"Oyster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... green leaves, as big as a shilling, with a fruit like capers, of which it is a kind, called eschuc, and is eaten in sallads. Oranges are scarce and dear. There is very fine sweet bazil. On the shore, many fine shells are found, mixed with cuttle-fish bones, and vast quantities of pearl-oyster shells, which the people say are driven thither by the winds and waves, as no pearl-oysters are to be found here-about. The people are very poor, and rank beggars, who buy what they are able and beg all they can get, yet are honest and give civil ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... animal.—A certain philosopher (I think it was Anaxagoras) walking along the sea-shore to gather shells, one of these unlucky birds mistaking his bald head for a stone, dropped a shell-fish upon it, and killed at once a philosopher and an oyster. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... in consequence of this, Eneas, an audacious young negro, in whom wisdom hath not waited for years—Eneas, my groom, I say, will probably be elevated to the post of valet-de-chambre. But where was I? I think I was speaking to you of an oyster breakfast, to which, on our return from the Park (du Bois), a company of pleasant rakes are invited. After quitting Borel's, we propose to adjourn to the Barriere du Combat, where Lord Cobham proposes to try some bull-dogs, which he has brought over from England—one ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are dead. When subsequently (or possibly concurrently in small quantity) living microbes of the same disease enter the blood, the opsonin is ready for them. They are, to put it picturesquely, like oysters at the oyster-bar, peppered and vinegared "in no time," and then swallowed by the phagocytes by the dozen. This seems almost too comic a view of the deadly struggle of man and higher animals for health and freedom from ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... wouldn't. I'd just invite all the boys round the corner to go with me to the theayter. Come, Luke, be a good feller, and give us all a blow-out. We'll go to the theayter, and afterwards we'll have an oyster stew. I know a bully place on Clark Street, ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... during the war, Hammond General Hospital with its extensive buildings, and a stockade and encampment for prisoners. The air is salubrious, the land fertile, a supply of excellent water brought from neighboring heights, and an extensive oyster-bed and a fine beach for bathing, add to its attractions. Believing the place well calculated to meet the wants of the Asylum, Miss Baker desired to secure the private property together with a grant from ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... a fortunate discovery," said the reporter, "and as it is said that each oyster produces yearly from fifty to sixty thousand eggs, we shall have ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... to the gallery at the opera, to supper at an oyster-shop, under Alan's pilotage, and then set out to walk back to Hampstead, timing themselves to catch the dawn. They had not gone twenty steps up Southampton Row before Alan and Sheila were forty steps in front. A fellow-feeling ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and vain of one's country, and to boast of it, is a natural feeling; but, with a Virginian, it is a passion. It inheres in him even as the flavor of a York river oyster in that bivalve, and no distance of deportation, and no trimmings of a gracious prosperity, and no pickling in the sharp acids of adversity, can destroy it. It is a part of the Virginia character—just as the flavor is a distinctive ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... a free moral agent. If the purple grackle does not like the sunflower seeds in my garden, lo! he is up and away across the Sound to Oyster Bay, Long Island, where his luck may be better. Failing there, he gives himself a transfer to Wilmington, or Richmond, via his own ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... with his manly enjoyments. . . . A state of happiness arising only from the want of foresight and reflection shall never provoke my envy; such degenerate taste would tend to sink us in the scale of beings from a man to a child, a dog and an oyster, till we had reached the confines of brute matter, which cannot suffer because it cannot feel. The poet may gaily describe the short hours of {94} recreation; but he forgets the daily, tedious labours of the school, which is approached ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... one were to try to persuade you that an oyster shell (which is also chiefly composed of carbonate of lime) had crystallized out of sea-water, I suppose you would laugh at the absurdity. Your laughter would be justified by the fact that all experience tends to show that oyster-shells are formed by the agency of oysters, ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... equally moved by fear, anger, repulsion, tender emotion, or sympathy. Nor do all men find the same things the objects of their fear, anger, repulsion, and the rest. The desire for food is an abstraction; in the concrete, this man eagerly accepts an oyster, and that one turns from it in disgust. In order to deal successfully with our fellow-man, we must not merely know ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... with little keys, but nothing to tell Dick which way to steer. He tried to keep to a southeast course, but ran into shallows which soon ended in a pocket from which they had to back out. Often they followed a good channel for a mile, only to have it end in an oyster reef, and again they had to turn back. A pair of dolphins lifted their heads above the surface in front of the canoe and with a sniff of fright started away across the bay like an express train. They were great creatures, nearly nine feet ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... here for goodness knows how long. And they say there are seven fellows down with it in the hospital now. What do you suppose they will do if it gets to be an epidemic in the school? I saw old Nealum just now, and he was mum as an oyster: looked bad, because he always loves to give out information, you know. We are to go to chapel in half an hour for instructions and new rules. Wish they would send us home! I ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... adjunct to a complete establishment as a barn-yard or hen-coop to a modern farmer or rural gentleman. Wherever there was a well-appointed Roman villa, it contained a piscina; while many gardens near the sea could boast also a vivarium, which, in this connection, means an oyster-bed. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Jeekie do, he do to save master and missus who he love. Care nothing for his self, ready to die any day. Keep it dark to save them too, 'cause they no like the story. If once they know, it always leave taste in mouth, same as bad oyster. Also Jeekie manage very well, take Major safe Asiki-land ('cause Little Bonsa make him), give him very interesting time there, get him plenty gold, nurse him when he sick, nobble Mungana, bring him out again, find Miss ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... intentions, which made her dance with joy. Besides, she had a little money, left her by a female oyster-dealer, who had picked her up when she had been left on the quay at Havre by an American captain. This captain had found her, when she was only about six years old, lying on bales of cotton in the hold of his ship, some hours after his departure from New York. On his arrival in Havre, he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... creatures of the mussel, cockle, and oyster class, which receive their name from the body being protected by a double shell, one valve of which is placed on each side) have their two shells united by one or two powerful muscles, which pass directly across ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... The Gorilla, the Hippopotamus and the Snapping-Turtle were once upon a time partaking of a royal dinner at the table of an opulent old Oyster, when the conversation turned upon personal beauty. Each one of the guests present claimed for himself that he alone was the favorite among the ladies for his handsome form and features. As the wine had gone around freely, the discussion grew heated, and upon the suggestion of the Gorilla ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... Full-Dress Dinner, and Mr. Speaker Denison,[*] who sat beside him, made this curious memorandum of his performance at table: "He ate two plates of turtle soup; he was then served very amply to cod and oyster sauce; he then took a pate; afterwards he was helped to two very greasy-looking entrees; he then despatched a plate of roast mutton; there then appeared before him the largest, and to my mind the hardest, slice of ham that ever figured on the table of a nobleman, yet it disappeared ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... boil in weak salt water until tender; drain, and put in white sauce. Oyster plant may be prepared ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... ladies, serve first an oyster cocktail in glasses, fruit punch or brandied peaches. Then serve sweetbread salad, with bread and butter sandwiches. Frozen eggnog and fig cake are a change from the regulation ice ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... from seeing when they are whipped in the battle of life. The man of success has usually a greater sense of the value of a ten-dollar note than his clerk who, like the braggart Pistol, has got the world for his oyster, and expects to open that tough old mollusk with his rusty sword. The man of success sees each young helper around him given better opportunities than he himself had to begin with. His astonishment that inexperienced ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... here, Hal, where a fellow can get an oyster fry," Benson explained, returning to his chum. "With that information came the discovery that I have an appetite. ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... curious railroad by the Whitby Moor was so much the more curious, that you were balanced against a counter-weight of water, and that you did it like Blondin. But in these remote days the one inn of Whitby was up a back-yard, and oyster-shell grottoes were the only view from the best private room. Likewise, sir, I have posted to Whitby. "Pity the sorrows of a ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... out of a sound sleep to tell him she's just thought how she can eke new sleeves out of the side panels, or make a pleated front for the waist out of the girdle. I guess Bart don't get much rest durin' makin'-over spells. I saw him yesterday at the post-office an' he was glum as an oyster; an' when I asked him was he sick all he said was he hoped there'd be ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... three whole nights, I've made my dinner-calls—you see I'm feeling pretty well, in this first period of quiet life I've yet found in this Babylon. Praise Heaven! they go off for Christmas. Everything's shut up tight. The streets of London are as lonely and as quiet as the road to Oyster Bay while the Oyster is in South America. It's about as mild here as with you in October and as damp as Sheepshead's Bay in an autumn storm. But such people as you meet complain of the c-o-l-d—the c-o-l-d; and they run into their heatless ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... into the post as the twelve o'clock call was going the rounds. Oh, they had had a blissful time! a glorious time! Such a delightful supper,—partridges and celery and all manner of dainties from Chicago, and such oyster patties! to say nothing of Roederer ad libitum. Then they had danced, and then they had more supper, and then started home. Willett would ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... thing to the next, being forever on the rush, never accomplishing anything, are common faults of both teacher and pupil. We call them mannerisms or tricks of personality. They are readily imitated by children. I once knew a young lawyer who had started life as an oyster dealer, whose power of imitation helped to make him responsive to both helpful and harmful influences. After being at the same table for two weeks with a talented man whom he admired, he acquired ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... her being, does her husband pay the penalty? When she breaks the moral laws, does he suffer the punishment? When he supplies his wants, is it enough to satisfy her nature? And when at his nightly orgies, in the grog-shop and the oyster-cellar, or at the gaming-table, he squanders the means she helped, by her co-operation and economy, to accumulate, and she awakens to penury and destitution, will it supply the wants of her children to tell them that, owing to the superiority of man she had no redress ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... that that rare spectacle, a smile on the face of an oyster, may now be seen. It has been decided that the Whitstable oyster feast shall not be held ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... into a confession, or to leave their hands free whilst they dealt with his employers. Perhaps they had both objects in view. In either event the appearance of the police on the scene would close their mouths more tightly than an oyster. As it is, I expect they will return, and, if possible, you must compel the concierge to conceal the fact that you have visited the house. Let him put all the blame on me. They know that I am mixed up in the inquiry, and fear me far less than the recognized authorities. ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... There were thousands of sandpipers in enormous flocks, mixed with king plovers, dunlins, and turnstones, which followed the ebb tides, and returned again in whirling clouds before the oncoming floods. Black-and-white oyster-catchers were always to be found chattering over the great mussel patches at low water. With their reddish bills, what a trophy a bunch of them made as we bore them proudly home over our shoulders! Then there ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the journalist. "If I fell from grace to-day, remember my unswerving loyalty since the hour we met on the platform at Knoleworth! Haven't I kept close as an oyster? And would any consideration on earth move me to publish an accurate and entertaining account of the roasting of Chief Inspector Winter by Wally Hart? Think what I'm sacrificing—a column ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... refection, but not within reach upon the Oise, trotted through my head for many a mile; and once, as we were approaching Verberie, the Cigarette brought my heart into my mouth by the suggestion of oyster patties and Sauterne. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at poker, as well as an oyster supper given to the two principal actresses of the "North Star Troupe," then performing in the town, convinced Mr. Pyecroft that the colonel was in one of his "moods," ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... that she has lungs; that she can still breathe a little? Or is it that the poor creature, driven into mere blind industrialisms; and as it were, gone pearl-diving this long while many fathoms deep, and tearing up the oyster-beds so as never creature did before, hardly knows,—so busy in the belly of the oyster chaos, where is no thought of "breathing,"—whether she has lungs or not? Nations of a robust habit, and fine deep chest, can sometimes take in a deal of breath before diving; and live long, in the muddy ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... point of the trip comes when one changes at Jamaica, there boarding the 1:15 for Salamis. This is the train that on Saturdays takes back the two famous club cars, known to all travellers on the Oyster Bay route. Behind partly drawn blinds the luncheon tables are spread; one gets narrow glimpses of the great ones of the Island at their tiffin. This is a militant moment for the white-jacketed steward ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... were a complete representative of the opal, with all its radiating fire. Some were spotted like butterflies, others like the expanded tail of the peacock, and again some had half circles of alternate colors like the eyes in a pearl oyster. We were told that only upon this island were such specimens to be found. Children gathered them, and filled little wooden boxes with various specimens, which they sold for a trifle. The harbor of Bombay is a spacious and ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... parlour table he ordered his wife and children out of the room and addressed himself to business. While clambering wearily up a column of figures he felt upon his cheek the touch of something that seemed to cling clammily to the skin like the caress of a naked oyster. Thoughtfully setting down the result of his addition so far as he had proceeded with it, he turned about ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... them opportunities of making each other's acquaintance on intimate terms, they never appeared to take advantage of them. But on Friday it was different. In the first place, anything more warm-blooded than an oyster must have fallen in love with Winifred at first sight on that evening. She wore a white flannel yachting-dress, and a red-felt hat cocked up on one side, and as she stood against the sail in the sunset, she was—Well, I'm too old to be ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... rapid pace in the direction of the Old Bailey, and crossing Fleet Bridge, "for oyster tubs renowned," the trio skirted the right bank of the muddy stream until they reached Fleet Lane, up which they hurried. Turning off again on the left, down Seacoal Lane, they arrived at the mouth of a dark, narrow alley, into ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fall in love is what puzzles me," said his lordship. "I should as soon have thought of an oyster's falling in love as ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... The Oyster Catcher feeds generally on shell-fish, oysters, limpets, &c. He detaches them from the rocks to which they are fastened, and opens them with his long, stout bill. The head, neck, and body are black. It lays two olive-brown ...
— Child's Book of Water Birds • Anonymous
... looked at her admiringly through his oyster-lidded eyes. His smile was as complacent as that of the ward boss who knows that the ballot-box is stuffed. It was the smile of one who can afford to ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... Moon" they sailed up the Hudson, and after building several forts, they finally established themselves in New Netherlands. Peter Minuit for a trifle bought from the Indians the whole of Manhattan Island. In locating on Manhattan Island, the Dutch secretly believed that they had secured the oyster while the English settlements further north and south were the two shells only. The development of almost three centuries and the supremacy of New York to-day, as the new world metropolis, verifies the sound sense ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... and five schooners was passed, drawn by four powerful tugs. Six hundred people inhabited this floating village and they stood on the decks of their migratory houses, going north with the spring, like the ducks, and hurrahed, and each tug screamed a salute. The oyster dredgers cheered and schooners changed ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... with that, Ralph," said Peterkin, holding a large oyster to my lips. I opened my mouth and swallowed it in silence, and really it was ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... "A Oyster sit upon the Spanish throne, my dear!—ay, ay—it just serves the Spanish right. They was always in a Stew, and is the most Shellfishest of people as ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... uneven; low clustered sheds rose out of the darkness against a deeper black beyond, and they came to the river. The bank was marshy, but a track of pounded oyster shells, visible against the mud, led to a wharf extending into the solid, voiceless flow of the water. Jasper Penny stood with Susan gazing into the blanketing gloom. A wan, disintegrated radiance shone from a riding light in the rigging of a vessel, and a passing warm blur flattened ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the necessary materials. But there was neither chimney nor plastering, for Heaton had neither bricks nor lime. Bricks he insisted he could and would make, and did, though in no great number; but lime, for some time, baffled his ingenuity. At last, Socrates suggested the burning of oyster-shells, and by dint of fishing a good deal, among the channels of the reef, a noble oyster-bed was found, and the boats brought in enough of the shells to furnish as much lime as would put up a chimney for the kitchen; one apartment for that sort ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. Do you like my new waistcoat? I'm wearing it for the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... birds, comes to be considered the very type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark, which I would not, for the universe, have it thought I apply to Governor Van Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, like an oyster, and rarely spoke, except in monosyllables; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence, that set light-minded ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... our mind, of the existence of this law of life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India Islands, especially along the sea-shore, where it becomes the natural habitat of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that the oyster climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the extreme limbs of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is manifestly an error, and belongs to the same class of ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... crowding into the oil country, lured by the tales of enormous fortunes and rich finds. No one could say what you might discover by digging down into the ground. One man claimed to have struck a vein of oyster-soup. And anyway he sold oyster-soup over his counter at a dollar a dish. Gas-gushers were lighted and burned without compunction as to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... battlements. It had been covered with white plaster once, but flakes of this had fallen away and showed the pinky bricks underneath. But the oddest thing about the house was the trimming that ran all round the bottom story about the height of a tall man. This trimming was of oyster-shells, and cockle-shells, and mussel-shells, and whelk-shells, and scallop-shells, all stuck on the wall of the house in patterns. It was a very wonderful house indeed, and the children always tried to go past it on ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... what's bothering the boss?" asked one of the young fire-eaters of another. "He nearly made a slip when he was lifting up that fake fried oyster." ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... twenty-six cows ten months, and ten more for an average of four and a half months, the feeding for 1896 would be equivalent to one year for thirty cows, or $900. To this add $120 for swine food and $25 for grits and oyster shells for the chickens, and we have $1045 paid for food for stock. Shoeing the horses for the year and repairs to machinery cost $157. The purchased food for eight employees for twelve months and for two additional ones for eight ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... ran away at the first approach of the caravans, and never came back to the Green till there was nothing left of the Fair but footmarks and oyster-shells. Running away was her pet principle; the only system, she maintained, by which you can live long and easily, and lose nothing. If you run away when you see danger, you can come back when all is safe. Run quickly, return slowly, ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... round for a spell, sort of prospecting, and then we landed at a little one-horse coral island, where there wa'n't no inhabitants, but where we was pretty dead sartin there was pearl oyster banks in the lagoon. There was five of us on the schooner, a Dutchman named Rhinelander, a Coolie cook and Lazarus and Hammond and me. We put up a slab shanty on shore and went to work pearl fishing, keeping one eye ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... experience, and piqued himself in particular upon his art of avoiding the snares of the female sex, in which he pretended to be deeply versed; but, notwithstanding all his caution and skill, he had lately fallen a sacrifice to the attractions of an oyster-wench, who had found means to decoy him into the bands of wedlock; and, in order to evade the compliments and congratulations of his friends and acquaintance, he had come so far on a tour to Paris, where he intended to initiate his spouse in the beau ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... dumb as an oyster, Ned," pleaded the other; and so it was settled that he could help to stand ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... then? I never saw such a block! I say you shall learn Greek!—Why do you stand there looking like a dead oyster?" ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... emit the same sparks during the day, which must be then invisible. This curious subject deserves further investigation. See Dictamnus. The ceasing to shine of this plant after twilight might induce one to conceive, that it absorbed and emitted light, like the Bolognian Phosphorus, or calcined oyster-shells, so well explained by Mr. B. Wilson, and by T. B. Beccari. Exper. on Phosphori, by B. Wilson. Dodsley. The light of the evening, at the same distance from noon, is much greater, as I have ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... with us, my son," stated Brannan. "They've opened an oyster palace down the street, and we're ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... despatched to the Kaiser at the County Hotel, Canterbury, and while they were waiting for the reply a message came in from Whitstable addressed to "Lennard, oyster merchant, Rochester," which was in the ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... the turkey, and had not had time to look for it; and she was panic struck lest her master had found it roasted in the very middle of the turkey, and was going to ask her if she thought she was cooking for an ostrich, which, as everybody knows, prefers a dinner of iron spikes, pebble stones, and oyster shells to roast beef. ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First - Being the First Book • Sarah L Barrow
... Tony. It must ha' been that 'ere naughty little chap as comes sometimes out o' the empty watch-box round the corner, - that same little chap as wos found standing on the table afore the looking-glass, pretending to shave himself vith a oyster-knife.' ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... whitings, smelts, &c. may be cut into bits, and put into escallop shells, with cold oyster, lobster, or shrimp sauce, and bread crumbled, and put into a Dutch oven, and browned like scalloped oysters. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... rung for to bring the game-pie. "If there are any oyster patties we might have them ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... and now, in a narrow street, lighted mostly by the dull, yellow glow that seeped up from the sidewalk through basement entrances, queer and forbidding portals to sinister interiors, or filtered through the dirty windows of uninviting little shops that ran the gamut from Chinese laundries to oyster dens, she halted, drawn back in the shadows of a doorway, and studied a tenement building that was just ahead of her. That was where old Nicky Viner lived. A smile of grim whimsicality touched her lips. Not a light showed in the place from ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... it took these small rodents to heap such a mass of material together I was unable to calculate, but the mound was as large as some of the shell heaps made by the ancient oyster-eating men and left by them along our coast from ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... to a string of pearls. If science seeks to know whether the pearls are genuine, she may apply chemical and other tests to the examination of their character; she may search into the conditions and circumstances in which the alleged pearls were found. Were they first found in an oyster, or in some manufacturing laboratory? And she may investigate the testimony of experts. Should the result of any one of these examinations affirm the genuineness of the pearls, science will be slow to believe that they are 'paste'; if all the results declare their genuineness, science will not ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... in diameter, and letting down a baited hook. This is always kept in motion to prevent the water from freezing, and to attract the fish to the spot. Immediately they take a fish, they scoop out the eyes and swallow them, thinking them as great a delicacy as the European does the oyster. ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... taken out of their shells and served en masse in a large dish. Our friends were astonished that we did not like these famous oysters of theirs in any form, which we did not, they being very huge in size and strong in flavour. We said, too, we did not like making two bites of an oyster; they pitied our want of taste, and lamented over our miserably small ones in England. After tea we saw some sea-weed and autumnal leaves beautifully dried and preserved by Mrs. Flagg, and we also looked over an illustrated poem on the subject ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... OYSTER-BED. A "laying" of culch, that is, stones, old shells, or other hard substances, so as to form a bed for oysters, which would ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... with Europeans, treat our comforts, our tastes, and pursuits. We may contemn and pity them, but they seem to have very much the same feelings for us. We are horrified at the greediness with which they devour grubs, and many of them are shocked at our oyster-eating propensities! A remarkable instance of this occurred to Captain Flinders in 1798, when he was exploring the eastern coast of New Holland, and surveying Two-fold Bay. While measuring a base line upon the beach, the English sailors heard ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... principal aim in making the communication was to elicit information. She knew Brinton perhaps better than any one else in the company. Couldn't she give him some "points"? Alas! she had no "points" to give, for, however expansive Brinton may have been under Cupid's influence, he was as close as an oyster in what related to his profession, as has already been said. There was but one course left for Rounders to pursue, which was to play ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... you wouldn't open up and tell a friend!" The Bald-faced Kid was beginning to show signs of exasperation. "You're the fellow that invented secrets, ain't you, old-timer? You're by a clam out of an oyster, you are! Never mind! Don't say it! I can tell by the look in your eye that Solomon thought the clam was the king of beasts. What I want to know is this: how did that black brute come to change his heart at the same time with ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... joined by a sergeant and corporal of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, and we walked across to a little settlement of freed people not far from Secessionville, where a boat and crew were engaged. It would be tedious to relate how, after sticking on invisible oyster-beds and mud-flats, and losing our way among the creeks, at two o'clock we found ourselves about one hundred yards from the north end of the island; and how, since it was too late to try to reach the wharf on the east side, even had we been sure of the way, the two Fifty-fourth boys and myself got ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... fluent Tattle, thou hast Tongue Enough to talk an Oyster-Woman deaf: I say it cannot be. —What means the panting of my troubled Heart! Oh, my presaging Fears! shou'd what she says prove true, How wretched and how lost a thing ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... here and there the habitation of man located upon some slight elevation of the surface. Having rowed twenty-six miles, and being off the mouth of Murderkill Creek, a squall struck the canoe and forced it on to an oyster reef, upon the sharp shells of which she was rocked for several minutes by the shallow breakers. Fearing that the paper shell was badly cut, though it was still early in the afternoon, I ascended the creek of ominous name and associations to the landing of an inn kept by ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... youth, issue the words, "The concert will come off on Wednesday." This vulgarism should never be heard beyond the "ring" and the cock-pit, and should be banished from resorts so respectable as an oyster-cellar. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... not seen the stalking By a rabbit of a bear, Nor yet an oyster walking Sedately up the stair; But a marvel as amazing Inspires these doggerel rhymes, For I've read a leader praising The PREMIER ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... can remember now General Robert Toombs' and Hon. Jeff Davis' speeches. I remember how funny Toombs' speech was. He kept us all laughing, by telling us how quick we were going to whip the Yankees, and how they would skedaddle back across the Ohio river like a dog with a tin oyster can tied to his tail. Captain Joe P. Lee and I laughed until our sides hurt us. I can remember today how I felt. I felt that Davis and Toombs had come there to bring us glad tidings of great joy, and to proclaim to ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... hours were those for Alice. They came at length into a low, barren land, of dwarfed and scrawny pines, with here and there a marshy flat; thence through a narrow strip of hickories, oaks, cypresses, and dwarf palmetto, and so on into beds of white sand and oyster-shells, and then into one of the villages on the north shore ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... with the agency of a creative mind, and could be referred to molecules formed in the water by the power of attraction, till by modifications of cellular tissue in the gradual lapse of ages, one monad became an oyster and another a Man,—would you not say this cosmogony could scarce have misled the human understanding even in the earliest dawn of speculative inquiry? Yet such are the hypotheses to which the desire to philosophize away that simple proposition of a Divine First Cause, which every child ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... know precisely what kind of fish it was, but it was fried in oil of sesame and flavoured with a mixture of cinnamon and ginger, and the Professor did not appear to be making much progress with it. Ventimore himself would have infinitely preferred the original cod and oyster sauce, but that could not be ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... slices of brown bread into fingers half an inch thick; spread with butter. Mix some Russian caviare with lemon-juice to taste and a tablespoonful of finely chopped shallots. Spread the fingers with the mixture and place an oyster in the centre of each. Sprinkle with salt and a pinch of paprica. Serve. Garnish with thin ...
— 365 Foreign Dishes • Unknown
... say so? I have never done anything all my life but listen to you and sympathise with you. When you were a boy and sold my books to the boys at your school, and when you were a young man and took my poor husband to oyster shops—you remember the stories you ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... pontifices—Caesar included—the Vestal Virgins, and some other priests and ladies nearly related to them partook. Before the dinner proper came sea-hedgehogs; fresh oysters as many as the guests wished; large mussels; sphondyli; fieldfares with asparagus; fattened fowls; oyster and mussel pasties; black and white sea-acorns; sphondyli again; glycimarides; sea-nettles; becaficoes; roe-ribs; boar's-ribs; fowls dressed with flour; becaficoes; purple shell-fish of two sorts. The dinner itself consisted of sow's udder; boar's-head; fish-pasties; ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the flank of Table Mountain,—a wandering trail through a tangled solitude that might have seemed virgin and unbroken but for a few oyster-cans, yeast-powder tins, and empty bottles that had been apparently stranded by the "first low wash" of pioneer waves. On the ragged trunk of an enormous pine hung a few tufts of gray hair caught from a passing grizzly, but in strange juxtaposition ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... ocean, it was a very brave thing for them to do, for as the picture shows their ship was a very small affair when compared with the magnificent vessels of to-day, and was ill fitted to battle with the storms of the Atlantic. She was of about ten tons burden, or as large as an oyster sloop of to-day, and carried a crew of twenty-five men. A single mast was stepped amidships, and this supported the one large square sail which was all that ships of those days carried. Well forward of the mast was a single bank of oars, or long sweeps, that ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... also occasionally carried by shellfish, especially oysters, on account of the interesting modern custom of planting them in bays and harbors near the mouths of sewers to fatten them. The cheerful motto of the oysterman is, "The muddier the water the fatter the oyster." And nowhere do the bivalves plump up more quickly than near the ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... "You oyster!" said the official politely, "because a Missie Ammal comes from the bungalow, does it prove that the goddess was a Missie Ammal?" The other women agreed with him, and snubbed the ignoramus, who retired from ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... zooephytes. Only within the main-types, in the classes, orders, etc., do differences in rank take effect; and even here, not without exception. What difference in rank, for instance, is there between an oyster and a cuttle-fish? between a cochineal and a bee or ant? and yet the first two belong to one and the same type—the type of mollusca; and the last three to one and the same class—the class of insects. The vertebrates rank decidedly above the invertebrates; and in a manner wholly corresponding ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... autumn, with the sky the color and heaviness of a Lynnhaven oyster, Mrs. Jett sat quite unusually forward on her chair at one of the afternoon congresses of the wives, convened in Mrs. Peopping's back parlor, Jeanette Peopping, aged four, sweet and blond, whom the Jetts loved to borrow Sunday mornings, ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... grounds for pearls is at Bahrein, on the Persian Gulf. The divers bring in the oysters from the fishing banks in the Gulf, and pile them on the shore in great heaps. Here they lie till they are rotted; and the stench that arises is enough to turn any inexperienced stomach. When the substance of the oyster is quite decomposed, the shells are opened, and the mass of matter they contain is thrown into tubs, and washed with water. It is necessary to pass the pulp very carefully through the fingers, for fear that some of the pearls will be lost, and consequently ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... confined to its artificial distribution over arid fields, but includes also the exploitation of the mineral and animal resources of the vast world of waters, whether the production of salt from the sea, salt lakes and brine springs, the cultivation of oyster beds, or the whole range of pelagic fisheries. The animal life of the water is important to man owing not only to its great abundance, but also to its distribution over the coldest regions of the globe. It furnishes the chief food supply of polar and ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... word shell implied that the Colonel knew what was what. To the New England inland native, beyond the reach of the east winds, the oyster unconditioned, the oyster absolute, without a qualifying adjective, is the pickled oyster. Mrs. Trecothick, who knew very well that an oyster long out of his shell (as is apt to be the case with the rural bivalve) gets homesick and loses his sprightliness, replied, with ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was reached, but his merciless adherents had not glutted their vengeance. They outraged the naked corpse, dismembered it, and incredible to be said, finished their infernal crime by scraping the flesh from the bones with oyster-shells, and casting the remnants into the fire. Though in his privacy St. Cyril and his friends might laugh at the end of his antagonist, his memory must bear the weight of the righteous ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... garniture of war. The natives of either sex wear no cloathing, but a girdle of stained leaves round their middle, and the men a gorget, of the exact shape and size as at present wore by officers in our service. It is made of the pearl oyster-shell. The centre is black, and the transparent part of the shell is left as an edge or border to it, which gives it a very fine effect. It is slung round their neck with a band of human hair, or the fibres of cocoa nut-shell, of admirable texture, and a rose worked at each corner of the ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... classified," retorted Ellen grimly. "She's neither fish, flesh nor fowl. She's taught school; laid out the dead; an' done the Lord only knows what durin' her lifetime. She can turn her hand to most anything; an' they do say she's mum as an oyster, which is a virtue out of the common in ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... Lane at Roanoke Island, in May, 1609, dispersed the whole colony in three parties, sending one to live with the savages, another to Point Comfort to try for fish, and another, the largest party, twenty miles down the river to the oyster-banks, where at the end of nine weeks the oyster diet caused their skins "to peale off from head to foote as if ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... important. As the Sabbath was made for man, so books were made for the reader, and, when a reader has assimilated from any given book his own proper nourishment and pleasure, the rest of the book is so much oyster shell. The end of true reading is the development of individuality. Like a certain water insect, the reader instinctively selects from the outspread world of books the building materials for the house of his ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... same way an electric current would, and he'd collapse, unconscious but relatively unharmed. But Mike doubted seriously that it would have any effect at all on the metal body of the robot. It is as difficult to jolt the nerves of a robot as it is to blind an oyster. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... had just left, and my father showed my sisters how to eat them without spilling the liquor. He even tried to give them an example, and seized an oyster. He attempted to imitate the ladies, and immediately spilled all the liquid over his coat. I ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... peculiarly to the Chronicles of the Canongate, to the grey-headed eld of whom they are as familiar as to Chrystal Croftangry. Yet I will not go back to the days of clanship and claymores. Have at you, gentle reader, with a tale of Two Drovers. An oyster may be crossed in love, says the gentle Tilburina—and a drover may be touched on a point of honour, says the Chronicler ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... you so," said Jim, suppressing his excitement. "Bread and milk?" he repeated. "Just bread and milk. You poor little shaver! Wal, that's as easy as oyster stew or apple-dumplin'. ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... say a good word of the feeding both at the Hotel de l'Univers and the Hotel du Centre et de la Paix; but I cannot speak of either of these from personal knowledge, nor do I know anything of Dinard, though it is said that the best cookery in the province is found there. Cancale of course has its oyster-beds, and the esculent bivalve can be eaten within sight of the mud-flat on which it erstwhile reposed. The one restaurant in this part of the world for which every one has a good word is that of Poulard ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... a very small office and a very large sign, with a transparency at night big enough for an oyster-shop. These young doctors are particularly strong, as I understand, on what they call diagnosis,—an excellent branch of the healing art, full of satisfaction to the curious practitioner, who likes to give the right Latin name to one's complaint; not quite so satisfactory to the patient, as it ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... thing for her too," said Eleanor; "if she had had more to occupy herself with this summer, she wouldn't have busied herself so disastrously with our affairs. I am afraid she made you very unhappy while you were there, and I, like a selfish oyster, sat tight here and kept you out ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... For instance, to show that the good is not pleasure, he can avowedly do nothing but appeal "to ethical judgments with which almost every one would agree." He repeats, in effect, Plato's argument about the life of the oyster, having pleasure with no knowledge. Imagine such mindless pleasure, as intense and prolonged as you please, and would you choose it? Is it your good? Here the British reader, like the blushing Greek youth, is expected to answer instinctively, No! It is an argumentum ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... cautious trout ventured out of his dark hole to seek his mate, the roach and the dace rose up to the surface of the brook to bask in the sunshine, and the amorous frog piped from among the rushes. If ever an oyster can really fall in love, as has been said or sung, it must be on such ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... oyster-catcher, as he flew from point to point, and cautiously waded into the shallow water; and the patient heron, that pattern of a fisherman, as with retracted neck, and eyes fixed on vacancy, he has stood for hours without a single snap, motionless as a statue. Here, too, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the lieutenant to his signaller, "what are you grinning at?" The submarine has hung on to ask if the destroyer will "kiss her and whisper good-night." A breaking sea smacks her tower in the middle of the insult. She closes like an oyster, but—just too late. Habet! There must be a quarter of a ton of water somewhere down below, on its way ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling |
