"Rook" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... coronach[145] had done shout, Ersche men so gatherit him about, In hell great room they took: Thae tarmigants, with tag and tatter, Full loud in Ersche begoud to clatter, And roup like raven and rook.[146] The Devil sae deaved[147] was with their yell; That in the deepest pot of hell ...
— English Satires • Various
... they that draw in bubbles for old gamesters to rook; also a sergeant's yeoman, or ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... "Good-night, Sir Rook!" said a little lark, "The daylight fades; it will soon be dark; I've bathed my wings in the sun's last ray; I've sung my hymn to the parting day; So now I haste to my quiet nook In yon ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... news of the town.... Never, by look or word or sign, helped to rub in what a beetle-headed idiot I'd been." She gulped. "I could have put my head down on the tablecloth and cried gallons"—she blew her nose again—"knowing 'd lost him a rook at least. For, of course, that flabby Slabberts creature counted for something in the game, or Brounckers wouldn't have wanted him. And Captain—my Captain!..." She threw a sparkling eye-dart tipped with remorseful ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... numbers of birds, though never as many of such different kinds as those named by Z.R.B. in the letter which you gave us in July. Sometimes, a great number of rooks gather in a ring, and in the center of it is one lonely, dejected-looking rook, who holds his head down in silence. The other rooks seem to hold a consultation, chattering and cawing back and forth, sometimes one alone and sometimes all together, until they seem to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... points which, upon this side, sink In dark, yet still are there; this ragged crane Spreading his wings at seeing us with vain Terror, forsooth; the trees, a pulpy stock Of toadstools huddled round them; and the flock— Black wings after black wings—of ancient rook By rook; has not the whole scene got a look As though we were the first whose breath should fan In two this spider's web, to give a span Of life more to three flies? See, there's a stone Seems made for us to sit on. Have men gone By here, and passed? or rested on that bank Or on this stone, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... a rook by wearing a pied feather, The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff, A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot On his French garters, should affect a humour! O, it ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... a scene more silent and more desolate. There was no sign of life, and not a sound save the occasional cawing of a rook. Advancing towards the abbey, they passed a pile of buildings that, in the summer, might be screened from sight by the foliage of a group of elms, too scanty at present to veil their desolation. Wide gaps in the roof proved that the vast and dreary stables were no longer ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... and shelves, But ourselves, That rook and rise With endless and uneasy motion, Now touching the very skies, Now sinking into the depths ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... strange!" T'an Ch'un exclaimed. "Instead of bracing up your energies now to rook some money out of our venerable senior, you turn ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... being much dimmed by obscure expression, and even slightly staggering continuity of thought. The Rooks may be properly supposed to have taught men to dispute, but not to write. The Swallow teaches building, literally, and the Owl moping, literally; but the Rook does not teach pamphleteering literally. And the 'of old' is redundant, for rhyme's sake, since Rooks hold parliaments now as much as ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... front are called Pawns. At the beginning of the game the queen always stands upon a square of her own colour. The board is so set that each player has a white square at the right hand end of the row nearest to him. The rook, knight and bishop on the right of the king are known as King's rook, King's knight, and King's bishop; the other three as Queen's rook, Queen's knight, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... me, or my wife, or servant Saurea—do your best, swindle us, rook us, I promise you your interests won't suffer, if you accomplish ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... cook crows, keep well his comb, For the fox and the fulmart they are false both. When the raven and the rook have rounded together, And the kid in his cliff shall accord to the same. Then shall they be bold, and soon to battle thereafter. Then the birds of the raven rugs and reives, And the leal men of Lothian, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... is sheer libel," he answered presently. "Larssen could rook you for goodness knows what damages if you got ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... certain extent confirmed by Mr. MacCulloch, who says he is very doubtful as to the occurrence of the Jay in the Island, and adds that the local name for the Mistletoe Thrush is "Geai." Mr. Gallienne, in a note to Professor Ansted's list, confirms the scarcity of the Jay, as he says the Rook and the Jay are rarely seen here, although they are indigenous to Jersey. The local name "Geai" may perhaps have misled him as to the occasional appearance of the Jay. I have never seen a real Jay in ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... was an inexperienced young rook goes without saying. An older bird would not have given a second glance to the thing. Indeed, one would have thought his own instinct might have told him that broken glass would be a mistake in ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... they present every one of those appearances which we are accustomed to connect with the communication of an idea from one mind to another, can we deny that they have a language of their own, though it is one which in most cases we can neither speak nor understand? How can we say that a sentinel rook, when it sees a man with a gun and warns the other rooks by a concerted note which they all show that they understand by immediately taking flight, should not be credited both with reason and the ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... and, indeed, almost dizzy is the thought of these veiled ladders on which we all live, like climbing monkeys! Many a black-coated clerk in a flat may comfort himself for his sombre garb by reflecting that he is like some lonely rook in an immemorial elm. Many a wealthy bachelor on the top floor of a pile of mansions should look forth at morning and try (if possible) to feel like an eagle whose nest just clings to the edge of ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... Makfadyane, Far north-wast in a neuck; Be he the coronach had done shout, Ersche men so gatherit him about, In hell great room they took. Thae tarmigants, with tag and tatter, Full loud in Ersche begoud to clatter, And roup like raven and rook. The Devil sae deaved was with their yell, That in the deepest pot of hell He ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... distance, when our smoke-sail yard was manned; we looked like a parcel of larks spitted, with one great goose in the midst of us. "Doey, get beyond me, zur; doey, Mr Rattlin," he would say. "Ah! zur, I'd climb with any bragger in this ship for a rook's nest, where I ha' got a safe bough to stand upon; but to dance upon this here see-sawing line, and to call it a horse, too, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... it any harm;" while in India, according to Dr. Jerdon's testimony, the jackdaws chase the gowinda-kite "for simple matter of amusement." Prince Wied saw the Brazilian eagle urubitinga surrounded by numberless flocks of toucans and cassiques (a bird nearly akin to our rook), which mocked it. "The eagle," he adds, "usually supports these insults very quietly, but from time to time it will catch one of these mockers." In all such cases the little birds, though very much ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... particulars of houses ill guarded, and shops insecurely fastened, and "put up" Blicks's ready ruffians to the more dangerous work. In his various disguises, and under his many names, he found his way into those upper circles of "fast" society, where animals turn into birds, where a wolf becomes a rook, and a lamb a pigeon. Rich spendthrifts who affected male society asked him to their houses, and Mr. Anthony Croftonbury, Captain James Craven, and Mr. Lionel Crofton were names remembered, sometimes with pleasure, oftener with regret, by many a broken man of fortune. He had ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... thought it was a judgment of Heaven upon him. In his rage for improvement the fellow dared anything. Without my orders he cut down an old rookery which was sacred in the country, and had a prophecy regarding it, stating, 'When the rook-wood shall fall, down goes Hackton Hall.' The rooks went over and colonised Tiptoff Woods, which lay near us (and be hanged to them!), and Cornichon built a temple to Venus and two lovely fountains on their site. Venuses and Cupids were the rascal's adoration: he wanted to take down the Gothic ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Marshall County, Mississippi. Born during slavery. I b'long to Master John Rook. He died during the Civil War. Miss Patsy Rook raised me. I put on her shoes, made up her bed, fetched her water ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... breathing so difficult that she turned a few paces aside, and sat down upon a rough block of stone, long since quarried and left unused. Just before her was a small patch of marshy ground, long grass growing about a little pool. A rook had alighted on the margin, and was pecking about. Presently it rose on its heavy wings; she watched it flap athwart the dun sky. Then her eye fell on a little yellow flower near her feet, a flower she did not know. She plucked and ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... precocious rook, who Haunts the high hall garden calling "Maud;" Mine's no "blithe newcomer" like the cuckoo ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... learn the ebb of time From yon dull steeple's drowsy chime, Or mark it as the sunbeams crawl, Inch after inch, along the wall. The lark was wont my matins ring, The sable rook my vespers sing: These towers, although a king's they be, Have not a hall ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... opening a great mouth, until he looked like an old rook which is about to caw, the Councillor would stamp his foot several times, as though preparing to dance to the boys' shouting, and lower his head, grasp his umbrella like a bayonet, and charge at the lads ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... brook, rook; drake, rake; flute, lute; pearl, earl; plane, lane; wheel, heel; spine, pine; trout, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... terrier. The breed was included in the first volume of the Kennel Club Stud Book, and the best among the early dogs were such as Mr. Pratt's Gillie and Dunvegan, Mr. D. W. Fyfe's Novelty, Mr. John Bowman's Dandie, and Mr. Macdona's Rook. These were mostly of the drop-eared variety, and were ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... door. Three other little girls looked on in open-mouthed appreciation. I do not wish to shock you, so I will not tell you about the complete success of the booby-trap, nor of the bloodthirsty fight between Lucy and Bertha Kaurter in a secluded fives-court during rec. Dora Spielman and Gertrude Rook were agitated seconds. It was Lucy's form mistress, the adored Miss Harter Larke, who interrupted the fight at the fifth round, and led the blood-stained culprits into the hall and up the beautiful picture-like ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... banks of a river. One serene evening the idle members amused themselves with chasing each other through endless mazes, and in their flight they made the air sound with an infinitude of discordant noises. In the midst of these playful exertions it unfortunately happened that one rook, by a sudden turn, struck his beak against the wing of another. The sufferer instantly fell into the river. A general cry of distress ensued. The birds hovered with every expression of anxiety over their ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... found. Vain things were plenty—there was the turkey, and the swan, and the blue jay, and the wood-duck, and the wakon bird; and noisy, chattering, singing creatures, such as the daw, and the thrush, and the rook, and the prairie-dog, abounded—indeed there were more of each than was pleasing to the ear—but of women, vain, noisy, laughing, chattering women, there were none. It was, indeed, quite a still world to what it is now. Whether it is better ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the owners as they drove up the pike. There was Rockwood, the summer home of the Stanleys, and The Dell, owned, and inhabited at intervals, by Mr. Young-Dickson, of the South Tredegar potteries. Farther along there was Fairmount, whose owner was a wealthy cotton-seed buyer; Rook Hill, which Tom remembered as the ancient roosting ground of the migratory winter crows; and Farnsworth Park, ruralizing the name of its builder. On the most commanding of the hillsides was a pile of rough-cut Tennessee marble with turrets and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... house; but being noisy, and not altogether cleanly in their habits, the ladies of the family grew weary of them and wished to remove them. Accordingly, the colony was driven away, and made their present settlement in a grove behind the house. Ever since that time not a rook has built in the ancient grove; every year, however, one or another pair of young rooks attempt to build among the deserted tree-tops, but the old rooks tear the new nest to pieces as often as it is ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... melancholy temper. You ought to live out of doors, dig potatoes, make hay, shoot, hunt, tumble into ditches, and come home muddy and hungry for dinner. It would be much better for you than moping in your rook tower, ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... Jerkin, The Falcon and Tassel-gentle, The Laner and Laneret, The Bockerel and Bockeret, The Saker and Sacaret, The Merlin and Jack Merlin, The Hobby and Jack: There is the Stelletto of Spain, The Blood-red Rook from Turkey, The Waskite from Virginia: And there is of short-winged Hawks, The Eagle and Iron The Goshawk and Tarcel, The Sparhawk and Musket, The ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... ROOK PIE. Skin and draw some young rooks, cut out the backbones, and season with pepper and salt. Lay them in a dish with a little water, strew some bits of butter over them, cover the dish with a thick crust, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... Friendly was Familiar. Or, if he tuned his lofty lays, With solemn air to Virtue's praise, Alike abusive and erroneous, They call'd it hoarse and inharmonious. Yet so it was to souls like theirs, Tuneless as Abel to the bears! A Rook[5] with harsh malignant caw Began, was follow'd by a Daw;[6] (Though some, who would be thought to know, Are positive it was a crow:) Jack Daw was seconded by Tit, Tom Tit[7] could write, and so he writ; A tribe of tuneless praters follow, The Jay, the Magpie, and the Swallow; And ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... will be accompanied, during the day, by several of these attendants. After feeding, the uncovered craw protrudes; at such times, and indeed generally, the Carrancha is an inactive, tame, and cowardly bird. Its flight is heavy and slow, like that of an English rook. It seldom soars; but I have twice seen one at a great height gliding through the air with much ease. It runs (in contradistinction to hopping), but not quite so quickly as some of its congeners. At times the Carrancha is noisy, but is not generally so: its cry is loud, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... feline, for he allows his adversary a moment's freedom to escape and then pounces upon him with the soft-furred claws; assured of his superiority in the game, yet using only half his mind; fencing with one arm pinioned; chess-playing with a rook and pawn given to his antagonist; or shall we say chess-playing blindfold and seeing every piece upon the board? Is Bishop Blougram's Apology a poem at all? some literary critics may ask. And the answer ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... eyes a little. "What! the millionaire?... Good biz! We'll rook him at poker and bridge and shooting, and a few other things. It isn't right for him to have all that money. It would even things up a little if we could transfer some of it to ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... twilight summons, seemed to make a deeper stillness all about him. When the wind was rumbling in the chimney, and sometimes crooning, sometimes howling, in the house. When the old trees outside were so shaken and beaten, that one querulous old rook, unable to sleep, protested now and then, in a feeble, dozy, high-up "Caw!" When, at intervals, the window trembled, the rusty vane upon the turret-top complained, the clock beneath it recorded that another quarter of an hour was gone, or ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... estimated to weigh eight or ten tons, is so nicely poised upon another rook, upon a high point about fifty rods west of the lake, that a gentle pressure of the hand will cause it ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... Sir James spared no pains to win their good will. He gave the Terror a rook-rifle and Erebus boxes of chocolate. If he chanced on them when motoring in the afternoon he would carry them off, bicycles and all, in his car and regale them with sumptuous teas at the Grange; and at Colet House he entertained them with stories of the African forest which thrilled Mrs. ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... The Dhar'rook and Gun'dungur'ra tribes respectively occupied the from the mouth of the Hawkesbury river to Mount Victoria, and thence southerly to Berrima and Goulburn, New South Wales. On the south and southeast they were joined by the Thurrawal, whose language has the same ...
— The Gundungurra Language • R. H. Mathews
... piece of ground in quest of wild-ducks and snipes; but, when it was shot, had just knocked down a rook, which it was tearing in pieces. I cannot make it answer to any of our English hawks; neither could I find any like it at the curious exhibition of stuffed birds in Spring Gardens. I found it nailed up at the end of a barn, which is ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... before it was too late. I carried the lady into her rook, and they ran for a surgeon and a midwife. It was no good, however, for in five minutes the count came out and said the countess had just been happily delivered. The dean looked as if a weight had been taken off his mind; however, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... great door-way and were soon treading the walls that had once sustained the cannon and the sentinel, but were now covered with weeds and wild flowers. The drum and fife had once been heard within these walls—the only music now is the cawing of the rook and daw. We paid a hasty visit to the various apartments, remaining longest in those of most interest. The room in which Martin the Regicide was imprisoned nearly twenty years, was pointed out to us. The Castle of Chepstow is still a magnificent pile, towering upon the brink of a stupendous cliff, ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... some time ago—I can't say when exactly, but it was before I came down here—this unnatural son introduced to the parental abode (which I think is either No. 5 or No. 6 in a row of young chestnuts abutting on the high road) a rook of more than dubious reputation, whom he persuaded his unsuspecting sire to put up for the night. And there the rook has been ever since. As I said, I have neither heard nor seen him, but I'm positive he's there. I am unable to give the precise date on which he first led the conversation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... death,— Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born. The owl shriek'd at thy birth, an evil sign; The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; Dogs howl'd, and hideous tempest shook down trees; The raven rook'd her on the chimney's top, And chatt'ring pies in dismal discord sung. Thy mother felt more than a mother's pain, And yet brought forth less than a mother's hope, An indigested and deformed lump, Not like the fruit of such a goodly ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... ore, though," muttered Harry to himself. "I don't believe this rook holds gold enough to put a ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... these bells," he said triumphantly. "Any attempt to scale the barbed wire or to force either gate would set two or more of these ringing. A stray cow raised one false alarm," he added, "and a careless rook threw us into a perfect panic on ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... spears—wheeled and manoeuvred. By the Nile all the tops of the palm-trees were crowded with daring riflemen, whose positions were indicated by the smoke-puffs of their rifles, or when some tiny black figure fell, like a shot rook, to the ground. In the foreground the gunboats, panting and puffing up the river, were surrounded on all sides by spouts and spurts of water, thrown up by the shells and bullets. Again the flotilla drew near the narrow channel; again the watching army held their breath; and again ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Crow may be considered the representative, in America, of the European Rook, which he resembles in many of his habits, performing similar services, and being guilty of the same mischievous deeds. It is remarkable that in Europe, where land is more valuable than in this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... gray sky appears a wavering speck which rises and falls and sways from side to side in an extraordinary way. Nearer and nearer the speck comes, until at last we find ourselves standing under a rook which flies with great difficulty. The poor rascal looks most disreputable, for his tail has evidently been shot away, and he is wounded. He drops on to a perch, but not before he has run the gauntlet of several lines of sharp eyes. The poor bird sits on ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... When he saw this, he was confounded at her quickness and skill; but she laughed and said, 'O master, I will make a wager with thee on this third game. I will give thee the queen and the right-hand rook and the left-hand knight; if thou beat me, take my clothes, and if I beat thee, I will take thine.' 'I agree to this,' replied he, and they replaced the pieces, she giving him the queen, rook and knight. Then said she, 'Move, O master.' So he moved, saying in himself, 'I cannot ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... I met Will Blanchard an hour agone. Gwaine in the dispensary, he was. The li'l bwoy's queer—no gert ill, but a bit of a tisseck on the lungs. He got playin' 'bout, busy as a rook, in ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... roll them about like nine-pins—at once included in the education of "Izunsabe," which he took upon himself, a course of elemental doctrine in the one true game. And the boy fought his way up at such a pace that he jumped from odds of queen and rook to pawn and two moves in less than two years. And now he could almost give odds to his tutor, though he never presumed to offer them; and trading as he did with enlightened merchants of large Continental sea-ports, who had plenty of time on their hands and played well, he imported ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... grave, but gentle look— His silence sweet with sounds With which the simple-hearted Spring abounds: Lowing of cattle from the abbey grounds, Chirping of insect, and the building rook, Mingled like murmurs of a dreaming shell; Quaint tracery of bird and branch and brook Flitting across the pages of his book, Until the very words a freshness took— Deep in his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... drove to with Mrs. Mannering in a hired fly. I don't call it very polite to the hostess, do you? This afternoon she amused herself from her bedroom window by shooting at rabbits just beyond the wire fence of the lawn with a rook rifle; she did not hit any rabbits, but she got a gardener in the leg, and the man was very angry, and bled a great deal, and had to be taken away, and I think it was very careless ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... call me the "Raw Recruit," The joke of the awkward squad, The rook of the rookies to boot, And a bumpkin, a dolt and a clod; But this much I'll plead in defense I seem popular with these chaps, For they keep me a'moving thither and ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... Dinas, check and mate! Thou mad'st it easy, friend. Thou never shouldst Have sacrificed the knight, for thus my rook ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... and noisy Parrots, so similar in their peculiar utterance. Or take as an example the web-footed Family,—do not all the Geese and the innumerable host of Ducks quack? Does not every member of the Crow Family caw, whether it be the Jackdaw, the Jay, the Magpie, the Rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the Crow of our woods, with its long, melancholy caw that seems to make the silence and solitude deeper? Compare all the sweet warblers of the Songster Family,—the Nightingales, the Thrushes, the Mocking-Birds, the Robins; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... for his stately mother than for the dairy-woman! How could such a bewitching creature so lack refinement! The more he thought, the more inexplicable and self-contradictory her conduct appeared. Such a jewelled-humming-bird to make friends with a grubbing rook! The smell of the leather, not to mention the paste and glue, would be enough for any properly sensitive girl! Universally fascinating, why did she not correspond all through? Brought out in London, she would be the belle of the season! If he did not secure ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... stepped upon the piazza, and saw the drooping head, the dangling arms, and the changed face of her husband. "Dead! dead!" she exclaimed. "My God! what has happened? Mildred, who was with him? Was the doctor sent for? or Squire Clamp? or Mr. Rook? What did he say to you, dear?" And she tried to lift up the sobbing child, who still clung to the stiffening knees where she had so often ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... Pez to hold the attention of the royalists, and, besides that depletion, had to suffer the loss of many of his plainsmen who refused to accompany him across the Andes. But Colonel Rook, the head of the British Legion, assured Bolvar that he would follow him "beyond Cape Horn, if necessary." After spending a month painfully wading through the flooded plains, he ascended the Andes and crossed them, in spite of inexpressible suffering. The men had lost most of their clothing in the ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... Cock then blew his horn, To let the neighbors know, This was Robin's wedding-day, And they might see the show. And first came parson Rook, With his spectacles and band, And one of Mother Hubbard's books He held ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... lying on the pier to the topmost round of the topmost ladder, that one might have fancied it was out a bird's-nesting, and was (as indeed it was) a wonderful climber. And mentioning birds, the place was not without some music from them too; for the rook was very busy on the higher levels, and the gull with his flapping wings was fishing in the bay, and the lusty little robin was hopping among the great stone blocks and iron rings of the breakwater, fearless in the faith of his ancestors, and ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... stiff, and speaking by rote, or talking politics. How glad I used to be to get on horseback again! But to see these—why, it is like the shepherd's glimpse at the pixies!—as one reads a new book, or watches what one only half understands—a rook's parliament, or a gathering of sea-fowl on ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... particoloured, black and white. This variegation of the plumage, however, disappears with the first moult; but among the next young families there are always a few pied ones." These changes of plumage, which appear and are inherited at various corresponding periods of life in the pigeon, canary-bird, and rook, are remarkable, because the parent-species ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... how full and plain the Word of God is against this sin, and them that use it. And therefore Mr. Badman, for that he used by these things thus to rook and cheat his neighbours, is rightly rejected from having his name in and among the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Yorke," I said, "as Guest here leaves me to do all the talking, I'll tell you why we are so far up to the northward, out of our usual beat. We heard in Samoa that a big ship, named the Sarawak had run ashore and been abandoned at Rook Island, in Dampier Straits, between the west end of New Britain and the east coast of New Guinea, and both Guest and myself know her to be one of the largest ships out of Liverpool; she left Sydney for Hongkong about six months ago with a general cargo. And 'there be pickings,' ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... from the garden with Offitt, and turned down a filthy alley to a squalid tenement house,—called by its proprietor Perry Place, and by the neighbors Rook's Ranch,—to the lodge-room of the Brotherhood of Bread-winners, which proved to be Offitt's lodging. They found there a half dozen men lounging about the entrance, who scowled and swore at Offitt for being late, and then followed ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... pillage, rifle, sack, loot, ransack, spoil, spoliate[obs3], despoil, strip, sweep, gut, forage, levy blackmail, pirate, pickeer|, maraud, lift cattle, poach; smuggle, run; badger*; bail up, hold up, stick up; bunco, bunko, filibuster. swindle, peculate, embezzle; sponge, mulct, rook, bilk, pluck, pigeon, fleece; defraud &c.545; obtain under false pretenses; live by one's wits. rob Peter to pay Paul, borrow of Peter to pay Paul; set a thief to catch a thief. disregard the distinction ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... shaded lawn, where a number of white men and women were playing a game with cards. The cards used by the lawn party were not ordinary playing-cards, but had figures on them instead of spots, and were called "rook" cards. The party of white ladies and gentlemen were playing "rook." On a table in the middle of the lawn glittered some pieces of silver plate which formed the first, second, and third prizes for ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... it;" whether for the sake of the pun, or because he disliked music, is uncertain. He invited, for the love of punning, Mr. Crowe and Mr. Rooke to dine with him; and having given Mr. Birdmore, another guest, a hint to be rather after the time, on his appearing, said, "Mr. Rook! Mr. Crowe! I beg leave to introduce one Bird more." He married his niece to a gentleman of the hopeful name of Buckle. The enterprise succeeded beyond his expectation. Mrs. Buckle was delivered of twins. "A pair of Buckles!" "Boys or girls?" said a congratulating friend; the answer may ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... afterwards a farm-boy brought a tale of how he had come suddenly on men lurking under a wall, and how one had a bloody foot and leg, and how the other sprung upon him and after a fierce struggle wrenched his master's rook-piece from his hands, rifled his pocket of a powder-horn, and made off with them like a hare towards Corfe. And as to Maskew, some of the soldiers said that Elzevir had shot him, and others that he died by misadventure, being killed by a stray bullet of one of his own men on the hill-top; ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... rook of Nizhni Novgorod!" the strangers' coachman shouted. Selifan tightened his reins, and the other driver did the same. The horses stepped back a little, and then came together again—this time getting a leg or two over the traces. In fact, so pleased did the skewbald ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... down the Forest. Such a torrent will not reach the lake without disporting itself into many little cataracts; and saw ye ever such a fairy one as that flowing through below an ivied bridge into a circular basin overshadowed by the uncertain twilight of many checkering branches, and washing the rook-base of a Hermitage, in which a sin-sickened or pleasure-palled man might, before his hairs were grey, forget all the gratifications and all the guilt ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... befell, And there within the Chief-priest's fair abode They cast aside their trouble's heavy load, Scarce made aweary by the sultry day. The earth no longer laboured; shaded lay The sweet-breathed kine, across the sunny vale, From hill to hill the wandering rook did sail, Lazily croaking, midst his dreams of spring, Nor more awake the pink-foot dove did cling Unto the beech-bough, murmuring now and then; All rested but the restless sons of men And the great sun that wrought this happiness, And all the vale with fruitful hopes did bless. ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... secrecy, that they shall never know how it comes about. He professes "no cure no pay," as well he may, for if nature does the work, he is paid for it; if not, he neither wins nor loses; and like a cunning rook lays his bets so artfully, that, let the chance be what it will, he either wins or saves. He cheats the rich for their money, and the poor for charity, and, if either succeed, both are pleased, and he passes for a very just and conscientious man: for as those that pay nothing ought at least ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... blackbird, * lark, * yellowhammer, * robin, *wren, * golden-crested wren, * goldfinch, * chaffinch, * *greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge, accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw, *blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff, * wood warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge warbler, coot, water hen, little grebe (dabchick), tufted duck, wood pigeon, stock dove, * turtle dove, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... it a thought that they could be after aught worse than rook-shooting," she would murmur, "for all I heard a sort of a sobbing on the stairs. It was hard on poor old Madam though, never to take any leave of her; but all her life has been hard for that matter, poor innocent old critter. Well, well, I hope ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... pipped in France in '15, they sent me out next time to Salonica. I hadn't been there very long before the question of exchange cropped up. In the early days most of us had English money only, and the villagers used to rook us frightfully changing it. I remember sending my batman, MacGusgogh, to a place for eggs, and he came back with the change for my Bradbury in nickel. I had a good look at it, and on each coin was the mystic inscription, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... one common expression of conflict, irritation, and excitement, around chin and mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking at the soldiers as if threatening to punish them. Cadet Mironov ducked every time a ball flew past. Rostov on the left flank, mounted on his Rook—a handsome horse despite its game leg—had the happy air of a schoolboy called up before a large audience for an examination in which he feels sure he will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a clear, bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat under fire. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the sergeant, "my own idea of it is that K. O. was trying you out on purpose. And I'll wager the K. O. was glad to find a rook sentry so thoroughly alive to his job. Though I doubt if you'll get commended in orders for just being awake. But that reminds me of something that happened to me, in the Philippines," laughed Brimmer. "I was sergeant of the guard out there, and ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... quite prepared to believe that an atom could be visible to the eye or cut in this manner. But any one at all conversant with physical conceptions would almost as soon think of killing the square root of 2 with a rook rifle as of cutting an atom in half with a knife. Our conception of an atom is reached through a process of hypothesis and analysis, and in the world of atoms there are no knives and no men to cut. If you have thought with a strong consistent mental movement, then ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... But the rook has built, and the song-birds quire, And over the faded lea The lark soars glorying, gyre on gyre, And he is the bird ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... mother-bird suffer in one day the loss of her young and her own liberty. And he who regarded in olden time the conduct of man toward the brutes, to-day looks down from heaven and is interested in every minnow that swims the stream, and every rook that cleaves ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... in, to have a wife and children, to chatter quietly every evening over the details of existence. We must have the azaleas out to-morrow and thoroughly cleansed, they are devoured by insects; the tame rook has flown away; mother lost her prayer-book coming from church, she thinks it was stolen. A good, honest, well-to-do peasant, who knows nothing of politics, must be very nearly happy;—and to think there are people who ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... And morning opening all her doors; The cawing rook, the distant train, The valley with ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... his head against a wall like a hooded rook as he was. So giddy had he become at the sight of this creature, even more enticing than a siren rising from the water. He noticed the animals carved over the door and returned to the house of the archbishop with his head full of diabolical ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... The building rook will caw from the windy tall elm-tree, And the tufted plover pipe along the fallow lea, And the swallow will come back again with summer o'er the wave. But I shall lie alone, mother, within ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... older "roc." The word is Persian, with many meanings, e.g. a cheek (Lalla "Rookh"); a "rook" (hero) at chess; a rhinoceros, etc. The fable world-wide of the wundervogel is, as usual, founded upon fact: man remembers and combines but does not create. The Egyptian Bennu (Ti-bennuphoenix) may have been a reminiscence of gigantic pterodactyls and other winged monsters. From the Nile ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... we gotta eat, and Jimmy—he can cook! (He makes a stew that tastes as good as mother used to make.) An' when he starts to flappin' cakes, why, every hungry rook Is droolin' at the mouth for them, a-waitin' fer ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... natives of the town of Bray are as well known and distinguished as the negroes are from white men. And this unhappy jest has been carried so far that our people have often sallied out in arms against their scoffers, and given them battle: neither king nor rook, nor fear nor shame, being able to restrain them. Tomorrow, I believe, or next day, those of our town will take the field against the people of another village about two leagues from us, being one of those which persecute us most: and I have brought ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... attachment to locality that since the incident alluded to in the following Poem took place the Rooks have, many of them, built in fir trees at a little distance from their former habitation. The habits of the Rook are well worthy the attention of all who delight in the study ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... since gone to his rest, but his name remains green among the villagers. To-day the traveler can see his elevated grave at Tigme[a]rook, about six miles east of the village of Tigara, at which place his career came to a sudden end through the agency of an arrow driven by ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... the third book (a most beautiful one) of Goldsmith sitting looking out of window at the Temple trees, you speak of the "gray-eyed" rooks. Are you sure they are "gray-eyed"? The raven's eye is a deep lustrous black, and so, I suspect, is the rook's, except when the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... higher," hastening up to get a first glimpse of the coming monarch, careless of food, flooding the fresh air with song. Steadily plodding rooks labour along below us, and lively starlings rush by on the look-out for the early worm; lark and swallow, rook and starling, each on his appointed round. The sun arises, and they get them to it; he is up now, and these breezy uplands over which we hang are swimming in the light of horizontal rays, though the shadows and mists still lie ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... The Sun sinks to rest; The rooks are all flying Straight home to their nest. "Caw!" says the rook, as he flies overhead: It's time little people were going ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... hit a hay-stack. My father, who had been used to carrying a gun in his younger days, was much amused, in his quiet way, at seeing Griff watch Chapman off on his rounds, and then betake himself to the locality most remote from the keeper's ears to practise on the rook or crow. Martyn always ran after him, having solemnly promised not to touch the gun, and to keep behind. He was too good-natured to send the little fellow back, though he often tried to elude the pursuit, not wishing ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with my letters on it. I tried reading them downward, across, upward and diagonally, in the direction of the moves of different chess pieces—king, queen, rook and bishop. Nothing came of that, whatever I did; the thing was as unreadable as ever. But there remained one chess-move to try—the eccentric move of the knight; the move of one square forward, backward or sideways, and then one square ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... shouldst bring forth thy priests, Al Kahlminar, then would I confront them and thee with the two elephants which my brother sent me lately from Geestan, on each of which I can place a rook with a slave cunning with the javelin, before which thy priests will flee; for the animals see no difference between priests and other mortals;—the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... their relatives found in other parts of the world. There are numerous varieties, differing in size—from the trogon viridis, scarcely larger than a sparrow, to the beautiful trogon, with its handsome tail, the size of a rook. Often they are to be seen in the depths of the forest, sitting motionless for hours together, simply moving their heads, watching apparently for insects, or sometimes scanning the neighbouring trees ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... embracing the vicarage-house, a comfortable residence, surrounded by a large walled-in garden, well stocked with fruit-trees, and sheltered by a fine grove of rook-haunted timber, extended on the one hand over the village, and on the other over the Abbey, and was bounded by the towering and well-wooded heights of Whalley Nab. On the side of the Abbey, the most conspicuous objects were the great north-eastern gateway, with ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Sciences at Paris, in which he aptly compared it, in its uses, to the trunk of an elephant. In its manners it is gentle and familiar, and when approached raises a cry which may be compared to a hoarse croaking. In its gait it resembles the rook, and walks much better than most ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... us dahn on top o' t'grass, Clois to a runnin' brook, An' harken'd t'watter wagtails sing Wi' t'sparrow, thrush, an' rook. ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... not fetch it, wherefore I kept on to the southward, and stemmed with the body of a high island about eleven or twelve leagues long, lying to the southward of that which I before designed for. I named this island Sir George Rook's Island. ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... here he housed us, In this nook, Where Love like balm has drowsed us: Robin, rook, Our chief familiars, next to ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... the very rough rails was excessive; it was, however, consolatory to feel that any little unpleasantness which might occur through the fact of the car leaving the track would be attended with some sense of alleviation. The rook is said to have thought he was paying dear for good company when he was put into the pigeon pie, but it by no means follows that a leap from an embankment, or an upset into a river, would be as disastrous as is usually ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... concentrated on this island. Indeed, I doubt if a sweeping together of all the birds of the United States into any two of the largest States would people the earth and air more fully. There appeared to be a plover, a crow, a rook, a blackbird, and a sparrow to every square yard of ground. They know the value of birds in Britain,—that they are the friends, not the enemies, of the farmer. It must be the paradise of crows and rooks. It ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... overshadows the shore and which marks the place where the Norsemen fled before the face of Even the Great. On this oak, whose leaves shine in the moon, the birds gather each night, the birds of the sea and the land, both of white and black feather. Among them is an old grey rook and a young crow. The birds sing such a beautiful song that the great sea keeps silence to hear it. All of them sing except the rook and the crow. Now the crow says: "Sing, little birds, sing; sing, little birds of the land, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... expenditure of physical force. Anyone at all conversant with philosophical thought, if I may adopt a simile used by Mr. H. G. Wells, "would as soon think of trying to kill the square root of 2 with a rook rifle." Physical violence can only solve purely physical problems. But as man no longer exists, if he ever did exist, in the completely unsocial "state of nature,"[86] the relations of one individual with another are no longer ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... that I look to the thickening rook, An' watch by the midnight tide; I ken the wind brings my rover hame, An' the sea that he glories to ride. Oh, merry he sits 'mang his jovial crew, Wi' the helm heft in his hand, An' he sings aloud to his boys in blue, As his e'e's ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... controversy still rages. These are: (a) how Greek utilized the four sibilants (Shin, Samech, Zain and Zade), which it rook over from the Phoenician; (b) what was the history of development in the symbols for f, ch, ps, o (the history of x belongs to both heads); (c) the history of the symbol for ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... at a time they went—decently and in order, like true Newfoundland sailors, Tom Rook, the first hand, the last of all. When they were all ashore, they scrambled like mad up the cliff; and they were no more than out of danger when the First Venture was blown to atoms. There was a flash, a deafening roar—and darkness; broken only by the spluttering ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... their peculiar utterance. Or, take as an example the web-footed family: Do not all the geese and the innumerable host of ducks quack? Does not every member of the crow family caw, whether it be the jackdaw, the jay, or the magpie, the rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the crow of our woods, with its long, melancholy caw that seems to make the silence and solitude deeper? Compare all the sweet warblers of the songster family—the nightingales, the thrushes, the mocking-birds, the robins; they ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... rook has been observed at Boston Road, Brentford, and a local ornithologist writes to say that the bird is probably an accidental straggler ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... the spoor of the game by the fountain, I suddenly detected an enormous old rook-snake stealing in beneath a mass of rock beside me. He was truly an enormous snake, and, having never before dealt with this species of game, I did not exactly know how to set about capturing him. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... me, diffused in the air.... It was the flush of dawn. All at once I was conscious of extreme fatigue and turned homewards. As I passed the poultry-yard, I heard the first morning cackling of the geese (no birds wake earlier than they do); along the roof at the end of each beam sat a rook, and they were all busily and silently pluming themselves, standing out in sharp outline against the milky sky. From time to time they all rose at once, and after a short flight, settled again in a row, without uttering a caw.... From the wood close ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... she talked to me of the new song she had learned? An expedition against Mexico, an attack upon the dominions of the King of Spain with whom we are at peace? Or a revolution in the country west of the Ohio? The one's a misdemeanour; the other's treason." He moved a rook. "Most like 'twas both—the first to mask the second. The boldest, simplest, most comprehensive stroke; there, there would show the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... we come to bigger birds—ducks and puffins. Puffins have beaks like poll parrots, and are about the size of a rook; they have neat white shirt-fronts, and their beaks are red and yellow and blue, but they have silly faces, as if they thought of nothing but their own fine clothes. They live near water on cliffs, and sometimes use an old rabbit burrow for a nest, ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... Adam de Bruce and Mathilda his wife." The two beautifully carved figures of a knight and his lady that lie in the Bruce Chapel are not Bruces for the surcoat of the man is adorned with the arms of the Rockcliffes—an heraldic chess-rook and three lions' heads. Both the knight and his lady wear the collar of SS, the origin of which is still wrapped in obscurity. Traces of gilding are visible in several places on the wings of the angels that support the heads of both figures, as well as in other parts of the carving ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... course, could only be killed at particular seasons of the year; and wild-geese, wild-ducks, woodcocks, and snipes in the winter; but spring and summer pastime was afforded by the crane, the bustard, the heron, the rook, and the kite; while, at the same periods, some of the smaller description of water-fowl offered excellent sport ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... of those inexcusable oversights which will sometimes afflict the best of players, placed his rook in the arms of one of her pawns. It was her first advantage. She looked ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... when her dear Mamma was away for the morning, it happened to be one of her pinchbeck times. Nothing would please her—she was cross with her governess at breakfast, she quarrelled with her bread-and-milk; and even when her favourite tame Rook, Cawcus, came hopping on her shoulder, she refused to give it anything to eat, but hit it on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... less than an hour, we found the horses tethered among the bushes. House there was none, which must be inconvenient when the weather is too tempestuous for crossing the strait from Parao. We took shelter from the heat under a rook, making studies of a group of picturesque shepherds, and amusing ourselves with some luscious grapes,—baskets of which were waiting for the return of the passage-boat to La Madelena,—while a pack-horse was ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... rabbits out. With the white marguerites and the dew cobwebs, it was all moon-flowery and white; and the rabbits being there made it perfect. He wanted one badly to model from, and for a moment was tempted to get his rook rifle—but what was the good of a dead rabbit—besides, they looked so happy! He put the glasses down and went towards his greenhouse to get a drawing block, thinking to sit on the wall and make a sort of Midsummer Night's Dream sketch of flowers and rabbits. Someone was there, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of a cultivated taste, unless the cheap classics in the book-case were a sign of an effort in that direction. The only object that threw any light upon the character of the room's owner was a large perch, placed in the window to catch the air and sun, upon which a tame and, apparently, decrepit rook hopped dryly from side to side. The bird, encouraged by a scratch behind the ear, settled upon Denham's shoulder. He lit his gas-fire and settled down in gloomy patience to await his dinner. After sitting thus for some minutes a small ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Readers contain many poems that may be used in connection with the Nature Study lessons. To supplement the observational studies of birds, read from the Third Reader, "The Robin's Song", "The Red-winged Blackbird", "The Sandpiper", "To the Cuckoo", "Bob White", "The Lark and the Rook", ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... volley that ripped out from the defenders of the camp. Half of the marksmen fired to the right of the rook, the ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... placed in a stout fork as a rule, is a large, strong, compact, stick structure, very like a Rook's nest at home, and like these is used year after year, whether by the same birds or others of the same species I cannot say. Of course they never breed in company: I never found two of their nests within 100 yards of ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... that O'Brien was without doubt the man who fired at you, looking to the type of gentleman he is, and the fact that you ran into him immediately afterwards, and especially the fact that he actually does possess an old rook rifle. He thinks he may have done it out of sheer Irish deviltry, you offering so convenient a target, just as they pot landlords in his own happy country. A man can hardly have drunk as heavily as he must have done without upsetting his brain a bit, and ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... setter crossed with spaniel, was the most unsuited for a rough life. He had been nurtured tenderly in the society of ladies; his heart was large and soft; he regarded the sofa-cushion as a bed-rook necessary of existence. Though about the size of a sheep, he loved to sit in ladies' laps; he never said a bad word in all his blameless days; and if he had seen a flute, I am sure he could have played upon it by nature. ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson |
