"Swan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ensued that you might have thought a 30 goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course—and in truth it was something very like it, in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... is then I KNOW he don't like it. Marcellus never made any fuss whatever happened, and he wouldn't make any at his own funeral no more than at anybody else's. That wasn't his way. Say nothin' and keep her on the course, that was Marcellus. I swan I can hardly make it seem ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Ohio Republican convention—the repudiation of Judge Swan, and the "plank" for a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law—I very much regretted. These two things are of a piece; and they are viewed by many good men, sincerely opposed to slavery, as a struggle against, and in disregard of, the Constitution ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... were piled around him neck-high. They say as an old woman brought her few fagots to the funeral pile, Hus cried out: "O sancta simplicitas!"—O holy simplicity. Another story goes Hus said: "Today you are burning a goose (hus in Bohemian); in a hundred years will come a swan you will not burn." This ...
— John Hus - A brief story of the life of a martyr • William Dallmann
... a mill pond, so that the paddles of our noble steamer, the Nikolai, were not at all impeded in their working by any rolling or pitching of the vessel. Immediately on my arrival I sought out Mr. Swan, one of the most amiable and interesting characters I have ever met with, and delivered to him your letter, the contents of which were very agreeable to him; for from applying himself too un-interruptedly ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... longed to have you all together, and now, at last, you are here. There sits Voltaire, whose divine Emile was delivered first of a book, then of a child, and then released from life before he was free to come to Berlin. There is Algarotti, the swan of Italy, who spreads his wings and would gladly fly to the land of oranges and myrtles. There is La Mettrie, who only remains here because he is convinced that my Cape wine is pure, and my pates de foie gras truly from Strasbourg. ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... own blood in any way. Condemned criminals were compelled to take roles in which they suffered torture and a frightful death, in order to entertain the Roman crowd. Such roles were Prometheus, Daedalus, Orpheus, Hercules, and Attys; Pasiphae and the bull, and Leda and the swan were also enacted. In Martial's Epigrams, Book I, the cases are mentioned where a woman fought with a lion; Laureolus, a robber, was crucified and torn, as he hung on the cross, by a bear; Daedalus, when his wing broke, was precipitated ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... difficult some day To turn out both, or either, it may be. Some persons think that Coleridge hath the sway; And Wordsworth has supporters, two or three; And that deep-mouthed Boeotian "Savage Landor"[591] Has taken for a swan rogue ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... famous constitution of the 3rd of May, 1791; the Kosciuszko Polonaise, with words adapted to already existing music, dedicated to the great patriot and general when, in 1792, the nation rose in defence of the constitution; the Oginski Polonaise, also called the Swan's song and the Partition of Poland, a composition without words, of the year 1793 (at the time of the second partition), by Prince Michael Cleophas Oginski. Among the Polish composers of the second half of the last century ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... UNITED IN ONE THING. These ideas of substances, though they are commonly simple apprehensions, and the names of them simple terms, yet in effect are complex and compounded. Thus the idea which an Englishman signifies by the name swan, is white colour, long neck, red beak, black legs, and whole feet, and all these of a certain size, with a power of swimming in the water, and making a certain kind of noise, and perhaps, to a man who has long observed this kind of birds, some other properties: which all terminate in sensible simple ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... hospitable people and I lectured to an enthusiastic audience. I do not know how it is with professional speakers, but with the amateur the chairman and the audience make the speech. The Rev. Swan Wiers introduced me in an address of eloquence for ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... necessities of speech, are necessarily and irrevocably Germanic. "Les Maitres Chanteurs," "The Dwarfs of Niebelheim," "Elizabeta," are impossibilities, whereas, for instance, Beethoven's "Eroica" labours under no such disadvantage. "Goodbye, My Dearest Swan," invests part of "Lohengrin" with a certain grotesque colour that no one would ever dream of if there were no necessity for the singer to be tied down to the exigencies of palpable and certainly most materialistic language. ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... raising his hand. "Let not the groping man thank the lamp, nor the briar the brook. Thank the sun whence the lamp hath his light, and the ocean to whom the brook oweth his waters. Thank that incomparable paragon, that consummate swan, that pearl of all perfection, my mistress, of whose brightness I am ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... laughter at that very bliss. My highest ecstacies could not bear down and silence the weight of my ridicule, which, in its turn, was powerless to prevent me from running into other and more gorgeous absurdities. I was double, not "swan and shadow," but rather, Sphinx-like, human and beast. A true Sphinx, I was a riddle and a ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... context of these words of our text, which, I said, presents so singular a contrast to them. It is a strange thing that so fierce a battle-chant should at the end settle down into such a sweet swan-song as this. It is a strange thing that in the same soul there should throb the delight in battle and almost the delight in murder, and these lofty thoughts. But let us learn the lesson that true love to God means hearty hatred of God's enemy, and that it will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... first with indifference, and then with incredulous surprise, exclaimed, with a burst of delighted recognition, like a child finding a long-lost plaything, "My darling boy!" And going to Cashel with the grace of a swan, she clasped him in her arms. In acknowledgment of which he thrust his red, discomfited face over her shoulder, winked at Lydia with his tongue ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... a superber scarlet. And look! the wonder of plumes that foams upon Her tidal breast - oh, but a swan! a swan! A swan snow-white with his sole scarlet hidden In the ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... expect you took precious good care not to. You've done the same thing before. Never to my dying day shall I forget the figure you cut outside Swan and Edgar's last Christmas. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... fallen in love with her, 'I could not expect them to do so,' she remarked candidly. 'As a girl I was plain featured, and so shy and awkward that your Uncle Joe used to tell me that I was the only ugly duckling that would never turn into a swan.'" ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... learnt from the incumbent of St. Luke's, in whose parish it was situated, had objectionable features. Nothing grave could be alleged against Mrs. Turpin, who regularly attended the Sunday evening service; but her husband, a carpenter, spent far too much time at 'The Swan With Two Necks'; and then there was a lodger, young Mr. Rawcliffe, concerning whom Wattleborough had for some time been too well informed. Of such comments upon her proceeding Miss Rodney made light; in the aspect ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... life. It was his inventive genius which led to his paying a long visit to Lichfield to see Dr. Darwin. There he lingered long in pleasant intimacy with the doctor and his wife, with Mr. Wedgwood, Miss Anna Seward—"the Swan of Lichfield"—and still more, with the eccentric Thomas Day, author of Sandford and Merton, who became his most intimate friend, and who wished to marry his favourite sister Margaret, though she could not make up her mind to accept him, and eventually became the wife of Mr. Ruxton of Black ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Australasian continent—and done for Van Diemen's Land what it has done for the Isle of Wight—the shore line is broken and ragged. Viewed upon the map, the fantastic fragments of island and promontory which lie scattered between the South-West Cape and the greater Swan Port, are like the curious forms assumed by melted lead spilt into water. If the supposition were not too extravagant, one might imagine that when the Australian continent was fused, a careless giant ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... own sense swan-like away—she left in her wake their fairly stupefied submission: it was as if she had, by an exquisite authority, now placed them, each for each, and they would have nothing to do but be happy together. Never had she so exulted as ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... doctor, "I am coming to that now. That monster could have been no other than the Plesiosaurus, one of the most wonderful animals that has ever existed. Imagine a thing with the head of a lizard, the teeth of a crocodile, the neck of a swan, the trunk and tail of a quadruped, and the fins of a whale. Imagine a whale with its head and neck consisting of a serpent, with the strength of the former and the malignant fury of the latter, and then ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... in this Production is supplied by the well-known firm of Messrs. Swan and Edgar, Piccadilly Circus, London."—Programme ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... group of tales, eight in number: "Monsieur du Miroir," as by the author of "Sights from a Steeple;" "Mrs. Bullfrog," as by the author of "The Wives of the Dead;" "Sunday at Home" and "The Man of Adamant," both as by the author of "The Gentle Boy," "David Swan, A Fantasy," "Fancy's Show Box, A Morality," and "The Prophetic Pictures," all anonymously; and "The Great Carbuncle," as by the author of "The Wedding Knell." These papers constituted one third of the volume, and for them he ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... Captain John Smith and his two companions were poor things compared with the fowling-pieces of to-day, but with their three shots they killed a hundred and forty-eight ducks at one firing. The splendid wild swan wheeled and trumpeted in the clear autumn air; the wild geese flew there in their beautiful V-shaped flight; duck in all the varieties known to modern sportsmen—canvas-back, mallard, widgeon, redhead, oxeye, dottrel—rested on the Chesapeake waters in vast flocks ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... however, one place more that the stranger will visit, the little spot at Nysoee where his atelier stands, and where the tree bends its branches over the canal to the solitary swan which he fed. The name of Thorwaldsen will be remembered in England by his statues of Jason and Byron; in Switzerland, by his "recumbent lion;" in Roeskilde, by his figure of Christian the Fourth. It will live in every breast in which a love of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... Baltic and the North Sea there lies an old swan's nest, wherein swans are born and have been ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... amiable, sweet-tempered and sweet-tongued maiden may often become, especially with her own sex, because of their innate feeling that she is not, in spite of all her courteous endeavors, really one of them. It is an evil day for the swan when she finds herself the only swan among a ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... calf. The tide no longer throws up the whiskered seal, with its curled ears and sharp jaws, dragging itself along on its nailless paws. On that Portland—nowadays so changed as scarcely to be recognized—the absence of forests precluded nightingales; but now the falcon, the swan, and the wild goose have fled. The sheep of Portland, nowadays, are fat and have fine wool; the few scattered ewes, which nibbled the salt grass there two centuries ago, were small and tough and coarse in the fleece, as became Celtic flocks brought there by garlic-eating ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the flood Full brown came from the West, and like pale blood Expanded to the upper crimson cloud. Love, that had robbed us of immortal things, This little moment mercifully gave, Where I have seen across the twilight wave The swan sail with her young ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... three," she answered, and taking a piece of swan's-down, a lock of golden hair, and a pair of silver-tinsel tights from her portmanteau she handed them ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... bird with a shot in its breast—in torture," he said, "And when you sing, it is like a swan song. Your soul is on your lips, ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... felt, henceforward a sister no more, Miss Leaf attired herself in her violet silk and white China shawl, and Miss Hilary put on her silver-grey poplin, with a cardinal cape, as was then in fashion, trimmed with white swan's-down. It was rather an elderly costume for a bridemaid; but she was determined to dress warmly, and not risk, in muslins and laces, the health which to her now was ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... survived for any considerable time in English popular tradition, stands alone in its cycle, and is the first heroic poem in the MS. It is in a very fragmentary state, some of the deficiencies being supplied by short pieces of prose. There are two motives in the story: the Swan-maids, and the Vengeance of the Captive Smith. Three brothers, Slagfinn, Egil and Voelund, sons of the Finnish King, while out hunting built themselves a house by the lake in Wolfsdale. There, early one morning, they saw three Valkyries spinning, ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... reasonable, I have another plan to suggest: I will give up my prospects of fortune in France, and will live here in this rotten Old Swan as long as you live, never taking Betty from your side. If you do not give her to me under these conditions, I will take her away without any ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... and another of fine Venetian lacework, worked in "punto in aria." A lady in Court dress holds a rose to shield herself from Cupid, a dear little fellow with wings, who is shooting his dart at her heart. Perhaps poor Elizabeth Hinde died of it and this is her "swan song." ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... was wonder to wee Shane, there was so much of it that it flicked through his head like a dream: the hazy September afternoon; the long, lean vessel like a greyhound; the sails white as a swan's wing; the cordage that rattled like wood; the bare-footed, bearded sailors; the town of Carrickfergus in the offing; the lap-lap-lap of water; the silent man at the wheel; the sudden transition of the friendly Raghery man into a firm, authoritative figure, quick as a cat, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... named Swan, who dwelt in Bearfirth, which lies north from Steingrimsfirth. This Swan was a great wizard, and he was Hallgerda's mother's brother. He was quarrelsome, and hard to deal with, but Hallgerda asked him to the feast, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... Swan River, Australia, attached to a coralline; Mus. Cuming. Port Western, Bass's Straits, as stated in the Voyage ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... averred, was sufficient to make a petticoat and upper garments for his wife and daughter. One evening he was sitting in his lodge, on the banks of a river, and hearing the quacking of ducks on the stream, he fired through the lodge door at a venture. He killed a swan that happened to be flying by, and twenty brace of ducks in the stream. But this did not check the force of his shot; they passed on, and struck the heads of two loons, at the moment they were coming up from ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... "Swan? Well, yes, I will, if you wish it: I don't mind," says Molly, amiably. "And now tell me, are you not surprised to ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... Cardinal Grimani or dug from time to time from the soil of Venetian provinces. Here are a few beautiful or precious relics and much that is indifferent. In the absence of a Hermaphrodite, the most popular possession is (as ever) a group of Leda and the Swan. I noted among the more attractive pieces a Roman altar with lovers (Baedeker calls them satyrs), No. 68; a Livia in black marble, No. 102; a nice girl, Giulia Mammea, No. 142; a boy, very like a Venetian boy of to-day, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the bath-room rare. For things are come to this; the merest dunce, So but he choose, may start up bard at once, Whose head, too hot for hellebore to cool, Was ne'er submitted to a barber's tool. What ails me now, to dose myself each spring? Else had I been a very swan to sing. Well, never mind: mine be the whetstone's lot, Which makes steel sharp, though cut itself will not. Although no writer, I may yet impart To writing folk the precepts of their art, Whence come its stores, what trains and forms a bard, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... announced, not as a hero, but as a fool; who was armed, not with a sword which cut irresistibly, but with a spear which he held only on condition that he did not use it; and who instead of exulting in the slaughter of a dragon was frightfully ashamed of having shot a swan. The change in the conception of the Deliverer could hardly be more complete. It reflects the change which took place in Wagner's mind between the composition of The Rhine Gold and Night Falls On The Gods; and it explains why he dropped The Ring ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... thus they spake, the angelic caravan, Arriving like a rush of mighty wind, Cleaving the fields of space, as doth the swan Some silver stream (say Ganges, Nile, or Inde, Or Thames, or Tweed), and midst them an old man With an old soul, and both extremely blind, Halted before the gate, and, in his shroud, Seated their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... those Bulgars who agitate from Roumania or from Serbia. He goes to the Banat, where he is not only made most welcome but is enabled to publish The Bulgarian News, which is political, and a literary supplement, The Swan of the Danube. The Turks are uneasy; they ask the Austrians to suppress these papers. The Austrians comply and expel the editor. He is persecuted by the Porte in Moldavia and flies to Russia, where he devotes himself seriously to ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... been discovered by Dr H.O. Forbes, namely, a true species of raven (Palaeocorax moriorum), a remarkable rail (Diaphorapteryx), closely related to the extinct Aphanapteryx of Mauritius, and a large coot (Palaeolimnas chathamensis). There have also been discovered the remains of a species of swan belonging to the South American genus Chenopis, and of the tuatara (Hatteria) lizard, the unique species of an ancient family now surviving only in New Zealand. The swan is identical with an extinct species found in caves and kitchen-middens ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... mute, either. Like the dying swan, he would breathe out his pain in a last song, and give sound and words to his despair and his agony. He could no longer read; ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... Caleb Swan, on March 11, 1792, advises Wilkinson that he had been to Kentucky and had paid off the Kentucky militia who had served under St. Clair. Wilkinson in a letter of March 13th, expresses the utmost anxiety for the retention of St. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... all pulled off a dance, and a big talk in a big council tent—it must have been big, for there were seventy Sioux in it, and just those two young American officers. The big pipe was on forked sticks in front of the chief, and under it they had sprinkled swan's-down, and they all were dressed up to their limit. And though they could have been killed any minute, these two white men had that lot of Indians feeding from the hand, as the ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... half-waking, half-sleeping. Whenever he was on the point of falling asleep a terror seemed to come upon him and scare his rest away, for his slumbers were haunted with spectres. If he tried, however, to rouse himself in good earnest he felt fanned as by the wings of a swan, and he heard the soft murmuring of waters, until soothed by the agreeable delusion, he sunk back again into a half-conscious state. At length he must have fallen sound asleep, for it seemed to him as if he were lifted up upon the fluttering wings of the swans and borne by them far over land ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... producing a light. In 1845 Mr. Staite devised an incandescent lamp consisting of a fine rod or stick of carbon rendered white-hot by the current, and to preserve the carbon from burning in the atmosphere, he enclosed it in a glass bulb, from which the air was exhausted by an air pump. Edison and Swan, in 1878, and subsequently, went a step further, and substituted a filament or fine thread of carbon for the rod. The new lamp united the advantages of wire in point of form with those of carbon as a material. ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... they kissed each other, and Nora went to look after the tea. She was a slim, pale-faced school-girl, with yellow-brown eyes, and yellow-brown hair, not as yet very attractive in looks, but her mother was convinced that it was only the plainness of the cygnet, and that the swan was only a few years off. Nora, who at seventeen had no illusions, was grateful to her mother for the belief but did not share ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with Merlin stood at the edge of the lake and wondered how it would be possible to obtain the sword, all of a sudden a barge appeared in the shape of a beautiful white swan. In it stood a radiant lady, clad all in green with white pearls in her hair and pearls like drops of weeping mist all over her garments—which themselves appeared like woven and intermingled rushes. The boat made its way through ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... forewood; for things are come to a creesus; and I have seen with my own bays, such smuggling — But I scorn for to exclose the secrets of the family; and if it wance comes to marrying, who nose but the frolick may go round — I believes as how, Miss Liddy would have no reversion if her swan would appear; and you would be surprised, Molly, to receive a bride's fever from your humble sarvant — but this is all suppository, dear girl; and I have sullenly promised to Mr Clinker, that neither ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... after Let your tears be tears of laughter - Every sigh that finds a vent Be a sigh of sweet content! When you marry merry maiden, Then the air with love is laden; Every flower is a rose, Every goose becomes a swan, Every kind of trouble goes Where the last year's snows have gone; Sunlight takes the place of shade When you ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... thy kingdom, all are well. The eagle builds his nest in a high tree; at times he grows careless in the fancied security of his high-perched home; then even a small bird will sometimes come and plunder it and eat the eggs and young brood: so it is with the swan whose nest is in the sedges on the lake. It, too, trusts too confidently in the dark thickets of reeds, yet prowling water falcons will sometimes come and rob it of eggs and young. This might happen to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... he'd do it. Listen to him," for another wail reached them from the disconsolate warship. "He's fixed there as though, he was glued to it. He'll have to jettison all his bunker an' a gun or two afore he gets off. They tell me Cigno means 'swan.' I wonder wot's the I-talian for 'goose.' Go an' tell Tagg. Tell him to tumble up quick, if on'y for the sake ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... mounted messenger; and about half-past seven the Empress reappeared, dressed in perfect taste. In spite of the cold, she had had her hair dressed with silver wheat and blue flowers, and wore a white satin polonaise, edged with swan's down, which costume was exceedingly becoming. The Emperor interrupted his work to regard her: "I did not take long at my toilet, did I?" said she, smiling; whereupon his Majesty, without replying, showed her the clock, then rose, gave ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... her smile Chooseth—'I will have a lover, Riding on a steed of steeds! He shall love me without guile; And to him I will discover That swan's ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... small palace, also rococo, peeped out behind a clump of bushy oaks. The moon shone dimly, shrouded in mist, and over the earth there was, as it were spread out, a delicate smoke. The eye could not decide what it was, whether moonlight or fog. On one of the lakes a swan was asleep; its long back was white as the snow of the frost-bound steppes, while glow-worms gleamed like diamonds in the bluish shadow at the base ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... any very melancholy trials!" replied he: "hitherto your young life has glided along as peacefully as a swan over ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... once more ahead, swan-white in the new daylight on a great breadth of water which she had earlier heard him tell ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... kind o' yeou tew say thet, an' I feel it, I swan," he finally stammered, as he managed to thrust out his brown hand, and take that of the boy which had been so impulsively ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... Stebney Swan, John Stinger, Robert Emerson, Anthony Pugh and Isabella ——. This company came from Portsmouth, Va. Stebney is thirty-four years of age, medium size, mulatto, and quite wide awake. He was owned by an oysterman by the name of Jos. Carter, who lived near Portsmouth. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... to go down to the stream, for at these times flights of birds were constantly approaching, and they could always rely upon coming home laden after an hour's shooting. Upon the present occasion, however, they did not do badly, but returned with a swan, three geese, and twelve ducks, just in time to find the ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... carries off a lamb from the flocks of careless shepherds. Were I an ornithologist, I might write a goodly volume on the birds of this country; but I must content myself with these few notices; not forgetting, however, to mention the stately black swan, a bird becoming every year ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... with extraordinary success." This was, of course, our old friend "Boots at the Swan," which Frank Robson, later, made his own. As Boz had nothing to do with it, there could be no objection. Barnaby Rudge, however, was the piece of resistance. On another occasion, January, 1840, came Mr. J. Russell, with his vocal entertainment, "Russell's Recollections" and "A Portrait ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... Staff Captain would have told you. Edgar is the swan—the last of his race, I'm afraid, so far as this place is concerned. He lives on the lake, and usually comes ashore to draw his rations about lunch-time. He is inclined to be stand-offish on one side, as he has only one eye; but he is most affable on the other. ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... not built on the same lines as the Princess. Princess Winsome is one of our names for Lloyd. And he says it is ridiculous for me to try to do things the way she does. He is always quoting Epictetus to me: 'Were I a nightingale I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.' He says that trying to copy her is what makes me just plain goose so much of ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... ridge of earth interesting to the eyes by the azure tint it imparts." ... Part of the echo may be "the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by the wood nymph." It is darker, the poet's flute is heard out over the pond and Walden hears the swan song of that "Day" and faintly echoes... Is it a transcendental tune of Concord? 'Tis an evening when the "whole body is one sense," ... and before ending his day he looks out over the clear, crystalline water of the pond and catches a glimpse ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... You can tell the difference by the twinkle, when the distance over water confuses the eye as to size. Mighty twelve-pounders with a five-foot spread of wing, many of these, and with more than a suggestion of the swan's mystic ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... like a razor's edge, with teeth like pearls, with majesty of bearing like to that of the king himself, with fingers like rosebuds set in pink seashells, with motion like that of an antelope, with grace like that of a swan floating upon water, and—I don't ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... royal rage with her poet. At last he cries out for Pity to become incarnate and vest his lady in her own robe. It may be that he loved his misery; he is always on the point of dying, but, like the swan, he was careful to set it to music first. Selvaggia, in fact, laughed at him (he turned once to call her a Jew for that) egged on as she was by her brother and her own vivacious habit. She had no Nicoletta ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... lifted by swans on their soft wings, and carried far away over lands and seas, all to the sound of their sweetest melody. "Swans singing! swans singing!" thought he continually; "is not that the strain of Death?" Presently he found himself hovering above a vast sea. A swan warbled in his ear that it was the Mediterranean; and as he looked down into the deep it became like clear crystal, transparent to the bottom. This rejoiced him much, for he could see Undine sitting in ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... the best dressmaker they could find. The oldest sister chose a pink silk gown. "I shall wear my red satin cloak trimmed with swan's-down," said she. ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... open gratis to all well-behaved pedestrians. The fatigued tradesman, the weary labourer, may at any time saunter round and walk to the brink of the giddy heights facing Levi; feast their eyes on the striking panorama unrolled at their feet; watch the white winged argosies of commerce float swan-like on the bosom of the mighty flood, whilst the wealthy citizen, in his panelled carriage, would take his afternoon drive round the Park en payant. The student, the scholar, the traveller might each in turn find here amusement, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... when a laughing boy," returned the patriarch, with the peculiar recollection of vast age, "I stood upon the sands of the sea shore, and saw a big canoe, with wings whiter than the swan's, and wider than many eagles, come from the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... he cares one way or another!" Honor answered, wounded but proud. "And I have had a lesson never to mistake a goose for a swan again." ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... Troilus, Pandarus, and Thersites, skilless Shakspeare had but begun—artful Dryden made an end of them; Cressida, who was false as she was fair, yet left alive to deceive more men, became a paragon of truth, chastity, and suicide; and by an amazing stretch of invention, far beyond the Swan's, was added Andromache. Dryden proudly announces that "the scenes of Pandarus and Cressida, of Troilus and Pandarus, of Andromache with Hector and the Trojans, in the second act, are wholly new; together with that of Nestor and Ulysses with Thersites, and that of Thersites ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... I got. Mr. Swan, the principal, waved his hand to silence me; and then, and only then, did I realize the enormity of what I ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... impressed, are saying it after him, when, at the words "Der reine Thor," the pure—the clean-lived—the immaculate Fool, a commotion develops in the direction of the lake-side, cries of "Woe! A pity! A shame! Who did it?" A great wild swan flies in sight, sinks to earth hurt to death by an arrow, and the king's esquires bring in, chiding and accusing him, a tall, innocent-eyed, fresh-cheeked boy, armed with bow and arrows,—Parsifal. Rustic enough is his outfit, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... child's hair unshaved for four or five years after its birth); Juadi, a gambler; Karsa, a deer; Khairaiya, the khair or catechu tree; Lodhi, born from the caste of that name (in Saugor); Markam, the name of a Gond sept; Rajhans, a swan; Suriya Bansia, from the sun (members of this barga feed the caste-fellows on the occasion of a solar eclipse and throw away their earthen pots); Silgainya from sil, a slate; and Tiparia from tipari, a basket (these two septs ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Sam Rodman; but Donald was too busy, just then, even to enjoy his triumph. As the hull slid off into the deep water, the boat-builder threw over the anchor, and veered out the cable till her headway was checked. The Maud rested on the water as gracefully as a swan, and the work of the ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... from the Dublin post-office, to every quarter of the kingdom. But the counterplot anticipated the plot. Lord Edward, betrayed by a person called Higgins, proprietor of the Freeman's Journal, was taken on the 19th of May, after a desperate struggle with Majors Swan and Sirr, and Captain Ryan, in his hiding-place in Thomas Street; the brothers Sheares were arrested in their own house on the morning of the 21st, while Surgeon Lawless escaped from the city, and finally from the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... which relates that next morning, when Mark Twain arrived in the Express office (it was then at 14 Swan Street), there happened to be no one present who knew him. A young man rose very bruskly and asked if there was any one he would like to see. It is reported that he replied, with ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Erus the Armenian, which I may possibly make the Subject of a future Speculation, records some beautiful Transmigrations; as that the Soul of Orpheus, who was musical, melancholy, and a Woman-hater, entered into a Swan; the Soul of Ajax, which was all Wrath and Fierceness, into a Lion; the Soul of Agamemnon, that was rapacious and imperial, into an Eagle; and the Soul of Thersites, who was a Mimick and a ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... conclusions; but to calculate the necessary formulae for the instruments he had conceived was often beyond him, and he must fall back on the help of others, notably on that of his cousin and lifelong intimate friend, emeritus Professor Swan,[7] of St. Andrews, and his later friend, Professor P. G. Tait. It is a curious enough circumstance, and a great encouragement to others, that a man so ill equipped should have succeeded in one of the most abstract and arduous walks ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rich clothing and low hum of talking seemed all a part of a world so different from his, so strangely more beautiful than anything he had known, that he sat in dreamland, and started when, after a hush, rose high and clear the music of Lohengrin's swan. The infinite beauty of the wail lingered and swept through every muscle of his frame, and put it all a-tune. He closed his eyes and grasped the elbows of the chair, touching unwittingly the lady's arm. And the lady drew away. A deep longing swelled ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... talking to the sacristan. "I hear many objections to that bird, sir," he remarked to me, "from fastidious tourists: one thinks that a peacock, spreading its jewels by mechanism, would have a richer effect. Another says that a swan, perpetually wrestling with its dying song, would be more poetical. Others, in the light of late events, would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... come to pass that thou, thine armor cast away Art mute in heaven; and but an idle tale? At such a time the horns should sprout, the raging bull hold sway, Or they white hair beneath swan's down conceal Here's Dana's self! But touch that lovely form Thy limbs will melt ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Eagle of North America (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) hides himself on a rock by the edge of a stream and awaits the passing of a swan. This eagle is brave and strong, but the palmiped is vigorous, and though inferior in the air, he has an advantage on the water, and may escape death by plunging. The eagle knows this advantage, so he compels the swan to remain in the air by attacking him from below ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... the forest was you could have heard an acorn drop or a bird call from one end of it to the other. The exquisite silence was evidently waiting for the exquisite voice, that presently not so much broke as mingled with it, like a swan swimming through ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... follows: "On Monday, the 13th, she came by water from Westminster, and landing at Temple Bridge, walked at noon-day through Fleet Street, bearing a waxen taper of two pounds weight, to St. Paul's, where she offered it at the high altar. On the Wednesday following, she landed at the Old Swan, and passed through Bride Street, Gracechurch Street, and to Leadenhall, and at Cree Church, near Aldgate, made her second offering. On the ensuing Friday she was put on shore at Queenhithe, whence she ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... with a heavy weight for the remainder of the day. On the south bank of the Saskatchewan were some poplars ten or twelve feet in circumference at the root. Beyond the river we traversed an extensive swamp bounded by woods. In the evening we crossed the Swan Lake, about six miles in breadth and eight in length, and halted on its south side for the night, twenty-four ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... To him greatest of comforts It became in the world at the wished-for tidings,— His heart delighted,—which army-leaders 995 Over the east-ways, messengers, brought him, How happy a journey over the swan-road The men with the queen successfully made To the land of the Greeks. The Caesar bade them With greatest haste again prepare 1000 Themselves for the way. The men delayed not As soon as they had the answer heard, The words of ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... of the Mendip Hills. So, fearing lest I might be followed, I went "all out" through Axbridge and Cheddar, until at last I came to the fine old cathedral at Wells, which I knew quite familiarly. Near it was the Swan Hotel, at which, after some difficulty, I aroused the "boots," secured a room, and placed ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... crimson ray By changes comes and goes, As rosy-hued Aurora's play Along the polar snows; Gay as the insect-bird that sips From scented flowers the dew— Pure as the snowy swan that dips Its wings in waters blue; Sweet thoughts are mirrored on her face, Like clouds on the calm sea, And every motion is a ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the picture was, there was a fluttering of great wings and a stamping of hoofs, and a sweet, soft, friendly neighing; and there came out of the book a beautiful white horse with a long, long, white mane and a long, long, white tail, and he had great wings like swan's wings, and the softest, kindest eyes in the world, and he stood there ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... in a park, was suddenly pounced upon by one of the swans, that pulled the animal into the water, and held it under till it was drowned. This cruel deed was noticed by the other deer in the park, and did not go long unrevenged; for shortly after this the very swan, which had never till this time been molested by the deer, was singled out when on land one day, and furiously attacked by the herd, which closed around the cruel swan, ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown
... fresh deer meat, two rabbits or two ptarmigan, one pound of flour or meal mixed with two ounces of tallow. That reminds me of the way the old half-breed dog-drivers used to do. In such districts as Pelly and Swan River, where fish and other food for dogs was scarce, we had frequently to feed both men and dogs on rations of flour. Some of the half-breeds would leave their ration of flour with their family, and count on eating the dog's ration ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... to the store," he said and Denver followed in a daze. She was not like any woman he had ever dreamed of, nor was she the woman he had thought. In the night, when she was singing, she had seemed slender and ethereal with her swan's neck and piled up hair; but now she was different, a glorious human animal, strong and supple yet with the lines of a girl. And her eyes were still the eyes of a child, big and round ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... sporting mid Elysian bowers, Where flowers of sweetest odor spring, And birds of golden plumage sing, And wanton thro' the sylvan bowers. There lakelets sparkled in the glow, Wreathed round with flowers of many a hue, And golden pebbles shone below The wave that bore the swan of snow, Reflecting, in its mirror true, The flowers which o'er its surface grew, The tints of earth—the hues of sky— That in its limpid bosom lie. And groups of happy children played Around the verge of each cascade; ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... her grandma bustled along in her crackling black ulster; they went so fast that she had now and again to give an undignified little skip to keep up with them. As well as her luggage strapped into a neat sausage, Fenella carried clasped to her her grandma's umbrella, and the handle, which was a swan's head, kept giving her shoulder a sharp little peck as if it too wanted her to hurry... Men, their caps pulled down, their collars turned up, swung by; a few women all muffled scurried along; and one tiny boy, only his little black arms and legs showing out of a white woolly ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... bachelor, and will not think me a particularly great donkey for prattling on in this way about my swan, who probably to unprejudiced eyes has a power ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... mentioned, can't, I think, be denied. But yet the spirit and the majesty of ancient Rome were never so well expressed as by Corneille. Nor has any other French dramatic writer, in the general character of his works, shown such a masculine strength and greatness of thought. Racine is the swan described by ancient poets, which rises to the clouds on downy wings and sings a sweet but a gentle and plaintive note. Corneille is the eagle, which soars to the skies on bold and sounding pinions, and fears not to perch on the sceptre of Jupiter, ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... Arunta seems to be white cockatoo[116], but we also find a word almost indistinguishable from it in sound—eranta—with the meaning of pelican[117]. Kulbara means emu and koolbirra kangaroo[118]. Malu (kangaroo), mala (mouse), and male (swan) are found in tribes of West Australia, though not of tribes living in immediate proximity one to another[119]. But perhaps the best example is that of Derroein, which, as we have seen, means kangaroo. In addition to durween (young male ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... 's time now I should give my thoughts upon the plan, Thet chipped the shell at Buffalo, o' settin' up ole Van. I used to vote fer Martin, but, I swan, I 'm clean disgusted,— He aint the man thet I can say is fittin' to be trusted; He aint half antislav'ry 'nough, nor I aint sure, ez some be, He 'd go in fer abolishin' the Deestrick o' Columby; An', now I come to recollect, it kin' o' makes ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the Lord Perc-y, He bare a bent bow in his hand was made of trusty tree, An arrow that a cloth yard was long to the hard steel hal-ed he, A dint that was both sad and sore he sat on Sir Hugh the Montgomer-y. The dint it was both sad and sore that he on Montgomery set, The swan-feathers that his arrow bare, with his heart-blood they were wet. There was never a freke one foot would flee, but still in stour did stand, Hewing on each other while they might dree with many a baleful brand. This battle began in Cheviot an hour before the noon, ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... Once escaped a keen-eyed falcon. Soon after him a huntsman came a-riding, And he beckoned to the falcon that had strayed, But the bright-eyed bird thus answered: "In gold cage you could not keep me, On your hand you could not hold me, So now I fly to blue seas far away. There a white swan I will kill, Of ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... these little ones, grieving at the sorrows of the heroes, laughing at their happy successes, breathless with anxiety lest the cat catch the disobedient mouse, clapping hands when the Ugly Duckling is changed into the Swan,—all appreciation, all interest, all joy! We might count the rest of the world well lost, could we ever be surrounded by such blooming faces, such loving ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... I am lock'd in one of them: If you do love me, you will find me out. Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof; Let music sound while he doth make his choice; Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, Fading in music: that the comparison May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream And watery death-bed for him. He may win; And what is music then? Then music is Even as the flourish when true subjects bow To a new-crowned monarch; such it is As are those dulcet sounds in break ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... early spring of 1741. Besides the surveyor himself, who was then a prominent citizen of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, and his son of the same name, then nineteen years old, the party consisted of Caleb Swan, Benjamin Smith, Zachariah Hildrith, Ebenezer Shaw and William Richardson. Under an imperative order from the Privy Council in England, Governor Belcher, who at that time administered government ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... years. Cuvier considers it probable that whales sometimes live 1000 years. The dolphin and porpoise attain the age of 30; an eagle died at Vienna at the age of 104; ravens have frequently reached the age of 100; swans have been known to live to the age of 300. Mr. Malerton has the skeleton of a swan that attained the age of 200 years. Pelicans are long-lived. A tortoise has been known to live to the age of ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... spot where we now are, which, though deficient in timber, is beyond measure fertile in corn, and contains, I am told, some excellent shooting—that is partridge shooting; for a pheasant is here a kind of rara avis in terris, and as little likely to be met with as the very black swan itself; but then it's a fine country for woodcocks, whilst the bottoms almost swarm with snipes; all of which the squire has promised to show me in the course of the day, and for days to come, if I feel so inclined; for he won't hear ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... see the Shakspeare House as it was,—wedged in between, and joined to, the "Swan and Maidenhead" Tavern and a mean and dilapidated brick building, not much worse than itself, however. The first improvement (as you see in No. 2) was to pull down this brick building. The next (as you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... afford them. I talked with an old Indian who pointed out one of the carvings he had made in the Wrangell village, for which he told me he had received forty blankets, a gun, a canoe, and other articles, all together worth about $170. Mr. Swan, who has contributed much information concerning the British Columbian and Alaskan tribes, describes a totem pole that cost $2500. They are always planted firmly in the ground and stand fast, showing the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... "Waal, I swan!" he ejaculated. "Here I am wastin' time on this cantankerous old pirate when I ought ter be hustlin' around ter ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... of the poet's passing is believed to have been an ancient dwelling-house adjacent to St. Michael's Church. At that date it was a private residence of the Whiddon family; but during later times it became known as the "Black Swan Inn," or tavern (a black swan being the crest of Sir John Whiddon, Judge of Queen's Bench in the first Mary's reign); while to-day this restored Mansion appears as the hostelry ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... year; but for this there must be a proper boat. Any person going there at present ought not to land if the surf is high, without Captain Davies' large sail-boat, which is as safe as a tug, and rides the sea like a swan. Send him word to send his largest boat at the best hour for landing. The Captain is a native merchant, ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... surface I could see signs of life, sometimes mere rings and ripples in the water, sometimes the gleam of a great silver-sided fish in the air, sometimes the arched, slate-colored back of some passing monster. Once upon a yellow sandbank I saw a creature like a huge swan, with a clumsy body and a high, flexible neck, shuffling about upon the margin. Presently it plunged in, and for some time I could see the arched neck and darting head undulating over the water. Then it dived, and I saw ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stream of Lutha, and the cliffs of sea-surrounded Gormal. It was noticed that there was no mention of the wolf, common in ancient Caledonia; nor of the thrush or lark or any singing bird; nor of the salmon of the sealochs, so often referred to in modern Gaelic poetry. But the deer, the swan, the boar, eagle, and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Editha, the "swan-necked," as some chroniclers term her, groped, with eyes half-blinded with tears, through that heap of mutilated dead, her soul filled with horror, yet seeking on and on until at length her love-true ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... themselves in their pristine vigor. Clarendon[**] tells us a pleasant incident to this purpose: a waterman, belonging to a man of quality, having a squabble with a citizen about his fare, showed his badge, the crest of his master, which happened to be a swan; and thence insisted on better treatment from the citizen. But the other replied carelessly, that he did not trouble his head about that goose. For this offence, he was summoned before the marshal's court; was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... greatest artists living in England, will never be elected Academicians; and artistic England is asked to acquiesce in this grave scandal, and also in many minor scandals: the election of Mr. Dicksee in place of Mr. Henry Moore, and Mr. Stanhope Forbes in place of Mr. Swan or Mr. John Sargent! No one thinks Mr. Dicksee as capable an artist as Mr. Henry Moore, and no one thinks Mr. Stanhope Forbes as great an artist as Mr. Swan or Mr. Sargent. Then why were they elected? Because the men who represent most emphatically the taste of the City have become so ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... his hand with as much deference as though she were the proudest dame in town. Her face was partly turned away from the window, but as Tryon's eye fell upon her, he gave a great start. Surely, no two women could be so much alike. The height, the graceful droop of the shoulders, the swan-like poise of the head, the well-turned little ear,—surely, no two women could have them all identical! But, pshaw! the notion was absurd, it was merely the reflex influence of ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... to pass the night there. But when the sun was just going to set, she heard a rustling, and saw six swans come flying in at the window. They sat down on the floor, and blew at one another, and blew all their feathers off, and took off their swan's-skins like shirts. Then the little girl saw them and recognised her brothers, and was very glad, and crept out ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... and you make good verses, it is likely enough that some queen will stuff your mouth with balass rubies. How poorly our modern means of locomotion compare with those of the Nights. If you take a jinni or a swan-maiden you can go from Cairo to Bokhara in less time than our best expresses could cover a mile. The recent battles between the Russians and the Japanese are mere skirmishes compared with the fight described in "The City of Brass"—where 700 million are ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright |
