"Weathercock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jest! Louis, your levity is incorrigible. France is beaten, discredited among nations, naked to her enemies. She lies here, between England and Prussia, as in a vise. God summons you, a Frenchman, to reign in Noumaria, and in addition affords you a chance to marry that weathercock of Badenburg's daughter. Ah, He never spoke more clearly, Louis. And you would reply with a shallow jest! Why, Badenburg and Noumaria just bridge that awkward space between France and Austria. Your accession would confirm the Empress,—Gaston de Puysange has it in her own hand, yonder at Versailles! ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... "He is a weathercock, turning every moment from side to side," said Gardiner, with a contemptuous shrug of ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... conscience is d——nab-y overlooked in Africa, and will not judge the nigger hardly for any little blunder he may make in the account of his religion. But the fellow is a thorough seaman, and should know a top-gallant-sail from a weathercock. Now, look you, S'ip, for the credit of your friends, if you've no great pride on your own behalf, just ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple! 125 My master sues to her; and she hath taught her suitor, He being her pupil, to become her tutor. O excellent device! was there ever heard a better, That my master, being scribe, to himself should ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... I'll tell you presently. I've a bone to pick with you. Wait till we've seen the little churchy-wurchy—there it is, over there, with a big weathercock—and then we can quarrel and go ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... has sense enough to keep out of mischief." Jo thought intently for a minute with her eyes fixed on the picture, then she smoothed out her wrinkled forehead and said, with a decided nod at the face opposite, "No thank you, sir, you're very charming, but you've no more stability than a weathercock. So you needn't write touching notes and smile in that insinuating way, for it won't do a bit of good, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... crooked gable, and a husky old dog in the recess under the steps at the door. Behind the house a wide yard with nettles, wormwood, and burdocks in the corners, outbuildings with doors that stick, doves and rooks on the thatched roofs, a little storehouse with a rusty weathercock, two or three birch-trees with rooks' nests in their bare top branches, and beyond—the road with cushions of soft dust in the ruts and a field and the long hurdles of the hemp patches, and the grey little huts of the village, and the cackle of geese in the far-away rich ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... tower, yellow spire, old clock and weathercock, seems to me as I look back on it to have been a very attractive piece of architecture. It was that church which suggested to Emerson the leading thought in one of his most ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... enlarged or rebuilt in the middle of the tenth century by St Aethwold, and if we may believe the poetical description of Wolstan, we shall be inclined to believe the church was enlarged, for it appears to have been a very complex building with a lofty central tower, having a spire and weathercock, in accordance with the Bull of Pope Urban, and a crypt, both the work of St Elphege. This church, which, like its successor until the Reformation, was served by monks, stood till the year 1093, when it was destroyed as useless, ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... grain (wheat, corn, etc.). orienta east, eastern. ke that (conjunction). pluvo rain. kontraux against. suda south, southern. montri to show, to point out. velki to wilt, to wither. norda north, northern. vento wind. nova new. ventoflago weathercock. okcidenta ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... thinking shame, that I was glad when I found our nebs turned homeward; and, when we got over the turn of the brae at the old quarry-holes, to see the blue smoke of our own Dalkeith, hanging like a thin cloud over the tops of the green trees, through which I perceived the glittering weathercock on the old kirk steeple. Tammie, poor creature, I observed, was a whit ree with the good cheer; and, as he sat on the fore-tram, with his whip-hand thrown over the beast's haunches, he sang, half to himself and half-aloud, a great many old Scotch songs, such as "the Gaberlunzie," "Aiken Drum," ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... had a horror of the east wind; and Tom Sheridan once kept him prisoner in the house for a fortnight by fixing the weathercock in that direction. ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... finest landscape in the world, so a lady who desires to ride well should not be satisfied if she can merely stick on, like the lady in Fig. 101, but should try to ride correctly. Her head will perhaps at first be jerked to and fro like a "vexed weathercock," but practice will enable her to overcome the tendency to fix the muscles of her neck and to allow her head to follow the motion of her body. She should take care that her elbows do not flap up and down like the pinions of an awkward ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... 60,000 curates and vicars in as many churches and chapels. Should the reader desire a more distinct impression of them, he may imagine on each square league of territory[1202], and to each thousand of inhabitants, one noble family in its weathercock mansion. In each village there is a curate and his church, and, every six or seven leagues, a community of men or of women. We have here the ancient chieftains and founders of France; thus entitled, they still enjoy many possessions and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... weathercock of a steeple that rose beyond the opposite range of buildings, pointing from the eastward; a sprinkle of small, spiteful-looking raindrops on the window-pane. In that ebb-tide of my energies, had I thought of venturing abroad, these tokens would ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has his heart on his sleeve, and a good whirling weathercock of a brain, who reckons his life as a thing to be dashingly used and cheerfully hazarded, makes a very different acquaintance of the world, keeps all his pulses going true and fast, and gathers impetus as he runs, until, if he be running towards anything better than wildfire, he may ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... pattern of the real old-fashioned New England meeting-house. It was a large barn with windows, fronted by a square tower crowned with a kind of wooden bell inverted and raised on legs, out of which rose a slender spire with the sharp-billed weathercock at its summit. Inside, tall, square pews with flapping seats, and a gallery running round three sides of the building. On the fourth side the pulpit, with a huge, dusty sounding-board hanging over it. Here preached the Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... improper choice of facts, and if I should be found at length most to resemble Maister Fabyan of old, who writing the life of Henry V. lays heaviest stress on a new weathercock set-up on St. Paul's steeple during that eventful reign, my book must share the fate of his, and be like that forgotten: reminding before its death perhaps a friend or two of a poor man (Macbean) living in later ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... said Bully Tom, in a tone of polite assent; "and there's a weathercock on the church-steeple but I never heard of either of 'em coming down to ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... rather too much time on this sort of thing; but the drift goes as slowly as ever, and the wind, the all-powerful wind, is still the same. The first thing my eyes look for when I set foot on deck in the morning is the weathercock on the mizzen-top, to see how the wind lies; thither they are forever straying during the whole day, and there again they rest the last thing before I turn in. But it ever points in the same direction, west and southwest, and we drift now quicker, now ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... a great passion on receiving the letter, saying that Monsieur Porthos was a weathercock, and that she was sure it was for some woman he had received ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... be sure, was monstrously hot and stuffy. Not a breath of wind ruffled the waters of the dock, around the head of which we trudged to a recently erected church on the opposite shore. I remember observing, on our way, the dazzling brilliance of its weathercock. ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... perpendicular rain or dew. Other bell-flowers, as the hemerocallis and amaryllis, have their bells nodding only, as it were, or hanging obliquely toward the horizon; which, as their stems are slender, turn like a weathercock from the wind; and thus very effectually preserve their inclosed stamens and anthers from the rain and cold. Many of these flowers, both before and after their season of fecundation, erect their heads perpendicular ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... dog-days, there would be little chance of sport when the sun was well up. So he let himself gently out of the hall door—paused a moment on the steps to fill his chest with the fresh morning air, as he glanced at the weathercock over the stables—and then set to work to put his tackle together on the lawn, humming a tune to himself as he selected an insinuating red hackle and alder fly from his well-worn book, and tied them on to his cast. Then he slung his creel over his shoulder, picked ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... a wizard's cave certainly, just as I had pictured it. At the top of the steeple, a rusty weathercock creaked mournfully; in the dusk, great Bats flew all around the edifice or dived down the throats of the gargoyles; at night, Owls hooted upon the copings of the leads. It was inside, under the immensities of the vault, that my chemist used to perform. What infernal mixtures did ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... morality changes, it seems, with men and with seasons. What was infamy in Espartero and Zurbano, is heroism and glory in Narvaez and Prim. What is more infamous than all this is the press, that thus displays itself in the light of a moral weathercock, shifting round to ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... world, constantly, which confounds its wisdom. Not only out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, but out of the mouths of fools and cheats, we may often get our truest lessons. For the fool's judgment is a dog-vane that turns with a breath, and the cheat watches the clouds and sets his weathercock by them,—so that one shall often see by their pointing which way the winds of heaven are blowing, when the slow-wheeling arrows and feathers of what we call the Temples of Wisdom are turning to all ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the number of Welsh people living on that side of the town; though why the "Taffies" were honoured with a distinct little market house of their own is not made clear. This building was taken down in 1803, the 3-dial clock, weathercock, &c., being advertised for sale, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... foresight can measure the baleful consequences. Who that is false to his God can be expected to remain faithful to his Sovereign? When a man, as a Catholic Bishop, marries, and, under the mask of patriotism, becomes the declared tool of all work to every faction, and is the weathercock, shifting to any quarter according to the wind,—such a man can be of no real service to any party: and yet has a man of this kind been by turns the primum mobile of them all, even to the present times, and was one of those great Church fomenters of the troubles of which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Englishman; in his heart is profoundly rooted a passion for long journeys; each and all of them, old and young, healthy and sickly, would if they could take not merely the grand tour, but circulate round the two hemispheres with all the pleasure imaginable. At a certain period of the year, when the weathercock points the right way, the sun burns in the sign of the Lion, and the husbandman bends his weary form to gather in the golden corn, the legs of the rich Englishman begin to be nervously agitated, he feels a sense of suffocation, and pants for change—of air, of place, of everything; he girds up ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... in the steeple! There the foul blast roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver! High up in the steeple, where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by the changing weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed tread; and birds stuff shabby nests into corners ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... of the steps, and the roses blossomed out sweet and profuse, for it was the time of roses, amid convolvulus and campion. The quaint old dove-cot near the house had almost disappeared behind the trees that had crowded up round it, and held aloft its weathercock in silent protest at their encroachment. The stables close at hand, with their worn-out clock and silent bell, were tenantless. The coach-houses were full of useless old chariots and carriages. Into one splendid court coach the pigeons had found their way through an open ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... down at her, smiling a little, but smiling sadly. "If Jean's mother had lived I should not have been such a weathercock. Will you write to me—promise me that ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... chanted the song of Saint Nicolaus, and the goblin, unable to endure either its spiritual potency or the worthy parson's singing, shot upward like a ball and rode off on the gale, carrying with him the nightcap of the parson's wife, which he hung on the weathercock of ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Congress? It is the echo of the country at home,—the weathercock, that denotes and answers the shifting wind,—a thing of tail, nearly all tail, moved by the tail and by the wind, with small heading, and that corresponding implicitly in movement with the broad sail-like stern, which widens out behind to catch the rum-fraught breath of 'the Brotherhood.' ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... breakfast-table, straightened his delicate form, with his noble head proudly erect, and one foot in advance, extended his right arm, giving one loud hurrah! "Now, for once, a tumult and noise, that thought may turn about like a weathercock. This savage noise has already wrought its own benefit. I begin to feel a little better. Rage and expand, mad heart, quicken yourself in hurly-burly-burly-burly!" [Footnote: From Klinger's tragedy ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... years, and is now the home of the United Service Museum. For the magnificent ceiling painted by Rubens we are indebted to Charles I., who also designed to have the walls painted by Vandyck, a still more costly operation, which was never carried out. The weathercock on the north end was put up by order of James II., so that he might see whether the wind was for or against the dreaded Dutch fleet. The building has one association never to be forgotten. On that black day when England shamed herself before the nations by spilling the ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... shone bright, the kirk no less: That stands above the rock: The moonlight steep'd in silentness The steady weathercock. ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... you could. I can't understand her, for she acts like a weathercock, and I never know how I 'm going to find her. I hate to have her mope so, but, upon my life, I don't know what to do," said Tom; but as he uttered the words, something was suggested by the sight before him. Chairs ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... lost all her fears of John Jay's dying. Although the promise made to George on the haymow was faithfully kept, he could no more avoid getting into mischief than a weathercock can keep from ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... elephants, dropping them both stone dead. At this moment the "Baby" was pushed into my hand by Hadji Ali just in time to take the shoulder of the last of the herd, who had already charged headlong after his comrades and was disappearing in the jungle. Bang! went the "Baby;" round I spun like a weathercock, with the blood pouring from my nose, as the recoil had driven the sharp top of the hammer deep into the bridge. My "Baby" not only screamed, but kicked viciously. However, I knew that the elephant must be bagged, ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... she failed to notice that her horse had suddenly become very alert. His large, low-bred ears, that weathercock of the horseman, were pricked up, and he looked inquiringly from side to side as he picked his way. Once he gave a ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... here, Mariano; I'm tired of it, I'm dying. This life is killing me. My husband! He doesn't count. My friends! Fools that flay me as soon as I leave them. The doctor! as untrustworthy as a weathercock. All those men in my coterie, idiots. Master, have pity on me. Take me far away from here. You must know some other world; artists ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... without us, d'you think? Like fish out of water! And yet we're reckoned as outcasts and all that. Devil take all your society women, I say. There's one I see pass by every day, a judge's wife, haughty and stuck up as a weathercock on a church spire. Think she'd look at one of us? But her husband, ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... many a heedless sphere to run, Many an eccentric and unthrifty motion make, And thousand incoherent journeys take, Whilst all th'advantage by it got, Was but to light earth's inconsiderable spot. The herd beneath, who see the weathercock of state Hung loosely on the church's pinnacle, Believe it firm, because perhaps the day is mild and still; But when they find it turn with the first blast of fate, By gazing upward giddy grow, And think the church itself does so; Thus ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... me! Didn't the weathercock look handsome, with his gilt feathers shining brightly in the rays of the morning sun as he turned to and fro with every little change ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... in the summer time I thrust back the curtain, to watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple, which stands opposite my chamber-window. First, the weathercock begins to flash; then, a fainter lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower, and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold, as it points to the gilded figure of the hour. Now, the loftiest window gleams, and now the lower. The ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... forward (as we judge) into the Saale, Merseburg way, or reverse-wise into the Unstrut, the last big branch of Saale. Southward from our Janus Height, eight or nine miles off, may be seen some vestige of Freiburg; steeple or gilt weathercock faintly visible, on the Unstrut yonder;—which I take to be Soubise's bread-basket at present. And farther off, and opposite the MOUTH of the Unstrut, well across the Saale, lies another namable Town (visible in clear weather, as a smoke-cloud ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... nimbleness in nature, you women have, to be first inconstant; but if you had not made the more haste, the wind was veering too upon my weathercock: The best on't is, Florimel is ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... and where he resided till his death. The farm had on it a small Dutch cottage, built about a century before, and inhabited by the Van Tassels. This was enlarged, still preserving the quaint Dutch characteristics; it acquired a tower and a whimsical weathercock, the delight of the owner, and became one of the most snug and picturesque residences on the river. A slip of Melrose ivy was planted, and soon overrun the house; and there were shaded nooks and wooded retreats, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... of one eye, with the hind-quarters of a lion, and the tail of a bear. At length all this was devoutly believed; and the new sexton used to exhibit to the curious, for a trifling emolument, a good-sized piece of the church weathercock which had been accidentally kicked off by the aforesaid horse in his aerial flight, and picked up by himself in the churchyard, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... represent a few of the recent improvements in the Zoological Gardens, as, the addition of the clock-house and weathercock[5] to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... at him, a pygmy flashed with sun. A weathercock or scarecrow or both things in one? As bright as a jewelled ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... still with joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. Why should we be busybodies and superserviceable? Action and inaction are alike to the true. One piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock and one for the sleeper of a bridge; the virtue of the wood is apparent ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... goes A stream of transparent and forcible prose; He shifts quite about, then proceeds to expound That 'tis merely the earth, not himself, that turns round, And wishes it clearly impressed on your mind 661 That the weathercock rules and not follows the wind; Proving first, then as deftly confuting each side, With no doctrine pleased that's not somewhere denied, He lays the denier away on the shelf, And then—down beside ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... swing at anchor here, and to wait in the same till his Majesty have done seeing Frankfurt, and return to us." Here is a message for the poor young Prince: Detected, prisoner, and a volcanic Majesty now likely to be in full play when he returns!— Gilt weathercock on the Mayn Bridge (which one Goethe used to look at, in the next generation)—this, and the steeple-tops of Frankfurt, especially that steeple-top with the grinning skull of the mutinous malefactor on it, warning to mankind what mutiny leads to; this, then, is what we are to see ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... despair. One moment he was filled with his unworthiness and wonder that so noble a creature as a woman should bend her heart and lips from her heaven down to his earth. The next he could not conceive any man should be such a witless ass as to stake his happiness on the steadiness of so manifest a weathercock as a woman's favour. It was all very strange talk; it opened to me, just as when a fog lifts and rolls down again, a momentary vision of a world of colours in which I had no share; and to tell the truth it left me with a suspicion ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... heights and of varying diameters to accommodate the wrists of man, woman, and child, may still be found in the middle of the Priests' Green. These stand, it will be remembered, under a quaint old roof supported on rough, oaken pillars, and surmounted by a weathercock which the monkish fancy has fashioned to the shape of the archangel blowing the last trump. His clarion or coach-horn, or whatever instrument of music it was he blew, has vanished. The parish book records that in the time of George I a boy broke it off, melted it down, and was publicly flogged in ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... the senseless stuff he now produces, and grieve. His John Knox—ill placed for effect, as relates to its height from the ground, I admit; but look at that—flat as a teaboard—neither depth nor brilliancy. Knox himself strongly resembling in attitude the dragon weathercock on Bow steeple painted black. Has Wilkie become thus demented in compliment to Turner, the Prince of Orange (colour) of artists? Never did man suffer so severely under a yellow fever, and yet live so long. I dare say it is extremely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... girl did not await the conclusion of this explanation; before her father had finished speaking, she led her lover to the window, pointed to the weathercock, and said: "Look, Geronimo, the ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... muttered Bill, using his clasp-knife for a tooth-pick. "It's as tough as a rifle sling. Yer must have got hold of the bloomin' weathercock." ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... defeated at the last election, and the State had been only with difficulty carried for the national candidates of the party. The lesson was plain: the people of Illinois did not approve the Kansas policy of Senator Douglas. Hence the weathercock obeyed ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... asked the Major a little nervously if he knew anything further. The Major knew nothing except Street rumors. Jack was uneasy, for the Major was a sort of weathercock, and before he left the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... bold, say my old grammatical exercises," answered her brother; "and I must trust her, were she as changeable as a weathercock.—And yet—if she should jilt me!—What will you do—what will you say, Clara, if I am unable, contrary to my hope, trust, and expectation, to repay you this money within ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... I, behind a hawthorn-bush, Watched on the fairies flaxen-tressed The fires of the morning flush. Till, as a mist, their beauty died, Their singing shrill and fainter grew; And daylight tremulous and wide Flooded the moorland through and through; Till Urdon's copper weathercock Was reared in golden flame afar, And dim from moonlit dreams awoke The towers and groves ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... vane, a weathercock. too, also. vain, proud; empty. two, one and one. vein, a blood-vessel. trey, three at cards. waste, to consume; loss. tray, a shallow vessel. waist, part of the body. vale, a valley; a dell. ware, merchandise. veil, ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... little rise, he saw the weathercock and one turret of a church tower peering over the edge of a small steep hill, close at hand, and turning toward it he went briskly on, under the lee of a short fir plantation, all the grass being pure and fresh with hoar-frost, which melted in every hollow and shadow as fast as the ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... puzzled, he added: "Just like a weathercock, and by Keel-Surface I mean everything you can see when you view the Aeroplane from the side of it—the sides of the body, ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... love him. And with the rush of the desire came the thought, as though it were a whispered voice from the heart of the desert: "What are you that you should speak so to her. What have you done to make you worthy of this woman? You, a laggard, as frivolous a thing until now as a weathercock, and by no means so useful a factor in the world, your regeneration merely begun; she the ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... if Sir Osmund catch thee carrying so much as a thumb-nail of Sir William's carcase, he 'll wring thy neck as wry as the chapel weathercock. My lady goes nigh crazed with his ill humours. I warrant thee, Sir William's ghost gaily snuffs up the sport. I have watched him up and down the old stairs, and once i' the chapel; and he told me"—whispering close to the pilgrim's ear—"a great ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... a touch of irony in his accent, himself looking a droll figure, hunched round his books and turning like a weathercock jerkily to keep the umbrella between him and the wind that strained its whalebone ribs ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... every wind that blows. It is only the female prig who acts consistently under all circumstances. In a world the leading of which is its men, inconsistency is the best nature of a healthy girl made to be loved by men. One doesn't sneer at the weathercock because one hour it points to the north and the next to the east. 'Tis its nature to. 'Tis our nature to change with every breeze of man that bears down on us. That's why they love us and detest the prigs. Here we are ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... the man with the tent! I see Mrs. Barker doing up the lunch in a hamper and a great basket. Now Mr. Laurence is looking up at the sky and the weathercock. I wish he would go too. There's Laurie, looking like a sailor, nice boy! Oh, mercy me! Here's a carriage full of people, a tall lady, a little girl, and two dreadful boys. One is lame, poor thing, he's got a crutch. Laurie didn't tell us that. Be quick, girls! ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... him into a narrow, winding passage which led to an old court, surrounded by rubble walls, with little moss-covered galleries under the roof and a weathercock upon the peak, as in the Tanner's Lane in Strasbourg. To the right was the brewery, and in a corner a great wheel, turned by an enormous dog, which pumped the beer to ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... contented, even though I begin so poorly as to try to interest you in two very humble beings who have been dead for many years, and whose lives were like a steeple without a bell in it, the intention of which you cannot understand till your eye reaches the weathercock upon the top, and then you wonder at so great an erection for so small an object. The one bore the name of William Halket, a young man, who, eight or nine years before he became of much interest either to himself or any other body, was what in our day is called an ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... degree, for the particular office assigned to him; and each, therefore, likely to labour in his own department, communicating little with his colleagues, and looking continually to the one hand that had invested him with his share of power. It was in vain that one party objected to the weathercock politics of Talleyrand. "Be it so," answered the Chief Consul: "but he is the ablest minister for foreign affairs in our choice, and it shall be my care that he exerts his abilities." Carnot, in like manner, was objected to as a firm republican. "Republican or not," answered Napoleon, "he ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... tense interest held us all spellbound. We could see nothing but some stray glimpses of an ivy-clad wall. A weathercock, that had once been gilded, stood out black against the evening sky. The Grey Lady in the rustling silk, through whom you could see the rain drops splash on the gravel stones, was by no means on view. No green ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... of that time Myles imparted something of his honest solidity to Gascoyne's somewhat weathercock nature, and to Myles's ruder and more uncouth character Gascoyne lent a tone of his gentler manners, learned in his pagehood service as attendant upon the Countess and ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... once prevented the Prince's armament from sailing and brought fresh Irish regiments from Dublin to Chester, were bitterly cursed and reviled by the common people. The weather, it was said, was Popish. Crowds stood in Cheapside gazing intently at the weathercock on the graceful steeple of Bow Church, and praying ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... think that pride exalts Thyself in other's eyes, And hides thy folly's faults, Which reason will despise? Dost strut, and turn, and stride, Like a walking weathercock? The shadow by thy side Will ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... porch, the mullioned windows, the venerable gravestones dotting the green churchyard, the ancient tower, the very weathercock; the brown thatched roofs of cottage, barn, and homestead, peeping from among the trees; the stream that rippled by the distant water-mill; the blue Welsh mountains far away. It was for such a spot the child had wearied in the dense, dark, miserable ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... taken off my outer things and was standing on my balcony, listening to the dull hum of the water in the glen, the rustle of the trees above it, the surge of the sea on the rocks below, the creaking of a rusty weathercock and the striking of a court-yard clock, when I also heard the toot and throb of another motor-car, and as soon as it came up I saw that it contained Aunt Bridget in the half-moon bonnet and Betsy Beauty, who was looking more than ever like ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... cried about you, for I was afraid lest you were drowned and lying at the bottom of the sea. Many a time I got up in the night and looked if the weathercock had turned; it turned often, but you did not return. I remember one day distinctly: the rain was pouring down in torrents; the dust-man had come to the house where I was in service; I went down with the dust-bin and stood ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... easy to call me a weathercock,' said the matron, putting on the look of a good woman; 'but I have reasoned it out, and at last, thank God, I have got over my ambition. The Lovedays are our true and only friends, and Mr. Festus Derriman, with all his money, is ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... speed, and prominence are the three gods of their idolatry. They are not content until they—the citizens—are all prominent, and their buildings are all the largest that cumber the earth. It is a great comfort to those who gamble away their substance in the Board of Trade to reflect that the weathercock that surmounts its tower is the biggest ever seen by human eye. There is not one of them that will not tell you, with a satisfied smile, that the slowest of their fire-engines can go from one end of the city to the other in five seconds. There is not one of them who, in the dark recesses of ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... off with a few trees, with some extensive stabling and cart-sheds on the left, and on the right hand the entrance to the cellars. Facing us is an unpretending-looking edifice, where the firm has its counting-houses, with a little corner tower surmounted by a characteristic weathercock consisting of a figure of Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a bottle in one hand and a goblet in the other. The old Remish Commanderie of the Knights Templars existed until the epoch of the Great Revolution, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... boy. You needn't think it an unmanly or quizzical thing to be particular about your nightcap, for I have often heard your poor dear papa, and the Reverend Mr What's-his-name, who used to read prayers in that old church with the curious little steeple that the weathercock was blown off the night week before you were born,—I have often heard them say, that the young men at college are uncommonly particular about their nightcaps, and that the Oxford nightcaps are quite celebrated for their strength and goodness; so much so, indeed, that ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... of the Roost! I have repaired and renovated it with religious care, in the genuine Dutch style, and have adorned and illustrated it with sundry reliques of the glorious days of the New Netherlands. A venerable weathercock, of portly Dutch dimensions, which once battled with the wind on the top of the Stadt-House of New Amsterdam, in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, now erects its crest on the gable end of my edifice; a gilded horse in full gallop, once the weathercock of the great Vander ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... affirmed to be an admirable resemblance of a great favorite of the epicures in that country, which bore the title of lake-fish, and doubtless the assertion was true; for, although intended to answer the purposes of a weathercock, the fish was observed invariably to look with a longing eye in the direction of the beautiful sheet of water that lay imbedded ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... grieved when the old-fashioned meeting-house was converted into the modern temple! Time and decay had rendered the tall spire unsafe, yet its fall by force and premeditated purpose seemed a sacrilege. I felt affronted for the huge weathercock, reclining sulkily against a fence, no more to point his beak to the east with obstinate preference. I mourned over the broad, old-fashioned dial, on which young eyes could discern the time a mile off. The old sexton lived to see this change, and at the end of half ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (see note below), who sometimes wrote in the London over the pseudonym Janus Weathercock. John Taylor, Hood and perhaps John Hamilton Reynolds, made up the magazine for press. In the May number, in addition to Lamb's "Poor Relations," were contributions from De Quincey, Hartley Coleridge, Cary, and Barton. But it was not what ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... The weathercock at sunset Would lose the slanted ray, And I would climb the beacon That looked to Wales away And ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... circular, the latter surmounted by a cross, and pierced by three round openings in the walls. There are two porches, one in the centre the other in the north tower, and the walls show indications of characteristic Saxon masonry. On the central roof is a large fleche or turret of two stages carrying a weathercock on a ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... animal should canter, his fair rider's head will be jerked to and fro as "a vexed weathercock;" her drapery will be blown about, instead of falling gracefully around her; and her elbows rise and fall, or, as it were, flap up and down like the pinions of an awkward nestling endeavouring to fly. To avoid ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... this it may be added, that Dub-a-dub is found in Halliwell's Arch. Gloss. with the definition, "To beat a drum; also, the blow on the drum. 'The dub-a-dub of honour.' Woman is a weathercock, p. 21., there used metaphorically." Mr. Halliwell might also ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... filled with sleepers in postures so strange that beside them the writhing figures in Dore's illustrations of the Inferno would have straightened into tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden—its constancy shown by its weathercock ways, its innocence by the coating of gold that it has acquired, its devotion to style by its single, graceful flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of ever drawing the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... enormously magnified, and shipped to Labrador. There, too, and in similar colors, is the long chapel, on the centre of whose roof there is a belfry, which looks like two thirds of immense red egg, drawn up at the top into a spindle, and this surmounted by a weathercock,—as if some giant had attempted to blow the egg from beneath, and had only blown out of it this small bird with a stick to stand on! Ah, yes! and there is the pig-sty,—not in keeping with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... here then, good reader, a glorious Latitudinarian, that can, as to religion, turn and twist like an eel on the hook; or rather like the weathercock that ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... we shot by the quarantine establishment, with its hospital and many offices, the sun rose, without one attendant cloud, over the forest heights of Brooklyn, burnishing, as with gold, every window and weathercock opposed ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... me to wipe my pen upon. There are three little circles of deerskin and one of ruby velvet, stitched together in the centre. Then, standing on the velvet is a yellow wooden chick, with little eyes of beads, and a little wooden bill stuck in most quaintly, and a head that twists like a weathercock. It has such a piquant silliness of look that I laugh at it most heartily, and I have an almost elfish fun in smearing its downy feathers. I am sure you did not think I could be amused so easily. You shall see this silly chick one day, humorously ugly and all daubed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... felt inclined to play the part of the young enthusiast in "Excelsior," as I looked up at the weathercock which surmounts the spire. But the man who oils the weathercock-spindle has to get up to it in some way, and that way is by ladders which reach to within thirty feet of the top, where there is a small door, through which he emerges, to crawl up ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... grave dignified persons are compelled to scud along before the gale, shorn of all the impressiveness of their wonted solemn gait, holding, perchance, their shovel-hat firmly on with both hands; and finally, there is neither pathos nor glory in having your head broken by a chimney-pot, or volant weathercock. No, the wide sea is an emblem of all that is deceitful and false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind is only one shade more respectable—nay, perchance the worse of the two; for the waters, in the self-justifying, neighbour-condemning spirit, apparently inherent in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c (oscillation) 314. restlessness &c adj.. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers^; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c 111 [Obs.]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble^, turn and turn about, ring the changes; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... is in the north," said Colline, gravely, pointing to a weathercock on a neighboring roof. "We shall not breakfast today, the elements are ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... was an emphatic monosyllable.—Beg pardon,—he added,—forgot myself. But let us have an English dictionary, if we are to have any. I don't believe in clipping the coin of the realm, Sir! If I put a weathercock on my house, Sir, I want it to tell which way the wind blows up aloft,—off from the prairies to the ocean, or off from the ocean to the prairies, or any way it wants to blow! I don't want a weathercock with a winch in an old gentleman's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... square; on the top of these place three more dove-cots, also back to back; above these set up two more dove-cots, and one on the top of all, with a short steeple above it, and a spire with an enormous weathercock on the top of that, and the building will not be a bad model of a Norwegian church, especially if you paint the sides white, and the ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... hillside abuts boldly on the salt marsh. One of the cemetery-paths runs along the brink of the hill; and here, on a wooden bench under a clump of red cedars, Putnam would sit for hours enjoying the listless mood of convalescence. Where the will remains passive, the mind, like an idle weathercock, turns to every puff of suggestion, and the senses, born new from sickness, have the freshness and delicacy of a child's. It soothed his eye to follow lazily the undulations of the creek, lying like the folds of a blue silk ribbon on the flat ground of the marsh below. He watched the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... has declared war against the Christianity of the world, and it must down. There is no help for it. The church, that great bulwark of our practical paganism, must be reformed from foundation to weathercock."[12] These passages indicate his dissatisfaction with an external religion and with dogmatic theology. On the other hand, his letters and his poems prove that he was strongly grounded in the faith of the spirit. In that faith he lived and died; and, if in later years he gave recognition ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... you remember the dances, The dearest were those we sat out, How I frowned when detecting your glances On others, which caused you to pout? You are changeful and coy and capricious, A weathercock easily blown; But when shall I hear the delicious One word that proclaims you ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... The weathercock on the ancient stronghold at Cleve is a swan, and in olden times the dynasty that ruled over the lovely country round Cleve had also a swan in their crest. A legend, tragic and beautiful, preserved to posterity forever in Richard Wagner's ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... him a willing and an able instrument, and yet he proved faithless to all; for, though we have not circumstantial proof of this as to the last, his growing discontent with Louis Philippe shows clearly, that the political weathercock was again veering. Even when we make allowance for the very peculiar circumstances by which he was surrounded from his entry into life until his exit from it, it is impossible to doubt that this versatility was a consequence of a particular mental organization, and that, if rigorously ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... tears cannot wash! Master Marlowe hath too deep a reading i' the books of nature to nail his heart upon a gilded weathercock. He is only desperate after the fashion of a pearl diver. When he hath enough he will desist—breathe freely, polish the ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... knocking down an old wife from a chimney-top—singeing a pair of worsted stockings that, knit in an ill-starred hour, when the sun had entered Aries, had been hung out to dry on a line in the backyard, or garden as it is called—or cutting a few inches off the tail of an old Whig weathercock that for years had been pecking the eyes out of all the airts the wind can blaw, greedy of some ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... foremost. The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors and small windows on every floor, the date of its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front, and on the top of the roof was perched a fierce little weathercock, to let the family into the important secret which way the wind blew. These, like the weathercocks on the tops of our steeples, pointed so many different ways that every man could have a wind to his mind; the most stanch and loyal citizens, however, always ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... your silence, unless you are silent. You must not relax, especially until you can give me better accounts of your health and spirits. I was peevish before with the weather; but, now it prevents your riding, I forget hay and roses, and all the comforts that are washed away, and shall only watch the weathercock for an east wind in Yorkshire. What a shame that I should recover from the gout and from bruises, as I assure you I am entirely, and that you should have a complaint left! One would think that it was I was grown young again; for while just now, as I was reading your letter in my bedchamber, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole |
