"Mice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they have grace and beauty and artistic workmanship, but they are all marble or bronze—the most costly of them only ivory with just an occasional gleam of gold, the merest surface-plating; and even those are wood inside, harbouring whole colonies of mice. Whereas Bendis here, Anubis there, Attis next door, and Mithras and Men, are all of solid gold, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... Porredge, & their fat Bul Beeues: Eyther they must be dyeted like Mules, And haue their Prouender ty'd to their mouthes, Or pitteous they will looke, like drowned Mice ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... meself in bed, An' kape it warrum, as your honour said; Long life to yees, and may you niver walk, Not even to your grave, but ride foriver; Good luck to yees," and without more of talk He pulled the forelock 'neath his tattered hat, And started off; but plans of mice and men Gang oft agley, again and yet again. Full half a mile upon his homeward road Poor Patrick toiled beneath his heavy load. A hilltop gained, he stopped to rest, alas! He laid his mare's egg on some treacherous grass; When down the steep ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... want, Fennell will serue to rub your Hiue withall. The Hiue being drest and ready spelkt, rubd and the hole made for their passage (I vse no hole in the Hiue, but a piece of wood hoal'd to saue the hiue & keep out Mice) shake in your Bees, or the most of them (for all commonly you cannot get) the remainder will follow. Many vse smoke, Nettles, &c. which I vtterly dislike: for Bees loue not to be molested. Ringing in the time of casting is a meere fancie, violent handling of them is simply euill, because Bees of ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... upon him; puff him out with humps and bunches behind; pinch his waist into a compass that will allow his lungs only half their breathing capacity; load his head down with superfluous hair—rats, mice, chignons, etc., and stick it full of hair-pins; and then set him to translating Greek and competing for prizes in a first-class university. What sort of a chance would he stand in running that race or any other!! Mrs. Stanton read a civil rights ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... shoulders who became our grandmothers. I think none of the numbers dated farther back than the early forties of the last century, and they were not very inviting, for they were dusty and discolored and the mice had gnawed holes in the career of Lord Reginald and ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... you think I'd bother to make biscuits out of flour?" she replied. "That is altogether too tedious a process for a Yookoohoo. I set some traps this afternoon and caught a lot of field-mice, but as I do not like to eat mice, I transformed them into hot biscuits for my supper. The honey in this pot was once a wasp's nest, but since being transformed it has become sweet and delicious. All I need do, when I wish to eat, is to take something I don't care to keep, ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... valleys of the stream: beaver, otter, mink, muskrat, coon, are examples. Those that do not actually live by the water seek these places because of their sheltered character and because their prey lives there; of this class are the lynx, fox, fisher, and marten that feed on rabbits and mice. Therefore a line of traps is usually along some valley and over the divide and down some other valley back to the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of society; a strong political and financial element, bankers, deputies, a few artists, all the jaded people of Parisian "high life," wan-faced, with glittering eyes, saturated with arsenic like greedy mice, but with appetite insatiable for poison and for life. The drawing-room being thrown open, the vast antechamber of which the doors had been removed to be seen, laden with flowers at the sides, the principal staircase of the mansion, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... had appeared around the corner, cocking a surprised eye at them. William regarded her thoughtfully. "When a man's alone, there ain't much he can do for folks," he said slowly, "except feed Juno night and mornin',—and she catches so many mice it ain't really wuth while. Now a hen needs ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... species of "vermin," both "creeping things" and "slimy things, that crawl with legs," which seem to imagine that drains are constructed for their especial accommodations. In dry times, it is a favorite amusement of moles and mice and snakes, to explore the devious passages thus fitted up for them, and entering at the capacious open front door, they never suspect that the spacious corridors lead to no apartments, that their accommodations, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... laid plans o' mice and men" often meet with unsuspected hindrances, as both Gulian and Yorke were destined to discover. What special imp prompted Betty to sally forth for a walk after dinner, thereby missing a call from Yorke (who came ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... critters in any water, and as he couldn't see 'em he ran off with the glasses to see if they would help him. He tied our old Tom to the mouse trap because he said that he wanted the cat to be on hand when the mice ran in. He carried a squash pie out to the brindle cow because he thought she must be tired of eating nothing but grass, and if he and Grandma Babson have got to spend three months under the same roof, I b'lieve he'll drive her crazy, for she hates boys and don't mind saying ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... time I wasn't thinking about Alice, because I remembered a certain other wedding where the dearest small girl in the world introduced me to the dearest big girl in the world. I thought also of the little partner who wrote a certain letter and of many other things—I didn't even forget the baby mice, Chicken Little! Alice says she would like to have your name on her diploma along with the president's because—well, you know why. And they tell us you are Chicken Big now. Thirteen going on, is a frightful age! The worst of it is ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... had prowled through the pasture on a hunt for field mice, spied him. "I declare, that's Turkey Proudfoot!" she exclaimed. "He must have got lost up here. I certainly shan't wake him and tell him the way home. If I spoke to him he'd be sure to gobble and scare away all the ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... rain, are nevertheless filled with fluid. On the Pacific Coast the golden jars of Darlingtonia californica, with their overarching hoods, are often so large and watery as to drown small birds and field mice. Note in passing that these otherwise dark prisons have translucent spots at the top, whereas our pitcher-plant is ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... rats and mice in the N.W. interior, numbers of which took up their abode in our underground room at the Depot, but there was no apparent difference between them and ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... know it. I know an owl that sits in the cleft of the hollow sycamore and eats its fill of mice, till it can hardly put a stir out ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... mice nibbled and nibbled, and the Country Mouse thought he had never tasted anything so delicious in his life. He was just thinking how lucky the City Mouse was, when suddenly the door opened with a bang, and in came the ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... turned out as the strategist predicted. Mice ran about boldly everywhere, and though the cat caught some of them the people of the house were dissatisfied. "We might as well drown that cat at once and get a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... your benefit at night. They will sing, laugh, and talk loudly, and bang furniture around in a most pitiless way. If you knock on your wall appealingly, they will quiet down and discuss the matter softly among themselves for a moment—then, like the mice, they fall to persecuting you again, and as vigorously as before. They keep cruelly late and early hours, for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mice, three blind mice, See how they run! They all run after the farmer's wife, And she cut off their tails with a carving knife, Did you ever see such a thing in your life As ...
— Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes • Beatrix Potter
... gods, he began to adjoin another to it, resenting the priests' opposition, and almost converting the thing into an omen. And, truly, many other prodigies also affrighted him; some temples had been struck with lightning, and in Jupiter's temple mice had gnawed the gold; it was reported also, that an ox had spoke, and that a boy had been born with a head like an elephant's. All which prodigies had indeed been attended to, but due reconciliation had not been obtained from the gods. The aruspices ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... voices, and after a few irrepressible giggles, silence reigned, broken only by an occasional snore from the boys, or the soft scurry of mice in the buttery, taking their part ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... for they carry sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion in their looks." "And I'll swear it, Brother Castle," says his companion; "let's dash at them." In the third, a cat watches the movements of some unsuspecting mice: "There's a pretty collection of rogues gathered together," observes Grimalkin; "if there is not a plot among them, burn my tail and whiskers." In the last, we behold a Kite just about to pounce on some chicken: ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... "I put some candy into my pajamas pocket when I went to bed, because the time I like to eat it best is just before breakfast—if people only wouldn't row so about my doing it. Let me see—it was two chocolate mice I had—I hope they didn't get squashed when we were playing! No, here they are." The chocolate mice were a little the worse for wear, in fact there were white streaks on them where the chocolate had rubbed off on the inside of Rudolf's pocket, but the children didn't ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... hesitation, they had squeezed through it, and had found themselves in a large room filled with huge sacks of corn, oats and barley. Their delight at this discovery was not to be described, any more than the feast they subsequently made. Mice, and even rats, were scampering about in every direction, gnawing holes in the sacks, and getting into all manner ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... want their porridge and their fat bull-beeves: Either they must be dieted like mules And have their provender tied to their mouths Or piteous they will look, like drowned mice."[848] ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... published an order that no person, on pain of death, should talk of surrendering. They had now consumed the last remains of their provisions, and supported life by eating the flesh of horses, dogs, cats, rats, mice, tallow, starch, and salted hides, and even this loathsome food began to fail. Rosene, finding him deaf to all his proposals, threatened to wreak his vengeance on all the protestants of that country, and drive them under the walls of Londonderry, where they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... creature yet," said Bawcombe. He caught things just for his own amusement, but never injured them—he always let them go again. He would hunt mice in the fields, and when he captured one he would play with it like a cat, tossing it from him, then dashing after and recapturing it. Finally, he would let it go. He played with rabbits in the same way, and if ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... only woman mouse-trap-maker in London, has retired from the business. It is said that a number of mice hope to arrange a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... hinder feet; he can not only sit on his haunches, but raise himself almost upright, and remain in that position to listen for some little time. For the same reason he can bark the ash saplings higher up than would be imagined: where he cannot reach, the mice climb up and nibble straight lines across the young pole, as if done with a single stroke from a saw that scraped away the rind but ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... make its way out and so spoil the silk. The quarter of an ounce of eggs will make about thirty pounds of cocoons. Now is the time to be specially watchful, for there is nothing in which rats and mice so delight as a plump, sweet chrysalis; and they care nothing whatever for the three or four thousand yards of silk that is ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... engagements at a provincial theatre, he was announced to perform the character of Hamlet, he was seized with a sudden and serious illness in his dressing-room, just before the play was going to begin; whereupon the manager, having 'no more cats than would catch mice,' was constrained to request the audience to suffer them to go through with the play, omitting the character of Hamlet; which, being complied with, it was afterwards considered by the bulk of the audience to be a great improvement." ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... struck, were candid enough. However, now I come to the moment when I first set eyes on her. You know my little place in Surrey? About a mile from me is a manor-house belonging to an old Catholic family, terribly devout and as poor as church-mice. They sent their daughters to school in Bruges. One summer holiday these girls brought home with them Julie Dalrymple as their quasi-holiday governess. It was three years ago. I had just seen Liebreich. He told me that I ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... accidentally killed. Next an ass, and then the mules, of which there was a considerable number, were brought to the shambles. The butchers were now ordered to sell this new kind of meat, and a maximum price was fixed. For a fortnight the supply of cats held out, after which rats and mice became the chief staple of food. Dog-flesh was next reluctantly tasted, and found, as our conscientious chronicler observes, to be somewhat sweet and insipid.[1300] And so the spring of 1573 passed away, and ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... goose-quill scratched thee into fame, Proved thee the source of every nameless ill, Whose sole specific is a moonshine pill, Till saucy Science, with a quiet grin, Held up the Acarus, crawling on a pin? —Mountains have labored and have brought forth mice The Dutchman's theory hatched a brood of—twice I've well-nigh said them—words unfitting quite For these fair precincts ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... as a "character" by her friends, and beloved by them as, a charitable, sympathetic woman whom it was good to know. Her sense of pity was abnormal. She refused to kill even flies, and punished the cat for catching mice. She, would drown the young kittens, when necessary, but warmed the water for the purpose. On coming to Hannibal, she joined the Presbyterian Church, and her religion was of that clean-cut, strenuous ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... day that for Jimmy. Late in the afternoon the Portier, with a collar on, had mounted the stairs and sheepishly presented him with a pair of white mice in a wooden cage. Jimmy was thrilled. The cage was on his knees all evening, and one of the mice was clearly ill of a cake with pink icing. The Portier's gift was a stealthy one, while his wife was having coffee with ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... they were his own. Thro' they were lin'd with many a piece Of ammunition bread and cheese, And fat black-puddings, proper food 315 For warriors that delight in blood. For, as we said, he always chose To carry vittle in his hose, That often tempted rats and mice The ammunition to surprise: 320 And when he put a hand but in The one or t' other magazine, They stoutly in defence on't stood, And from the wounded foe drew blood; And 'till th' were storm'd and beaten out, 325 Ne'er left the fortify'd redoubt. And tho' Knights Errant, as some think, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... remarked Curly, taking off his hat and scratching his head perplexedly, "sometimes I wish Bill was a chicken hawk instead of a talker. There is rats, or mice, or something, got into ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... the army he would be called Long Tom. He is a cat of fine disposition, the most irreproachable morals I ever saw thrown away in a cat, and a splendid hunter. He spends his nights, not in social dissipation, but in gathering in rats, mice, flying-squirrels, and also birds. When he first brought me a bird, I told him that it was wrong, and tried to convince him, while he was eating it, that he was doing wrong; for he is a reasonable cat, and understands pretty much everything except the binomial theorem ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... "Is mice the same as mouses?" said Fixie; and when Bee nodded, "Why don't you say mouses then?" he asked, "it's ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... hardship. It was not for him to sing of summer and nectarines, nor to honestly appreciate or kindly judge those who did so; but he sang of winter, of crab-apples, of cranberries, of reptiles, of field-mice, with just the right accent and with a tingling vibration of life in his chords. The Bernard Palissy of literature, he modeled his frogs and water-snakes so true that they seemed better than birds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... was a bachelor I lived by myself And all the bread and cheese I got, I put upon the shelf; The rats and the mice, they made such a strife I was forced to go to London to buy me a wife. The streets were so broad and the lanes were so narrow I was forced to bring my ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... of Doko, both men and women, are said to be no taller than boys nine or ten years old. They never exceed that height even in the most advanced age. They go quite naked; their principal foods are ants, snakes, mice, and other things which commonly are not used as food.... They also climb trees with great skill to fetch down the fruits, and in doing this they stretch their hands downwards and their legs upwards.... They live mixed together; men and women unite and separate ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... story of the two mice, with the similar fables of The Boy who cried Wolf, The Frog King, and The Sun and the Wind, are given here with the hope that they may be of use to the many teachers who find the over-familiar material of the fables difficult to adapt, and who are ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... ensuing summer in wooden vessels, or in the first stomach of the reindeer. It is stored either in the caves of the mountains or in holes dug in the ground, lest it should be attacked by the mountain mice. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... lute, to soften, by the harmonies of his instrument, the rigours of his prison. At the end of a few days, this modern Orpheus, playing on his lute, was greatly astonished to see frisking out of their holes great numbers of mice, and descending from their woven habitations crowds of spiders, who formed a circle about him, while he continued breathing his soul-subduing instrument. He was petrified with astonishment. Having ceased to play, the assembly, who did not ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... yet accomplished, In the summer just passed over, 260 If the gloves she was not weaving, Nor begun to make the stockings? Empty to the house she cometh, To our household brings no presents, Mice are squeaking in the baskets, Long-eared ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... the war-path in the brave days of old; gorges where currents of hot air breathe in your face like the breath of some fierce animal. There are brilliant and noisy cataracts and cascades that silver the rocks with spray; and a huge winding cavern filled with mice and filth and the blackness of darkness, and out of which one emerges looking like a tramp and feeling like—well! There are springs bubbling and steeping and stagnating by the wayside; springs containing carbonates of soda, lithia, lime, magnesia, and iron; sulphates of potassa and soda, chloride ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... animal, of animal upon plant, of plant upon animal, is enforced in many ways by Darwin. For instance, the visits of humble-bees are of special importance to the welfare of red clover; humble-bees are largely destroyed by field-mice; cats largely destroy field-mice near villages, and so favour humble-bees, and secondarily red clover. Every paragraph of the chapter on the struggle for existence is full of suggestion, and subversive of old imaginings. But Darwin's knowledge is to him slight, his ignorance profound. Yet, ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... of Osiris, and no one was allowed to wash on the 16th Tybi; whilst the name of Set might not be pronounced on the 24th of Pharmuthi. Fish was forbidden on certain days; and what was still more difficult in a country so rich in mice, on the 12th of Tybi no mouse might be seen. The most tiresome prohibitions, however, were those which occurred not infrequently, namely, those concerning work and going out: for instance, four times in Paophi the people had to 'do nothing at all,' and five times to sit the whole day or ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... cobwebby places, always full of slits where long, smoky sun-rays can poke in. An amber warmth cheers the darkness of garrets; you feel certain there is nothing ugly hiding behind the remotest and dustiest box. If rats or mice inhabit it, they are jovial fellows. But how different is a cellar, and especially a cellar neglected. You plunge down rough steps into a cavern. A mouldy air from dried-up and forgotten vegetables meets ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... garret. Suzette is overjoyed. Dream of dreams! For Suzette to have one real live soldier in the house—but to have two! Both of these red-eared, red-trousered dispensers of harmony are perfect in deportment, and as quiet as mice. They slip out of my back gate at daylight, bound for the seat of war and slip in again at sundown like obedient children, talk in kitchen whispers to Suzette over hot cakes and cider, and go punctually to bed at nine—the very hour when the roaring old general and his aide-de-camp ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... and sparrows consume annually hundreds of tons of seeds of noxious weeds; that hawks and owls as a class (excepting the few that kill poultry and game birds) are markedly beneficial, spending their lives in catching grasshoppers, mice, and other pests that prey upon the products of husbandry. It has conducted field experiments for the purpose of devising and perfecting simple methods for holding in check the hordes of destructive rodents—rats, mice, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... leave," said the Acolyte, "I would myself have undertaken instantly to lead against this Tancred and his Italians the battle-axes of the faithful Varangian guard, who will make no more account of the small number of Franks who have come ashore, than the farmer holds of the hordes of rats and mice, and such like mischievous vermin, who have harboured ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... my good lady,' said the ass, 'what's the matter with you? You look quite out of spirits!' 'Ah, me!' said the cat, 'how can one be in good spirits when one's life is in danger? Because I am beginning to grow old, and had rather lie at my ease by the fire than run about the house after the mice, my mistress laid hold of me, and was going to drown me; and though I have been lucky enough to get away from her, I do not know what I am to live upon.' 'Oh,' said the ass, 'by all means go with us to the great city; you are a good night singer, and may ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... funniest papa said, 'Now all you fellows keep still half a minute,' and the next thing they knew he ran into the house, and came out, walking his wife before him with both his hands over her eyes. Then the boys saw he was going to have some fun with her, and they kept as still as mice, and waited till he walked her up to the pumpkin-glory; and she was saying all the time, 'Now, John, if this is some of your fooling, I'll give it to you.' When he got her close up he took away his hands, and she gave a kind ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... long, Ruth kept herself close prisoner in the room to which Mrs Morgan accorded her; all that day, and many succeeding days. But at nights, when the house was still, and even the little brown mice had gathered up the crumbs, and darted again to their holes, Ruth stole out, and crept to his door to catch, if she could, the sound of his beloved voice. She could tell by its tones how he felt, and how he was getting ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... not know. Her thoughts were occupied with her own affairs, and in the oppressive silence she sat watching some little moving threadlike concerns which hung in a row through a crack below the mantelpiece above the open fire. They were the tails of mice which often here congregated nigh the warmth and sat in a row, themselves invisible. The tails moved, and Joan noted some shorter tails beside long ones, telling of infant vermin at their mothers' sides. In the silence she could hear the squeaking of them, and now and ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... beads, and neatly-worked wristlets of copper. Nnanaji, being a doctor of very high pretensions, in addition to a check cloth wrapped round him, was covered with charms. At their sides lay huge pipes of black clay. In their rear, squatting quiet as mice, were all the king's sons, some six or seven lads, who wore leather middle-coverings, and little dream-charms tied under their chins. The first greetings of the king, delivered in good Kisuahili, were warm and affecting, and in an instant we both felt and saw we ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... him with a hearty shake of the hand, his mother with a fond clinging embrace, and his sisters with smiles and kisses; while his younger brothers, who have been on the watch for hours, greet him with shouts of delight, and hurry him away to see their favourite rabbits, and pet guinea-pigs, and mice. Who so happy as a ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... Gyaros.—Ver. 470. This was a sterile island among the Cyclades; in later times, the Romans made it a penal settlement for their criminals. The mice of this island were said to be able to gnaw iron; perhaps, because they were starved by reason of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... In an instant Alan had drawn the girls back into the shadow of the winding stairs, where they could all remain without betraying their presence. Estelle, being the farthest back, could see nothing, for which she was duly thankful; but Marjorie and Alan sat as still as mice, their ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... little thing he fancied, and hence he had in one of the lofts a couple of very ancient pigeons, which the man of whom he bought them declared to be extremely young; a thrush in a cage; two hedge-sparrows, which were supposed to be linnets, in another; two mice in an old cigar-box lined with tin; and a very attenuated rat, which had been caught by Peter in a trap, and which was allowed to live minus one foreleg that had been cut short off close to the shoulder, but over which the ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... is vurry little left to be said on any subject whatuffer. I feel vurry much like the meenister who went into the pulpit with his sermon. He had not looked at it since he had put it away the night before, and the mice had got at it and had eaten all the firstly, the secondly and the thirdly, and there was vurry little left—vurry little left, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen. But the meenister would jist be explaining his dilemma to the people. 'My dearly beloved brethren,' he said, said he, 'I am vurry sorry ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... Owl in an exasperated voice; "what is there to do, I should like to know, but to get the children away? I wouldn't keep them in the same tree with that gamblesome elf—no, not a night longer—for all the mice you could offer me." ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... looked about for food, but found none; his short span of life was drawing to a close; even when at last he saw me, he could only run a few inches under cover of a dead clover-plant. Thousands upon thousands of mice perish like this as the winter draws on, born too late in the year to grow strong enough or clever enough to prepare a store. Other kinds of mice perish like leaves at the first blast of cold air. Though but a mouse, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... to bring in the white mice and the blind French guinea-pig, and let them run loose over the counterpane, and Pip did most of his carpentering on a little table near, so she could see each fresh stage and suggest ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... dirty in their habits, scarcely ever washing their porringers, or only doing so in their broth; they hardly ever wash their clothes, more especially "when there is thunder about;" and they eat rats, mice, &c., if they are badly off for other food. The men are not brought up to any manual labour, their whole occupation consisting in hunting, shooting with bow and arrows, watching the flocks, and riding. The women and girls are very athletic and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... mainly of mice and Squirrels, but it kills Rabbits and Grouse when it can find them, and sometimes even feasts on game of a ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... fidgeting with his glass and foot, and sticking one shoulder up above the other. And now, in the afternoon, I felt as if I had been in this long, rambling, tumble-down Villa of Mistra—a villa three-quarters of which was given up to the storage of grain and garden tools, or to the exercise of rats, mice, scorpions, and centipedes—all my life; as if I had always sat there, in Count Alvise's study, among the pile of undusted books on agriculture, the sheaves of accounts, the samples of grain and silkworm seed, the ink-stains and the cigar-ends; as if I had never heard of anything save the cereal ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... may be sure that Freddie Firefly never bothered HIS head over Solomon Owl. Perhaps he knew that Solomon was too busy hunting for mice to take notice of anybody so small as he was, even if he did carry a bright light everywhere ...
— The Tale of Freddie Firefly • Arthur Scott Bailey
... from somewhere a Siberian kitten with long white fur and black eyes, and brought it to us. This kitten takes people for mice: when it sees anyone it lies flat on its stomach, stalks one's feet and rushes at them. This morning as I was pacing up and down the room it several times stalked me, and a la tigre pounced at my boots. I imagine the ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... But when you were binding the poor bandit weren't you afraid he'd bite you? He was only a hundred feet or so away, you know. Are you afraid of mice, too?" ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... fifteen to twenty degrees below the freezing point. A covering of snow on the sash will do no harm, if it does not last longer than a week or ten days, in which case it must be removed. There is some danger to be feared from ground mice, who, when everything else is locked up by the frost, will instinctively take to the sash, and there cause much destruction among the plants unless these are occasionally examined. When March opens remove the sash when the temperature ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... exorcisms are among the most effective methods of healing. For example, Hardy reports that a missionary told him of his being called in to see a man suffering from convulsions; he found him smelling white mice in a cage, with a dead fowl fastened on his chest, and a bundle of grass attached to his feet. This had been the prescription of ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Ellsworth, smiling, as she continued: "And you are both as poor as church mice; I know that without asking. Now, don't color up and get angry. Poverty is inconvenient, but it's no disgrace. Besides, I ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... probably Ring Dotterell, Purres, and Turnstones do not form so considerable a part of its food as they do of the Merlin. Skylarks, Rock and Meadow Pipits, and, in the summer, Wheatears, with a few rats and mice, seem to afford the principal food of the Kestrel, and to obtain these it has not to wander far from its ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... what the Christ-child would bring to them, and what he would put in their shoes, which they would, of course, be very careful to leave in the chimney before going to bed. And the eyes of those little boys, lively as a parcel of mice, sparkled in advance with the joy of seeing in their imagination pink paper bags filled with cakes, lead soldiers drawn up in battalions in their boxes, menageries smelling of varnished wood, and magnificent jumping-jacks ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... six in all, and must have been sitting like mice: for all I know of it is this. I had climb'd the hedge first, and was helping Delia over, when out of the ground, as it seem'd, a voice shriek'd, "Run—run!—the King's men are on us!" and then, my foot slipping, down I went on to the shoulders of a thick-set man, and well-nigh broke ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... Himalayans, though produced so suddenly, breed true. But as, whilst young, they are albinoes, the case falls under a very general rule; for albinism is well known to be strongly inherited, as with white mice and many other quadrupeds, and even with white flowers. But why, it may be asked, do the ears, tail, nose, and feet, and no other part of the body, revert to a black colour? This apparently depends on a law, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... to be told at St. Edmondsbury," said Father Peter on one occasion, "that many years ago they were so overrun with mice that the good abbot gave orders that all the cats from the country round should be obtained to exterminate the vermin. A record was kept, and at the end of the year it was found that every cat had killed an equal number of mice, and the total was exactly ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... not gone far, when a really characteristic tropical shower baptized us properly, and continued during the whole of the rest of the day, the result being, as may be imagined, that we arrived at "Copacabana" like the proverbial "drookit mice." As the path was beneath the trees all the way, we got the full benefit of the rain dripping from the branches overhanging, which was just like a shower bath all the time. However, I got into dry ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... presence, for hours at a time, the perversity of tradesmen and servants, or make an estimate of what was being stolen from him each month, each week, every day, every minute; Madame Fromont might enumerate her grievances against the mice, the maggots, dust and dampness, all desperately bent upon destroying her property, and engaged in a conspiracy against her wardrobes; not a word of their foolish talk remained in Claire's mind. A run around the lawn, an hour's reading on the river-bank, restored ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... the inoculated mice are unaffected, test the action of the organism in question upon white ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... to wreck, snows fallen to cumber, Ships and chariots, trapped like rats or mice, Since my king first smiled, whose years now number Three ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... can get a good many of some kinds. Old Mrs. Simpson has got a three-legged cat with four kittens, an' Ben Cushing has got a hen that crows; an' we can take my calf for a grizzly bear, an' Jack Havener's two lambs for white bears. I've caught six mice, an' I'll have more'n a dozen before the show comes off; an' Reddy's goin' to bring his cat that ain't got any tail. Leander Leighton's goin' to bring four of his rabbits an' make believe they're wolves; an' Joe Robinson's goin' to catch all the squirrels he can—we'll have the largest ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... I never had any tiffen with it, Samantha; you'll see it don't mean plain breakfast; you'll see that they'll pass some tiffen, and we shall have to eat it no matter what it's made on, rats or mice or anything. Whoever heard of common breakfast ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... studies in his garden and farmyard at home. [Page: 59] Is it not the main support of the subtle theorisings and far-stretched polemic of Prof. Weismann that he can plague his adversaries with the small but literal and concrete mice and hydroids and water fleas with which his theories began? And is it not for a certain lack of such concrete matter of observation that the vast systematisations of M. de Greef, or M. de Roberty, or the original and ingenious readings ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... a singing party every evening. Johnnie Green liked to hear them. But he objected strongly to the weird hooting and horrid laughter of Solomon Owl, who left the hemlock woods after dark to hunt for field mice. ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... flying as far up the finger-board as they could go, without falling overboard, near the bridge—a dangerous place at all times from the currents and eddies—and there provoking a series of sounds, as if the performer were pinching the tails of a dozen mice, that squeaked and squealed as he made the experiment. The bow (like the funambulist with the soles of his slippers fresh chalked) kept glancing on and off, till we hoped he would be off altogether and break his neck; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Lawson Tait wrote to Mr. Darwin (June 2nd, 1875): "I am watching a lot of my mice from whom I removed the tails at birth, and I am coming to the conclusion that the essential use of the tail there is as a recording organ—that is, they record in their memories the corners they turn and the height of the holes they ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... sun was never on the street but in the morning, about breakfast-time.... It was soon gone again, to return no more that day, and the bands of music and the straggling Punch's shows going after it left it a prey to the most dismal of organs and white mice. ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... said Captain Shad. "Lively as can be. He'll have a good time out in that barn; there's considerable many mice out ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and mouse destroyers. I dare say they are, though the two I once kept (I drowned them in the cistern) were more notorious as crockery destroyers than anything else. I thought, on the whole, that they exterminated more raw beef than rats and mice, so I consigned them ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... as good as gold, She always did as she was told; She never spoke when her mouth was full, Or caught bluebottles their legs to pull, Or spilt plum jam on her nice new frock, Or put white mice in the eight-day clock, Or vivisected her last new doll, Or fostered a passion for alcohol. And when she grew up she was given in marriage To a first-class ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... francs' income, —thanks to me, who never spend more than three thousand a year, everything included, even my own clothes, yes, everything!—and you never think of offering him a home here, though there's the second floor empty! You'd rather the rats and mice ran riot in it than put a human being there,—and he a lad your father always allowed to be his own son! Do you want to know what you are? I'll tell you,—a fratricide! And I know why, too. You see I take an interest ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... began playing the B-flat Nocturne of Field. I played it with much delicacy and a delicious touch. I am very vain of my touch. The moon melted into the apartment and my two guests, enthralled by the mystery of the night and my music, were still as mice. I was enraptured and played to the end. I waited for the inevitable compliment. It came not. Instead, there were stealthy snores. The pair had slept through my playing. Imbeciles! I awoke them and soon packed them off to their canvas home in the woods hard by. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... wise return him a trespass offering: then ye shall be healed, and it shall be known to you why his hand is not removed from you. Then said they, What shall be the trespass offering which we shall return to him? They answered, Five golden emerods, and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines: for one plague was on you all, and on your lords. Wherefore ye shall make images of your emerods, and images of your mice that mar the land; and ye shall give glory unto the ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... their meal; for he was ready to demonstrate, that the flesh of a cat was as nourishing and delicious as veal or mutton, provided they could prove that the said cat was not of the boar kind, and had fed chiefly on vegetable diet, or even confined its carnivorous appetite to rats and mice, which he affirmed to be dainties of exquisite taste and flavour. He said, it was a vulgar mistake to think that all flesh-devouring creatures were unfit to be eaten: witness the consumption of swine and ducks, animals that delight ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Anglesey, which is inhabited by hermits, living by manual labour, and serving God. It is remarkable that when, by the influence of human passions, any discord arises among them, all their provisions are devoured and infected by a species of small mice, with which the island abounds; but when the discord ceases, they are no longer molested. Nor is it to be wondered at, if the servants of God sometimes disagree, since Jacob and Esau contended in the womb of Rebecca, ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... tie your tail in a knot, hang you over the clothes line and then throw stones at you!" went on the cruel boy. "That will teach you to keep away from our place. We don't like mice." ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis |
