"Woodcock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I went along the street, I carried my hat in my hand, And to every one that I did meet I bravely bent my band. Some did laugh, some did scoff, And some did mock at me, And some did say I was a woodcock, And ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... for such conditions as might be at the same time beneficial for the Persians and ourselves. At length, a Persian officer and I were deputed to go into the castle to treat with the Portuguese, and they also desired our vice-admiral, Mr Woodcock, might accompany us. We all three went to the castle gate, but could not be allowed to enter; yet were met by Luis de Brito, the Portuguese almirante, and five or six other cavalieros, but did not ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... of shade, from the absolute black of the block to the lightest tints. The general result of this method was to give a greater depth of colouring and variety to the engraving, but its advantages may perhaps be best understood by a glance at the background of the "Woodcock" on the following page. ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... that list they gave me had everything on it that was ever et or drunk, but I told dad they would fire us out if we ordered the whole prescription, so all I ordered was terrapin, canvasback duck, oysters, clams, crabs, a lot of new kinds of fish, and some beef and mutton, and turkey, and woodcock, and partridge, and quail, and English pheasant, and lobster and salads and ices, and pie and things, just to stay our stomachs, and when it came to wine, dad weakened, because he didn't want to set a bad ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... same ingredients into a number of small cases or patty tins. Ten minutes should be long enough to bake. Another very good filling for these or the previous puff pie is the mixture given in recipe for Scotch woodcock, while ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... variety of birds serenade me morning and evening, rejoicing in their liberty and security; for I have, as much as possible, prohibited the grounds from invasion, and sometimes almost wished for game-laws, when my orders have not been sufficiently regarded. The partridge, the woodcock, and the pigeon are too great temptations ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... jest. Many hands make light work. Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Necessity is the mother of invention. Old birds are not to be caught with chaff. Old friends and old wine are best. One swallow makes not a spring, nor one woodcock a winter. People who live in glass houses should never throw stones. Possession is nine points of the law. Procrastination is the thief of time. Short reckonings make long friends. Safe bind, safe ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... Adam Woodcock, the falconer of Avenel, was an Englishman by birth, but so long in the service of Glendinning, that he had lost much of his notional attachment in that which he had formed to his master. He was a favourite in ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... feathers, the restless and deeply bifurcated tail of the horse mackerel, the fluttering of the mullet with its triple wings, the grotesque rotundity of the boar-fish and the pig-fish, the dark smoothness of the sting-ray, floating like a fringe, the long snout of the woodcock-fish, the slenderness of the haddock, agile and swift as a torpedo, the red gurnard all thorns, the angel of the sea with its fleshy wings, the gudgeon, bristling with swimming angularities, the notary, red and white, with black bands similar to the flourishes on signatures, the modest ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... birds, would often sail as before in the middle distance, or night-hawks would cut their strange curves in the evening sky. Far out beyond, sea-gulls, mere specks of white, would wheel and plunge into the bay, and at our backs the woodcock, shy enough in any other presence, would whir fantastically through the woods. All nature was the same, but I was no longer its solitary admirer, for I held in my arms a gentle framework of delight such as no other man before or since has known. She was finer than ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... with the single-barrel was woodcock shooting; woodcock being by virtue of rarity a sort of royal game, and a miss at a woodcock a terrible disappointment. They have a trick of skimming along the very summit of a hedge, and looking so easy to kill; ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... fancy which plays us strange tricks, still but a year ago, having gone to set a springe for a woodcock, I chanced to pass by yonder big oak upon a November eve, and I could have sworn that I saw it all again. I saw myself a lad, my wounded arm still bound with Lily's kerchief, climbing slowly down the hill-side, while behind me, groaning beneath their burden, were the forms of the four serving ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... do you see now once again The glen And fern, the highland, and the thistle? And do you still remember when We heard the bright-eyed woodcock whistle Down by ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... of Saratoga. There is a row of carriages at the sheds—a select party is dining upon those choice trout, black bass and young woodcock. The game dinners are good, the prices are high, and the fried potatoes are noted all over the world. They have never been successfully imitated. Are done up in papers and sold like confectionery. The gayly ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... the first of many strange days; golden September days they were, cool and full of the ripened beauty of the departing summer. Kerry's host taught him to snare woodcock and pheasants—shoot them the Irishman could not, since the excitement of the thing made ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... shams are liable to misinterpretation. In centuries to come our own modern recipes for "Scotch Woodcock" or "Welsh rabbit" may be interpreted as attempts on our part to hoodwink guests by making game birds and rabbits out of cheese and bread, like Trimalchio's culinary artists are reputed to have ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... he has another sort of beauty, I think, such a beauty as made Victor Hugo's monster, Gwynplaine, fascinating, or gives a certain sort of charm to a banded rattlesnake. He is not much like the dove-eyed setter over whom we shot woodcock this afternoon, but to me he is the fairest object on the face of the earth, this gaunt, brindled Ulm. There's such a thing as association of ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... the racing droshky to be got out, and set off to the forest to shoot woodcock. It is pleasant making your way along the narrow path between two high walls of rye. The ears softly strike you in the face; the cornflowers cling round your legs; the quails call around; the horse ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... to what he says of the woodcock:" and with trembling hand she turned over the leaves, till he found the place. "Here it is," said he, "page 88, chap. xvi. Just be so good as read that, Lady Emily, and say whether it is not infamous that Monsieur Grillade has never even ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... birds familiar to European sportsmen, partridges and quails are to be had at all times; the woodcock has occasionally been shot in the hills, and the ubiquitous snipe, which arrives in September from Southern India, is identified not alone by the eccentricity of its flight, but by retaining in high perfection the qualities which have endeared ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... jorum about, And let us be merry and clever; Our hearts and our liquors are stout; Here's the Three Jolly Pigeons for ever. 20 Let some cry up woodcock or hare, Your bustards, your ducks, and your widgeons; But of all the birds in the air, Here's a health to the Three Jolly Pigeons. Toroddle, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... autumn the woodcock were very plentiful, and as my gout had left me for a time, I dragged myself as far as the forest. I had already killed four or five of the long-billed birds, when I knocked over one, which fell into a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... deep, and the current is swift in some places, sluggish in others. The channel winds through heavy timber lands and between high, rocky cliffs. The mountains are not far away. The fishing is splendid, and woodcock and ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... incident occurred that night, and yet one that came near costing Kirkendall his life. Among the men left with the train was William Woodcock, Lieutenant Jacobs' servant. He was armed with a double-barreled shotgun and ordered to take ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... land, it is surely only right and reasonable that lovers of lark's flesh should be prevented from gratifying their taste at the cost of the destruction of so loved a bird, that they should be made to content themselves with woodcock, and snipe on toast, and golden plover, and grouse and blackcock, and any other bird of delicate flavor which does not, living, appeal so strongly to the aesthetic feelings in us and is not ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... most delightful diversions imaginable. The woods are calm and the ripe colors are blazing in all their glory; the cone-laden trees stand motionless in the warm, hazy air, and you may see the crimson-crested woodcock, the prince of Sierra woodpeckers, drilling some dead limb or fallen trunk with his bill, and ever and anon filling the glens with his happy cackle. The humming-bird, too, dwells in these noble woods, and may oftentimes be seen glancing among the flowers or ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... the situation of a woodcock caught in his own springe, turned short round and coughed, to excuse a slight blush as he mustered his answer"as to the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... station and hunted our way up, making great sweeps and jogs, as hunters must, to take in certain spots we thought promising—certain ravines and swamp edges where we are always sure of hearing the thunderous whir of partridge wings, or the soft, shrill whistle of woodcock. At noon we broiled chops and rested in the lee of the wood edge, where, even in the late fall, one can usually find spots that are warm and still. It was dusk by the time we came over the crest of the farm ledges and saw the huddle of the home buildings below us, and quite ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... company, in a desert of dining room at a vast table loaded with masses of gold plate. The peaches are from South Africa; the strawberries from the Riviera. His chef ransacks the markets for pheasants, snipe, woodcock, Egyptian quail and canvasbacks. And at enormous distances from each other—so that the table may be decently full—sit, with their wives, his family doctor, his clergyman, his broker, his secretary, his lawyer, and a few of the ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... was approaching a perspiring and vociferous close when the Antiquary whispered an invitation to the Painter, the Patron, and the Critic. A Scotch woodcock at "Dick's" weighs heavily, even against the more solid pleasures of the mind, so terminating four conferences on as many tendencies in modern art, and abandoning four hungry souls, four hungry bodies bore ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... argument, that the memorial "might be attended with dangerous consequences to your person and contribute to exasperate the nation." He closed with the significant sentence: "I heartily wish you a prosperous voyage and long health." The significant words remind one of the woodcock's feather with which Wildrake warned the disguised monarch that no time was to be lost in fleeing from Woodstock. But if the hint was curt, it was no less wise. There was no doubt that it was full time for the sage to be exchanging his farewells, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... while there was scarcely a day that the old gentleman's servant did not knock at their door, bearing a present of game. The second time he came with some fine larks; next was a superb grouse; then woodcock again. Curiosity strove with astonishment and gratitude in Ellen's mind. "Mamma," she said, after she had admired the grouse for five minutes, "I cannot rest without finding out who ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... turkey that would sell for five or six shillings at the London market, costs me but three at Nice. I can buy a good capon for thirty sols, or eighteen-pence; and the same price I pay for a brace of partridges, or a good hare. I can have a woodcock for twenty-four sols; but the pigeons are dearer than in London. Rabbits are very rare; and there is scarce a goose to be seen in the whole county of Nice. Wild-ducks and teal are sometimes to be had in the winter; and now I am speaking of sea-fowl, it may ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... grew warmer, it carried these with it and deposited them fifty yards from where they originated. This is exactly the action of a glacier. The ice-mist was often visible over the frozen water-meadows, where I went for duck, teal, and at intervals a woodcock in the adjacent mounds. But it was better seen in the early evening over a great pond, a mile or more long; where, too, the immense lifting power of water was exemplified, as the merest trickle of a streamlet flowing in by-and-by forced up the thick ice in ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... been provided by the Goulds and Manlys, and day after day the rich smells of roast beef and the salt vapours of boiling hams trailed along the passages, and ascended through the banisters of the staircases in Beech Grove and Manly Park. Fifty chickens had been killed; presents of woodcock and snipe were received from all sides; salmon had arrived from Galway; cases of champagne from Dublin. As a wit said, 'Circe has prepared a banquet and is ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... after all it may have been a couple of young farmers taking a day off, hunting woodcock along the river. This is the time of year for the first brood to be big enough for shooting. The law opens for a short spell, and then it's on again till fall," Owen remarked, with his knowledge of such things, ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... walked into the forest which surrounds the caravanserai on all sides, and shot two or three brace of red-legged partridges and a woodcock. I saw the traces of several wild boars; they were evidently quite recent; also a wretched porcupine the Arabs ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... his rich domains, Round Euston's water'd vale, and sloping plains, Where woods and groves in solemn grandeur rise, Where the kite brooding unmolested flies; The woodcock and the painted pheasant race, And sculking foxes, destin'd for the chace; There Giles, untaught and unrepining, stray'd Thro' every copse, and grove, and winding glade; There his first thoughts to Nature's charms inclin'd, That stamps devotion on th' inquiring ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... plump bird, and truss it in the following manner:—After it has been carefully plucked, drawn, and singed, skin the neck, and fasten the head under the wing; turn the legs at the first joint, and bring the feet close to the thighs, as a woodcock should be trussed, and do ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... particularly about the dam, where he generally burrows, a glimpse of the musk-rat as he dives down. Now and then too the wild duck will push his beautiful shape with his bright feet through it—the snipe will alight and "teter," as the children say, along the banks—the woodcock will show his brownish red bosom amongst the reeds as he comes to stick his long bill into the black ooze for sucking, as dock-boys stick straws into molasses hogsheads—and once in a great while, the sawyer, if he's wide awake, will see, in the Spring or Fall, the wild ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... Gladstone. Hearne's allusions to the contemporary state of buildings and of college manners are often rather instructive. In All Souls the Whigs had a feast on the day of King Charles's martyrdom. They had a dinner dressed of woodcock, "whose heads they cut off, in contempt of the memory of the blessed martyr." These men were "low Churchmen, more shame to them." The All Souls men had already given up the custom of wandering about ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... resignation. I'm not quite certain even now whether I'm expressing myself clearly. While I've been lying here, I've kept fancying red dogs were running round me, while you were making them point at me, as if I were a woodcock. Just as if I were drunk. Do ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... popping out of his head. He had just a glimpse of a brown form disappearing over the tops of some tall bushes. Then Peter chuckled. "I declare," said he, "I had forgotten all about my old friend, Longbill the Woodcock. He scared me for ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... too utterly miserable to be borne. The sight of the deck-steward bringing round cups of half-cold beef-tea with grease spots floating on the top proved the last straw, so, with a graceful, wavering flight like a woodcock, we zigzagged to our bunks, where we have ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... well as the shaft are preserved. The head was at first supposed to be wanting, but Mr. Evans detected on the slab what seems to be the impression of the cranium and beak, much resembling in size and shape that of the jay or woodcock. This valuable specimen is now in the British Museum, and has been called by Professor Owen Archaeopteryx macrura. Although anatomists agree that it is a true bird, yet they also find that in the ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... invited Grace and Emily to accompany her in a walk; the gentlemen having preceded them in pursuit of their different avocations. Francis had his regular visits of spiritual consolation; John had gone to the hall for his pointers and fowling-piece, the season for woodcock having arrived; and Denbigh had proceeded no one knew whither. On gaining the high-road, Mrs. Wilson desired her companions to lead the way to the cottage where the family of the mendicant gardener had been lodged, and thither they soon ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... therefore obliged to employ that part of life in study which my progenitors had devoted to the hawk and hound, I was in my eighteenth year despatched to the university, without any rural honours. I had never killed a single woodcock, nor partaken one triumph over ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... for the granting of a pension to the beneficiary therein named, describing her as the "widow of Robert Woodcock, deceased, late a private in the Fourth United States Volunteer Infantry in the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... so far as to let our guns speak for us, when at length we had swept out of sight, and thus left the woods to ring again with their echoes; and it may be many russet-clad children, lurking in those broad meadows, with the bittern and the woodcock and the rail, though wholly concealed by brakes and hardhack and meadow-sweet, heard our salute ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... eggs, and then, Limons, and wine for sauce: to these, a coney Is not to be despair'd of for our money; And though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks, The sky not falling, think we may have larks. I'll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come: Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some May yet be there; and godwit if we can; Knat, rail, and ruff too. Howsoe'er my man Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus, Livy, or of some better book to us, Of which we'll speak our minds, amidst our meat; And I'll profess no verses to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... could I look forward without a shudder, to set up my everlasting rest, to lay my weary bones in the earth, and to mingle my clay with that whereout it was moulded. No fear of being houcked here, Thomas, and preserved in a glass case, like a stuffed woodcock, in Surgeons Hall. I am a barbarian, Tom, in these respects—I am a barbarian, and nothing of a philosopher. Quiero Paz is to be my epitaph. Quiero Paz—'Cursed be he who stirs these bones.' Did not even Shakspeare write it? What poetry in ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... and a dingy yard, to which it applies. At the theatre last night I saw Hamlet, and should have done better to 'sit at home and mope' like the idle workmen. In the last scene, Laertes on being asked how it was with him replied (verbatim) 'Why, like a woodcock—on account ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... across the bait strewn for them, and equally as certain to be caught and entangled in the nooses. The writer has known as many as six quails to be thus caught at a time, on a string of only twelve nooses. Partridges and woodcock will occasionally be found entangled in the snare, and it will oft-times happen that a rabbit will be ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... be few. Personally, I should detest a world all red and ruled with the ploughshare in spring, all covered with harvest in autumn. I wish a little variety. I desiderate moors and barren places: the copse where you can flush the woodcock; the warren where, when you approach, you can see the twinkle of innumerable rabbit tails; and, to tell the truth, would not feel sorry although Reynard himself had a hole beneath the wooded bank, even if the demands of his rising family cost Farmer Yellowleas a fat capon or two ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... thrust their spike-shaped leaves above the mould. The hedgehogs, curled in their beds amid the wind-blown oak-leaves, were awakened by the gentle heat, and wandered through the ditches in search of slugs and snails. One evening, as the moon shone over the hill, the woodcock, that for months had dwelt by day in the oak-scrub near the "set," and had fed at night in the swampy thickets by the rill, heard the voice of a curlew descending from the heights of the sky, and rose, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... or minerals, one frequently comes upon evidence of the former occupation of the country. Speaking of game, the partridges are not preserved, and they are scarce; of course I was too early, but in autumn the woodcock-shooting, I understand, is first-rate. Quails and snipes are also common in ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... foot on either bank of this menacing but not yet very formidable stream. So that on the whole this nook of shelter under the coronet of rock was a favourite place for a sage cock-pheasant, or even a woodcock in wintry weather. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... the long green-wooded valley between the hills where he had shot his first woodcock; there was the great stone on which he had broken his best knife in a fit of geological research; there was the pool where he used to skate; there the sudden break in the lulls that gave the first view of the sea. He ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the sportsman—and the Lancashire gentlemen of the sixteenth century were keen lovers of sport—the country had a strong interest. Pendle forest abounded with game. Grouse, plover, and bittern were found upon its moors; woodcock and snipe on its marshes; mallard, teal, and widgeon upon its pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might follow the wolf to his lair in ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... left his father's home because the old gentleman wanted him to marry Rosetta, whom he had never seen. He called himself Thomas, and entered the service of Justice Woodcock as gardener. Here he fell in love with the supposed chamber-maid, who proved to be Rosetta, and their marriage fulfilled the desire of all the parties interested.—I. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... in the best houses nothing was eaten except a thin soup (or bru), followed by fish, succeeded by meat or by game, especially such birds as are particularly pleasing to Buddha, as the partridge, the pheasant, and the woodcock. After this, except for fruits and wine, the principle of Swaraj, or denial of self, was rigidly imposed. Special Oriental dinners of this sort were given, followed by listening to the reading of Oriental poetry, with closed eyes ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... of rough, open land there that gave from the covert edge, with scattered brake-fern and a stream in the midst and a lot of blackthorn scrub round about. A noted place for a woodcock, also a snipe, and a spot from which trespassers were warned very careful. So Samuel took a look over to see that all was quiet, and there, in the midst, he marked a big girl struggling with a sloe-bush! But, quick though he was, she'd ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... is very small, The humming-bee is less; The ladybird is least of all, And beautiful in dress. The pelican she loves her young, The stork its parent loves; The woodcock's bill is very long, And innocent are doves. In Germany they hunt the boar, The bee brings honey home, The ant lays up a winter ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... from the front walk. It was Aunt Elizabeth. She has a way of calling to announce herself in a sweet, cooing tone. I said to Charles Edward once it was like a dove, and he said: "No, my child, not doves, but woodcock." Alice giggled and called out, quite loudly, '"Springes to catch woodcock!'" And he shook his head at her and said, "You all-knowing imp! isn't even Shakespeare hidden from you?" But now the voice didn't ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... Isn't this American Woodcock, or indeed any member of the family, a comical bird? His head is almost square, and what a remarkable eye he has! It is a seeing eye, too, for he does not require light to enable him to detect the food he seeks in the bogs. He has many names to characterize him, such as Bog-sucker, Mud Snipe, ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... as numerous in Hertfordshire as in any other county of equal size; the large flocks of hen chaffinches that haunt the farmyards in winter being quite a notable feature. The goldfinch, it is to be feared, is rapidly becoming scarcer; as are also the jay, the woodcock and other birds much more numerous a few years back. Fieldfares and redwings visit the county in great numbers from the N. during the winter; one morning in the winter of 1886 the writer saw many thousands of fieldfares pass over St. Albans from the direction of Luton. ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... it. The reader will remember that the occasion and philosophy to which we allude were, respectively, the dinner at Mr. Karl Benson's, and a conversation in which Mr. Harry Benson expressed it as his decided opinion that living in a country where one could eat woodcock and drink claret without having to pay very high taxes or do any hard work, was much better than some other things which he then and there suggested. But in the silence which often falls over a small dinner circle, and over a circle ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... gout of game and venison. It is not found in the flesh of young animals, which is said, with reason, to be, on that very account, less nutritious. It is only when they have attained the adult age that it appears in them; it is abundant in beef, mutton, kid, hare, pigeon, partridge, pheasant, woodcock, quail, duck, goose, and generally, in all animals having dark coloured flesh. Mushrooms and oysters also contain some, but in ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... pheasants, fifty-six rabbits, eleven hares, three pigeons, and a woodcock. We should have got a hundred and eighty pheasants if they hadn't dodged us in the big wood. I can't make out where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... many reasons why the woodcock should be prized by the winter sportsman more than any other bird in the bag. In the first place, there is its scarcity. Half a dozen to every hundred pheasants would in most parts of the country be considered a ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... faith, I thank him; he hath bid me to a calf's head and a capon, the which if I do not carve most curiously, say my knife's naught.—Shall I not find a woodcock too? ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... at the door, "come forth! You are now fairly trapped at last—caught like the woodcock in your own springe. We have you. Open the door, I say, and save us the trouble of forcing it. You cannot escape us. We will burn the building down but we ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and very soon two hovered over the garden, eventually descending into the garden with wings slanted, and then the seagulls had to leave off fighting or go without food altogether. A great strange bird rose out of the bushes, and flew away in slow, heavy flight. Monsignor thought it was a woodcock; and there were birds whose names no one knew, migrating birds come from thousands of miles, from regions where the snow lies for months upon the ground; and Evelyn and the prelate and the nuns watched them all until the frosty air ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... were plentiful, and the Adamses did their best to preserve them on their own place. But too keen sportsmen were always stealing into the Richmond Hill grounds for a shot or two. "Oh, for game laws!" was her constant wail. In one letter she declares: "The partridge, the woodcock and the pigeon are too great temptations for ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... To make mutton taste like venison, provide for it the following gravy. Pick a very stale woodcock or snipe, and cut it to pieces, after having removed the bag from the entrails. Simmer it in some meat gravy, without seasoning; then strain it, and serve it ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... azure of the northern sky, very, very far away, there was cold in the world, for even last week, through the violet and primrose dusk, out of the north, shadowy winged things came speeding, batlike phantoms against the dying light—flight-woodcock coming through hill-cleft and valley to the ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... for edible game were likewise abundant, with squirrels, opossums and wild turkeys, and even deer and bears in the woods, rabbits, doves and quail in the fields, woodcock and snipe in the swamps and marshes, and ducks and geese on the streams. Still further, the creeks and rivers yielded fish to be taken with hook, net or trap, as well as terrapin and turtles, and the coastal waters added shrimp, crabs and oysters. In most localities it required little time for ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... came out on the top of Pound's Hill Wood. Sir Richard pointed to the swells of beautiful, dappled Dallington, that showed like a woodcock's breast up the valley. 'Ye ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... nuthatches and chickadees close at hand. Joe said that they called the chickadee kecunnilessu in his language. I will not vouch for the spelling of what possibly was never spelt before, but I pronounced after him till he said it would do. We passed close to a woodcock, which stood perfectly still on the shore, with feathers puffed up, as if sick. This, Joe said, they called nipsquecohossus. The kingfisher was skuscumonsuck; bear was wassus; Indian Devil, lunxus; the mountain-ash, upahsis. This was very abundant and beautiful. Moose-tracks were not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the famous Irishman they used to call "Woodcock" Hussey, because he was never hit, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... distance. Suddenly, with one clear, sharp whistle to announce his intention, he would drop like a plummet for a thousand feet, catch himself in mid-air, and zigzag down to the nest in the spruce top, whirling, diving, tumbling, and crying aloud the while in wild, ecstatic exclamations,—just as a woodcock comes whirling, plunging, twittering down from a height to his brown mate in the alders below. Then Ismaques would mount up again and repeat his dizzy plunge, while his larger mate stood quiet in the spruce top, and the little fishhawks ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... member of the crew was a long, lazy-looking Yankee, whom the Skipper called Rento, and the others plain "Rent," his full name of Laurentus Woodcock being more than they could away with. But it was not to see the crew, neither the schooner (though she was a pretty schooner enough, as anybody who knew about such matters could see), that the village had come out; it was to see the ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... Milton lived in peace and obscurity in Jewin Street, near Aldersgate Street. During the commonwealth his first wife, the mother of his three children, had died; on which he sought solace and companionship in a union with Catherine Woodcock, who survived her marriage but twelve months; and being left free once more, he, in the year of grace 1661, entered into the bonds of holy matrimony for a third time, with Elizabeth Minshul, a lady of excellent family and shrewish temper, who rendered ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... not," said the Stork gravely. "Yet the Woodcock is a very foolish bird. One never knows what he will do next. If he should try to ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... to catch woodcock!" he said to himself, quoting Shakespeare, then went on to reflect in his own vernacular: "The chap is trying to bribe me, confound him! Well, here goes!" Thereupon he said aloud, for they were ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... grouse, woodcock, partridge, canvas-backs, and quails; meats, venison, and oysters, master-did up in any shape what the gentlemen wish. Wines, &c., if they want," replied the servant, without any of the negro dialect, at the same time making a low ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... added a dressing-gown of flannel, or print lined with wadding or fleecy hosiery, and so made shift. In particular all those who had the care of Josephs took care to lie warm and soft. Hawes, Jones, Hodges, Fry, Justices Shallow and Woodcock, all took the care of their own carcasses they did not take ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock. All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... were carried in, to Morano's great delight: with wide blue eyes he watched the produce of that mighty estate coming in through the doorway cooked. Boars' heads, woodcock, herons, plates full of fishes, all manner of small eggs, a roe-deer and some rabbits, were carried in by procession. And the men set to with their ivory-handled knives, each handle being the whole tusk of a boar. And with their eating ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... strawberry shortcake, spontaneous yeast, banana popoi, Pennsylvania scrapple, miti sauce to eat with pig roasted underground, baked breadfruit, breadfruit pudding, onion soup, bisque of lobster, bouillabaise, banana beer, Russian risotto, Scotch woodcock, Russian pancake, Spanish ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... you a song Of the days that are long, Of the woodcock and the sparrow, Of the little dog that burnt his tail, And he shall ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous
... (from St. James's Square), writes Mrs. Yorke, 'and Mr. Woodcock followed in the chariot with the Great Seal. The King had given it in his closet, and at the same time Mr. Yorke kissed his Majesty's hand on being made Baron of Morden in the county of Cambridge. Not once did Mr. Yorke close his eyes, though at my entreaty he took composing medicines.... ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... Hill, he dined at the Castle Inn, and when Partridge, the host, produced his bill, which was rather exorbitant, the comedian asked him his name. "Partridge, sir," said he. "Partridge! It should have been Woodcock, by the ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... but entirely spoiled this act of politeness by exclaiming in a rude tone, "Pass, madame, pass on!" And turning towards the King of Naples, added, loud enough to be heard, this disgraceful exclamation, "The old woodcock!" ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... I learnt to read, but it was a long time before I could write. There was a small lake on the estate which was full of fish; every stream contained trout. The hills abounded in rabbits and hares; in a larch-forest, since cut away, were woodcock. Pheasants used often to stray over from Lord Powerscourt's demesne, which was separated from our ground by a much-broken fence. These my father strictly forbade me to snare, but I fear I did not always obey him. Pheasants ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... left the ground, you may be sure that the woodcock has come. The woodcock has a bill nearly three inches long. He sticks it into the soft earth to hunt for the worms on which he lives. So you see if the ground were hard the woodcock could not get his ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... handed the woodcock, but they all refused it, and ate nothing but salad. Laptev did not remember what he had said, but it was clear to him that it was not his words that were hateful, but the fact of his meddling in the conversation ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... peculiarity in carving the woodcock or snipe is, that the bird is not drawn like other birds, but roasted as it is plucked, suspended by the head, with a toast beneath, on which the trail, as it is called, or internal part, is allowed to drop; and when the birds are roasted, which should be rapidly done ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... pygmaeus), numerous seagulls, as the Adriatic gull (Larus melanocephalus), Andonieri's gull, the herring-gull, the Red-Sea-gull (Larus ichthyo-aetos), and others; the gull-billed tern (Sterna anglica), the Egyptian goose, the wild duck, the woodcock, the Greek partridge (Caccabis saxatilis), the waterhen, the corncrake or landrail, the coot, the water-ouzel, the francolin; plovers of three kinds, green, golden, and Kentish; dotterels of two kinds, red-throated and Asiatic; the Manx shearwater, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... order for foreign service as anything rather than unpleasant—now the thought was insupportable. Then there would have been some charm to me in the very novelty of the locale, and the indulgence of that vagrant spirit I have ever possessed; for, like Justice Woodcock, "I certainly should have been a vagabond if Providence had not made me a justice of the peace"—now, I could not even contemplate the thing as possible; and would have actually refused the command of a regiment, if the condition ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... reflected, from the woods about home. There the game was already harried; the report of a gun set every living creature skulking. Here the crack of my little rifle was no more heeded than the plunge of a fish-hawk, or the groaning of a burdened elm bough. A score of fat woodcock lay unheeding in that bit of alder tangle yonder, the ground bored like a colander after their night's feeding. Up on the burned hillside the partridges said, quit, quit! when I appeared, and jumped ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... the partridge drum in the woods; He heard the woodcock's evening hymn; He found the tawny thrushes' broods; And the shy hawk did ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... plump, the skin clear; and if a few feathers be plucked from the inside of the leg and around the vent, the flesh of freshly killed birds will be fat and fresh colored; if it is dark, and discolored, the game has been hung a long time. The wings of good ducks, geese, pheasants, and woodcock are tender to the touch; the tips of the long wing feathers of partridges are pointed in young birds, and round in old ones. Quail, snipe, and small birds should ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... a breath of heat, Summer and winter at Candlemas meet. In April the year grows moist and warm the air, The old folks' lives without their doors bids fair; The woodcock then comes flying from the sea, Brings back the ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... oysters obediently, and after the oysters, fish, and after the fish the breast of a woodcock. But from the autumn lamb, roasted whole, which followed, she was ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... crossed the Bay road, on the site of the Hatch tavern, opposite Barden's building in North Attleboro; and because this stream marked a journey of ten miles from Seekonk, the early travellers named it Ten-Mile River. Here the famous John Woodcock took up his abode in 1663 or 1664, and established a garrison which afterwards formed one of a chain of strongholds extending from Boston to Rhode Island. An avowed foe of the red race who surrounded him, he found them hostile and treacherous, and had no recourse ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... origin. When they run wild, Mr. St. John says, they are often irreclaimable, and do incredible mischief. There are instances, however, of their returning to their homes bringing game with them. One known to the above gentleman, used every winter evening to bring in a woodcock; another brought back rabbits and hares; the latter was constantly caught in traps, which accident did not cure him of his wanderings, and he never struggled, but sat quietly till some one ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... foolish boy!" she retorted. "Go and try something that you do know about. You can snare a partridge, or shoot a woodcock, perhaps!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... for their young, with the harsh cry of the toucan, the cooing of the pigeon, and the "to-whit, to-whoo" of the owl. From the long grass in its vicinity also issue the grating and loud cry of the florican, woodcock, and grouse. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the beautiful moment was for ever poisoned by the thought that it was passing, passing; and that the spirit, whatever joy might be in store for it, could never again be at the same sweet point of its course. The poem is about a woodcock, a belated bird that haunted the hanging thickets of his Devonshire home. "Ah, hapless bird," he says, "for you to-day King December is stripping these oaks; nor any hope of food do the hazel-thickets afford." That is my case. I have lingered too late, trusting to the ease ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the fault of Knox or his influence that a man should be sentenced to be hanged for the rough horseplay of a Robin Hood performance, or because he was "Lord of Inobedience" or "Abbot of Unreason," like Adam Woodcock; but the extraordinary exaggeration of a society which could think such a ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... human signs there; here a woodcock had peppered the mud with little holes, probing for worms; there a raccoon had picked his way; yonder a lynx had left the great padded mark of its foot, doubtless watching for yonder mink nosing us from the bank ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... woodcock in that wet ground, Griffin," he said, as he reluctantly yielded a little in his intention; "and Winchester would fancy a bird exceedingly in a day or two. I never was hit in my life that I did not feel a desire for game after the fever was gone. Snipe, too, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... met with very fair sport, considering that we were only going through outlying cover for cocks. I think that we had killed twenty-seven, a woodcock and a leash of partridges which we secured out of a driven covey. On our way home there lay a long narrow spinney, which was a very favourite "lie" for woodcocks, and generally held a pheasant ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... The Woodcock is very rare, because it is only to be met with in inhabited countries. It is like that of France; its flesh is white, but rather plumper and more delicate than that of ours, which is owing to the plenty and goodness ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... which live on the ground, every one admits that they are coloured so as to imitate the surrounding surface. How difficult it is to see a partridge, snipe, woodcock, certain plovers, larks, and night-jars when crouched on ground. Animals inhabiting deserts offer the most striking cases, for the bare surface affords no concealment, and nearly all the smaller quadrupeds, reptiles, and birds depend for safety ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... as he had been about India when he was Viceroy here. He threw himself into it with just as much vigour. That beats me. He was a big man, of course, and I am not. I suppose that's the explanation. Anyway, the School Board was not for me. I put in my winters for some years at Corfu shooting woodcock. And in the summer I met a man or two back on leave at my club. But on the whole it was pretty dull. Yes," and he nodded his head, and for the first time a note of despondency sounded in his voice. "Yes, on the whole it was pretty dull. It will ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... fifth son of the alderman, was in the East India Company's Civil Service, as collector at Saharapore. He married Harriet Dawson, and his daughter Harriet married William Woodcock, Esq. ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... tip it off with Blake and the rest. No bridge for you tonight—early to bed and tomorrow morning you'll all start out in your natty knickers and short kilts to murder things that will fall in bloody feathery heaps at your feet. Native woodcock, jack snipe, black mallard, grouse, etc., the restless eager setters doing their own retrieving; the soft dank ground daintily overspread with the frond of marvelous fern like my window pane this morning with its delicate tracery in frost; the tall-stemmed alders echoing your shots ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr |
