"Bats" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over India the birds and beasts are entirely different from ours, all but one bird which is exactly like ours, and that is the Quail. But everything else is totally different. For example they have bats,—I mean those birds that fly by night and have no feathers of any kind; well, their birds of this kind are as big as a goshawk! Their goshawks again are as black as crows, a good deal bigger than ours, and very ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I'm a crow, especially when I stand a'top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! Ain't I a crow? And where's the scare-crow? There he stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into the sleeves of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... next of solitariness, A portraiture doth well express, By sleeping dog, cat: Buck and Doe, Hares, Conies in the desert go: Bats, Owls the shady bowers over, In melancholy darkness hover. Mark well: If't be not as't should be, Blame the bad ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... carpets, the chill high walls, the massive desks, the impressive chairs, the great majestic table portentously suggestive of power. Presto! the dim calm is broken; the air vibrates as when an ancient church is invaded by a swarm of vampire-bats. Into the great room enter a group of men and a flock of youths, who settle in the impressive chairs round the majestic table. You wonder what is the motive of the assemblage. These grave lawyers, whose names are weighty in the nation's councils, and these gray-haired, dignified financiers ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... travel. The road would fringe a pit of shade, black but for the gleam of mica and the scattered foam of the stream. It was no longer a silent world. Hawks screamed at times from the cliffs, and a multitude of bats and owls flickered in the depths. A continuous falling of waters, an infinite sighing of night winds, the swaying and tossing which is always heard in the midmost mountain solitudes, the crumbling of hill gravel and the bleat of a goat on some hill-side, all ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... its hardness and unhappiness. Every day, through the long monotonous hours, the song of his little guest would come up in snatches to the lonely watcher, and at evening, when the vesper-bell was ringing and the great grey bats slid out of their hiding-places in the belfry roof, the bright-eyed bird would return, twitter a few sleepy notes, and nestle into the arms that were waiting for him. Those were happy days for the Dark Image. Only the great bell ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... beasts among the ruins. A traveller saw some bones of a sheep in one, the remains, he supposed, of a lion's dinner; but he did not like to go further into the den to see who dwelt there. Owls and bats fill all the dark places. But no men live there, though human bones are often found scattered about, and they turn into dust as ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... she disturbed the forest creatures at their varied businesses; and underneath spoke an apparent dozen of terrifying voices which were in reality only the winds and the trees. Virginia knew that these things were not dangerous—that daylight would show them to be only deer-mice, hares, weasels, bats, and owls—nevertheless, they had their effect. For about her was cloying velvet blackness—not the closed-in blackness of a room, where one feels the embrace of the four walls, but the blackness of infinite space ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... I was the newly appointed occupant of a college chair and had to address the Owl's Club. It is a penalty that all new professors pay; and the Owls batten upon them like bats. It is one of the compensations of age that I am free of the Owl's Club forever. But in the days when I still had to address them, I used to take it out of the Owls in a speech, delivered, in imagination only and not out loud, ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... thou laid it out? or buried it? To whom hast thou preached these seven months? to bats and owls? Hast buried it in one hole with thyself and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... that is, there was no regular house for the assistant, but a little one-roomed hut, built on the top of the indigo vats, served me for a residence. It had neither doors nor windows, and the rain used to beat through the room, while the eaves were inhabited by countless swarms of bats, who, in the evening flashed backwards and forwards in ghostly rapid flight, and were a most intolerable nuisance. To give some idea of the duties of an indigo assistant, I must explain the system on which we get our lands, and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... scorned thou wert; Even thy child beholding thee in ruins, As if the waters of Oblivion In dark Oblivion's Dale had touched his lips, Left thee; and thou didst writhe like a whole world Engulfed in sounds of woe: Hair-tearings and Breast-beatings, groans of sad despair, night-bats Wandering restlessly, unheeded prayers Of souls condemned, loud thunder peals, fierce glares Of lightnings, and the laughter of ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... post office constant. None of us says anything, not even to ourselves; but when it gets to whar she shoves you away from the letter place, an' begins talkin' milk and honey to him right under your nose, onless you're as blind as steeple bats, an' as deaf as the adder of scriptoore which stoppeth her y'ear, you're shore bound to ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... already twinkling in the sky. The moon must have been rising on the further side of the monastery, for the sky was clear, soft, and transparent. Bats were flitting noiselessly along ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... planned, it seems hard indeed that I find myself so unable to execute his wishes. After a few days, when I shall leave it, I suppose that for the next five years the house will become an owl roost and den of bats and spiders. On Thursday I go temporarily to Charleston to visit my uncle, Doctor Thornton, who offers me a place in his office, and a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... is interested in the subject of the origin, in certain places, of the patterns, may turn to Mr. Haddon's Evolution of Art. {64c} Mr. Haddon shows how the Portuguese pattern of horizontal triangles is, in the art of the uncivilised natives of Brazil, meant to represent bats. {64d} A cross, dotted, within a circle, is directly derived, through several stages, from a representation of an ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... branch of Audubon Avenue,—is on the left as you advance, and not more than three-hundred yards from the great vestibule. It is but little more than a quarter of a mile in length, and is remarkable for its pit of two-hundred and eighty feet in depth; and as being the hibernal resort of bats. Tens of thousands of them are seen hanging from the walls, in apparently a torpid state, during the winter, but no sooner does the spring open, ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... don't forget the bats that get their claws in your hair," said Skippy, approaching with the gag, "and not a soul to hear your cries, ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... with his spider-like limb in, And stock his lean bag with waylaying the women; And Jove only knows for what creatures beside To shelter their envy and dust-liking pride, And feed on corruption, like bats, who at nights, In the dark take their shuffles, which they call then flights; Be these the court-critics and vamp a Review. And by a poor figure, and therefore a true, For it suits with thy nature, both shoe-like and slaughterly Be its hue leathern, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... foregoing classes, except a few of the Batrachians, breathe air in lungs, and almost all, except snakes, have legs; none now living can fly, except bats and birds; but ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... into the masses of big clustering leaves over my head I spied a bat hanging suspended from a twig. The bats, I must explain, in that part of the world, that illimitable plain where there were no caverns and old buildings and other dark places to hide in by day, are not so intolerant of the bright light as in other lands. They do not come forth until evening, but ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... Jacquiline Auzun," ah, if I had my stilts and bats, I would strike the little birds down, and we should have ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... such a small chap could send in the balls at the terrific speed he did, balls that set leg-guards and pads at defiance, and splintered one of the batsmen's spring-handled bats as if it had been match wood; but he ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... game like cricket or tennis. It behoves them to see that all start fair, and that no hapless beginner is unduly handicapped. To compel men to take part in a match for dear life, whether they wish it or not, and then to insist that some of them shall wield bats and some mere broom-sticks, irrespective of height, weight, age, or bodily infirmity, is surely not fair. It justifies the committee in calling for ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... probably no tree that contributes so largely to the conveniences of English life as the Willow. Putting aside its uses in the manufacture of gunpowder and cricket bats, we may safely say that the most scantily-furnished house can boast of some article of Willow manufacture in the shape of baskets. British basket-making is, as far as we know, the oldest national manufacture; it is the manufacture in connection with which we ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... breathed. "Jumping, they were, and leaping, and flying on their leather wings like a lot of black bats out o' hell! And I'm thinkin' that's where they've taken Chet Bullard, and never again will he hold a ship like 'twas in the hollow of his hand, and him settin' ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... louder and louder; the whole wood seemed to echo; her heart beat high; lights glimmered nearer and nearer, hares and rabbits pattered by and startled her, and pheasants thundered off their roosts with an incredible noise, owls flitted, and bats innumerable, disturbed and terrified by the glaring lights and loud ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... case of the sleeping butterfly, carry one of the bats to your warm room and place him in a bird-cage, hanging him up on the top wires by his toes, with his head downward. The inverted position of these strange little beings always brings to mind some of the experiences of Gulliver, and indeed ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... sleepy lake sucked at the mud banks with small mouthing sounds as though it found the taste of the raw mud agreeable. A monster crawfish, big as a chicken lobster, crawled out of the top of his dried mud chimney and perched himself there, an armored sentinel on the watchtower. Bull bats began to flitter back and forth above the tops of the trees. A pudgy muskrat, swimming with head up, was moved to sidle off briskly as he met a cotton-mouth moccasin snake, so fat and swollen with summer poison that it looked almost like a legless lizard as it moved along the ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... n'alley, ivery man jack of 'em: Aberford's in Stomich Alley, Chalmers's in Nairve Court, Short's niver stirs out o' Liver Lane, Paul's is stuck fast in Kidney Close, Kinyon's in Mookis Membrin Mews, and Hibbard's in Lung Passage. Look see! nixt time y' are out of sorts, stid o' consultin' three bats an' a n'owl at a guinea the piece, send direct to me, and I'll give y' all their opinions, and all their prescriptions, gratis. And deevilich dear ye'll find 'em at the price, if ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... less extensively ensheathed in horny beaks, remind us of birds. Moreover, their bones contained air cavities, rendering them specifically lighter, as is the case in most birds. The breast-bone was large and keeled, as in most birds and in bats, and the shoulder girdle is strikingly similar to that of ordinary birds. But it seems to me that the special resemblance of pterodactyles to birds ends here, unless I may add the entire absence of teeth which characterises the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to travel a few feet further we would have both found a comparatively safe footing and had our arms free and a fighting chance with the big catamount in place of hanging suspended to the face of the rock like two big, helpless, terrified bats. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... curl about him and press him closer. The hand bent from the wrist and caressed him protectingly, and the warm contact of his velvet body put a change in Skipper's sick dreams, for he began to mutter in cold and bitter ominousness: "Any nigger that as much as bats an eye at that ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... donations of lots were made to the first woman married, to the first newspaper, to the first church, to the first child born. But there were no mines near, and the city never had an inhabitant. The half-dozen buildings put up by the proprietors are left for the nightly carnivals of bats and owls. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... of dusk and mist and midges, Now the tired planes drone homeward through the haze, And distant wood-fires wink behind the ridges, And the first flare some timorous Hun betrays; Now no shell circulates, but all men brood Over their evening food; The bats flit warily and owl and rat With muffled cries their shadowy loves pursue, And pleasant, Corporal, it is to chat In this hushed moment with a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... the stern face of Mr. Ball, the master, appeared at the door; he rapped sharply with his ferule, and called: "Books, books, books!" The bats were dropped, and the boys and girls began streaming into the school, but some of the boys managed ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... into unfrequented places, where there was no outlet, and where their pursuer kept them eddying round at his pleasure, and they crept under the eaves of the houses, and clung tightly to the sides of hay-ricks, like bats, and tore in at open chamber windows, and cowered close to hedges, and, in short, went ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... mine. The wooden tram-way on which the coal-car had formerly run still remained; and cautiously walking upon this causeway through the quagmire of mud, Miselle and Mr. Williams penetrated some distance into the mine, but saw nothing more wonderful than mould and other fungi, bats and toads. Retracing their steps, they followed the tram-way to its termination at the top of a high bank, down which the coals were shot into a cart stationed below. This coal is of an inferior quality, bituminous, and largely mixed with slate. It sells readily, however, upon the Creek, at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the quarries whence the Romans drew them have also been found, by Guerin; they lie in the flanks of the Jebel Assalah, and are well worth a visit; legions of bats—tirlils, the Arabs call them—hang in noisome clusters ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... subterraneous labyrinths as places of retreat in extreme danger; the howling of winds through the crevices of old walls and other dreary vacuities; the grating of heavy doors on rusty hinges of iron; the shrieking of bats and the screaming of owls and other creatures that resort to desolate or half-inhabited buildings; these and the like circumstances in the domestic life of the people I speak of, would multiply their superstitions and increase their credulity; and among warriors who set all danger at defiance, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... like a nest left to swing upon a bough when the bird is flown: these are uses to which we cannot without a mixture of spleen and contempt behold the human carcass reduced. We string up dogs, foxes, bats, moles, weasels. Man ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... to do but push on. Precautions would have availed them nothing, and there was no refuge nearer than the pueblo. Sometimes they walked down aisles unchoked by brush but full of moving shadows, above which sounded the lonely continuous hooting of the owl. Now and again bats whirred past, and once a startled wildcat scurried across the path and darted up a ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... machinery, and would require the skill of an "artist." It is precisely upon this issue that the conflict of machine versus hand-labour is still fought out. The most highly-finished articles in the clothing, and boot trades are still hand-made; the best golf-clubs, fishing-rods, cricket bats, embody a large amount of high manual skill, though articles of fair average make are turned out chiefly by machinery in large quantities. These hand-made goods are produced for a small portion of the consuming public, whose education ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... a muffled rustling of wings was heard above their heads. They looked up, and saw numbers of large black bats, startled by the torches, darting hither and thither under the dismal vault. Birds, too, flew out from their hiding-places as they advanced, and flapped and screamed in ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... folded arms and fixed eyes, A sigh that piercing mortifies, A look that's fasten'd to the ground, A tongue chain'd up without a sound! Fountain-heads and pathless groves, Places which pale passion loves! Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Are warmly housed save bats and owls! A midnight bell, a parting groan! These are the sounds we feed upon; Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley; Nothing's so dainty ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... of ambassador from you to Willoughby, Clara? You decree me to the part of ball between two bats. The Play being assured, the prologue is a bladder of wind. I seem to be instructed in one of the mysteries of erotic esotery, yet on my word I am no wiser. If Willoughby is to hear anything from you, he will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... immediately followed by the flight of two brick-bats, which fell close to the singer's feet; but had they come in contact with his head, they would certainly have knocked all the music and poetry out of it. The poor frightened musician took to his heels with such speed that a greyhound could not have caught him. Unhappy fate of night-birds, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... out'n my head by next Chris'mas, I'll be mighty lucky. They sot me over ag'in the biggest fuss they could pick out, an' gimme a pa'r er cotton kyards. Here's what kin kyard when she gits her han' in, an' I b'leeve'n my soul I kyarded 'nuff bats to thicken all the quilts betwix' this an' Californy. The folks, they 'ud come an' stan', an' star', an' then they 'ud go some'rs else; an' then new folks 'ud come an' stan', an' star', an' go some'rs else. They wuz jewlarkers thar frum ever'wheres, an' they lookt like they wuz too brazen to ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... Sandy. "That's a deputation frae the Callyfloor C.C. I gae them a tume orange box a week or twa syne to haud their bats an' wickets, an' they ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... stone trap door less than two feet square in the stone floor and through this small entrance we squeezed, candle in hand, and descended a stone stairway to explore the dark crypt underneath. Although the ladies screamed when the bats, disturbed and blinded by the light, flew wildly overhead, they bravely followed the guide. The long passage was but three feet in width and we wondered why the dragoman had brought us down into its close and gloomy recesses; but when magnesium wires were ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... terrible, dark, and dreadfully crowned with her doom. It was not often that anyone dared wander near to Thlunrana by night when the moan of the magicians invoking we know not Whom rose faintly from inner chambers, scaring the drifting bats: but on the last night of all the man from the black-thatched cottage by the five pine-trees came, because he would see Thlunrana once again before the enemy that was divine, but that dwelt with men, should come against it and it should be no more. Up the dark valley he went like ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... on which we have set eyes on him was on a lovely summer's evening, just after sunset: we observed him peeping at us over a hedge, for all the world like the "Spectator" when he was staying with Sir Roger de Coverley. He is supposed to come out at sunset, like the foxes and the bats, and has been seen in the distance on bright moonlight nights striding over the Cotswold uplands. If any one approach him, he hurries away in the opposite direction; yet he is not queer in the head, but strong and in the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... the occupants whereof have to descend as if from an eyrie, to gain any of the other localities. They are a set of whom little seems to be known—quaint and unsocial personages, venturing out at dusk like bats and owls, and looking grimly on all but their immediate neighbours: the gentlemen, mostly gouty, or otherwise disabled; the fairer sex, isolated and ancient, with a marked predilection for close straw-bonnets, large ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... last of the group. These are the most singular of all, and resemble great bats more than squirrels. They possess the power, not exactly of flight, but of making very long leaps from a higher to a lower level, so long that they might almost be regarded as flights. They can pass ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... the neighboring group of islands.[1602] It appears that all omens are derived either from the movements of animals that are regarded as incarnations of deities,[1603] or from phenomena that are held to be produced immediately by deities. The flight of owls, bats, or rails, according to its direction, indicates the result of a battle or a war; the howling of a dog is a sign of coming misfortune; if a centipede crawls on the top of a mat it is a good omen, if on the bottom of a mat it is ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... epoch neither terrestrial reptiles, nor terrestrial mammals. The mention of Australia, indeed, suggests an illustration which, even alone, would amply prove our case. The Fauna of this region differs widely from any that is found elsewhere. On land, all the indigenous mammals, except bats, belong to the lowest, or implacental division; and the insects are singularly different from those found elsewhere. The surrounding seas contain numerous forms which are more or less strange; and among the fish there exists a species of shark, which is the only ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... in one part where the mark of a foot had been impressed since the last high water. Large fires were burning three or four miles off but no human beings were seen. As our gentlemen proceeded up the river a large flight of bats flew over the boat. Very few birds were observed but a cry like that of the Ardea antigone was heard; Mr. Roe killed a small ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... the top of our heads; but their roots also are very richly supplied with nerves so that they form almost a sort of feelers, or organs of sense. Many animals that move about much in the dark, like cats and bats, for instance, have their lips or faces studded with long, delicate, stiff hairs called whiskers, which act in this way and prevent their bumping into objects in the dark. And it is probable that the bristling of the hair on a dog's back, when ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... and several rows of teeth, bent back, that are generally known by the name of pantouffles; vespertilios, a kind of red isosceles triangle, half a yard long, to which pectorals are attached by fleshy prolongations that make them look like bats, but that their horny appendage, situated near the nostrils, has given them the name of sea-unicorns; lastly, some species of balistae, the curassavian, whose spots were of a brilliant gold colour, and the capriscus of clear violet, ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... giants; but, on the contrary, the giants head the column. The geological books are full of them—sharks forty feet long, frogs as big as oxen, ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus of fabulous proportions—were not their skeletons preserved—pterodactyles, or bats, as big as a dog, the mastodon giganteus, beside which an ordinary modern elephant is like a Shetland pony beside a dray horse, ferns as big as oak trees, and mosses eighteen inches in diameter, shell fish of the nautilus order the size of dinner plates, and crustaceans, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... bear, hides itself in winter. In a Memoir on Babylon, by the late Mr. Rich, it is stated that great quantities of porcupine-quills were found on the spot; and that in most of the cavities are numbers of bats and owls. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... two by two, Bats in the belfry, two by two, Rats in the sugar-bowl, two by two, Skip to ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the worthy young fellow. He himself was anxious to quit the meal soon, for he felt restless and uneasy. Antinous could no doubt easily find his way to Lochias, but recollections of the evil omens he had observed in the heavens last night flitted across his soul like bats through a festal hall, marring the pleasure on which he again tried to concentrate it, in order to enjoy his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ranging from 16 to 38,000 per second. The bottom and top notes of a piano make respectively about 40 and 4,000 vibrations a second. Of course, some ears, like some eyes, cannot comprehend the whole scale. The squeak of bats and the chirrup of crickets are inaudible to some people; and dogs are able to hear sounds far too shrill to ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... caring much less for the past or the future than their girl-companions, seldom taking trouble of any kind to heart, or if they did, up again like a cork at the first chance. But yet how dull the world, now as then, would be without them and their bats and balls, and pockets full of rubbish, and everlasting scrapes and mischief, ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... shadow of the gray eclipse Haggards the countryside, When moon-fooled birds have nothing more to say, And soft untimely bats begin to slide; As darkness sweeps the morning light away, So silence brushes music now ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... Where did you ever get such a ridiculous idea?" He sat up suddenly, annoyed beyond expression over disturbing suggestions that seemed to rise like a bevy of black bats all around the ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... were driven hard home into the wainscot; the wedges underneath were tightly fixed. The bed, with bedding complete, was drawn against the entry. A second line of defence was thrown up of chairs, chest of drawers, book-case, and wash-stand. Beyond that were stacked against the wall cricket bats, stumps, boxing-gloves, and other dangerous-looking implements, for use in a last emergency. At Percy's suggestion, and under Wally's direction, an additional loophole was bored in the panel of the door (in flagrant forgetfulness of the rights of School property), through ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... if black bats were flying about his brain, each charged with a different portent of disaster. Once more the unreality of the whole affair overwhelmed him. How could he have been so fatuous as to believe that he had really won such a woman? He remembered his first impression: ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... about the study; there were some shelves with books on them. There was a little bed let into the wall on one side; there was an easy-chair, and what professed to be a sofa; and there was a pile of miscellanies, consisting of bats and boots and collars and papers, heaped up in the corner, which appeared to be the most abundantly furnished portion of the little room. Stephen sat there, very dismal, and wishing himself home again once more, when the door ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... is the broad leaf-nosed family of bats, it is in reality the least harmless. The little grey Phyllostoma is the guilty blood-sucker which visits sleepers and bleeds them in the night. It is of a dark grey colour, striped with white down the back, and having a leaf-like fleshy expansion ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... lot of rattlesnakes formed themselves into a lariat, and tried to catch it; but those at the noose end were all cut to pieces. The rock was now close to Old Man, so close that it began to hit his heels; and he was about to give up, when he saw a flock of bull bats circling over his head. "Oh my little brothers," he cried, "help me. I am almost dead." Then the bull bats flew down, one after another, against the rock; and every time one of them hit it he chipped off a piece, and at last one hit it fair in the middle and broke ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... filled with wonders from every region: dolls that walked and talked and sang, fit for princesses; sleds fine enough for princes; drums and trumpets and swords for young heroes; horses that looked as though they were alive and would spring next moment from their rockers; bats and balls that almost started of themselves from their places; little uniforms, and frocks; skates; tennis-racquets; baby caps and rattles; tiny engines and coaches; railway trains; animals that ran about; steamships; books; pictures—everything ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... ceased; And the tall pines stood still as if bereft Of a strong passion, or from pain released; Once more they wove their strange, dark, moveless weft O'er the dull midnight sky; and in the East A mist arose and clomb the skyey stairs; And like sad thoughts the bats ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... Glenrock players arrived. He looked at them closely and his nerves jumped. Gosh! didn't they look big! And what big black bats! ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... wrong side—Edmund Verney the standard-bearer. Only the worm-eaten shelves were dropping from their supports, and the books lay in mouldy confusion; the roofs had great holes and gaps, whence the laths hung dismally down, and bats came flitting in the dusk; and there were rotten places in the ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... where the devil then has the seed been dropped? I look back from generation to generation; I scour our annals without finding the least little sketching grandmother, any sign of a building or versifying or collecting or even tulip-raising ancestor. They were all as blind as bats, and none the less happy for that. I'm a wanton variation, an unaccountable monster. My dear father, rest his soul, went through life without a suspicion that there's anything in it that can't be boiled into blue-books, and became in that conviction ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... go back again to the bank by the cornfields, with the glorious open stretch of stream. In the evening, the rosy or golden hues of the sunset will be reflected on the surface from the clouds; then the bats wheel to and fro, and once now and then a nighthawk will throw himself through the air with uncertain flight, his motions scarcely to be followed, as darkness falls. Am I mistaken, or are kingfishers less numerous than they were only a few seasons since? Then ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... quantity of presents and supplies had been sent from Windsor to Fort Howe by the schooner Menaguash, Peter Doucet, master, to be given to the Indians—blankets, shirts, blue and scarlet cloth, beaver bats, ribbons, powder and shot, and lastly, "one cask of wine sent by Mr. Francklin for the squaws and such men ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... opposed to near (16' i) Buckthorn Brown. Previous to the taking of this specimen, Webb and Jones (1952:277) reported as E. f. pallidus a specimen, saved as a skull only, which was picked up dead at Niobrara. It seems best to assign these two bats from the vicinity of Niobrara, Knox County, to ...
— Distribution of Some Nebraskan Mammals • J. Knox Jones
... and as darkness came on, the countryside glowed as with the light of a hundred huge torches. The skies were reddened, and as a mighty oak or poplar log toppled and fell to the ground, showers of sparks lent the scene volcanic splendor. Bats and owls and other dim-eyed creatures of the night flew about in bewilderment, sometimes bumping hard against fences or other objects, sometimes plunging madly into the flames and contributing to the general holocaust. For days the great fires ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... when to his horror there was a rush which nearly made him loosen his hold before he realised what had happened. But fortunately he held on, and in an instant the alarm and danger had passed away. For the occupants he had disturbed proved to be some half-dozen huge bats, which fluttered out, squealing, and made for the opposite ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... they can't fly to you. One of the most talkative people living, in some ways I am strangely speechless. Why! I haven't even told Boggley, though if he had eyes to see instead of being the blindest of dear old bats, my shining face would betray me. I keep on smiling in a perfectly imbecile manner, so that people exclaim, "Well, you are indecently glad to get away," and when they ask Why? I point them to the scene in the Old Testament where Hadad said unto Pharaoh, "Let me depart, that I may go to mine own ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... long-haired goat, the Evil One in that form. But some one has broken the head, perhaps to show the powerlessness of the enchanted guardian of the cave. Some say that there are no living animals here, but there is no doubt that there are bats; and an exploring party, who passed the night here, not only heard the hissing of the rattlesnake, but were startled by the apparition of a fierce leopard, whose loud roarings were echoed amongst the vaults, and who, after gazing at them by the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... named because it formerly harbored immense numbers of bats, is on Robert Page's land, 41/2 miles from Crocker, near the Waynesville road. The entrance is 40 feet wide and 30 feet high. Cave earth extends for more than 200 feet in plain daylight; at this depth the cave separates into two branches, one directly over the other. The lower ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... the soft blue hills in sight; But betwixt his house and the hills I builded a house for spite: And the name thereof I set in the stone-work over the gate, With a carving of bats and apes; and I called it ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... of the night, the screech-owls with their graceful flight, the bats, the badgers, all the timid beasts which glide through the air or in the grass and of which we know so little. What festivals do they hold ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... progress of events at Collingwood. Fires were kindled on the marble hearths, and the flames went roaring up the broad-mouthed chimneys, frightening from their nests of many years the croaking swallows, and scaring away the bats, which had so long held holiday in the deserted rooms. Partitions were removed, folding doors were made, windows were cut down, and large panes of glass were substituted for those of more ancient date. The grounds and garden ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... endeavour to separate the faculty{288} by which they perform it, and the mental power which urges to the performance, which is more properly called an instinct. We have an instinct to eat, we have jaws &c. to give us the faculty to do so. These faculties are often unknown to us: bats, with their eyes destroyed, can avoid strings suspended across a room, we know not at present by what faculty they do this. Thus also, with migratory birds, it is a wonderful instinct which urges them ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... it was whilst we staggered on through the swamp in agony of mind and body that we saw the light of many torches amid the trees ahead of us, and in their smoky glare witnessed the flight of hundreds of bats. The moonlight creeping dimly through the mist, and the torchlight—how do you say?—enflaming the vegetation, created a scene like that of Inferno, in which naked figures ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... be bats!" suggested Uncle William. "But listen! I thought I heard the girls laughing," and at that moment an audible titter was making its way out of ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... me, and I pity you from my soul for being shut up in that old castle. I suppose it is like an old castle in Dauphiny, where I once spent a week, and where I was nearly frightened to death by the flapping of the old tapestry behind my bed, and by the bats which flew in through the broken windows. They say, however, that our chateaux and yours are something different. Of this I have no ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... bottom his warm love of this world and his lukewarm love of the world to come, had unfortunately all descended to his daughter, till we find her actually reviling Christiana on that decisive morning, and returning to her dish of tea and tittle-tattle with Mrs. Bats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs. ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... soft slumber seals the wakeful eye, That drives the ghosts to realms of night or day, Points out the long uncomfortable way. Trembling the spectres glide, and plaintive vent Thin hollow screams, along the deep descent. As in the cavern of some rifty den, Where flock nocturnal bats and birds obscene, Cluster'd they hang, till at some sudden shock, They move, and murmurs run through all the rock: So cowering fled the sable heaps of ghosts; And such a scream fill'd all ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... rock, and when she turned it, she found a battle royal going on over an old lobster-pot—Conrade hand to hand with a stout fisher-boy, and Francis and sundry amphibious creatures of both sexes exchanging a hail of stones, water-smoothed brick-bats, cockle-shells, fishes' backbones, and other unsavoury missiles. Abstractedly, Rachel had her theory that young gentlemen had better scramble their way among their poor neighbours, and become used to all ranks; but when it came to witnessing an actual skirmish when she was responsible ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... turf on Arthur's Seat, St Anthon's well aye springin'; The lammies playing at her feet, The birdies round her singin'. The solemn haunts o' Holyrood, Wi' bats and hoolits eerie, The tow'ring crags o' Salisbury, The lowly wells o' Weary, O[62] The lowly wells ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of the cupboard doors may be filled in with Japanese lacquer-work or painted decoration, and here and there, in the recesses, nests of shelves may be fitted with projecting brackets, designed as part of them, for pieces of china, vases of flowers, or busts, and not looking like bats stuck on to ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... to a dollar and a half. It is particularly desirable to have the specially made ball and cord for this game, but any of the paraphernalia may be improvised, the pole being cut from a sapling, and even the bats whittled from strips of thin board about the ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impression of being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on the autumn sky. The electric cloud seems almost level with the ground and the livid flame to rush to and fro beneath the boughs as the little bats do in the evening. ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... renewed her terrors,—"to me?—I have not known one for many a year. Bear witness in her behalf?—a proper witness, that even to speak these few words to a woman of so little consequence as yourself, must choose such an hour and such a place as this. When you see owls and bats fly abroad, like larks, in the sunshine, you may expect to see such as I am in the assemblies of men.—Hush—listen ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... were in full accord as to the necessity of immediately reducing Camp Jackson. Defiance was daily passing between the marshalling hosts, not face to face, but through dubious partisans who passed from camp to camp, flitting like the bats of fable in the confines of conflict. Capt. Lyon's decision, urged thereto by Col. Blair, was made without calling a council of the rest of his advisers. They heard of it, however, and, though brave and loyal men all, they gathered around him in his quarters at the arsenal, Thursday ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... That burn by day and night: and then I lov'd thee, And show'd thee all the qualities o' th' isle, The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place, and fertile. Curs'd be I that did so! All the charms Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you! For I am all the subjects that you have, Which first was mine own king; and here you sty me In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... heard or invented contrived to make it eatable. A column of recipes for making delicious preparations of it had been going the rounds of Confederate papers. I tried them all; they resulted only in brick-bats or sticky paste. H. sallied out on a hunt for provisions, and when he returned the disproportionate quantity of the different articles obtained provoked a smile. There was a hogshead of sugar, a barrel of syrup, ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... she explained airily. "Brought some with me, in case of emergency. It's useful stuff. And I just looted Linda Mottram's curling apparatus from her bedroom. Don't you twig? What blind bats you are! I'm going ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... Dubh Donn; two wild pigs from Cluaidh Chuir; two cuckoos from Drom Daibh; two lapwings from Leanain na Furraich; two woodcocks from Craobh Ruadh; two hawks from the Bright Mountain; two grey mice from Luimneach; two otters from the Boinn; two larks from the Great Bog; two bats from the Cave of the Nuts; two badgers from the province of Ulster; two landrail from the banks of the Sionnan; two wagtails from Port Lairrge; two curlews from the harbour of Gallimh; two hares from Muirthemne; two deer from Sith Buidhe; two peacocks from Magh ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... extremely dangerous if one did not know how to use it. "My daughter found a bat in a field one day, but an old Indian said that if she didn't know how to treat it, it would eat up her children." Women especially were afraid of bat-talismans and of living bats. The Washo believe that a bat charm is also a powerful love medicine and that a woman once touched by such a charm is powerless in the hands of its owner. "You touch a woman with that thing and it hypnotizes her. She follow the guy and die if she ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... the bats their wavering wings extend, Soon as the gloaming [5] spreads her waning shade;[ii] The choir did, oft, their mingling vespers blend, Or matin ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... of the British; was sent prisoner to New York, and was detained in captivity for the greater part of the war. In the mean time, the Roost remained a melancholy ruin; its stone walls and brick chimneys alone standing, blackened by fire, and the resort of bats and owlets. It was not until the return of peace, when this belligerent neighborhood once more resumed its quiet agricultural pursuits, that the stout Jacob sought the scene of his triumphs and disasters; rebuilt the Roost, and reared again ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... long upon a few words he had one day heard drop from the lips of Bigot, which meant more, much more, than they seemed to imply, and they flitted long through his memory like bats in a room seeking an outlet into the night, ominous of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... see thy blessed door, But, lo, a cloud of flies and bats and birds, And stalking vapours, and vague monster-herds Have risen and ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... were bitter enemies of the painters, and above all of the Florentine painters, who surpassed all the rest in subtlety of wit. Chiefly they reproached them with representing them under a hideous guise, with the heads of bird and fish, serpents' bodies and bats' wings. This sore resentment which they felt will come out plainly in the history of Spinello ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... what I saw as I stood with my feet on the rickety hand-rail of the ladder. The long dim garret was already half-lighted by the coming day. Red cloaks swung and flapped like vast, deadly, winged bats from the rafters, and reached almost to the ground. There was no glass in any of the windows of the garret, for my father minded neither heat nor cold. He was a man of iron. Summer's heat nor winter's cold neither ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... trees overhead, carrying with it the sweetness of the hayfields and the honeysuckle in the hedges, owls hooted mysteriously, and the frogs croaked in some distant pond. Creatures never seen in the daytime were now awake and busy. As Lilac ran along, the bats whirred close past her face, and she saw in the grass by the wayside the steady little light of the glow-worms. It was certainly very late; there was hardly a glimmer of hope that anyone would be up at the farm. It was equally certain that, if there were, a scolding waited ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... precise knowledge. It is also interesting to notice the effective use which is made in "A Dree Neet" of all the superstitions which gather about the great pageant of death. The flight of the Gabriel ratchets, or Gabriel hounds, through the sky, the fluttering of bats at the casement and of moths at the candle flame, and the shroud of soot which falls from the chimney of the room where the dying man lies, are introduced with fine effect; while the curious reference to the folk that draw ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... room to the south-west into one with only three sides looking over a lovely green view to the north-east, with a huge sort of solid veranda, as large as the room itself, on the open side; thus I live in the open air altogether. The bats and the swallows are quite sociable; I hope the serpents and scorpions will be more reserved. 'El Khamaseen' (the fifty) has begun, and the wind is enough to mix up heaven and earth, but it is not distressing like the Cape south-easter, and, though ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... sun set, and it was the hour when the bats and the dark creatures are abroad and the lions come down from their lairs, and the desert robbers go into the plains again, and fevers rise up winged and hot out of chill marshes, and it was the ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany |
