"Speckled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intersected the green lawns. There was a whole nation of motionless marble there steeped in the diffuse light falling from the glazed roof on high. Looking southwards, some holland screens barred half of the nave, which showed ambery in the sunlight and was speckled at both ends by the dazzling blue and crimson of stained-glass windows. Just a few visitors, tired already, occupied the brand-new chairs and seats, shiny with fresh paint; while the flights of sparrows, who dwelt above, among the iron girders, swooped down, quite at home, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... was Andrew. She was very shy of him at first, but he coaxed her to look at a bird's nest with its small, blue-speckled eggs. And there were the chickens that, as they grew larger, followed her about. Andrew found the first ripe early pear for her, and the delicious, sweet July apple; he took her when he went fishing on the creek, but she always felt sorry for the poor fish so cruelly ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... For final result—if you are as great as Rembrandt—you will have most likely a heavy, black, cloudy stain, with less character in it than the first ten lines had. If you are not as great as Rembrandt, you will have a stain by no means cloudy; but sandy and broken,—instead of a face, a speckled phantom of a face, patched, blotched, discomfited in every texture and form—ugly, assuredly; dull, probably; an unmanageable and manifold failure ill concealed by momentary, accidental, undelightful, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the trout. He seems to follow Mr. Graham up and down every stream; and he explains to me with the utmost minuteness just how the flies are cast and just where they were probably thrown to snare the speckled beauties. By the way, Mr. Graham puzzles me. He seems to be the most indefatigable sportsman I ever heard of. But I should never have suspected it from the tranquil weeks he spent with us. He seemed ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... at discipline were unavailing. The speckled chicken surreptitiously introduced under the yellow hen's hovering wings, enjoyed the briefest possible period of maternal protection. Before Peggy could get back into the house, the yellow hen was chasing him all around the woodshed, and ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... which they had fled, now rested broad and quiet as a shallow lake, burnished faintly, brooded over by a floating, increasing light, not yet compounded into day. Tussocks, innumerable clods and crumbs of vivid green, speckled all the nearer water. On some of these storks meditated,—sage, pondering heads and urbane bodies perched high on the frailest penciling of legs. In the whole expanse, no movement came but when ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... remembrance of the sorrow at the farm kept her silent. The March wind blew keen and crisp around her, the air was filled with the quivering songs of the larks, the furze was bursting into bloom, even the bare blackthorn put on its speckled mantle of white; what wonder was it in a world so fair, that Morva's heart sang for joy? But as she turned round the Cribserth, a sudden shadow came upon her, for here was Ebben Owens coming towards her, with bent head and slow dragging step. She ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... springing April grass, Too blue the silver speckled sky, For me to linger here, alas, While happy winds go laughing by, Wasting the golden hours indoors, Washing windows ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... of knightly vigilance and of Christian watchfulness. An old Anglo-Norman, Osmont, writes: "The eye-speckled feathers should warn a man that never too often can he have his eyes wide open, and gaze inwardly upon his own heart." These dear people were so introspective and self-conscious, always looking for trouble—in their own motives, even—that no doubt many good impulses perished unnoticed, ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... by five little speckled eggs were in the nest, and the mother bird asked, "Is there anything in all the world as ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... to be feared; and foremost among these is the Malmignatte, the terror of the Corsican peasantry. I have seen her settle in the furrows, lay out her web and rush boldly at insects larger than herself; I have admired her garb of black velvet speckled with carmine-red; above all, I have heard most disquieting stories told about her. Around Ajaccio and Bonifacio, her bite is reputed very dangerous, sometimes mortal. The countryman declares this for a fact and the doctor does not always dare deny ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... from under the door. Still all was quiet. A stealthy glance round, and I had out the key. To draw back now was to write myself craven all my life; and with a shaking hand I thrust the wards into the lock, turned them, and in another moment stood on the other side of the door in a neat garden, speckled with sunshine and shade, and where ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... familiar and human, seemed to me to belong to a wholly different sphere. One night I dreamed of the sea, but it changed to something else, - a park, a landscape peopled with many creatures. I remember that the ground was moving like ocean waves, but magnificently blue and speckled with intensely yellow spots. There were also bushes and a multitude of happy, festive, richly dressed human beings. They were not demons, that I felt, but a species of men - happy, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... northeast storm blew directly toward the bay, and kept us in camp. It was fishing weather, however, and my fly-rod, with a Parmachenee belle, kept us well supplied with steelheads and speckled trout, which were plentiful in the clear waters of a wandering trout brook running through ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... through the branches, and then carefully, very carefully, unwind and let the hook drop lightly on the water. Then as likely as not there would be a swift, tingling tug, and, if you were lucky, an instant later you would have a beautiful red-speckled fellow landed among the grass and field flowers, his gay colors glancing ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... no other business than race-business any longer existed on the face of the earth. The talk was all of horses and 'John Scott.' Guards whispered behind their hands to station-masters, of horses and John Scott. Men in cut-away coats and speckled cravats fastened with peculiar pins, and with the large bones of their legs developed under tight trousers, so that they should look as much as possible like horses' legs, paced up and down by ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... think on you it's clean past my wits to find out. Dressed up so beautiful, all in your velvets and things, and buckles in your shoes, and going to see your pa married, and won't be satisfied unless I'll dig out this here nasty speckled beast of a snake." ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... comes around each year there are certain wise men who proceed to load up their automobiles with their fishing tackle and in the early morning turn Capeward. They have experiences of previous years to guide them and know certain brooks and pools where the speckled beauties await them. The wise ones know just where to throw their lines and the kind of bait that is sure to lure the denizens of that particular spot. For fishing is a science, as well as a sport requiring skill and judgment. The born fisherman seems to have ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... the wide and fertile valley of Bekaa lay between the two great chains of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon; the latter of whose varied hills and glens, speckled with forests and villages, lay beneath my feet. Nothing but lakes were wanting to the valleys, nothing but heather to the mountains. We caught some goats after a hard chase, and, milking them on the snow, drank eagerly from ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... dashes out.) Well! well! the garden has got back its own color again! A warmish vapor moistens my rough-grained nose. I'm filled with the desire to jump and run. The grass is reeking, shining wet. Horned snails are feeling around in the pink gravel with the tips of their eyes, and speckled black and white slugs embroider the wall with a silver ribbon. Oh! what a beautiful green and gold beastie running out there in the wet! Shall I catch it? Shall I scratch its metallic shell, until it breaks with a little crackling sound? No. I'd rather stay near Her. She's leaning ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... being a rich cinnamon color. It is almost exclusively a fresh water species and is very rarely found around a salt water marsh. Its nest is built on the ground, in a tuft of grass and weeds woven about the upright stalks. They lay from five to twelve eggs having a cream colored ground, sparingly speckled with brown and lilac. Size 1.60 x 1.20. Data.—Clark County, Missouri, June 6, 1893. 10 eggs. Nest composed of reed stalks; a slightly concave mass 8 inches across, and only two inches above the water, in a clump of reeds. Collector, Ed. ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... tramp knew. He put his gnarled hand over one of hers. Rosie looked up curiously from the speckled beans she was counting into a bag, and then went on singing to herself an unformed, baby song. "Folks'll talk," said Enoch gently. "They do now. A man an' woman ain't never too old to be hauled up, an' made to answer for livin'. If I was younger, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... runs in a Vein; or lie dispers'd in scatter'd pieces; or be divided partly into a Vein, and partly into loose masses; or like a Wall between two Rocks, as it were in a Cleft; or be interspers'd in the firm Rock, like speckled Marble? Or be found in Grains like Sand or Gravel; as store {337} of excellent Tin is said to be found in some parts of Cornwall at the Sides and in the Channels of running Waters, which they call ...; ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... abundance of mosquitoes, that we are more tormented with them than ever we were with the cold weather. Here be likewise ants, and frogs in the ponds upon the land, but we durst not eat of them, they looked so speckled like toads. By this time there are neither bears, foxes, nor fowl, to be seen; they ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... the Judge had waded into mountain streams with the water coming up close to the pocket of his flannel shirt where he kept his cigars, or had been poled by Bob Flippin from "riffle" to pool. Those had been the days of speckled trout and small-mouthed bass, and Bob had been a boy and the Judge at middle age. Now Bob Flippin had reached the middle years, and the Judge was old, but they still fished together. They were comrades in a very close and special sense. What Bob Flippin lacked in education and culture he made ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... rarely we see the cow-bird in our walks, her merciless ubiquity is astonishing. It occasionally happens that almost every nest I meet in a day's walk will show the ominous speckled egg. In a single stroll in the country I have removed eight of these foreboding tokens of misery. Only last summer I discovered the nest of a wood-sparrow in a hazel-bush, my attention being attracted thither by the parent bird bearing food in her beak. I found the nest occupied, appropriated, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... and another begun. And as they were beginning the first move of the game, they beheld at a small distance from them a tent speckled yellow, the largest ever seen, and the figure of an eagle of gold upon it, and a precious stone on the eagle's head. And coming out of the tent, they saw a youth with thick yellow hair upon his head, fair and comely, and a scarf of blue satin upon him, and a brooch of gold in the scarf upon his right ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... trees, there were six or seven thrushes, all declaring that they were the best singers, and had the most speckled necks; and up in the sky the swallows were saying that ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... according to the Franciscan custom, so securing for themselves frozen toes. Rubruquis thus describes the interview: "Mangu-Khan is a man of middle height with a flat nose; he was lying on a couch clad in a robe of bright fur, which was speckled like the skin of a sea-calf." He was surrounded with falcons and other birds. Several kinds of beverages, arrack punch, fermented mare's milk, and ball, a kind of mead, were offered to the envoys; but they ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... the silver glint of the trout's flanks through the green water. She brought him nearer. Swimming parallel with the boat, he was plainly visible from his wide-opened mouth—the hook and fly protruding from his lower jaw—to the red, quivering flanges of the tail. His sides were faintly speckled, his belly white as chalk. He was almost as long as ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... is speckled with white incrustations and sombre tufts of desert herbs; here and there, where the winter's rain lingers underground, are spots of brilliant green; short-lived crops of corn, sown by the nomads. The hills to the right of the line are bare ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Malan, returning suddenly. We passed the sentry between white enamelled walls of speckless small arms, and since that Royal Marine Light infantryman was visibly suffocating from curiosity, I winked at him. We entered the chintz-adorned, photo-speckled, brass- fendered, tile-stoved main cabin. Moorshed, with a ruler, was demonstrating before ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... to close on the valley while the far, high crests of the mountains still gleamed under a crimson sky. Deep shadows filled every gorge and canyon, crept up and up until only the snowy crests glimmered in the night, ghostly-silver against a sky speckled with stars. The valley itself was shrouded under the dark blanket of the night, through which the river murmured unseen and distant waterfalls roared over rocky precipices. The two Indians attending Lawanne squatted within the red glow of their fire on the bank. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... or ten feet around. It rises as straight as an elm, with high branching limbs and long, smooth oval leaves. Sprays of pale flowers blossom upon it in August, followed in a few months by pods containing three speckled seeds which look like smooth, slightly flattened nutmegs. When the seeds are ready to drop the outer covering of the pod bursts with a loud report, the seeds shooting in ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... molluscs. Some of these cavities also contained sea-snakes from four to five feet long, which were described as having the head "hooded like the cobra de capello, and of a light grey colour, slightly speckled. They coiled themselves like serpents on land, and darted at poles thrust in among them. The Singhalese who accompanied the party, said that they not only bit venomously, but crushed the limb of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... master, did not cease their sport because of what had befallen Master Brookes, but continued at the hunting until they had brought down two wild boars and also an animal fashioned like unto nothing I had ever seen before. It was something after the manner of a serpent, but speckled on the stomach as is a toad, and Captain Smith believed the true name of it to be Iguana, the like of which he says that he has often seen in other countries and that its flesh makes very ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... empty-headed people, she was quick to lose her temper. "Spots indeed! I'd have you know that I haven't any spots. I'm a speckled beauty—that's what I am. And if you don't believe it you can ask ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... would tear her by force from prison, and expire at her feet. I remembered a picture hanging in our drawing-room—Malek-Adel bearing away Matilda—but at that point my attention was absorbed by the appearance of a speckled woodpecker who climbed busily up the slender stem of a birch-tree and peeped out uneasily from behind it, first to the right, then to the left, like a musician behind ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the great dangers of my labours kill me? Am I the mighty son of Jupiter, And shall this poison'd linen thus consume me? Shall I be burnt? Villains, fly up to heaven, Bid Iris muster up a troop of clouds, And shower down cataracts of rain to cool me; Or else I'll break her speckled bow in pieces. Will she not? no, she hates me like her mistress. Why then descend, you rogues, to the vile deep. Fetch Neptune hither: charge him bring the sea To quench these flames, or else the world's fair frame Will be in greater ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... point the rescue-party chanced to have reached one of those bluffs of woodland which at that time speckled the plains—though they were ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the principal members of her ship's company seated with the others on the promenade. The commander had engaged a pilot for the whole length of the Red Sea; for it is full of rocks and reefs, making the navigation difficult and dangerous, though it has been thoroughly surveyed, and the chart is speckled with small islands and ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... character of modern literature: everything about it is temporary and fragmentary. Look at a railway stall: you see books of every color,—blue, yellow, crimson, "ring-streaked, speckled, and spotted,"—on every subject, in every style, of every opinion, with every conceivable difference, celestial or sublunary, maleficent, beneficent—but all small. People take their literature in morsels, as they take sandwiches on ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Lupine is a native of Sicily. It is a hardy annual, and resembles the foregoing species in its general character. The flowers are yellow; the pods are about two inches long, hairy, flattened, and enclose four or five large, roundish, speckled seeds. It blossoms and ripens at the same time with the White, and is planted and cultivated in the ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... the back. The color of the rest of the body is red, generally dark, but sometimes light. Eighty years ago the best Hereford cattle were mottled or roan all over; and some of the best herds, down to a comparatively recent period, were either all mottled, or had the mottled or speckled face. ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... edge of a shore of green shadow, and a sea of sun speckled with buttercups was before her. David Blessing came and leaned against her. His first intentions were good, he kissed her hurriedly on the chin, but after that he ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... Parnassia palustris, "which springs up in the damp meadows, below the beech-wood to the west of the village; which bears a superb white flower at the top of a slightly twisted stem, having an oval leaf about its middle"; the purple digitalis, "whose long spindles of great red flowers, speckled with white inside, and shaped like the fingers of a glove," border a certain road; all the ferns that grow on the wastes, "amid which it is often no easy task to recollect one's whereabouts," and on the ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... the sun was setting we toiled out of Chezy on to an upland of cornfields, speckled with grey patches of dead men and reddish-brown patches of dead horses. One great horse stood out on a little cliff, black against the yellow of the descending sun. It furiously stank. Each time I passed it I held ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... symbolical visions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision of the seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this which he sees is not a real thing; but merely a significant dream. Also, when Zachariah sees the speckled horses among the myrtle trees in the bottom, you still may suppose the vision symbolical;—you do not think of them as real spirits, like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But when you are told of the four riders in the Apocalypse, a ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... point out to him a water-ouzel, with impudently jerking tail, dipping and wading in the shallows of the stream? Did not Moorcock find him a water-rail's nest, hidden in a tuft of reeds and grass, with ten, yellowish, speckled eggs in it? And did not both men pluck him handfuls of cowslips, of tawny-pink avens, and of mottled, snake-headed fritillaries, and stow them away in the fishing-baskets above the load ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... deafening concert of shrieks and whistles. The long beak of the toucan stood out against the golden clusters of the "quiriris," and the treepeckers or woodpeckers of Brazil wagged their little heads, speckled all over with their purple spots. It was truly a ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... of sabbath drives, in fair June mornin's, through the old lane alder and willow fringed, with the brook runnin' along on one side of it; where the speckled trout broke the Sunday quiet by dancin' up through the brown and gold shadows of the cool water, and the odor of the pine woods jest beyend comin' ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... it, his two hands locked upon it, trusting to it, just trusting to it. It bent low in a great sweeping curve, the nest swayed and swung from the movement of the swing downward, a little olive-colored, speckled head peeking cautiously out as if to see what all the ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... see what he could find. (They had brought a bit of everything from the lower world with them). From the east he brought eagle feathers; from the south feathers from the bluejay; in the west he found hawk feathers, and in the north speckled night bird (whippoorwill) feathers. Etseastin and Etseasun carried these to a spring, placing them toward the cardinal points. The eagle plumes were laid to the east and near by them white corn and white shell; the blue feathers were laid to the south with blue corn and turquoise; the hawk ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... that built a little later to crown the mausoleum of Itimad-ud-daula. Finch, the traveller, who was at Agra about 1611, was informed that the cenotaph was 'to be inarched over with the most curious white and speckled marble, and to be seeled all within with pure sheet gold, richly inwrought.' The reason for omitting the dome ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... three at Romsey. Then I sat in front for a little while to talk to my Malachi. When I looked back, Shend was solidly asleep, and stayed so for the next two hours, while Leggatt chased Attley's fat Daimler along the green-speckled hedges. He woke up when we said good-bye at Mittleham, with promises to meet ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... twilight of a summer's morning, and the little birds had begun to chirp their matins, and the lark to brush the dew from her speckled breast, waiting for the first gaze of the sun. The old man pressed the infant closer to his bosom as he drew nigh to the steep acclivity, the solitary dwelling of the eagle. He kissed the babe; then looking round, fearful of intruders, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... pipe, and because of the strong breeze stepped close to the cabin wall. Being a keen observer, he noticed many small, round holes in the logs. They were so near together that the timbers had an odd, speckled appearance, and there was hardly a place where he could have put his thumb without covering a hole. At first he thought they were made by a worm or bird peculiar to that region; but finally lie concluded that they were bullet-holes. He thrust his knife blade ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... associations, personal or political, for the bull, shows how uniutcllectual his anger must be. Another instance of misdirected anger in nature, not quite so familiar .as that of the bull and red rag, is used as an illustration by one of the prophets: "My heritage is unto me as a speckled bird; the birds round, about are against it." I have frequently seen the birds of a thicket gather round some singularly marked accidental visitor, and finally drive him with great anger from the neighbourhood. Possibly association comes in a little here, since any ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... proceed, that the legends of mankind, in describing the comet that struck the earth, represent it as party-colored; it is "speckled" in one legend; spotted like a tiger in another; sometimes it is a white boar in the heavens; sometimes a blue snake; sometimes it is red with the blood of the millions that are to perish. Doubtless these separate formations, ground out of the granite, from the mica, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... the most virulent type. Wherever they went, she wanted, and she got, the pick of the water. She seemed to be equally at home on all kinds of streams, large and small. She would pursue the little mountain-brook trout in the early spring, and the Labrador salmon in July, and the huge speckled trout of the northern lakes in September, with the same avidity and resolution. All that she cared for was to get the best and the most of the fishing at each place where she ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... shallow glittering river-bed, throwing up the shingle, striking out the water in long glistening sheets; and how they too swept after them, down the flat valley, rounding crag and headland, which opened one after another in interminable vista, along the narrow strip of sand and rushes, speckled with stunted, moss-bearded, heather-bedded hawthorns, between the great grim lifeless mountain walls? Did he feel no pleasant creeping of the flesh that day at the sound of his own horse-hoofs, as they swept through the long ling with a sound as soft as the brushing of a woman's ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... hire he asked in return for his labor and for the blessings he had brought Laban was the speckled and spotted among the goats of his herd, and the black among the sheep. Laban assented to his conditions, saying, "Behold, I would it might be according to thy word." The arch-villain Laban, whose tongue wagged in all directions, and who ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... whose meadows it murmurs through, Have named the stream from its own fair hue. Yet pure its waters—its shallows are bright With colored pebbles and sparkles of light, And clear the depths where its eddies play, And dimples deepen and whirl away, And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot The swifter current that mines its root, Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill, The quivering glimmer of sun and rill With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown, Like the ray that streams from the diamond-stone. Oh, loveliest there the spring days come, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... of the slope was speckled with men returning in a disorderly fashion to the river front. Behind them marched a small but very compact body of men who had filed out of the stockade. These last dragged ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... me," said Nat, when he heard of it; and though the boys shouted at the idea, Nat found comfort in it, for when one is down in the world, the confidence of even a speckled hen is ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... thaw. Few facts are better established than that the February thaw is the poorest time of year for everybody. But for a boy it is worse than poorest; it is bankrupt. The remnant streaks of old soot-speckled snow left against the north walls of houses have no power to inspire; rather, they are dreary reminders of sports long since carried to satiety. One cares little even to eat such snow, and the eating of icicles, also, has come to be a flaccid and stale diversion. ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... Of circle, cube, or sphere. The third ascent Unites this varied symmetry of parts With colour's bland allurement; as the pearl Shines in the concave of its azure bed, And painted shells indent their speckled wreath. Then more attractive rise the blooming forms Through which the breath of Nature has infused Her genial power to draw with pregnant veins Nutritious moisture from the bounteous earth, 460 In fruit and seed prolific: thus the flowers Their purple ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... coldest winters Kansas had ever known, and there fell one of the deepest snows. And now, winding through the deep snow, benumbed with cold, and all unprovided with clothing suitable for such inclement weather, the rear guard of the ring-streaked, speckled and spotted regiment of Kansas and Missouri Militia passed ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... the smaller, greenish globe of its companion across a cloudless sky in which the stars made a speckled pattern like the scales of a huge serpent coiled around a black bowl. Ras Hume paused at the border of scented spike-flowers on the top terrace of the Pleasure House to wonder why he thought of serpents. He understood. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... ascend from shelf to shelf, we find the tenants of the tower serially disposed in order of their magnitude:—gannets, black and speckled haglets, jays, sea-hens, sperm-whale-birds, gulls of all varieties:—thrones, princedoms, powers, dominating one above another in senatorial array; while, sprinkled over all, like an ever-repeated fly in a great piece of broidery, the stormy petrel or Mother Cary's chicken sounds his continual ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... with a few cottages standing a good way back in their gardens, and as their centre, one of the great old coaching inns of past days, now chiefly farmhouse, though a sign, bearing a golden bugle-horn upon a blue ground, stood aloft in front of it, over the heads of the speckled mass of tan, black, and white, pervaded with curved tails, over which the scarlet-coated whips kept guard, while shining horses, bearing red coats and black coats, boys, and a few ladies, were moving about, and carriages drew ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... THE speckled hen walked all around the house, and saw the front-door open. So she walked right in, ...
— The Nursery, November 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 5 • Various
... little child at the sight of a hippopotamus, robed in flowing bed-curtains and walking erect on its hind legs, would perhaps be comparable to the panic possessing the shallow brain of the poor speckled thing when that huge woman came ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... high toddy palm (Borassus flabelliformis) and was unlined save for a wad of human hair, on which the eggs, two in number, lay; these I found hard-set (on the 13th March); in colour they were a pale greenish blue, boldly blotched, spotted, and speckled ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... barrel are big apples, little apples, freckled apples, speckled apples, green apples, and dried apples. A bad boy on the front row shouted the other night, "And ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... Yet he saw no man. He stood still, being astonished, and became aware that this tumult was divinely guided, for as in a trance he saw and heard marvellous things. For the war-steeds of the Ultonians neighed loudly in their stables, and from the Tec Brac, the Speckled House of the Red Branch, rose a clangour of brass, the roar of the shield called Ocean, and the booming of the Gate-of-Battle, and the singing of swords long silent, and the brazen thunder of the revolution of wheels; and ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... had three sons and a daughter. One day when her sons were out looking for sticks in the wood they saw a fine speckled bird flying in the trees. The next day they saw it again, and the eldest son told his brothers to go and get sticks by themselves, for he was going ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... Canadian Pacific Railway. The summit, which is known as the Great Divide, separates the Pacific Slope from Eastern Canada. The crossing once made, a country is reached in which there is a great change in climate, fauna, and flora; and in the rivers, instead of the so-called speckled trout, the muskallunge, black bass, and Atlantic salmon, are found the rainbow, silver, and steel-head trout, with the five species of the Pacific salmon. This last fish is not a salmon at all, but only bears ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... face," he reflected, surveying it in the dusty speckled glass. "A trifle weak perhaps. I am a trifle weak; that is so. But, on the whole, the face of a gentleman and a decent fellow. And not devoid of intelligence.... Interesting, to see one's own face. Especially in this odd glass. Now ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... and feats of mighty whips—notably of a never-to-be-forgotten dinner at the Pelican Inn, Newbury, to which were gathered the elite of the Bath-road cracksmen. At that great repast we heard how "for wittles there was trout, speckled like a dane dog, weal as wite as allablaster, sherry-wite-wine, red-port, and everything in season. Then for company there was Sir Pay (Sir H. Peyton), Squire Willy boys (Vielbois), Cherry Bob, Long Dick, and I; and where would you go to find five ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... friar uttered a short Latin prayer for the safety of his soul, and took his place composedly. They rolled along; one moment they saw nothing, and seemed down in a mere basin of watery hills: the next they caught glimpses of the shore speckled bright with people, who kept throwing up their arms with wild Italian gestures to encourage them, and the black boat driving bottom upwards, and between it and them the woman rising and falling like themselves. She had come across a paddle, and was holding her child ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf's tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf's gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... knocked at the door, and directly after the elder Loveday himself was admitted to the room. He was dressed in a suit between grand and gay, which he used for such occasions as the present, and his blue coat, yellow and red waistcoat with the three lower buttons unfastened, steel-buckled shoes and speckled stockings, became him very well ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... unique to Egypt: beak black, head gray and stippled, eyes surrounded by white dots, back, wings, and tail grayish, belly and throat white, feet red. Also caught were a couple dozen Nile duck, superior-tasting wildfowl whose neck and crown of the head are white speckled with black. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... a beech, was stroke to death, his clothes stinking with a sulphurous stench, being about the age of twenty years or thereabouts, at Mereden House." The Dorking fowls all have the peculiarity of an extra claw on each foot, being white and speckled, and a Roman origin being claimed for the breed, which is most delicate in flavor and commands a high price. On the southern outskirts of the town is Deepdene, a mansion surrounded by magnificent trees and standing on the slope of a hill. It was the home ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... remembered that he was to be awakened early and that it was Friday the hardest day of the week, when she must make up her arrears of scrubbing and dusting. Her luxurious mood changed to one of dull irritation, and she looked sullenly at the enormous wardrobe and dressing-table with their speckled mirrors. These had delighted her at first, but in her heart she preferred the battered, makeshift furniture of Cardigan Street. A few licks with the duster and her work was done; but here the least ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... filled with tears. The pilot climbed up with one end of the rope in his hand and once on the platform began to pull on it. The monster soon appeared above the water with the rope tied in a double band around its neck and underneath its front legs. It was a large one, as Leon had said, speckled, and on its back grew the green moss which is to the caymans what gray hairs are to men. Roaring like a bull and beating its tail against or catching hold of the sides of the corral, it opened its huge jaws and showed its long, sharp teeth. The pilot was hoisting ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... left his prisoning pane at last, and came over to the Mayflowers, which were in full bloom, although the season was very late, and deep in the woods there were still some graybacked snowdrifts, speckled with bits of bark and moss ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... with hints of lusty snails and fine young curly leeches. Many and many a pleasant stroll they had among the poultry markets, where ducks and fowls, with necks unnaturally long, lay stretched out in pairs, ready for cooking; where there were speckled eggs in mossy baskets, white country sausages beyond impeachment by surviving cat or dog, or horse or donkey; new cheeses to any wild extent, live birds in coops and cages, looking much too big to be natural, in consequence of those receptacles being much ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the fair of Cappagh.' And Raftery said: 'You are not Burke but a breed of scatties, That's all over the country gathering praties; When I'm at the table filling glasses, You are in the corner with your feet in the ashes.' Then Burke said: 'Raftery a poet, and he with bracked (speckled) shins, And he playing music with catgut; Raftery the poet, and his back to the wall, And he playing music for empty pockets. There's no one cares for his music at all, but he does be always craving money.' For he was sometimes accused of love of money; 'he wouldn't ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... stood on the parlor mantelpiece and on the top of the piano. There was a china shepherdess with a basket of flowers at one end of the mantelpiece and an exact duplicate on the other. In the center a big clock of speckled marble was surmounted by a little domed edifice with Corinthian pillars in front, and this again was topped by the figure of an archer with a bent bow—there was nothing on top of this figure because ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... a white rabbit just over the hill, He's eating a lettuce for tea; And a fat speckled duck, with a very large bill, Is quacking, "Oh, where can she be?" And two little mice are there, standing quite still, They're all of them waiting ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... carry off. The river presented a most extraordinary scene. Lighted by the red and fierce reflection of the fire, and covered with boats, filled with families who had just quitted their habitations either on the bridge or in some other street adjoining it, its whole surface was speckled with pieces of furniture, or goods, that had been cast into it, and which were now floating up with the tide. Great crowds were collected on the Southwark shore to watch the conflagration, while on the opposite side the wharves and quays were thronged with persons ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... at its first note there were twenty little pocket-knife answers from over the pond, and that in a twinkling twenty pairs of red satin boots were running as fast as they could go to meet the great speckled mother-hen, whose blady voice was the sweetest music in ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... shingles of its roof weathered black, and all around it a palisade of pointed sticks thrust in the ground, and with a pair of gates and watch-towers. Drooping on its staff was the standard of England. North and south of the village the emerald common gleamed in the slanting light, speckled red and white and black by grazing cattle. Here and there, in untidy brown patches, were Indian settlements, and far away to the westward the tawny Father of Waters gleamed through ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... rufous-colored bird flies quickly past, and, alighting on a low limb a few rods off, salutes me with "Whew! Whew!" or "Whoit! Whoit!" almost as you would whistle for your dog. I see by his impulsive, graceful movements, and his dimly speckled breast, that it is a thrush. Presently he utters a few soft, mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the veery, or Wilson's thrush. He is the least of the thrushes in size, being about that of the common ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... The result was a cabinet, strong much beyond the average in its individual members, but weak to powerlessness in the diversity of its composition. Burke, in a memorable passage of a memorable speech, has described this "chequered and speckled" administration with great humour, speaking of it as "indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on." Pitt chose for himself the office of lord privy seal, which necessitated his removal to the House of Lords; and in August he became ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... the animals themselves; and, from the appearance of bones and old excrement, we suppose that buffalo sometimes stray into the valley, though we have as yet seen no recent sign of them. Along the water are a number of snakes, some of a uniform brown color, others black, and a third speckled on the abdomen, and striped with black and a brownish yellow on the back and sides. The first, which is the largest, is about four feet long; the second is of the kind mentioned yesterday; and the third ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... Next Anger rushed, his eyes on fire. The moping Owl doth to the Moon complain. True Hope is swift and flies with swallow's wings. Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, as to be hated needs but to be seen. Speckled Vanity will sicken ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... me," observed Peterkin, as we walked side by side over an open grassy and flower-speckled plain that lay about a couple of miles distant from the village—"it seems to me that we shall never ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... dropped at a distance from the nest at almost unbelievable short intervals, proving the wonderful rapidity of digestion and the immense amount of labor required to supply the mill inside the little speckled throats with grist. ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... trees above; mixed with their hoarse cries I heard a lively strain of music. It was Alfred's birthday. The young people, the Etonians, and children of the neighbouring gentry, held a mock fair, to which all the country people were invited. The park was speckled by tents, whose flaunting colours and gaudy flags, waving in the sunshine, added to the gaiety of the scene. On a platform erected beneath the terrace, a number of the younger part of the assembly were dancing. I leaned ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley |
