"Quill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... insecurely propped up by a bundle of old papers and books, since no two of its four legs were completely whole—and on the table there was a neckless bottle half-filled with ink, a few sheets of paper and a couple of quill pens. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... and dodging a fly hook, hurled with intent to hit, proceeded to sort and equip three slender rods destined to bring joy and fish to Cecil, Colette, and Jacqueline. With perfect gravity he ornamented each line with four split shot, a small hook, and a brilliant quill float. ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... effect of inducing more care in collecting and also of revisiting old spots, often with the result of a rich harvest of bark which had been left on partly denuded trunks, and the opening up of new localities. The new shoots springing up from the old stumps have yielded much quill bark, and the root bark of the old ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... city, and presenting altogether a most singular contrast to the teeming life around him, stared at, smiled at, wondered at, yet respectfully greeted by all who knew him; or as finally standing on the rostrum, playing with a goose-quill which his amanuensis had always to provide; constantly crossing and recrossing his feet, bent forward, frequently sinking his head to discharge a morbid flow of spittle, and then again suddenly throwing it on high, especially when aroused to polemic zeal against pantheism and ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... AND QUERY.—First volume of Tacitus translated into English by A.W. QUILL. Judging from a review in the Times of this instalment, it is the work of neither a soft nor hard Quill, but a medium Quill. With such a suggestive name, this author will show himself a Goose Quill if he does not at once turn his attention ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 103, July 16, 1892 • Various
... "But you haven't writ his name out. Give me the pen here, quick!" Then he took the quill and wrote her father's name up in one blank corner, and dried the ink with a little sand, and put the note into the envelope containing his own, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... seated, warmed with his wine, takes many red-taped papers from his bag and a quill ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... ink the ocean fill, Were the whole earth of parchment made, Were every single stick a quill, Were every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God alone, Would drain the ocean dry; Nor would the scroll contain the whole Though stretched from ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... I think, I am nearly sure, there is a feather in this cushion that has the quill in it ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... marked accordingly with a "P," carved rudely enough by one whose hand was much more practised in slitting the weasand of a buck, than in cutting out, with crayon, or Italian crow-quill, the ungainly forms of the Roman alphabet. Ned Hinkley shook his head with some misgiving when the work was done; as he could not but see that he had somewhat impaired the beauty of the peacemaker's butt by the hang-dog looking initial which ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... living representatives of the class Aves, the tail-feathers are attached to a coccygian bone, consisting of several vertebrae united together, whereas in the Archaeopteryx the tail is composed of twenty vertebrae, each of which supports a pair of quill-feathers. The first five only of the vertebrae, as seen in A, have transverse processes, the fifteen remaining ones become gradually longer and more tapering. The feathers diverge outward from them at ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles in all directions that defied attack. In his youth One Eye had once sniffed too near a similar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tail flick out suddenly in his face. One quill he had carried away in his muzzle, where it had remained for weeks, a rankling flame, until it finally worked out. So he lay down, in a comfortable crouching position, his nose fully a foot away, and out of the line of the tail. Thus he waited, keeping perfectly quiet. There was ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... usually nothing is placed under the head, but sometimes small wooden blocks are used. In the morning when they arise they roll the mats, and the chamber-work is done. A young girl whom I measured had her hair fastened up with the quill of a porcupine; when asked to undo her hair, she put the quill under the top of her skirt. The Bukits possess one musical instrument, sarunai, a kind of clarinet, which does not sound badly. There are many blians, nearly all men. Several prominent members of ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... had been waved to seats by a great window with Mr. Pollock, made no protest. There they sat in silence for a few minutes, while the Governor General dictated to a secretary who sat at a little table by his side and who wrote with a goose-quill. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... we reckon those of the governmental leeches, who are merely quill-drivers with a salary of six hundred ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... very strangely dressed, in tweeds and knicker-bockers and wore a soft round hat with a quill in it—the oddest of hats—and had a knapsack on his back. The colours of the coming day were caricatured in his ruddy face and red-gold hair, his bright green stockings and bright red tie. He was Germanic, flagrant, incredible, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... too certaine ill, Did not extinguish, but gaue honour fier, Th'amazing prodigie, (bane of my quill,) Bred not astonishment, but a strong desier, By which this heauen-adopted Knights strong will, Then hiest height of Fame, flew much more hier: And from the boundlesse greatnes of his minde, Sends back this answer ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... the individual man, is the noblest of passions in a people. If he lose one, we are all beaten with him, we all fall down with our Caesar, and the grief glistens in every eye, the shame burns on every cheek. Moralize as we may about the victories of peace and the superiority of the goose-quill over the sword, there is no achievement of human genius on which a country so prides itself as on success in war, no disgrace over which it broods so ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... benefits of British Rule, was its weakening and debasing effect on Indian manhood. "We cannot," he declared, "be grateful to it for degrading our natures, for systematically crushing out all martial spirit, for converting a race of soldiers and heroes into a timid flock of quill-driving sheep." This was done not by the fact that a man did not carry arms—few carry them in England—but that men were deprived of the right to carry them. A Nation, an individual, cannot develop his capacities to the utmost without liberty. And this ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... be neatly folded in paper and marked; and this can be done in the evening or at odd times, but placing the feathers on the pages ought to be daylight work, that the colors may be studied. Now open the tail-feather packet, and with the razor carefully pare away the quill at the back ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... get a footing in a magazine where one would care to appear. There are not many authors whose sole dependence is a goose-quill. Call over the well-known men; they are all something else before they are authors. Your pot-boilers are sure of a market; pictures have become articles of furniture, indispensable to people of taste, and everybody has a taste now-a-days. But rejected papers are good for nothing but to light one's ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... tedious, owing to his weakness, the rough country, and the deepening snow. Towards noon he came upon the newly made track of a porcupine, followed it a short distance into a clump of trees, where he soon saw the round quill-covered animal in the snow and shot it. Immediately he built a fire, and singed off quills and hair. Then, as he related to me afterwards, he considered, talking aloud to himself, what was best to ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... things the easiest to get! How could it care for a fellow's happiness, or even for his leading a correct life! Would he not be a much better man if allowed to have Hester!—whereas in all probability she would fall to the lot of some quill-driver like her father—a man that made a livelihood by drumming his notions into the ears of people that did not care a brass farthing about them!—Thus would Vavasor's love-fits work themselves off—declining from cold noon ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... size, corresponds with the small deer of Ceylon. I never saw so beautiful a little creature, appearing more like a fable than a reality. Their tiny black horns are but slightly curved inwards, their legs are not thicker than the quill with which I am now writing; and yet all the characters of the antelope are strongly marked. The first I saw had been brought to my uncle; and as I entered his room, I stood quite still at the door, with surprise at this exquisite, tiny creature, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... of a shepherd, cleverly modelled and painted, and vaguely resembling himself—he had been a Calabrian goatherd. The contralto, who came from Bologna, the city of sausages, gave Margaret a tiny pig made of silver with holes in his back, in which were stuck a number of quill toothpicks. ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... Bones." Of the passion for gaming of the Beaver Indians, see his Journal, 149. The same author (page 311), describes another game played by the Indians of the Rocky Mountains. It was played by two persons, each of whom had a "bundle of about fifty small sticks, neatly polished, of the size of a quill, and five inches long; a certain number of these sticks had red lines round them; and as many of these as one of the players might find convenient were curiously rolled up in dry grass, and, according to the judgment of his antagonist, respecting their number ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... sending envelopes, carefully addressed in a feigned hand, to a certain person at the Oxenbridge Hydro. These envelopes contained no word of writing, but held, on one day, only a bit of down from a hen's breast, on another, a goose-quill, on another, a glossy tail-feather, on another, a grain of corn, and so on. These trifles were regarded by me not as degrading or unmaidenly hints and suggestions, but simply as tests of intelligence. Could a man receive ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Lincolnshire family named Tetlow, which, with thirteen other figures, includes the representation of a book duly clasped and ornamented, having on it a silver penny; while above the book rests a dove, holding in its beak a crow-quill! This was to commemorate one of the family having, with a crow-quill, actually achieved the exploit of writing the Lord's Prayer within the compass of a silver penny. Amongst the most objectionable of the arms of this class are those which were granted ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... and dragon's blood, as they style their vile mixtures; or else grope in dead men's bodies for the thing which killed them. Which is a pure handicraft and cheirergon, unworthy a scholar, who stoops of right to naught but the goose-quill!" ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance; at least I suppose this quill I hold in my hand writes better than a peacock's would, and the peasants of Vevay, whose fields in spring time are as white with lilies as the Dent du Midi is with its snow, told me the hay was none the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... ten square leagues her pennons broad expand, And twilight swims upon the shuddering sand; 465 Perch'd on her crest the Griffin Discord clings, And Giant Murder rides between her wings; Blood from each clotted hair, and horny quill, And showers of tears in blended streams distil; High-poised in air her spiry neck she bends, 470 Rolls her keen eye, her Dragon-claws extends, Darts from above, and tears at each fell swoop With iron ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... goin' to grow up?" he asked; and poured out a big glass of the pure quill for me, and fiercely ordered me to drink it. By this time I was desperate; so I smashed his glass and mine; and taking him by the throat I shook him and told him that if he did not take me to the hump-backed man or to the drayman, and that right off, I'd shut off his wind ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... acquaintance, and so in three days' time a clergyman said, "Wilt thou take this woman here present to be thy lawful wife?" knowing full well what the answer must be. Short of other materials, the marriage contract was written with a goose quill on the parchment head of a drum. Sir William found that Meg made him a very good wife in spite of her wide mouth, and they lived happily together, the moral being, we supposed, that it is not always the prettiest girl that makes ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... play the lute, the violin, the flageolet, the harp, the syrinx and the regals," the other replied; "also the Spanish penola that is struck with a quill, the organistrum that a wheel turns round, the wait so delightful, the rebeck so enchanting, the little gigue that chirps up on high, and the great horn that booms ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... for whom, to-night, These walls are crowded with this cheering sight Ye love the poet—oft have conned him o'er, Knew ye the man, ye'd love him ten times more. Ye critics, spare him from your tongue and quill, Ye gods, applaud him; and ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... I receive are preceded by a volume of some sort or other, as a token of my new acquaintance being a regularly initiated member of the fraternity of the quill. In two or three instances, I have been surprised at subsequently discovering that the regular profession of the writer is arms, or some other pursuit, in which one would scarcely anticipate so strong a devotion to letters. In short, such is the actual state of opinion ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... from Rydal, with a washing tub of ink on castors, which he pushes about with him wherever he goes, and in which, as in a Claude-Lorraine mirror, he contemplates everything that he can both on earth and above. He is constantly employed in fishing in it with a quill for ideas; and as often as he catches one, even if it is half drowned, my door-keeper ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... silence. M. de Rivarol sat back in his chair, the feathered end of a quill between his teeth. Presently he cleared his throat and ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... one more example. The feather of a bird is a marvellous structure, and no one will deny that as a whole it depends upon adaptation. But what part of it DOES NOT depend upon adaptation? The hollow quill, the shaft with its hard, thin, light cortex, and the spongy substance within it, its square section compared with the round section of the quill, the flat barbs, their short, hooked barbules which, in the flight-feathers, hook into one another with just sufficient firmness to resist the pressure ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... who was allowed to bound upon the desk without rebuke, or even to perch upon the author's shoulders. Here the cat settled down contentedly, and with half-shut eyes watched the steady driving of the quill across ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... served to make Jasmin's name popular beyond the town in which they had been composed and published. His friend M. Gaze said of him, that during the year 1825 he had been marrying his razor with the swan's quill; and that his hand of velvet in shaving was even surpassed by ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... and, entering a house, were ushered into a cool, lofty room, where there were a lot of mahogany desks, and a single old clerk, who resembled a last year's dried lemon, with some few drops of acid juice for blood, perched up on a hard stem of a high stool, with four or five quill pens, like so many thorns, sticking out ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... do it delicately! I can't Apologize. I'll hint at it ... in verse; And, to be sure that Rosalind reads it through, I'll make it an appendix to my will!" —Still cynical, you see. He couldn't help it. He had seen much, felt much. He snapped the snuff box, Shook his white periwig, trimmed a long quill pen, And then began to write, most carefully, These couplets, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... leant forward and took from the tray of the inkstand a quill pen. With the point of it he followed the lines written ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... a young Examiner, scarce thirty were his years, His name our University loves, honours, and reveres: He pondered o'er some papers, and a tear stood in his eye; He split his quill upon the desk, and raised a bitter cry— 'O why has Fortune struck me down with this unearthly blow? "Why doom'd me to examine in my lov'd one's Little-go? "O Love and Duty, sisters twain, in diverse ways ye pull; ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... only through the assistance of the chemist that he finally hit upon the method of staining the sheets with a thin broth of untanned leather, of which the analysis would give a result closely approaching that of the parchment itself. Moreover, he made all sorts of trials of quill pens, until he had found a method of cutting which produced the exact thickness of stroke required, and during the whole time he exercised himself in copying and recopying many pages of the manuscript upon common paper, in order to familiarise himself ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... said Meeson, addressing himself to Mr. Todd and the managing clerk, as he took the quill between his fingers to sign, "do you two bear in mind that at the moment I execute this will I am of sound mind, memory, and understanding. There you are; now do you ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... a cave.] In Guiuan I had an opportunity of purchasing four richly painted Chinese dishes which came from a similar cavern, and a gold signet ring; the latter consisting of a plate of gold, originally bent into a tube of the thickness of a quill with a gaping seam, and afterwards into a ring as large as a thaler, which did not quite meet. The dishes were ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... so," answered John; "and if rest is what thou needest for thy recovery, it will not be lacking to thee here. It is well that the sword is not the only weapon thou lovest, but that the quill and the lore of the wise of the earth have attractions for ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... our party. Presently the folding-doors are to be shut, the ladies are to descend from their chambers, the bar will be kept appropriated to our house, the male part of the company will get into good humour, dinner will be ready, and then I must lay aside the grey goose-quill. As a preliminary to these promised comforts, the servant is mopping the hearth, which is composed (like a tesselated pavement) of little bricks about two inches long by half an inch wide, set within a broad black stone frame. The fuel is of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... listening again, and as her master was preparing to take his seat at the table and sharpen his goose-quill, she glanced around to see that they were entirely alone; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... difference between a full-grown bear and a furry, inquisitive cub. Though he was not afraid, the appearance of the mother bear was more than he had bargained for, and he immediately rolled himself into a ball again, every quill bristling defiantly. The old bear, however, wise in the lore of the dim trails, paid no more attention to him. Calling her cub, she shambled off through the bushes, the youngster casting many a backward glance at this little, ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... barbarous-looking. A great many fine canoes. The life is very wild about us here. One canoe comes in loaded down with rabbits which they have shot along the shores. Much gaudy clothing and savage finery now. Every one wears moccasins. One woman here does fine porcupine-quill work. She is Mrs. McLeod, and is the daughter of Old-man Firth, who is the factor at Fort McPherson, so they say. She is the wife of the factor at Fort Nelson, and knows how to trade. Quill-work ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... accident I met him out there in the timber. I delivered the telegram you sent him. After he had read it I showed him mine. He scribbled something on a bit of paper, folded it, and pinned it with a porcupine quill. I've been mighty curious, but I haven't pulled out that quill. ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... distantly reminded of a celebrated racehorse. However, it was clear that Mr. Fulton was a retired tradesman of some kind. 'He went out of isinglass—before the cheap scientific substitute was invented (it is made out of old quill pens)—with seventy-five thousand pounds. And it ought to come to my children. He has not another relation living but ourselves; he married my aunt. But we never see him: he said that he could not stand ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... five minutes I set to work, and in a few more, to my intense satisfaction—for I felt nervous—the thing was done, and I had extracted a piece of wood half an inch long, and as thick as a small quill. Then Guest and I carefully washed the wound over and over again in a solution of carbolic acid, and in half an hour the hand was bound up pro tem. Poor Yorke bore the pain without the twitching of an eyelid, and I felt a sincere thankfulness when, ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... expressed his commiseration was sitting with his high chair tilted back, with his knees against the edge of his desk, with his hat almost down upon his nose as he looked at his visitors from under it, and he amused himself by cutting up a quill pen into small pieces with his penknife. It was not pleasant to be pitied by such a man as that, and so ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Virtue (to trace only a few of its varied activities) meant manliness, then the quality or attribute peculiar to true manhood (with the Romans this was valor), then any admirable quality, then female chastity. Pen meant a feather, then a quill to write with, then an instrument for writing used in the same way as a quill. A groom meant a man, then a stableman (in bridegroom, however, it preserves the old signification). Heathen (heath-dweller), pagan (peasant), and demon (a divinity) had in themselves ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... painting set; I found, or thought I found, you did exceed That barren tender of a poet's debt: And therefore have I slept in your report, That you yourself, being extant, well might show How far a modern quill doth come too short, Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow. This silence for my sin you did impute, Which shall be most my glory being dumb; For I impair not beauty being mute, When others would give life, and bring ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... had enough of it. He was still striking the water, but his movements were becoming slower, for he was weakened by the loss of blood from the stabs he had received from below, and from the arrows, many of which were now buried to the goose quill in him. In a minute or two he gradually turned on one side, and floated, with his ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... abandoned. In 1878, when I spent three weeks at Ampersand, the cabin was in ruins, and surrounded by an almost impenetrable growth of bushes. The only philosophers to be seen were a family of what the guides quaintly call "quill pigs." The roof had fallen to the ground; raspberry-bushes thrust themselves through the yawning crevices between the logs; and in front of the sunken door-sill lay a rusty, broken iron stove, like a dismantled altar on which the ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... no one is speaking, and the grating of the clerks' quill pens against the paper is the only sound which disturbs the silence of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... that is, the Weekly Review (which was published weekly from February 19th, 1704, until 1712) which, says Gay, "is quite exhausted and grown so very contemptible, that though he has provoked all his brothers of the quill round, none of them will enter into ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... as we could get hold of it we inhaled, with delight, the perfume which issued from it, and which communicated to our senses the most soothing impressions. Some of us reserved our portion of wine in little tin cups, and sucked up the wine with a quill; this manner of taking it was very beneficial to us, and quenched our thirst much more than if we had drunk it off at once. Even the smell of this liquor was extremely agreeable to us. Mr. Savigny observed that many of us, after having taken ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... dear Cally, comes the hour When triumph crowns thy will, Submissive to thy winning power I seize the recreant quill: Indite these lines to bless thy days And sing my ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... in Spinville. And Jedidiah tried to tell his mother, through the open window, how the more they took the potatoes out of the bin, the more there were left in it; and how everybody had enough, and went away satisfied, and had filled their pockets; and even one of the boys was planning a quill popgun for sliced potato, such as the worst boys had not dreamed of all summer. He was a ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... task to write a letter. Paper and ink were not things of common use, as they are with us. A pen had to be made from the quill of a goose. ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... "Take a swan quill and a sheet of the finest parchment, and write down carefully what I shall dictate: the story of ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... thronged—though only with men, now; the bright colors that had made them look like hanging gardens were gone, with the ladies. The reporters' gallery, was merely occupied by one or two watchful sentinels of the quill-driving guild; the main body cared nothing for a debate that had dwindled to a mere vaporing of dull speakers and now and then a brief quarrel over a point of order; but there was an unusually large attendance of journalists in the reporters' waiting-room, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... out ahead, darted forward and stopped at where a small plant grew with linear leaves and a stalk not thicker than a crow's quill. Instantly taking a spade fastened to the back of the ox, he began eagerly digging away; and after he had got down to the depth of a foot, he displayed to us a tuber, the size of an enormous turnip. On removing the rind, he ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... of letters, there is no member of such inferior rank, or who is so much disdained by his brethren of the quill, as the humble Novelist; nor is his fate less hard in the world at large, since, among the whole class of writers, perhaps not one can be named of which the votaries are ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... forked hill Sate full-blown Bufo, I)uff'd by every quill; Fed with soft dedication all day long, Horace and he went hand in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... be used to make trimming for a hat by cutting it from the quill with a very sharp knife or razor blade, retaining a small portion of the quill which will be sufficient to hold the feathers together. This should be sewed onto a fine wire, and it may then be wound into a rosette. A small flower placed in the ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... they never attack one another, and there's no record of one yellow dog who tried to eat another yellow dog who belonged to the same gang. There's a mighty difference between the canine and the human, eh? You're one of our breed, Armstrong—yellow dog of the yellow dog quill-driving tribe—and your comrades haven't the gentlemanly instinct of the Constantinople cur. They get round you and worry you,' he declaimed, rising, and striding about the room, with an occasional double-handed clutch at ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... enough from a peasant the number, quartered there, they would write a report on the number the intentions as far as they could learn them, the amount of food in store, and the sentiments of the population, would enclose the despatch in a goose-quill and give it to their host, who was ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... the timepiece on the notary's wall. The town clocks were striking the hour. A knock at the door made the notary turn, with his quill pen still indicating the space for Denise's signature. It was the dingy clerk who sat in a sort of cage in the outer office. After opening the door he stood aside, and Susini came in with glittering eyes and ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... going in and out down there in the narrow streets, who were neither princes, nor generals, nor even captains, and yet the people looked after them with respectful curiosity—mere quill-drivers! It was ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... brother is not looking. Let him turn his eyes to the left. He will see two wild flowers broken off at the stem, a feather which has not fallen from the plumage of a bird, because the quill is painted, and two traces of footsteps ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... with his crop rapped upon the factor's door. Old Islay came out with a quill behind his ear and a finger ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... fact that one day, while leaving the swamp, a big feather with a shaft over twenty inches long came spinning and swirling earthward and fell in the author's path. Instantly she looked upward to locate the bird, which from the size and formation of the quill could have been nothing but an eagle; her eyes, well trained and fairly keen though they were, could not see the bird, which must have been soaring above range. Familiar with the life of the vulture family, ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Women think themselves completely Adorned till they have tinged the Lashes and the edges of their Eyelids with the powder of Lead-Ore. This they do by dipping a Bodkin of the thickness of a Quill into the Powder, and dragging it under the Eyelids. This gives their Eyes a Sooty colour, but is thought to add a Wonderful Grace to their Complexions. And was not this that which Jezebel did in the Ancient Time?[C] ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... a crop of paint-brushes growing all over it; for a feather, when it first comes, is protected by a little case, and the end of the feather, which sticks out of the tip of the case, does look very much like the soft hairs at the end of a paint-brush, the kind that has a hollow quill stem, you know. After they were once started, dear me, how those feathers grew! It seemed no time at all before they covered up the ear-holes in the side of his head, and no time at all before a little bristle fringe grew down ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... follow by ear—no difficult matter, for on the line of their course every wood-pigeon rose from its perch with a continued clash, dashing its wings against the branches with wellnigh force enough to break every quill. By taking the track of this noise he soon came to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... consequence, disappoints everybody, the sitter always included. When we wish to judge of a man's character by his handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common workaday pen, not his best small text traced laboriously with the finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting, which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of character recognisably presented to the ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... joy to your lodges, or I shall live among the dogs and old women for the remainder of my days. My friends, you saw which way my feather flew. I shall hold my shield in that direction, and the lightning will draw a great cloud, and this arrow, which is feathered with the quill of the white swan will make a hole ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... did idly try To show her sheaepe a-riden by, The rushes brown-bloom'd stems did ply, As if they bow'd to her by will. The rings o' water, wi' a sock, Did break upon the mossy rock, An' gi'e my beaeten heart a shock, Above my float's up-leapen quill. ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... those ancient papers with their great Old English capitals, their stiff flourishes, their quaint abbreviations, we should scarcely have been startled to see a peruked head bend above them and a hand with noisy quill go tracing along the lines of those long-ago "Whereases" and ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... regular order from the lowest to the highest degree of the attendant women. But it certainly was perhaps a little too much of a departure from the usages of a Court when the monarch, about to sign an important document in the presence of his State Council, flung down the quill with which he had begun to write and proclaimed it to be a damned ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a wise child," he said. "My writing isn't the plainest in the world, but I'll do my best. I have some sheets of good smooth paper in my sea-chest, and a good quill pen, too. Elder Haven fixed the pen for me from the feather of a wild goose I killed on the marshes last spring. But I do not think there is such a thing as ink in the house; but I can make a fair ink with the juice of the elderberry and a fair lot of soot from the chimney. So think up what you ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... Tribunal" the wild hawk-moths were beginning to whir with their red-green wings. Gradually the ground in the forest also began to show signs of life. A hedgehog crept sleepily through the underbrush; a little weasel dragged his supple body forth from a crevice in the rocks no broader than a quill. Little hares darted with cautious leaps out from the bushes, stopping in front of each to crouch down and lay their ears back, until finally, growing more brave, they mounted the ridge by the cornfield and danced and played together, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... perforated with several holes, about the outer and lower part of the edge, in which they hang little bunches of beads, made of the same tubulous shelly substance used for this purpose by those of Nootka. The septum of the nose is also perforated, through which they frequently thrust the quill-feathers of small birds, or little bending ornaments, made of the above shelly substance, strung on a stiff string or cord, three or four inches long, which give them a truly grotesque appearance. But the most uncommon ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... would be hunting or walking in solitude, he would suddenly be seized with an unearthly fright, terribly awe stricken, apprehending some great evil. He feels very peculiar sensation from head to foot—the hair of his head standing and feeling stiff like a porcupine quill. He feels almost benumbed with fright, and yet he does not know what it is; and looking in every direction to see something, but nothing to be seen which might cause sensation of terror. Collecting himself, he would then say, "Pshaw! its nothing here to be afraid ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... started up wondering what it might be. After a while one of the men-at-arms gathered courage enough to pick it up and bring it to the Sheriff. Then everyone saw that it was a blunted gray goose shaft, with a fine scroll, about the thickness of a goose quill, tied near to its head. The Sheriff opened the scroll and glanced at it, while the veins upon his forehead swelled and his cheeks grew ruddy with rage as he read, for ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Pekan the Fisher we all saw. I might add that Puma the Panther is to be feared at times, and when he is very hungry Buster Bear will take a chance on turning you on your back. By the way, don't any of you call Prickly Porky a Hedgehog. He isn't any thing of the kind. He is sometimes called a Quill Pig, but his real name, Porcupine, is best. He has no near relatives. Tomorrow morning, instead of meeting here, we'll hold school on the shore of the pond Paddy the Beaver has made. ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... grotesquely. But finally he finished. The search produced four cigars somewhat crumpled and frayed; some matches in a gun-metal case, a silver cigar cutter, two five-dollar bills, a handful of silver chicken feed, the leather case of the eyeglasses, a couple of quill toothpicks, a gold watch with a dangling fob, a notebook and some papers. Mr. Trimm ranged these things in a neat row upon a log, like a watchmaker setting out his kit, and took swift inventory of them. Some he eliminated from his design, stowing them back in the pockets easiest to reach. He kept ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... a valley, the noble bird sprang from the top of a dry tree above me and came sailing directly over my head. I saw him bend his eye down upon me, and I could hear the low hum of his plumage as if the web of every quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong, level flight. I watched him as long as my eye could hold him. When he was fairly clear of the mountain, he began that sweeping spiral movement in which he climbs the sky. Up and up he went, without once breaking his majestic poise, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... business of getting a new suit he has more trouble than a fine lady, for he has to shake off the old garments, while getting the new, bit by bit, here a feather and there a feather, today a new wing-quill; tomorrow a new ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... common disapproval. It is marvellous how a member of her sex will conceive dislike of people that she has never seen; but birds are sensible of heat or cold long before either arrives, and it may be that this mocking-bird feels something wrong at the quill end of ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... he fondly entitled them "Pistolette Amorose del Doni," 1552, 8vo. These Pistole were designed to be little epistles, or billets-doux, but Doni was one of those fertile authors who have too little time of their own to compose short works. Doni was too facetious to be sentimental, and his quill was not plucked from the wing of Love. He was followed by a graver pedant, who threw a heavy offering on the altar of the Graces; PARABOSCO, who in six books of "Lettere Amorose," 1565, 8vo. was too phlegmatic to sigh over ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... who tells us the trill of the Hair-Bird (Fringilla socialis) is produced by the bird fluttering its wings upon its sides! The Hermit-Thrush may be easily identified by his color; his back being a clear olive-brown, becoming rufous on his rump and tail. A quill from his wing placed beside one from his tail, on a dark ground, presents quite ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of which he had nothing to complain, although it barely served its purpose, like most of the inexpensive objects about him, was a charming. Italian bronze ink-stand, over whose cover wrestled the infant Hercules in the act of strangling a goose—in friendly aid of "drivers of the quill." My father wrote with a gold pen, and I can hear now, as it seems, the rapid rolling of his chirography over the broad page, as he formed his small, rounded, but irregular letters, when filling his journals, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... with a white unused quill, and a vellum scroll on which the names of all the members of the Society were written in ominous red. He handed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... expand in the evening, and are sweet-scented. They are produced along the margins of the broad, flat, deeply-notched branches, the serratures being rounded instead of angled, as in some of the kinds. The tube of the flower is long and slender, no thicker than a goose quill, and covered with reddish scales; the petals are spreading, and form a cup 6 in. across; they are narrow, pointed, and pure white, the outer whorl, as well as the sepals, being tinged on the under side with a tawny colour. The stamens form a large cluster in the centre, and are bright yellow, ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... it was Aladdin's Cave undergoing a wondrous 'sea change.' A poetess, who writes for the papers under the name of Melissa Mayflower, had fastened herself upon our party in some way; and I suppose she felt bound to sustain the reputation of the quill. She said the Nereids must have built that marine palace, and decorated it for a visit from ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... of paper on which we have written (post-card fashion) message and address are rolled two or three together, and inserted into a piece of quill less than two inches long, which, however, they do not entirely fill. While a pigeon is held by one man, another pushes one of the bird’s tail-feathers well through the quill, which is then fastened in its place by two minute wooden wedges. A moment later the pigeon is tossed up into the air, ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... father's watch, and Bud had found it and played with it until it was creased and cracked all over like "crazed" china, yet not torn. Old Madam Leigh's face could not be said to be wrinkled, for the lines were shallow. They were as fine as if made with an inkless crow quill, and so close together you would have thought there was not room for another. Her eyes were dark and bright She had French blood in her veins, and showed it in her quick ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... came down from his brother's closet, old Sigismond was sure to be watching for him, and would walk a few steps with him in his long, lute-string sleeves, quill and knife in hand. He kept the young man informed concerning matters at the factory. For some time past, things seemed to have changed for the better. Monsieur Georges came to his office regularly, and returned ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... annihilate a man by pad and pencil is indeed an art worthy of admiration. The pen of an indictment clerk is oft mightier than the sword of a Lionheart, the brain behind the subtle quill far defter than said swordsman's skill. Moreover, the ingenuity necessary to draft one of these documents is not confined to its mere successful composition, for having achieved the miraculous feat of alleging in fourteen ways without punctuation ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... serenity expressed in his smooth, regular, and scrupulously perfect handwriting. It was quite vertical, and rounded, with a slope neither to the right nor left, and at the time I knew him first, he was fond of using a soft pencil on printing paper, though commonly he wrote with a quill. Each letter was distinct in shape, and between the verses was always the exact space of half an inch. I have a good many of his poems written in this fashion, but whether they were the first drafts or not I cannot ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... I found a nest which I was not looking for. There were six eggs in it. I took one of them—here it is—and I am waiting for the rest to hatch. I shall go back for the others when the young birds have their quill feathers. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... the quill and turned to go behind the counter. The girl was dancing nervously on her toes. "But say, Billy Little, I can't pay you for them now. Will—will—you ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... always a quill, which, during the lecture, he kept constantly twirling about and crushing. He pushed the desk forward upon two legs, swinging it back and forth, and every few minutes would plunge forward almost spasmodically, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... shaped like an olive, with a pair of shrewd gray eyes, and a clever, clean-shaven mouth. He was well-dressed, and was continually probing with a quill tooth-pick at his gold-filled front teeth, evidently desirous of excavating some of the ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... see that some of them are hollow; when the bird was alive, those hollow places were all filled with air. Take a dead bird and look at the quills at the roots of the feathers; and now watch that swallow as it darts so rapidly hither and thither. The bird is able to fill each tiny quill with air, so that its body becomes like a balloon, and it rises high above the roofs of the houses; then, like the fish, when it wishes to sink, it can breathe out all the air again, and so constantly change its weight, and fly, now high, now low, faster than ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... for a while thoughtfully biting the top of her quill pen and looking out dreamily into the street. Her little sitting-room faced Knightsbridge and the trees and grass of the Park. Often when some problem of the domestic economy of the hotel caused her a passing perplexity, she would ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... midst of books, papers, bills, and other implements of gain, let me lift up my drowsy head awhile to converse with dear Julia. And first, as I know she has a fervent wish to see me a quill-driver, I must tell her that I begin, as people are wont to do, to look upon my future profession with great partiality. I no longer see it in so disadvantageous a light. Instead of figuring a merchant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... Crees and Blackfeet would have nothing to do with him; and the half-breeds were profane regarding him. But Little Hammer was oblivious to any depreciation of his merits, and would not be suppressed. He loved the Hudson's Bay Company's Post at Yellow Quill with an unwavering love; he ranged the half-breed hospitality of Red Deer River, regardless of it being thrown at him as he in turn threw it at his dog; he saluted Sergeant Gellatly with a familiar How! whenever he saw him; he borrowed tabac of the half- breed women, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... out for the fellow That came with this device. 'Twas queintly carried: The stalke pluckt cleanly out, and in the quill This scroll conveyd. What ere it be the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... hole through the nose cartilage of her child with a porcupine quill and then takes care that the wound heals quickly, without closing. Afterwards she passes through a ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... was brief enough, but there was plenty of husk to the grain. The old expatriate was querulous, long-winded, not niggard with his ink when he cursed the English and damned the Prussians; and he obtained much gratification in jabbing his quill-bodkin into what he termed the sniveling nobility of the old regime. Dog of dogs! was he not himself noble? Had not his parents and his brothers gone to the guillotine with the rest of them? But he, thank God, had no wooden ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... In forming their type the German printers imitated the lettering made by copyists with a quill. Their type is called Gothic, and it is still widely used in German books. The Italian printers made their letters more round and simple in shape, imitating the handwriting of the best Italian copyists. This is the Roman type, in which many European peoples, as also the English and the Americans, ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... are told of him; for he was fond of joking, and was often absent-minded. It is said that his wife was skilled in embroidery, and would decorate his moccasins with fine porcupine quill work; and it disturbed her to see him put them on to go out of a morning when the dew was on the grass. So she took him to task for ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... this time last year that it occurred. But, first of all, I must tell you that I am a clerk in the Admirality, where our chiefs, the commissioners, take their gold lace and quill-driving officers seriously, and treat us like fore-top men on board a ship. Well, from my office I could see a small bit of blue sky and the swallows, and I felt inclined to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... a dress to be hurried with; every quill and gather of its trimming must be "set just so;" and there was still one flounce to be made, and these others were only basted, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... keep? Our teeth would chatter and our eyes would weep; Hunger and dullness would invade our feasts, Did not Batt find us arms against such guests. He is the cunning engineer, whose skill Makes fools to carve the goose, and shape the quill: Fancy and wit unto our meals supplies: Carols, and not minc'd-meat, make Christmas pies. 'Tis mirth, not dishes, sets a table off; Brutes and Phanaticks eat, and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... could not happen. The greater part of the people were still very ignorant and could not read or write at all. But those who had mastered the difficult art of handling the goose-quill belonged to an international republic of letters which spread across the entire continent and which knew of no boundaries and respected no limitations of language or nationality. The universities were the strongholds of this republic. Unlike modern fortifications, they ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... inspired labour. Their unblessed condition was obvious. On the large library table were a couple of brass candlesticks with fresh candles (Adrian could not work by electric light), a couple of reams of scribbling paper, an inkpot, an immaculate blotting pad, three virgin quill pens (it was one of Adrian's whimsies to write always with quills), lying in a brass dish, and an office stationery case closed and aggressively new. The sight of this last monstrosity, I thought, would play the deuce with my imagination and send it on a devastating ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... destroyed or wasted? A certain amount of white paper at a farthing a square yard (and I am not certain it is not pleasanter all diversified and variegated with black wriggles)—a certain amount of ink meant to be spread and dried: made for no other purpose. A certain infinitesimal amount of quill—torn from the silly goose for no purpose whatsoever but to minister to the high ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... rose and walked back to the inner part of the temple, though he was still visible from the front. Here he took out a roll of paper and a quill pen, which he put in his mouth and bit, as he was in the habit of doing when composing. Then he threw his head back and ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... parental affection, for it builds its nest, hatches its own eggs, and rears its own young, Wilson assures us. It is about a foot in length, clothed in a dark drab suit with a silken greenish gloss. A ruddy cinnamon tints the quill-feathers of the wings; and the tail consists partly of black feathers tipped with white, the two outer ones being of the same tint as the back. The under surface is a pure white. It has a long curved bill of a greyish-black above, and yellow beneath. The female differs from the male in having the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston |
