"Swarm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and blotting out the sweetness with angry buzzing, furry bodies, armed with sharp stings for punishment or revenge. She had seen a little peach-tree weighed down and bowed to the red earth at its roots with the weight of such a swarm. She felt at this juncture very like the tree. A little more, only a slight increase of the burden, and the slender trunk would have snapped. When the native bee-master came and shook the double swarm into a couple of hives, the little ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... cavalry, excellent for skirmishing, harassing, terrifying, by their extraordinary shouts and their unbridled gallop. They were not able to hold out against a regular disciplined cavalry provided with bits and substantial arms. They were but a swarm of flies that always harasses and kills at the least mistake; elusive and perfect for a long pursuit and the massacre of the vanquished to whom the Numidians gave neither rest nor truce. They were like Arab cavalry, badly armed for the combat, but sufficiently ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... Every look of them is a sigh—'Would I were something other! I am sick and tired of what I am.' In this swamp-soil of self-contempt, every poisonous weed flourishes, and all so small, so secret, so dishonest, and so sweetly rotten. Here swarm the worms of sensitiveness and resentment, here the air smells odious with secrecy, with what is not to be acknowledged; here is woven endlessly the net of the meanest of conspiracies, the conspiracy ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... must not travel as a courier of the Czar usually would. No one must even suspect what he really was. Spies swarm in a rebellious country; let him be recognized, and his mission would be in danger. Also, while supplying him with a large sum of money, which was sufficient for his journey, and would facilitate it in some measure, General Kissoff had not given ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... the face with his polite struggles when he broke from them at last. "How they do hang on to a man, over here!" the Iowa man continued. "And the Americans are as bad as any. Why, there's one ratty little Englishman up at our place, and our girls just swarm after him; their mothers are worse. Well, it's so, Jenny," he said to the lady who had joined them and whom March turned round to see when he spoke to her. "If I wanted a foreigner I should go in for a man. And these officers! Put their mustaches up at ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... through forests many a mile; A month had passed since then. Midsummer blazed On all things round: the vast, unmoving groves Stretched silent forth their immemorial arms Arching a sultry gloom. Within it buzzed Feebly the insect swarm: the dragon-fly Stayed soon his flight: the streamlet scarce made way: In shrunken pools, panting, the cattle stood, Languidly browsing on the dried-up sprays: No bird-song shook the bower. Alone that maid Glided light-limbed, as ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... been in the city for a long time, looked with a certain curiosity on that swarm of people and on that Forum Romanum, which both dominated the sea of the world and was flooded by it, so that Petronius, who divined the thoughts of his companion, called it "the nest of the Quirites—without the Quirites." In truth, the local element was well-nigh lost in ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... And there I saw a weird ominous scene. Up the empty harbor, under a dark and cloudy sky, came four barges, black with negro laborers, and ahead and around and behind them came police boats throwing their searchlights upon an angry swarm of union picket dories, from which as they drew nearer I heard furious voices shouting, "Scab!" One of the barges docked where I stood and the negroes quickly slunk inside. I drew back from them as they passed, for to me too they were "scabs" that night. Afraid ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... recently become a mother, Chitrangada, and other ladies of the royal house-hold, all proceeded with the old monarch. The wail they uttered on that occasion, O king, from grief, resembled the loud lamentations of a swarm of she-ospreys. Then the wives of the citizens,—Brahmanas and Kshatriyas and Vaisyas and Sudras,—also came out into the streets from every side. At Dhritarashtra's departure, O king, all the citizens of Hastinapore became as distressed as they had been, O ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... painted with holy monograms and devices to add a blessing and security to the provident labors of the little inmates. They were, in fact, beatified bees, who had to be solemnly invited to attend the death mass when the owner died, else they would fly away, refusing to stay. If a swarm of bees hung to a house, it was simply as a warning that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... scarlet and blue on the trail formed a target which the leaden missiles could not miss. Continually shouting the war whoop, exultant now with the joy of expected triumph, the savages hovered on either flank of Braddock's army like a swarm of bees, but with a sting far more deadly. The brave and wily Beaujeu had been killed in the first minute of the battle, but St. Luc, Dumas and Ligneris, equally brave and wily, directed the onset, and the huge Tandakora ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... your neckerchief without thinking too much about it. The ancient prophets called this world, even in their time, a valley of woe. Now, at that period, the Orientals had, with the permission of the constituted authorities, a swarm of comely slaves, besides their wives! What shall we call the valley of the Seine between Calvary and Charenton, where the law allows ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... excursion, is open to question, but that it was a unique and comic sight we were all agreed. The hotel garden, filled with guides, horses, donkeys, and pilgrims; the delicate exhibition of ankles and feet —such feet; the chairs to help the rotund damsels; the swarm of natives round one especially fat woman, who got down after all; the beaming face of the host, and the gloomy looks of a very fat man, just the size for a small pilgrim tea party; not omitting the priest, whose flowing ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... all the motley swarm of women and children caught themselves mounts—some already loaded with the gipsy baggage, some with saddles, some without, some with grass halters for bridles. In another minute Fred and I were riding surrounded by a smelly swarm of ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... your mind to one thing: from the first warm weather until August you must expect to cope with insect pests. The black fly will keep you busy until late afternoon; the midges will swarm you about sunset; and the mosquito will preserve the tradition after you have turned in. As for the deer-fly, and others of his piratical breed, he will bite like a ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... doubt an able man; but what has he ever done in comparison to what Pisani has accomplished? Why should we place our only hope of safety in the hands of an untried man? I warrant, if Pisani was out and about, you would see Venice as active as a swarm of bees, pouring out against our aggressors. What is being done now? Preparations are being made; but of what kind? Ships are sunk in the channel; but what will be the use of this if Chioggia falls? The canals to that place ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... way I have got over between twenty and thirty miles of road which were tramped in the dark, and the description of which would have plagued you worse than a swarm ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... to the dispassionate intelligence, the calm reason, and the sober judgment, of the community. The Senate has no army, no navy, no patronage, no lucrative offices, no glittering honors, to bestow. Around us there is no swarm of greedy expectants, rendering us homage, anticipating our wishes, and ready ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... occasional luminous white figures. As weeks passed and his efforts continued, there came a noticeable increase in the number of these moving shapes until, when the doctor desired it, he could make them swarm everywhere, over the ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month—the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this—or the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the barracks of the Chasseurs of the Guards, and the line of cafes all filled with uniforms. I caught a glimpse as I went by of the blue and gold of some of my comrades, amid the swarm of dark infantry coats and the light green of the Guides. There they sat, sipping their wine and smoking their cigars, little dreaming what their comrade had on hand. One of them, the chief of my squadron, caught sight of me in the lamplight, and came shouting after ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lurking in the ground by trampling on them, and even men of wisdom and enlightenment destroy animal life in various ways, even while sleeping or reposing themselves. What hast thou to say to this?—The earth and the air all swarm with living organisms, which are unconsciously destroyed by men from mere ignorance. Is not this so? The commandment that people should not do harm to any creature, was ordained of old by men, who were ignorant of the true facts ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... king, whose realm was terribly exhausted by the long contest with England, a contest wherein one nation alone had felt the invader's foot. French prosperity had been nibbled off like green foliage before a swarm of locusts, and the whole north-eastern portion of France was in a sorry state of desolation by 1435. On the other hand, the territories covered by Burgundy as an overlord had greatly increased during the sixteen years that Philip had worn the title. An aggregation ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... his followers broke from trot to canter—canter to gallop—and soon were cracking their hard hoofs on the stony court. Like a swarm of bees the riders swooped down upon the racers, caught them, and led ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... from a kind of penny- royal herb and powdered charcoal. Talking about pests, in some parts the ants were even more terrible than the mosquitoes, and I have known one variety—a reddish-brown monster, an inch long—to swarm over and actually kill children by stinging them. Another pest was the leech. It was rather dangerous to bathe in some of the lagoons on account of the leeches that infested the waters. Often in crossing a swamp I would feel a slight tickling ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... to his own room, Diggory and Mugford lay awake for hours discussing the situation; and when at length they did fall asleep, it was only to dream of being chased by "The Hermit" and a swarm of long-legged policemen, who forced their way into the Third Form classroom at Ronleigh, and handcuffed the unfortunate trio in the very bosom ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... fairest heart. It is an error to suppose that homely minds are the best administrators of small duties. Who does not know how wretched a contradiction such a rule receives in the moral economy of many a home? how often the daily troubles, the swarm of blessed cares, the innumerable minutiae of arrangement in a family, prove quite too much for the generalship of feeble minds, and even the clever selfishness of strong ones; how a petty and scrupulous anxiety in defending with infinite ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... suppose there's a swarm of bees up there in the loft?" Addison exclaimed. "I'll bet there is," he added, "a runaway swarm that's gone in at the gable end outside, where ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... galleries have sprung up everywhere, and art stores are popular resorts in our larger cities. Art societies thrive and flourish in many States, and art teachers are in demand in most of our towns. Colonies of artists swarm in stately buildings in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The time has come when no artist of merit need starve for ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... find him to have been a zealous, though a very credulous, and ignorant man; for he believed the story of Papias just quoted, and many others equally absurd. He however furnishes this important intelligence, that in the second century, the Christian world was overrun with heresy, and a swarm of apocryphal, and spurious Books were ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... another like a scattering swarm of locusts, to the right and left; this phenomenon lasted until daybreak; people were thrown into consternation and cried to God, the ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... seemed to have buried it alive. There had, for a little while past, been a low growling and muttering, which all at once broke into a heavy peal of thunder. But Pandora, heeding nothing of all this, lifted the lid nearly upright, and looked inside. It seemed as if a sudden swarm of winged creatures brushed past her, taking flight out of the box, while, at the same instant, she heard the voice of Epimetheus, with a lamentable tone, as if ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... should awake and spring at me, I took a jump backwards, that would have done honour to a gymnastic master, and thus darted outside the door of the room. With a thick stick, I then returned and settled his worship. Some parts of South Africa swarm with snakes; none are free from them. I have known three men killed by them in one harvest on a farm in Oliphant's Hoek. There is an immense variety of them, the deadliest being the puff-adder, a thick and comparatively short snake. Its bite will kill occasionally within an ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... "Loathsome hells, where they swarm and squirm and wriggle in and out of each other. Sanguinary, murderous hells, where they're all tearing at each other's throats. How can you hope, how can you possibly hope to do anything original, if you're constantly breathing ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... such books 'swarm and buzz about one:' 'flap them away,' says Chesterfield, 'they have no sting.' The earl directed the whole force of his mind to oratory, and became the finest speaker of his time. Writing to Sir Horace ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... night to their moorings, their homes, the disposal of fish, and then the deep slumber of Sunday. If the breeze should enable them to round the Head, and the tide avail for landing, the lane to the village, the beach, and even the sea itself would swarm with life and bustle and flurry and incident. But Dolly's desire was for scenes more warlike and ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... soon, yes, very soon," the Sergeant said, when another lull in the firing arrived. "They will go on blazing away, throwing tons of metal at us, till they think they have blotted us out of existence, and then—then you will see they will swarm to the ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... present are chiefly due, I think, to the swarm of vagrants thrown upon society by the disbanding of the rebel armies and the emancipation of the slaves at a season of the year when it is difficult for those ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... Booksellers in this gay metropolis; who strive, by the sale of instructive and curious tomes, sometimes printed in the black letter of Gourmont and Marnef, to stem the torrent of those trivial or mischievous productions which swarm about the avenues of the Palais Royal. In ancient times, the neighbourhood of the SORBONNE was the great mart for books. When I dined in this neighbourhood, with my friend M. Gail, the Greek Professor at the College Royale, I took an ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... more and so many that there was a swarm of them, and then the brewing went on. When the sweet-wort was ready they were all, as a matter of course, anxious to taste it, first the Troll himself and then the others; but Minnikin had brewed the wort ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... only a rough path through high bracken, heather and broom. Snakes rustled as I passed, and hid themselves among the stones. The cobbler had forgotten to include these with the dangers to be encountered. To my mind they were much more to be dreaded than the boars, for these stony solitudes swarm with adders, of which the most venomous kind is the red viper, or aspic. Its ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... embrace all his kind, and who, refined though he may be himself, will not sneer at the humble wit or grotesque peculiarities of the boozing mechanic, the squalid beggar, the vicious urchin, and all the motley group of the idle, the reckless, and the imitative that swarm in the alleys and broadways of a metropolis. He who walks through a great city to find subjects for weeping, may find plenty at every corner to wring his heart; but let such a man walk on his course, and enjoy his grief alone—we are not of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... story gets out, the river will crawl with expeditions and the airships rise like a swarm of mosquitoes." I laughed as I thought of it. "We've made a great mistake not to let Mr. Yellow Press in on this. ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... A swarm of river vessels and fly-boats were coming daily through the rivers of Germany, France and the Netherlands, laden with the agricultural products and the choice manufactures of central and western Europe. Wine and oil, and delicate fabrics in thread and wool, came from France, but no silks, velvets, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... multitude of household articles—pans, pails, kettles, brooms, and what not; and on a heap of beds, bedding, quilts, striped blankets, &c., is the old woman, the daughter, about eighteen, and a perfect swarm of white-headed little ones. The father, and his two stalwort sons, are busy in the forest close at hand. How merrily the echoes ring out at each blow of their axes, and how the earth groans with the shock of the falling trees. The two largest of the woodland giants are ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... any candy. Nobody knew how to make it. But he knew where to find the wild honey. He had found some one day in a hollow tree. He learned to track a bee home to its tree. When he found a bee-tree he robbed the swarm. Sometimes the bees stung him, but he was ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... drawing to a close, a day of joyful excitement for the people of the Tyuonyi. The dance terminated. As the sun went down the dancers crowded out of the passage-way; so did the visitors; it grew quieter and quieter on and about the large house. The swarm of people leaving it scattered toward the cliffs in little bands and thin streams, separating and diverging from each other like the branches of an open fan. And yet, after night had come and the moon had risen in a cloudless sky, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... say; that I never had any Luck with printing: I certainly don't mean that I have had much cause to complain: but, for instance, I know that Livy and Napier, put into good Verse, are just worth a corner in one of the swarm of ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... You Like It (act ii, scene ii). Shakespeare makes no reference to any secret society, but some of his allusions suggest that he knew more than he wrote. He describes "The singing Masons building roofs of gold" (Henry V, act i, scene ii), and compares them to a swarm of bees at work. Did he know what the bee hive means in the symbolism of Masonry? (Read an interesting article on "Shakespeare and Freemasonry," American Freemason, January, 1912.) It reminds one of the ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... irregular government was removed from them; but for this purpose a conference was first summoned by the archbishop. It included the bishop of Sinopolis, the superiors and masters of the religious orders—and with them crowded in all the swarm of doctors and masters of Santo Tomas, to the no little annoyance of the bishop and the religious orders. In this conference the question was asked whether the members of the cabildo were worthy of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... "but it is very possible that my poor Blackfoot may have the misfortune to be carrying the carcass of one of the insurgents at this very moment; and whether the youth Karl may not have fallen into the hands of one of the bands who, no doubt, swarm throughout the country; whether he ever found our soldiers; whether they chose to march to our aid; whether, in short, they will have the sense to come in time; and whether they are strong enough, after all, to disperse the troop gone ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... storming columns of the conquistadors. The horse transformed the Utes, Apaches, Comanches, and Navajos from snapping-turtles into condors. Thenceforward, instead of crawling in slow and feeble bands to tease the dense populations of the pueblos, they could come like a tornado, and come in a swarm. At no time were the Moquis and their fellow agriculturists and herdsmen safe from robbery and slaughter. Such villages as did not stand upon buttes inaccessible to horsemen, and such as did not possess fertile lands ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... improves excellently. Kutrulis pledges himself to each of these candidates for his support, but mean while his friends have spread the report that he has actually been appointed minister. Now the swarm of office-seekers and speculators of all sorts come to solicit his favor and exhibit their own corruption. This part of the drama is treated with keen effect. While the report of his appointment is believed ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... laws regulating the diamond trade, so a swarm of itinerant diamond buyers were let loose on the community. Many of these were young men, who were averse to manual labor, but whose business instincts were acute. "Kopje Wallopers" was the generic term by which such dealers were known. The equipment ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... pains in her legs, on which her load was given to another slave, and she was directed to keep in front. The coffle rested near a small rivulet, and a hive of bees being discovered in a hollow tree, some negroes went in quest of the honey, when an enormous swarm flew out, and attacked the people of the coffle. Mr. Park, who first took the alarm, alone escaped with impunity. The negroes at length again collected together at some distance from the place where they were dispersed, but Nealee was missing, and many of the bundles ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... girl of Opar stood wide-eyed and staring. Then a look of hopeless misery suffused her eyes—tears welled into them, and with a little cry she sank to the cold floor, just as a swarm of frightful men dashed past her to leap upon ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was strung over the plains—squaws, dogs, fat little boys toddling after possible prairie dogs, tepee ponies, pack-animals with gaudy squaw trappings, old chiefs stalking along in their dignified buffalo-robes—and a swarm of young warriors riding ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... human. The tongue of the dumb had been in training for song. And first of all he had learned to be silent while he had nought to reveal. He had been trained to babble about religion, but through God's grace had failed in his babble, and that was in itself a success. He would have made one of the swarm that year after year cast themselves like flies on the burning sacrifice that they may live on its flesh, with evil odours extinguishing the fire that should have gone up in flame; but a burning coal from off the altar had been laid on his lips, and had silenced them ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... no attention was directed to the 'periodicity' of the phenomenon, and no idea seems to have been entertained of the connection existing between the fall of shooting stars and the recurrence of certain days, until the prodigious swarm of shooting stars which occurred in North America between the 12th and 13th of November, 1833, and was observed by Olmsted and Palmer. The stars fell on this occasion, like flakes of snow, and it was calculated that at least 240,000 had fallen during a period ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... they but the worst of Atheists be Who, while they word it 'gainst impiety, Affront the throne of God with their false deeds? Alas! this wonder in the Atheist breeds. Are these the men that would the age reform, That Down with Superstition cry, and swarm This painted glass, that sculpture, to deface, But worship pride and avarice in their place? Religion they bawl out, yet know not what Religion is, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... citizens to be able to shake hands across the street. The city was comparatively empty and quiet, as all the world were keeping holiday at Westminster; but even as it was, the passengers seemed to swarm in the streets, and knots of persons who had been unable to witness the spectacle, sat with gazing children upon the stairs outside the houses, to admire the fragments of the pageant that came their way. Acclamations of delight greeted the appearance of the scarlet-mantled Hospitaliers, such ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... isolated show the first tendencies toward personal property; for example, the nest where they hoard their provisions, while others, such as the ants, bees, wasps, etc., have the sentiment of collective property well developed. For instance, a swarm of ants regards plants with grubs as its property, and defends ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the Bavarian parliament, whose members have a six years' tenure of office, which takes place next spring, excites uncommon interest; for the leading issue will be that of education. The little local newspapers—and every city has a small swarm of them, which are remarkable for the absence of news and an abundance of advertisements—have broken out into a style of personal controversy, which, to put it mildly, makes me, an American, feel quite at home. Both parties are very much in earnest, and both speak with a freedom that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... defence was not broken or driven out—it was killed out; and lunging bayonet or smashing butt caught and finished the few that tried to struggle and claw a way out up the slippery trench-sides. Hard on the heels of the victorious attackers came a swarm of men running and staggering to the trench with filled sandbags over their shoulders. As the front of the attack passed on over the wrecked trench and pressed the Germans back across the open, the sandbags were flung down and ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... He was clinging to the brick wall, his eyes staring out of his head. A great clamour rose from the little railway—from beneath it—from all sides of it. The shed began to swarm with running men, all hurrying towards the furnace. The air was full of their cries. It was like the loosing ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his slow way through the swarm of hurrying pikemen, doing what he could to keep them off Beelzebub. The moment he was clear, he made a great bolt for the bridge, and the same moment perceived who the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... pensive thought; Those muskets, cas'd with venerable rust; Those once-lov'd forms, still breathing thro' their dust, Still from the frame, in mould gigantic cast, Starting to life—all whisper of the past! As thro' the garden's desert paths I rove, What fond illusions swarm in every grove! How oft, when purple evening ting'd the west, We watch'd the emmet to her grainy nest; Welcom'd the wild-bee home on weary wing, Laden with sweets, the choicest of the spring! How oft inscrib'd, with 'Friendship's votive rhyme, The bark now ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... recklessly ahead of the car. Soon they reached the Nila Mahal, or Blue Palace, as His Highness's residence was called, with its iron-studded gates, carved doors, and countless wooden balconies. A swarm of retainers in magnificent, if soiled, gold-laced liveries filled the courtyards, and bare-footed sepoys in red coats, generally burst at the seams and lacking buttons, and old shakoes with white cotton flaps hanging ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... open, and as John entered he was aware of an odour of drugs and saw Dr. McGregor sound asleep in an armchair, a red silk handkerchief over his bald head, and a swarm of disappointed flies hovering above him. In the back room the clink and rattle of a pestle and mortar ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... his people in. Going out about half a mile from the village he gave a peculiar yell, at which between three and four hundred Indians arose simultaneously from the ground, and in answer to his signal came out of the tall grass like a swarm of locusts and soon overran our camp in search of food, for like all Indians they were hungry. They too, proved to be Pit Rivers, and were not less repulsive than those of their tribe we had met before. They were aware of the hostilities going on between the Rogue Rivers ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... consisted of a procession partly spiritual or Ecclesiastick, partly civil or Temporal. To make the spirituall their was their all that swarm of grassopers which we are fortold sould aschend out of the bottemlese pit; all these filthy frogs that we are fortold that beast that false prophet sould cast out of his mouth, I mean that rable of Religious orders ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... swarm with vermin. Their garments, their persons, their tents and their mats are literally alive with the third plague of Egypt, lice! Ali soon found himself completely overrun with them, and was almost driven wild. The Sitt Harba urged him to try ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... silk stockings, white or flesh-coloured; and the barristers with their wigs, and the javelin men and silver trumpets. Every spring, too, the Royal Rangers Militia came up for training. Suddenly one morning, in the height of the bird-nesting season, the street would swarm with countrymen tramping up to the barracks on the hill, and back, with bundles of clothes and unblackened boots dangling. For the next six weeks the town would be full of bugle calls, and brazen music, ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pounds. It had been as bad a bargain as was ever made. People talk glibly of "the total disarmament of the frontier tribes" as being the obvious policy. No doubt such a result would be most desirable. But to obtain it would be as painful and as tedious an undertaking, as to extract the stings of a swarm of ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... with exceeding vigour, like a rabbit at a hole, to dig violently away at my tympanum. The queer sensation this amusing measure excited in me is past description. I felt inclined to act as our donkeys once did, when beset by a swarm of bees, who buzzed about their ears and stung their heads and eyes until they were so irritated and confused that they galloped about in the most distracted order, trying to knock them off by treading on their heads, or by rushing ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... starship Star of Fire collided with a meteor swarm six parsecs stellar north of the galactic hub in the year A.D. 2278, it lost its atmosphere within forty-five minutes. At first it was thought that every man, woman and child of the four thousand, one hundred and sixty-six aboard were lost, in this the greatest of ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... the Barotse valley, rains had fallen and the woods had put on their gayest hue. Flowers of great beauty grew everywhere. "The ground begins to swarm with insect life, and in the cool, pleasant mornings the place rings ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... features of the dead before living witnesses, is his most successful method at the present time. But as this work is, as yet, done largely in the dark, it gives more room for jugglery and imposition. The time will come, however, when, in open light, counterfeit materializations of the dead will swarm on earth, and deceive, if it were possible, the very elect—i.e., all who cannot meet the deception with the potent weapon—"It is written, The dead know not anything, neither have they any more a portion forever [in the present state of ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... sheer want of practice, could not have fixed his attention on a worthy book through five of its pages. The question that arose in the minds of his visitors comes again here: what could have been so good to keep idleness from breeding its swarm of evils in his brain and hands—and home—as for somebody, something, somehow, to put it into his head—well—for example—to make a garden? A garden, we will say, that should win a prize, and—even though it failed to win—should ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... snaps Mr. Hubbard. "It's been tried too often. Look at the results. Who fill our jails? Foreigners! Who swarm in our filthy city slums? Foreigners! They are the curse of this country. Look at the wretched mob you have brought about your heels to-day, those outside there. There's ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... tournaments; only go, because there will be found some profit. Prince Witold is munificent, as you know; and he knows you. If you acquit yourself well, he will reward you liberally. Above all, if God help you, you will secure many slaves. The Tartars swarm in the world. In case of victory, every knight will capture three-score ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... far-stretching quays. She had to lean out to distinguish the deserted square of the Champ-de-Mars, barred at the farther end by the sombre Military School. Down below, on thoroughfare and pavement on each side of the Seine, she could see the passers-by—a busy cluster of black dots, moving like a swarm of ants. A yellow omnibus shone out like a spark of fire; drays and cabs crossed the bridge, mere child's toys in the distance, with miniature horses like pieces of mechanism; and amongst others traversing the grassy slopes was a servant girl, with a white apron which set a bright ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... of a quarter of a mile or so, and he to another and another in succession, and by this living telephone the news was delivered to the chief as he sat by his fireside. A salute was then fired to welcome us, and a swarm of musket-bullets, flying scarce high enough for comfort, pinged over our heads. As soon as we reached the landing at the village, a dignified young man stepped forward and ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... the town of New Haven was accordingly founded. The next year a swarm from this new town settled Milford, while another party, freshly arrived from England, made the beginnings of Guilford. In 1640 Stamford was added to the group, and in 1643 the four towns were united into the republic of New Haven, to which Southold, on Long Island, and Branford were ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... track, towards the Ohio, of family groups, behind and before us.... A small wagon (so light that you might almost carry it, yet strong enough to bear a good load of bedding, utensils and provisions, and a swarm of young citizens—and to sustain marvelous shocks in its passage over these rocky heights) with two small horses; sometimes a cow or two, comprises their all; excepting a little store of hard-earned cash for the land office of the district; where they may obtain a title for ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... an inch in depth; but they vary a good deal in size. They lay two or three eggs, rarely four; and the eggs vary a good deal in shape and size, being sometimes very round and sometimes comparatively long ovals. The birds swarm on oar coffee estates, and ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... a gloom of sadness. And then the only gayety that remains is the gayety of the young children, of little mouskos and little mousmes, who spread themselves like a wave through the streets filled with shadow, as they swarm from schools and workshops. On the dark background of all these wooden buildings, the little blue and scarlet dresses stand out in startling contrast,—drolly bedizened, drolly draped; and the fine loops of the sashes, the flowers, the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... liar and the hater and the covetous man, and proclaim the vengeance of God against all evildoers, with all the fierceness of an Isaiah? It was enough for him—let it be enough for us—that he should see, above the thunder- cloud, and the rain of blood, and the scorpion swarm, and the great angel calling all the fowl of heaven to the supper of the great God, that they might eat the flesh of kings and valiant men, a city of God eternal in the heavens, and yet eternally descending among men; a perfect order, justice, ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... this house." But presently her chin dropped; and after feeble efforts to interpose an exclamation, she sat quiet—overcome by the deliberate gravity of his manner, and motioning despairingly with her head, to relieve the swarm of unborn figure-less ideas suggested by his passing speech. The ladies were ranged like tribunal shapes. It could not be said of souls so afflicted that they felt pleasure in the scene; but to assist ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of tiny stones from innumerable hands. They could not materially injure me, although they cut me on the head and face. I attempted to run away, but they all rushed upon me, and, laying hold of every part that afforded a grasp, held me tight. Crowding about me like bees, they shouted an insect-swarm of exasperating speeches up into my face, among which the most frequently recurring were—"You shan't have her; you shan't have her; he! he! he! She's for a better man; how he'll kiss her! how ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... charge made by Murat and his cavalry, and it was almost impossible to carry out the Emperor's command because a swarm of Cossacks separated us from the 14th. It was clear that any officer sent towards the unfortunate regiment would be killed or captured before he got there. Nevertheless, an order is an order; and the marshal had ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... to breakfast; and when the men again turned to, upon the conclusion of their meal, their first act was to swarm aloft and unbend the whole of the canvas, from the royals down—a proceeding which seemed to confirm my previous surmise that they intended their sojourn upon the island to be of some duration. This task occupied them the entire morning; but when they knocked ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... is bearing it in a very manly way, but I fancy he has felt it deeply, poor fellow. He's never been in Boston since, and I don't believe he'd come here if he'd any idea how many Boston people there were in the hotel—we swarm! It would be very painful ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of narrow alley-ways over which the house tops meet, and through which the people swarm by the millions, sellers crying their wares, merchants urging patronage, children screaming, beggars displaying their infirmities, and through it all coolies carrying sedan chairs scattering the crowd ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... whole swarm of stingery honey bees flew down from the sky toward Mrs. Twistytail's flowered bonnet that the wolf held in his paw. You see, the bees thought the flowers were real and that they ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... in Gold Hill are the Ophir, Caledonia, Overman, Seg, Belcher, Yellow Jacket, Kentuck, Crown Point, Imperial and Bullion. The Yellow Jacket was the first mine located, taking its name from the fact that its locators were warmly opposed by a swarm of yellow jackets. This was in 1859. The yield of the Gold Hill mines and the dividends ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... reach here, and when they stopped presently at the beginning of Tin Pot Alley, there floated out to them the sharp acrid odour of huddled negroes. In these squalid alleys, where the lamps burned at longer distances, the more primitive forms of life appeared to swarm like distorted images under the transparent civilization of the town. The sound of banjo strumming came faintly from the dimness beyond, while at their feet the Problem of the South sprawled innocently amid tomato cans ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... inferior newspapers, which had hitherto evaded the stamp act, by calling themselves pamphlets and not newspapers, because they only commented upon the news of the day, to be henceforth liable to the stamp duties. This really did good service to the better class of journals, by sweeping away a swarm of newspapers which, by the quibble above mentioned, were enabled to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... satisfactory action—and all space-fighting took place just out of the atmosphere of a possibly embattled planet, because you couldn't intercept a ship at cruising speed between the stars. Regardless of the result of the fighting, one had to get away fast when it was over, lest overwhelming force swarm up from the nearby world. It was intolerably devoid of anything an ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... not. An enemy is indeed at hand. I see it through the heavy air; I hear it through the silence: the Ghostly One,—the Destroyer, the PESTILENCE! Ah, seest thou how the leaves swarm with insects, only by an effort visible to the eye. They follow the breath of the plague!" As he spoke, a bird fell from the boughs at Viola's feet; it fluttered, it writhed an ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... embroidered curtains, or through lattice of royal seraglio, but as writhing in the agonies of a city hospital. Cursed be the books that try to make impurity decent, and crime attractive, and hypocrisy noble! Cursed be the books that swarm with libertines and desperadoes, who make the brain of the young people whirl with villainy. Ye authors who write them, ye publishers who print them, ye book-sellers who distribute them, shall be cut to pieces; if not by an aroused community, then at last by ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... noticed a man on the rampart who towered over the battlements from his belt upwards. The arrows that flew about him seemed to frighten him no more than a swarm of swallows. Extraordinary to say, none of ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... Boches' daughter, and Victor, the son of Gervaise's old employer—a big booby of ten who delighted in playing with very little girls. Madame Fauconnier who had not quarreled with the Coupeaus would herself send her son. In the house, too, there was an extraordinary swarm of brats, flights of children who rolled down the four staircases at all hours of the day and alighted on the pavement of the courtyard like troops of noisy pillaging sparrows. Madame Gaudron was responsible for nine of them, all with uncombed hair, runny noses, ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... they had three squirrels. Thus they were prepared for truly a thanksgiving feast. Hastily they returned with their treasure, when they learned that the others of their party had found a bee-tree, that is, a tree where a swarm of bees had taken lodgment, and were laying in their winter stores. They cut down the tree with their hatchets, and obtained an ample supply of wild honey. They all felt that they had indeed fallen upon a ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... let drop at Douai; the remembrance of his limp; and of Campion's powerlessness to raise his hand when called upon to swear—all these things crowded on him now; and there seemed to rest on him a crushing swarm of fearful images and words. He made a great effort, and closed his eyes, and repeated the holy name of Jesus over and over again; but the struggle was still fierce when Wade's voice, harsh and dry, broke in and scattered the confusion of mind that ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... quays are black with crowds of people waving their hats and handkerchiefs. But silently and quietly the Fram heads towards the fjord, steers slowly past Bygdoe and Dyna out on her unknown path, while little nimble craft, steamers, and pleasure-boats swarm around her. Peaceful and snug lay the villas along the shore behind their veils of foliage, just as they ever seemed of old. Ah, "fair is the woodland slope, and never did it look fairer!" Long, long, will it be before we shall ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... all scales in the spring, and washed with a solution of soft soap. About the 1st of July, wrap bandages of old cloth, carpet, or rags of any kind around the trunk and larger limbs. The worms will appreciate such excellent cover, and will swarm into these hiding- places to undergo transformation into moths. Therefore the wraps of rags should often be taken down, thrown into scalding water, dried, and replaced. The fruit as it falls should be picked up at once and carried to the pigs, and, when practicable, ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... administration was, of course, a mere camouflage. Without the support of the Italian Government, which paid his troops though calling them rebels, the poet-adventurer could scarcely have lasted for a day; and the swarm of officers, many of them worse adventurers than himself, would have deserted him. Nor would the population of Rieka have listened to his glowing periods if the Italian Government had not, under cover of the Red Cross, sent an adequate supply ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... voice from thee, O Lord, Across the mid-sea of the night! I lift my voice and cry with might: If thou keep silent, soon a horde Of imps again will swarm aboard, And I shall be in sorry plight If no voice come from thee, my Lord, Across the mid-sea ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... and sickening filth lie among standing pools in all directions; the atmosphere is poisoned by the effluvia from these, and laden and darkened by the smoke of a dozen tall factory chimneys. A horde of ragged women and children swarm about here, as filthy as the swine that thrive upon the garbage heaps and in the puddles. In short, the whole rookery furnishes such a hateful and repulsive spectacle as can hardly be equalled in the worst court ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... him firin' up like he was tryin' to hive a swarm of bees," one reported, coming from the seat of ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... rush was a beautiful white horse. Every one of his men did the same. Each one took one of the rushes and sat astride of it and said, "Borram, borram, borram!" and every one of the rushes grew into a horse. There was a little whirring sound, like that of a swarm of bees, and ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... a very small species of red ant, that swarm over everything in the house. Their remedy for this is, to send for the priest, and exorcise them. The drain from the new convent opens into the middle of the street. An English pigsty is cleaner than the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... brings the beat of the surf against the bolder reliefs of the land produces a ragged, indented coast, deep-water inlets penetrating far into the country, hilly or mountainous tongues of land running far out into the sea and breaking up into a swarm of islands and rocks, whose outer limits indicate approximately the old prediluvial line of shore.[451] Such are the fiord regions of Norway, southern Alaska, British Columbia, Greenland, and southern Chile; the Rias or submerged river ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... that you are a unit in an army, drilled and kept under by the bureaucracy and the police. It surprises you to see an unmanageable crowd in a train or on a steamer, much as it would surprise you to see soldiers swarm at will into a troopship. You expect them to march precisely, each man to his place. And in Germany this nearly always happens in civil life; while even on a Sunday or a public holiday the mob behaves itself. At the Berlin Zoo, for instance, there ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... swarming creatures and they fell dead in heaps at their feet. But still the onrush came and the lads shuddered with repulsion as they felt the tiny claws of the rodents fixed in their trousers as the creatures tried to swarm up them. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... to kill two settlers whom they met on the road—German farmers, with no connection, so far as known, with the thieves. These men escaped, and gave the alarm. In a few hours the whole range was aflame with vengeful fire. The Forks, as you may recall, was like a swarm of bumblebees. Every man and boy was armed and mounted. The storekeepers distributed guns and ammunition, leaders developed, and the embattled 'punkin rollers,' rustlers, and townsmen rode out to ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... stayed with the little old woman in her tiny cottage on the edge of the river. Each morning they crossed the bridge and stationed themselves by the Antwerp road to watch the swarm of sad-faced Belgians as they hurried through Boom on their way to the frontier and to safety in Holland. Each day they hoped that before the sun went down they should see their mother among the hurrying multitudes, but each day brought a fresh disappointment, ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... lighted up. "I see what he means. Anstice, you or I must make all speed back to Cairo and fetch out some soldiers. The barracks swarm with them, and if I know them they'll jump at the chance of a little scrap like this. With luck you'd be back in three days—less, if you pushed your horses—and by God I believe we could ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... then," Tai-y suggested, whereupon Pao-y prosecuted his raillery. "In this Lin Tzu cave," he said, "there was once upon a time a whole swarm of rat-elves. In some year or other and on the seventh day of the twelfth moon, an old rat ascended the throne to discuss matters. 'Tomorrow,' he argued, 'is the eighth of the twelfth moon, and men in the world will all be cooking the congee of the eighth of the twelfth moon. We ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... round the junk like a swarm of bees. It was impossible to doubt what the result would be. He was loth to lose more time: the plight of a Chinese vessel was no concern of his; yet as he glanced up and down the bay and saw that it could obtain help from ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... be told, they were sometimes as troublesome to the Giant as a swarm of ants or mosquitoes, especially as they had a fondness for mischief, and liked to prick his skin with their little swords and lances, to see how thick and tough it was. But Antaeus took it all ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the ancient Red Tower, I thought, we might at least be safe enough till my good fellows of Plassenburg, with the Prince at their head, should swarm hammering at ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... a deadly fray. Rang tang bang, paoufff! We fought as if it had been a Sixth Ward election. Suddingly I found myself amid a swarm of my country's foes. Sabres slashed at me, and in my rage I determined to exterminate something. Looking around from mere force of habit to see that there were no police about, I drew my revolver and aimed at JIM MARRYGOLD of Charleston, whom I had last seen owling it in New Orleans, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it?—we are ten miles from land, to say nothing of sharks and crocodiles and the lordly tiger. So I perforce remain, to the injury of my caste, which forbids navigation. But see the issue. The Dutch ship is assaulted; grabs and gallivats galore swarm upon the face of the waters; all is confusion worse confounded; in a brace of shakes we are in the toils. It is now two years since this untoward catastrophe. With the crew I am conveyed hither and eat the bitter crust of servitude. Some of the Dutchmen are consigned to other forts in ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... attempt to hide himself. He hurriedly took a handful of feathers from his bosom, and blew them from him with a few magic words, and lo! they became an armed host of warriors,—thousands of them, both on foot and on horseback.[44] They rushed upon the son of Kalev like a swarm of gnats or bees; but he laid about him with his club as if he was threshing, and beat them down, horse and man together, on all sides, like drops of hail or rain. The fight was hardly begun when it was over, and the hero waded ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... influence of this peculiar music; and the constable, holding faithfully to the popular belief, rushed down his garden, "tanging" as though his life depended upon it, in the hopes that the soothing sound would induce the swarm to settle at once on his own ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... skirmish line, thrashing the bushes with their pine boughs. As they advance the birds will awaken with a shrill little peep and scuttle off through the bushes down the canyon and directly toward the trappers. The birds take just little flights at a time, so you must keep them moving or they will swarm and fly away in a panic. If a flock panic on you, you might as well quit, for every bird in the canyon will follow. You see this is the game: snowbirds live on little bugs that are found in great numbers around the great Northern Lights. When they see ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... come back again," said young Harden piously, "else shall we soon be turned into a pack of old wives. The changes that have come to Harden be more than I can stand, Willie. Not so many years past we were aye as busy as a swarm of bees. When we had a mind, and had nought else to do, we leaped on our horses and headed towards Cumberland. There were ever some kine to be driven, or a house or two to be burned, or some poor widow to be avenged, or some prisoner ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... momentous importance had overtaken the world. The imperial system broke down under Commodus. All through the third century the civil organisation of the Empire was at the mercy of military adventurers. Twenty-five recognised Emperors, besides a swarm of pretenders, most of them raised to the purple by mutinous armies, succeeded one another in the hundred years between Commodus and Diocletian. At the same time the Christian religion, already recognised ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... entering the large gate of the outer enclosure. In the village and on the opposite hill the people resembled a swarm of black locusts. The drums ceased. Bakahenzie and Marufa and Yabolo ran straight towards him screeching. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... in the afternoon and tried to sleep; but her brain was inexorably alert, and she lay making inventory of all the pleasant things she was to leave for that ugly fate she had insisted on. A swarm of fancies gave every detail of the parting dramatic intensity. Amidst the poignancy of her regrets, her shame for her ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... are occupied, as truly enormous. And yet it is but one of three that occur in a single system. We reach the long flat bay of Dunnet, and cross its waste of sands. The incoherent coils of the sand-worm lie thick on the surface; and here a swarm of buzzing flies, disturbed by the foot, rises in a cloud from some tuft of tangled sea-weed; and here myriads of gray crustaceous sand-hoppers dart sidelong in the little pools, or vault from the drier ridges a few inches into the air. Were the trilobites of the Silurian system,—at one period, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... dominant. Although the great changes, which took place in the religion and cultivation of the Greeks, banished from their minds the conviction that these events really occurred, yet an enthusiastic sympathy with the god and his fortunes, as with real events, always remained. The swarm of subordinate beings by whom Bacchus was surrounded—satyrs, nymphs, and a variety of beautiful and grotesque forms—were ever present to the fancy of the Greeks, and it was not necessary to depart very ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... stopped still. The light was not moonlight, and its source was not a moon. It was a globular cluster of stars, hung in the sky like a swarm of fiery bees, a burning and pulsing of many colors, diamond-white and gold, green and crimson, peacock blue and smoky umber. Kieran stared, and beside him Paula murmured, "I've been on a lot of planets, but none of them have anything ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... girls looked in the direction indicated. The crowd at the corner seemed to become thicker. People began to swarm out of the doorways and stream out into the middle of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... rear their own pine-apples—the common, innocent iniquities (innocent from their very antiquity, having been bequeathed from sire to son) which men perpetrate six working-days in the week, and after, lacker up their faces with a look of sleek humility for the Sunday pew—consider all this locust swarm of knaveries annihilated by the purifying spirit of Christianity, and then look upon London breathing and living, for one day only, by the sweet, sustaining ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... death happen in a house at night, and there be a hive or hives of bees in the garden, go out and wake them up at once, otherwise the whole hive or swarm will die. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... nothing, From thy father-in-law ask nothing; Best it is to ask thy husband, Ask him to obtain them for thee. There are not within the forest Any four-legged beasts that wander, 360 Neither birds in air that flutter Two-winged birds with rushing pinions, Neither in the shining waters Swarm the best of all the fishes, Which thy husband cannot capture; He can catch and bring ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... felt it was not that which these people needed. They did not pity themselves. They accepted their fate. It was the natural order of things. Otherwise, good heavens! otherwise they would swarm over the river in their multitude to the side where those great buildings were, secure and stately, and they would pillage, burn, and sack. But the day, tender and pale, had broken now, and the mist was tenuous; it bathed everything in a soft radiance; and the Thames was ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... but in several parts of the world insects determine the existence of cattle. Perhaps Paraguay offers the most curious instance of this; for here neither cattle nor horses nor dogs have ever run wild, though they swarm southward and northward in a feral state; and Azara and Rengger have shown that this is caused by the greater number in Paraguay of a certain fly, which lays its eggs in the navels of these animals when first born. The increase of these flies, numerous as ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... gallant firemen still wrestling with their uniforms. They had nearly reached the fire when around a corner back of them, with frightful speed and clangor, came a modern automobile fire-truck, clinging to which was a swarm of little brown men in red shirts and helmets. They reminded the American of monkeys on a circus horse, and, although he had been counted a reckless driver, he exclaimed in astonishment at the daring way in which the ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... enthusiasm of indignation.... It was all a dream, the dream of a prosperous comfortable man who had never come to the cutting edge of life. Everywhere cunning, everywhere small feuds and hatreds, distrusts, dishonesties, timidities, feebleness of purpose, dwarfish imaginations, swarm over the great and simple issues.... It is a war now like any other of the mobbing, many-aimed cataclysms that have shattered empires and devastated the world; it is a war without point, a war that has lost its soul, it has become mere incoherent fighting and destruction, a demonstration ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... they came by in twos and threes. They were nearly all come, and he was considering the place of the sun in the heavens to know whether it was time to begin, when he heard a sound that was like the buzzing of a swarm of bees in the air, or the rushing of a hidden river in time of flood. Then he saw a crowd coming up to the cabin from the road, and he took notice that all the crowd was made up of old men, and that the ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats |
