"Beak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when he had been left alone for a few minutes, a bird with brilliant plumage came and fluttered round the window, and finally rested on the sill. His feathers were sky-blue and gold, his feet and his beak of such glittering rubies that no one could bear to look at them, his eyes made the brightest diamonds look dull, and on his head he wore a crown. I cannot tell you what the crown was made of, but I am quite certain that it was still more splendid than ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... said La Salle. "Now, Creamer, take your birds, gun, and one decoy, and align yourself with these oars when you have counted one hundred paces. When you have done so, face about and turn the beak of the decoy towards the boat. Now, Ben," continued he, when this was done, "walk up within twenty yards of Creamer, and let me align you; Kennedy will go with you, and, counting one hundred paces beyond Creamer, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... top of its head was of a deep purple. On its breast was a broad yellow collar; the wings were green, changing to violet towards the edges, and while the feathers on its thighs were of a lovely azure, those of the tail were scarlet, banded with black and tipped with yellow. Its beak which by its shape showed that the bird was a species of parrot, was of ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... in a circle round the parrot's cage and gazed with interest at its occupant. She (Evangeline) was balancing easily on one leg, while with the other leg and her beak she tried to peel a monkey-nut. There are some of us who hate to be watched at meals, particularly when dealing with the dessert, but Evangeline ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... furniture there were a bench, two chairs, some shelves, a cast iron stove, a wooden box partly filled with saw-dust which was used as a cuspidor, and a rough wooden table which served as a desk. In a chair beside the desk sat a tall, lean-faced man, with a nose that suggested an eagle's beak, with its high, thin, arched bridge, little, narrowed, shifting eyes, and a hard mouth whose lips were partly concealed under a drooping, tobacco-stained mustache. He turned as the three men entered, leaning back in his chair, his legs a-sprawl, motioning ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... a branch of a tree with a piece of cheese in her beak when a Fox observed her and set his wits to work to discover some way of getting the cheese. Coming and standing under the tree he looked up and said, "What a noble bird I see above me! Her beauty is without equal, the hue of her plumage exquisite. If only ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... elegant, it rolled its full, dark-blue neck as it moved to her. She crouched down. 'Joey, dear,' she said, in an odd, saturnine caressive voice, 'you're bound to find me, aren't you?' She put her face forward, and the bird rolled his neck, almost touching her face with his beak, as ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... you, Sinclair. You love fighting, you see. You're made for fighting. You make me think of that hawk. All beak and talons, made ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... Boilvar!" yelled the slangy bird, as he fastened his beak in Tim's ear. "Waow! Whoop her up, boys! ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... sack, without eyes or other organs of special sense, which lies motionless under a flat, thin, circular, reddish scale composed of wax and two or three cast skins of the insect itself. The insect has a long, slender, flexible, sucking beak, which is thrust into the leaf or stem or fruit of the orange on which the "scale bug" lives, and through which the insect sucks the orange sap, which is its only food. It lays eggs under its body, and thus also under the protecting wax scale, and dies. From the eggs hatch active ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... defense, at the window; Zoe blushing crimson, and newly started away from her too-enterprising wooer; and the tall, thin, grim old maid, standing stiff, as sentinel, at the bedroom door, and gimleting both her charges alternately with steel-gray orbs; she seemed like an owl, all eyes and beak. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... you have done; Only think of all you can do; A false note is really fun From such a bird as you! Lift up your proud little crest, Open your musical beak; Other birds have to do their best, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... ape in the Zoo To a white cockatoo: "Your beak is uncommonly strong!" Said the white cockatoo To the ape in the Zoo, "And your tail is ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... gently, therefore, he followed the outraged boy back to the barn. The crumbs were all gone. The nimble bills of the hens, the greedy, overbearing beak of the rooster, had gobbled them all up. Resentfully, Tommy picked up his shiny air rifle and went ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... it was very near sunset and the windows were small, and I had slipped off my knapsack and dropped into a big comfortable chair before I noticed a clean-shaven man with a big hooked nose and gleaming eyes seated in the far corner. It was like the beak of a bird, that nose, and I was so fascinated by it that I didn't answer the landlord when he came in and said 'Good evening.' The man opposite said 'Good evening' too, so I suppose that it must have been just a mistaken ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... as a Sacred Bird in Folk-Speech and Child-Song" (198). The latter says: "It is with a sort of awe (Ehrfurcht) that the child looks upon this sacred bird, when, returning with the spring he settles down on the roof, throwing back his beak and greeting the new home with a flap of his wings; or when, standing now on one foot, now on the other, he looks so solemnly at things, that one would think he was devoutly meditating over something or other; ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... expressive sweep of the hand outward the cashier stood waiting, his tall, narrow head, topped by carefully brushed gray hair, thrust forward in the attitude of a parrot about to strike with its beak. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... pictures. To one of them, the title of which was "Saffron and the Rainbow," was appended the explanation, "The effect of this is great." Opposite another, which represented "A Stork, flying with a violet in its beak," stood this motto, "To thee they are all known;" and "Cupid, and a bear licking its cub," was styled "Little by Little." Fedia used to pore over these pictures. He was familiar with them all even to their minutest details. Some of ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... you had so little religion As to catch a hawk, some falcon-lanner, And thrust her broad wings like a banner {270} Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon; And if day by day and week by week You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes, And clipped her wings, and tied her beak, Would it cause you any great surprise If, when you decided to give her an airing, You found she needed a little preparing?— I say, should you be such a curmudgeon, If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon? Yet when the Duke to his lady signified, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... after a while, 'it appeared so awful to me when I saw it coming out of the white mist with its glaring red eyes and terrible beak. It was a ghost I feels, if it wasn't the sea sarpint; and whether or no it bodes no good to the man wot sees it, I know. ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... beak. He simply lives for the sake of booking chaps. If he books a chap out of bounds it keeps him happy for ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... noblest tragic woe. He was not of European blood, he was handsome, but not of European beauty. His face white—not of a Northern whiteness; his eyes protruding somewhat, and rolling in their grief. Those eyes had seen the Orient sun, and his beak was the eagle's. His lips were full. The beard, curling round them, was unkempt and tawny. The locks were of a deep, deep coppery red. The hands, swart and powerful, accustomed to the rough grasp of the wares in which he dealt, seemed unused to the flimsy artifices ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were in camp on the San Miguel water-hole a solitary horseman on the regulation fiery steed dashed in among them. The newcomer was of a portentous and devastating aspect. A beak-like nose with a predatory curve projected above a mass of bristling, blue-black whiskers. His eye was cavernous and fierce. He was spurred, sombreroed, booted, garnished with revolvers, abundantly drunk, and very much unafraid. Few people in the country drained by the Rio Bravo ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... barriers,—rises a crag of a singular shape, jutting far out from the almost perpendicular strata beneath. Its form is precisely that of a gigantic helmet, hammered out by the fanciful artist into the likeness of an eagle, its wings partly outstretched, and its beak—the point of the crag—overshadowing the grim head of some gaunt warrior. With but little aid from the imagination, the whole features may be discerned; hence it was denominated, "The Eagle Crag." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... chloropus).—Very similar are the ways of the moor-hen, with its brilliant beak. But once, by some extraordinary chance, a moor-hen fell down a cottage chimney, and was brought alive for inspection by a boy, who, ignorant of natural objects, as was always the case in villages forty years ago, thought ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?) 220 Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion, Where in the foreground kneels the donor? If such remain, as is my conviction, The hoarding it does ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... throughout this landscape of manifest life. Where are they—all the dying, all the dead, of the populous woods? Where do they hide their little last hours, where are they buried? Where is the violence concealed? Under what gay custom and decent habit? You may see, it is true, an earth-worm in a robin's beak, and may hear a thrush breaking a snail's shell; but these little things are, as it were, passed by with a kind of twinkle for apology, as by a well-bred man who does openly some little solecism which is ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... thoughtfully into the fire, the glow of which fell full upon his face, revealing every feature like carving. His nose was hooked slightly, and to Dick it now looked like the beak of an eagle. The somber eyes, too, ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... this portrait in the full insolence of her young womanhood. She retained not a trace of that handsomeness today. Her hands were skinny, large-veined, discolored by moth patches, and her large aquiline nose rose from her sunken cheeks like the beak of an old eagle—an indomitable old eagle. Many women of sixty-eight had worn far better, but looks need care, spurred by vanity, and she had a profound contempt for both. No doubt if she had made a few of the well-known feminine concessions would have looked at least ten years younger ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... light blue, was the word Love. Out of his left shoulder, in the same direction, rose a staff of deep blue, to which was attached a drooping silver flag crossed with bars of gold. (Its pattern was like the one placed in his grave.) On the top of the staff rested a dove, holding in its beak a wreath, composed of rainbow shades, circling the word Peace in letters whiter than snow. As the new sun continued to rise, the jewelled sky increased in dazzling brilliancy, ten thousand gems of shining gold shot out, and ten thousand sapphires too, all glistening gloriously ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... swept his back. His red jacket was cut short and square, barely reaching to the waist, the better to show off his elegant figure. In his girdle he carried an enormous sabre, the hilt of which was a glittering eagle's beak. A pair of flapped breeches of sky blue moulded the fine muscles of his legs and was braided in rich arabesques of a darker blue on the thighs. He might have been a dancer dressed for some warlike and dashing role, in Achilles ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... given her the stuffed parroquet on her birthday, and Mamma had given her the Bible and the two grey china vases to make up, with a bird painted on each. A black bird with a red beak and red legs. She had set them up on the chimney-piece under the picture of the Holy Family. She put the Bible in the middle and the parroquet on the top of the Bible and the vases one on ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... companions rode up to the chief gateway, a grand circular archway, with all the noble though grotesque mouldings, zigzag and cable, dog-tooth and parrot-beak, visages human and diabolic, wherewith the Norman builders loved to surround their doorways. The doors were of solid oak, heavily guarded with iron, and from a little wicket in the midst peered out a cowled head, and instantly ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Tagaygt-Huwaytt, the half Fellahs that own and spoil the once goodly land; the dogs barked at us, but the men never thought of offering us hospitality. We had an admirable view of the Tihmah Mountains—Zahd, with its "nick;" the parrot-beak of Jebel el-Sht; the three perpendicular Pinnacles and flying Buttresses of Jebel 'Urnub; the isolated lump of Jebel Fs; the single cupola of Jebel Harb; the huge block of Dibbagh, with its tall truncated tower; the little Umm Jedayl, here looking like a pyramid; ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... With beak and claws the bird endeavored to tear at the youth's face. Jack jerked loose the transmitter and beat it to pieces over the bird, but without ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... doves, a pony, and sundry fragments. She had fastened the jessamine sprigs to the tops of their heads by a tiny daub of wet clay, and had evidently been surprised trying to put a sprig into the mouth of one of the doves, for it hung by a little thread of clay from the beak. He detached it and put it in his buttonhole. Poor little Sylvia! she took things awfully to heart. He would be as nice as ever he could to her all day. And, balancing on his stool, he stared fixedly at the wall against which she had fallen back; the line of her soft chin ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... they turned the nose of their machine toward a lower level, running at reduced speed, a huge bird with curving beak, which John said was a condor, dashed from the crags after the airplane. It was followed a moment later by five or six others. The great birds seemed to resent the appearance of so strange a giant in the mountain fastnesses where they had ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... couple of young ducks which were on a pond come swimming towards him. "You come just at the right moment," said he, and laid hold of one of them and was about to wring its neck. On this an old duck which was hidden among the reeds, began to scream loudly, and swam to him with open beak, and begged him urgently to spare her dear children. "Canst thou not imagine," said she, "how thy mother would mourn if any one wanted to carry thee off, and give thee thy finishing stroke?" "Only be quiet," said the good-tempered tailor, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... wars in the lands from whence thou camest—that is if indeed they make wars in the Stars. Now tell us, what shall we do? Twala has brought up many fresh men to take the place of those who have fallen. Yet Twala has learnt his lesson; the hawk did not think to find the heron ready; but our beak has pierced his breast; he fears to strike at us again. We too are wounded, and he will wait for us to die; he will wind himself round us like a snake round a buck, and fight the ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... said Pietro. "Old Elsie is a fierce old kite, with strong beak and long claws, and will not let the poor girl have any good of her youth. Some say she means to marry her to some rich old man, and some say she will shut her up in a convent, which I should say was a sore hurt and loss to the world. There are a plenty of women, whom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... ship was of deep draft and rode to anchor, the shallow flat-bottomed long ships were drawn up on shore. The Phoenicians took the Egyptian and Cretan models and improved them. They lowered the bows of the fighting ships, added to the blunt ram a beak near the water's edge, and strung the shields of the fighting men along the bulwarks to protect the rowers. To increase the driving force and the speed, they added a second and then a third bank of oars, thus producing the "bireme" and the ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... long even for such a tall man, and the huge, bony hands were gnarled and knotted. Regardless of the season, he had removed his bowler hat, revealing his forehead, which was high, flat and narrow. His nose was a large, fleshy, hawklike beak, and from the side of each nostril a deep indentation extended downwards until it disappeared in the drooping moustache that concealed his mouth when he was not speaking, but the vast extent of which was perceptible now as he opened it to call out the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... built pyramids. Little Thais loved Ahmes like a father, like a mother, like a nurse, and like a dog. She followed the slave into the cellar when he went to fill the amphorae, and into the poultry-yard amongst the scraggy and ragged fowls, all beak, claws, and feathers, who flew swifter than eagles before the knife of the black cook. Often at night, on the straw, instead of sleeping, he built for Thais little water-mills, and ships no bigger than his hand, with all ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... his chin, his jaw, was likewise firm or harsh, with all the fierceness and indomitableness of the male—the nose also. It was the nose of a being born to conquer and command. It just hinted of the eagle beak. It might have been Grecian, it might have been Roman, only it was a shade too massive for the one, a shade too delicate for the other. And while the whole face was the incarnation of fierceness and strength, the primal melancholy from which he suffered seemed to greaten the lines ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... an assembly of strange things, Of horrors such as nightmare only brings. Asps, and spread eagles without beak or feet, Sirens and mermaids here and dragons meet, And antlered stags and fabled unicorn, And fearful things of monstrous fancy born. Upon the rigid form of morion's sheen Winged lions and the Cerberus are seen, And serpents winged and finned; things made to fright The timid foe, alone by ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... of a leguminous plant, Physostigma venenosum, a native of tropical Africa. It derives its scientific name from a curious beak-like appendage at the end of the stigma, in the centre of the flower; this appendage though solid was supposed to be hollow (hence the name from [Greek: phusa], a bladder, and stigma). The plant has a climbing habit ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... brought him a native woman, each holding an arm and thrusting her forward between them. She was not at all unlike a native woman of to-day, either in dress or sullenness; she had the beak and the keen eyes and the cruel lips of the "Hills." They showed her to him, and it was quite clear that they compared her to their own women, left behind; the comparison ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... he threw him, Hid in his wing his beak and wept, There ceased his sorrows to pursue him, The ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... by the chimney, he heard a rustling and stirring about overhead; one of the little owls clicked its beak in its sleep, and he heard a sleepy, whining voice: "Now just you stop scrouging me. Screecher is ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... is loud, very harsh and peculiar, and may be likened to the sound of the Spanish guttural g, followed by a rough double r r; when uttering this cry it elevates its head higher and higher, till at last, with its beak wide open, the crown almost touches the lower part of the back. This fact, which has been doubted, is quite true; I have seen them several times with their heads backwards in a completely inverted position. To these observations ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... feet, and one of this size carries from seven to ten people. The body is formed by the hollowed-out trunk of a tree, tapering and rising at each end, short and rounded behind, but in front run out into a long beak. A stout plank on each side raises the canoe a foot, forming a gunwale secured by knees, the seam at the junction being payed over with a black pitch-like substance. This gunwale is open at the stern, the ends not being connected, but the bow is closed by a raised ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... explaining about, and I got to thinking how much old Justice Hawkins looked like the counsel in 'Alice in Wonderland' when they tried the knave of spades for stealing the tarts. He has just the same sort of a beak and the same sort of a wig, and I wondered why he had his wig powdered and the others didn't. Pollock's wig had a hole in the top; you could see it when he bent over to take notes. He was always taking notes. I don't believe he understood ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... one of those keen profiled men who have such roguish eyes when they come to earth. Frenchmen strolling down the boulevards glanced skywards and smiled. They were brave lads who defended the air of Paris. No Boche would dare to poke the beak of his engine above the housetops. But one or two men were uneasy and stood with strained eyes. There was something peculiar about the cut of those wings en haut. They seemed to bend back at the tips, unlike a Bleriot, with its straight spread ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... second time before there was any answer. They heard voices—Massey's and another. Then the druggist came to the entrance, unbolted it and stuck his head out—his gray hair all ruffled up in a tuft which made him, with his big beak and red-rimmed eyes, ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... he took a few seeds and began to coax the bird, until it, in point of fact, performed various tricks, on the stage, clasping in its beak a mask ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Andrew, and that I can. 'Twas a quist a-cooing in the tree one time—and then—she did recollect herself and did sharpen up her tongue and 'twas another sort of bird what could drive its beak into the ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... Castlereagh till he's got them under cow — Just pick a quarrel and raise a fight, and leather him good and hard, And I'll take good care that his wretched sheep don't wander a half a yard. It's a five-pound job if you belt him well — do anything short of kill, For there isn't a beak on the Castlereagh will fine you ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... indifference did not please the olive-sided, but he alighted on a branch below and bided his time; it came soon, when the goldenwing took flight, and he came down upon him like a kingbird on a crow. I heard the snap of the woodpecker's beak as he passed into the thick woods, but nobody was hurt, and the flycatcher ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... rapped out the words in tones of unusual vigour, a little, stout, old gentleman, opening a door behind Gotthold, received them fairly in the face. With his parrot's beak for a nose, his pursed mouth, his little goggling eyes, he was the picture of formality; and in ordinary circumstances, strutting behind the drum of his corporation, he impressed the beholder with a certain air of ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Isabel a little conventual curtsey and then came to be kissed. The Countess Gemini simply nodded without getting up: Isabel could see she was a woman of high fashion. She was thin and dark and not at all pretty, having features that suggested some tropical bird—a long beak-like nose, small, quickly-moving eyes and a mouth and chin that receded extremely. Her expression, however, thanks to various intensities of emphasis and wonder, of horror and joy, was not inhuman, and, as regards her appearance, it ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... Coon thought that he would drive Solomon out of his snug house and live in it himself. But he soon changed Solomon Owl—so Fatty discovered—had sharp, strong claws and a sharp, strong beak as well, which curled over his face in a ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... she added; and then she held the bird toward me. His little beak moved from her mouth to mine, and the delightful sensation seemed like the forerunner of the ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... Indian stork with an enormous beak, about 5 ft. in height, which feeds on carrion and offal, and is useful in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... changes, we have in Lithuanian szwilpti for the song of birds. Of all natural objects, different kinds of reeds and the hollow stalks of plants are, owing to their hollow and cylindrical form, best adapted for the imitation of a bird's beak and the sonorous transmission of breath. In many languages the word for a flute is the same as that for a reed. In Sanscrit, vanca and venu mean a flute and bamboo; in Persian, na and nay mean a flute and reed; in ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... the Jotun Loki is loosed. The shadows groan on the ways of Hel, until the fire of Surt has consumed the tree. Hrym steers from the east, the waters rise, the mundane snake is coiled in jotun-rage. The worm heats the water, and the eagle screams; the pale of beak tears carcases; the ship Naglfar is loosed. Surt from the south comes with flickering flame; shines from ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... I've learned owl-eology. I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections, And can not be blinded to any deflections Arising from unskilful fingers that fail To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail. Mister Brown! Mister Brown! Do take that bird down, Or you'll soon be the laughing-stock all over town!" And the barber ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... and simple thing, my dear Edward. When we go on board the DUNCAN, turn her beak head to the east, and go right along the thirty-seventh parallel till we come back to our starting ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... to do what the Esquimaux tell us was done. Men so placed are no more responsible for their actions than a madman who commits a great crime. Thank God, when starving for days, and compelled to eat bits of skin, the bones of ptarmigan up to the beak and down to the toe-nails, I felt no painful craving; but I have seen men who suffered so much that I believe they would have eaten any kind of ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... won't you ketch it," he raged in his puny wrath. "My master's a law-cove, and he'll 'ave y' up before the beak." ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... towards the speaker and looked full upon the beak nose, cleft cheek and bristling red moustache of an old friend. "Good Lord, The Beachcomber!" I breathed. He started, peered at me and growled, "Captain Dawnay-Devenish, if it's all the same to you, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... fire to shore, and Raven said, 'Because you were cowardly and obeyed me only through fear, your beak shall remain forever burned off and short as it ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... with long beak outstretched before him, and long legs outstretched behind cast a beady eye upon him, and shrilled "Cor-reck! Cor-reck!" in unregenerate approbation of ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... willingly and kindly aid him. Wondrous to relate, the bird not only kept the place it had once taken, but as often as the encounter was renewed, raising itself on its wings, it attacked the face and eyes of the foe with its beak and talons, until Valerius slays him, terrified at the sight of such a prodigy, and confounded both in his vision and understanding. The crow soaring out of sight makes towards the east. Hitherto the advanced guards on ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... counties of Worcester and Essex, presented similar examples of political geography. It is said that Gilbert Stuart, seeing in the office of the Columbian Centinel an outline of the Essex outer district, nearly encircling the rest of the country, added with his pencil a beak to Salisbury, and claws to Salem and Marblehead, exclaiming, 'There, that will do for a salamander!' 'Salamander!' said Mr. Russell, the editor: 'I call it a Gerrymander!' The mot obtained vogue, and a rude cut of the figure published in the ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... and also heard speak the beak, And sound in its voice and I and my, When it was in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... burning spot, and taking off my hat, I thanked the man for his most kind attention. He pointed out to me that time spent in explaining the condition of my nose, would have been pure loss: the danger was pressing, and he attacked it at once! I was indeed entirely unconscious of the state of my beak—the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... fine. The fearfull bird his little house now builds In trees and walls, in Cities and in fields. The outside strong, the inside warm and neat; A natural Artificer compleat. The clocking hen her chirping chickins leads With wings & beak defends them from the gleads My next and last is fruitfull pleasant May, Wherein the earth is clad in rich aray, The Sun now enters loving Gemini, And heats us with the glances of his eye, Our thicker rayment makes us lay aside Lest by his fervor we be torrified. All flowers the Sun now ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... hour we had a fire made of dry melon stalks, and he was toasting over it, and we made such a feed as we had not tasted for a week. We ate that pauw; nothing was left of him but his leg-bones and his beak, and we felt not a little ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... necessity must it have been which could have forced the poor, hunted wanderers of the wilderness to fly for refuge and protection from the talons and beak of the eagle to the claws and teeth of the lion. It was but a change, and made with but little hope of its being for the better. None saw this more clearly, felt it more deeply, than the sagacious Tecumseh; and his proud spirit groaned under the humiliating ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... which, having exhausted its malignancy without producing any particular effect, ended by gently harmonizing with the captain's sandy hair, reddish beard, and tanned skin. His mouth was like a badly made buttonhole, which gaped a little when he smiled. He had a nose like a parrot's beak, and his eyes were blue, kindly, and wise in their straightforwardness. When he would render his costume absolutely de rigueur, he wore a leathern jacket with manifold pockets, from one to another ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... beneath Lay earth and sea: the winds, the clouds were there, The moon and sun, each in its several place; There too were all the stars that, fixed in heaven, Are borne in its eternal circlings round. Above and through all was the infinite air Where to and fro flit birds of slender beak: Thou hadst said they lived, and floated on the breeze. Here Tethys' all-embracing arms were wrought, And Ocean's fathomless flow. The outrushing flood Of rivers crying to the echoing hills All round, to right, to left, rolled ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... his eyes, and indignant gestures, exclaimed, 'It's not true! The little bird said, coui, coui, coui, coui, before he fell into the fire, to make his mother hear; but the mother did not hear him, and he burnt his wings, his claws, and his beak, and he died, poor little bird.' And the child ran away, crying as if he had been beaten. He had been worse than beaten; he had been deceived, or at least he thought so; his story had been spoiled by being altered." So seriously do children for a long ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... hole under the garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident the creature languished ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the Deacon! I didn't know it gave his like, in these lax days. He has a beautifully chiseled old face with an eagle beak and ice-blue eyes, and he looks as if his favorite winter sport were Turning Erring Daughters Out into ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... as he had done in the days before his marriage. In his strong, almost passionate nature, there was one great weakness; the love and admiration of women was a necessity to him. He could no more help trying to make women love him, than the kingfisher can help thrusting down his beak when the bright speckled sides of his prey flash through the water. It was from neither cruelty nor vanity, for Thorne had less of both traits than usually falls to the lot of men; it was rather from the restlessness, the yearning of a strong nature for that which it needed, but had not yet ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... between a stork and a swan—a melancholy water-fowl brought from Astracan by the Russian ambassador." This writer tells us, "It was diverting to see how the pelican would toss up and turn a flat fish, plaice or flounder, to get it right into its gullet at its lower beak, which being filmy stretches to a prodigious wideness when it devours a great fish. Here was also a small water-fowl, not bigger than a more-hen, that went almost quite erect like the penguin of America. It would eate as much fish as its ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... barrel-like paunch," cried Giles, "do I pronounce this dire and dreadful ban, videlicet, Sir Fatness, nota bene and to wit: may the fiend rend it with gruesome gripings—aye, rend it with claws and beak, unguibus et rostro, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... worm she found there. The fowls darted at her hands; but to amuse herself with the sight of their greediness she held the worm high above them. At last she opened her fingers, and forthwith the fowls hustled one another and pounced upon the worm. One of them fled with it in her beak, pursued by the others; it was thus taken, snatched away, and retaken many times until one hen, with a mighty gulp, swallowed it altogether. At that they all stopped short with heads thrown back, and eyes on the alert for another worm. Desiree called them by their names, and talked pettingly to them; ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... you a little sketch to-day from the foreground of a Venetian picture, in which there is a bit that will show you this precision of method. It is the head of a parrot with a little flower in his beak from a picture of Carpaccio's, one of his series of the Life of St. George. I could not get the curves of the leaves, and they are patched and spoiled; but the parrot's head, however badly done, is put down with no more touches than the Venetian gave ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... of Tomo Chichi, on presenting the feather of an Eagle to Oglethorpe, is very expressive in his own laconic explication. By a little paraphrase it may be understood to import: "The Eagle has a sharp beak for his enemies, but down on his breast for his friend. He has strong wings, for he is aspiring; but they give shelter to feeble ones, for he is ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... soft-hairy or smooth. Leaves: More or less divided, the lobes with rounded teeth; large lower compound leaves on long petioles. Fruit: An erect pod, each of the 5 divisions tipped with a long, sharp beak. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... claws, which looked slender as cobwebs, were knotted close to his body, and it was long before one could feel the least motion in them. Finally, to our great joy, we felt a brisk little kick, and then a flutter of wings, and then a determined peck of the beak, which showed that there was sonic bird left in him yet, and that he meant at any rate to ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... said, and the creature looked up intelligently at her as she rapped him on the back with a long knitting-needle.—"And you, Mademoiselle Cleopatre!—attention!" she continued, tapping the ancient fowl on the beak. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... and claws, disclosing to their sight The glorious meed of high heroic might. For with insatiate vengeance, he pursued, And never-ending hate, the feathery brood. Unhappy they, confiding in the length Of horny beak, or talon's crooked strength, Who durst abide his rage; the blade descends, And from the panting trunk the pinion rends. Laid low in dust the pinion waves no more, The trunk, disfigured, stiffens in its gore. What hosts of heroes fell beneath his force! What heaps of chicken-carnage marked ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... his possession a hen, which answered the purpose of a cat in destroying mice. She was constantly seen watching close to a corn rick, and the moment a mouse appeared, she seized it in her beak, and carried it to a meadow adjoining, where she would play with it like a young cat for some time, and then kill it. She has been known to catch four or five mice a ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... up the grave with the earth they had turned up, they flew away, but returned in a few minutes, bringing with them the bird that had committed the murder, one holding one of its wings in its beak, and the other one of its legs; the criminal all the while crying out in a doleful manner, and struggling to escape. They carried it to the grave of the bird which it had lately sacrificed to its rage, and there killed it in just revenge for the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... beautiful bird, with plumage of the finest shining blue, with purple beak and legs, the natural and living ornament of the temples and palaces of the Greeks and Romans, which, from the stateliness of its part, as well as the brilliancy of its colors, has ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... nerve was obviously shaken by his competitor's undoubtedly fine performance, and he craked indecisively. At 4.30 a.m. I distinctly heard him utter a flat note. At 4.47 he missed the second part of a bar entirely. Thisbe's beak, I must believe, curled derisively; Strong-i'-th'-lung laughed contemptuously, and at 5.10 a.m. Eugene faltered, stammered and fled from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... the wild and clamorous sea-gulls Toiled with beak and claws together, Made the rifts and openings wider In the mighty ribs of Nahma, And from peril and from prison, From the body of the sturgeon, From the peril of the ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... Colonel Rutler was robust and tall; his face wore an expression of audacity, bordering on cruelty; his hair, lying in close, damp meshes, was of a deep red; his mustache of the same color hid a large mouth overshadowed by a hooked nose, resembling the beak ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... him. All night the lion remained, roaring at intervals, and Bar Shalmon clung to one of the upper branches afraid to sleep lest he should fall off and be devoured. When morning broke, a new danger threatened him. A huge eagle flew round the tree and darted at him with its cruel beak. Then the great bird settled on the thickest branch, and Bar Shalmon moved stealthily forward with a knife which he drew from his belt. He crept behind the bird, but as he approached it spread its big wings, and Bar Shalmon, to prevent himself being swept from ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... thee, Kai, that there is neither man nor beast that could endure that shower and live. For not one of those hailstones would be stopped either by the flesh, or by the skin, until it had reached the bone. I turned my horse's flanks towards the shower, and placed the beak of my shield over his head and neck, while I held the upper part of it over my own head. And thus I withstood the shower. When I looked on the tree, there was not a single leaf upon it, and then the sky became clear; and ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... passed along, he saw an old man counting on a table a big heap of gold pieces, which Kiki thought to be money. One of these would buy him supper and a bed, he reflected, so he transformed himself into a magpie and, flying through the open window, caught up one of the gold pieces in his beak and flew out again before the old man could interfere. Indeed, the old man who was robbed was quite helpless, for he dared not leave his pile of gold to chase the magpie, and before he could place the gold in a sack in his pocket the robber bird ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... together, fell for about 100 feet, as though hit by a rifle bullet. After the first blow, the large wings of the heron expanded, and checked the rapid fall; the falcon was fixed upon its back, holding the neck in its sharp beak, while it clung to the body with its claws. In this position the two birds slowly descended towards the ground, twirling round and round in their descent from a ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... minutes there was no difference in speed, nor any sign by which the instructed might detect the probable evidence of defeat or success. The whole ten, which formed the front line, skimmed the water with an equal velocity, beak to beak, as if some secret attraction held each in its place, while the humble, though equally light bark of the fisherman steadily kept its ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... elements of Materia Medica, and does in reality effect cures. I class him among what are popularly known as humbugs, however, for he is a pretender to more wisdom than he possesses. It was to me a strange and suggestive scene—the bald, beak-nosed, coal-eyed charlatan, standing in the market-place, so celebrated in history, peering through his gold spectacles at the upturned faces below him, while the bony skeleton at his side swayed in the wind, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... she roused herself, and her great wings flew out, striking his arm and face as he pushed them forward; and had he not drawn back swiftly, her iron beak would surely have rent his ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... bits of leaf and bark. It had two eggs in it, quite white, and each about as large as a small sugarplum. 6. When you approach the spot where one of these birds has built its nest, it is necessary to be careful. The mother bird will dart at you and try to peck your eyes. Its sharp beak may hurt your eyes most severely, and even destroy the sight. 7. The poor little thing knows no other way of defending its young, and instinct teaches it that you might carry off its nest if ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... not get that hen away from the bad fox. They used to think me a slow dull reader for not getting on with my lesson, but I used to sit and picture to myself the red hen, with its wings beating helplessly, screeching in terrified protest, or perhaps, if he had got it by the neck, with beak wide agape and silent, and eyes staring, as it left the farmyard for ever. I have seen blood-spillings and down-crushings and abject defeat here and there in my time, but the red hen has remained in my mind as the type of helpless tragedy." ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... Spike Brennon his work-out. Spike had laboured to develop other talent in Newbern, but with ill success. When you got 'em learned a little about the game they acted like a lot of sissies over a broken nose or a couple of front teeth out or something. What he wanted was lads that would get the beak straightened, pretty near as good as new, or proper gold ones put in, and come back looking for more trouble. Wilbur Cowan alone he had ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Tigers do not generally come so high. Of birds, I mean about Churra, there are several species of hawks, and their old companions crows and swallows; but I have seen no sparrows, which is singular enough. There is one beautiful species of jay, with crimson-orange beak and legs, and a pretty king-fisher; but, except perhaps in the valleys, birds, I should say, are very scarce. With respect to shooting, scarcely any is to be had; wood- cocks are found in the dells about Churra, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... light, and in some cases the jaws, though bearing teeth, are beak-like at their extremities and appear to have been enveloped in a horny sheath. In the part of the vertebral column which lies between the haunch bones and is called the sacrum, a number of vertebrae may unite together into one whole, and in this respect, as in some details of its structure, ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... A wooden staircase leading to the upper floor. In the foreground near the feet of the mother, a hen leading her young ones, to whom a little girl throws crumbs of bread; a basin full of water, and on the edge of it, one of the small chickens with its beak up in the air so as to let the water go down." Diderot then proceeds to criticise the details, telling us the very words that he hears the father addressing to the bridegroom, and as a touch of observation of nature, that while ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... his feet, and showing their teeth to all besides; and for virtues such as these they were rewarded by the highest offices in church, camp, and state, while new taxes and imposts were invented almost daily to feed their avarice and supply their extravagance. France, doomed to feel the beak and talons of these harpies in its entrails, impoverished by a government that robbed her at home while it humiliated her abroad, struggled vainly in its misery, and was now on the verge of another series of internecine combats—civil ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... surrender grew inevitable; but its Moorish commander, Mirat, though an infidel, was, for his nobility of character, in special favor with the Virgin,—Notre Dame de Puy.[23] In this extremity, she sent to him an eagle bearing in its beak a live fish; and Mirat promptly sent it to Charlemagne, to show his heavenly succor. The king, knowing that there was no possible fishing on the castle hill, perceived that it was a miracle; and lessening his rigor in the face of this sign, proposed less hard terms: the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... and there, and already a monstrous protuberance was coming into view midway along its back, as if forced into position from within. Where the bow of the tramp had been there were colossal treads now visible. There was a sort of conning-tower, armored and grim. There was a ghastly steel beak. The thing was a war-machine of monstrous size. It emitted a sudden roaring sound, as of internal-combustion engines operating at full power, and lurched heavily. The steel plates of the tramp still visible above water, crumpled up like paper and were trodden under. The thing came toward ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... of 1615, pursuing one day a remarkable bird "which was the size of a hen, had a beak like a parrot and was entirely yellow, except for a red head and blue wings, and which had the flight of the partridge"—a bird I cannot identify—lost his way in the woods. For two days he wandered in the wilderness, sustaining himself by shooting birds and roasting ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... dares to approach its nest. The bird circles round the disturber of the peace with evident exasperation, and now and then goes whizzing past his head at such a furious rate that he must every moment fear that he will be wounded with its sharp beak. ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... was shy and reserved. The fond male flew to a knot-hole in an old apple-tree and coaxed her to his side. I heard a fine confidential warble—the old, old story. But the female flew to a near tree and uttered her plaintive, homesick note. The male went and got some dry grass or bark in his beak and flew again to the hole in the old tree, and promised unremitting devotion; but the other said "Nay," and flew away in the distance. When he saw her going, or rather heard her distant note, he dropped his stuff and cried out in a tone that said plainly ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... a bough almost over Dick's head, but this was game far too large for Mr. Owl's beak and talons, and he soon flew away in search of something nearer his size. A raccoon on a bough stared with glowing eyes and then ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... respectable women then. With gay ladies the habit was to hold them up just a little higher. I saw a pair of feet in lovely boots which seemed perfection, and calves which were exquisite. I fired directly. Just by Beak Street she stopped, and looked into a shop. "Is she gay?" I thought. "No." I followed on, passed her, then turned round, and met her eye. She looked at me, but the look was so steady, indifferent, and with so little of the gay woman in her ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... the most odd and interesting bird on the American continent except the emperor penguin. Its beak baffles description, its long legs and webbed feet are a joke, its nesting habits are amazing, and its food habits the despair of most zoological-garden keepers. Millions of flamingos inhabit the shores of a number of small ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... word for word and adds something about the eagle, for instance, the last part may be, "to tell you that she has an eagle with silver beak." The next player may add, "golden claws," the next "emerald eyes," the next "purple feathers," ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann |
