"Nocturnal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or two about the gentleman who paid me this nocturnal visit. Though he has probably long since forgotten the humble circulator of the Bible in Spain, I still bear in mind numerous acts of kindness which I experienced at his hands. Endowed with an intellect ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Assistances as may promote that useful Work. For this Reason I could not forbear communicating to you some imperfect Informations of a Set of Men (if you will allow them a place in that Species of Being) who have lately erected themselves into a Nocturnal Fraternity, under the Title of the Mohock Club, a Name borrowed it seems from a sort of Cannibals in India, who subsist by plundering and devouring all the Nations about them. The President is styled Emperor of the Mohocks; and his Arms are a Turkish Crescent, which ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... for a year from an old merchant's clerk, who had wearied of it because nocturnal prowlers used to steal his fowls and rabbits. On either side of the grass-plot a gravel path led to the steps. They took the path on the right. The gravel creaked ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... tall trees lay long nocturnal shadows; over the pond where there was more light, being free from shade, hung a faint vapory cloud, and over yonder in the meadows, where a pool of water, concealed by the mossy moorland, had formed, the mists had gathered still more thickly and hung like a gray-white veil ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... Sahagun, Lib. I., cap. 18, Lib. II., cap. 21, etc.) Totec is named as one of the companions of Quetzalcoatl, and an ancient divinity whose temple stood on the Tzatzitepec (see the Codex Vaticanus; Tab. XII., in Kingsborough's Mexico). His high priest was called Youallauan, "the nocturnal tippler" (youalli, night, and tlauana, to drink to slight intoxication), and it was his duty to tear out the hearts of the human victims (Sahagun, u.s.). The epithet Yoatzin, "noble night-god," bears some relation to the celebration ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various
... awkward. After dinner he would occasionally play another rubber; but twelve o'clock always saw him back into his own rooms. No one knew better than Mr. Maule that the continual bloom of lasting summer which he affected requires great accuracy in living. Late hours, nocturnal cigars, and midnight drinkings, pleasurable though they may be, consume too quickly the free-flowing lamps of youth, and are fatal at once to ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... "I saw, in a nocturnal vision, a man named Victoricus[120] coming as if from Ireland, with a large parcel of letters, one of which he handed to me. On reading the beginning of it, I found it contained these words: 'The voice of the Irish;' ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... had set in early. The leaves which had been blighted by the morning frost fell in roseate showers from the vines and chestnut-trees. Until noon, the mist overspread the valley, like an overflowing nocturnal inundation, covering all but the tops of the highest poplars in the plain; the hillocks rose in view like islands, and the peaks of mountains appeared as headlands in the midst of ocean; but when the sun rose higher in the heavens, the mild southerly ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... SOMERS) and I have been up to town to get the costumes, wigs, etc., to-day. I've got them up-stairs—knee-breeches, stockings, buckled shoes, and all that sort of thing. It's a rare chance. If you wait a bit, I'll give you a full dress rehearsal, entitled "Jerry Bundler, or the Nocturnal ...
— The Ghost of Jerry Bundler • W. W. Jacobs and Charles Rock
... Devil has reach'd our cliffs so white, And what did he there, I pray? If his eyes were good, he but saw by night What we see every day; But he made a tour, and kept a journal Of all the wondrous sights nocturnal, And he sold it in shares to the Men of the Row, Who bid pretty ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... time of mourning on his part, my mother-in-law's nocturnal wanderings continued with the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... wildcat of truly awesome size. In its clenched teeth it still held the young nestling—the object of its nocturnal climb into the tree. Alec's unexpected shot had hit true and had done ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... tinge of black matter. All remedial means were adopted with a view to the removal of the irritation of the chest, without producing any very decided effect. The thoracic pain was occasionally subdued, but the cough became incessant; loss of appetite, rapid emaciation, and cold nocturnal sweats, with slow weak pulse, supervened. After a severe fit of coughing, during one of his bad nights, the black expectoration made its appearance, in considerable quantity, by which his sufferings were ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... solitary creature, and, like most predatory animals, a nocturnal prowler. The female brings forth two, sometimes three and four, at a birth. The cubs are of a cream colour, and only when full grown acquire that dark brown hue, which in the extreme of winter often passes ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... his condition his father was surprised and indeed annoyed as well as startled to see him: he was in no mood for such a visit. He felt also strangely afraid of the child, he could not have told why. Wretched about one son, he was dismayed at the nocturnal visit of the other. The cause was of course his wrong condition of mind; lack of truth and its harmony in ourselves alone can make us miserable; there is a cure for everything when that is cured. No ill in our neighbours, if we be right in ourselves, will ever seem ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... already to the dark belt of woodland that the first Hewishes had planted, a darkness unvisited by moonlight, where their feet rustled a carpet of dead leaves, and shy, nocturnal creatures made another rustling beside them. At the edge of the wood a bird flew out of a thorn tree. "It's a brown owl," cried Radway; but when its wings caught the moonlight they saw the band of white. ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... Cynthia, silver beams On man's nocturnal state; His lessen'd light, and languid powers, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... in the open air. The walls of this hall were adorned with many paintings and engravings—all, however, did not apparently belong to the period of Frederick; for there were among them paintings and engravings representing his last hours, and his lonely nocturnal funeral.—Others again depicted the scene of young Frederick William II. standing by the corpse of his great uncle, and swearing with tearful eyes, his hand placed on the head of Frederick, that he would be a just and good ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the nocturnal animals from their slumbers in the straw— the wingless apteryx, like a little armless man with a very long nose; the huge misshapen earthy-looking ant-bear, and those four-footed Rip Van Winkles, the quaint, rusty, blear-eyed armadillos. But the giant ant- eater was the most ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... Lincoln, in his first message, discussed, ably enough, the right of secession as a mere constitutional or legal right. Others have done the same before and since. The opinion of the lawyer is all very well, but it has no special potency to restrain the nocturnal activities of the burglar. All such discussions are, for the present behalf, utterly puerile. Secession, revolution, the bloody destruction and extinction of the whole nation, were for years before the war foregone determinations in the Southern mind, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the phenomenon that she sat up in bed, and stared steadily at the shine. An appearance of this sort, sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less than a marvel in Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet. Almost every diurnal and nocturnal effect in that woodland place had hitherto been the direct result of the regular terrestrial roll which produced the season's changes; but here was something dissociated from these normal sequences, and foreign ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... in the lower orders put to death. In like manner, it is enacted in one of Constantine's laws that the haruspices should not exercise their art in private; and there is a law of Valentinian's against nocturnal sacrifices or magic. It is more immediately to our purpose that Trajan had been so earnest in his resistance to hetaeriae or secret societies, that, when a fire had laid waste Nicomedia, and Pliny ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Green—late a nuisance and a pandemonium, now an oasis of verdure—has not as yet reported its owl, but the public eye is upon it, and the nocturnal marauder may yet be detected in the forks of the great willow-trees, which still retain their verdure. The sparrows are almost disproportionately numerous in this small park, but this may be accounted for. It has lately been laid down with new grass, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... evenings in Greenwich and Peckham. But playing a one-stringed violin at fairs and public-houses could not be more than a relaxation to a man of Peace's active temper, who had once tasted what many of those who have practised it, describe as the fascination of that particular form of nocturnal adventure known by the unsympathetic name of burglary. Among the exponents of the art Peace was at this time known as a "portico-thief," that is to say one who contrived to get himself on to the portico of a house and from that point of vantage make ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... scanty flip of grass-plat, that would not afford pasture sufficient for an ass's colt. The walks, which nature seems to have intended for solitude, shade, and silence, are filled with crowds of noisy people, sucking up the nocturnal rheums of an aguish climate; and through these gay scenes, a few lamps glimmer like so ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the mystery and excitement of that night. I know nothing in life more fascinating than the nocturnal ascent of an unknown river, leading far into an enemy's country, where one glides in the dim moonlight between dark hills and meadows, each turn of the channel making it seem like an inland lake, and cutting you off as by a barrier ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Richard curtly. He was growing restive under these interrogations, the drift of which was plain enough to be disagreeable. Moreover, Mr. Perkins had insensibly assumed the tone and air of a counsel cross-examining a witness on the other side. This nocturnal cruise, whose direction and duration were known only to young Shackford, struck Lawyer Perkins unpleasantly. He meditated a moment before ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... dreaded, because with them generally come storms and bad weather. They revel in storms, and the fiercer the gale and the higher the waves, the more merry are they. This preference of the petrel is explained by the fact that he is more than half nocturnal in his habits, and greatly dislikes the glare of sunshine. But when black clouds and gloomy mists hang low over the ocean, the semi-darkness just suits him, and through it may he be seen skimming the angry billows many ...
— Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and he thought of Dare's mysterious manner in speaking of himself. This lad resembled the Etruscan youth Tages, in one respect, that of being a boy with, seemingly, the wisdom of a sage; and the effect of his presence was now heightened by all those sinister and mystic attributes which are lent by nocturnal environment. He who in broad daylight might be but a young chevalier d'industrie was now an unlimited possibility in social phenomena. Havill remembered how the lad had pointed to his breast, and said that his secret was literally kept there. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... extreme were these nocturnal combats, when all the world was asleep, and they two were alone, alone in the world, and repelling each other. It was hardly ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... night they beheld the Moon, now increasing, now waning, pursue her irregular path, also to disappear in the west; whilst, like the bands of an army marshalled in loose array, the constellations of glittering stars, with stately motion, traversed their nocturnal arcs, circling the ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... powerful conical teeth implanted in distinct sockets. The teeth in Simosaurus (152, b) are of a similar nature; but the orbits are of enormous size, indicating eyes of corresponding dimensions, and perhaps pointing to the nocturnal habits of the animal. In the singular Placodus, again, the teeth are in distinct sockets, but resemble those of many fishes in being rounded and obtuse (fig. 153), forming broad crushing plates adapted for the comminution ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... immediately put up under his directions an apparatus between his house and part of Piccadilly. He adds: 'I also set up a night telegraph between a house which Sir Francis Delaval occupied at Hampstead, and one to which I had access in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury. This nocturnal telegraph answered well, but was too expensive for common use.' Later on he writes to ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... toad and snake, and hurriedly plunging his hand into the big pot he found Sam the toad, seated right at the top, evidently eager to start on a nocturnal ramble, but the ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... of day's encouraging beams in some degree quieted my nocturnal terrors, and I went, at the appointed hour, to Ludloe's presence. I found him with a much more cheerful aspect than I expected, and began to chide myself, in secret, for the ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... tormented with fear, which is vain if no danger comes; and if it does, only augments the pain! It was my happiness to be destitute of this afflicting passion, with which I had the greatest reason to be affected. The prowling wolves diverted my nocturnal hours with perpetual howlings, and the various species of animals in this vast forest, in the day-time were continually in my view. Thus I was surrounded with plenty in the midst of want. I was happy in the midst of dangers and inconveniences. ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... exclusively nocturnal, and so large a place in it is taken by huge and portable candlesticks that it might be called the Tragedy of the Candelabra. Through the windows, on the landward side, a procession of mysterious visitors go by in the moonlight, one ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... greater portion of the crops. Not wishing a return of these visitors, Mrs. Lewis, on the 16th of September, sent word to Egan to come and take away what was left of the crops; one of the horses employed in the nocturnal harvest of September 8th having been seized by the police and identified as belonging to Egan. Egan did not respond; but in July 1887 he brought an action against his landlady to recover L100 sterling for her "detention of his goods," and her "conversion ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... over to the window with brightening eyes and swinging hands in her apron of the colour of the nocturnal sky. Her face and the upper part of her body were illuminated. She seemed to be ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... his supernatural power, and any native will tell you how he walks abroad of a night, and visits the homes where his image is enshrined, a tremendous undertaking, as hardly a nipa shack on the island but boasts its picture or statue of Cebu's patron saint. On returning from these nocturnal tramps, the Holy Child is wont to bring back with him food and drink for his own consumption, the evidence of these midnight feasts being found on many a morning in the shape of crumbs scattered over the altar, a touch of nature which makes him indeed kin to the natives, who, we were told, invariably ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... "Not probable; but such nocturnal promenades announce great agitation. I arrive at my story: just now, I went in to get some signatures. At the moment I placed my hand on the lock, I thought I heard some one speak. I stopped, and distinguished ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... long, O Catiline, wilt thou abuse our patience? Until how long, too, will thy frantic fury baffle us? Unto what extremity will thy unbridled insolence display itself? Do the nocturnal guards upon the Palatine nothing dismay you, nothing the watches through the city, nothing the terrors of the people, nothing the concourse hitherward of all good citizens, nothing this most secure place for the senate's convocation, nothing the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... is flightless, its breast-muscles being so small as to be practically useless. Its habits are nocturnal, and it has a ring of feathers arranged round the eye, giving it a curious resemblance to an owl, whence the name owl-parrot is often applied ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... o'clock I found a little bayou in the dark woods, and moored my boat to a snag which protruded its head above the still waters of the tarn. The old trees that closely encircled my nocturnal quarters were fringed with the inevitable Spanish moss, and gave a most funereal aspect to the surroundings. The mournful hootings of the owls added to the doleful and weird character of the place. I was, however, too ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... as I stretched my legs—"Hamilcar, somnolent Prince of the City of Books—thou guardian nocturnal! Like that Divine Cat who combated the impious in Heliopolis—in the night of the great combat—thou dost defend from vile nibblers those books which the old savant acquired at the cost of his slender savings and ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... found in Ceylon is the little loris[1], which, from its sluggish movements, nocturnal habits, and consequent inaction during the day, has acquired the name of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... becoming hysterical, he told himself with compressed lips—no better than Lichfield Stope. The latter rose greyly in his memory, and fled across the sea, a phantom body pulsing with a veined fire like that stirred from the nocturnal bay. He again consulted his watch, and said aloud, incredulously: "Five minutes past eight." The inchoate crawling of his thoughts changed to an acute, tangible ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... going the rounds with Dr. P., as he made his second daily survey, dressing my dozen wounds afresh, giving last doses, and making them cozy for the long hours to come, till the nine o'clock bell rang, the gas was turned down, the day nurses went off duty, the night watch came on, and my nocturnal ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... his nocturnal expeditions, in company with Levee and Featherby, they robbed one Mr. Brown, in Dean's Court by St. Paul's Churchyard, of a gold watch and thirteen guineas; upon which the gentleman thought fit, it seems, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... the Brighton coach) from Sir Stapleton Cotton (the Peninsular hero) will go for little in such matters; and as for Copley, Lord Lyndhurst (just then promoted from the Rolls to the Woolsack), why not say at once that he attended the nocturnal sittings at ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... feet and threw a gorgeous robe about her. "Come along, Sally! Let's go down and make some chocolate! I've come to crave nocturnal nourishment, and much as I adore talking about myself I've really had enough of the topic for to-night. How many pupils have you now? And how ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... natural and short as from Cook's Court to Chancery Lane. And thus jealousy gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in Mrs. Snagsby's breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of Mr. Snagsby's pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby's letters; to private researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box, and iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... amphitheatre. Beneath, in the silent waters, another town, also illuminated, seemed to descend into the depths of the abyss. The night was balmy, pure, delicious; the atmosphere laden with the perfume of flowers came wafted to us from the mountains. From the tea-houses and other nocturnal resorts, the sound of guitars reached our ears, seeming in the distance the sweetest of music. And the whirr of the cicalas—which, in Japan, is one of the continuous noises of life, and which in a ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... with large femora, I observe build their mud nests in houses. The rarity of Lepidoptera, except perhaps some nocturnal moths, is curious; Coleoptera are more common, but inconspicuous. Ants are abundant in the mud walls. A small gnat with large noiseless wings, is very annoying, and the bite very painful and irritating. Doves, and wild ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... be pulled onward, but remembering Molly's previous encounter upon the same spot, was curious enough to demand an explanation of Rupert's nocturnal rambles when they had reached the haven of Sophia's bedroom. It was very simple, but it struck her as exceedingly pathetic and confirmed her in her opinion of the unreasonableness of her sister's dislike ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the enemy were seen throughout the day mustering along the heights, which by night were illumined with a hundred fires. Ferdinand's utmost vigilance was required for the protection of his camp against the ambuscades and nocturnal sallies of his wily foe. At length, however, El Zagal, having been foiled in a well-concerted attempt to surprise the Christian quarters by night, was driven across the mountains by the marquis of Cadiz, and compelled to retreat on his capital, completely ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... burden of exile sat none the more lightly as the days went on, turned out of the Strand into one of the theatres. He had been gloomily pushing his way through the various London densities—the November fog, the nocturnal darkness, the jostling crowd. He was too restless to do anything but walk, and he had been saying to himself, for the thousandth time, that if he had been guilty of a misdemeanor in succumbing to the attractions of the admirable girl who showed to such advantage in letters ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... waved his hand and held his breath.... At first he could hear nothing but those nocturnal sounds which can almost always be heard in an inhabited place: a horse was munching oats, a pig grunted faintly in its sleep, a man was snoring somewhere; but all at once his ear detected a suspicious sound coming from the very end of the ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... their menaces; on the loss of the goods and chattels of your subjects; on the proofs of guilt continually afforded by the insensibility of the marks upon the accused; on the sudden transportation of bodies from one place to another; on the sacrifices and nocturnal assemblies, and other facts, corroborated by the testimony of ancient and modern authors, and verified by so many eyewitnesses, composed partly of accomplices and partly of people who had no interest in the trials beyond the love of truth, and ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... nerves Has ever yet been found, For him who like a menial serves Dull lesson's daily round; But gnawing friction, stern and gaunt, Tears flesh and brain away, While ghosts nocturnal ever haunt A soul with fell dismay, Whose mercenary greed has led Itself into a snare That counts by scores its strangled dead, Its ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... the rest of the day on business so urgent that I had not leisure to think much on the nocturnal adventure to which I had plighted my honour. I dined alone, and very late, and while dining, read, as is my habit. The volume I selected was one of Macaulay's Essays. I thought to myself that I would take the book with me; there was so much of healthfulness ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... the lover, lights its beacon "like a spark fallen from the full moon"; but "presently the light grows feebler, and fades to a discreet nightlight, while all around the host of nocturnal creatures, delayed in their affairs, murmur the general ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... was closeted with Goldmark, Old Man Curry was entertaining another nocturnal visitor. It was the Bald-faced Kid, breathless, his brow beaded ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... new crater for itself? In every Society are such chimneys, are Institutions serving as such: even Constantinople is not without its safety-valves; there too Discontent can vent itself,—in material fire; by the number of nocturnal conflagrations, or of hanged bakers, the Reigning Power can read the signs of the times, and change course ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... with this desire. Stanhope was rather surprised at this ready submission on the part of De Valette, which was, by no means, a prominent trait in his character; but, as nothing could be gained by remaining at Pemaquid, he consented to accompany him, on his nocturnal voyage. ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... this is a digression. We at length reached London, and Derrick took a room above mine, now and then disturbing me with nocturnal pacings over the creaking boards, but, on the whole, proving himself ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... becoming in the end the victim of that arch enemy of early manhood, consumption! Every practicing doctor has seen this, not once, but hundreds of times, and in the vast majority of instances he can say with truth that the frightful result is a consequence of overwork—too often associated with nocturnal dissipation. The man who works during the day, and devotes his nights to alcohol and gay company when he should be sleeping, will assuredly, sooner or later—and usually sooner—suffer ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... "it seems to me that the residential side of the hotel is admirably suited to the nocturnal adjustment of ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was that rippling of the ropes through the blocks, as our mainsail rose up high against the moon and filled proudly with the steady northeast breeze we had been waiting for. The water began to talk along our sides, and the immense freshness of the nocturnal sea took us in its huge embrace. The spray began to fly over our bows as we nosed into the glassy rollers, one of which, on the starboard side, admonished us, by half swallowing us, that only the mighty-limbed ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... terror, however, produced by the assaults of the Spartans were the only results that immediately followed them, for the troops soon found that no real progress could be made, and no advantage gained by this nocturnal warfare. The soldiers could not distinguish friends from foes. They could not see or hear their commander, or act with any concert or in any order. They were scattered about, and lost their way in narrow streets, ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the heat haze and vapours from the Thames. The air was very windless, and the river lay like a sheet of grey steel at her feet, save where a little spreading feather of black ripple showed the course of some water-rat. Bats wheeled and dipped like some company of nocturnal swallows, pursuing their minute prey, and uttering their little staccato cries so high in the scale that none but the ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... skilful to be enticed into giving battle under unfavourable circumstances. He temporized and succeeded in tiring out Narvaez and his troops, who retired to Zempoalla. Then Cortes, having taken his measures with consummate prudence, and the surprise and terror of a nocturnal attack which he organized compensating for the inferiority of his troops, he made prisoners of his enemy and all his soldiers, his own loss amounting to but two men. The conqueror treated the vanquished well, and gave them the choice between returning to Cuba, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... even by day in a similar manner to the beams of the aurora and then disturb the course of the magnetic needle in the same manner as the latter. On the morning after every distinct nocturnal aurora the same superimposed strata of clouds have still been observed, that ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... to get the whisky, from which I judged there were three pocket flasks ready for emergency. Gertrude threw a shawl around my shoulders, and we all started down over the hill: I had made so many nocturnal excursions around the place that I knew my way perfectly. But Thomas was not on the veranda, nor was he inside the house. The men exchanged significant glances, and Warner got ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to see me. I told him that I had some rare new fun in my head, and we planned that I should feign to be worse than usual. Burrill knew that our people had made efforts to stop our nocturnal expeditions, and he agreed with me that the thing should be kept secret. On that last night he left the house early, saying that he would spend a couple of hours at 'Old Forty's,' and then meet me at ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... of these situations which catch the spirit of romance as in a net, Scott has never been equalled or even approached. His finest scenes affect us like fragments of a hilarious dream. They have the same quality which is often possessed by those nocturnal comedies—that of seeming more human than our waking life—even while they are less possible. Sir Arthur Wardour, with his daughter and the old beggar crouching in a cranny of the cliff as night falls and the tide closes around them, are actually in the coldest ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... of will-power held him back on the downward slope leading him to answer the invitation of that face. With wide eyes, his arms extended, his hands spread open, he uttered a long groan. Then, suddenly fearing some nocturnal wayfarer might have heard him, he held his breath, listening. Silence: silence in all things save the river. His heart was growing more calm. "My God! my God!" he murmured, horrified at the he had been in, at the abyss he had crossed. He clung with his eyes, with ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... twelve hours on deck, and probably sixteen, but in this fair-weather sailing, he might safely sleep between his tricks of wheel, leaving orders to be called on any sign of squalls. So far he could trust the men, between whom and himself a close relation had sprung up. With Uncle Ned he held long nocturnal conversations, and the old man told him his simple and hard story of exile, suffering, and injustice among cruel whites. The cook, when he found Herrick messed alone, produced for him unexpected and sometimes unpalatable dainties, of which he forced himself to eat. And one day, when he was forward, ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... life of continence the sexual activity is wont to discharge the sexual substance at night during pleasurable dream hallucinations of a sexual act, this discharge coming at changing but not at entirely capricious intervals; and the following interpretation of this process—the nocturnal pollution—can hardly be rejected, viz., that the sexual tension which brings about a substitute for the sexual act by the short hallucinatory road is a function of the accumulated semen in the reservoirs for the sexual products. ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... X. In that nocturnal council debate grew loud and warm. When Eurybiades had explained his change of opinion and his motives for calling the chiefs together; Themistocles addressed the leaders at some length and with great excitement. It was so ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... moving up and down the area thereof. Though this last part of the dreadful scene might have been sufficient to intimidate persons possessed of no ordinary degree of courage; yet such was the bravery and resolution of the Reverend Doctor, that he even ventured to accost the nocturnal disturber of their repose: when, on lifting up the mort-cloth, to his inexpressible surprise, he discovered the terrible apparition to be only an unhappy young man belonging to the parish, who had for some time past been disordered in his senses, ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... breach has often been of great use to me. Its wide base made it possible for me, without being present at the work, to judge which of the two neighbouring Osmiae had pierced the partition; it told me the direction of a nocturnal migration which I had ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... mosquitoes, all kinds of insects and frogs, in such innumerable quantities that the din made by them collectively was so loud as to resemble the sound of an iron foundry or a battle-ship in course of construction, the sounds produced by the millions of nocturnal singers being quite metallic and reproducing exactly the sound of hammers driving rivets into the steel plates of a ship. Whether it was done purposely or accidentally I do not know, but those little water creatures of the Arinos seemed to keep excellent time, their vigour also being ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... tell you a dodge; put one of the tin washing-basins against the iron door of the lavatory, and then if any one comes he'll make clang enough to wake dead; and while he's amusing himself with this, there'll be lots of time to 'extinguish the superfluous abundance of the nocturnal illuminators.' Eh?" ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... the drive entrance to gaze upward as great searchlights began playing upon the dark inverted bowl of the heavens. The long, shifting beams of light were accusing fingers seeking to point out the unwelcome, stealthy nocturnal sky prowlers. ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... remained in the possession of the Syracusans there was no hope of taking their city, and he therefore directed all his efforts to the recapture of that position. But his attempts were unavailing. He was defeated not only in an open assault upon the Syracusan wall, but in a nocturnal attempt to carry it by surprise. These reverses were aggravated by the breaking out of sickness among the troops. Demosthenes now proposed to return home and assist in expelling the Lacedaemonians from Attica, instead of pursuing an enterprise which seemed to be hopeless. But Nicias, who feared ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... he does not know when broomsticks, spits, and similar utensils were first assumed to be the canonical instruments of this nocturnal equitation. He thinks it comparatively modern, but I suspect it is as old as the first child that ever bestrode his father's staff, and fancied it into a courser shod with wind, like those of Pindar. Alas for the poverty of human invention! It cannot afford a hippogriff for an everyday ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... years past whenever I return to the sedentary life and heated rooms of Edinburgh, which are so different from the open air and constant exercise of the country. Odd enough that during cold weather and cold nocturnal journeys the cold never touched me, yet I am no sooner settled in comfortable quarters and warm well-aired couches, but la voila. I made a shift to finish my task, however, and even a leaf more, so we are bang up. We dined and supped alone, and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... waterfall, along the rocky face of the towering precipice, with fleeting glimpses of the myriad monkeys eternally flitting through the tropical forest, with the discords of nocturnal animals, and the squawking and cries of disturbed birds of a hundred different species, amid the soft moonlight and deep shadows, our friends threaded their way, listening and peering into the gloom, their hopes high, and yet with misgiving in ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the fat man at the inn for this. If the fat man had not thrust his presence and conversation on him he would have been able to enjoy a sound sleep in the afternoon, and would have come fresh to his nocturnal task. He began to muse on the fat man. And by a curious coincidence whom should he meet a few moments later but ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... be monstrous coy, or some things fall out opportunely, or else almanacs are consulted by nocturnal adventurers; but so it is, that when Cynthia shows a round and chubby disk, few daring deeds are done. Though true it may be, that of moonlight nights, jewelers' caskets and maidens' hearts have been burglariously broken into—and rifled, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... had come, the nocturnal visitation wore such a different aspect to both our minds that we decided to say nothing to our parents, who, said Clarence, would simply disbelieve him; and, indeed, I inclined to suppose it had been an uncommonly vivid dream, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of pearls, or the white lotus, or milk, or the fibres of a lotus stalk, served for his conch. And that adorable and omnipotent God thus slept on the bosom of the deep, enveloping all space with nocturnal gloom. And when his creative faculty was excited, he awoke and found the Universe denuded of everything. In this connection, the following sloka is recited respecting the meaning of Narayana. "Water was ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... pausing-place which had proved tenacious. When the mainstream of evolution on Darkover left the trees to struggle for existence on the ground, a few remained behind. Evolution did not cease for them, but evolved homo arborens; nocturnal, nystalopic humanoids who lived out their ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... could not tell what they were—like the noises of animals. She stood close to me, looking about her with an air of greater security but without any demonstration of interest in me as an individual. Then I guessed that nocturnal prowlings were not in the least her habit, and I was also reminded (I had been struck with the circumstance in talking with her before I took possession) that it was ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... rumble of wheels would startle her into wakeful terror. At half-past two in the morning she heard the opening and shutting of the front door, and her father's footsteps on the stairs as he came up to bed. There seemed to her something uncanny in these nocturnal habits. The life of a journalist, of a literary man, of anybody who did any definite work in the world at all, was quite unknown ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... sensible methods of training. For instance, to habituate himself to long marches he would go round his morning constitutional seven or eight times, sometimes at a brisk walk, sometimes at the trot with two pebbles in his mouth. Then to accustom himself to nocturnal chills and the mists of dawn, he went into the garden and stayed there until ten or eleven at night, alone with his rifle, on ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... nocturnal regions and with the winds of dispersion that blow, meetings are almost impossible. The lovers see each other in dreams. In all probability the woman will never set eyes on the man. Is he young? Is he old? Is he handsome? Is he ugly? She does not know; she knows nothing about him. She adores him. ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... feelings of a man of forty-five, who is loved for himself, under the most flattering and unexpected conditions, one can comprehend the object of this nocturnal walk and the long pause that Henri made beneath the windows of Zibeline's apartment. A small garden, protected by a light fence, was the only obstacle that separated them. But how much more insuperable was the barrier which his own principles had raised between this ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... servitors Henriet and Poitou, he remains on the verge of the wood into which the sorcerer penetrates. The night is heavy and there is no moon. Gilles becomes nervous, scrutinizing the shadows, listening to the muted sounds of the nocturnal landscape; his companions, terrified, huddle close together, trembling and whispering at the slightest stirring of the air. Suddenly a cry of anguish is raised. They hesitate, then they advance, groping in the darkness. In a sudden flare of light they perceive de la Riviere ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... most favourable times for obtaining these treasures. These tales, of course, I regarded as visionary. However, being prompted by curiosity, I at length accepted their invitation to join them in their nocturnal excursions. I will now relate a few incidents ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... do not fully comprehend which makes sleep at night more restful than sleep during the daylight. Those who go to bed at midnight or thereafter use several hours of daylight in the early morning for sleeping. I realize that there are nocturnal animals and that the human race has developed nocturnal habits to a certain extent, but the human race and the animal life of the world generally have followed the habit through the ages of sleeping ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... of the migratory pigeon, as one which shall supply them with an unbounded quantity of provisions, in the quality of which they are not particularly chary. Nor are these roosting-places attractive to the Indians only, for the settlers near them also pay them nocturnal visits. They come with guns, clubs, pots of suffocating materials, and every other means of destruction that can well be imagined to be within their command, and procure immense quantities of the birds in a very short ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... died unended. At the same moment the sound of a violent scuffle smote the nocturnal air. It appeared that Jim, presumably laboring under an unfortunate misapprehension, had not received his visitor with that refined hospitality due from one gentleman to another. Even more inexplicable, it looked in the deceitful darkness, remarkably as though the boss's ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... it was, and is, ten times worse than the more pungent but comparatively salubrious perfume which a certain handsome little black-and-white quadruped—handsome, but impolite—is given to scattering upon the nocturnal breeze in ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... believe—and they are right—that eating cold food at such high elevations, with such low temperature, leads to certain death. They preferred, therefore, to remain without food altogether. Night came, and with it the wind blowing in gusts, and piling the grit and snow around our tents. During the nocturnal hours, with the hurricane raging, we had to turn out of our flapping canvases several times to make the loose pegs firmer. Fastening all the frozen ropes was very cold work. At 2 A.M. the thermometer was down to 12 deg.. At 9 A.M. in the sun, ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... dinner next day. A serpent was occasionally found coiled in a corner, or the indweller of the habitation had to spring up, in the middle of the night, to save himself and his house from being crushed to pieces during the nocturnal affrays of the cattle which roamed at large. He lived principally upon milk and dried meat, until, after a time, he was able to raise a little grain ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... his presence And ceases to lamp with fierce incandescence, Then you illumine the regions supernal, Scintillate, scintillate, semper nocturnal. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... used on the Good Turn, for the reason that the boys had not run her at night. It was an acetylene light of splendid power and many a little craft Harry Stanton had picked up with it in his nocturnal cruising. Pee-wee had polished its reflector one day to pass the time, but with the exception of that attention it had lain ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... gorgeous scarves, the exclusive ornament of the female ripe for matrimony, and that of the modest fairy-lamp on the last segment, which both sexes kindle at any age. In the second case, the extinction caused by a flurry is sudden and complete, or nearly so. In my nocturnal hunts for young Glow-worms, measuring about 5 millimetres long,[3] I can plainly see the glimmer on the blades of grass; but, should the least false step disturb a neighbouring twig, the light goes out at once and the coveted insect becomes invisible. Upon the full-grown ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... parrot group has developed some of its strangest and most abnormal offshoots. One would imagine beforehand that no two birds could be more unlike in every respect than the gaudy, noisy, gregarious cockatoos and the sombre, nocturnal, solitary owls. Yet the New Zealand owl-parrot is, to put it plainly, a lory which has assumed all the outer appearance and habits of an owl. A lurker in the twilight or under the shades of night, burrowing for its nest in holes in the ground, it has dingy brown plumage like the owls, with an undertone ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... snooding. They had never seen such beautiful tackle before, and were loud in their expressions of admiration, but thought the line too thin for a very heavy fish. I told them that at Nanomaga I had caught palu (a nocturnal feeding fish of great size) in over sixty fathoms with ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove, Venus now wakes, and wak'ns Love. Com let us our rights begin, 'Tis onely day-light that makes Sin Which these dun shades will ne're report. Hail Goddesse of Nocturnal sport Dark vaild Cotytto, t' whom the secret flame Of mid-night Torches burns; mysterious Dame 130 That ne're art call'd, but when the Dragon woom Of Stygian darknes spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the ayr, Stay thy cloudy ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... something fell with a heavy flop from the yard over their heads right in among the men, and vanished with a shriek. It was Jacko, who, in his nocturnal rambles in the rigging, had been shaken off the yard on which he was perched, by a sudden lurch of the vessel as the tide began to move her about. At any time such an event would have been startling, but at such a time as this it was horrifying. The men recoiled with sharp cries of terror, ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... himself now stooped with age, with silver hair and faltering step, built the pretty white house that his parents might have beauty in a dwelling such as they never knew in their former life on earth. The old fellow himself, so the story goes, makes many a nocturnal visit to the dream house, hoping to find his parents returned and happily living within ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... the eleventh point," exclaimed Joseph Speckbacher, with flashing eyes. "I intend to take part in carrying out this point of the programme. It is, to take the fortress of Kufstein on the frontier by a nocturnal coup de main. Field-Marshal Jellachich will move several companies of riflemen as close up to the fortress as possible, and Jacob Sieberer and Joseph Speckbacher, who will beforehand enlist assistants in the town and spy out every thing, will ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... of sphaeriaceous fungi have been described as parasitic on insects. Five species are recorded in South Carolina, one in Pennsylvania, found on the larvae of the May-bug, and one other North American species on Nocturnal Lepidoptera, one in Cayenne, one in Brazil, on the larva of a Cicada, and one on a species of ant, two in the West Indies, one in New Guinea on a species of Coccus, and one on a species of Vespa in Senegal. ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... and she hoped that it would be possible to dismiss from her thoughts the fellow creature who had destroyed her joy of life and worked evil so far reaching. She could leave him now to his destiny and feel under no compulsion to relate the incidents of her nocturnal search. Had he been there, she would have risked the meeting, urged him to surrender and then left him if he allowed her to do so. She would never have given him up, or broken her promise to keep ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... have slain the enemies of the celestials—those Rakshasas capable of assuming any form at will, such as were headed by Hidimva and Kirmira! When those high-souled ones went from hence that Rakshasa of fierce soul obstructed their nocturnal path even like an immoveable hill. And even as a tiger slayeth a little deer, Bhima, that foremost of all endued with strength, and ever delighted in fight, slew that monster. Consider also, O king, how while out on his campaign of conquest, Bhima slew in battle ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... true that these Kirghiz, mere novices in the art of war, are rather nocturnal thieves and plunderers of caravans than regular soldiers. As M. Levchine says, "a firm front or a square of good infantry could repel ten times the number of Kirghiz; and a single cannon ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... that we were going to attack the enemy in the rear; some that we were going to Princeton; the latter proved to be right. We went by a bye road on the right hand which made it about 16 miles. During this nocturnal march I with the Dover Company and the Red Feather Company of Philadelphia Light Infantry led the van of the army and Capt. Henry with the other three companies of Philadelphia Light Infantry brought up the rear. The van moved on all ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... out to Aberdeen Gully after breakfast. Here one feels comparatively safe, and we are enjoying the peace after our nocturnal shellings, and the thought of a good night's sleep braces one up wonderfully. Fiddes and I walked over to the Artillery Observation Post to see the extent of our advance, the other day, and I was surprised ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... capacities for gathering dew, to protect itself against arid conditions. In an ordinary dew-making night the leaves of a single stem may gather as much as half a pint of water, which flows down their surfaces to the roots. So efficient is this dew supply, this nocturnal cloudless rain, that on the western coast of South America and elsewhere, where the ordinary supply of moisture is almost wanting, many important plants are able to obtain from it much of the water which they need. The effect is particularly striking ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... largest quadruped indigenous to South America, the tapir is not very well-known to naturalists. Its haunts are far beyond the borders of civilisation. It is, moreover, a shy and solitary creature, and its active life is mostly nocturnal; hence no great opportunity is offered for observing its habits. The chapter of its natural history is therefore a ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... members of the council left the Hotel de Ville, the officers went to put themselves at the head of their troops, and execute the orders they had received. At the same time the artillery sounded. This artillery surprised the French in their nocturnal march, by which they had hoped to surprise the town; but instead of stopping their advance, it only hastened it. If they could not take the city by surprise, they might, as we have seen the king of Navarre do at Cahors, fill up the moats with ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... less familiar than the red one. He makes a lively pet, and we have all seen him turning the wheel attached to his cage. The curious little flying-squirrel, however, is a stranger even to those to whom he may be a near neighbor, for the reason that his habits are chiefly nocturnal. He ventures out occasionally on a cloudy day, but is shy and retiring. Thoreau relates an interesting experience with one. He captured it in a decayed hemlock stump, wherein it had a little nest of leaves, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... true," I said, "that they speak evil of your nocturnal excursions. Are you sure that they are wrong? Has nothing happened in those romantic grottoes and by-paths in the forest? Have you never accepted the arm of an unknown as you accepted mine? Was it merely charity that served as your divinity in that ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... anxiety of mind, in which his days had hitherto been passed: his frame, which, though tall, had never been robust, was too weak for the vehement and sleepless soul that dwelt within it; and the habit of nocturnal study had, no doubt, aggravated all the other mischiefs. Ever since his residence at Dresden, his constitution had been weakened: but this rude shock at once shattered its remaining strength; for a time the strictest precautions ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... absolutely of the lives and fortunes of his conquered subjects as an eastern monarch; and forbade, upon pain of death, the English either fire or candle in their houses after eight o'clock; whether was this to prevent their nocturnal meetings, or only to try, by an odd and whimsical prohibition, how far it was possible for one man to extend his power over his fellow-creatures. It is true, indeed, that the English had Parliaments before ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... poised in midair, equidistant from one another, between each pair of trees. When darkness and rain fell they were still out, fixing their webs, and pouncing on the occasional insects that blundered into the webs. I have no question that they are nocturnal; they certainly hide in the daytime, and it seems impossible that they can come out only for a few minutes ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... the roar of a cannon will waken the vibrations of harp-strings. Around where they stood was the peace of the night and sleep. The perfume of violets and hyacinths, and of myriads of opening buds seemed shed by the moon with her silvery rays through the soft, dewy air; a few nocturnal insects droned hither and thither, and "drowsy ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... throbbed faster or with more joyous anticipation than on the nocturnal ride which led him to his father and the woman he loved, and on reaching his goal, instead of the utmost happiness, he now ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... twenty-five feet, but it spreads to a very wide flat-topped head, the branches are thick, the wood immensely strong and hard, while the thorns resemble fish-hooks minus the barb. This impenetrable asylum was the loved resort of elephants, and it was from this particular station that they made their nocturnal raids upon the cultivated district more than 20 miles ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... increasing, as there have been several hunts started within the last six years. There can well be many more, as, according to the opinion of that excellent authority, the late Rev. "Otter" Davies, as he was always called, there are otters on every river; but, owing to the nocturnal and mysterious habits of the animals, their whereabouts or existence is seldom known, or even suspected. Hunting them is a very beautiful sport, and the question arises as to whether the pure Otterhounds should not be more generally used than ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... brought us to a large splendid house; my companion pointed it out to me as the termination of our nocturnal walk. We passed the principal door, and entering a small gate, which the stranger carefully closed after him, ascended, in the dark, a narrow, winding staircase. This brought us to a dimly-lighted corridor, from ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... over the camp, beneath the somber heavens, a loud, wailing cry. Was it the plaint of some nocturnal bird? Or was it a mysterious voice, reaching them from some far-distant field of carnage, ominous of disaster? The whole camp shuddered, lying there in the shadows, and the strained, tense sensation of expectant ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... journey. In shape they were like horrible toads, and moved in a succession of springs, but in size they were of an incredible bulk, larger than the largest elephant. We had never before seen them save at night, and indeed they are nocturnal animals save when disturbed in their lairs, as these had been. We now stood amazed at the sight, for their blotched and warty skins were of a curious fish-like iridescence, and the sunlight struck them with an ever-varying rainbow bloom ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was attributed to the introduction of the Slave Registry Bill into the British Parliament, and it was discovered that several free men of colour, who had for several months previous attended nocturnal meetings of slaves on the estates where the insurrection began, had told the slaves that a law was being passed in England to make them free, and that as the King was giving them their freedom the King's troops would not be ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... had in the first flush of their enthusiasm been quite disposed to sacrifice themselves upon the altar of their devotion; but, although they could have forgiven any other form of maltreatment, Lulu's apparent distrust of them wounded them deeply. They had looked forward to delicious nocturnal confidences, when, half disrobed, each should visit the other's boudoir and discuss the fascinating topic from all possible and impossible points of view. That Lulu had proved impervious to all ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... came that night in October whose happenings it is so difficult for a sympathetic historian to drag out of their proper nocturnal indistinctness into the clear, hard light of positive statement. A novelist should present characters, not ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... great god, represented the sun in his darkened or nocturnal or ruined condition, before the coming of ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... personal guard brought down with their javelins four hundred bears and three hundred lions. On the same occasion thirty knights belonging to the military fought in the arena. The emperor sanctioned such proceedings openly. Secretly, however, he carried on nocturnal revels throughout the length and breadth of the city, insulting the women, practicing lewdness on boys, stripping those whom he encountered, striking, wounding, murdering. He had an idea that his incognito ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... circumstances prevented this idea from being realized as I then purposed. The Representatives have done their whole duty. Providence perhaps has not done all on its side. Be it as it may, supposing that we were not at once carried off by some nocturnal and immediate combat, and that at the hour at which I was speaking we had still a "to-morrow," I felt the necessity of fixing every eye upon the course which should be adopted on the day which was ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... days. But when nocturnal shades This world envelop, and th' inclement air Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood; Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk Of loving friend delights; distressed, forlorn, Amidst the horrors ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... of temperature insupportable to organization, it was not so at the historical period of time. The atmosphere enveloped the disc with a fluid mantle; vapor deposited itself in the shape of clouds; this natural screen tempered the ardor of the solar rays, and retained the nocturnal radiation. Light, like heat, can diffuse itself in the air; hence an equality between the influences which no longer exists, now that atmosphere has almost entirely disappeared. And now I ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... beloved object without catching the contagion, and to this fact I distribute that flame which now flickers with intense conflagration in my bosom. Why, cruel member of the other sex! did you evade the privacy of our innocent and nocturnal retreat, turning the salubrious and maiden emotions of my bosom into agonizing delight and repressible tribulation! Could you not practice upon others the wiles of your intrinsic charms, and spare the weak Sallianna, whose only desire ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... of consideration from their age, their profession, or their character, men of proprietary landed estates, substantial renters, opulent merchants, physicians, and titular bishops, could not easily be suspected of riot in open day, or of nocturnal assemblies for the purpose of pulling down hedges, making breaches in park-walls, firing barns, maiming cattle, and outrages of a similar nature, which characterize the disorders of an oppressed or a licentious populace. But when the evidence given on the trial ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... quiet even for an upper West Side residential quarter. A block over to the east Broadway was strident in the flood of its nocturnal traffic; a like distance to the west Riverside Drive hummed with pleasure cars taking advantage of the first bland night of that belated spring. But here, now that the taxi had wheeled away, there was never a car in sight, nor even a strolling ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... awoke with their scale of savage life. Swift swooping shapes winged out from the trees, prey-hungry eyes gleaming green. And from the swamps came bellowings and stirrings from monster mud-encrusted bodies, awakening to their nocturnal quest for food. The night reechoed with the harsh ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... while no way we can see. If in sickness for succor we thirst, Is there balm in the dreams that have burst? Stars of hope and of longing eternal, That we saw o'er life's sorrows arisen, Shall they sink in death's terrors nocturnal, Only turn ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... hushed silence of the midnight hour rang the chimes of the village clock, from the tall steeple-tower of the quaint old church of Wimbledon, while several ambitious chickens rose from their neighboring perches, piped a shrill answering salute, and sank to their nocturnal slumbers again. But nor clock nor chanticleer disturbed Wimbledon. Still she slept on beneath the blossoming stars; and by their soft, inspiring light, with your permission, gentle reader, we'll enter the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... washerwoman who has found a scrap of paper in a dressing-gown, on the false interpretation of a letter, on vague indications which it completes and patches together by the strength of its imagination, it forges a coup d'etat, makes examinations, domiciliary visits, nocturnal surprises and arrests;[2150] it exaggerates, blackens, and comes in public session to denounce the whole affair to the National Assembly. First comes the plot of the Breton nobles to deliver Brest ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... until by the tumbling down of the embers she was again aroused, and would brace herself for another hour's vigil. At last the darkness became profoundly silent and even the wind ceased to whisper, the nocturnal marauders stole away, and night held her undisputed reign. Then came a heavy dreamless sleep and overpowered the frame of the watcher, chilled as it was, and faint with hunger, and worn with fatigue and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... whom Hollinshed generally copied; but perhaps immediately from an old historical ballad. My reason for believing that the play was posterior to the ballad, rather than the ballad to the play, is, that the ballad has nothing of Shakespeare's nocturnal tempest, which is too striking to have been omitted, and that it follows the chronicle; it has the rudiments of the play, but none of its amplifications: it first hinted Lear's madness, but did not array it in circumstances. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... everything was quiet, Patty turned back the covers of her bed and cautiously stepped to the floor. She was still fully clothed, except that she had changed her shoes for softer soled bedroom slippers, better fitted for nocturnal adventures. Priscilla and Conny joined her. Fortunately a full moon shone high in the sky, and they needed no artificial light. Aided by her two assistants, Patty draped the sheets of her bed about her into two voluminous wings, and fastened ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... becomes irresistible. It will then be indulged in even in the presence of strangers, though the girl in question at other times may be exceptionally modest. Girls addicted to the vice also suffer from nocturnal emissions. The general effect of self-abuse is much the same in the case of a girl as in that of a boy, for leucorrhea is injurious in somewhat the same fashion as seminal loss. In the case of girls the greatest injury, however, is due to the nervous ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... was consulted by a gentleman of twenty-six as to his ability to perform the marital function. In size his penis and testicles hardly exceeded those of a boy of eight. He had never felt desire for sexual intercourse until he became acquainted with his intended wife, since when he had erections and nocturnal emissions. The patient married and became the father of a family; those parts which at twenty-six were so much smaller than usual had increased at twenty-eight to normal adult size. There are three cases on record in the older literature of penises extremely primitive in development. They are ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... a type of human being too tender to go on living? I stuck for a time as one does on these nocturnal occasions at the word "hypersensitive," going round it and ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Trustworthy information as regards fishes is extremely scarce, partly owing to the difficulties of observation, and partly because no proper attention has yet been paid to the subject. As to the mammalia, Kessler already remarked how little we know about their manners of life. Many of them are nocturnal in their habits; others conceal themselves underground; and those ruminants whose social life and migrations offer the greatest interest do not let man approach their herds. It is chiefly upon birds that we have the widest range of information, and ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... valuable to me,—anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands of small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with their tails in the moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle night breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along it, indicative of some life prowling about its extremity, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... purlieus of the Hall, in spite of a positive interdiction of the squire. They are part of a gang that has long kept about this neighbourhood, to the great annoyance of the farmers, whose poultry-yards often suffer from their nocturnal invasions. They are, however, in some measure, patronised by the squire, who considers the race as belonging to the good old times; which, to confess the private truth, seem to have ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving |
