"Bird's nest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ruining a fine bunch, or a number of them, in a short time. I have therefore been compelled to wage a war upon some of the feathered tribe, although they are my especial favorites, and I cannot see a bird's nest robbed. However, there are some who do not visit the vineyard, except for the purpose of destroying our grapes, and these can not complain if we "won't stand it any longer," but take the gun, and retaliate on them. The ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... had been to visit her brother, who had recently died. To do this she perfumed herself with water in which a dead rat had been steeped, so as to give herself a death-like smell. She then pulled up a bird's nest and descended through the hole thus made. Her brother, whom of course she found, cautioned her to eat nothing, and by taking his advice she was able to return. A similar tale is told of a New Zealand woman of rank, who was lucky enough to come back from the abode ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... BIRD'S NEST. A round top at a mast-head for a look-out station. A smaller crow's nest. Chiefly used in whalers, where a constant look-out is kept for whales. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... as he had hunted with his ape people in the past, as Kala had taught him to hunt, turning over rotted logs to find some toothsome vermin, running high into the trees to rob a bird's nest, or pouncing upon a tiny rodent with the quickness of a cat. There were other things that he ate, too, but the less detailed the account of an ape's diet, the better—and Tarzan was again an ape, the same fierce, brutal anthropoid that Kala had taught him to be, and that he had been for the ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... now," said her father, "might as well climb back and finish your dinner. You can't find a bird's nest after dark—and you can see that it's almost dark now. You wait till morning and I'll show you that ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... boy who dares to take a bird's nest is occasionally fined and severely reproved. The ruffian-like crew who go forth into the pastures and lanes about London, snaring and netting full-grown birds by the score, are permitted to ply their trade ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... dandelion-balls woven together with horse-hair. In this dainty nest are laid four or five creamy white eggs, speckled with lilac tints and red-browns. The unwelcome egg of the Cow-bird is often found in the Yellow-bird's nest, but this Warbler builds a floor over the egg, repeating the expedient, if the Cow-bird continues her mischief, until sometimes a ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... seashore for those small treasures, without money and without price, with which nature is lavish toward the poor who love her and attend her carefully, such as the first flowers of the season, nuts and seed-vessels, and sometimes an empty bird's nest and a stray bright feather and bits of bright stones, which might, for her baby fancy, be as good as my brother's gold and silver, and shells, and red and russet moss. All these I offered her from time to time as reverently and shyly as ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... birds which have been known occasionally to lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid an egg in another bird's nest. If the old bird profited by this occasional habit through being enabled to emigrate earlier or through any other cause; or if the young were made more vigorous by advantage being taken of the mistaken instinct of another species ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... in size and other peculiarities to be easily identified by ornithologists. Some of these birds are actually no larger in body than butterflies, and with not so large a spread of wing. A humming-bird's nest, composed of cotton interlaced with horse-hair, was shown the author at Buena Esperanza, a plantation near Guines. It was about twice the size of a lady's thimble, and contained two eggs, no larger than common peas. The nest was a marvel of ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... moon swung clear of the pointed fir tops and shone full upon a tall spruce tree in the wilderness, a dark object, looking not unlike a great bird's nest upon one of the branches, suddenly came to life. Kagh, the porcupine, had awakened from his dreamless slumber and, though scarce two hours had elapsed since his last satisfying meal upon tender poplar ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... there as bright as ever, scarlet within and white outside; but the name is painted off, because the little dears are in their graves. Two nicer children were never seen, clever, and sprightly, and good to learn; they never even took a common bird's nest, I have heard, but loved all the little things the Lord has made, as if with a foreknowledge of going early home to Him. Their father came back very tired one morning, and went up the hill to his breakfast, and the children got ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... empty now!" he said. "Not for nothing did I spend part of the night in the Dicky-bird's nest! By the way, did you ever hear that touching story about little Sally walking up and laying an egg?—I see you have. What do you think is ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to say that the Awakening of Appleboro began in that workroom; and in a way it did. But it really had its inception in a bird's nest John Flint had discovered and watched with great interest and pleasure. The tiny mother had learned to accept his approach, without fear; he said she knew him personally. She allowed him to approach close enough to ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... scarlet jacket she fancied in those days, one of them, Cyprian Eveleth had given it a name which became current among the young people, and indeed furnished to Gifted Hopkins the subject of one of his earliest poems, to wit, "The Fire-hang-bird's Nest." ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... lowering his tone. "I tell you the boy has gone back home and the hut is as empty as a last year's bird's nest. I'll stake my oath on it. The place is shut and locked tight as a drum. You'll see ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... enables the solitary white or pink widely open flower to droop from the tip, thus protecting its precious contents from rain, and from crawling pilferers, to whom a pendent blossom is as inaccessible as a hanging bird's nest is to snakes. This five-petalled waxen flower, half an inch across or over, with its ten white, yellow-tipped stamens, and green, club-shaped pistil projecting from a conspicuous round ovary, never nods more than six inches above the ground, often at only half that height. When there ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... marges spring Thick bulrushes to hide the reed-bird's nest; Where the shy ousel dips her glossy wing, And balanced in the water takes her rest: While under bending leaves, all gem-arrayed, Blue dragon-flies sit panting in ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... sunrise, on the second day, some rashes recently torn up, were seen near the vessels. A plank, evidently hewn by an ax, a stick skillfully carved by some cutting instrument, a bough of hawthorn in blossom,—and lastly, a bird's nest built on a branch which the wind had broken, and full of eggs, on which the parent bird was sitting amid the gently-rolling waves,—were seen floating past on the waters. The sailors brought on board these living and inanimate witnesses of their approach ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... bird's nest soup, sharks' fins and bamboo cells, we were taken in motors to see the five-storied Pagoda, the City of the Dead, and the monument to the Chinese revolutionary heroes (donated by the Chinese all over the world). ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... there, too. Even Janzoon Kolp's sister has been admitted, but Janzoon himself has been voted out by the directors, because he killed the stork, and only last summer was caught in the act of robbing a bird's nest, a legal ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... some fledged bird's nest may know, At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair dell or grove he sings in now, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Bird's Nest Crow's Foot Chimney Swallows Cockscomb Dove in the Window Duck and Ducklings Four Little Birds Goose Tracks Goose in the Pond Honeycomb Honeycomb Patch Hen and Chickens King's Crows Peacocks and Flowers Spider's Den Shoo Fly Spider's Web ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... distinction of shape and size and color sharply present, and accurately to portray it in the absence of the original. If one should ask him, "What's the shape of the milkweed butterfly's wing, and the color of the spice-bush swallowtail, Peter Champneys? What does the humming-bird's nest look like? What's the color of the rainbow-snake and of the cotton-mouth moccasin? What's the difference between the ironweed and the aster?"—Ask Peter things like that, and lend him a bit of paper and a pencil, and he literally had the answers ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... behaviour. His decorations added to his queer appearance; scarred by deep gashes on chest and arms, his body was daubed with red ochre, and his ribs picked out with white; on his head a kind of chignon formed of grass, hair, and string held his matted locks in place, like a bird's nest on his crown; he had neither beard nor whiskers, and was not blessed with any article ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... an' high, so's it could straddle stumps good. They's so many tree-stumps in our woods, an' I know Sonny ain't a-goin' to drive nowhere but in the woods so long ez they's a livin' thin' to scurry away at his approach, or a flower left in bloom, or a last year's bird's nest to gether. An' the little Sweetheart, why, she's got so thet she's ez anxious to fetch home things to study over ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... fronds and ruddy drupe of the ie-ie (pl. II) and its kindred, the hala-pepe (pl. III); the scarlet pompons of the lehua (pl. XIII) and ohi'a, with the fruit of the latter (the mountain-apple); many varieties of fern, including that splendid parasite, the "bird's nest fern" [Page 20] (ekaha), hailed by the Hawaiians as Mawi's paddle; to which must be added the commoner leaves and lemon-colored flowers of the native hibiscus, the hau, the breadfruit, the native banana ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... who were to examine the boys were perched up in a high pulpit so profusely trimmed with evergreen that it looked like a bird's nest; they were remarkably pleasant-looking men, and their eyes twinkled merrily under their Christmas wreaths. Father Anselmus was a little the taller of the two, and Father Ambrose was a little the broader; and that was about all the difference between ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... she said exactly and went. And sure enough he saw the bird's nest—it was as large as a round pavilion. Then he tied his curved sword to the poles, chopped at the tree with all his strength, laid down his poles on the ground and never looked around but ran for dear life. Suddenly he heard the roaring ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... to say, they only eat grain, worms, caterpillars, and dead animals; and there are others who lead a regular bandit's life, who throw themselves upon baby-hares and small birds, and plunder every single bird's nest they ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... Waterfowl Way to Sing Wedding Guest Wedding, The Fairy What the Birds Say Whippoorwill Who Stole the Bird's Eggs? Who Stole the Bird's Nest? Who Taught? William of Orange Williamsburg Winchester Wish, A Wolf Wolf-Hound Wood Lark Wood Pigeons Workman of God ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... unbound and loose; it was dark, and finer than the finest spun silk, and fell all over her shoulders and down her back to the stone she sat on. He let his fingers stray in and out among it; and it felt like the soft, warm down that lines a little bird's nest to his skin. Finally, he touched her neck and allowed his hand to rest there, it was such a soft, warm neck. At length, but reluctantly, for his little rebellious heart was not yet wholly subdued, he ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... seems hard that he should come under the yoke so early, but we must not approach such subjects with Western ideas. The exuberant spirits of boyhood are not indigenous to this country, and the dog-boy has none of them. He never does mischief for mischief's sake; he robs no bird's nest; he feels no impulse to trifle with the policeman. Marbles are his principal pastime. He puts the thumb of his left hand to the ground and discharges his taw from the point of his second finger, bending it back till it touches the back of the hand and then letting it off like ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... when detected, he is tempted to lie, to conceal his fault and avoid punishment; and here again we see how one sin leads to another. The temptations to cruelty are many. Sometimes they appear in the form of a bird's nest, placed by a fond and loving mother on the high bough of a tree, to secure ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... and no longer able to raise your arm; stay here, and sit down beside me." The son, however, went into the forest, ate his bread, was very merry and peered in among the green branches to see if he could discover a bird's nest anywhere. So he went up and down to see if he could find a bird's nest until at last he came to a great dangerous-looking oak, which certainly was already many hundred years old, and which five men could not have spanned. He stood still and looked at it, and thought, "Many a bird must ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... related to a young boy who one day, taking his little brother with him for company, went to look for birds' nests. On reaching the cove they rambled to the top of the cliff, where the elder boy saw a bird's nest, to which he went while his little brother waited for him at a distance, watching him taking the eggs. All at once he saw him stoop down to gather some flowers to bring to him, and then disappear. He waited some time expecting his brother to return, but as he did not come back the little ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... ten of them for the stock we kept there. Very often all the rest were full, and I had to send horses off to another place. I have often sent a wagon-load of hay up to the stable, and the next morning there would not be enough left to make a bird's nest. I have killed a fine beef, and it would all be eaten up in a day ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... trio as you would want to avoid. The shepherd looked as if he had been dug up, a dirty ruffian with matted hair and a beard like a bird's nest. The two soldiers stood staring with sullen faces, fingering their guns, while the other chap raved and stormed and kept pointing at Peter, whose mild eyes ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... home, neighborhood, Kindergarten and Sunday School. Nature makes strong appeal, not on the aesthetic side of tint and shadow, but through the charm of her multiform movements and family life akin to the child's. The bird's nest fascinates because there is connected with it the story of the building and the hungry little brood it sheltered. Tales of animals, fairies and real folk, busy in simple and familiar occupations hold him entranced, and he will watch with rapt attention the performance of most common tasks. It ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... should wonder at myself if it were so. Have we not been all in all to one another from the time when we first peeped into the bird's nest, waded in the brook, ran after the butterflies, and prattled to each other that we would marry fine gentlemen, and played at ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... is a funny, snarly head, with fine shreds of hair laced over a smooth shell. Ah, what gleams of colored light shoot through the hair! Here is a bird's nest on a bar, lying side of a wide fan, shaped like a palm leaf; in the plaitings are curled all colors, pink, ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... your finger into a bird's nest," observed Elsie, with a sapient shake of the head. "The eggs always addle if you do, or the young birds refuse to hatch out; and of course in the case of turtle-doves it would be all the more so. 'Lay low, Bre'r Fox,' and wait for what happens. It all promises delightfully, ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... me the key," explained Mr. Sanford. "He said the castle was as empty as a last year's bird's nest, but I thought we might like to take ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... lost the bird, but we will try to find something instead," said Kallolo, giving me his blowpipe and bow to hold. He then climbed up the tree till he reached the bird's nest, from which he extracted two eggs, and brought them down safety. They were considerably larger than a duck's egg, white and granulated all over, though the bird itself did not appear to be above ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... is certain: a mare roaming in a meadow with a foal at its side, a bird's nest full of young ones, squeaking, with their open mouths and enormous heads, made her quiver with ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... and the afternoon after their first meeting he had repaired to the librarian's dwelling. Crescenti was the priest of an ancient parish lying near the fortress; and his tiny house was wedged in an angle of the city walls, like a bird's nest in the mouth of a disused canon. A long flight of steps led up to his study, which on the farther side opened level with a vine-shaded patch of herbs and damask roses in the projection of a ruined bastion. This interior, the home of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... an empty bird's nest, denotes gloom and a dull outlook for business. With eggs in the nest, good results will follow all engagements. If young ones are in the nest, it denotes successful journeys and satisfactory dealings. If they are ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... "churchwarden gothic" building does to Canterbury Cathedral; the colours were varied. The initial was pale gold, the h pink, the o black, the u blue, and the first letter was somehow connected with a bird's nest containing the young of the pigeon, who were waited on by ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... Krakow untied her black alpaca apron, pinned a hat as nondescript as a bird's nest at an unrakish angle, and slid into a ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... the children look out of the window at a bird's nest, which was snuggled into one corner of the piazza-roof, so high up that nobody could reach it without a very ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... he said this, to a little tuft floating round and round in a small eddy, made by a turn of the brook, just above where they had crossed. He turned his horse towards it. "It is a bird's nest," said he. ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... and Honey Pudding Apple and Lady Finger Pudding Apple Slump Apple Snow Apple Tapioca Pudding Auflauf Bird's Nest Pudding Black Bread Pudding Blanc Mange Bohemian Cream Boiled Custard Bread Pudding Brown Betty Caramel Custard Cherry Pudding Chestnut Pudding Chocolate Cornstarch Pudding Chocolate Custard Corn Pudding ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... Your theme lies lowly as the ground-bird's nest; Why seek, with wings so feeble and unused, To soar above the clouds and front the stars? Descend from your high venture, and to scenes Of the heart's common ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... humane, but I owed this entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. I doubt indeed whether humanity is a natural or innate quality. I was very fond of collecting eggs, but I never took more than a single egg out of a bird's nest, except on one single occasion, when I took all, not for their value, but from ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... flat transgression of a schoolboy; who, being overjoy'd with finding a bird's nest shows it his companion, and ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... bird's nest." He glanced in the mirror and saw the print of Ella's fingers on his collar. "Will you look at that?" ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... toward some of these heights, would repeat a name. Jeanne and Julien would look where he pointed, but see nothing, until at last they discovered something gray, like a mass of stones fallen from the summit. It was a little village, a hamlet of granite hanging there, fastened on like a veritable bird's nest and almost invisible ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... stopping my hand with the vehement exclamation, "Stop, stop, child, you don't know what you are doing."—"No, indeed, ma'am, I don't—what am I doing?" She took the wreath of cotton wool from my passive hand and showed me, wrapped up in it, a humming-bird, luckily unhurt, unsquelched. The humming-bird's nest is more beautiful than the creature itself. Poor Lord Liverpool—no one can wish ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... element must have felt these angry vibrations: they ceased from singing, and together we climbed out of the wood, to see Schlingen below us, tucked in a circle of hills, the white houses shining in the sunlight, "for all the world like eggs in a bird's nest", as Herr Erchardt declared. We descended upon Schlingen and demanded sour milk with fresh cream and bread at the Inn of the Golden Stag, a most friendly place, with tables in a rose-garden where hens and chickens ran riot—even flopping upon the disused tables and pecking at the red checks on the ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... Custard Baked Custard Pudding Banana, Wholemeal Pudding Barley (Pearl) and Apple Pudding Barley Soup Batter, Celery Batter, Jam Pudding Batter, Potato Batter, Pudding Batter, Sweet Batter, Vegetable Bean, French, Omelet Bean Pie Beans, Butter, with Parsley Sauce Belgian Pudding Bird's Nest Pudding Biscuits— Butter Chocolate Cocoanut Blackberry Cream Blancmange Blancmanges Blancmange, Chocolate Blancmange, Eggs Blancmange, Lemon Blancmange— Orange Mould (1) Orange Mould (2) Blancmange, Semolina Blancmange, Tartlets Boiled Onion Sauce Bread and Cakes— Barley Bannocks Buns Bun ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson
... thrill of pleasure, a sudden emotion, that gave a moment's happiness. The delight caused by the discovery of a fine argol may be compared to that of a sportsman finding the trace of his game—of a child contemplating the long sought for bird's nest—of an angler, who sees a fish quivering at the end of his line; or, if we may be allowed to liken great things to small, we would compare it to the enthusiasm of a Leverrier finding a planet at the tip ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... you went on, contrariwise, to tender me the advice you did. This makes it evident that I have laboured under a mistaken idea! Had I not made this discovery the other day, I wouldn't be speaking like this to your very face to-day. You told me a few minutes back to take bird's nest congee; but birds' nests are, I admit, easily procured; yet all on account of my sickly constitution and of the relapses I have every year of this complaint of mine, which amounts to nothing, doctors have had to be sent for, medicines, with ginseng ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... thousand curlews and gulls, and some pelicans; but all too shy to allow of his approach within musket shot. Upon one of the trees was stuck the cap of a small whale's skull, and in one of the sockets of the eyes was a bird's nest apparently ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... everything soaking wet, with nothing more than a tinder-box and a piece of rag, immediately make a fire. They sought beneath the tufts of grass and bushes for a few dry twigs, and these they rubbed into fibres; then surrounding them with coarser twigs, something like a bird's nest, they put the rag with its spark of fire in the middle and covered it up. The nest being then held up to the wind, by degrees it smoked more and more, and at last burst out in flames. I do not think any other method would have ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... body—to the year 1268. It is a year which makes no great stir in the history books, but it will serve us well. In those days, as in our own, Venice lay upon her lagoons, a city (as Cassiodurus long ago saw her[B]) like a sea-bird's nest afloat on the shallow waves, a city like a ship, moored to the land but only at home upon the seas, the proudest city in all the Western world. For only consider her position. Lying at the head of the Adriatic, half-way ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... in the woods yesterday, where boys should not be on Sundays, and, in climbing a tree after a bird's nest, he fell ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... the jewel of the just. Shining nowhere but in the dark, What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, Could men outlook that mark! He that hath found some fledged bird's nest, may know, At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair field, or grove, he sings in now, That is to ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... walls and mantleshelf were Army photos, a print of Christ at prayer; a few treasures, 'with a meaning' (her sister explains), picked up here and there as mementoes of her furloughs; a small French bronze of Jesus carrying His cross; a petrified bird's nest, which has served as an object lesson in children's meetings, and ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... grandma, and when the latter died, Patty secured this lock of hair. She tied it up in a little piece of old-fashioned lawn, dotted with wee blue flowers, and always carried it in her bosom. But this was not all. She had a dainty little glass salt-cellar, scarcely larger than the inside of a humming-bird's nest, and, what was more precious than this, a tiny, wooden doll. This doll had been her constant companion. It had black eyes and hair, and was indeed very pretty. At Woodworth's camp, Patty told "Dolly" all her joy and gladness, ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... Elspeth, Betsy, and Bess, They all went together to seek a bird's nest They found a bird's nest with five eggs in; They all took one, and ...
— The Song of Sixpence - Picture Book • Walter Crane
... almost dusk when the train reached the lovely little village of Lee, nestling like a bird's nest amid ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... had for a long period saved the government the burden of caring for an additional income of 100,000 pounds a year. And the same little word, if published in its connection, would render Bessemer's perforation device of far less value than a last year's bird's nest. He felt proud of the young woman's ingenuity, and promptly suggested the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... pretty hamlet at Manitou stands a cottage half hidden like a bird's nest among the trees. I saw only the peaks of gables under green boughs; and I wondered when I was informed that the lovely spot had been long untenanted, and wondered still more when I learned that it was the property of good Grace Greenwood. Will she ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... were always full of travelers, and that they being hungry, there had sprung up, near by, the shops of butchers, bakers, charcoal dealers, and bird's nest sellers. Since these worthy men could not go naked, tailors, shoemakers and umbrella and fan dealers had settled there, and as they do not sleep in the open air, even in the Celestial Empire, carpenters, masons and thatchers congregated there. Then came ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... somebody shout behind him, "Hi! stop!" The prince looked round, and saw a tall man hastening after him. "Stop and take me with you, and take me into your service, and you won't regret it!" "Who are you," said the prince, "and what can you do?" "My name is Long, and I can extend myself. Do you see a bird's nest in that pine yonder? I will bring you the nest down ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... from the flowers. Still, they could find nothing to do. The sunbeams bade the dimples good-by and silently crept home. "Oh," said the dimples, "what shall we do? We have no place to rest tonight." "Here is a bird's nest; let us rest in this," said one dimple. "No, that will never do," said the other dimple, "for there is the mother bird, who rests in her nest ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... first lecture, any reader who cares for a clue to the farther significances of the title, may find one to lead him safely through richer labyrinths of thought than mine: and ladder enough also,—if there be either any heavenly, or pure earthly, Love, in his own breast,—to guide him to a pretty bird's nest; both in the Romances of the Rose and of Juliet, and in the Sermons of St. ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... then that Aunt Rhoda and Aunt Cinthia, matrons of portly frame and perilous foothold, engaged in a metrical dialogue concerning the robbing of a bird's nest, in which lively diversion they assumed to have participated. And Bachelor Lot rendered "My beautiful Annabel Lee" with unique effect; and Grandma Keeler spoke mysteriously ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... they gambolled in the meadow, plucking the sweet wild grasses—and often and often they clambered up the mountain side, knee deep in the heather, searching for frechans and wild honey, and sometimes they found a bird's nest—but they only peeped into it, they never touched the eggs or allowed their breath to fall upon them, for next to their little mother they loved the mountain, and next to the mountain they loved the wild birds who made the spring and summer ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... Peter! everything is on fire! All the rocks are burning, and the great snow mountain and the sky! O look, look! the high rock up there is red with flame! O the beautiful, fiery snow! Stand up, Peter! See, the fire has reached the great bird's nest! look at the rocks! look at the fir trees! Everything, ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... round the azalea shrubs and the dwarf conifers, were enfolded in a thick white shroud. Like tufts of foam on a wave, the snow was tossed on the plumes of the bamboo clump, which hid the neighbour's dwelling, and made a bird's nest of ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... and Bess, They all went together to seek a bird's nest. They found a bird's nest with five eggs in, They all took one, ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... pillow high under her head, and, drawing the curtain to shade the light, left the room that she might be perfectly quiet. And when she returned to the drawing-room, she inquired of the other children what they had been doing, and received a full account of the feast, and the bird's nest, and all the little ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird's nest within three or four perches of the pole. But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenland-men were; yet that disadvantage is greatly counterbalanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Mr Bang at this juncture, while he looked over the edge of his cot on the stramash below, "saw ever any man the like of that? Why, see there—there, just under your candle, Tom—a bird's nest floating about with a mavis in it, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... over the six miles to the station. No shriek of an engine's whistle disturbed the quiet of Turkey Ridge; to go into wider ways one must needs start from the nearest town. Once she looked back at the house, set like an ancient brown bird's nest on ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... black-and-white checks. No nice quiet pepper-and-salt, you understand, but the checkerboard kind, the oilcloth kind, the kind that looks like the marble floor in the Boston post-office. They was pretty tolerable seedy, and so was his hat. Oh, he was a last year's bird's nest NOW, but when them clothes was fresh—whew! the northern lights and a rainbow mixed wouldn't have been more'n a cloudy day 'longside ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... for birds and animals revived. He had favourite dogs, and cows, and horses; and again he began to keep rabbits, and to pride himself on the beauty of his breed. There was not a bird's nest upon the grounds that he did not know of; and from day to day he went round watching the progress which the birds made with their building, carefully guarding them from injury. No one was more minutely acquainted with the habits of British birds, the ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... early summer; not to, say a word of the storms, the inundations which destroy nests by the million in America, and the sudden changes of weather which are fatal to the young mammals. Each storm, each inundation, each visit of a rat to a bird's nest, each sudden change of temperature, take away those competitors which appear so terrible ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... would go up the Seine on little excursions on Sunday afternoons, they would bring back rich spoils in the way of swan feathers, butterflies, "snake-feeders" and tiny shells. Then once they found a bird's nest, and as the mother bird had deserted it, they carried it home. That was a red-letter day, for the garret collection had increased to such an extent that a partition was made across the corner of a room by hanging up ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... daigh, daigh, daigh!" At the same time, from amidst the green foliage which twined about the dead tree, they heard a feeble, plaintive cry from several little throats, "te-derry, te-derry." Frank and Fanny were much amused. They had never seen a bird's nest so low before, and they had been forbidden to climb the trees; but now Frank saw, that by placing one large stone upon another, he could reach up, so as to look into the nest. He did so, and found there were six little birds in it. But Fanny begged him to get down, ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... our leader. Between the roofs we could see the low half-moon, hanging like a tilted bird's nest in the dark blue sky, while a group of stars fluttered near it like young birds. The Cathedral clock ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... and Virginia,' and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all the sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand, bringing you a bird's nest." ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... head of the table looked on in dumb amazement, and he was still speechless when, after dinner, five children set upon him and dragged him out to see the bird's nest ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... drift over our way. The one that spoke first is a redhead. The one who seems to be the leader is a big blonde in a real short skirt and hair piled up high in a bird's nest. Maybe that's what started Nick bird-watching. The third girl is sort of quiet-looking, with brown ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... despot, now breathed again, and hailed Sargon as its deliverer, while he on his part was actively engaged in organising his conquest. The voluntary submission of Upiri, King of Dilmun, who lived isolated in the open sea, "as though in a bird's nest," secured to Sargon possession of the watercourses which flowed beyond the Chaldaean lake into the Persian Gulf: no sooner had he obtained it than he quitted the neighbourhood of Dur-Yakin, crossed the Tigris, and reinforced the garrisons ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... adopts a system of manoeuvres to conceal her design. She brings down her bonnet and shawl by stealth, and before the chaise comes to the door she sends Mary out into the garden with her sister, under pretense of showing her a bird's nest which is not there, trusting to her sister's skill in diverting the child's mind, and amusing her with something else in the garden, until the chaise has gone. And if, either from hearing the sound of the wheels, ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... Even so, if there could have been country silence for five minutes at a time, the running river, the hills so disturbed with light beyond, might have worn some aspect of peace. But even in the high bird's nest of the apartment there was no real silence, only a pretending at silence, like the forced quiet of a child told to keep still in a corner—the two people dining together could talk in whispers, if they wanted, and still be heard, but always at ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet |
