wasp or the stinging ant is buried in the same manner in order that it may kill the soul, as these are said to kill other more powerful insects by their poisonous sting or bite. The wood of a tree struck by lightning is also a potent spell for both good ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... or at least of certain fragments of them, is remarkable. Few reputations have been exposed to such perils at the hands of open enemies or of imprudent friends. In his lifetime 'the wasp of Twickenham' could sting through a sevenfold covering of pride or stupidity. Lady Mary and Lord Hervey writhed and retaliated with little more success than the poor denizens of Grub Street. But it is more remarkable that Pope seems to be stinging well into the second century after ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... midnight. No mail, passenger or freight flyers were scheduled to pass near there at that hour, and, save for some chance private craft, we would be undisturbed. The ransom gold was available to Hanley. He had said he would bring it in his personal Wasp. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... its foe turned up his nose in disgust. Its legs were quite as long as the tiger had said, and its body covered with coarse black hair. It had a great mouth, with a row of sharp teeth a foot long; but its head was joined to the pudgy body by a neck as slender as a wasp's waist. This gave the Lion a hint of the best way to attack the creature, and as he knew it was easier to fight it asleep than awake, he gave a great spring and landed directly upon the monster's back. Then, with one blow ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... over de slaves was worse off dan when dey had marsters. Some of 'em was put in stockades at Angola, Loosanna[FN: Louisiana], an' some in de turrible corral at Natchez. Dey warnt used to de stuff de Yankees fed 'em. Dey fed' em wasp-nes' bread, 'stead o' corn-pone an' hoe cake, an' all such lak. Dey caught diseases an' died by de hund'eds, jus' lak flies. Dey had been fooled into thinkin' it would be good times, but it was de wors' times dey ever seen. Twant no place for 'em to go; no bed to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... "pleeks" his happiness as he excavates the twig of a silver maple. Probably he has found the larvae which the wood wasp left there in the fall. The big hairy woodpecker flies across the clearing with a strident scream. Next to the crow and the jay he is the noisiest fellow in the winter woods. He hammers away at a decaying basswood and the chips which fall are an inch and a half long. His hammering is ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... thing I should know, they would have got her away from me entirely. I have been well pleased to have her much with the sisters hitherto, because it kept her from hearing the foolish talk of girls and gallants,—and such a flower would have had every wasp and bee buzzing round it. But now the time is coming to marry her, I much doubt these nuns. There's old Jocunda is a sensible woman, who knew something of the world before she went there,—but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... feelings too involved for calm scientific contemplation. As if a Martian should suddenly become visible to an astronomer, I found that one of the egg planets was inhabited. Perched upon the summit—quite near the north pole—was an insect, a wasp, much smaller than the egg itself. And as I looked, I saw it at the climax of its diminutive life; for it reared up, resting on the tips of two legs and the iridescent wings, and sunk its ovipositor deep into the crystalline ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Hiawatha aimed an arrow; Scarce a twig moved with his motion, Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled, But the wary roebuck started, Stamped with all his hoofs together, Listened with one foot uplifted, Leaped as if to meet the arrow; Ah! the singing, fatal arrow, Like a wasp it buzzed ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... and a foolish love of fable and adventure is sufficiently testified by the pretty numerous fragments which still remain (Pauly). Demetrius Phalereus, quoted by Pearce, quotes a grandiloquent description of the wasp taken from Kleitarchus, "feeding on the mountainside, her ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... wasp, oh, STANLEY! mark its nest of paper.—(it is said, on wasp's paper you are wont to write your thoughts on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... said Beau-Pied, "the adjutant's wrong to run himself into this wasp's-nest. If Hulot was in command we shouldn't ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... fashion but form! Whether coat skirts are long or short, full or plain, and waists wasp-like or square, the above admonitions have held for many decades, and are likely to hold ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... liquor contain'd in the small baggs or bladders, upon which grow out those sharp Syringe-pipes, as I before noted; and very consonant to this, is the reason of the pain created by the sting of a Bee, Wasp, &c. as I elsewhere shew: For by the Dart, which is likewise a pipe, is made a deep passage into the skin, and then by the anger of the Fly, is his gally poisonous liquor injected; which being admitted among the sensible parts, and so mix'd ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... youth, and youth and rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all. Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so as a Phoenix out of the ashes of another Phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion or as a snake out of dung." We can comprehend how an audience composed of men and women whose ne'er-do-weel relatives went to the theatre to be stirred by such tragedies as those of Marston and Cyril Tourneur would themselves snatch a sacred pleasure from awful ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... pleased to hear me. Paramanus ten A parasukshma make; ten of those build The trasarene, and seven trasarenes One mote's-length floating in the beam, seven motes The whisker-point of mouse, and ten of these One likhya; likhyas ten a yuka, ten Yukas a heart of barley, which is held Seven times a wasp-waist; so unto the grain Of mung and mustard and the barley-corn, Whereof ten give the finger joint, twelve joints The span, wherefrom we reach the cubit, staff, Bow-length, lance-length; while twenty ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... months good sport may be had with the wet fly; and in September a yellow dun, or a fly that imitates the wasp, will kill, if only you can keep out of sight, and place a well-dried fly right on the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... need some part of the house that he may call his very own. Here he can keep his specimens, his aquarium, his herbarium and what not. Around the wall he can hang the twigs with their cocoons, oak galls, last year's wasp and bird nests and other treasures. He should also have a work table that a little glue or ink will not injure and a carpet that has no further use in the household. Usually one corner of the attic or cellar is ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... he that deems himself as sure of getting the better of his neighbour as thou dost, a wasp that buzzes against the cicala. But as it is plain thou thinkst the kid no fair stake, lo, here is this ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... with their fingers. After cutting themselves once with any sharp tool, they would not touch it again, or would handle it with the greatest caution. Lumps of sugar were often given them, wrapped up in paper; and Reugger sometimes put a live wasp in the paper, so that in hastily unfolding it they got stung; after this had once happened, they afterward first held the packet to their ears to ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... another pirate upon us at Nazareth—another invincible Arab guard. We took our last look at the city, clinging like a whitewashed wasp's nest to the hill-side, and at eight o'clock in the morning departed. We dismounted and drove the horses down a bridle-path which I think was fully as crooked as a corkscrew, which I know to be as steep as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... felt free to devote myself to the conquest of my new world. Looking back to those critical first years, I see myself always behaving like a child let loose in a garden to play and dig and chase the butterflies. Occasionally, indeed, I was stung by the wasp of family trouble; but I knew a healing ointment—my faith in America. My father had come to America to make a living. America, which was free and fair and kind, must presently yield him what he sought. I had come to America to ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... bachelor, he was instinctively ashamed of his family, and when the weary-looking wife, the thin, shy girl, or the corpulent, stupid-faced son were with him and he heard steps outside, he would come out like a little wasp, and, unmistakably resenting the intrusion, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... which is inflicted upon them; and therefore we should take care not to put children in situations where they are liable to be hurt or terrified by animals. Could we possibly expect, that Gulliver should love the Brobdignagian wasp that buzzed round his cake, and prevented him from eating his breakfast? Could we expect that Gulliver should be ever reconciled to the rat against whom he was obliged to draw his sword? Many animals are, to children, what the wasp and the rat were to Gulliver. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... story the hero Joro gets the better of his enemy the lama Tschoridong in the following way. The lama, who is an enchanter, sends out his soul in the form of a wasp to sting Joro's eyes. But Joro catches the wasp in his hand, and by alternately shutting and opening his hand he causes the lama alternately to lose and recover consciousness. In a Tartar poem two youths cut ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... and I don't see what made her run, because she had been in the garden. Maybe a bee or a wasp—" ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... once left the cottage. The latter was let into the secret, and prevailed on to form one of the crew of the Wasp, as the little cutter was named. In the course of the afternoon everything was in readiness. Gascoyne waited till the dusk of evening, and then embarked along with Ole Thorwald; that stout individual having insisted on being one of the party, despite ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... Do you hear? What I won't have is, flat robbery! Mark me, Germany or England, it 's one to me if I see vital powers in the field running to a grand career. It 's a fine field over there. As well there as here, then! But better here than there if it 's to be a wasp's life. Do ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that I might eat, Would take the bitter and leave me the sweet; But once, when I made her jealous for fun, At something I'd whispered, or looked, or done, One Sunday in San Antonio, To a glorious girl on the Alamo, She drew from her belt a dear little dagger, And—sting of a wasp!—it made me stagger! An inch to the left, or an inch to the right, And I shouldn't be maundering here to-night; But she sobbed, and, sobbing, so swiftly bound Her torn rebosa about the wound, That I quite forgave her. Scratches don't count In Texas, down by ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... tree, which grew out from the hillside, was the living centre-beam of the roof. The walls were of wattle and covered with moss. The whole house had something of an egg shape; and it half hung, half stood in that steep, hillside thicket, like a wasp's ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... half-measures, which irritates without crushing its victims, which flaps an exasperated wasp-nest with a silk pocket-handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely successful; and after three or four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... night, to you, Thane of Aescendune," said he to Elfwyn; "we have had a fair night's work, and destroyed a big wasp's nest; have you come for ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... done their work and wrapped themselves round Umbelazi's army as the nippers of a wasp close about a fly (why did not Umbelazi cut off those horns, I wondered), the Usutu bull began his charge. Twenty or thirty thousand strong, regiment after regiment, Cetewayo's men rushed up the slope, and there, near the crest of it, were met ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... ten, I think, and the morning was warm and pleasant, when there gently sailed into the secretary's room, through the open window, a wasp. I saw him come in, and I do not think I ever beheld a more agreeable or benignant insect. His large eyes were filled with the light of a fatherly graciousness. His semi-detached body seemed to quiver with a helpful impulse, and his long hind legs hung down beneath him as though ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... king's beard, and another of the same materials, but fixed into a paring of her Majesty's thumb-nail, which served for the back. There was a collection of needles and pins, from a foot to half a yard long; four wasp stings, like joiners' tacks; some combings of the queen's hair; a gold ring which one day she made me a present of, in a most obliging manner, taking it from her little finger and throwing it over my head like a collar. I desired the captain ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... when they are quite young they will follow with equal readiness any moving object remotely resembling their mother, or even a human being (James, "Psychology," ii, 396). Bergson, quoting Fabre, has made play with the supposed extraordinary accuracy of the solitary wasp Ammophila, which lays its eggs in a caterpillar. On this subject I will quote from Drever's "Instinct in Man," ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... she scampered up the corridor; however, I must try and find something to do here—it's very dull being all by oneself. Just then, as she drew near one of the windows, she heard a great buzzing and fluttering, and looking up, saw a large wasp dancing about in the sunshine. Wishie thought it would be very good fun to try and catch him, so she made several springs at the window, but all in vain; the wasp was as young and active as she was, and eluded her very nimbly. Quite out of breath, she paused for a minute to look ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... richest mauve and brightest orange worn by those which are at home in a hot country. As the sun gets strong we hear the drone of a swarm of great creatures like prodigious wasps with legs like stilts, which fly around the sweet-scented blooms. In ancient inscriptions this wasp, or hornet, was used as the sign of Northern or Lower Egypt. Across the flower-beds run miniature canals of stone, by means of which the water from the life-giving river is carried all over the ground, so that it can be easily watered; ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... became so great that the subject was laid before the Prophet. No one was more opposed to it than was his brother Hyrum, who condemned it as from beneath. Joseph saw that it would break up the Church should he sanction it, so he denounced the pamphlet through the Wasp, a newspaper published at Nauvoo, as a bundle of nonsense and trash. He said that if he had known its contents he would never have permitted ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... sandal—yet no part is but a vile thing habits there; Snake and wasp haunt root and blossom; on the ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... of Passamaquoddy; and the English frigate "Phobe" captured the United States' frigate "Essex," off Valparaiso, on the western coast of South America. On the other hand, a British sloop of war was captured by the American sloop "Wasp;" and an expedition, under Admiral Cochrane and Sir E. Pakenham, against New Orleans failed, after a severe rencontre with the American troops who defended the city. The final event of the war was the capture of Fort Bowyer, by the British, in the Gulf of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sound of human voices. So I became curious to know what made the noise, and to my delight I saw a cow that had evidently strayed away from its field, having probably got into the wood to be under the shade of the trees, and away from wasp-flies. At first she was frightened at me, but I had been used to cattle all my life, so I soon quieted her, and she let me approach her. I saw that it was time for her to be milked, so, making the palm of my hand into a cup, I got enough milk to refresh me considerably and to ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... the young foliage and grow rapidly into the conspicuous cream, yellow and black 'looper' caterpillars mentioned in a previous chapter (p. 60). These, when fully-grown, spin among the twigs of the food-plant a light cocoon, in which the black and yellow-banded wasp-like pupa spends its short summer term before the emergence ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... nest of the coal-black Trigona (Trigona carbonaria), from eastern Australia, Mr. F. Smith, of the British Museum, found from four hundred to five hundred dead workers, but no females. The combs were arranged precisely similar to those of the common wasp. The number of honey-pots which were placed at the foot of the nest was two hundred and fifty. Mr. Smith inclines to the opinion that the hive of Trigona contains several prolific females, as the great number of workers can only be thus explained, and M. Guerin ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... this fear had haunted him. Like a wasp, it had buzzed constantly about his ears, threatening to sting him at any moment. It had become a veritable obsession, a mean, haunting, appetite-destroying, ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... of animals, plants and natural objects. Instances of these names are Dhana (a leaf of the rice plant), Kasia (bell-metal), Gohia (a kind of lizard), Bachhulia (a calf), Gujaria (a milkmaid), Moria (a peacock), Laraiya (a jackal), Khatkira (a bug), Sugaria (a pig), Barraiya (a wasp), Neora (a mongoose), Bhartu Chiraiya (a sparrow), and so on. Thirty-nine names in all are reported. Members of each sept draw the figure of the animal or plant after which it is named on the wall at marriages and worship it. They usually refuse to kill ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... capture was very significant, and it happened July 12 only a fortnight after Blakely captured the 'Reindeer' farther westward. The 'Siren' was but one of many privateers in those waters. The 'Governor Tompkins' burned fourteen vessels successively in the British Channel. The 'Young Wasp,' of Philadelphia, cruised nearly six months about the coasts of England and Spain, and in the course of West India commerce. The 'Harpy,' of Baltimore, another large vessel of some 350 tons and fourteen guns, cruised nearly three months off the coast of Ireland, in the British Channel, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the smaller animals, the birds and the insects, gathered themselves together in a common council. Here, too, all were bitter against the useless cruelty of mankind. After all complaints had been heard, Am-wee-soo the Wasp ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... if the roof you were born under was not big enough for you. And then your eyes—I have seen your eyes flash up, as if you were fighting; and the bosom of your Sunday frock was loose in church two buttons; it was not hot at all to speak of, and there was a wasp next pew. All these things make me unhappy, Mary. My darling, tell me ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... lovely sunshine-day, The house and the yard couldn't hold me; I roved to the woods, on my back I lay, In cradle of fancy rolled me; But there were ants, and gnats that bite, The horse-fly was keen, the wasp showed fight. ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... cotton. In the course of cultivation for three thousand years the animal and vegetable fibers were lengthened and strengthened and cheapened. But at last man has risen to the level of the worm and can spin threads to suit himself. He can now rival the wasp in the making of paper. He is no longer dependent upon the flax and the cotton plant, but grinds up trees to get his cellulose. A New York newspaper uses up nearly 2000 acres of forest a year. The United States grinds up about five million cords of wood a year in the ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... degree of folly in England, must sooner or later lead to the production of a degenerate race. Moreover, I maintain that the charm which these corsets are supposed to produce is in the worst possible taste; it is not a pleasant thing to see a woman cut in two like a wasp—it offends both the eye and the imagination. A slender waist has its limits, like everything else, in proportion and suitability, and beyond these limits it becomes a defect. This defect would be a glaring one in the nude; why should it ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... half an hour they started, the cider-makers in the yard having ceased their labors and gone away, so that the only sounds audible there now were the trickling of the juice from the tightly screwed press, and the buzz of a single wasp, which had drunk itself so tipsy that it was unconscious of nightfall. Grace was very cheerful at the thought of being soon in her sylvan home, but Fitzpiers sat beside her almost silent. An indescribable ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... interrupted, enjoyed all the advantages of that system from which I was preserved. She grew up a wandlike figure, graceful and interesting, and died of decline at nineteen; while I, though not able to compare shapes with a wasp or an hour-glass, yet passed muster very fairly among mere human forms of God's moulding; and I have enjoyed to this hour a rare exemption from headaches, and other ladylike maladies, that appear the almost exclusive privilege of women in the ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... result remained that in future, British frigates, like other frigates, could safely fight only their inferiors in force. What applied to the Guerriere and Macedonian against the Constitution and United States, where the British force was inferior, applied equally to the Frolic against the Wasp, where no inferiority could be shown. The British newspapers thenceforward admitted what America wished to prove, that, ship for ship, British were no more than the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... responded Clemm, as he ingratiatingly placed an arm about her wasp-like waist. "But two's company, and four's too much ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... know, that there is a wasp buzzing about his honey-comb," said Phoebe; "and, moreover, that I know that this young Scotch Scapegrace shifted himself out of a woman's into a man's dress at Goody Green's, and gave Goody Green's Dolly a gold-piece ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... time no word was spoken. I watched my life run redly through the wasp waist of the transparent glass, then suddenly the sand ceased to flow, half in the upper ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... not quite sure what Pierre's enigmatical tone meant. A wild light showed in his eyes, and his tongue blundered out: "Yis, Hilton's wife's finger, or a look av her eye, or nothin' at all. Aisy, aisy, ye wasp! Ye'd go stalkin' divils in hell for her yerself, so ye would. But the tongue av ye—but, it's gall to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the great poet Pope, and a glance across the world's literature will show that the mandate was unneeded. For ages before the birth of the celebrated "wasp of Twickenham," mankind had been at study on the subject. "The burden of history" says George Finlayson, "is what man has been; of law, what he does; of physiology, what he is; of ethics, what he ought to be; of revelation, what he shall be." "Man is the product of his own ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... none of mine, though the plan was a creditable one. But it has brought old Jaspar into a wasp's nest." ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... is not a cause of war. It is the means which helps savage peoples to fight. It is the spirit which enables them to combine—the great common object before which all personal or tribal disputes become insignificant. What the horn is to the rhinoceros, what the sting is to the wasp, the Mohammedan faith was to the Arabs of the Soudan—a faculty of offence ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... up in the night and touched them with his hands. He remembered, too, the fragrance they gave out—a hot, dry, spicy smell. He remembered also the dried apples spread out on a board beside his bed, and the broken spinning-wheel, and the wasp's nest. He was sure, too, there were many other fascinating relics stored away in this old attic. But for the sputtering tallow-candle, which the night before was nearly burnt out, he would have examined everything else about him before ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... upon this their favourite autumn food. Others that have fallen and been knocked out of the cup are a light yellow at the base and green towards the middle and the point; the yellow part is that which has been covered by the cup. In the sward there is a small hole from out of which creeps a wasp at intervals; it is a nest, and some few of them are still at work. But their motions are slow and lack vivacity; before long, numbers must die, and already many have succumbed after crawling miserably on the ground which they spurned a short while since, when with a brisk buzz ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of Budge, Toddie went off weeping, and declaring that he would look at his dear whay-al anyhow. A moment later his wail changed to a piercing shriek; and running to his assistance, I saw him holding one finger tenderly and trampling on a wasp. ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... As to Ward I did but touch a filament or two in one of his monstrous cobwebs, and off he ran instantly to Newman to complain of my gratuitous impertinence. Many years after I was forcibly reminded of him by a pretty group of a little Cupid flying to his mother to show a wasp-sting he had just received. Newman was then in this difficulty. He did not disagree with what Ward had written; but, on the other hand, he had given neither me nor Ward to understand that he was likely to step in between ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... swathed in orange-coloured linen, kept in place by bands of brownish linen, and is further covered by a mask of wood and cartonnage, painted to match the exterior of the coffin. Long garlands of faded flowers deck the mummy from head to foot. A wasp, attracted by their scent, must have settled upon them at the moment of burial, and become imprisoned by the lid; the insect has been completely preserved from corruption by the balsams of the embalmer, and its gauzy wings have passed un-crumpled ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... was drawing near to its brilliant climax. Through the blue waters of the Solent a swarm of palatial steam yachts, saucy outriggers, graceful cutters and wasp-like motor boats jostled one another in their efforts to gain safe anchorage after the strenuous excitement of the day's racing. Everywhere could be heard the clank of mooring chains, mingled with the full-flavoured oaths of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... the small round mottled variety is considered the best. The drone, or, as some call him, the thief,[213] is black with a large belly. The wasp, which has some resemblance to a bee, is not, however, a fellow labourer, but attacks the bees with his sting, wherefore the bees ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... objections, was too much. It was the last straw. The country was going to the dogs. He argued, pleaded, stormed and swore and beat his head against the wall of indifference and obstinacy which his daughter reared between them with the unremitting fury of a wasp that finds itself on the wrong side of a windowpane. This new turn in affairs rendered Mrs. Forest so furious that she snapped right and left regardless of persons like a dog possessed of the rabies, rendering herself the most disagreeable ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... passages is there any wonder that it is hard to persuade women that men do not admire "wasp" waists? How are they to know that the "jimp middle" of the ballads was in its jimpness in proportion to the shoulders? The trouble is, that the early rhymesters have used up the only side of the question capable of poetical treatment. One cannot sing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... acting as stoker. The second truck was in charge of Lieutenant More, an engineer on the Bechuanaland Railway. No. 1 truck was armed with a Maxim, and its crew mostly with Lee-Metfords. Truck No. 2, which carried another Maxim, rejoiced in the name of "Wasp." A third truck, the "Gun," carried a Hotchkiss. The crew of the trucks numbered barely fifteen in each. The train, after passing Lord Charles Bentinck's squadron, who hailed it with a cheer and various humorous sallies, came on the enemy, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... transition was somewhat sudden; to a wasp or two that had come foraging on Daisy's window-sill. But Dr. Sandford was at home there; and so explained the wasp's work and manner of life, with his structure and fitness for what he had to do, that Daisy ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... pity's sake, forbid Beauty's wasp at me to fly; Sure the child should not be chid, And his mother ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... get rid of them. Their men, Pascoe, Sam, and Jowdie, seeing the condition they were in, landed from the canoe, and made large fires in the form of a ring, and they laid down in the midst of them and slept till daylight. The sting of a black ant is quite as painful as that of a wasp. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... contained dried ferns and even flattened-out butterflies between two sheets of shiny tissue-paper. The salon had dark walls on which hung a collection of family portraits. Ladies with puckered mouths and wasp-like waists had necks adorned with gorgeous pearls, which had apparently gone to an early grave with their wearers. I saw no similar ones on the necks of the present generation. After the coffee was served and a certain time ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... form, from the tip of the nose to the ends of the fingers and the points of the toes—thus revealing a sympathy reaching across many ages. It seems to me that the same artistic impression is to be detected in the still earlier paintings of the wasp-waisted little ladies of the Cogul rock-shelter in Catalonia. We find here the same sinuous figure with exaggeratedly compressed waist, prominent bosom, and emphasised haunches. But it is many, perhaps forty, thousands years earlier! One is led to wonder whether this type of human female—to-day ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... want you to go, silly child." Aline tried to withdraw sharpness from her voice, but it was there, like the sting of a wasp in a wound. "Even if I didn't think it wise for some reasons, it isn't my car, you know, but Mr. Somerled's, and he has a perfect right to invite any guests he likes. Don't imagine that I'm going to talk to him ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a wasp came buzzing along, and, delighted at finding so many flowers without the trouble of searching for them, he began to drink up their honey very voraciously. Little Red Riding Hood knew well the difference ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... left Mr. Coffin's hand, and the next instant formed the contents of Nathaniel's open mouth, leaving, however, a liberal surplusage to ornament his cheeks, chin, and nose. The recipient of this bulletin choked, spluttered, and pawed at his face after the manner of a cat who has tried to eat a wasp. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the little wasp, "you are afraid, sir;" and the other boys abetting the mischief-maker, the lad was goaded to leave his hold of the cable, and strike out for the buoy. He reached it, and then turned, and pulled towards the ship again, when he caught ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various |
