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More "Hornet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sides of the river. The boatmen in their sheepskin coats and hats walked slowly to and fro, and gave animation to the picture. While I wrote my journal the horses above me danced as though frolicking over a hornet's nest, and reduced sentimental thoughts to a minimum. To render the subject more interesting two officers and the priest grew noisy over a triple game of cards and a bottle of vodki. I wrote in my overcoat, as the thermometer ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... were burning, a few rods on our right. The fire at last reached a lot of shells, which had been thrown from the wagons, to keep them from falling into the hands of the Yankees. They went off with a frightful clatter. The captain bounced from the ground as if a hornet had lifted him. "FALL IN!" he shouted, grasping his sword. Of course, all who were awake comprehended the situation, and prudently lay still, to avoid the flying fragments. As the truth dawned upon him, the captain at first looked "sold" and disgusted, and then joined ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... I kill this youth, and so have a blood-feud with Gospatrick, I have a hornet's nest about my ears. Not only he and his sons,—who are masters of Scotch Northumberland, [Footnote: Between Tweed and Forth.]— but all his cousins; King Malcolm, and Donaldbain, and, for aught I know, Harold and the Godwinssons, if he bid them ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... simply; "but I'll get myself into a hornet's nest. These young people don't like to be told what's good for them," he added with a laugh, rising from his seat. "And after that you'll permit me to slip away without telling anybody, won't you? My last minute has come," and he glanced at ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the school with their canes, shouting "S-s-s-s-i-lenc-c-c-c-e" at the top of their voices. However, the chief offenders for the time were flogged and kept in bounds; but the victorious party had brought a nice hornet's nest about their ears. The landlord was hissed at the School-gates as he rode past, and when he charged his horse at the mob of boys, and tried to thrash them with his whip, was driven back by cricket-bats and wickets, and pursued ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... which has more hidden or treacherous depths and cross-currents. For when you interfere with the private member, you suddenly come in collision with a vast number of personal vanities, and when you touch anything in the shape of personal vanity in politics you have got into a hornet's nest, the multitudinousness, the pettiness, the malignity, the unexpectedness of which you can never appreciate. I sometimes gaze upon the House of Commons in a certain semi-detached spirit, and I ask myself if there be any place in the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... caused by the Roosevelt dinner. The dinner itself passed off quietly, pleasantly, and without particular event. It was not until he took up the papers at his little hotel in New York the next morning that he found that he had again stirred up a hornet's nest similar to that of four years before. The denunciation was if anything more violent; for, as many of his assailants said, he should have profited by the protests of four years before. In an editorial entitled, "Booker Washington's ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... in Silver Street—the regiments was out, They called us "Delhi Rebels", an' we answered "Threes about!" That drew them like a hornet's nest—we met them good an' large, The English at the double an' the Irish at ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... actions of national vessels, and the raids of the privateers. The first gave to the United States the most brilliant successes of the war. When it began two small squadrons were getting ready for sea at New York; the frigate "President" (44) and sloop "Hornet" (18), under Commodore John Rodgers, who had also the general command; and the frigates "United States" (44) and "Congress" (38), with the brig "Argus" (16) to which two guns were afterwards added, under Captain Stephen Decatur. Rodgers would have preferred to keep his command ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fascination there is about that old fort at Annapolis!—"the hornet's nest", as it was called in the olden time; the stronghold which withstood so many sieges, and was the subject of constant contentions in ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... a radiant morning in June, and they are in the dining-room; the balcony door is open wide, and a large hornet buzzes loudly in the vine. Louise is still at the piano; she is singing this time, and trying to reach the low tones of a dramatic romance where a Corsican child is urged on ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... therefore can only say that I am laying close siege; that my lines of circumvallation do not proceed quite so rapidly as my desires; but that I have just blown up the main bastion; or, in other words, have prevailed on Sir Arthur to send this hornet, this Frank Henley, back to England. The fellow's aspiring insolence is not to be endured. His merit is said to be uncommon. 'Tis certain he strains after the sublime; and in fact is too deep a thinker, nay I suspect too deep a plotter, not to be ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... execute it, it turned out that the estate on which he had a lien was a joint family possession, with the shares so inextricably mixed up that he could neither trace the property mortgaged to him nor discover who was liable for the proportion of profit derived from it. As well poke one's fingers into a hornet's nest as into a joint family estate! Sham Babu was glad to accept an offer of Rs. 5,000 from Gopal's co-sharers, in return for a surrender of his claims. Despite his heavy loss, enough remained to preserve him from penury; and he was even able to start Susil in a small way of ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... quietly, as we did when we were boys? I expect I had a rather comfortable time of it then, though I did get whipped for tearing my clothes, and killing flies, which I used to do worse than any bald hornet. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... worm. 'You're wrong, Mrs. Barrett,' he says, lookin' like th' meek puppy he is, 'an' you'll have t' look some place else for th' person that done it.' But she wouldn't talk no longer—jus' walked out, as mad as a hornet." ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... a hornet, his eyes were as red as a burning fire and he rode on a tall horse six spans across and more than 20 long with six giants tied up to his saddle-bow and one in his hand which he gnawed with his teeth. And behind him came boars with tusks sticking out of ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... old Brax had been mad as a hornet. He was not much of a drillmaster or tactician, but he thought he was, and it delighted him to put his battalion through the form of review, the commands for which he had memorized thoroughly and delivered with resonant voice and with all proper ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... soft mud on the hand," returned Dick. "There is nothing better to draw out the pain of a hornet's sting." ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... thought of a flash of lightning, a steel hoop lying on its side, a hornet's nest—but none of these quite suited him. He ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... would have made the Baptists happy with a half an acre, long since, and so, in his belief, scotched a hornet's nest. But he had never breathed any suggestion of the ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... plate, red in the face, mad as a hornet, and he sidestepped every time Rube pitched a ball. He never even ticked one and retired in disgust, limping and swearing. Ashwell was next. He did not show much alacrity. On Rube's first pitch down went Ashwell flat in the dust. The ball whipped the ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... but, like the others, he is a species of incapable; and the word dandin in the old French dictionaries is given as signifying inaptness or incapacity. [10] The oyster and lawyer story is also treated in Fable XXI., Book I. (The Hornet and the Bees). ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... "Of course you are perfectly right, Miss Farrell," said he, with a little bow. "I'm sorry that circumstances ... But come! She'll have this hornet's nest about our ears in a brace of seconds. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... grateful sense of the King's liberality: but it is enough to have been chargeable to you when in France. I have never done you any service, though I made an offer of myself. But it would not be proper that I should now live like a hornet on the goods of other men. I shall never forget, however, the kindness of so great a King, and the good offices of so ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... King thy brother fool?' Then little Dagonet clapt his hands and shrilled, 'Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools! Conceits himself as God that he can make Figs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milk From burning spurge, honey from hornet-combs, And men from beasts—Long live the ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... at golf. The infinite details of a great business crowded upon him. Inexperienced, he had not learned the ways in which seasoned "executives" protect themselves against useless intrusion. His telephone buzzed like a hornet. Not five minutes went by without callers or interruptions of ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... continuous firing on both sides of the line. At about 6 o'clock the firing ceased, and the rebels withdrew to a safe distance from the landing. The casualties of the day were three killed and six wounded, two of the latter dying shortly afterward. The fight at what was known as the "hornet's nest" was most terrific, and had not the First battery held out so heroically and valiantly the rebels would have succeeded in forcing a retreat of the Union lines to a point dangerously near the Tennessee river. Capt. Munch's horse received ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... neighbors or cuss them about their opinions. I've heard more politics in a country store in Horsford in a day than I've heard here in Eupolia in a year—and we've got ten thousand people here, too. I moved here last year, and am doing well. I wouldn't go back and live in that d—d hornet's nest that I felt so bad about leaving—not for the whole State, with a slice of the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... exchanged shots with them. All were Boxers in this new uniform; but although we tried to entice them on and corner them in houses, they were too cunning for us, and broke back each time. In the end we had so stirred up this hornet's nest that the scattered firing became more and more persistent, and stern orders came for us to ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... however, is one case, where, owing to the lucky accident of an examination given in detail, one can observe in one nest, every variety of the species and of its appetites, the dozen or fifteen types of the Jacobin hornet, each abstracting what suits him from whatever he lights on, each indulging in his favorite sort of rapine.—At Nantes, "Pinard, the great purveyor of the Committee,[33142] orders everything that each member needs for his daily use to be carried to his house."—"Gallou ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and chilly. We wore our greatcoats most of the afternoon, and looked for bits of sunlight to get warm. About two o'clock the heavy guns gave us a regular "black-smithing". Every time we fired we drew a perfect hornet's nest about our heads. While attending to a casualty, a shell broke through both sides of the trench, front and back, about twelve feet away. The zigzag of the trench was between it and us, and we escaped. From my bunk the moon looks down ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... last chance: so he pounced down upon Charlie's candy; and being cross, and not knowing Flyaway from any other little girl, he stung her on the thumb. Then how she cried, "'Orny 'ting me! 'Orny 'ting me!" for she had been treated just so before by a hornet. "O my ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... in ancient sages, Have been like cobwebs in all ages: Cobwebs for little flies are spread, And laws for little folks are made; But if an insect of renown, Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone, Be caught in quest of sport or plunder, The flimsy fetter flies in sunder. Your simile perhaps may please one With whom wit holds the place of reason: 10 But can you prove that this in fact is Agreeable to life and practice? Then hear, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... another expedition, as she needed fitting up. Yet Captain Barry was not permitted to be idle. On May 8th, Robert Morris, for the Marine Committee of Congress, directed him to go down the Delaware River in the sloop "Hornet," commanded by Captain Hallock, and to take the officers and men of the "Lexington" to supply the Provincial armed ship, commanded by Captain Read, the Floating Battery and the "Reprisal," under Captain Wickes, with men sufficient to have these vessels "fit for immediate action," and ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... danger, furnishes a somewhat greater mental stimulation, and thence is better for everybody. I regret to say that I am gaining in weight. It was my hope to come back thin and gaunt and interesting-looking. Instead of which, you will likely be mad as a hornet to find me so sleek, while you at home have done all the thinning down. Truth to tell, if you compare our relative peace and war status, you are much more at war ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans!— For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,— ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... mountains grind and crash to pieces, and the thunder of Thor's chariot wheels rushing through the heavens. A frenzied horror seized upon Loki's mind. If these wretched dwarfs were going to make anything to add to Thor's strength he knew that it would be his own ruin. So, changing himself to a hornet, he sprang upon the forehead of Brok, and dug so fiercely into his eyelids that the blood trickled down and blinded him. Then the dwarf let go of the bellows for one moment to clear his eyes, and ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... disgusting as they could desire. And in many cases they succeed in inflicting a good deal of pain. A very low, vulgar, petty, and uncultivated nature may cause much suffering to a lofty, noble, and refined one,—particularly if the latter be in a position of dependence or subjection. A wretched hornet may madden a noble horse; a contemptible mosquito may destroy the night's rest which would have recruited a noble brain. But without any evil intention, sometimes with the very kindest intention, there are those who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... evening of the 31st our right wing seemed to have run against a hornet's nest, and we could hear the musketry and cannon speak out real spiteful, but nothing came down our way. We had struck the railroad leading south from Atlanta to Macon, and began tearing it up. The jollity at Atlanta was stopped right in the middle by the appalling news that the Yankees hadn't ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... comparatively small permanent effects which it produces upon the joints in the way of crippling, or even stiffening. To gaze upon a rheumatic knee-joint, for instance, in the height of the attack,—swollen to the size of a hornet's nest, hot, red, throbbing with agony, and looking as if it were on the point of bursting,—one would almost despair of saving the joint, and the best one would feel entitled to expect would be a roughening of its surfaces ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... asthma tore them down, too, and burned them slowly and stooped over the smoldering mass and inhaled the fumes and the smoke which arose, because the country wiseacres preached that no boughten stuff out of a drug store gave such relief from asthma as this hornet's-nest treatment. But it remained for this man to find a third use for such a thing. He brought it into the office of Gafford's wagon yard, where some other men were sitting about the fire, and he held it up before them and ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... scarcely had I laid me down, When comes a voice: "Is that you, Joe? I'm calling you from Williamstown! Knock once for 'yes,' and twice for 'no.'" Then, hornet-mad, I knocked back two— The table shook, I banged it so— "Not Joe!" they ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... brought a hornet's nest about his ears. Kenny swung to his feet in smoldering fury. He expressed his opinion of Whitaker, editors, Brian and sons. The sum of them merged into an unchristian melee of officiousness and black ingratitude. He recounted ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans! For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks Part and parcel of her joy. ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... jury? He did discharge the jury, and then, gentlemen, we had another surprise! No sooner had those jurymen left the box than in marched Burr once again, and said he regretted that the jury had been discharged, and asked the reason. Daviess buzzed up, like a mad hornet, and explained that one of his principal witnesses, Davis Floyd, was in Indiana attending a territorial legislature. Everybody burst out laughing, and the judge had to call the court to order. You ought ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... conflux of two such antipodes. McGuire was five feet one, with a countenance belonging to either Yokohama or Dublin. Bright-beady of eye, bony of cheek and jaw, scarred, toughened, broken and reknit, indestructible, grisly, gladiatorial as a hornet, he was a type neither new nor unfamiliar. Raidler was the product of a different soil. Six feet two in height, miles broad, and no deeper than a crystal brook, he represented the union of the West and South. Few accurate pictures ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... he was going to say. Instead he jumped back as though he had been stung by a hornet, and let ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... drive for luck at what I could see. It was a fool thing to do, of course, but I just happened to feel careless and confident. There was a snort and a crash, and old Whitehead loomed up madder than a hornet. I had shot him in the haunch and he felt insulted. He made a rush at me, and I skipped aside and jumped for a small tree standing on the brink of a little ravine. My rifle dropped into the ravine, and I went up the tree like a monkey up a pole, and by the time ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... Pailon, in Esmeraldos, Ecuador, i.e. on the Pacific Coast, and also up more than one of the rivers, he has heard a similar sound, attributed by the natives to a fish which they call 'The Siren,' or 'Musico.' At first, he says, he thought it was produced by a fly, or hornet of extraordinary size; but afterwards, having advanced a little farther, he heard a multitude of different voices, which harmonised together, imitating a church organ to great perfection. The good people of Trinidad believe that the fish which makes this noise is the trumpet-fish, or ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... have noticed any signaling, and if she did she certainly ignored it. Perhaps she believed that her hornet's nest of women could stand off any invasion or interference from without. At any rate, she went on unfolding her instructions to destiny with ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... an' her face, which is stern an' heroic, carries a capac'ty for trouble lurkin' 'round in it, same as one of them bald hornet's nests on a beech limb. Nacherally my grandfather's gaze gets riveted on this lady a whole lot, his pipe hangin' forgetful from his lips. The lady's eyes all at once comes down on my grandfather, partic'lar an' personal, like a ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 2 stod utanfr p vakt. Han vaktade med allvar, gav ock p mjdet akt. En sed den gamle hade: han jmt i botten drack, och intet ord han sade, blott hornet in han stack. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... times when he could have taken the neck of the Prince between his strong fingers and choked out his worthless life. These attacks of envy were short-lived—he could not ascribe them to the reading of the little hornet-like anarchist sheet, Pere Peinard, which the other waiters lent him; rather was it an excess of bile provoked by the coveted beauty ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... curious representation of an insect with a pointed beak-like structure and a spine at the posterior extremity of its human-like body. It is engaged in apparent conflict with a man and may represent a hornet. ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... had taken place. Perchance if he had stopped as he was minded, the tragedy might have been averted. Nobody seemed to know just how it came about. The thing was most unfortunate politically. King would stir up a hornet's nest of public opinion. Broderick reached his lodgings and at once retired. His sleep was fitful. He dreamed that Alice Windham and Sheriff Scannell were fighting ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... John, Master of the Temple of God, 10 Falling to sin the Unknown Sin, What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod, He sold it to Sultan Saladin: Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there, Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive, And clipt of his wings in Paris square, They bring him now to be burned alive. [And wanteth there grace of lute or clavicithern, ye shall say to confirm him who singeth— We bring John ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... a Fat man of his little clam-bake, and it would be full as pleasant as settin' down onto a Hornet's nest, when the Hornet family were all ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... I will give you the whole Gulf of Mexico if it isn't a big thing," replied Dave with his most expansive smile. "You done get into a hornet's nest, Captain Passford." ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Thomas. As if a man what's been stung by a wasp would care to sit himself down on a hornet's nest. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... as a hornet ef I don't get any of ye," he remarked, sadly. "She's paid Sam Cotting fer this courtin' suit, an' he won't take back the gloves on no 'count arter they've been wore; an' thet'll set ma crazy. Miss Patsy, ef yo' ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... the bee and the ant taught man wisdom from the first? I was highly edified the past summer by observing the ways and doings of a colony of black hornets that established themselves under one of the projecting gables of my house. This hornet has the reputation of being a very ugly customer, but I found it no trouble to live on the most friendly terms with her. She was as little disposed to quarrel as I was. She is indeed the eagle among ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... horseback, and left their horses in the bushes and crowded the streets and filled the saloon of one Jack Woods—who had the cackling laugh of Satan and did not like the Guard, for good reasons, and whose particular pleasure was to persuade some customer to stir up a hornet's nest of trouble. From the saloon the crowd moved up towards the big spring at the foot of Imboden Hill, where, under beautiful trunk-mottled beeches, was built the ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... Captain Vanderbilt soon found that he had put his head into a hornet's nest. The State of New York had granted to Fulton and Livingston the exclusive right of running steamboats in New York waters. Thomas Gibbons, believing the grant unconstitutional, as it was afterwards declared by ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... am acquainted; and as his great work partially covers the same period to which Taine has recently devoted himself, I ventured to mention his name in this connection. But I might as well have stirred up a hornet's nest. "Von Sybel," said Taine, "wrote his book to prove that Prussia was perfectly right in taking part in the partition of Poland, and some other things of like nature." He seemed to think this assertion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... swirling bombs toward the enemy. The scythe-blades dripped as they cut swaths through massed rows of human flesh. But from far down the street a swarm of red sparks came rushing at the bombs like hornets. They swirled about them, humming angrily. And then the bombs and the hornet-sparks were gone. ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... the arrangements for the purchase of the sheep-ranch, and that he intended to go and take possession of it in a few days. Meantime, he appeared to be considerably shot up over June. In spite of Mrs. Reed's frowns, he hung around her like a hornet after a ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... and as the wasps and hornets claimed to be their cousins Wakonda was good-natured enough to give them the same sort of weapons. Some people, especially boys, think this was a, great mistake, and would be very glad if Wakonda had refused to give stings to the yellow wasp and the black hornet." ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... Buol stirred up a hornet's nest of indignation. The people of England and France became incensed as they saw that Austria showed no inclination to fight. Prussia flatly refused to assist Austria in any warlike undertaking. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... an' ut would be betther not to slip your boots. How do I know that? By the light av pure reason. Here are three companies av us ever so far inside av the enemy's flank an' a crowd av roarin', tarin', squealin' cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole hornet's nest av them. Av course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like as not, an' thin we'll have to run for ut. Mark my words. I am av the opinion av Polonius whin he said, "Don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... they lodge, and make him legion. Of brethren he's a false accuser; A slanderer, traitor, and seducer; A fawning, base, trepanning liar; The marks peculiar of his sire. Or, grant him but a drone at best; A drone can raise a hornet's nest. The Dean had felt their stings before; And must their malice ne'er give o'er? Still swarm and buzz about his nose? But Ireland's friends ne'er wanted foes. A patriot is a dangerous post, When wanted by his country most; Perversely comes in evil times, Where virtues are imputed crimes. His ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... sole-leather trunk, the whole cut of his jib told you at once that he was a regular man-of-war's man—one of a class whose faults I can hardly recall while remembering their sense of duty, their utter disregard of danger, and the reliance with which you can lead them on to attack anything, from a hornet's ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... thought that I had finished, and was only too glad that I had laid this question to sleep, and was reflecting how fortunate I was in your acceptance of what I then said, you ask me to begin again at the very foundation, ignorant of what a hornet's nest of words you are stirring. Now I foresaw this ...
— The Republic • Plato
... he; I will not hear it. As for Pamela, she has a lucky knack of falling into fits, when she pleases. But the cursed yellings of you both made me not myself. I intended no harm to her, as I told you both, if you'd have left your squallings: And I did no harm neither, but to myself; for I raised a hornet's nest about my ears, that, as far as I know, may have stung to death my reputation. Sir, said Mrs. Jervis, then I beg Mr. Longman may take my accounts, and I will go away as soon as I can. As for Pamela, she is at her liberty, I hope, to go ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... she write the letter 'stead er gittin' that husband er hern ter write fer her? I'd 'nough rather she'd told Mis' Brimblecom she wuz comin', 'stead er leavin' me ter tell her. She'll be mad's a hornet, an' I vaow I ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... headstrong creation of an anomalous social position, that Gwen could not decide, nominally omnipotent as she was in her parents' absence, on telling the servants to serve her dinner in the room Mrs. Picture occupied. Had it not been for her suspicion of a hornet's nest at hand, she might have dared to ordain that Mrs. Picture should be her sole guest in her own section of the Towers, or at least that she herself should become the table-guest of the old lady in Francis Quarles; "might ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... noise! Gholson, hold the horses. Come. Lieutenant, come Smith, maybe he's killed himself, but it seems too good to be true. Here, girl, go cram what you can get into a pillow-case, and mount behind my saddle again; be quick, we're going to burn this hornet's nest too." Harry and I had already run to the old man's room, and, sure enough, there lay the aged assassin hideous in his fallen bulk, with his own bullet in ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... recalled to the House by his agitated colleague, recognised that his old Parliamentary hand had got into a hornet's nest, and promptly withdrew it. To the best of my recollection this is the first time on record that a Government measure has perished before its first reading. Conceived in secrecy and delivered in pain, its epitaph will be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... The Arabs, however, stood their ground, and, firing their rifles wildly in all directions, killed and wounded a good many horses and men, so that the squadrons were content to bring up their right still more, and finally to ride out of the hornet swarm, into which they had plunged, towards Surgham Hill. The pursuit was then suspended, and the Egyptian cavalry joined the rest of the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... circular. The circular was tended by a powerful, sombre-visaged old mill-hand called 'Lije Vandine, whose office it was to trim square the ragged ends of the "stuff" before it went down the slide. At the very back of the table hummed the saw, like a great hornet; and whenever Vandine got two or three deals in place before him he would grasp a lever above his head, and forward through its narrow slit in the table would dart the little saw, and scream its way in a second through the tough white spruce. Every time ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the plea that the American frigates were almost ships of the line in disguise, and that their superior size and armament carried an unfair advantage. The same plea could not be offered in explanation of the victories won by American sloops, in the case of the American Hornet and British Peacock, of about equal strength, while the American Wasp was considerably inferior in guns and weight of metal to the British Frolic. Master-Commandant James Lawrence, of the Hornet, captured the Peacock in eleven minutes from the beginning of the action, the American guns ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... provided her with a tall lank mule, "By Gosh," to ride, and she had never been aboard an animal before. Every time By Gosh flopped an ear she thought he was trying to slap her in the face. On a steep part of the trail a hornet stung the mule, and he began to ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... Gabriel mentally thought of the high-coloured young lady in the bar. His conscience was not at ease regarding his admiration for her; and he dreaded lest the officious Cargrim should talk about her to the bishop. Altogether the chaplain, like a hornet, had annoyed both Dr Pendle and his son; and the bishop in London and Gabriel in Beorminster were anything but well disposed towards this clerical busybody, who minded everyone's business instead of his own. It is such people who stir up muddy ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... chair in the middle. I am then insulated, and, though myriads of fleas jump on the paper, the powder stupefies them, and they are easily killed. I have been obliged to rest here at any rate, because I have been stung on my left hand both by a hornet and a gadfly, and it is badly inflamed. In some places the hornets are in hundreds, and make the horses wild. I am also suffering from inflammation produced by the bites of "horse ants," which attack ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... drank so much that our senses clean forsook us. As to my indiscreet speech touching your majesty, neither disrespect nor disloyalty were intended by it. I was goaded to the rejoinder by the sharp sting of this hornet." ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... common salt in as little water as possible, which he gave to the young man, and, after several swallows of the potion, the symptoms disappeared as if by enchantment. There is a recent account from Bridgeport, Conn., of a woman who, while eating a pear, swallowed a hornet that had alighted on the fruit. In going down the throat the insect stung her on the tonsil. Great pain and inflammation followed, and in a short time there was complete deprivation ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... reckoning with, gave him no concern. No men in the mountains understood better or were more expert in the technicalities of the law of self-defense than the gunmen of Calabasas. The killing of de Spain they well knew would, in spite of everything, raise a hornet's nest in Sleepy Cat, and they wished to be prepared for it. Their manoeuvring on this score caused no disquiet to their slender, compactly built victim. "You'll wait a long time, if you wait for service here, Morgan," he said, commenting with composure on Morgan's impatience. ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... my study, with the windows open, the occasional incident of the visit of some winged creature,—wasp, hornet, or bee,—entering out of the warm, sunny atmosphere, soaring round the room with large sweeps, then buzzing against the glass, as not satisfied with the place, and desirous of getting out. Finally, the joyous uprising curve with which, coming to the open part of the window, it emerges ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... big sody water bottle on wheels, and it busted and squirted sody water all over me. Wall one of them fire fellers, lookin' jist like I'd seen them in picters in Ezra Hoskin's insurance papers, he cum up to me madder'n a hornet, and he sed "what are you tryin' to do with that box?" So I told him I'd jist writ a letter home, and I wuz a tryin' to mail it. He sed "why you durned old green horn, you've called out the hull fire department ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... dirty business down there—once we start," he said. "Business for men; and you're a better man than most of us, girl; but you surely didn't reckon that Cal and me would let you go careening down in gunshot of that hornet's nest." ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... learn how to be patient when what you want to do is to chew somebody up and spit him into the gutter. You learn to control your temper when it is on the high speed, with the throttle jerked wide open and buzzing like a hornet convention. You learn, by having it told you, just how small and foolish and insignificant you are, and how well this earth could stagger along without you if some one were to take a fly-killer and mash you with it. And you learn all this at the time of life when your head is swelling ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... curtains; and I have already mentioned that the Malays light fires under their houses to smoke them away. Last night a malignant and hideous insect, above an inch long, of the bug species, appeared. The bite of this is as severe as the sting of a hornet. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... cool to drink is what you want," said Charteris, half helping, half pulling him off his horse. "Lie down here and take this. I give you fair warning, Master Gerrard, you ain't going to die on my hands and leave me to settle with this hornet's nest you have stirred up ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... no less drily, "but hornet's nests are exactly what I happen to like. Before, however, I begin to stir up this particular one I propose to travel for a few years, with the especial object of finding out what nations now existing are the best, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the idea of barging in on the main office of the company but I figured that might be too much like poking my head into a hornet's nest. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... general is no fool. He saw his danger, and, like a wise man, he dodged it. Gatacre's generalship was simply superb. Let the idiotic band of critics who sit in safety in England howl to their heart's content; Gatacre deserves well of his country. Had he dashed recklessly into this hornet's nest he would have sacrificed four-fifths of his gallant officers and a host of his men. Had I to write his military epitaph to-day I should say that "he won with brains what most generals would ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... aviary were all the birds of creation, divided into classes, from the humming-bird, the size of a hornet, to the ostrich. This was, to tell the truth, the part that interested Mother Etienne most of all. She was more used to creatures of this kind, they reminded her of her beloved poultry-yard. In spite of the signs put up ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... Found the people in confusion, Heard of all the misdemeanors, All the malice and the mischief, 5 Of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis. Hard his breath came through his nostrils, Through his teeth he buzzed and muttered Words of anger and resentment, Hot and humming like a hornet. 10 "I will slay this Pau-Puk-Keewis, Slay this mischief-maker!" said he. "Not so long and wide the world is, Not so rude and rough the way is, That my wrath shall not attain him, 15 That my vengeance shall not reach him!" Then in swift pursuit departed Hiawatha ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... image!—It planted a thorn in a till then insensible heart, and sent a new kind of a knight-errant into the world. But even this was nothing to the catastrophe, and the circumstance on which it hung, the hornet settling on the sleeping lover's face. What a heart-rending accident! She planted, in imitation of those susceptible souls, a rose bush; but there was not a lover to weep in concert with her, when she watered it ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... tormentin' critter!" exclaimed Walter, mopping his brow as he stood at the little gate of Mrs. Elmer's yard, returning thither, after his fruitless searching, in the hope of finding his brother among the familiar faces. "Mad ez a hornet, I'll be bound, an' lef' me in the lurch. Beat arter ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... hornet, who is said to leave his sting in the wound, and afterwards to languish away, Pope felt so greatly exhausted by the efforts connected with the Dunciad, (which are far greater, in fact, than all his Homeric labors put together,) that he prepared his ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... family at home, and screened by the profound ignorance of Congress concerning men and affairs abroad, Lee was able for a long time to run his mischievous career without discovery or interruption. He buzzed about Europe like an angry hornet, thrusting his venomous sting into every respectable and useful servant of his country, and irritating exceedingly the foreigners whom it was of the first importance to conciliate. Incredible as it seems, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... 1827, thirty-two sail of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Russians, attacked and vanquished in the Levant an Ottoman fleet of three ships-of-the line, twenty-five frigates, and a swarm of fire ships and hornet craft. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... his putting a hornet in a sluttish maid's shoe, which was credible, if scarcely meriting that elfish laughter which made his auditor shrink, but when he told of dancing over the mud banks with a lantern, like a Will-of-the-wisp, till he lured boats to get stranded, or horsemen to get stuck, in the hopeless mud, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... although the outlaws had continued to gain in numbers, their natural increase was not proportionate to the growing power of their adversaries. Little by little the Doomsmen began to lose ground; already they had been defeated several times in pitched battle, and it looked as though the hornet's-nest would soon be ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... give out," agreed Martin. "Lyman Mertzheimer will feel those hornet stings for a few days. While I've always been taught not to rejoice at the misfortunes of others I'm not sorry I saw him. I'll call our account square now. You pitied him, didn't you?" he asked Amanda suddenly. "I saw it in your eyes. So ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... to say "I told you so."] Streak of poor judgment! Do you remember the day you rode Billy at a six-foot stone wall, and he stopped and you didn't, and there was a hornet's nest [MATTHEW rises.] on the other side, and I remember you were hot just because I said you showed poor judgment? [She laughs at the memory. A general movement of disapproval. She remembers the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... its allies (except in another species from Java)—the expanded wings, the white band on them, and the oval scale-like elytra.[109] Another remarkable case has been noted by Mr. Neville Goodman, in Egypt, where a common hornet (Vespa orientalis) is exactly imitated in colour, size, shape, attitude when at rest, and mode of flight, by a beetle of ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... hard as they could. Donald ran up and down Wishbone Valley, calling upon them to stop, and declaring that if turkey should ever be put upon the table again he would eat nothing but the stuffing. When Donald found that the wishbones were sticking into his neck like so many hornet stings, he made up his mind that he would run for the house. Finally the wishbone tattoo stopped, and when he looked around, the gobbler, who was twenty feet away, said: "When a Thanksgiving turkey dies, his ghost comes down here to Wishbone Valley to join his ancestors, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... It is getting dusk and mosquitoes are coming out by hundreds, they have not annoyed me before, but I think I must use my net to-night. I lie on my bed after dinner smoking with a lighted candle by my side. A hornet flies in and settles on my hand, then a large beetle comes with a buzz and a thud against me, making me start. Sundry moths, small flies, and beetles, are playing innocently round the flame. In half an hour I shall be able to make a fair entomological ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... are kings, Queens, bishops, knights, rooks, pawns; the World's a game; Save that the puppets pull at their own strings, Methinks gay Punch hath something of the same. My Muse, the butterfly hath but her wings, Not stings, and flits through ether without aim, Alighting rarely:—were she but a hornet, Perhaps there might be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... I-told-you-so air, but softly, for many of his comrades were wounded, though he was not, as usual, for all his seven feet of perpendicular target. But "the Doc," of Benton, was, of course. Getting wounded was the greatest trouble with Doc. If he attacked a hornet's nest, he would contrive some way to get a leg shot off. But with him such things had become to be a matter of course, so now he crated himself together enough to move around and attend to the others. Driscoll was most innumerably barked, with a perforated ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... have been back to San Antonio yesterday," he exclaimed. "But I was delayed in Denison. I suppose Perry Watson will be as mad as a hornet when I get back because I didn't make it as quick as he expected. He expects an awful lot from ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... that he might not hear her sobs, if he could have perceived how Thyone's wrinkled old face contracted as if she were swallowing a colocynth apple, while at the same time she patted his strong shoulder briskly, exclaiming with forced cheerfulness: "Go on, my boy! The steed rears when the hornet stings! Try again, if it only soothes you! We will take everything out of your way. You need not mind the water-jars. The potter will make ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... still for a moment, and a mocking laugh was heard from among the clouds, for it was a little hornet that had asked to go out and meet the power of the ruler of ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... there procured, and we barricaded Cowgill House so as to make it at once a decoy and a hornet's nest. I despise war and men of war so much that I have somewhat studied their campaigns, and I suggested, friend Clayton, that the stairway was a good tactical defensive position—is that the vain term?—to send a volley out the main door, and a flank fire on every door ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... you met in the woods east of the big river, and whom you tried to persuade to line a yellow hornet to his nest: as if my eye was not too true to mistake any other animal for a honey-bee, in a clear day! We tarried together a week, as you may remember; you at your toads and lizards, and I at my high-holes and hollow trees: and a ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... now only seven sea miles distant from the Dean Tail Buoy. Within ten minutes of the receipt of the wireless she was on the spot—one of the very first of a regular hornet flotilla bent upon adding yet another of Von ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... they can never do any thing but good. But you and I are now at that time of life when our call to another state of being cannot be distant, and may be near. Besides, your government is in the habit of seizing papers without notice. These letters might thus get into hands, which, like the hornet which extracts poison from the same flower that yields honey to the bee, might make them the ground of blowing up a flame between our two countries, and make our friendship and confidence in each other effect exactly the reverse of what we are aiming at. Being yourself thoroughly possessed of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Baby, is easily puzzled," smiled Raymonde serenely. "It's meant to wear fluffy curls, and not to engage itself in abstruse problems. I don't advise you to worry yourself over this, unless you can turn it to some account. If the Hornet should ask you for an original example, you might begin: 'Let A represent a fountain pen, and B my schoolmate, C ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... "prisoner's base," "town-ball," "Antney-over;" "bull-pen" and "knucks," the hand to hand engagements with yellow jackets, the Bunker Hill and Brandywine battles with bumblebees, the charges on flocks of geese, the storming of apple orchards and hornet's nests, and victories over hostile "setting" hens. Then I witnessed the old field school "Exhibition"—the wonderful "exhibition"—they call it Commencement now. Did you never witness an old field school "exhibition," far out in the country, and listen ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... said the Elephant's Child. 'But it's very useful,' and he picked up his hairy uncle, the Baboon, by one hairy leg, and hove him into a hornet's nest. ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... a raid," said Kynan. "It stirs up such a hornet's nest round one's ears. However, we on the border are somewhat used to it. We ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Gentiles had brought all this trouble upon Mur, since before we came the Abati, although threatened, had lived in peace and glory—he actually used the word glory!—for generations. But now we had stung the Fung, as a hornet stings a bull, and made them mad, so that they wished to toss the Abati. He proposed, therefore, that we should at once be ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... castle, the mole and crown batteries, while within range were ten other batteries, mounting, all told, a hundred and fifteen guns. Between the Philadelphia and the shore lay a number of Tripolitan cruisers, galleys and gunboats. Into this hornet's nest, Decatur steered his little vessel of sixty tons, carrying four small guns, and having a crew ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... vineyards, will trample down all the rich clusters in order to slake its own thirst. Find a man who yields to his desires after his neighbour's goods, and you find a man who will break all commandments like a hornet in a spider's web. Be he a Napoleon, and glorified as a conqueror and hero, or be he some poor thief in a jail, he has let his covetousness get the upper hand, and so all wrong-doing is possible. Nor is it only the second table which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... that many women delight to excite envy, even whilst they affect to fear its consequences: but they, who imprudently provoke it, are little aware of the torments they prepare for themselves.—"Cover your face well before you disturb the hornet's nest," was a maxim of ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... himself as second in command on board the sloop Hornet, of ten guns, one of two vessels then preparing for a cruise under Commodore Hopkins, for this was in the early part of the revolution. The sloop fell in with a British tender, which she might have captured, but for the timidity of the American captain. The ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... that our ancestors Have not been over-prudish with our kings; It is no fall to pick up handkerchiefs When on the handkerchief a lily's broidered. But honor never will accept a rag Which bears the Bonapartist weed and hornet, Woe to ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... the while I told him a lot of things about true politeness—things that I wasn't living up to worth mentioning. He yelled to the postmaster to grab me, and the fellow tried it. I backed into a corner and held old King in front of me as a bulwark, warranted bullet proof, and wondered what kind of a hornet's-nest I'd got into. The waiter and the postmaster were both looking for an opening, and I remembered that I was on old King's territory, and that they were ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... answered. "Came a few minutes after you took off, but when I refused him a ship he got mad as a hornet, bawled out the light crew and—and me, and then jumped back in his car and rode off. Rather ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... softest sound you ever heard—she was mad as a hornet, too." The General's swift chuckle caught him. "'Hyer,' she said it," he repeated. "'Hyer.'" He liked to say it, evidently. "I stood holding my cap in my hand, so tame by this time you could have put me on a perch in a cage, for the pluck of the girl was as fascinating as her looks. I spoke up ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... "the day for me to buck agin you is past. I don't mind markin' yearlin' calves and I don't hold off when it comes to breakin' up a hornet's nest, but I stand ready and willin' to fling up my hands when it comes to pullin' agin you. I have been kept busy many a time in my life; I have been woke up at mornin' and kept on the stretch pretty nigh till midnight, but you can come ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... showing his great fear, Roger watched the blip as it sped down like a maddened hornet toward the Polaris resting on its directional fins in the green jungle. He could hear the hatch slam closed below as Loring re-entered the ship, but he continued to watch ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... obeyed in silence had not Miss Fenshawe thought fit to help him. She had found Mrs. Haxton's airs somewhat tiresome during the long journey from London, and she saw no reason why that lady should be so ready to bring a hornet's ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... full of wrinkles. It was hard to realize that this little body held one of the great driving minds of the country. He was an intensely nervous and irritable man, bitter and implacable—by all odds the most hated and feared man in Wall Street. He was swift, imperious, savage as a hornet. "Directors at meetings that I attend vote first and discuss afterward," was one of his sayings that Montague had heard quoted. Watching him here by the fireside, rubbing his hands and chatting pleasantly, Montague had a sudden sense of being behind the scenes, of being admitted to ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... made a trip to Berlin to borrow money for the war. And it is likely that the Sultan may soon have so many enemies to fight that he will wish the Powers had allowed him to arrange the Cretan matters for himself, without interfering and bringing this hornet's nest about ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 26, May 6, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... I don't wonder. But don't you think, Verena, I was a very brave woman to put myself into such a hornet's nest?" ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... said; "I'd about as soon argue with a hornet as a mother. She's nearly crazy! I'll tell you the situation." He told it, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... there was greater safety. The cave, as she called it, was dimly lighted with a paraffin lamp, and was very damp and chilly, but it was good to be there in this hiding-place, for at regular intervals she could hear the terrible buzzing noises of a shell, like some gigantic hornet, followed by its exploding boom; and then, more awful still, the crash of a neighbouring ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... couldn't think er hevin' a man that warn't a church-member, that hadn't experienced religion, or even ben struck with conviction, an' all the rest on't. Ef anny one hed a wanted tew hev seen a walkin' hornet's nest, they could hev done it cheap that night, as I went hum. I jest stramed intew the kitchen, chucked my hat intew one corner, my coat intew 'nother, kicked the cat, cussed the fire, drawed up a chair, and set scaoulin' like sixty, bein' tew mad for talkin'. The young woman that was nussin' aunt,—Bewlah ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... only seven sea miles distant from the Dean Tail Buoy. Within ten minutes of the receipt of the wireless she was on the spot—one of the very first of a regular hornet flotilla bent upon adding yet another of Von ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... felt the world careen, Leap in its orbit like a punished pup Which hath a hornet on his burning bean? Last night, last night — historic yestere'en! — ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... for these hornet stings," added Tad Sobber. "If I don't get something soon I'll go ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... foolish, Thomas. As if a man what's been stung by a wasp would care to sit himself down on a hornet's nest. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... the House by his agitated colleague, recognised that his old Parliamentary hand had got into a hornet's nest, and promptly withdrew it. To the best of my recollection this is the first time on record that a Government measure has perished before its first reading. Conceived in secrecy and delivered in pain, its epitaph will be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... billowing along her decks and blinding her gallant skipper, the maimed little vessel staggered forward. But escape was not for her. The Union had a smart man for captain, and he did not intend the little Chilian hornet to go clear. The forward 8-inch gun bellowed out, and its shell struck the Chilian fair and square on her stern, exploding as it passed into her hull, and literally blowing the ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... wailed; "here's this horrid, hateful old snowstorm, and we can't go outdoors or anything! I'm mad as a hornet, as a hatter, as a wet hen, as a March hare, as a—as hops, as—what else gets awful ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... I sit in my study, with the windows open, the occasional incident of the visit of some winged creature,—wasp, hornet, or bee,— entering out of the warm sunny atmosphere, soaring round the room in large sweeps, then buzzing against the glass, as not satisfied with the place, and desirous of getting out. Finally, the joyous, uprising curve with ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "but I'll get myself into a hornet's nest. These young people don't like to be told what's good for them," he added with a laugh, rising from his seat. "And after that you'll permit me to slip away without telling anybody, won't you? My last minute has come," and he glanced ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and some mere repetitions. It amends acts by later acts and, before they have gone into effect, wipes them out by substitutions. It hitches on extraneous matters and it amends past legislation by mere inference. Like a hornet it stings in the end, where revolutionary changes are introduced by altering or adding a word or two in sections a page long, and it ends with the cheerful but too usual statement that "all laws and parts of laws in conflict with provisions ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... of his little clam-bake, and it would be full as pleasant as settin' down onto a Hornet's nest, when the Hornet ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... last reached a lot of shells, which had been thrown from the wagons, to keep them from falling into the hands of the Yankees. They went off with a frightful clatter. The captain bounced from the ground as if a hornet had lifted him. "FALL IN!" he shouted, grasping his sword. Of course, all who were awake comprehended the situation, and prudently lay still, to avoid the flying fragments. As the truth dawned upon him, the captain at first looked "sold" and disgusted, and then ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... and to her audience there was nothing amusing about this prescription. Stranger remedies than that had been ordered by the wise doctors of the day: a broth of beetle's legs, crab's eyes, the heads of mice, bruised flies to cure the sting of a hornet! ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... the mole and crown batteries, while within range were ten other batteries, mounting, all told, a hundred and fifteen guns. Between the Philadelphia and the shore lay a number of Tripolitan cruisers, galleys and gunboats. Into this hornet's nest, Decatur steered his little vessel of sixty tons, carrying four small guns, and having a crew ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... up my options. I went to Corkery, gave my notice and told him what I was going to do. He was madder than a hornet. I listened to what he had to say and went off without a word in reply. He was so unreasonable that it didn't seem worth it. That noon I rounded up the men and told them frankly that I was going to start in business for ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... together, and wondered at the conflux of two such antipodes. McGuire was five feet one, with a countenance belonging to either Yokohama or Dublin. Bright-beady of eye, bony of cheek and jaw, scarred, toughened, broken and reknit, indestructible, grisly, gladiatorial as a hornet, he was a type neither new nor unfamiliar. Raidler was the product of a different soil. Six feet two in height, miles broad, and no deeper than a crystal brook, he represented the union of the West and South. Few accurate pictures of his kind ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Mr. Gibbons, Captain Vanderbilt soon found that he had put his head into a hornet's nest. The State of New York had granted to Fulton and Livingston the exclusive right of running steamboats in New York waters. Thomas Gibbons, believing the grant unconstitutional, as it was afterwards declared by the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... race with an unfriendly dog. 2. An unpleasant experience. 3. A story told by the school clock. 4. Disturbing a hornet's nest. 5. The fate of an Easter bonnet. 6. Chased by ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... his promise not to swear. "I know it," said he, "I know I promised not to swear, and for better than two months I hain't swore, but I can't help it now. And yet I expected it. I know'd 'twould be so when I let Tempest go to New Orleans. But he'll run himself into a hornet's nest, and I ain't sure but it's just the ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... "a nest of revolutionists—and quite a hornet's nest it would seem. Well, you won't abide here long, I can ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... joyful season of the year? It is then that the spring bonnet of the workaday world crosses the earth's orbit and makes the bank account of the husband and father look fatigued. The low shoe and the low hum of the bumble-bee are again with us. The little striped hornet heats his nose with a spirit lamp and goes forth searching for the man with the linen pantaloons. All nature is full of life and activity. So is the man with the linen pantaloons. Anon, the thrush will sing in the underbrush, and the prima donna will do up her voice in a red-flannel ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the Jew," returned the hornet; "he wears the garb of a priest, and is at a tavern in the Street of the Dyers, because he has learned that two Peruleros[50] are now stopping there. He wishes to try if he cannot do business with them, even though it should be but ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... had incurred some ridicule by his readiness in proposing constitutions. His antagonist, like a hornet, instantly fixed his sting upon the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... fury, plunged the pin into his wrist. It stung like a hornet; and with a gasp of pain, Craig leaped back ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... sensation in the corn-market as a flying machine would create at Charing Cross. The farmers crowded round it, women drew near it, children crept under and into it. The machine was painted in bright hues of green, yellow, and red, and it resembled as a whole a compound of hornet, grasshopper, and shrimp, magnified enormously. Or it might have been likened to an upright musical instrument with the front gone. That was how it struck Lucetta. "Why, it is a sort of agricultural piano," ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... at my grandmother's cabin and she tell us it am so. We look scared, lak mules in de midst of a hornet nest, as we stood dere. We didn't wait long, for old Mistress Sligh she come 'long and say: 'Sho' it am so, you am free.' Many of de slaves, 'cludin' me, tell her we love to stay on and work as usual 'til de big white folks come. She smile and say: 'All right, maybe we be able ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... great red gorilla, that had felt something sting him, and on feeling it threw up his paw to scratch the place, no doubt fancying it to be but the bite of a mosquito or hornet. The piece of stick broken off by his fingers may have seemed to him rather strange, but not enough so to arouse him ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... anomalous social position, that Gwen could not decide, nominally omnipotent as she was in her parents' absence, on telling the servants to serve her dinner in the room Mrs. Picture occupied. Had it not been for her suspicion of a hornet's nest at hand, she might have dared to ordain that Mrs. Picture should be her sole guest in her own section of the Towers, or at least that she herself should become the table-guest of the old lady in ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... aside, then sit down on their tails in a solemn circle and watch as if studying the strange beast. Again and again he would rush upon them, only to find that he was fighting the wind. Mad as a hornet, he would single out a cub and follow him headlong through brush and brake till some subtle warning thrilled through his madness, telling him to heed his flank; then as he whirled he would find the savage old mother close ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... I was not to get myself jabbed for typhoid before I came here! It would have been worth the money. Today my arm feels like a hornet's nest, with roots up into my shoulder and down my ribs. And my head is light and wavy—that's fever. I saw one guy keel over stiff when the doctor stuck him, and the poor corp of our squad says he'd ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... on we'll be in the saddle; and if such a thing should jess accidentally happen to happen, which I hope it won't, to be sho', that I should happen to sort o' absent-mindedly yell out 'Go!' like as if a hornet had stabbed me, you jess come down with that switch, and make the critter under you run like a ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... But after surveying the result a moment he seemed to feel that he had insulted a helpless object, for he took the hat off, spat into it, and kicked it into shapeless pulp. Then he came back to the house and grimly asked his wife if she had anything handy to take the poison out of hornet stings. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... conversation in the lobby of the theatre, and at the same time took the very particular pleasure of introducing the Captain to several of the young bloods, as he called them, while they walked to and from the boxes. At length the Captain found himself in a perfect hornet's nest, surrounded by vicious young secessionists, so perfectly nullified in the growth that they were all ready to shoulder muskets, pitchforks, and daggers, and to fire pistols at poor old Uncle Sam, if he should poke his ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... ut would be betther not to slip your boots. How do I know that? By the light av pure reason. Here are three companies av us ever so far inside av the enemy's flank an' a crowd av roarin', tarin', squealin' cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole hornet's nest av them. Av course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like as not, an' thin we'll have to run for ut. Mark my words. I am av the opinion av Polonius whin he said, 'Don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', but if you do, knock the nose av him first an' frequint.'. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... abilities. He was instantly offered employment of various kinds, and chose that of editor. He took charge of the Constitutionel, and plunged into the heat and strife of party politics. His witty, hornet-like nature fitted him well for the position. He attained great influence and power, and the great men of the time, even Talleyrand, came to him, while he exclaimed bombastically and blasphemously, "Suffer little children ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... tones like a hornet stinging slowly and often. "Mr. Diggs, I have put up with many things, and am expecting to put up with many more. But you'd behave better if you ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... above the smithy door an idler was 25 sitting—a mischief-making hornet who heard every word that the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... for its living, represents its patrons, as do some portrait-painters, not as they are but as they would like to be. In the eyes of Andalusian journalists their compatriots are for ever making a magnificent gesture; and the condition would be absurd if a hornet's nest of comic papers, tempering vanity with a lively sense of the ridiculous, did not save the ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... gamle Halvar 2 stod utanfr p vakt. Han vaktade med allvar, gav ock p mjdet akt. En sed den gamle hade: han jmt i botten drack, och intet ord han sade, blott hornet in han stack. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... be remembered that Decatur had been checked in his attempt to break the blockade at the eastern end of Long Island Sound, and was forced to take the frigates "United States" and "Macedonian," and the sloop-of-war "Hornet," into New London Harbor. Early in December, 1813, he determined to try to slip out; and choosing a dark night, when wind and tide were in his favor, he dropped down the bay, and was about to put to sea, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... sting of the hornet lies in the conclusion. If this quadriliteral man had done so much for them, (though really, we think, 6s. 8d. might have settled his claim,) what, says Fire, setting her arms a-kimbo, would they ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... bushes. He paused just a moment to be sure that no one was coming after him. All was as before and the dark group of buildings, his home for nearly two months, loomed in silent dignity behind him. But Renwick knew that it would not be long before the whole countryside would be buzzing like a hornet's nest. In his enfeebled condition, he could hardly hope to cope with his pursuers in the matter of speed and so as he went on across the stream at the base of the hill, he tried to plan something that would ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... in reference to "well done," it means partially cooked or underdone. This, then, is a clear case of Exclusion. Other examples: "Men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, and men whose shoulders do grow beneath their heads;" "Cushion, Mule's Hoof;" "Ungoverned, Henpecked;" "Bed of Ease, Hornet's Nest;" ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... about him, in Hebrew—an acrostic, with his name for the mockery of posterity. Stocks and shares have I translated into Hebrew, with new words which will at once be accepted by the Hebraists of the world and added to the vocabulary of modern Hebrew. Oh! I am terrible in satire. I sting like the hornet; witty as Immanuel, but mordant as his friend Dante. It will appear in the Mizpeh to-morrow. I will show this Anglo-Jewish community that I am a man to be reckoned with. I will crush ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... France; Everywhere men bang and blunder, Sweat and swear and worship Chance, Creep and blink through cannon thunder. Rifles crack and bullets flick, Sing and hum like hornet-swarms. Bones are smashed and buried quick. Yet, through stunning battle storms. All the while I watch the spark Lit to guide me; for I know Dreams will triumph, though the dark Scowls above me where I go. You can hear me; ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... of temper brought a hornet's nest about his ears. Kenny swung to his feet in smoldering fury. He expressed his opinion of Whitaker, editors, Brian and sons. The sum of them merged into an unchristian melee of officiousness and black ingratitude. He recounted the events of the night before ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... is little pleasure that comes into her life. An orphan—barely twenty-two—with the entire responsibility of her uncle's ranch upon her shoulders. Living in a very hornet's nest of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... North Carolina, were famous for the patriotism of their women. Mecklenberg claims to have issued the first declaration of independence, and, at the centennial celebration of this event in May, 1875, proudly accepted for itself the derisive name given this region by Tarleton's officers, "The Hornet's Nest of America." This name—first bestowed by British officers upon Mrs. Brevard's mansion, then Tarleton's headquarters, where that lady's fiery patriotism and stinging wit discomfited this General in many a sally—was at last ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... its dark counterpart in the unwritten belief that no alien ruler, enthroned at Delhi, shall endure. Hence the dismay of many loyal Indians when the British Government deserted Calcutta for the Queen of the North. And here, already, were her endless, secretive byways rivalling Calcutta suburbs as hornet-nests ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... those, to these is cruelty. A fine and slender net the spider weaves, Which little and light animals receives; And if she catch a common bee or fly, They with a piteous groan and murmur die; But if a wasp or hornet she entrap, They tear her cords like Samson, and escape; So like a fly the poor offender dies, But like the wasp, the rich escapes and flies. 110 Do not, if one but lightly thee offend, The punishment beyond the crime extend; Or after warning the offence ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... seems to have been resolved upon, because at the moment they did not know what else to do. The cabinet wished only sixty days—the senate made it ninety. Our government leaves no room to expect a repeal of the order in council, yet they wait for the return of the Hornet. Something decisive must then be known; perhaps when they become completely convinced of Bonaparte's playing upon them, it will end in declaring against France. The question of adjournment was lost, notwithstanding there was an absolute majority known a ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... sheltered a large body of Indians, who from this point of vantage directed a particularly galling fire at the loop-holes in the palisades. By it several of the defenders were wounded, until finally a cannon was brought to bear upon the hornet's nest, and a quantity of red-hot spikes were thrust into its muzzle. A minute after its discharge flames burst from the buildings, and the savages who had occupied them were in precipitate flight, followed by jeering shouts and a ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... that followed, and the Major sprang to his feet. "Merciful Heavens!" he exclaimed, staring at his watch, "it's twelve o'clock. That must be Uncle Neb still waiting, and Grandmother Verney's probably standing on the church porch yet, mad as a hornet." He was at the door now, calling wildly to the negro: "Uncle Neb, why under the ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... works and presses with the sharp joints of its folded legs until it has sunk itself at a sufficient depth, which is only a few inches beneath the surface. The water frogs appear to pass the winter in the mud at the bottom of ponds and marshes. The queen bumblebee and the queen hornet, I think, seek out their winter quarters in holes in the ground in September, while the drones and the workers perish. The honey-bees do not hibernate: they must have food all winter; but our native ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... State! Just as I thought that I had finished, and was only too glad that I had laid this question to sleep, and was reflecting how fortunate I was in your acceptance of what I then said, you ask me to begin again at the very foundation, ignorant of what a hornet's nest of words you are stirring. Now I foresaw this gathering ...
— The Republic • Plato
... To an evening's amusement together repair. And there came the Beetle, so blind and so black, Who carried the Emmet, his friend, on his back; And there was the Gnat, and the Dragon-fly too, And all their relations, green, orange, and blue. And then came the Moth, with her plumage of down, And the Hornet, in jacket of yellow and brown; Who with him the Wasp, his companion, did bring, But they promised that evening to lay by their sting. Then the shy little Dormouse peeped out of his hole, And led to the feast ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... as mad as a hornet if he had much trouble finding his boat," said Snap, in talking the situation over. "And the first thing he'll think of will be ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... fly in precious ointment; and, that loathsome disease, laziness. Like drunkenness it is an inexcusable shame, that dooms one to poverty and clothes him with rags. Shun idleness as you do the sting of a hornet, or ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... the continuous firing on both sides of the line. At about 6 o'clock the firing ceased, and the rebels withdrew to a safe distance from the landing. The casualties of the day were three killed and six wounded, two of the latter dying shortly afterward. The fight at what was known as the "hornet's nest" was most terrific, and had not the First battery held out so heroically and valiantly the rebels would have succeeded in forcing a retreat of the Union lines to a point dangerously near the Tennessee river. Capt. Munch's horse received a bullet In his head and fell, and the captain himself ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... the doctor said; "I'd about as soon argue with a hornet as a mother. She's nearly crazy! I'll tell you the situation." He told it, and ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... "For his lost child; but when the flames he saw "Ascending, four times 'mid the funeral fires "He strove to plunge; four times from thence repuls'd, "His rapid limbs address'd for flight, and rush'd "Like a young bullock, when the hornet's sting "Deep in his neck he bears, in pathless ways. "Ev'n now more swift than man he seem'd to run: "His feet seem'd wings to wear, for all behind "He left far distant. Through desire of death, "Rapid he gain'd Parnassus' loftiest ridge. "Apollo, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... incurred Madame V.'s serious displeasure. A hornet's nest had been discovered, and, as it was voted a great curiosity, was placed by Madame's orders among the other specimens of Natural history in the library. Warmed into life by the heat of the room, some of the hornets began to show signs of activity. The prospect was far from pleasant, ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... "The navigation is doubtless difficult, and the water shallow. We should find ourselves in a pretty pickle if we plumped into a hornet's nest and on to a shoal ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... always," says he, "retain a most grateful sense of the King's liberality: but it is enough to have been chargeable to you when in France. I have never done you any service, though I made an offer of myself. But it would not be proper that I should now live like a hornet on the goods of other men. I shall never forget, however, the kindness of so great a King, and the good ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... master of the situation, and he directed ten thousand bees under General Bumble, and another ten thousand wasps under Colonel Hornet, to fall on the robber and cruel Sigli and sting them to death. But this was hardly necessary, as the wriggling of their bodies so fixed them to the figure that they died ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... payment in transportation, Martin wrote back to inquire if the transportation was transferable. It was not, and so, being prevented from peddling it, he asked for the return of the poem. Back it came, with the editor's regrets, and Martin sent it to San Francisco again, this time to The Hornet, a pretentious monthly that had been fanned into a constellation of the first magnitude by the brilliant journalist who founded it. But The Hornet's light had begun to dim long before Martin was born. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... and went and quarrelled with one another just as usual, and when I parted from them there was not one of the company who could be said to be the worse for liquor. Probably there is no more steady- headed insect than the wasp, unless it be his noble cousin and prince, the hornet, who has a quite humanlike unquenchable thirst for ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... laid me down, When comes a voice: "Is that you, Joe? I'm calling you from Williamstown! Knock once for 'yes,' and twice for 'no.'" Then, hornet-mad, I knocked back two— The table shook, I banged it so— "Not Joe!" they said, "Then tell ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... enquiries, I find there is a garrison of seven men. It is getting dusk and mosquitoes are coming out by hundreds, they have not annoyed me before, but I think I must use my net to-night. I lie on my bed after dinner smoking with a lighted candle by my side. A hornet flies in and settles on my hand, then a large beetle comes with a buzz and a thud against me, making me start. Sundry moths, small flies, and beetles, are playing innocently round the flame. In half an hour I shall be able to make a fair entomological collection but as I neither (Ha! ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... she had heard Blanchefleur speak of a youth in Spain of form and face resembling her own, bethought her that this May-Day offering might be the Spanish love of Blanchefleur; so with a laugh she dismissed the maidens who were her fellows, saying that a hornet springing out from amid the flowers had frighted her. Reader, picture to yourself the terror of Fleur on finding he was discovered! But fortune was kind, for Clarissa, the captive daughter of a Duke of Alemannia, was the bosom friend of lovely Blanchefleur, and often had the two together bemoaned ...
— Fleur and Blanchefleur • Mrs. Leighton
... yell, when the column of smoke went high in the air from our exploded caisson. Well, all the satisfaction we got out of the affair, was that "We found out, what the enemy had over there," and we did not stir up that hornet's nest again. Occasionally, they would plug at us, but we would lie low and not reply. One of their 24-lb. rifled parrot shells ricochetted over from the front one day with out exploding. Some of the men got it unscrewed the percussion fuse from ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... too, and burned them slowly and stooped over the smoldering mass and inhaled the fumes and the smoke which arose, because the country wiseacres preached that no boughten stuff out of a drug store gave such relief from asthma as this hornet's-nest treatment. But it remained for this man to find a third use for such a thing. He brought it into the office of Gafford's wagon yard, where some other men were sitting about the fire, and he held it up before ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... out his orders, the Englishman was working his hold up past the floundering guard's waist. Madden's grip was about to break under the strain the Teuton put on it, but his fingers clung desperately to the fellow's throat, for one shout would bring a hornet's nest around the fugitives. Just then Malone ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... at me!" he cried. But as a matter of fact, it was a hornet and its unmistakable sting that injected ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... the notorious bandit, had ridden toward the ranch in the hope of getting an opportunity to vent his anger against its mistress or some of her men. While pursuing the renegade Bannister had stumbled into a hornet's nest, and was in imminent danger of being stung to death. Even now the last speaker was scrambling ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... "let 'em come! like to see 'em takin' our powder an' shot 'thout askin'! Guess they'll hear thunder, ef they stick their heads inter a hornet's nest." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... had continued to gain in numbers, their natural increase was not proportionate to the growing power of their adversaries. Little by little the Doomsmen began to lose ground; already they had been defeated several times in pitched battle, and it looked as though the hornet's-nest would soon ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... were fairly overpowered and caught in a trap. The whole of the party, indeed, behaved with admirable coolness, and one of them, Mr. Charles Hawker, as well as their leader, Mr. Fidd, shewed a degree of moderation and forbearance on the occasion that was highly to their credit. Here also was the Hornet's Nest, where the natives offered battle to my gallant friend, Major O'Halloran, whose instructions forbade his striking the first blow. I can fancy that his warm blood was up at seeing himself defied by the self-confident natives; ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... run'd down across de fiel', A rattlesnake bit me on de heel. I rears an' pitches an' does my bes', An' I falls right back in a hornet's nes'. ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... an immense aviary were all the birds of creation, divided into classes, from the humming-bird, the size of a hornet, to the ostrich. This was, to tell the truth, the part that interested Mother Etienne most of all. She was more used to creatures of this kind, they reminded her of her beloved poultry-yard. In spite of the signs ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... Roosevelt dinner. The dinner itself passed off quietly, pleasantly, and without particular event. It was not until he took up the papers at his little hotel in New York the next morning that he found that he had again stirred up a hornet's nest similar to that of four years before. The denunciation was if anything more violent; for, as many of his assailants said, he should have profited by the protests of four years before. In an editorial ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... you can, a bald-faced hornet of your earthly experience grown to the size of a prize Hereford bull, and you will have some faint conception of the ferocious appearance and awesome formidability of the winged monster ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on the enormous couch and Robina looked at her brother. "Jason, Ah'm real sorry. Ah went an' stirred up a hornet's nest of trouble ...
— The Premiere • Richard Sabia
... room was reserved for weapons. His prize, a Thompson submachine, had been procured from the Los Angeles police arsenal. Supplementing the Thompson were two semi-automatic rifles, a Luger, a Colt .45 and a .22-caliber Hornet pistol, equipped with a silencer. He always kept the smallest gun in a spring-clip holster beneath his armpit, but it was not his habit to carry any of the larger weapons with him into the city. On this night, however, ...
— Small World • William F. Nolan
... to send European memsahibs to call on her," said the priest, and the maharajah gnashed his teeth and swore like a man stung by a hornet. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... his great fear, Roger watched the blip as it sped down like a maddened hornet toward the Polaris resting on its directional fins in the green jungle. He could hear the hatch slam closed below as Loring re-entered the ship, but he continued to watch the rapidly ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... particular remark on the subject: no work of which D'Alembert[460] was co-editor would have been started on any such plan. For, first, he was a real sceptic: that is, doubtful, with a mind not made up. Next, he valued his quiet more than anything; and would as soon have gone to sleep over an hornet's nest as have contemplated a systematic attack upon either religion or government. As to Diderot[461]—of whose varied career of thought it is difficult to fix the character of any one moment, but who is very frequently ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... finish what he was going to say. Instead he jumped back as though he had been stung by a hornet, ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... Bart. "Those fellows will wake up after a while to the fact that they've tackled a hornet's nest. Even a thick German head can take ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... will of a great ruler or in the white heat of religious fanaticism; and while Moslem fury sometimes unites all the Afghan clans, the Moslem marriage customs result fully as often in a superfluity of royal heirs, which gives rein to all the forces that make for disruption. Afghanistan is a hornet's nest; and yet, as we shall see presently, owing to geographical and strategical reasons, it cannot be left severely alone. The people are to the last degree clannish; and nothing but the grinding pressure of two mighty Empires has ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... gladly go to his house and see them. Now, my dear Mrs. Grundy, that is very different from going to his house to see the Plutuses. They are not the possessions that make his house desirable. My young friend Hornet says that if the only way to drink Midas's gold-seal Johannisberger is to take Mrs. Plutus down to dinner, he will not hesitate to pay the price, as he is willing to pay the price of sea-sickness if he wishes to see the Vatican. Does my dear Mrs. ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... and sat down to supper there were no hornets. Jawohl had just stood on a chair, she said, poured a can of water into the nest, and stuffed up the opening with grass. She had not been stung, and we were not pestered by a hornet again that summer. I have sometimes told this story to English people, and seen that though they were too polite to say so they did not believe it. But that is their fault. The story as I have told it is true. We found immense ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... courageous Spider-huntress is the Ringed Pompilus (Calicurgus annulatus, FAB.), clad in black and yellow. She stands high on her legs; and her wings have black tips, the rest being yellow, as though exposed to smoke, like a bloater. Her size is about that of the Hornet (Vespa crabro). She is rare. I see three or four of her in the course of the year; and I never fail to halt in the presence of the proud insect, rapidly striding through the dust of the fields when the dog-days arrive. Its audacious air, its uncouth gait, its war-like bearing long ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... evening, just before dusk, after having idled about out of sight of the signal station nearly all day, Captain Shewell entered Golden Gate with the Hornet-of no squadron. But the officers at the signal station did not know that, and simply telegraphed to the harbour, in reply to the signals from the corvette, that a British man-of-war was coming. She came leisurely up the bay, with Captain Shewell on the bridge. He gave a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... short-lived triumph, however, and Mrs. Gaskell soon found herself, as she expressed it, 'in a veritable hornet's nest.' Mr. Bronte, to begin with, did not care for the references to himself and the suggestion that he had treated his wife unkindly. Mrs. Gaskell had associated him with numerous eccentricities and ebullitions of temper, which during his later years he always ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... the famous hat that waved along Marengo's ridge? Are these the spurs of Austerlitz—the boots of Lodi's bridge? Leads he the conscript swarm again from France's hornet hive? What seeks the fell usurper here, in ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... to see you back, although you have brought a nice hornet's nest about our ears, and started something like a social and religious earthquake in Kensington and the adjacent lands of Mayfair and Belgravia, to say nothing of a distinct fluttering in what I may, perhaps, without irreverence ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... with ranch supplies from Cheyenne, were pounced upon in plain view of Hunton's, murdered and scalped and mutilated just before Blunt and his little command reached the scene. Despite the grave disparity in numbers, Blunt had galloped in to the attack, and found himself and his troopers in a hornet's nest from which nothing but his nerve and coolness had extricated them. Most of his horses were killed in the fight that followed, for Blunt promptly dismounted his men and disposed them in a circle around their wounded comrades, and thereby managed ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... paymaster was as hot as a hornet. His gorge rose—his freeborn, independent American gorge. It rose clear to the ceiling and threw off sparks and red clinkers. He sent for the manager. The manager came, all bows and graciousness and rumply shirtfront; and when he heard what was to be said he became all ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... bands, and exchanged shots with them. All were Boxers in this new uniform; but although we tried to entice them on and corner them in houses, they were too cunning for us, and broke back each time. In the end we had so stirred up this hornet's nest that the scattered firing became more and more persistent, and stern orders came for us to ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... strength of man to that of insects! I have just been watching an ant dragging the body of a hornet, many times larger than itself, up a door with the greatest ease; so much so, that after dragging it up three feet, it came down to alter its position, carrying it up a second time by its wing: the ant ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... man, and he sprung upon the detective, but he might as well have leaped head first at a hornet's nest. ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... our glory that our ancestors Have not been over-prudish with our kings; It is no fall to pick up handkerchiefs When on the handkerchief a lily's broidered. But honor never will accept a rag Which bears the Bonapartist weed and hornet, Woe to the ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... sin at any time committed by man, but there is some circumstance or other attends it, that makes it, when charged home by God's law, bigger and sharper, and more venom and poisonous to the soul than if it could be committed without them; and this is the sting of the hornet, the great sting. I sinned without a cause to please a base lust, to gratify the devil; here is the sting! Again, I preferred sin before holiness, death before life, hell before heaven, the devil before God, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a big sody water bottle on wheels, and it busted and squirted sody water all over me. Wall one of them fire fellers, lookin' jist like I'd seen them in picters in Ezra Hoskin's insurance papers, he cum up to me madder'n a hornet, and he sed "what are you tryin' to do with that box?" So I told him I'd jist writ a letter home, and I wuz a tryin' to mail it. He sed "why you durned old green horn, you've called out the hull fire department ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... dockyard, in the town, innumerable lights dotted the blackness, some stationary, others moving this way and that. Now cries were heard from all sides, growing in volume until the sound was as of some gigantic hornet's nest awakened into angry activity. To the clangor of gongs was added the blare of trumpets, and from the walls of the fort and palace, from the hill beyond, from every cliff along the shore, echoed and re-echoed ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... door waiting to leave the car. It had been set in on the siding, and the engine, uncoupled, had disappeared, but she could see shifting lights moving near. One, the bright, green-hooded light, her eyes followed. She watched the furious snow drive and sting hornet-like at its rays as it rose or swung or circled from a long arm. Her straining eyes had watched its coming and going every moment since he left her. When his figure vanished her breath followed it, and when the green light flickered ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... believe alike. They reject all those sacred traditions which lead back to Christ. Their only union is in hatred of the Church. They exist for themselves alone, to the hurt of others, just like stinging insects. And Allah alone knows why they were ever created, unless it be as a kind of hornet to molest the faithful. Consider, O my dear, how transient this life is; its prosperity departs with the breath. Think on the anguish of those who, attracted by the wealth and luxury of these missionaries, forsake ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... yells Jabez, hot as a hornet, "I'm a man an' you ain't, an' that makes a heap o' difference. I had to give up cussin' on your account, but I don't intend to go to wearin' dresses complete, just ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... should follow us. But when I had fouled the trail so that I myself hardly knew it again, Mang, the Bat, came hawking between the trees, and hung up above me." Said Mang, "The village of the Man-Pack, where they cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet's nest." ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... whom I am acquainted; and as his great work partially covers the same period to which Taine has recently devoted himself, I ventured to mention his name in this connection. But I might as well have stirred up a hornet's nest. "Von Sybel," said Taine, "wrote his book to prove that Prussia was perfectly right in taking part in the partition of Poland, and some other things of like nature." He seemed to think this assertion (admitting its truth) ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... high-coloured young lady in the bar. His conscience was not at ease regarding his admiration for her; and he dreaded lest the officious Cargrim should talk about her to the bishop. Altogether the chaplain, like a hornet, had annoyed both Dr Pendle and his son; and the bishop in London and Gabriel in Beorminster were anything but well disposed towards this clerical busybody, who minded everyone's business instead of his own. It is such people who stir up ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... air, but softly, for many of his comrades were wounded, though he was not, as usual, for all his seven feet of perpendicular target. But "the Doc," of Benton, was, of course. Getting wounded was the greatest trouble with Doc. If he attacked a hornet's nest, he would contrive some way to get a leg shot off. But with him such things had become to be a matter of course, so now he crated himself together enough to move around and attend to the others. Driscoll was most innumerably barked, with a perforated ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... out into the open air. Then followed the games of "prisoner's base," "town-ball," "Antney-over;" "bull-pen" and "knucks," the hand to hand engagements with yellow jackets, the Bunker Hill and Brandywine battles with bumblebees, the charges on flocks of geese, the storming of apple orchards and hornet's nests, and victories over hostile "setting" hens. Then I witnessed the old field school "Exhibition"—the wonderful "exhibition"—they call it Commencement now. Did you never witness an old field school "exhibition," far out ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... by Jacob Cats. He lived there. Scheveningen is a bare-looking shore, all sand, and bordered with sandbanks, or Dunes. It was fiercely hot, scorching, and not an atom of shade to be had; but in spite of sun, slipping sandbank-seat, sand-fleas, and a hornet circling round, I did make a sketch, which I hope to finish at home. Both Regie and I bathed, and it was delicious—an utterly calm sea, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The bathing machines seem to be a ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... Trail. He provided her with a tall lank mule, "By Gosh," to ride, and she had never been aboard an animal before. Every time By Gosh flopped an ear she thought he was trying to slap her in the face. On a steep part of the trail a hornet stung the mule, and he began ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... Tim said, to show him the true light. I seed she was listenin' an' that he had hold uv 'er some, but I kinder thought she wusn't as easy prey as he 'lowed, fer he broke down once in awhile an' had a sort o' sickly, quivery look about the mouth. All at once he turned to me as mad as a hornet. Sez he: 'It's that dern bonnet,'—no, he didn't say that exactly. I heer Luke say them things so much 'at his words slip in when I'm in a hurry—'it's that bonnet o' her'n, Sister Bradley,' sez he. 'I'll never git 'er in a wearin' way as long as that poke keeps bobbin' ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... regular pandemonium ensued. Ted saw that he had run into a hornet's nest, and like the wise general that he was, concluded that it was no place for a fellow who had any self respect. Their little game was spoiled, that seemed evident, and it would be the height of folly to think of conducting ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... to America, and applied for admission to the New-York bar. This started a hornet's nest. He had been 'sarving up' too many newspaper and other scribblers, to be left in peace any longer. With an excellent opinion of himself, his contempt was often quite as large, to say the least of it, as his charity; and he had doubtless, at times, in England, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... blaze of gold, and the wonderful spotted bird with red head and yellow wings and tail in the taxidermist's window, were all resolved into one and the same—the Flicker or Golden-winged Woodpecker. The Hang-nest and the Oriole became one. The unknown poisonous-looking blue Hornet, that sat on the mud with palpitating body, and the strange, invisible thing that made the mud-nests inside old outbuildings and crammed them with crippled Spiders, were both identified as the ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... puppets pull at their own strings, Methinks gay Punch hath something of the same. My Muse, the butterfly hath but her wings, Not stings, and flits through ether without aim, Alighting rarely:—were she but a hornet, Perhaps there might be vices which would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... great variety of beatles common to the Atlantic states are found here likewise. except from this order the large cow beatle and the black beatle usually alled the tumble bug which are not found here. the hornet, the wasp and yellow wasp or yellow jacket as they are frequently called are not met with in this quarter. there is an insect which much resembles the latter only a vast deel larger which are very numerous ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... the Pacific Coast, and also up more than one of the rivers, he has heard a similar sound, attributed by the natives to a fish which they call 'The Siren,' or 'Musico.' At first, he says, he thought it was produced by a fly, or hornet of extraordinary size; but afterwards, having advanced a little farther, he heard a multitude of different voices, which harmonised together, imitating a church organ to great perfection. The good people of Trinidad believe that the fish which ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... regarded him with an odd expression. They were aground on Sirene VIII, on which no human ship had ever landed before them, and they had stirred up a hornet's nest on Sirene IV, which had orbital eighty-gee rocket missiles in orbit around it with bust bomb heads and all the other advantages of civilization. The Aldeb was on the way with a fifteen-man crew. And seventeen men, altogether, must pit themselves against ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... portrait.—Fatal image!—It planted a thorn in a till then insensible heart, and sent a new kind of a knight-errant into the world. But even this was nothing to the catastrophe, and the circumstance on which it hung, the hornet settling on the sleeping lover's face. What a heart-rending accident! She planted, in imitation of those susceptible souls, a rose bush; but there was not a lover to weep in concert with her, when she watered it ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... certain variety of cactus, according to a favorite family prescription used by Old Nick several centuries ago when he was residing in this section. For its size and complexion I know of nothing that is worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with mescal, unless it is the bald-faced hornet of the Sunny South. It goes down easily enough—that is not the trouble—but as soon as it gets down you have the sensation of ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... wrote down the words of Jesus, "They who live by the sword shall perish by the sword," and it is a good saying. Thus it happened, that, after a wild hunt through the silent forests to the northwest for many weeks, one day they found a village which was all too strong for them. It was like arousing a hornet's nest. Umpl got out of it safely enough, with an arrow hole or two here and there where they did not count. But he did not have so many to lead back home again; and the Iron Star, alas! was lost, captured by the enemy. Umpl never laid ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... whole and let's be going," for I was sure the bolted door must have seemed suspicious and would bring the whole hornet's nest about our ears, though how thankful I was that I had bolted it, none could tell who had never met that ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the plate, red in the face, mad as a hornet, and he sidestepped every time Rube pitched a ball. He never even ticked one and retired in disgust, limping and swearing. Ashwell was next. He did not show much alacrity. On Rube's first pitch down went Ashwell flat in the dust. The ball whipped the hair of his head. Rube was wild and I began ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... I fled from the ancestral manor. The tenants claimed the farms were theirs. I attempted to turn them out and—they turned me out! I might as well have inherited a hornet's nest. It was a legacy-of hate! The old patroon must have chuckled in his grave! One night they called with the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... good-natured enough to give them the same sort of weapons. Some people, especially boys, think this was a, great mistake, and would be very glad if Wakonda had refused to give stings to the yellow wasp and the black hornet." ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... his part, my dear," said Mr. Ayrton. "I think that he's a bit of a fool to run his head into a hornet's nest because he has come to the conclusion that Abraham's code of morality was a trifle shaky, and that Samson was a shameless libertine. Great Heavens! has the man got no notion of the ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... attract the bite. If the worm could but make the angler respect, or even fear it, the barb would find some other bait. Few anglers would impale an estimable silkworm, and still fewer the anglers who would finger into service a formidable hornet. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... old globule. Football is only the smallest thing you learn. You learn how to be patient when what you want to do is to chew somebody up and spit him into the gutter. You learn to control your temper when it is on the high speed, with the throttle jerked wide open and buzzing like a hornet convention. You learn, by having it told you, just how small and foolish and insignificant you are, and how well this earth could stagger along without you if some one were to take a fly-killer and mash you with it. And you learn all ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... you worry about it occurrin' again. You don't suppose I did it on purpose, do you? Gosh no! I wouldn't get onto Charley's back again, with my clothes off, any more than I'd sit on a hornet's nest. How'd you like to ride through the town with nothin' on but your swimmin' trunks and drippin' with bluin ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... unconquered walls. In truth, the Italians employed half their time in brawls amongst themselves; the Velletritrani had feuds with the people of Tivoli, and the Romans were still afraid of conquering the Barons;—"The hornet," said they, "stings worse after he is dead; and neither an Orsini, a Savelli, nor a Colonna, was ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the United States Sloop-of-War Hornet, in the Gulf of Mexico, 1829, suggested this passage. She was supposed to have gone down in a hurricane, but as nothing is positively known on the subject, it is not beyond lawful poetical license to imagine, at least in a dream, that ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... The battle of the Hornet and Penguin, as well as those of the Reindeer and Avon, showed that the excellence of American gunnery continued till the close of the war. Whether at point-blank range or at long-distance practice, the Americans used guns as they had never ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... now I heedlessly stepped among the outliers of a small party of the carnivorous foraging ants; now, grasping a branch as I stumbled, I shook down a shower of fire- ants; and among all these my attention was particularly arrested by the bite of one of the giant ants, which stung like a hornet, so that I felt it for three hours. The camarades generally went barefoot or only wore sandals; and their ankles and feet were swollen and inflamed from the bites of the boroshudas and ants, some being actually incapacitated from work. All of us suffered more or ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... straight, upon the alarm, The city would be sure to be in arms; Therefore, to undertake, and not to compass, Were to come off with ruin and dishonour. You know the Italian proverb—Bisogna copriersi[6],— He, that will venture on a hornet's nest, Should arm his head, and ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... of the Temple of God, 10 Falling to sin the Unknown Sin, What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod, He sold it to Sultan Saladin: Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there, Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive, And clipt of his wings in Paris square, They bring him now to be burned alive. [And wanteth there grace of lute or clavicithern, ye shall say to confirm him who singeth— We bring John ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... been King Erik's fall. Lately lord of a kingdom, he had now not a foot of land he could call his own, and he sailed about as a sea-robber, landing and plundering in Scotland and England. At length, to rid himself of this stinging hornet of the seas, King Athelstan made him lord of a province in Northumberland, with the promise that he would fight for it against other vikings like himself. He was also required to be baptized and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... in confusion, Heard of all the misdemeanors, All the malice and the mischief, 5 Of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis. Hard his breath came through his nostrils, Through his teeth he buzzed and muttered Words of anger and resentment, Hot and humming like a hornet. 10 "I will slay this Pau-Puk-Keewis, Slay this mischief-maker!" said he. "Not so long and wide the world is, Not so rude and rough the way is, That my wrath shall not attain him, 15 That my vengeance shall not reach him!" Then in swift pursuit ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... subjects of his letters. "God knows," said he to Perez, "that I always speak of them with respect, which is more than they do of me. But God forgive them all. In times like these, one must hold one's tongue. One must keep still, in order not to stir up a hornet's nest." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... excite envy, even whilst they affect to fear its consequences: but they, who imprudently provoke it, are little aware of the torments they prepare for themselves.—"Cover your face well before you disturb the hornet's nest," was a maxim of the experienced Catherine ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... will tell you what I saw,' said Phyllis; 'I was picking up apples, and the wasps were flying all round, and there came a hornet.' ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mad as a hornet ef I don't get any of ye," he remarked, sadly. "She's paid Sam Cotting fer this courtin' suit, an' he won't take back the gloves on no 'count arter they've been wore; an' thet'll set ma crazy. Miss Patsy, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... been back to San Antonio yesterday," he exclaimed. "But I was delayed in Denison. I suppose Perry Watson will be as mad as a hornet when I get back because I didn't make it as quick as he expected. He expects an awful lot from those ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... a row in Silver Street—the regiments was out, They called us "Delhi Rebels", an' we answered "Threes about!" That drew them like a hornet's nest—we met them good an' large, The English at the double an' the Irish at ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... I," Collins assured him. "That's why I'm here. I'm a specialist, and you're paying a specialist's fee. You'll be as mad as a hornet when I tell you, it's that simple; and for the life of me I can't understand why you ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... maid in dusting lifted up the flap, and down fell a quantity of fine, dry mud with young grubs in it which would soon have hatched into wasps, and revealed their rather strange nesting-place. I have in my collection a very interesting hornet's nest, which was being constructed in the hollow of an old tree. I happened to notice a hornet fly into the opening, and, looking in, there was a small beginning of a nest. It hung from a kind of stalk and consisted of only eight cells, each having an egg at the bottom. I captured the two ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... devil assign'd; Sent from the dark infernal region, In him they lodge, and make him legion. Of brethren he's a false accuser; A slanderer, traitor, and seducer; A fawning, base, trepanning liar; The marks peculiar of his sire. Or, grant him but a drone at best; A drone can raise a hornet's nest. The Dean had felt their stings before; And must their malice ne'er give o'er? Still swarm and buzz about his nose? But Ireland's friends ne'er wanted foes. A patriot is a dangerous post, When wanted by his country most; Perversely comes in evil times, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... out. Needn't hop up like that, mad as a hornet, at me. I'm not the one hints and shrugs. It's the whole lot of your precious 'boys'—boys; indeed! and needing spanking more'n they ever did ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
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