"Sparrow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boil over like milk on the fire! How are you to write music in the state that you are in? Why, you can't have looked at yourself in the glass! Will you have the glass and see? You are nothing but skin and bone—you are as weak as a sparrow, and do you think that you are fit to make your notes! why, you would not so much as make out mine.... And that reminds me that I ought to go up to the third floor lodger's that owes us seventeen francs, for when the chemist has been paid we shall not have twenty left.—So I had to tell M. Gaudissart ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... trouble to remove the eggs or the nest altogether, when the latter has been discovered, in order to avoid further risks of danger. The American Sparrow Hawk has been observed to do this, and the following incident is quoted by Bendire, from MacFarlane's Manuscript Notes on Birds Nesting in British America, concerning the Pigeon Hawk (Falco columbarius):—"On May 25, 1864, a trusty Indian in my employ found ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... God his creator? Must He not care for him?' he said. 'Not a sparrow falls to the ground without ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... part of his ponderous figure arrayed in a frock-coat. He did not take kindly to what he termed "those skittish sparrow-tailed affairs". Frock-coats suited him, but I am not partial to them on every one. They look well enough on a podgy, fat, or broad man, but on a skinny one they hang with such a forlorn, dying-duck expression, that they invariably make ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... sayings, and scraps of songs, of which he had plenty, this pleasant honest fool poured out his heart even in the presence of Goneril herself, in many a bitter taunt and jest which cut to the quick: such as comparing the king to the hedge-sparrow, who feeds the young of the cuckoo till they grow old enough, and then has its head bit off for its pains; and saying, that an ass may know when the cart draws the horse (meaning that Lear's daughters, that ought to go behind, now ranked ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... thus, when his Sparrow's flown, The Bird in Silence eyes; But soon as out of Sight 'tis gone, Whines, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... ready for any kind of an excursion. During the whole of this little flight he uttered a loud, brisk, and melodious neigh, and finally came down at Bellerophon's side as lightly as ever you saw a sparrow hop ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... half jest, but nothing could have been more real; she was beside herself with grief. I realised that if philologians have disputed as to how far Catullus' poem of the girl's grief over the dead sparrow were jest or earnest, it was because they had never seen a girl weep over a bird. Catullus, perhaps, makes fun a little of the grief, but the grief itself, in his poem too, is ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... forests, as the pygmies of Africa do to this very day. When he felt the pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and the roots of plants or he took the eggs away from an angry bird and fed them to his own young. Once in a while, after a long and patient chase, he would catch a sparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a rabbit. These he would eat raw for he had never discovered that food tasted ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... fear in the world." "What another man would call want, I call comfort." "Must not one often act thoughtlessly, if one would provoke Fortune to do something for him?" In his first inexperience, the life of "the sparrow on the house-top" (which we find oddly translated "roof") was the one he would choose for himself. Later in life, when he wished to marry, he was of another mind, and perhaps discovered that there was something in the old father's ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... impression which some who read it, and may believe it, may form, that such a vast catastrophe as I have depicted militates against the idea that God rules and cares for his world and his creatures. It will be asked, If "there is a special providence even in the fall of a sparrow," how ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... is before our eyes! On one side, the nations who allow the woman to be degraded and enslaved at the feet of the confessor—France, Spain, Romish Ireland, Mexico, &c., &c.—are, there, fallen into the dust, bleeding, struggling, powerless, like the sparrow whose entrails are devoured by the vulture. On the other side, see how the nations whose women go to wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb are soaring up, as on eagle wings, in the highest regions ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... to the sea he is with that child that looks as if he was made of air, and lived on live larks! And Master Lance, he's no better-eats like a sparrow, and sits up half the ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one may hear the happy song of the white-throated sparrow. Here and above lives the leucosticte. Far above the vanguard of the brave pines, where the brilliant flowers fringe the soiled remnants of winter's drifted snow, where sometimes the bees hum and the painted butterflies sail on ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... this dream and a little anecdote brought down to us, as having actually occurred in Rome about twenty-four hours before his death. A little bird, which by some is represented as a very small kind of sparrow, but which, both to the Greeks and the Romans, was known by a name implying a regal station (probably from the ambitious courage which at times prompted it to attack the eagle), was observed to direct its flight towards the senate-house, consecrated by Pompey, whilst ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... 3 Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young: even thy altars, O Lord of hosts, my Bang ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... at Bonneville—shackamarack gilt dirt, Irish-French. Pictet bought a sparrow some boys in the street threw up at the window, and said he would bring it home for his little grandson. It was ornamented with a topping made of scarlet cloth. He put it in his hat, and tied a handkerchief over it; and hatless in the burning sun he ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... bye there arrived, with chattering loud, Chaffinch and sparrow and finch, in a cloud; Round and around in their fierce attack, They plucked the feathers from breast and back; And the poor little linnet all vainly strove, Fighting with ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... (Kutuzov could not listen to this without wincing) by insisting that Moscow must be defended. His aim was as clear as daylight to Kutuzov: if the defense failed, to throw the blame on Kutuzov who had brought the army as far as the Sparrow Hills without giving battle; if it succeeded, to claim the success as his own; or if battle were not given, to clear himself of the crime of abandoning Moscow. But this intrigue did not now occupy the old ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... naturally grows curious about whether a cobra or some other less desirable member of the reptile world is not likely at any time to join their interesting company. The lizards scale the walls and ceiling in search of flies, frogs hop sociably about the floor, and a sparrow now and then twitters ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... instances of a directing Providence in our affairs. And have we forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance? I have lived, sirs, a long time and the longer I live the more convincing proof I see of this truth that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow can not fall to the ground without His notice is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, sirs, that except the Lord build the house they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this and I also believe that without His concurring ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus- flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest, under a ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... point; thinness &c 203. dwarf, pygmy, pigmy^, Liliputian, chit, pigwidgeon^, urchin, elf; atomy^, dandiprat^; doll, puppet; Tom Thumb, Hop-o'-my-thumb^; manikin, mannikin; homunculus, dapperling^, cock-sparrow. animalcule, monad, mite, insect, emmet^, fly, midge, gnat, shrimp, minnow, worm, maggot, entozoon^; bacteria; infusoria^; microzoa [Micro.]; phytozoaria^; microbe; grub; tit, tomtit, runt, mouse, small fry; millet seed, mustard seed; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sister, with whom I have played and been merry in the autumn tide about the edges of the stubble-fields; and we gathered the nuts and bramble-berries there, and started thence the missel-thrush, and wondered at his voice and thought him big; and the sparrow-hawk wheeled and turned over the hedges and the weasel ran across the path, and the sound of the sheep-bells came to us from the downs as we sat happy on the grass; and she is dead and gone from the ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... of the body differs not so greatly for the fool or the sage, the elephant or the cock-sparrow; and similar chemical elements, variously disguised, support all mortals. A brief study of Pinkerton in his new setting convinced me of a kindred truth about that other and mental digestion by which we extract what is called "fun for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Paradise for the thieves and murderers who acknowledged His splendor and fought His fight. This marvelous charity, the cleansing hope for his blackened soul, swept over him in a warm rush of humble praise and unutterable gratitude. Nothing of the Lord's was lost: "His eye is on the sparrow." ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... go by, a noisy throng; About the meadows all day long The shore-lark drops his brittle song; And up the leafless tree The nut-hatch runs, and nods, and clings; The bluebird dips with flashing wings, The robin flutes, the sparrow sings, And the swallows ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... common. There is your military martinet, your clerical martinet, your legal martinet, and the martinet of common life, ("Gallicrista fastidiosa communis," Linnaeus would class him,) who is to the others what the house-sparrow is to the rest of his tribe. It is with him alone we have to do. The "martinet" is a person who is all his life violently busied in endeavouring to be a perfect gentleman, and who almost succeeds. He misses the point by over-stepping it. He is like one of those ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... grown—as is also the fibre of men. Impenetrable and therefore weedless; for no plant life can flourish there, nor animal nor bird. Scarce a beetle runs bewilderingly through those forbidding colossal solitudes. The field-sparrow will flutter away from pollen-bearing to pollen-receiving top, trying to beguile you from its nest hidden near the edge. The crow and the blackbird will seem to love it, having a keen eye for the cutworm, its only ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... the life of man, O king," said an aged noble, "as a sparrow's flight through the hall when you are sitting at meat in winter-tide, with the warm fire lighted on the hearth, while outside all is storm of rain and snow. The sparrow flies in at one door, and tarries for a moment in the light and heat of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... endeavor, Thy birds here do not live forever; That cold or hunger, sickness or age, Finishes their earthly stage; The rook drops without a stroke, And never gives another croak; Birds lie here, and birds lie there, With little feathers all astare; And in Thy own sermon, Thou That the sparrow falls dost allow. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... also materially assisted by Military Store-Keeper Girardey and several young officers—Captain Finney, and Lieutenants Waller, Collier, Sparrow, Hallam, and Cadet Lewis, and towards the close of operations by ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... beginning of things! Ammon, lord of eternity! Ptha, demiurgus! Thoth, his intelligence! Gods of Amenthi! Special Triads of the Nomes! Sparrow-hawks in the azure! Sphinxes on the outsides of temples! Ibises standing between the horns of oxen! Planets! Constellations! River-banks! Murmurs of wind! Reflections of light! Tell me ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... acquaintances was a little bird which is known as the clay-colored sparrow. It belongs to the same genus (Spizella) as the chipping and field sparrows which are so well known in the East; but it has an individuality of its own, and is not merely a copy. I stumbled upon ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... changed the whole perspective of life for birds, as they may for us shortly; so it is no surprise to find that birds have, almost with one consent, converted their tails into steering-gear. A commonplace bird, like a sparrow, scarcely requires this except as a brake when in the act of alighting; but to those birds with which flight is an art and an accomplishment, an expansive forked or rounded tail (there are two patents) is indispensable. We have shot almost ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the prairie spring unrolled its beauties before me. I saw the last goose pass on to the north, and watched the green grass creeping up the sunny slopes. I answered the splendid challenge of the loitering crane, and studied the ground sparrow building her grassy nest. The prairie hens began to seek seclusion in the swales, and the pocket gopher, busily mining the sod, threw up his purple-brown mounds of cool fresh earth. Larks, blue-birds and king-birds followed the robins, and at last the full tide ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... he had created in his mind, he buried his face again in his hands. Once more Blanche sought to soothe his cares by assuring him that He who watched the sparrow's fall would in some way care for ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... inspection at the principal ports of entry on both Atlantic and Pacific coasts by means of which the introduction of noxious mammals and birds is prevented, thus keeping out the mongoose and certain birds which are as much to be dreaded as the previously introduced English sparrow and the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... de la cort del Puoi Santa Maria e de dar l'esparvier. Lone temps ac la seignoria de la cort del Puoi, tro que la cortz se perdet." "He was made president of the court of Puy Sainte Marie and of awarding the sparrow-hawk. For a long time he held the presidency of the court of Puy, until the court was dissolved." The troubadour Richard de Barbezieux refers to this court, which seems to have been a periodical meeting attended by the nobles and troubadours of Southern Prance. ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... how the appreciate this plant. There wasa chewink in the Stanley woods, that brought off a brood of four, under the safe shelter of a rank thistle leaf, in the midst of trampling herds of cattle driven wild by flies. There was a ground sparrow near the Hale sand pit, covered by a base leaf of another thistle, and beneath a third on Bob's lease, I had made a study of an exquisite nest. Protection from the rank leaves was not all the birds sought of these plants, for goldfinches were darting around inviting all creation ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to cry. "Oh, my dear, my dear, try to control yourself, or you'll do something dreadful some day!" Cherry-pie's efforts to check Elizabeth's temper were like the protesting twitterings of a sparrow in a thunder-storm. When she reproved her now, the furious little creature, wincing and trying to check the bleeding with her handkerchief, did not even take the trouble to reply. Later, of course, the ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... do not," he said heartily. "I care for you as St Francis did for his pet sparrow. So now put your hat on and I will go down and get a vettura with ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... a hero; I could reverence him as my prince; I would kneel and wash the dust from his feet, or cut off my long hair to string his bow; but I cannot be his bride," exclaimed Zarah. "I am so weak, so unworthy! It would be like mating the eagle with the sparrow that sits on the housetops. Maccabeus ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... was thrashing the broad, leafy top of the maple whose tallest twigs reached to the funny grey eaves of our old house. One roly-poly little sparrow blew or flew to the sill and sat there for a minute, looking at me with knowing eyes. Down below I could see Murray in a corner of the yard, pottering over a sick duck. He had set its broken leg and was nursing ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lay at St. James's. Yesterday evening he was at the Queen's and Carlton-house, and at night at Lady Hertford's assembly. He only takes the title of altesse, an absurd mezzotermine, but acts king exceedingly; struts in the circle like a cock-sparrow, and does the honours of himself very civilly. There is a favourite too, who seems a complete jackanapes; a young fellow called Holke, well enough in his figure, and about three-and-twenty, but who will be tumbled down long before he is prepared for it. Bernsdorff, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and etiquette for which he was indebted to the unusual movement about him, pursued his favourite sport of bird-hunting in the gardens of the Tuileries, and attached more importance to the feats of a well-trained sparrow-hawk than to the probable qualities of the bride provided for him by the policy of ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... valleys and lakes burst upon his view, as the deer at his approach leaped from his ambush into the deeper solitudes, as the startled bird with rushing wings darted from his feet into the sky; or his pious thanksgiving, as at the end of a weary day the song of the sparrow or the robin relieved his mind from the heavy melancholy that ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... what an accomplished young man he was, and how he thought nothing of squandering half-a-dollar for ice-cream and oysters to celebrate his entry as clerk into the woollen department of Macy's. Before she finished I began to paint, and she resumed the pose, smiling and chattering like a sparrow. By noon I had the study fairly well rubbed in and Tessie came to ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... no great sympathy with those who talk of the cruelty of the work. A whale feels acutely, no doubt, and so does a mouse or a sparrow, when wounded; but not having huge bodies to twist and turn about in their agony, they do not appear to suffer so much as does the mighty monarch of the deep. I suspect that the amount of pain felt by the small animal is equally great with that felt by the ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... hair, which was not so dark as that of the Indians, was smooth and sleek as the hair on the head of a child, or the feathers on the breast of the humming-bird. His head was encircled with a chaplet made of the feathers of the song-sparrow and the red-headed-woodpecker. He rode slowly through the village without stopping till he came to the lodge of Wasabajinga, when he alighted, leaving his good horse to feed upon the grass which grew around the cabin. He entered the lodge of the chief. The stern old warrior, without ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... was a sort of hawk (Haliaeetus leucosternus, Gould) rather larger than the sparrow-hawk, of a light cinnamon colour, with a perfectly white head. They also frequent the shores, but I never ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... watchful care was impressed upon them by the simple reminder that though sparrows were sold two for a farthing, and yet not a sparrow could be sacrificed without the Father's concern, they, who were of more value than many sparrows, would not be forgotten. They were solemnly warned that whosoever would freely confess the Christ before men would be acknowledged by Him in the Father's ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the reposeful quiet of the tomb. Barney Bill smoked for a time in silence, while Paul sat with clenched fists and a beating heart. The simplicity of the high adventure dazed him. All he had to do was to walk away—walk and walk, free as a sparrow. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... and lanes the quantity and variety of life in the hedges was really astonishing. Magpies, jays, woodpeckers—both green and pied—kestrels hovering overhead, sparrow-hawks darting over gateways, hares by the clover, weasels on the mounds, stoats at the edge of the corn. I missed but two birds, the corncrake and the grasshopper lark, and found these another season. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... Delmar, Delamere, Delapole, impress more than Mears and Pool, and Larpent (Fr. I'arpent), Lemaitre, and Lestrange more than Acres, Masters, and Strange. There are few names of less heroic sound than Spark and Codlin, yet the former is sometimes a contraction of the picturesque Sparrow-hawk, used as a personal name by the Anglo-Saxons, while the latter can be traced back via the earlier forms Quodling (still found), Querdling, Querdelyoun ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... parrot, with a red beak, and a circle of salmon-coloured feathers round its neck; they are very noisy and destructive, and flock together to the fields where they do great damage to the crops. The lutkun sooga is an exquisitely-coloured bird, about the size of a sparrow. The ghur[a]l, a large red and green parrot, with a crimson beak. The tota a yellowish-green colour, and the male with a breast as red as blood; they call it the amereet bhela. Another lovely little ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... in their frown! Cannot we direct it harmlessly to the earth? The morning and evening prayer of the people I speak for in such weakness rises in strength to that Supreme Ruler who, in noticing the fall of a sparrow, cannot disregard the fall of a nation, that our States may continue to be as they have been—one; one in the unreserve of a mingled national being; one as the thought of God ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... would have occasioned little disturbance, she suspected, had it not been for the cookies. She was used by now to having no fuss made over her. Laura waved a hand from her seat behind the horses; the boys swung their hats; Priscilla darted over to display a ground-sparrow's nest that ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... man, the promise of a life beyond death; and Coifi, one of the councillors, rising, speaks thus: "So seemeth to me the life of man, O King, as when in winter-tide, seated with your thanes around you, out of the storm that rages without a sparrow flies into the hall, and fluttering hither and thither a little, in the warmth and light, passes out again into the storm and darkness. Such is man's life, but whence it cometh and whither it goeth ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... damned hard thing to hear one's own flesh and blood abused. Look here: there's a couple. One of them has made a fool of a girl. It can't be my rascal—stop a minute—he isn't the man, because she'd have been sure to have made a fool of him, that's certain. He's a soft-hearted dog. He'd aim at a cock-sparrow, and be glad if he missed. There you have him. He was one of your good boys. I used to tell his poor mother, 'When you leave off thinking for him, he'll go to the first handy villain—and that's the devil.' And he's done it. But, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... water, and she had never had very much to do with them. In the birds she found her true allies. They were not attached to the higher civilisation. The higher civilisation, so far, had treated them inconsiderately, at sparrow clubs. The Owl talked a good deal about the low moral tone of the human race in this respect, and was pessimistic about it, failing to perceive that higher types of organisms always like to signify their superiority over lower ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... unprejudiced man who looks at history can fail to see from how small and apparently unimportant an event has sprung the greatest results to the individual, the nation, and the world. The Christian, at least, needs no other explanation of this than that his God, without whose knowledge no sparrow falleth to the ground, guides all the affairs of the world. Surely God did not make the world, and purchase the salvation of its tenants by the sacrifice of his Son, to take no further interest in it, but leave it subject either to fixed law or ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... is a marvellous transformer; not only vegetable but animal life is affected by it; the bush is enlivened by the twittering of small birds, which come from nobody knows where, build their nests, hatch out their young, and disappear! Almost every bush held a nest, usually occupied by a diamond-sparrow. Her nest is round, like a wren's, with one small entrance and is built roughly of grass, lined with soft, small feathers. The eggs, numbering four to five in the few nests we disturbed, are white and of the size and shape of our hedge-sparrow's. I am pretty ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... beast more formidable than the fox. The inordinate breeding of rooks seems even in those days[125] to have led to a war of extermination against them, carried on upon a system akin to that which was waged against the sparrow in the memory of men yet living. But besides this one, he records, in the De Subtilitate, few facts concerning Britain. He quotes the instances of Duns Scotus and Suisset in support of the view that the barbarians ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... commander was the son of Colonel Nivelle—and an English mother, a former Miss Sparrow, whose family lived at Deal, on the English Channel. In his married life General Nivelle ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... bright and cheery as her appearance. She picked up her courage very soon, stepped neatly through the miry, slippery streets, and presently reached her home. Mrs. Reed and the six grandchildren lived in a model lodging-house in a place called Sparrow Street, off Whitechapel Road. The house possessed all the new sanitary improvements, a good supply of water was laid on, the rooms were well ventilated, the stoves in the little kitchens burned well, the rents were moderate, there was nothing at all to complain of ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... bird cannot live where there are neither seeds nor insects, but must soar away across the seas to cooler and more fertile climes. Not only here, but throughout the whole of Syria, I missed the delightful minstrels of the air. The sparrow alone can find sustenance every where, for he lives in towns and villages, wherever man is seen. A whole flock of these little twittering birds woke me ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... Jack Hor-ner sat in a cor-ner Lit-tle Tom Tuck-er Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle A dog and a cat went out together Little Polly Flinders Four and twen-ty tai-lors went to kill a snail A little cock-sparrow sat on a tree Bless you, bless you, bonny bee One day, an old cat and her kittens Doctor Foster went to Gloster John Cook had a little gray mare; he, haw, hum! Dingty, diddlety, my mammy's maid A horse and cart Who ever saw a rabbit Boys and girls, come out to play Jog on, ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... placid little woman in dove-gray came walking from the bridge and handed over her penny. She eyed the skipper with interest, and cocked her head with the pert demureness of a sparrow while she studied the parrots who ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... been, but full of freckles, and not handsome in face. And so I out by water among the ships, and to Deptford and Blackewall about business, and so home and to dinner with my father and sister and family, mighty pleasant all of us; and, among other things, with a sparrow that our Mercer hath brought up now for three weeks, which is so tame that it flies up and down, and upon the table, and eats and pecks, and do everything so pleasantly, that we are mightily pleased ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... So you mean to say that a bird as large as a goose can go in and out by that hole? Why, a sparrow could scarcely ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... of ribbons well before the end of the Somme battles, and had flower-borders on their breasts by the time the massacres had been accomplished in the fields of Flanders. I know an officer who was awarded the D. S. O. because he had hindered the work of war correspondents with the zeal of a hedge-sparrow in search of worms, and another who was the best-decorated man in the army because he had presided over a visitors' chateau and entertained Royalties, Members of Parliament, Mrs. Humphry Ward, miners, Japanese, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... any," pricked the accuser. "You talk about the honor of the Winnebagos. If you use that information you would be dishonoring the Winnebagos! You're a cheat, you're a cheat," it said tauntingly, and a little sparrow on the window sill outside took up the mocking refrain, "Cheat! Cheat!" Stung as though some one had pointed an accusing finger at her, Migwan flung down her pen in despair and resolutely blotted her paper. She handed in her examination with ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... is not so easy to do as you imagine. But I will torture you no longer. You ask what we are going to do. Well, we are going to amuse ourselves and seek adventures. You ask where we are going. Ask that question of the sparrow that sits on the house-top—ask where it is going, and what is the aim of its journey. It will reply, the next bush, the nearest tree, the topmost bough of a weeping willow, which stands on a lonely grave; the mast of a ship, sailing on the wide sea; or the branch of ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... white, like the Martin's, or pure green, like the Robin's, or dotted and mottled into the loveliest of browns, like the Red Thrush's, or aqua-marine, with stains of moss-agate, like the Chipping-Sparrow's, or blotched with long weird ink-marks on a pale ground, like the Oriole's, as if it bore inscribed some magic clue to the bird's darting flight and pensile nest. Above all, the associations and predictions of this little wonder,—that one may bear home between his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... and his rough-running, irregular rhythmic rather than strictly metrical verses ... mad and ribald ... often tedious ... but with wild flashes of beauty interwoven through his poems ... the poem about his mistress's sparrow ... the elegy on its death ... where he prayed God to give it the little wren of the Virgin Mary, as a wife, in heaven—"to tread, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... 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
... like other poverty-stricken girls, to marry somebody who will support me comfortably; but that is rather an uncertain speculation, and meantime Miss Jane might die. Now, if the Bible is true, it must indeed be a blessed lot to be born a brown sparrow, and have the Lord for a commissary. I am a genuine child of old Adam, and labor is the heaviest curse that could possibly be ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... the only Son, who is in the Father's bosom—He has made Him known."[8] He made Him known in His own Person; but He appealed also to the everyday sights and sounds, the lily of the field, the blowing wind, the sparrow falling, the children at their mothers' knees, for the evidence to declare Him. As expressions of Him they may be misinterpreted by the error in my physical senses, or distorted by my limitations of spiritual perception; but even then they bring Him near to me in the kind of radiance ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... within; while through the fissures of the great door the weeds on the threshold threatened to encroach upon the nave. Amid all this quickening life, the big Christ, still in shadow, alone displayed signs of death, the sufferings of ochre-daubed and lake-bespattered flesh. A sparrow raised himself up for a moment at the edge of a hole, took a glance, then flew away; but only to reappear almost immediately when with noiseless wing he dropped between the benches before the Virgin's altar. A second sparrow followed; and soon from all the boughs of the rowan tree came others ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... heard on pleasant days throughout the winter season, and a few of the braver and hardier ones never entirely desert us. The Robin and the Blue Bird are tenderly associated in the memories of most persons whose childhood was passed on a farm or in the country village. Before the advent of the English Sparrow, the Blue Bird was sure to be the first to occupy and the last to defend the little box prepared for his return, appearing in his blue jacket somewhat in advance of the plainly habited female, who on her arrival quite often found a habitation selected and ready for her acceptance, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... ever guessed how marvelous it is for a human being to walk. As for the internes in their white suits, I had never realized before the whiteness of white linen; but much more than that, I had never so much as dreamed of the beauty of young manhood. A little sparrow chirped and flew to a near-by branch, and I honestly believe that only "the morning stars singing together, and the sons of God shouting for joy" can in the least express the ecstasy of a bird's flight. I cannot express it, but I ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... poor first-floor to us, but a bower to them. Very neat. Very airy. Plants you observe; hyacinths; books again; birds.' These birds, by the bye, comprised, in all, one staggering old sparrow without a tail, which had been borrowed expressly from the kitchen. 'Such trifles as girls love are here. Nothing more. Those who seek heartless splendour, would seek ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the palms, where turtle doves, lapwings and sparrow-hawks were wont to perch, were crowded with the vagabond boys of the town, who whiled away the time by pulling the withered and diseased dates from the great clumps and flinging them down on the bystanders below, till the guard took aim at them with their arrows and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to Desks in Churches: Font Inscription: Parochial Libraries, by W. Sparrow Simpson, B.A. 93 Real Signatures versus Pseudo-names, by the Rev. James Graves 94 Popular Stories of the English Peasantry, by Vincent T. Sternberg 94 Shakspeare Correspondence, by Cecil Harbottle, &c. 95 Epitaph and Monuments in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... regular customers. One man in particular became a great favourite with Joe, and that was Jacob Wideawake the Birdcatcher; and it was interesting to listen to his conversation on the means of catching and transforming the London Sparrow into an ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... a flocke of Birds into Cornwall, about Haruest season, in bignesse not much exceeding a Sparrow, which made a foule spoyle of the Apples. Their bils were thwarted crosse-wise at the end, and with these they would cut an Apple in two, at one snap, eating onely the kernels. It was taken at first, for a forboden token, and ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... purposes of Heaven, we cannot but admire the inscrutable wisdom that appoints all persons to their stations, qualifies all agents for their particular instrumentality, and regulates all the movements of this lower world. Not a sparrow falls to the ground, nor an angel wings his flight, but in subserviency to the arrangements ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... lazily from one foot to the other as he began, "The sparrow, the robin, and wrens, and—the ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... security, he comes quite up to our door-step, mindless of the people who are assembled round it, and, fearless of danger, picks up the crumbs that are scattered there. He may be seen at all seasons of the year, though his voice is not heard in the spring so early as that of the Song-Sparrow or the Blue-Bird. He lives chiefly on seeds, though, like other granivorous birds, he feeds his young with grubs and small insects. This is a general practice with the granivorous tribes, in order to provide their young with soft and digestible food before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the flower laughs where lately lay the snow, O'er the breezy hill-top hoarsely calls the crow, By the flowing river the alder catkins swing, And the sweet song-sparrow cries, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... "since they all hate one another and want to get away. The Galahs have pecked the Butcher Bird twice in five minutes, the Pee-weet keeps quarrelling with the Soldier Bird, and none of them can bear the English Sparrow." ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... thought that if the devil were to assume the form of that girl he would have no difficulty in leading one into temptation. She was moreover of a sweet temperament, very obedient, and lively, like a sparrow upon the roof. Sometimes strange thoughts crossed the Bohemian's mind; once when he and Anulka remained somewhat in the rear near the packhorses, he suddenly turned ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... could be exercised and all things would continue to proceed in the old merely cosmic order. It is of course true that in the merely generic order the Spirit must be present in every form of Life, as the Master pointed out when He said that not a sparrow falls to the ground without "the Father." But as the sparrows He alluded to had been shot and were on sale at a price which shows that this was the fate of a good many of them, we see here precisely that stage of manifestation where the Spirit has not woke up to individual self-recognition, ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... self-projecting process by the somewhat ambiguous name of "personalizing," rightly insists, I believe, that poets make a more distinctive use of this activity than other men. He quotes some of the classic confidences of poets themselves: Keats's "If a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel"; and Goethe on the sheep pictured by the artist Roos, "I always feel uneasy when I look at these beasts. Their state, so limited, dull, gaping, and dreaming, excites in me such sympathy that I fear I ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... leafless thicket Close beside my garden gate, Where, so light, from post to picket Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate; Who, with meekly folded wing, Comes to sun himself ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... said Thornton. "No, I am not a sparrow, to have my neck wrenched by a woman's hand like your's. Give me my demand—sign the paper, and I will leave you for ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... grows the whisper into word, As sharp as lightening, and as broad of reach, As seas, flung down by God to every beach Where thirsts a sparrow, or a bleating herd! There is no soul through out the land, not stirred; For, oh, to glory God gives his own speech When darkness, raised by Gold, declares that each, Hulk-held, is good but ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... couldn't I leave him in heavenly hands? And then it came into my heart to pray. I knew I hadn't any right to pray expecting to be heard; but yet mine would be the prayer of the humble, and wasn't Faith of as much consequence as a sparrow? By-and-by, as we all sat leaning over the gunwale, the words of a hymn that I'd heard at camp-meetings came into my mind, and I sang them out, loud and clear. I always had a good voice, though Dan 'd never heard me do anything with it except hum little low things, putting mother to sleep; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... distastefully. Her first impression of the stranger had been more correct than are first impressions nine times out of ten; he was as full of impudence as a city sparrow. She had sat up 'looking like a fright'; her father had made himself ridiculous; the stranger was mirthfully concerned with the amusing possibilities of ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... scarcity of woods and high trees may probably account for this. Besides the carrion vulture, condors collect in great numbers on the shore to prey on the stranded whales. Falcons seldom appear, except the small Sparrow Hawk (Falco sparverius, L.), which is very numerous in Peru. One of the most common birds is the little Earth Owl (Noctua urucurea, Less.), which is met with in nearly all the old ruins scattered along the coast. The Pearl Owl (Strix perlata, L.) ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... shelter, food or blankets; but even the labor of fire-building appalled his spirit. I would be a mighty task, fatigued as he was: first to clear away the snow, cut down trees, hew them into lengths and split them—all with a light camp ax that only dealt a sparrow blow—then to kneel and stoop ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... have plenty of wit, we thought it would be a good thing to parade our dear little honor, or dishonor, to catch an old boy; but that old boy, my dear heart, knows the Alpha and Omega of female tricks,—which means that you could easier put salt on a sparrow's tail than to make me believe I have anything to do with your little affair. Go to Paris, my dear; go at the cost of an old celibate, I won't prevent it; in fact, I'll help you, for an old bachelor, Suzanne, ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... not even time to sing. But there was a good deal of discomfort and unpleasantry abroad, for a young relative of Spottleover the thrush had lost three or four eggs from his nest at the bottom of the garden. Of course they had been stolen, but who was the culprit? A chattering old sparrow said it was one of the rooks; and when the report got up in the rookery there was a fine commotion about it that evening, for the rooks held quite a parliament to vindicate the innocence of their order; and at last passed a vote of censure upon the sparrow for his false accusation; agreed ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... evidently, was a sparrow, offensively cheerful upon a lamp-post. This self-centred little bird allowed a pebble to pass overhead and remained unconcerned, but, a moment later, feeling a jar beneath his feet, and hearing the tinkle of falling glass, he decided to leave. Similarly, and at the same instant, Penrod ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... sodaine Very sore, all here about. Hor. My lord, forebeare the challenge then. Ham. No Horatio, not I, if danger be now, Why then it is not to come, theres a predestinate prouidence in the fall of a sparrow: heere comes the King. [I3] Enter King, Queene, Leartes, Lordes. King Now sonne Hamlet, we hane laid vpon your head, And make no question but to haue the best. Ham. Your maiestie hath laide a the weaker side. King We doubt it not, deliuer ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... those generally seen are the long tailed grouse-hawk, the sparrow hawk, and the sharp-shinned hawk. Night-hawks are quite conspicuous, if one walks about after sunset. They are dusky with a white throat and band on the wing. They sail through the air without any effort, wings outspread and beak wide open, and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... nestle was a blue jay, and the euthuma was a sparrow. We couldn't see what the shelcuff was ourselves, the tree ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... false stroke, I believe for the first time in his life, snapped an oar and overturned a lantern. Some drift-wood, covered with slimy weeds, washed heavily up at our feet. I remember that a little disabled ground-sparrow, chased by the tide, was fluttering and drowning just in sight, and that Myron drew it out of the water, and held itup for a moment to ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... very pale, and Jane now and then reproached her with eating no more than a sparrow, and told her she was getting into a dwining way; but she made no answer, except that she 'could do her work.' At last, one Sunday evening, when she had been left alone with the children, her mistress found her sitting at the foot of her bed, among the sleeping ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ship-destroying monsters, the beasts of the forest, the birds of the air, they all are called into existence by God, and God has not merely called all these creatures into existence, but His providence preserves them, and not even a sparrow falls from ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... prosecution, and the execution of his wrath upon them, often gets a Liberty to make a Descent upon the Children of men. When the Devil does hurt unto us, he comes down unto us; for the Rendezvouze of the Infernal Troops, is indeed in the supernal parts of our Air. But as 'tis said, A sparrow of the Air does not fall down without the will of God; so I may say, Not a Devil in the Air, can come down without the leave of God. Of this we have a famous Instance in that Arabian Prince, of whom the Devil was not able so much as to Touch ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... him!" cried Dickie and Nellie Chip-Chip, the boy and girl sparrow, who happened to be at the circus. "We'll save ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... rockets off here where we are at this moment? They deceived me, for I took them to be signals of their presence from the Weasel or the Sparrow. When I saw those rockets, Griffin, I was just as certain of the Few-Folly as I am now of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... syllable in the book of nature, he will make the most of that. I read such a word the other morning when I perceived, when watching a young but fully fledged junco, or snowbird, that its markings Were like those of the vesper sparrow. The young of birds always for a brief period repeat the markings of the birds of the parent stem from which they are an offshoot. Thus, the young of our robins have speckled breasts, betraying their thrush kinship. And the young junco shows, in its striped appearance of breast and back, and the ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... is no question, and he attacked Walpole in one of the second series of his "Fables" (which appeared posthumously in 1738), entitled "The Vulture, the Sparrow, ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... to be first in the pursuit of our life's work. We cannot reach the topmost round at once, and if we get there at all there must be something in us worthy of the upper rounds. Can we ask Him to be our guide who noticed the falling of a sparrow to the ground? Do so; then we will not choose the wrong path, we will not stumble in our darkest hours. We will not think solely of our slavery, of our closing hour, or how we will spend the evening, but will put our mind on our duties and ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... and enclosures of the forest; swooped down upon the game with the keen scent and the velocity of a bird of prey, and never was known to miss his mark. Thus it was that the country people surnamed him the 'grand chasserot', the term which we here apply to the sparrow-hawk. Besides all these advantages, he was handsome, alert, straight, and well made, dark-haired and olive-skinned, like all the Buxieres; he had his mother's caressing glance, but also the overhanging eyelids and somewhat stern expression of his father, from whom ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... one day a hawk pounced on a bird, * A wildling sparrow driven by destiny; And held in pounces spake the sparrow thus, * E'en as the hawk rose ready home to hie:— 'Scant flesh have I to fill the maw of thee * And for thy lordly food poor morsel I. Then ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... doing the same thing. They did not roar now, but went quietly, slinking through the jungle as quietly as your cat creeps through the grass when she is trying to catch a sparrow. The lions had done enough roaring to scare away other animals who might bother them in their hunt. Now they did not roar any longer, for they did not want to scare away the smaller beasts which were food for ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... during the day; and 'd whistle to the guitar, or git his maw into a game of cards with his aunt and the girls. Law! that boy didn't believe in no house of mourning. He'd be up at four in the morning, hoein' up their old garden; raised garden-truck for their table, sparrow-grass and sweet corn—yes, and roses, too; always had the house full of roses in June-time; never was a ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... sparrow, Rayther hear a robin twitter; Tho' they may net be thi marrow, May net fly wi' ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... A sparrow was hopping along the flat stone, toward the upraised box, under which were the bread and cake crumbs, and other good things that birds like. Closer and closer to the box went the bird, and finally it was all the way under, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... existence. Finally Shandon contented himself by forbidding Dart to meddle in the future with anything not in any way a part of his own business; and nourished the secret hope that a few weeks of the humdrum of mountain life would tire this sparrow of the city gutters. Whereupon, when alone with his big book and a fresh cigar, ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... things need him. Think of God as a king working for ever for the good of his subjects, a Father working for ever for the good of his children, for ever sending forth light and life and happiness to all created things, and ordering all things in heaven and earth by a providence so perfect, that not a sparrow falls to the ground without his knowledge, and the very hairs of your head ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the New York Tribune by an official in the Department of Agriculture estimated the amount of weed seeds annually destroyed by the tree sparrow in the state of Iowa on the basis of one-fourth of an ounce of seed eaten daily by each bird. Supposing there were ten birds to each mile, in the two hundred days that they remain in the region, we ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... grumbling about something from morning to night. The old man had for a long time ceased to take any notice of her crossness. He was out most of the day at work in the fields, and as he had no child, for his amusement when he came home, he kept a tame sparrow. He loved the little bird just as much as if ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... and ministers around you, and a good fire blazing in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail outside, and the two doors are open at each end, sometimes it happens that a poor little sparrow flies in at one door, and immediately out at the other; but for the short space during which he is in the hall, he enjoys the light and warmth, and is safe from the wintry storms. The swift flight of the sparrow from one darkness to another darkness, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... away," he said. "In the third kingdom from here near the Tsar's own city there is a deep lake. A dragon lives at the bottom of the lake. In the dragon there is a wild boar; in the boar a hare; in the hare a pigeon; in the pigeon a sparrow. My strength is in the sparrow. Let any one kill the sparrow and I should die that instant. But I am safe. No one but shepherds ever come to the lake and even they don't come any more for the dragon has eaten up so many of them that the lake has got a ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... way," said Ready; "if I thought our situation hopeless, I would candidly say so; but there always is hope, even at the very worst, - and there always ought to be trust in that God without whose knowledge not a sparrow falls to the ground. But, Mr. Seagrave, I shall speak as a seaman, and tell you what our probabilities are. The ship is half-full of water, from her seams having opened by the straining in the gale, and the heavy blows which she received; but, now ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... Zoological Gardens in the quiet hours of the night, and suppose that, as in old fables, the animals are able to converse, and that some very wise creature who had easy access to all the cages, say a philosophic sparrow or rat, was engaged in collecting the opinions of all sorts of animals with a view of elaborating a system of absolute morality. It is needless to enlarge on the contrariety of ideals between the beasts that prey and those they prey upon, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... first ascertained their position by his compass. Turning to the north, they observed in that direction fewer churches, but numerous villas and lines of wood, with the arid steppe beyond them. To the south-west arose the Sparrow Hills, those celebrated heights whence Napoleon and his then victorious army first caught sight of that magic city which they deemed was soon to be the reward of all their toils, but yet which, ere many days had passed, was to prove the cause of their destruction. ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... to be so lean that I was nothing but skin and bone, he let me go. He took up all the rest one by one, and viewed them in the same manner. The captain being the fattest, he held him with one hand, as I would do a sparrow, and thrust a spit through him; he then kindled a great fire, roasted, and ate him in his apartment for his supper. Having finished his repast, he returned to his porch, where he lay and fell asleep, snoring louder than thunder. He slept ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... awful and on so large a scale that the senses refused to grasp it. It has been said that in the Civil War Sheridan was commanded, in pushing up the Shenandoah Valley, to leave the countryside in such condition that a crow could not live on it. A sparrow could not have existed in ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... been led back to sobriety and a life of honest industry by the hand of a little child cast somehow adrift in the world, yet guarded and guided by Him who does not lose sight in his good providence of even a single sparrow. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... crooked toes, and screwing his head sideways at intervals to look at the sky. Sometimes he stopped to tweak some tender stalk with his hooked beak, and sometimes he took a sudden and vicious little run at a sparrow or some other bird at a distance; when it flew away he flapped his wings ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... various states of corruption. The men of the North were puffed up with livid swellings, while the more nervous Africans looked as though they had been smoked, and were already drying up. The Mercenaries might be recognised by the tattooing on their hands: the old soldiers of Antiochus displayed a sparrow-hawk; those who had served in Egypt, the head of the cynosephalus; those who had served with the princes of Asia, a hatchet, a pomegranate, or a hammer; those who had served in the Greek republics, the side-view of a citadel ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... Kurmis, who profess to be members of the Hindu community, still retain the totemistic organisation, with names derived from birds, beasts and plants. Even the Jagannathi Kumhars of Orissa, taking rank immediately below the writer-caste, have the totems tiger, snake, weasel, cow, frog, sparrow and tortoise. The sub-castes of the Khatlya Kumhars explain away their totem-names "as names of certain saints, who, being present at Daksha's Horse-sacrifice, transformed themselves into animals to escape the wrath of Siva," like ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... his first impulse, on entering the city, was to fly to this holy solitude, as the wandering sparrow of sacred song sought her nest amid the altars of God's temple. Artist no less than monk, he found in this wondrous shrine of beauty a repose both for his artistic and his religious nature; and while waiting for Agostino Sarelli to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... poor sparrow," she said, dragging him across the threshold of the chapel, "the abate is here asking for you;" and she crossed herself, as though she had named ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... servants in the day of their temptations in this world; and a sore time it is. Job complained under it, so did Heman, Paul, and Christ (John 6:66; 2 Tim 1:15; Job 19:13-19). Now a man is as forlorn as a pelican in the wilderness, as an owl in the desert, or as a sparrow upon the house-top. If a man cannot now go to the throne of grace by prayer, through Christ, and so fetch grace for his support from thence, what can he do? He cannot live of himself (John 15:4). Wherefore this is a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... his meaning obscure and even unintelligible. He uses a maze of alphabetical acrostics, line by line he wreathes into his compositions the words of successive Bible texts. Yet even at his worst he is ingenious and vigorous. Such phrases as "to hawk it as a hawk upon a sparrow" are at least bold and effective. Ibn Ezra later on lamented that Kalir had treated the Hebrew language like an unfenced city. But if the poet too freely admitted strange and ugly words, he added many of considerable force and beauty. Kalir rightly felt that if Hebrew was to ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... soldiers, and the stores of Homeville were ransacked for drums, swords, and belts and toy-guns. He would stand on guard for hours at the barnyard gate, saluting in the most solemn manner whoever passed, even if it was only a sparrow. The only interest in animals which survived his change of heart was that which he now took in horses as chargers. He would ride the farm-horses bare-back to the trough, holding the halter in one hand and a tin sword ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... The weeping fog rolled fold on fold the wrath of man to cloak, And the flame-spurts pale ran down the rail as the sealing-rifles spoke. The bullets bit on bend and butt, the splinter slivered free (Little they trust to sparrow-dust that stop the seal in his sea!), The thick smoke hung and would not shift, leaden it lay and blue, But three were down on the Baltic's deck and two of the Stralsund's crew. An arm's-length out and overside the banked fog held them bound, But, as they heard or groan or word, they fired ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... for my nest," said the falconer, "if this cock-sparrow is to crow over us as he seems ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... shoe or stockin' on your hooves—wid a couple of shiverin', half starved, sick childre, tied by an ould praskeen to your back, an' you sinkin' wid hunger all the time?—ay, and the tail o' your old coat blown up behind every minute, like a sparrow before the wind!—Eh, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... they do not love them even as dogs. Mark this, a hen, a goose, a wolf, will always remain to woman inaccessible ideals of animal love. It is a rare thing for a woman to throw herself, at the peril of her life, upon an elephant to snatch her child away, whereas a hen or a sparrow will not fail to fly at a dog and sacrifice itself utterly for its children. Observe this, also. Woman has the power to limit her physical love for her children, which an animal cannot do. Does that mean that, because of this, woman is inferior to the ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... rhythmic gestures, and appeared to be reciting verses. The Florentine cobbler listened with a kind smile. He was a little, bald man, and represented one of the types familiar to Flemish painters. On a table, among wooden lasts, nails, leather, and wax, a basilic plant displayed its round green head. A sparrow, lacking a leg, which had been replaced by a match, hopped on the old man's shoulder ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... distresses we must hold fast to the belief that there is a God who maketh the clouds His chariot and walketh upon the wings of the wind—a God who is present in every summer breath and every wintry blast, in every budding leaf, and every opening flower, in the fall of every sparrow and the wheeling of every world. His Providence is in every swinging of the tides, in every circulation of the air, in all attractions and repulsions, in all cohesions and gravitations. These, and the varied ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... doubtless, very beautiful. You must all have admired the bold, fierce, bright eye of the eagle; the large, gentle, brown eye of the ox; the treacherous, green eye of the cat, waxing and waning like the moon; the pert eye of the sparrow; the sly eye of the fox; the peering little bead of black enamel in the mouse's head; the gem-like eye that redeems the toad from ugliness, and the intelligent, affectionate expression which looks out of the human-like eye of the horse and dog. There are many other animals whose ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... often the only refuge of the unhappy subject of orphanage, or the victim of evil family influences, it seems an unnecessary cruelty to withhold the protection, encouragement, and support, which may be so easily and profitably furnished. It is said that a sparrow pursued by a hawk took refuge in the bosom of a member of the sovereign assembly of Athens, and that the harsh Areopagite threw the trembling bird from him with such violence that it was killed on the ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... crop. The Argentine ant has been brought to us from South America and is proving a most destructive pest. The Norway rat was brought to our country on sailing vessels and causes more loss than most of us realize. The English sparrow has spread over much of the country and is driving many of the native birds from their homes, because of its quarrelsome disposition. It makes itself a nuisance ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... unfamiliar cries. The variety of birds was a very marked feature of this tropical region. The keen voice of the Ceylon thrush rang in our ears like the scream of a young child. Many other smaller birds were seen in rainbow feathers; and a sparrow, like his English brother, except that the Ceylon species wear a white ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... he dropped off, and he seemed to have slept only a moment when there was a knocking at his door. He heard it while he was still sleeping. The dawn had broken, the streamers of the sun were rising out of the sea. A sparrow in the garden was hacking the air ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... was rough and clumsy, and looked more like a Sparrow's nest than that of a small Sylvine bird. The entrance was about 13/4 inch in diameter, and was with the interior of the nest neat and strong. Horornis pallidus occurs at from 5600 feet elevation up to 7000 and even 8000 feet. It was abundant at Suki ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume |
