"Pigeon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would laugh at a target like that," he said to Cacama, "but it is nigh three years since I practiced. I have seen men who could with certainty, at this distance, hit a bird the size of a pigeon sitting on the top of that target, twenty times in succession, and think it ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... round reflectively. In the centre of the courtyard stood a building not unlike a pigeon-house, or the shelter that is sometimes set up in the middle of a market beneath which merchants gather. In fact it was a shot tower, where leaden bullets of different sizes were cast and dropped through an opening in the floor into a shallow tank below ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... alight; he received their civilities with very little courtesy. However, he got out of the carriage, and giving himself a shake, and a sort of twist, which caused the lappets of his coat to expand, like the fan-tail of a pigeon, he asked, if the place was Dymock's Moor, and if the old man he saw before him, was one called Shanty of the Moor? The blacksmith declared himself to be that same person, "and this gentlemen," he added, pointing to Dymock, ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... proximity to Paris and to the numerous chateaux, all occupied at this season of the year, and in one of which, at Mouchy-le-Chastel, the duc de Mouchy entertains a large and distinguished company. Sunday and Tuesday are the days for races at Beauvais, Monday being given up to pigeon-shooting. Then follow in quick succession the courses of Amiens, Abbeville, Rouen, Havre and Caen; and in all these places the daily programme will be found to be a very varied one—too much so, indeed, to suit the taste of the English, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... muffled in the leafy vine. There, on a slope of orchard, Francis laid A damask napkin wrought with horse and hound, Brought out a dusky loaf that smelt of home, And, half-cut-down, a pasty costly-made, Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay, Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks [3] Imbedded and injellied; last with these, A flask of cider from his father's vats, Prime, which I knew; and so we sat and eat And talk'd old matters ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... "I wish I was! I got four pigeon-toed, bow-legged, bat-eared Moonstoners down in that meadow, just itchin' mad to cut loose. And they ain't sayin' a word, which is suspicious. Worryin' across the old dry spot the last three days has kind of het 'em up. And then ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... evidence, or anything but their desire to gain something. We, of course, claim Sugar Island, and will not relinquish it under any circumstances. We also claim inland by the Kamanistiquia, and have sustained this claim by much evidence. The Pigeon River by the Grand Portage will be the boundary, if our commissioners can come to any reasonable decision. If not, I have no doubt, upon a reference, we shall gain the Kamanistiquia, if properly managed; the whole of the evidence ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the little heels tapped regularly on the floor; the pigeon-like walk was resumed; and Rachel Varnhagen, watched by the loving eyes of her father, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... whirlpool details of their own adventure and of general progress or disaster on one sector of the battle-front. Then in divisional headquarters we saw the reports of the battle as they came in by telephone, or aircraft, or pigeon-post, from half-hour to half-hour, or ten minutes by ten minutes. Three divisions widely separated provided all the work one war correspondent could do on one day of action, and later news on a broader scale, could be obtained from corps headquarters ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... "Not while the pigeon-pie lasts," said his fair companion. "But you may give me a glass of champagne, if you will. I see some going to waste in an ice-cooler over there ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... "Charming old pigeon-hole it is," said its owner, "I have not seen it since I went into the Guards. Campbell says it's a shame of me, and so it is one, I suppose; but how beautiful you ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... gone far from the camp before I met with pigeons, and some of them alighted in the bushes very near me. I cocked my pistol, and raised it to my face, bringing the breech almost in contact with my nose. Having brought the sight to bear upon the pigeon, I pulled trigger, and was in the next instant sensible of a humming noise, like that of a stone sent swiftly through the air. I found the pistol at the distance of some paces behind me, and the pigeon under the tree on which ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... to whom I have spoken, quite confirms this. But I am persuaded that a native can see a tiger much more readily than a European, and the former have, I think, much better distinguishing power. For instance, a European has great difficulty in seeing a green pigeon in a green tree till the bird moves, while a native seems to have no such difficulty. My own sight is, or rather was, very good, but I found on one occasion, when I was stalked by a tiger, that it was most provokingly defective as compared with that of ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... be no such thing. His loyalty was deeply intensified by the hot volleys poured into the Boordman Building; but he was not disturbed by the references to himself. He winced a little bit at being called a "stool pigeon"; but he thought he knew the reporter who had written the article, and his experience in the newspaper office had not been so brief but that it had killed his layman's awe of the printed word. When he walked into the Whitcomb that ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... their own place. But too keen sportsmen were always stealing into the Richmond Hill grounds for a shot or two. "Oh, for game laws!" was her constant wail. In one letter she declares: "The partridge, the woodcock and the pigeon are too great temptations for the ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... travel from one end of the Western Front to the other and back again, taking care never to attempt to renew an old acquaintance. Occasionally he makes the mistake of running across a mitrailleuse battery with its dog-teams needing reinforcements, or tries to billet himself on a military pigeon-loft and meets a violent death. But whatever fortune may bring him we can confidently assert that he is much too fly to chance his luck across the border and into the land where the sausage-machines guard ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... the visitor to another friend. How could "he know it"? Depend upon it, the people who say this are really those who have little "to think of." There are many burthened with business who always manage to keep a pigeon-hole in their minds, full of things ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... pie, of pale-brown, well-baked crust, garnished with many a pair of little claws, showing what were the contents. She set it down in the middle of the table, just opposite to Walter. The grace was said, the supper began, and great was the merriment when Walter, raising a whole pigeon on his fork, begged to know if Rose had appetite enough for it, and if she still possessed the spirit of a wolf. "And," said he, as they finished, "now Rose will never gainsay me ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pains to remove the packet from the shelf, and that it was undoubtedly now safely reposing in the inner receptacle of the big vault; indeed, the door of this being ajar Dick fancied he could see the buff envelope with the heavy rubber band sticking out of one of the various pigeon-holes. ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... Prince, perceiving that Palmerston was more firmly fixed in the saddle than ever, decided that something drastic must be done. Five months before, the prescient Baron had drawn up, in case of emergency, a memorandum, which had been carefully docketed, and placed in a pigeon-hole ready to hand. The emergency had now arisen, and the memorandum must be used. The Queen copied out the words of Stockmar, and sent them to the Prime Minister, requesting him to show her letter to Palmerston. "She thinks it right," she wrote, "in order TO PREVENT ANY MISTAKE for the FUTURE, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... with many precious stones; for this was the region of the esmeraldas, or emeralds, where that valuable gem was most abundant. One of these jewels that fell into the hands of Pizarro, in this neighborhood, was as large as a pigeon's egg. Unluckily, his rude followers did not know the value of their prize; and they broke many of them in pieces by pounding them with hammers.16 They were led to this extraordinary proceeding, it is said, by one of the Dominican missionaries, Fray Reginaldo de Pedraza, who ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... excitement, stalked him to the orchard, where there was a big pigeon-house covered with ivy. In front of it the pigeons had a good run, enclosed with wire netting when they were shut in; but they were often let out to feed in the fields. The yard-boy now reached up and opened a little door in the side of the house. As he did ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the tiller in my hand, and stared at my wife in some consternation. This was not the tame pigeon, the rosy, humble, domestic creature who was to make me a home and rear me children. A sea bird with broad white wings swooped down upon the water, now dark and ridged, rested there a moment, then swept away into the heart of the gathering ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... tower was building, Mr Stevenson and his men were exposed for many days and nights in this beacon—this erection of timber-beams, with a mere pigeon-house on the top of it for a dwelling. Before the beacon was built, the men lived in the Pharos floating light; a vessel which was moored not far from the Rock. Every day—weather permitting—they ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... higher mountains which only produced bushes and fern. The birds he saw were blue parakeets and green doves, except one which he found burrowing in the ground and brought to me. This bird was about the size of a pigeon, and proved to be a white-bellied petrel of the same kind as those seen in high latitudes, which are called shearwaters. He likewise brought a branch of a plant like the New Zealand tea-plant, and which at Van Diemen's land we had made use of for brooms. From the ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... him THAT, hold him THERE. They lean heavily on what they find of the above influence in him. They won't follow the rivers in his thought and the play of his soul. And their cousin cataloguers put him in another pigeon-hole. They label him "ascetic." They translate his outward serenity into an impression of severity. But truth keeps one from being hysterical. Is a demagogue a friend of the people because he will lie to them to make them cry and raise false hopes? A search for perfect truths throws out ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... doctor ruffled his beard and threw out his chest like a mammoth pouter pigeon—"you'll have to give us a sensible answer before we let you go one step. You know you can't expect to get very far with that—in this city," and he tapped the bag ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... described the history of king Mandhata; then the history of prince Jantu; and how king Somaka by offering up his only son (Jantu) in sacrifice obtained a hundred others; then the excellent history of the hawk and the pigeon; then the examination of king Sivi by Indra, Agni, and Dharma; then the story of Ashtavakra, in which occurs the disputation, at the sacrifice of Janaka, between that Rishi and the first of logicians, Vandi, the son of Varuna; the defeat of Vandi by the great Ashtavakra, and the release ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... boxes,—not to steal any thing, upon my honour, Sir,—only to see what was in them; have had pens stuck in my eyes for peeping through key-holes after knowledge; could never see a cold pie with the legs dangling out at top, but my fingers were for lifting up the crust,—just to try if it were pigeon or partridge,—for no other reason in the world. Surely I think my passion for nuts was owing to the pleasure of cracking the shell to get at something concealed, more than to any delight I took in eating the kernel. In short, Sir, this appetite has ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... from the former. Its name, Iximche, is that of a kind of tree (chetree) called by the Spanish inhabitants ramon, apparently a species of Brosimium. Ratzamut, literally "the beak of the wild pigeon," was the name given to the small and almost inaccessible plain, surrounded on all sides by deep ravines, on which Iximche was situated. Doubtless, it was derived from some fancied resemblance of the outline of the plain to ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... couldn't understand anything of what was said soothed her apprehensions. Sometimes a silence fell and Lingard bending toward her would whisper, "It isn't so easy," and the stillness would be so perfect that she would hear the flutter of a pigeon's wing somewhere high up in the great overshadowing trees. And suddenly one of the men before her without moving a limb would begin another speech rendered more mysterious still by the total absence of action or play of feature. Only the watchfulness of the eyes which showed that the speaker ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... picture of a handsome boy, far back in one of the pigeon-holes, and with the familiarity born of country intercourse, she looked intently at it, remarking ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... be done by selective breeding, and it is a better case, because there is no chance of that partial infusion of error to which I alluded, has been studied very carefully by Mr. Darwin,—the case of the domestic pigeons. I dare say there may be some among you who may be pigeon 'fanciers', and I wish you to understand that in approaching the subject, I would speak with all humility and hesitation, as I regret to say that I am not a pigeon fancier. I know it is a great ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... pleasure. I was to go with Aunt Marion to dine soon after midday with a Danish family, in real Danish West Indian fashion, and among the guests were to be some officers of the East-Indiamen. I carried with me one fear—that we should have pigeon-pea soup. Whoever ate pigeon-pea soup, Si' Myra said, would never want to leave the island, and I longed for those ships to go. But in due ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... to by Champlain were probably the Passenger pigeon (Ectopistes) which at one time was extraordinarily abundant in parts of North America, though it has now been nearly killed out by man. It would arrive in flocks of millions on its migratory ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... paltry dollar. I was reminded of the boy whose father bragged of killing nine hundred and ninety-nine pigeons at one shot. Somebody asked why he didn't say a thousand. 'Thunder!' says the boy, 'do you suppose my father would lie just for one pigeon?' I told the story, to show my cousins how coolly I received the bill, and paid it,—coined my heart and dropped my blood for drachmas, rather than appear mean in presence of my relatives, although I knew that a portion of the charge was for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Round Robin, round as any ball; You scarce can see his head or tail at all. He's not a carrier-pigeon, though he brings Important messages beneath his wings. And 'tis this freak of ornithology They mean who say, "A little ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... floor and striking against a great land map on the wall. Upon the hearth had been thrown an armful of hickory and pine. Rand, kneeling, laid a fire, struck a spark into the tinder, and had speedily a leap and colour of pointed flames. He rose, opened his desk, drew papers out of pigeon-holes and laid them in order upon the wood, then pushed before it his accustomed chair. He did not take the latter; instead, after standing a moment with an indescribable air of weary uncertainty, he turned, went back to the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... world of amusing oneself and of amusing oneself in vulgar fashions—as a born clown would do if he came suddenly into a large fortune. The women are just as bad as the men, only in a different way—not always even that; for most of them think only of the Four-in-hand Club and the pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham—things to sicken one. Now, I've known selfish people before, but not selfish people utterly without any tincture of culture. I come away from Dunbude, and come down here to Calcombe: and the difference in the atmosphere makes one's very breath ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... going to the dresser, took down her hair. The smiling face of a doll looked up at her from the neighboring chair, where it was sitting bolt upright. Her costume was fresh from the modiste, and her feet, though hopelessly pigeon-toed, were encased in bronze boots of a freshness which caught the dim gaslight with a ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... gathered, and was pleased with their wild flavor. The small denizens of the wilderness hardly took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon repented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl to come beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. A squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered either in anger or merriment,—for ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mean time I had tied the calf to a low tree, which I discovered was the thorny dwarf palm, which grows quickly, and is extremely useful for fences. It bears an oblong fruit, about the size of a pigeon's egg, from which is extracted an oil which is an excellent substitute for butter. I determined to return for some young plants of this palm to ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... convinced me that it was not only folly, but a positive sin, to leave this sum lying in the bank at a pitiful rate of interest, and otherwise unemployed, while every one else in the kingdom was having a pluck at the public pigeon. Somehow or other, we were unlucky in our first attempts. Speculators are like wasps; for when they have once got hold of a ripening and peach-like project, they keep it rigidly for their own swarm, and repel the approach ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... broken only by the cooing of a wood-pigeon in a tall tree close at hand. Then Anstice ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... philanthropy with its expenditure of alms. Those aviaries and fish-ponds of the grandees were of course, as a rule, a very costly indulgence. But this system was carried to such an extent and prosecuted with so much keenness, that e. g. the stock of a pigeon-house was valued at 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds); a methodical system of fattening had sprung up, and the manure got from the aviaries became of importance in agriculture; a single bird-dealer was able to furnish at once ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and have felt, just as I did. I was bruised and still; but so one is after a run with hounds. I had had many a nastier fall hunting in Derbyshire. The worst that could happen did not happen; but the worst never - well, so rarely does. One might shoot oneself instead of the pigeon, or be caught picking forbidden fruit. Narrow escapes are as good as broad ones. The truth is, when we are young, and active, and healthy, whatever happens, of the pleasant or lucky kind, we accept as a matter ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... would sooner eat a dead pigeon taken from the soles of the feet of one sick of the plague than kiss ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... a lieu commun in Arabic poetry. I have noticed the world-wide reverence for the pigeon and the incarnation of the Third Person of the Hindu Triad (Shiva), as Kapoteshwara (Kapota-ishwara)"pigeon or dove-god (Pilgrimage ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... to cry. However, the boys in the kitchen took him in hand and fed him up. They would set him down alone to table and wait upon him till he had his fill, which was a good long time to wait; and the first thing we noticed was that his little stomach began to stick out like a pigeon's breast; and then the food got a little wider spread and he started little calves to his legs; and last of all he began to get quite saucy and impudent, so that we could know what sort of a fellow he really was when he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... life more tolerable, deprived as we were of all communication with the outer world and of family affection, we were allowed to keep pigeons and to have gardens. Our two or three hundred pigeon-houses, with a thousand birds nesting all round the outer wall, and above thirty garden plots, were a sight even stranger than our meals. But a full account of the peculiarities which made the college at Vendome ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... leads on to the floor the shortest woman—a little humpbacked dwarf: he is smoking a cigar, and she a cigarette, and they dance with fury while puffing clouds of smoke. The man jumps in the air with wondrous pigeon-wings, slaps his heels with his hands, shouts and twists his lank body into grotesque shapes. The little dwarf, madly hilarious, rushes about with her head down, swings her long dress in the air, whirls and "makes cheeses," and in the climax of her efforts kicks her partner squarely in the back amid ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... the hall. It, however, was quite deserted. I had hoped I might see something of Mrs. Lascelles; she was not one of those in the glass veranda. I now looked in the drawing-room, but neither was she there. Returning to the empty hall, I passed a minute peering through the locked glass door of the pigeon-holes in which the careful concierge files the unclaimed letters. There was nothing for me that I could discern, in the C pigeon-hole; but next door but one, under E, there lay on the very top a letter which caught my eye and more. It had not been through any post. It was a note ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... rare that we can afford to make an exception, though the temptation is often great. The head and the heart—voyez, vous, Monsieur—they pull in contrary directions." And she slipped the book back into a pigeon-hole as if the touch of it was distasteful. She glanced perfunctorily at the cheque he handed to her, then closer, and the colour rose again to ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... plumage and fixative were destined. Hence a loud war of words, which the barkeeper had almost smoothed out when the light-hearted Gibbs suddenly decreed that the four should sing, march, pat and "cut the pigeon-wing" to the new song (given nightly by Christy's Minstrels) ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... tracks of the big Constitutional papers; they have pigeon-holes full of ecclesiastical canards," ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... him why he blushes, and why he stammers, and why he always speaks in an almost inaudible tone, as if they thought he did it on purpose. Then one of them, sticking out his chest and strutting about the room like a pouter-pigeon, suggests quite seriously that that is the style he should adopt. The old man slaps him on the back and says: "Be bold, my boy. Don't be afraid of any one." The mother says, "Never do anything that you need ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... my dear little friends! It would never do to go away, however, so I said: "Well, never mind, Mr. Mansion House—that is, Mr. Neighbor Nelly—dear me!—Mr. Laird, I can do without a room; and at night you can put me to sleep in the pigeon house, or the hen coop, or under the counter of the office, or up the chimney, I don't care which; but go ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... went through the accumulation without finding anything to help him. Then his eye was attracted by a small tin case thrust into one of the oblong pigeon holes at the back of the desk. This he pulled out and opened and found a small wad of paper wrapped ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... morning when the camp at Djedile was taken, and the Emir Fakreddin slain, a pigeon carried intelligence of the disaster to Cairo; and the Egyptian capital was immediately in consternation. Believing that the days of Islamism were numbered, and the empire of the sultan on the verge of ruin, the inhabitants thought of nothing but escape ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... came to the rescue with her question about Rumple's adventures, and at once the hero rose to the occasion, puffing out his chest with such an air of unconscious importance that Sylvia at once called him a pouter pigeon, to his great disgust; for he said it always made him feel sick to look at ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... casual approach of night, had been between me and the worst kind of destruction - viz. that of falling into the hands of cannibals and savages, who would have seized on me with the same view as I would on a goat or turtle; and have thought it no more crime to kill and devour me than I did of a pigeon or a curlew. I would unjustly slander myself if I should say I was not sincerely thankful to my great Preserver, to whose singular protection I acknowledged, with great humanity, all these unknown deliverances were due, and ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... were discussed in hushed but intense undertones, faint but all-important modifications were offered by the vendeuse to bridge the gulf between the figures of the mannequins and those of the clients. The brave longing of a squat pigeon to have the model ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... pilasters of cut stone, and the crown by four pillars in a double row: the dividing arches, according to the plan, are not symmetrical. Hard by, measuring twelve metres by twelve, is the quarry whence the stone was taken; and near it stands the normal Egyptian pigeon-tower, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... pigeon, eat and be off; I've looked at you quite enough! Drive Marfa to her bridegroom, old man. And look here, old greybeard! drive straight along the road at first, and then turn off from the road to the right, you know, into the forest—right up to the big pine that stands on the hill, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... new description of pigeon were seen for the first time; two were shot, and were beautiful and curious. Their heads were crowned with a black plume, their wings streaked with black, the short feathers of a golden colour edged with white; the back ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... dominated, from the jingle of the bags in the hands of the dowagers and the faint, protesting creak of their corsets as they picked their way as delicately as fat, gorgeous macaws across the sand, to the sound of their daughters' voices, musical as a pigeon-loft, as they chattered catchwords at each other and their partners, or occasionally, very occasionally, dipped in for a three-minute swim. Moreover, and supremely, it was a triumph of ritual, and such ritual as reminded Oliver a little of the curious, unanimous and apparently meaningless movements ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... spoke, he tore open the porter's shirt, and a silver ball, about as large as a pigeon's egg, fell to the ground. Leonard picked it up, and found it so hot that he could scarcely ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sat an horse better than I, and no warrior ever fought that could more ably handle sword. I have mustered armies to the battle ere now; I have personally conducted sieges, I have headed sallies on the camp of the King of France. Am I meek pigeon to be kept in a dovecote? Look around thee! This is my cage. Ha! the perches are fine wood, sayest thou? the seed is good, and the water is clean! I deny it not. I say only, it is a cage, and I am a royal eagle, that ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... poverty, hungering for any chance sight of him which his outgoings or incomings might give. The chances were better with the outgoings than with the incomings, for these were apt to be so hurried, in the final result of his constitutional delays, as to have the rapidity of the homing pigeon's flight, and to afford hardly a glimpse to the quickest eye. It cannot harm him, or any one now, to own that Harte was nearly always late for those luncheons and dinners which he was always going out to, and it needed the anxieties and energies of both families ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... these remote, ignorant, insignificant, half-tamed pioneers of civilization roused but faint interest in the minds of the people of Canada. Formal resolutions and petitions of rights had been regularly sent during the past two years to Ottawa and there as regularly pigeon-holed above the desks of deputy ministers. The politicians had a somewhat dim notion that there was some sort of row on among the "breeds" about Prince Albert and Battleford, but this concerned them little. The members of the Opposition found in the resolutions and petitions ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... the Baby Towers, two of which we had to pass. These are square towers, with small windows, about twelve feet from the ground, somewhat resembling pigeon-towers; these strange dove-cotes are built to receive the bodies of such babies as die too young to have fully developed souls, and therefore there is no necessity to waste coffins on them, or even to take the trouble of burying them in the bosom of mother earth. So the insignificant little corpse ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... today, and be not labelled and pigeon-holed and held to account on any special line of thought or action lest the individual soul be barred out from a conception and knowledge of some far grander truth. At best our view is narrow and contracted, else were we gods, and as we grow we discover our little, vaunted ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... stalwart horses tinted like the dappled deer, Grey and pigeon-coloured coursers bore ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread. Hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou half-penny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion. O! an the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but my bastard, what a joyful father wouldst thou make me. Go to; thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers' ends, ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... perhaps of a caterpillar. It would not be imaginable to any person free from hobby-horse or fanciful attachments, how much mortification such an incident occasions. St. Evremond, after removing into the country, returned to a city life because he found himself in despair for the loss of a pigeon. His conclusion was, that rural life induced exorbitant attachment to insignificant objects. My experience is conformable to this. My natural propensity was to raise trees, fruit and forest, from the seed. I had it in early ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... vigorously than ever. Birds and even shell-fish were included in the provisions, and thus not only were the nation's foodstuffs diminished, but also its crops lay at the mercy of destructive animals and birds. It is recorded that a peasant was exiled for throwing a stone at a pigeon, and that one man was put to death for catching fish with hook and line, while another met the same fate for injuring a dog, the head of the criminal being exposed on the public execution ground and a neighbour who had reported the offence being ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... quite a hunter in my youth, as most farm boys are, but I never brought home much game—a gray squirrel, a partridge, or a wild pigeon occasionally. I think with longing and delight of the myriads of wild pigeons that used to come every two or three years—covering the sky for a day or two, and making the naked spring woods gay and festive with their soft voices and fluttering blue wings. I have ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... morning of my return home. But, after all, it doesn't matter much, as there's a clergyman present!" And her blue eyes. danced mischievously; "Isn't it lucky you came? You can stop that curse on its way and send it back like a homing pigeon, can't you? What do you say when you do it? 'Retro me Sathanas,' or something of that kind, isn't it? Whatever it is, say it now, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... The Hopper sat pigeon-toed, beset by countless conflicting emotions. His ingenuity was taxed to its utmost by the demands of this complex situation. But for his returning suspicion that Muriel was leading up to something; that she was detaining him for some purpose not yet apparent, ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... Amzi sat pigeon-toed. Mrs. John Newman King, whose husband had been United States Senator and who still paid an annual visit to Washington, where the newspapers interviewed her as to her recollections of Lincoln, was given to frank, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... pictures, one upon the other, rose before him—dark judgments, which he had never dreamed of or anticipated; and he stood like a stricken coward, and he yearned for the silence and concealment of the grave. Ay—the grave! Delightful haven to pigeon-hearted malefactors—inconsistent criminals, who fear the puny look of mortal man, and, unabashed, stalk beneath the eternal and the killing frown of God. Michael fixed upon his remedy, and the delusive opiate gave him temporary ease; but, in an another instant, he derived even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... [Footnote 1: Pigeon fanciers know that when they have once obtained, by crossbreeding and selection, a particular form or feather, the utmost care is needed to preserve it. If the parents are not selected the progeny wilt gradually revert towards the original wild ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... up a half-burned peat which lay there, and after some trouble succeeded in lighting it again. He then explained what had taken place; which indeed was easily done, as the candle happened to be extinguished by a pigeon which sat directly above it. The chapel, I should have observed, was at this time, like many country chapels, unfinished inside, and the pigeons of a neighboring dove-cot had built nests among the rafters of the unceiled roof; ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... will take us to travel all the way from New York State, as they will have to travel slower, having the Twins with them. Besides, Nannie is not so young as she was and cannot stand the hardships of a hurried trip. I don't believe there is a carrier pigeon within a hundred miles of here to take my message, so I think I shall have to entrust it to the crows. There are crows in every State, and they are very reliable messengers and travel fast. One crow need ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... would it be that its furniture and the paths between were fitted as the trays and pigeon-holes of a cabinet? What stupidity of perfection would that be which left no margin about God's work, no room for change of plan upon change of fact—yea, even the mighty change that, behold now at length, his child is praying! See ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... not harmonize with its natural features as now ascertained. "Long Lake" is nowhere to be found under that name. There is reason for supposing, however, that the sheet of water intended by that name is the estuary at the mouth of Pigeon River. The present treaty therefore adopts that estuary and river, and afterwards pursues the usual route across the height of land by the various portages and small lakes till the line reaches Rainy Lake, from which the commissioners agreed on the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... the river, the dogs killed a jaguar kitten. There was no trace of the mother. Some accident must have befallen her, and the kitten was trying to shift for herself. She was very emaciated. In her stomach were the remains of a pigeon and some tendons from the skeleton or dried carcass of some big animal. The loathsome berni flies, which deposit eggs in living beings—cattle, dogs, monkeys, rodents, men—had been at it. There were seven huge, white grubs making big abscess-like swellings over its eyes. These flies deposit their ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... monumental fence of cast-iron, were the only excuse for giving the title of chateau to a very commonplace structure, of which the main body presented bare, whitewashed walls, flanked by two small towers on turrets shaped like extinguishers, and otherwise resembling very ordinary pigeon-houses. ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... ain't goin' there t'night. It's too dark t' see anything now," he remarked, to my astonishment. "Dives and the choo-choo back t' little ole Trouville f'r mine! I on'y wanted to take a LUK at this pigeon-house joint." ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... mak brass goa farther, they'll be content to give up th' Union. But aw think it goas far enuff—what they want is to keep it nearer hooam, to let less on it goa to th' ale haase, to spend less o' dog feightin', pigeon flyin', an' rat worryin'; an' if they'd niver spend owt withaat think in' whether it wor for ther gooid or net, they'd find a deal moor brass i'th' drawer corner at th' month end, an' varry likely a nice little bit to fall back on i'th' Savings bank at th' year end. An a chap stands ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... far-seeing men have looked to the preservation of much of nature's beauty through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which embraces Little Pigeon Gorge, and Chimney Tops, which command a breathtaking view of the ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... stately columns all about him. The floor was red and brown mosaic, the roof a tracery of leaves intertwined with light. Eastward the sun flashed as through a window. Close by a wood-pigeon was praying. ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... but nothing definite. I've got the proposition I told you about from the Engraving Company. Here it is." And Fitz pulled out a package of papers from a pigeon-hole and laid the letter before the Colonel. It was the ordinary offer agreeing to print the bonds for a specified sum, and had been one of the many harmless dodges Fitz had used to keep the ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was as indifferent to English honours as to those of the Chinese. As for Prince Kung's letter to Queen Victoria, we are informed by Mr. Hake that he has good reason to believe it never reached the Queen, but was allowed to remain in a pigeon-hole in the Foreign Office! Well may we quote the words of Axel Oxenstiern to his son, to which the late Prince Consort once referred in a letter to the late Emperor of Germany, at that time Crown ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... between Asnieres and Paris with an amorous message under her wing, that odd carrier-pigeon remained true to her own dovecot and cooed ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... Paolo Uccello has painted scenes from the Old Testament in a sort of green monotone, for once without enthusiasm. Above you and around you rises the old convent and the great tower; there, in the far corner, perhaps a friar plays with a little cat, here a pigeon flutters under the arches about the little ruined space of grass, the meagre grass of the south, where now and then the shadow of a white cloud passes over the city, whither who knows. For a moment in that silent place you wonder ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... idea,—that is if the idea be that the likeness of the assassin remains on the retina of the victim's eye, and can be reproduced by photography,—is not a novelty. Perhaps this story in Lippincott comes out of one of Mr. RUDYARD KIPLING'S pigeon-holes, and was just chucked in haphazard, because Editorial Lippincott wanted something with the name of the KIPLING, "bright and merry," to it. It's not very "bright," and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... But the most fierce of all these wild forest animals are those of the feline class. The spotless dark-grey yaguarundi, not much larger than the wild cat of Europe, pursues all kinds of birds, particularly the pigeon, the partridge, and the penelope. The oscollo (F. celidogaster, Tem.), the uturunca (F. pardalis, L.), and the long-tailed, yellowish-grey tiger-cat (F. macrourura, Pr. M.), all lie in wait, not only for the weaker mammalia, but sometimes they even ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... hoopoe, vulture, robin, phoebe bird, bluebird, swallow, barn owl, flicker, oriole, jay, magpie, crow, purple grackle, starling, stork, wood pigeon, Canada goose, mallard, pintail, bob white and a few other species have accepted man at his face value and endeavored to establish with him a modus vivendi. The mallard and the graylag goose are the ancestors of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... crimson, and black. "Wherefore such a beak?" every naturalist has asked; but the toucan still wags his head, as much as to say, "you can not tell." There must be some other reason than adaptation. Birds of the same habits are found beside it—the ibis, pigeon, spoonbill, and toucan are seen feeding together. "How astonishing are the freaks and fancies of Nature! (wrote the funny Sidney Smith). To what purpose, we say, is a bird placed in the woods of Cayenne with ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... ago these same streets would lie sleepily in the sun, dreaming of the days of splendour long by. In the square before the wonderful cathedral there would be stillness—here and there, perhaps, a pigeon would come fluttering down from the ledges and cornices of the Gothic facade; sometimes a nondescript dog would raise a lazy head to snap at the flies; occasionally the streets would send back a nasal echo as a group of American tourists, with their ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... walks or drives for miles. Everything that woods and waters, nature and art can do to make Ashford delightful has been done. I got a companion, a pretty girl, a permit from some official who lived in a cottage at Cong, and set out by way of the Pigeon Hole to see at ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... Casino. I couldn't stand it, so I had to come away, but nobody else seemed to mind, and some of 'em was hanging over the wall to see what was going on!' I couldn't imagine what she meant, for a minute. Then I knew it must be the pigeon-shooters." ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... blacksmith shop at Holland Landing was for some weeks largely given up to this manufacture. As there was no attempt at interference with these proceedings, the disaffected became bolder, and began to assemble at regular periods to engage in rifle practice, pigeon-matches, and the slaughter of turkeys. As intimated in a previous note,[285] Mr. Bidwell was applied to for a legal opinion as to the lawfulness of such gatherings. He advised with great caution, specifying how far he conceived ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... and Ladysmith remain unrelieved, and such want of success must in any case discredit Warren in the eyes of his troops. Besides, a subordinate is not discredited because his chief steps in to conduct a critical operation. However, these personal controversies may be suffered to remain in that pigeon-hole from which they should never have ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shops and tilted eaves, and fantastic riddles written over everything. I have no idea in what direction Cha is running. I only know that the streets seem to become always narrower as we go, and that some of the houses look like great wickerwork pigeon-cages only, and that we pass over several bridges before we halt again at the foot of another hill. There is a lofty flight of steps here also, and before them a structure which I know is both a gate and a symbol, imposing, yet in no manner resembling the great Buddhist gateway ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... prominent part, and acts like the rudder of a ship, except that, instead of sideways, it moves upwards and downwards. If the bird wishes to rise, it raises its tail; and if to fall, it depresses it; and, whilst in a horizontal position, it keeps it steady. There are few who have not observed a pigeon or a crow preserve, for some time, a horizontal flight without any apparent motion of the wings. This is accomplished by the bird having already acquired sufficient velocity, and its wings being parallel to the horizon, meeting with but small resistance from the atmosphere. If it begins ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... best way to learn to sleep is not to care whether you do or not. Nothing could be better than DuBois's advice: "Don't look for sleep; it flies away like a pigeon when one pursues it."[58] Attention to anything keeps the mind awake, and most of all, attention to sleep. More than one person has waked up to see whether or not he was going to sleep. We cannot, however, fool ourselves by merely pretending indifference. The ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... practically vanished; occasionally a lone survivor strayed into the ranch valley. There were bears, of course, shy and fearful, in the rough, unsettled country. We had great variety of meat, venison, Bighorn sheep, grouse, ptarmigan, wild pigeon, sometimes ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... cleared his throat. Mrs. Fanny Newt Dinks turned back from the window, and conversation ceased. All eyes were fixed upon the speaker, who became more pigeon-breasted every moment. He took out his glasses and placed them upon his nose, and slowly surveyed the company. He then drew a sealed paper from his pocket, clearing his throat with great dignity as ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... Cesena for a manuscript which it was reported that he wished to consult; and his days were spent profitably between the Minerva and the Vatican, where he was initiated in the mysteries of Galileo's tower. It was his fortune to have for pilot and instructor a prelate classified in the pigeon-holes of the Wilhelmsstrasse as the chief agitator against the State, "dessen umfangreiches Wissen noch durch dessen Feinheit und geistige Gewandtheit uebertroffen wird." He was welcomed by Passaglia and Schrader at the Collegio Romano, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... one is heard openly cursing the Government as oppressive and intolerable in a cafe or other public resort, though the sentiment is heartily responded to, the utterer is suspected and avoided as a Police stool-pigeon and spy. Such mutual distrust necessarily creates or accompanies a lack of moral courage. There are brave and noble Italians, but the majority are neither brave nor noble. There were gallant spirits who joyfully poured out their blood for Freedom in ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... instance of an immense bird population is that of the passenger pigeon of the United States, which lays only one, or at most two eggs, and is said to rear generally but one young one. Why is this bird so extraordinarily abundant, while others producing two or three times as many young are much less plentiful? The explanation is ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... his head to the Chief, it was a voluntary act, a form of respect, and not the surrendering of his judgement. He was on the spot: the Chief was absent. Barto reasoned that the Chief could have had no experience of women, seeing that he was ready to trust in them. "Do I trust to my pigeon, my sling-stone?" he said jovially to the thickbrowed, splendidly ruddy young woman, who was his wife; "do I trust her? Not half a morsel of her!" This young woman, a peasant woman of remarkable personal attractions, served him with the fidelity of a fascinated animal, and the dumbness ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... long yellow bows, the most deadly weapon that the wit of man had yet devised, thrusting forth from behind their shoulders. From each man's girdle hung sword or axe, according to his humor, and over the right hip there jutted out the leathern quiver with its bristle of goose, pigeon, and peacock feathers. Behind the bowmen strode two trumpeters blowing upon nakirs, and two drummers in parti-colored clothes. After them came twenty-seven sumpter horses carrying tent-poles, cloth, spare arms, spurs, wedges, cooking kettles, horse-shoes, bags ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... found that the open air was good. So around nearly every golf club other sports grew up. Polo grounds were laid out by the side of the links, croquet lawns appeared on one side of the club-house and lawn-tennis nets arose on the other, while traps for the clay-pigeon shooters were placed ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... hour whether that act of mine was one of sublime courage or of the crassest folly; I remember that I strode blithely forward, and that he followed; that some chance thing or another caused me to turn my head—the sun burning in a casement, a pigeon, a cat, some speck of accident. That motion saved my life, for immediately afterwards I heard the report, and felt the ball flicker through my hair. The fiend had gouged him again, and he had tried to murder me. At that certainty, in all the ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Pigeon may be prepared in the same way as the chicken and served with the Indian meal; or either one may be served instead of the Indian meal with rice, as in receipt for Risotto alla Nostrale; Macaroni, ...
— Simple Italian Cookery • Antonia Isola
... especially savory, was added, Merrick's countenance would brighten up. At one time he sat quietly musing, then gave expression to his joy in an Irish ditty. His handsome suit of clothes, donned at Hagerstown, was now in tatters, which made his appearance the more ludicrous as he "cut the pigeon-wing" around the seething cauldron. He had particularly enjoined upon us, when starting out, to procure, at all hazards, some okra, which we failed to get, and, in naming aloud the various items, as each appeared on the surface of the water, he wound ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... transition from a town life to such a melancholy state of rustication; but I was agreeably disappointed. — She found the reality less uncomfortable than the picture I had drawn. — By this time indeed, things were mended in appearance — The out-houses had risen out of their ruins; the pigeon-house was rebuilt, and replenished by Wilson, who also put my garden in decent order, and provided a good stock of poultry, which made an agreeable figure in my yard; and the house, on the whole, looked like the habitation ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... told of straining effort the lolled head came up off the chest. The thin, corded neck stiffened back, rising from a dirty, collarless neckband. The Adam's apple bulged out prominently, as big as a pigeon's egg. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... desk they accosted the still-courteous clerk. Uncle Richard produced his card, and, before he could ask for the manager the clerk flicked a memorandum out of one pigeon-hole, a key out of another, and twirled the register on its turn-table almost into the ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... a pet pigeon with a red breast, a pussy, and a little brown calf. I had two beautiful chickens, but they died. I am seven ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... use the burs for fuel, is the pinus sativus, being two-leaved. They use-for an edging to the borders of their gardens, the santolina, which they call garderobe. I find the yellow clover here, in a garden, and the large pigeon succeeding well, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... violet dusk set in. The beautiful young Premiere stood at the window of her yellow-and-black boudoir, gazing a little wistfully at the almost deserted pavements of Downing Street. A white pigeon perched—'" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... that I was doing wisely in leaving the captain, that the people of Leasse would gladly receive me, and that I would find great pig-hunting and pigeon-shooting among the dense forests that lay at the back ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... thumb. Critically, if superiority in mere intellect and strong self-will, or even success in the object he designs, constitute a hero, the clear-witted, audacious, subtle Ancient has entirely the upper hand of the trusting, hood-winked pigeon, Othello— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... three rubies, each as large as a pigeon's egg, if he would go away and forget all about Yun-Ying, he took them ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... on the forehead, and are rather larger than the common noddy. Most of them had lately hatched their young, which lay under old ones upon the bare ground. The rest had eggs, of which they only lay one, larger than that of a pigeon, bluish and speckled with black. There were also a good many common boobies, a sort that are almost like a gannet, and a sooty or chocolate-coloured one, with a white belly. To this list we must add men-of-war birds, tropic-birds, curlews, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... Ireland which has owed its inspiration to the priestly teaching. The genius of the Gael could not find itself in their doctrines; though above all things mystical it could not pierce its way into the departments of super-nature where their theology pigeon-holes the souls of the damned and the blessed. It knew of the Eri behind the veil which I spoke of, the Tir-na-noge which as a lamp lights up our grassy plains, our haunted hills and valleys. The faery tales have ever lain nearer to the hearts of the people, and whatever ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... Prince! when morning came he found that affairs were turning out differently indeed from the way in which he had planned. When he came down to breakfast, with his foolish head full of visions of ordering the cook to send up pigeon pot-pie, curry of larks, strong coffee,—which was a forbidden delight to the Prince except upon his birthdays,—and unlimited buttered toast and jam, what a downfall to all his hopes was it to find, pacing the dining-hall, the fierce and cruel ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... and heaths which had never been cut for a score of years, he saw approaching him the tall, slender form of Don Silverio, moving slowly, for the heather was breast high, his little dog barking at a startled wood-pigeon. ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... the proprietor of the expense account is not required personally to consume it each month. It is designed rather to win the esteem of bar-tenders, loosen the tongues of suspects, libate the thirsty stool-pigeon, and prime other accepted sources of information. But beware! Exceeding care in filling out the account of such expenditures at the month's end. Carelessness leads a hunted life on the Canal Zone. Take, for instance, the slight error of my friend—who, ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... Lefever and Sawdy, while Laramie, opposed by the cattlemen's lawyer, was demanding from Justice Druel warrants for his prisoners; and that after they had reluctantly been issued, Sheriff Druel had pigeon-holed them until Tenison, backing Laramie, had told Druel after a big row, he would run him out of town if he didn't take his ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... thousands of blackbirds rising in huge swarms like gnats; full-voiced meadowlarks on the fence posts; herons stalking solemnly, or waiting like so many Japanese bronzes for a chance at a gopher; red-tailed hawks circling slowly; pigeon hawks passing with their falcon dart; little gaudy sparrow hawks on top the telephone poles; buzzards, stately and wonderful in flight, repulsive when at rest; barn-owls dwelling in the haystacks, and horned ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... administered to a healthy young cat 7 drachms of Battley's solution of opium, then 10 grains of morphia, and a little later 20 grains more of morphia without rendering the cat unconscious. The same experimenter gave to a pigeon 21, 30, and 40, then 50 grains of powdered opium on succeeding days with no bad effect. S. Weir Mitchell gave to three pigeons, respectively, 272 drops of black drop, 21 grains of powdered opium, and 3 grains of morphia without any effect.[72] On the other hand, horses ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... battle, she sniffed once more at her mangled young one, and brayed piteously over it. Then turning in an explosive fury upon the body of the rhinoceros, began to tear it limb from limb as one might pull apart a roast pigeon. While thus occupied, she chanced to turn her eyes upon the tree, and caught sight of the three figures ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... known in London by his long residence among us, and from the undisputed merit of his compositions, now inhabits this his native city, and being fond of dumb creatures, as we call them, took to petting a pigeon, one of the few animals which can live at Venice, where, as I observed, scarcely any quadrupeds can be admitted, or would exist with any degree of comfort to themselves. This creature has, however, by keeping his master company, I trust, obtained so perfect an ear and taste for music, that no one ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... possible sort of system into which to weave an object, mentally, is a rational system, or what is called a 'science.' Place the thing in its pigeon-hole in a classificatory series; explain it logically by its causes, and deduce from it its necessary effects; find out of what natural law it is an instance,—and you then know it in the best of all possible ways. ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... of such size and so lovely a colour, that his eyes were dazzled when he looked at it. The gem, though roughly polished, was uncut, but its dimensions were those of a small blackbird's egg, it was of the purest pigeon-blood colour, without a flaw, and worn almost round, apparently by the action of water. Now, as it chanced, Leonard knew something of gems, although unhappily he was less acquainted with the peculiarities ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... knot of Chinamen stood watching as we approached, whilst just beyond we caught sight of a couple of women hobbling nimbly away out of reach of our sight, as though they walked on stilts. Sherman—for such was the second mate's name,—approaching the Chinamen, began with them in pigeon English. They did not understand. He exhibited a few dollars, and traced the outline of a sheep upon the ground, and, with many surprising motions of his arms, sought to acquaint them with the object of his visit. All to no purpose. "What's to be done?" said Sherman, looking at us. "There's ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... as a child. I have heard of you from time to time, but I wonder what sort of person you are now. Perhaps if I did know I wouldn't dare put pen to paper. But I don't know. I only remember that we were great chums. In fact, I chummed with you even more than with your brothers. But I am like the pigeon that went away in the fable of the Two Pigeons. If I once start to tell you I would want you to feel that you have been there yourself. I may overtax your patience with the story of my life so different from yours, not only in all the facts but altogether in spirit. You may ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... been a foregone conclusion that Clarence should join Company A. Few young men of family did not. And now he ran to his room to don for Virginia that glorious but useless full dress,—the high bearskin rat, the red pigeon-tailed coat, the light blue trousers, and the gorgeous, priceless shackle. Indeed, the boy looked stunning. He held his big rifle like a veteran, and his face was set with a high resolve there was no mistaking. The high color of her pride was on the cheek of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Paradise now and then strayed wandering. Without knowing it, she had begun already to love the queer little woman, with the wretched body, the fine head, and gentle, suffering face; while the indescribable awe, into which her aversion to the kobold, with his pigeon-chest, his wheezing breath, his great head, and his big, still face, which to such eyes as the curate's seemed to be looking into both worlds at once, had passed over, bore no unimportant part in that portion of her discipline here commenced. One of the loftiest spirits ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... been sailing foreign, ma'am,' he said. 'And I don't know nothing that cut's a man's heart from its moorings like coming home same as a homing pigeon, and then wishing yourself back again ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... their time to go; As long as cattle shall roam at will The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill; As long as sheep shall look from the side Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide, And Parker River, and salt-sea tide; As long as a wandering pigeon shall search The fields below from his white-oak perch, When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn, And the dry husks fall from the standing corn; As long as Nature shall not grow old, Nor drop her work from her doting hold, And her care for the Indian corn forget, And the yellow rows ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... their drugs is in some sort mysterious and divine; the left foot of a tortoise, the urine of a lizard, the dung of an elephant, the liver of a mole, blood drawn from under the right wing of a white pigeon; and for us who have the stone (so scornfully they use us in our miseries) the excrement of rats beaten to powder, and such like trash and fooleries which rather carry a face of magical enchantment than of any solid science. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... rapidly increasing difficulty found in producing by ever such careful selection, any further extreme in some charge already carried very far (such as the tail of the "fan-tailed pigeon" or the crop of the "pouter"), is certainly, so far as it goes, on the side of the {117} existence of definite limits to variability. It is asserted in reply, that physiological conditions of health and life may bar any such further development. Thus, Mr. ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... the breast. The sound of her screaming, which was to him like a girl crying, moved him strangely. He jumped from his saddle, ran to the entangled birds and cuffed the two hawks off; but seeing that they came on again, hunger-bold no doubt, he strangled them and freed the white pigeon. He took her up in his hands to look at her; she was too far gone for fear; she bled freely, but he judged she would recover. So she did, after he had washed out the wound; sufficiently at least to hop and flutter into covert. Prosper took to ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... under the large archway leading into the yard of the Green Dragon. He was not fond of solitary contemplation, but he had only just come out of the house, and any human figure standing at ease under the archway in the early afternoon was as certain to attract companionship as a pigeon which has found something worth peeking at. In this case there was no material object to feed upon, but the eye of reason saw a probability of mental sustenance in the shape of gossip. Mr. Hopkins, the meek-mannered draper opposite, was the first to act on ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Bird nodded. She was not looking at them. In the firelight her eyes were glowing pools. Her body had grown a little tense. Without asking Jolly Roger's permission she placed the tress of Nada's hair in her bosom. "Oo-Mee, the Pigeon," she said again, looking far away. "That is her name, because the Pigeon flies fast and straight and true. Over forests and lakes and worlds the Pigeon flies. It is tireless. It is swift. It ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... Paris during the siege was probably mental, suffering from the want of news; but by the middle of November the balloon and pigeon postal service was organized. Balloons were manufactured in Paris, and sent out whenever the wind was favorable. It was found necessary, however, to send them off by night, lest they should be fired into by the Germans. A balloon generally carried ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... made in words. Reaching into a pigeon-hole of her desk she took from it a folded letter minus its envelope and handed it ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... promises I have made the people? I have been trapped just as all the others you and I have dealt with have been trapped. I see it all now. Trapped, trapped until now it is too late for me even to save my reputation. To think I should have been fool enough to allow myself to be made a stool-pigeon for 'Standard Oil,' and all because I ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... mention should have also been made of the natural nitre beds, as well as of the artificial beds built up from slow experience. Reference is made that in France nitre was won from the lime and rubbish of old, ruinous buildings, and from the floors of stables and pigeon houses, while it is also recorded that during the ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... a single pigeon that time," Peace broke in hotly. "I was only thinking about those hateful gods folks used to b'lieve in, and wondering why the School Board makes us study about them when they were just clear fakes—every one of 'em—'nstead ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the gun, and the fate of the pigeon, brought the personages of our little drama with hurrying steps to the edge of the river. One scream of surprise and distress proceeded from the lips of its fair young mistress, after which she wrung her hands, and wept and sobbed like ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the turtle-dove, the swallow, the horned owl, the buzzard, the pigeon, the falcon, the ring-dove, the cuckoo, the red-foot, the red-cap, the purple-cap, the kestrel, the diver, the ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... made money by dice-playing or any games of hazard, by betting on pigeon matches and similar objectionable practices, were not only incapable of becoming members of a tribunal, but were not permitted to give evidence. The Ghemara regards a man who gains money by the amusements named, ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... and, having laid it bare, confidently classifies every phase of its mentality. It has the spring of every emotion carefully pigeon-holed; it puts a mental finger upon every passion; it maps out the soul into tabulated territories of feeling; and probes to ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... flying dove of Archytas of Tarentum is the earliest suggestion of true aerostation. According to Aulus Genius (Noctes Atticae) it was a "model of a dove or pigeon formed in wood and so contrived as by a certain mechanical art and power to fly: so nicely was it balanced by weights and put in motion by hidden and enclosed air.'' This "hidden and enclosed air'' may ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a considerable sum of money. The police were notified, and a week later he was found in a house of the type—so euphemistically called—of "ill fame." There he was spending the money lavishly on the inmates and was indulging his every desire. One of the women, a police stool-pigeon, identified him as the boy who was wanted by the law, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... man's gaze. It was open. Papers lay scattered everywhere and its contents had been rifled and flung on the floor. Some one, in a desperate hurry, had searched every pigeon-hole. ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... pigeon-house, But scarcely for a chamber large enough To hold such rose-perfume as yonder vases Exhale, and yet not fill ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... any "fancy stunts," such as Bland had done. He merely climbed to where he dared circle, then circled deliberately, carefully. When he came about so that the sun was warming his right shoulder, he flew straight for the Rolling R ranch, like a homing pigeon ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... to the dance with abandon. The music took possession of her and she swayed and rocked to its beat and cut pigeon wings with Colonel Crutcher, much to the delight of that veteran. She smiled at Miss Ann and Miss Ann smiled at her as Pete Barnes called, "Ladies change." They squeezed hands as they passed and Judith whispered, "Isn't it lovely?" and Miss Ann ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson |
