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Roost   Listen
verb
Roost  v. t.  See Roust, v. t.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Roost" Quotes from Famous Books



... is well known, they nearly always post a sentinel in some tree top to keep watch while the rest of the flock is feeding in the field below. In the fall and winter, large numbers of them flock, and at night all roost in one piece of woods; some of the "crow roosts" are of vast extent and contain thousands of individuals. Crows nest near the tops of large trees, preferably pines, either in woods or single trees in fields. Their nests ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... muezzin sounded, cracked voices cried unmelodiously from all the minaret tops. Immediately, as if it were their signal, all the crows arose from the town, hovered around in batches for a moment, chattering, and flew away up the hill to roost in the trees round the hospital ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... happy, and now set forth the beauty and harmony of the world, seen from the loftiness of the divine roost: below all was dark, unjust, sorrowful; seen from on high, it all became clear, luminous, ordered: the world was like the works of a ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... native tongue, well adapted to such matters; and at each carrion crow or magpie, down came his crossbow, and he would go a furlong off the road to circumvent it; and indeed he did shoot one old crow with laudable neatness and despatch, and carried it to the nearest hen-roost, and there slipped in and set it upon a nest. "The good-wife will say, 'Alack, here is Beelzebub ahatching of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... but woods, canebrakes, cotton, and negroes, and yet, in her kindness and hospitality, she displayed a refinement of feeling and good breeding. She was daughter of the celebrated Daniel Boone, a name which has acquired a reputation even in Europe. She immediately ransacked her pantry, her hen-roost, and garden, and when we returned from the cotton-mill, to which our host, in his farmer's pride, had conducted us, we found, upon an immense table, a meal which would have satisfied fifty of those voracious Bostonians whom ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... That year I had a large number of hens, and Jacko went about among them with the most perfect indifference, never looking on them to lust after them, as I could see, and never touching an egg or a feather. So excellent was his reputation that I would have trusted him in the hen-roost in the dark without counting the hens. In short, he was domesticated, and I was fond of him and very proud of him, exhibiting him to all our visitors as an example of what affectionate treatment would do in subduing the brute instincts. I preferred him to my dog, whom I had, with much ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... availed to protect a field of maize or a patch of potatoes; the traditional negro was not more skilful in looting a fowl-house;* (* Despite Lee's proclamations against indiscriminate foraging, "the hens," he said, "had to roost mighty high when the Texans were about.") he had an unerring scent for whisky or "apple-jack;" and the address he displayed in compassing the destruction of the unsuspecting porker was only equalled, when he was caught flagrante delicto, by ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... power, or failed to believe that he could himself take a high part in high affairs when his own turn came. He was biding his time, and patiently looking forward to the days when he himself would sit authoritative at some board, and talk and direct, and rule the roost, while lesser stars sat round and obeyed, as he had so ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... as the pote says." And Overland grinned. "But I got to put that little chaffer to roost somewhere." ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... some checkerberry-leaves as he spoke; "but I may have the fun of looking on, I suppose. But see, these fellows are kinder debating down there, and looking up, like hens when they are going to fly up on to the roost. Hadn't thee better give 'em a word of advice, before they come up, just to tell 'em handsomely they'll ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... had its two crows, either as guardians of the farm—for two crows implied good luck—or as if they were located by couples in various places, which places became their feeding ground and homes. This, however, is not true of rooks, which feed in flocks and roost in flocks. ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... white, even banks. Once or twice I went by a lonely cottage with a smell of earthy turf coming from the chimney, weeds or oats sprouting on the thatch, and a broken cart before the door, with many straggling hens going to roost on the shafts. Near these cottages little bands of half-naked children, filled with the excitement of evening, were running and screaming over the bogs, where the heather was purple already, giving me the strained feeling of regret one has so often in these places ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge

... snow-storms as a rule Aren't looked on as man-killers, and although I'd rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep Under it all, his door sealed up and lost, Than the man fighting it to keep above it, Yet think of the small birds at roost and not In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are? Their bulk in water would be frozen rock In no time out to-night. And yet to-morrow They will come budding boughs from tree to tree Flirting their wings and saying Chickadee, ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost

... continuous plunge of a cascade somewhere near at hand among the mountains. The air struck chill, but tasted good and vigorous in the nostrils - a fine, dry, old mountain atmosphere. I was dead sleepy, but I returned to roost with a grateful mountain ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... yet turned into their fen, because a new scheme had occurred to Marvel, relative to some reeds with which a part of this fen was covered; on these reeds myriads of starlings were accustomed to roost, who broke them down with their weight. Now Marvel knew that such reeds would be valuable for thatching, and with this view he determined to drive away the starlings; but the measures necessary ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... for the missing scalp. But to the Fox was given this honor, because he had first found the body of the Good Hunter in the forest. The Fox set out upon his search, in his foxy way. He visited every hen-roost and every bird's-nest, but no scalp did he find. "Of course not!" screamed the birds when he returned from his fruitless quest, "Of course no bird has taken the Good Hunter's scalp. You should have known better ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown

... in my lady's bower, (Oh! weary mother, drive the cows to roost;) They faintly droop for a little hour; My lady's head droops ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... justly surnamed "The Scourge of God". Yet in flight lies safety. Skirmish and run To forest and fastness, Teuton and Hun, From the banks of the Rhine to the Danube's shore, And back to the banks of the Rhine once more; Retreat from the face of an armed foe, Robbing garden and hen-roost where'er you go. Let the short alliance betwixt us cease, I and my Norsemen will go in peace! I wot it never will suit with us, Such existence, tame and inglorious; I could live no worse, living single-handed, And better ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... things there are, no doubt you know, To which a fox is used: A rooster that is bound to crow, A crow that's bound to roost, And whichsoever he espies He tells ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl

... it had got into comfortable quarters. There was just enough cold crispiness in the air to-night to make the two fat cows move faster into the stable, with smoking breath, to bring out a crow of defiance from the chickens huddling together on the roost; it spread, too, a white rime over the windows, shining red in the sinking sun. When the sun was down, the nipping northeaster grew sharper, swept about the little valley, rattled the bare-limbed trees, blew boards off the corn-crib that Doctor Blecker had built ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... pit,' he replied, 'an' earns a good wage, but whiles I tires ov it an' longs for a walk up the hedgerows, to hear the partridge call and the pheasant shoutin' as he gans up to roost, an' to say to myself, "Aha, my fine fellow, but thoo'll be i' my bag to-morrow night, an' in my kite the night after that."' He paused a moment, then asked suspiciously, 'Thoo'll not blab—thoo'll not tell ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... blood and thoughts have twin conception: Study to act deeds yet unchronicled; Cast native monsters in the moulds of men; Case vicious devils under sancted rochets; Unhasp the wicket, where all perjureds roost, And swarm this ball with treasons. Do thy worst; Thou canst not (hell-hound) cross my star[A] to-night. [A] [Old copy, steare.] Nor blind that glory, where ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... his friend. "Duck back into the restaurant, Bob. Get a pocketful of dry rice from the Chink. Trail those birds to their nest and find where they roost. Then stick around like a burr. Scatter rice behind you, and I'll drift along later. First off, I got to stay and talk with Miss Joyce. And, say, take along ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... floor; but my prompt action revealed who the intruder was, by producing a wild flutter and a frantic cackling! Before my companion could strike a light the mysterious attack was fully explained. The supposed midnight robber and possible assassin was simply a peaceable hen that had gone to roost on my arm, and, on finding her position unsteady, had dug her claws into what ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... blood-hound was chained to one of the posts of the verandah; Jezebel, the noble mastiff-bitch, lay basking before the door, perfectly contented with her situation and prospects; and little Fig was busily hunting among the shrubs, and barking at the small birds which he disturbed as they were preparing to roost. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... one of the long perches where the fowls roost at night, the newly hatched Chicken lay shivering in the nest, and on the floor were the pieces of the wonderful shiny egg. The Dorking Hen had knocked it from the nest ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson

... he had originally made an honest mistake and was no longer positive of the defendant's identity, in which case when the grand jury threw out the case nobody would ever know the reason and no chickens would come home to roost on him. ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... through the old house for the last time, sniffing the agreeable odor of aged hypo still permeating the dark room, re-covering the empty stains of skins and traces of maps on the walls, and re-filling in my mind the vacant shelves. The vampires had returned to their chosen roost, the martins still swept through the corridors, and as I went down the hill, a moriche oriole sent a silver shaft of song after me from the sentinel palm, just as he had ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... threatened us. Though we felt quite secure in our "roost" we could not remain there long. It was by no means comfortable, straddling the naked branch of a tree; but the comfort was a small consideration. We were both used to riding such a stock-horse, and as for Brace, he could have gone to sleep with ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... sayin' that Sabriny air weak-minded, nuther—thet is weakmindeder then thet she air a—she hev the mine uv a female, an' nachully not able ter hannel proppity. An' I haint sayin' she aint gettin' mighty well took keer uv by Lige, nuther. The last time I war theer she war roolin' the roost. She slep' in the bes' bed, an' et offen the bes' plate, an' had the bes' corn dodger an' shote; but what I air—that is what some air thinkin' about air whence Lige onct gits the hull er thet proppity in bulk, air hit goin' ter be thet away? Mine you, I aint asten ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... lower, I swear to rob this chicken-grower!' Revolving such revenge within, When night had still'd the various din, And poppies seem'd to bear full sway O'er man and dog, as lock'd they lay Alike secure in slumber deep, And cocks and hens were fast asleep, Upon the populous roost he stole. By negligence,—a common sin,— The farmer left unclosed the hole, And, stooping down, the fox went in. The blood of every fowl was spill'd, The citadel with murder fill'd. The dawn disclosed sad sights, I ween, When heaps ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... turned, expecting—not to see a bear or a fox, but my fancies incorporate. The leaves were still quivering, but I saw no apparent cause for so much disturbance. I probably had startled a brace of partridges from their roost. They brought me back to the actual world, and I came home to an excellent dinner, which I found my father ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... I daresay it's comfortable enough; so the sun shines in mornin's, thet's the most I care for. You'll make any kind o' house pooty to look at inside, an' I reckon we needn't roost on the fences outside, a-lookin' at it, any more'n we choose to. It does look, for all the world though, like 'Bijah Jenkins's old yaller barn; 'n' thet there jog's jest the way he jined on his cow-shed. I declare it's too redicklus." And the old lady ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... single pairs or in little bands of four or five. In the autumn evenings, however, they assemble in considerable flocks before going to roost and make a wonderful chattering, as if comparing notes of the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... enough to roost in the fall, I expect we'll have to gather that crop with a gun," Hiram ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... flew to their nests. The chickens went to roost. The cows came home from the pasture and stood mooing at the gate. It grew so dark that the people could not see ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin

... supported by a line of wooden stanchions. There were arm racks round the stanchions, containing muskets, cutlasses, and long, double-barrelled pistols. As I expected, there were several bee-skeps hanging from nails, or lying on the floor. I was in the smugglers' roost, perhaps in the presence of Captain ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... roost with Ad," said he. "Heard the old gent say so. Guess Ad has been whining to the grandmarm not to have you. He is a regular old Betty. 'Fraid you'll upset some of his ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... said, "you've been lyin' to me two weeks, tryin' to buy that rooster that I wouldn't sell no more'n I'd sell my first husband's gravestun'. And when you couldn't git it by lyin', you stole it off'm the roost to-night. And to make sure there won't be any more lies, I've followed you right here to find out the truth. Now what ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... yellow-gray cloud with no deeper nor shallower tints to it, rising steadily, moving swiftly, shut off the noonday glare. The shadows deepened below this strange un-cloud-like cloud, not dark, but dense. The few chickens in the settlement mistook the clock and went to roost. At every settler's house, wondering eyes watched the unheard-of phenomenon, so like, yet utterly unlike, the ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... with the Burgdalers, and they were exceeding merry; and especially the women of them, they were chattering like the stares in the autumn evening, when they gather from the fields in the tall elm-trees before they go to roost. ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... accommodation of this multitude were cities of nest houses, roost houses, and the like. Huge structures elevated on poles swarmed with doves. A duck pond even had been provided for its ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... over an' over again to insure my life," explained the stoker, "but I told 'im as I didn't 'old with laying out good money wot wouldn't never come 'ome to roost-like, until I was dead. Then Abey leans over the counter an' ketches me by the neck 'andkerchief an' says, 'Think of the worst life you know, an' 'ave a bit on that.' Naturally, talkin' o' bad lives, you're the first chap whose name comes ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... against her in the street; has constantly occasion to pass under her window, or to talk to some one opposite to it. He, of course, looks up; Pompilia looks down; the neighbours say, 'What of that?' The Count is uncomfortable, but he is only laughed at for his pains; the fox prowls round the hen-roost undisturbed. He wakes one morning, after a drugged sleep, to find the house ransacked, and Pompilia gone, and everyone able to inform him that she has gone with Caponsacchi, and to Rome. He pursues them, and overtakes them where they have spent the night together. She brazens the matter out, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... requisition. It was their honest pride to see a well-furnished dresser, showing copper and pewter in shining splendor as if for ornament rather than for use. In all this they differed widely from the Germans, a people with whom they have been erroneously and often confounded. Roost fowls and ducks are not more different. As water draws one it repels ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... straddle. The date of her foaling went further back than Dad's, I believe; and she was shaped something like an alderman. We found her one day in about eighteen inches of mud, with both eyes picked out by the crows, and her hide bearing evidence that a feathery tribe had made a roost of her carcase. Plainly, there was no chance of breaking up the ground with her help. We had no plough, either; how then was the corn to be put in? That was ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... scared of you, Abby," relented Mrs. Black. "But I says to myself, 'I'm goin' to let Lydia Orr stand on her two own feet in this town,' I says. She can say what she likes about herself, an' there won't be no lies coming home to roost at my house. I guess you'd feel the very same way if you was ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... skirts of the Richelieu Army in Hanover or Hessen Country, had of course to take wing in that general fright before the mastiff. Soubise did not cross the Rhine with it; Soubise made off eastward; [Westphalen, i. 501 ("end of March, 1758").]—found new roost in Hanau-Frankfurt Country; and had thoughts of joining the Austrians in Bohemia next Campaign; but got new order,—such the pinches of a winged Clermont with a mastiff Ferdinand at his poor draggled tail;—and came back to the Ferdinand scene, to help there; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... Falling-sickness; The very bag you bear, and the brown dish Shall be escheated. All your daintiest Dells too I will deflower, and take your dearest Doxyes From your warm sides; and then some one cold night I'le watch you what old barn you go to roost in, And there I'le smother you ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... he had done for years, and behind him Camorak went. And when at last they climbed from the third valley, and stood on the hill's summit in the golden sunlight of evening, their aged eyes saw only miles of forest and the birds going to roost. ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... repose in a chair, Chickens can roost upon rails; Puppies are able to sleep in a stable, And oysters can slumber in pails. But no one supposes A poor Camel dozes— ANY PLACE does ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl

... above the old nests to indicate their rights; for in the rookery possession is the law, and not nine-tenths of it only. In the slow dull cold of winter even these noisy birds are quiet, and as the vast flocks pass over, night and morning, to and from the woods in which they roost, there is scarcely a sound. Through the mist their black wings advance in silence, the jackdaws with them are chilled into unwonted quiet, and unless you chance to look up the crowd may go over unnoticed. But so soon as the waters begin to make a sound in February, running in the ditches and splashing ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... have not been guilty of great crimes; but it is only because they have not energy of mind to rise to any height of wickedness. They are not hawks or kites: they are only miserable fowls whose flight is not above their dunghill or hen-roost. But they tremble before the authors of these horrors. They admire them at a safe and respectful distance. There never was a mean and abject mind that did not admire an intrepid and dexterous villain. In the bottom of their hearts they believe such hardy miscreants ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... no etiquette at these small drawing-rooms. People came and went at pleasure. The window embrasures became the roost of happy couples; at the great chimney the talkers mostly congregated, each full-charged with scandal; and down at the farther end the gamblers gambled. It was towards this point that Otto moved, not ostentatiously, but with a gentle insistence, and scattering attentions as he went. Once abreast ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... candle to me. Fenwick, with all his cunning, is a child compared with Ned Blossett. Ask any of the old gang in New York, ask the blistering police if you like; and as to the rest of you, who are you? A set of whitefaced mechanics, without pluck enough to rob a hen-roost. Take that, you cur!" ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... the road to me in the night, a crown will be ready for the messenger.' In the same spirit, he walked up and down outside the iron gate for the best part of an hour, with some solicitude; occasionally looking in between the bars, as if he had laid a dove in a high roost in a cage of lions, and had it on his mind that ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... naught amiss 'at I know. I'm but takin' roost here wi' the owls an' jackdaws a bit, maybe for ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... sir knight! Thou wilt have a plentiful lack of them ere the honeymoon be out of the comb. A pleasant roost in thy bachelor's hall, and many of them!" and the vagabond sprung upon the back of a green lizard creeping silently through the grass, and sticking his heels into his astonished charger, dragoon-fashion, disappeared down the bank of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... youth Death came with great celerity; Egad, that never can be said of you with any verity! The old crow that you are, the teasing boys will jeer, compelling you To roost at home. Reflect, all this is straight that ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field

... lived much to himself in the quiet spaces, who could not believe that grain dealers could be honest and build palatial residences in Winnipeg while his own toil in producing the grain was rewarded with a living only. It looked as if the roost was being robbed and with his newborn initiative he wanted to find out how it was done ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... to see you but two or three days in the year? I thought you would at last come and while away the remainder of life on the banks of the Thames in gaiety and old tales. I have quitted the stage, and the Clive[1] is preparing to leave it. We shall neither of us ever be grave: dowagers roost all around us, and you could never want cards or mirth. Will you end like a fat farmer, repeating annually the price of oats, and discussing stale newspapers? There have you got, I hear, into an old gallery, that has ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... had to stop for breath; and her neighbors all looked at one another, feeling undecided whether to own they were wrong, or to put Mrs. Wing down. Every one twittered and chirped, and made a great noise; but no one would give up, and all went to roost in a great state of uncertainty. But, the next day, it became evident that Mrs. Wing was right; for Major Bumble-bee came buzzing in to tell them that old Daddy Winter's hut was empty, and his white head had been seen in the sunny ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... mark without Alec's trying for it, and a heavy thud informed the scouts that the bullet was fatal! Instantly, however, there was such a commotion in the leaves, and such a Bedlam of screeching! Finally a great flock of crows swept out of the high tree and flew away to find a less dangerous roost. ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... moment writing this by the bank, I see the black, clear-cut reflection of them far below, flying through the watery looking-glass, by ones, twos, or long strings. All last night I heard the noises from their great roost in a neighboring wood. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... before it is started. A man must come into court with clean hands. I had started by rotting the other fellow's eggs and he finished by souring my milk. I wanted justice and I got it, but I didn't recognize it when it landed on me with all four feet. Chickens come home to roost, and my pigeons had found a nesting-place on my anatomy; and the spot they had chosen was right in ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... Yup, I'm puttin' back a few feathers. Old birds like to roost comf'table. You've got a fairly ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... do poor rude wolf wool chew you soon rule could foot crew to noon tool would good brew shoe whom school should hood drew prove food spool woman wood threw broad whose roof shook stood screw moon tomb broom crook pull strew goose stoop roost hook bush shrewd took full ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams

... St. Sylvester's day—St. Sylvester! Why, that is his birthday! Ungrateful friend, to give no thought to it! Quick! my coat, my stick, my hat, and let me run to see these two early birds before they seek their roost. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... and near, Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding, Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh, Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the high weeds, Where band-neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out, Where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates of a cemetery, Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees, Where the yellow-crown'd heron comes to ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... Wisdom, it must now be used; If we have Numbers, they must be united; If we have Strength, it must be all exerted; If we have Courage it must be inflamed, And every Art and Stratagem be practis'd: We've more to do than fright a Pigeon Roost, Or start a timorous Flock of running Deer; Yes, we've a strong, a warlike stubborn Foe, Unus'd to be repuls'd and quit the Field, Nay, flush'd with Victories and long Success, Their Numbers, Strength, and Courage all renown'd, 'Tis ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers

... witchery of an increasing, a thing as different as possible from the decreasing twilight, and finally mellow, distinct and luminous, as the rays of the great centre of light diffuse themselves in the atmosphere. The hymns of birds, too, have no moral counterpart in the retreat to the roost, or the flight to the nest, and these invariably accompany the advent of the day, until the appearance of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... name is wrongly spelt in the "Origin of Species."]) experiments on seeds "in a box in the actual sea.") that my observations on the effects of sea-water have been confirmed. I still suspect that the legs of birds which roost on the ground may be an efficient means; but I was interrupted when going to make trials on this subject, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... himself with his wings, but without flying. Its cry is seldom heard and never long continued. At noon, sometimes from sixty to eighty of these birds perch themselves on the tops of the houses or on the adjoining walls, and with the heads under the wing they all go to roost. They are extremely voracious, and devour every sort of animal substance they can find, however filthy it may be. They are not in the least degree shy, for they hop about among men and cattle in the most populous places. The Turkey vulture is far more lively, and its movements are more light. It ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... them all there, or at least the young ladies; and perhaps the doctor. The baroness goes to bed early. Meantime I can show you one of our dramatis personae, and an important one too. She rules the roost." ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... daughter's mine to command; have I not brought her up to this? She shall have him. I'll rule the roost for that. I'll give her pounds and crowns, gold and silver. I'll weigh her down in pure angel gold. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... the catboat or thirty-footer to be brought in from her moorings, for Cap'n Perry to land with a load of oysters; or it is the bench you sit upon to watch the sunset glow behind the pines on the opposite headland, the pines where the blue herons roost, or to see the moon track on the dancing water. The Post Road is alive with motors now, far into the evening. You get your mail from the little post office beside it as quickly as possible—which isn't very quickly, to ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... Trail Arizona Ames Riders of Spanish Peaks The Border Legion The Desert of Wheat Stairs of Sand The Drift Fence Wanderer of the Wasteland The Light of Western Stars The U.P. Trail The Lone Star Ranger Robber's Roost The Man of the Forest The Call of the Canyon West of the Pecos The Shepherd of Guadaloupe The Trail Driver Wildfire ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... the spell, whereupon they both bounded off in different directions. This, I am told by an authority, was a case of neurasthenia, or nerve-paralysis. A not quite similar occurrence was recorded some little time ago. A farmer saw a pheasant go to roost in a tree, standing alone in the field. Presently he saw a fox approach, go to the tree, and look up at the pheasant. After pausing for a moment, regarding the bird, he proceeded to run rapidly round the tree in a narrow circle. This he did for ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... up; they had to! There! Ma Sills certinly did rule the roost, and no mistake. She'd been a widder ever since the boys were a year old, so she had to do for herself and them, and she done it. She was a master hand; ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards

... last, and I was not long in making acquaintance with it. I awoke to find, by the light of the lantern swung from the roost overhead, the dozen men in the loft awake and pulling on their boots. They had lain in their sodden clothes all night: but of their boots, I found, they were as careful as dandies, and to grease them would hoard up a lump of fat even while their stomachs craved for it. Sergeant ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... but he told me he had prayed already, and that he would give me the cock, whose dung he had taken, for my trouble, as it was a fine large cock, and he had nothing better to offer for my Sunday's dinner. And as the poultry was by this time gone to roost, he went up to the perch which was behind the stove, and reached down the cock, and put it under the arm of the maid, who was just come to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... depths—on he went with hopping, lurching jerks, with whispering lips. Street after street he passed, and then at a corner he turned and went East—not far, only to the side entrance of the saloon on the corner known, to those who knew, as the "Roost." ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... O'Mara heartily. "But they've both got fine young tempers of their own, for all they're so gay and friendly. Somebody's going to learn who's rulin' the roost, when the first edge of the honeymoon's off. And it's in me mind that the under-dog won't be ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer

... and saueray. quinces. and peeres [1], garlek and Grapes. and fylle the gees erwith. and sowe the hole at no grece come out. and roost hem wel. and kepe the grece at fallith erof. take galytyne and grece and do in a possynet, whan the gees buth rosted ynowh; take an smyte hem on pecys. and at tat [2] is withinne and do it in a possynet and put erinne wyne if it be to thyk. do erto powdour of galyngale. ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge

... friends. There was Harriet, for example, dear, serious, practical Harriet. I used to be fretted by the way she was forever trying to clip my wing feathers—I suppose to keep me close to the quiet and friendly and unadventurous roost! We come by such a long, long road, sometimes, to the acceptance of our nearest friends for exactly what they are. Because we are so fond of them we try to make them over to suit some curious ideal of perfection ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... with the impalpable outbreathings of the silence. The audience listened intently to an indignant and spirited passage against the pirates, so numerous at that period, who had become cocks of the roost after long haunting the darkest corners to rob all who passed. Certainly Maranne, when he wrote those fine lines, had had nobody less in his mind than the Nabob. But the audience saw in them an allusion to him; and while a triple salvo of applause greeted the end of the tirade, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... without stinging, is nevertheless productive of no little annoyance. The tameness of the birds and lizards is as nothing when compared to the fearless confidence of this insect. He will perch upon one of your eye-lashes, and go to roost there if you do not disturb him, or force his way through your hair, or along the cavity of the nostril, till you almost fancy he is resolved to explore the very brain itself. On one occasion I was so inconsiderate ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... or the designs for the Christmas cards? Have not heard a word, pro or con. Guess no news is good news; for I notice 'rejected' work generally travels fast, to roost at home." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... and all the swift changes of life, God's attempts to lead him to yield himself up, and bow his will? And was not God striving with him now, in the anxieties which gnawed at his heart, and in his dread of the morrow? Was He not trying to teach him how crime always comes home to roost, with a brood of pains running behind it? Was not the weird duel in the brooding stillness a disclosure, which would more and more possess his soul as the night passed on, of a Presence which in silence strove with him, and only desired ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... with an abstracted air, as if he had been another bird entirely. The paper got into a manzanita bush, where it remained suspended until the evening, when, being dislodged by a passing wild-cat on its way to Mulrady's hen-roost, it gave that delicately sensitive marauder such a turn that she fled into ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte

... wonder if any one else can see it in a picture before the eyes as I can, bright, and vivid as trees suddenly shown at night by a great flash of lightning. All the leaves and branches and the birds at roost are visible during the flash. It is barely a second; it seems much longer. Memory, like the lightning, reveals the pictures in the mind. Every curve, and shore, and shallow is as familiar now as when I ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... I tell you, w'y you kin tie me ter er tree an' whup me ef you wants ter, but I got ter tell you. Not laung ergo, I stole er chicken from yo' roost. An' now you may ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read

... her feet upon the low, brass fender and drawing up the edge of her dress, to toast her ankles, "this is just as good a time to tell you all about it as any other, now that the young uns are gone to roost. I hate to talk about the wickedness of the world before the young uns; they will find it out quick enough for themselves, poor things! Well, you want to know what in the name o' sense ever possessed me to marry that beat, don't you?" she ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... said Mr. Healy at an Irish political meeting, 'that there are at the present moment crystallizing in this city precedents which will some day come home to roost like a boomerang.'" ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... moorcock that craws on the brows of Ben-Connal, He kens of his bed in a sweet mossy hame; The eagle that soars o'er the cliffs of Clan-Ronald, Unawed and unhunted his eyrie can claim; The solan can sleep on the shelve of the shore, The cormorant roost on his rock of the sea, But, ah! there is one whose hard fate I deplore, Nor house, ha', nor hame in his country has he: The conflict is past, and our name is no more— There 's nought left but ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Fisherman Charlie, have I caught thee setting bait for Lorna? Now, I understand thy fishings, and the robbing of Counsellor's hen roost. May I never have good roasting, if I have it not to-night and roast thee, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... singed; yet singeing has not the effect upon them for which singeing is designed; and like chickens in a shower that have got the pip, they keep still gasping and shooting out their tongues, and walking on tip-toe with their tails down, till finally they go to roost in some obscure corner, and are no more ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... studied owls, And other night fowls, And I tell you What I know to be true: An owl cannot roost With his limbs so unloosed; No owl in this world Ever had his claws curled, Ever had his legs slanted, Ever had his bill canted, Ever had his neck screwed Into that attitude. He can't do it, because 'Tis against all bird laws. Anatomy teaches, Ornithology preaches, An owl ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... were quite right; he had given her plenty of run and ignored her cackle, and now she had come home to roost. There is nothing like a knowledge of farming, and an acquaintance with the habits of domestic animals, to teach a man how ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... house anxiously awaiting the result. After some time she heard the shotgun go off, and in a few minutes the farmer entered the house. 'What luck had you?' said she. 'I hid myself behind the woodpile,' said the old man, 'with the shot-gun pointed toward the hen-roost, and before long there appeared, not one skunk, but seven. I took aim, blazed away, and killed one—and he raised such a fearful smell I concluded it was best to let the other six alone.'" The Senators retired, and nothing more was heard from ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... Dunlap's "History of New York," and Mrs. Ellet's "Domestic History of the Revolution." For an excellent description of the border warfare on the "neutral ground," the reader should go to Irving's delightful "Chronicle of Wolfert's Roost." Cooper's novel, "The Spy," deals accurately with that subject, which is touched upon also in that good old standby, Lossing's "Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution." Philipse Manor-house has been carefully written of by Judge Atkins in a Yonkers newspaper, and less accurately by ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... but the current was not so strong, so we turned round, seeing the flood was going down, and by nightfall we had got back to where the house had stood. Every vestige of the once pretty homestead had disappeared, with sheep and cattle, though the fowls had managed to find a roost on the topmost branches of some orange trees, which alone remained to ...
— True Stories of Wonderful Deeds - Pictures and Stories for Little Folk • Anonymous

... eye, having just finished as fine a torrent of abuse of each other and of Kilquhanity as can be imagined. Kilquhanity himself, with the sorrow of death upon him, though he knew it not, had listened to the brawl, his chickens come home to roost at last. The first Mrs. Kilquhanity had sworn, with an oath that took no account of the Cure's presence, that not a stick nor a stone nor a rag nor a penny should that Irish slattern ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... shedding upon the earth's surface an illumination somewhat akin to full moonlight. Usually the planet Venus and a few stars shine out the while in the darkened heaven. Meantime around the observer animal and plant life behave as at nightfall. Birds go to roost, bats fly out, worms come to the surface of the ground, flowers close up. In the Norwegian eclipse of 1896 fish were seen rising to the surface of the water. When the total phase at length is over, and the moon in her progress across ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... call back our proud eagle of liberty from its pinion flight through the skies of national achievement, and make our national emblem the barnyard fowl that crows in the day dawn as if creating light instead of noise, and then runs for his roost ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... nuisance to live anywhere. I was born to be a bird—to roost on trees." I had considerable difficulty in disentangling the words from his thick speech. He shut his eyes—then ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... came upon he gave a wide berth except at night, and then he only approached them stealthily for such provender as he might filch. Before the week was up he had become an expert chicken thief, being able to rob a roost as quietly as the most finished carpetbagger on the sunny side ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... true cat-like stealthy pace," half muttered the centurion, as his sentinel descended to do such a crime as he was posted there to prevent. "This cockerel's comb must be cut, or he will become king of the roost. But let us see if his hand be as resolute as his tongue; then we will consider what turn ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... the preceding evening, when the cock-partridge went to roost, there had been no suggestion of rain, but a bitter air from the northwest searching through the woods. The wise old bird, finding cold comfort on his perch, had bethought him of a trick which many a time before had served his turn. In the open, where the snow was deep, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Highee down in de market reckoned it was high time fancy niggers was drov into de swamp, and I allowed that loafers and beggars had better roost high when workin' folks was around, and Marse Tom said he'd cut ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... in the woods somewhere he digs up an old b'gosh artist that was brought up with one of them guns in his hand, and he takes a private course. After he's used up a keg of powder shootin' at tin cans they start out to find where the deers roost. They find 'em, too. Mr. Robert is so rattled that he misses the one he aims at; but he bores a tunnel through another in ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... twenty years ago, Cal," Harris said. "But it still holds good—only I've changed my mind too. You was dead right from the first. Squatters will come to roost on every foot of ground and there'll come a day when I'll have to turn squatter myself—so I might as well start now. The way to get used to crowds, Cal, is to go where the crowds are at. I'm headed back ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... went out, taking Bully with him. He thought he would see for himself if Bully would try to take the chickens, and with this idea, went up the garden to a place overlooking the farm hen-roost. The chickens were chirping and snuggling on their perches, and he felt sure that Bully was innocent, for he did not even prick an ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... sauntering along, and found places on the "roost." One of these was a burly fellow with a pugnacious face and a bold eye. He seemed to be no favorite among the boys, though they treated him with a certain amount of respect. Well, there is never a town or a village but has its particular bully; and for several years now Nick Lang had ably ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... came the faint sounds of music. It might have been a phonograph playing in one of the summer cabins with names like Polly Ann Roost and Patches and Seventh Heaven, but to Kimmy it was the hated cry of the Father of Therns calling the dreadful Plant Men to their feast of victims borne into this Valley Dor ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel

... not yet touched the outstretched arms of the prickly pear upon the kopje, and the early cocks and hens still strutted about stiffly after the night's roost, when Waldo stood before the wagon-house saddling the grey mare. Every now and then he glanced up at the old familiar objects: they had a new aspect that morning. Even the cocks, seen in the light of parting, ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... the matter than I have been able to give. My own paper was printed at the same time, in The Atlantic Monthly, and had been accepted by the editor before I knew of Mr. Brewster's intention to write. References to a roost in Belmont, Mass., discovered by Mr. Brewster six years before, are frequent in the ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... from his cradle," growl'd another; "and times enough I've told 'n: 'Cap'n,' says I, 'there's no sense o' proportions about ye.' A master mind, sirs, but 'a 'll be hang'd for a hen-roost, so sure as my name's ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... exclaimed, after returning from a drive to Eastboro village, "I give you my word, Seth, they dummed nigh et me alive. They covered the horse all up, so that he looked for all the world like a sheep, woolly. I don't mind moskeeters in moderation, but when they roost on my eyelids and make 'em so heavy I can't open 'em, then I'm ready to swear. But I couldn't get even that relief, because every time I unbattened my mouth a million or so flew in and choked me. That's ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... nodded Flanders, "but then it's happened the same way with others I could tell about. As long as he was winnin' Sandy was the king of any roost. The minute he lost a fight he wasn't worth so many pounds of salt pork. Take a hoss; a fine hoss is often jest the same. Long as it wins nothin' can touch some of them blooded boys. But let 'em go under the wire second, maybe jest ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... at low tide, were all swept out to sea and drowned. I observed that many horses were still turned out to pasture all summer on the islands and beaches in Wellfleet, Eastham, and Orleans, as a kind of common. He also described the killing of what he called "wild hens" here, after they had gone to roost in the woods, when he was a boy. Perhaps they were "Prairie ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... on which your Mr. Bennett comes. He has spent five dollars paying the negroes to polish up their instruments and clean up the uniforms and it cost him twenty-five to bail the cornettist out of jail for roost robbing, and it takes a whole gallon of whisky to get any spirit into the drummer. He says tell you that as this is your shindig you ought at least to pay the piper. Hurry up, he's waiting for me, and here's the kiss he told me to put ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess

... jackal ventures near a house, and perhaps enters a hen-roost, to steal a hen. But in such cases, he often shows himself to be as stupid as he is impudent; for even then, if he hears the yelling of his comrades chasing their game, he forgets himself, and yells as lustily as the ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... all the rooks of the neighbourhood gathered into vast flocks and returned to roost in the woods of the Chace. But one winter afternoon there came on the most dense fog that had been known for a length of time, and a flock of rooks on their way as usual to the Chace stopped all night in a clump of trees on the farm ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... thunder, beat upon the reefs and beaches. Now louder in one place, now lower in another, like the combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly varied for a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hear the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the Merry Men. At that hour there flashed into my mind the reason of the name that they were called. For the noise of them seemed almost mirthful, as it out-topped the other noises ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... out the kitchen chair to Cis; and when she was seated, got the wood box and set it on its side. "Come and roost along with me," he bade Johnnie, the single eye under the wet-combed, tawny bang smiling almost tenderly ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... more sleep all night, and I, after running the risk of catching cold in searching over the house, have this morning been at the expense of new fastenings to the doors and windows. The next time, however, you rise, Richard, to alarm the family, you shall in future roost with the hens or bed in ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... body and one leg tucked up, patiently awaits his turn. At night the beautiful Brahminee geese alight, one by one, and seek total solitude; ever since having disturbed a god in his slumbers, these birds are fated to pass the night in single blessedness. The gulls and terns, again, roost in flocks, as do the wild geese and pelicans,—the latter, however, not till after making a hearty and very noisy supper. These birds congregate by the sides of pools, and beat the water with violence, so as to scare the fish, which ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... Muster Barton,' she exclaimed, further manifesting her maternal instincts by applying her apron to her offspring's nose. 'He's al'ys a-findin' faut wi' him, and a-poundin' him for nothin'. Let him goo an' eat his roost goose as is a-smellin' up in our noses while we're a-swallering them greasy broth, an' let my ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... traversed, and strikes its projector; he, having matter in his astral and mental bodies similar to that of the thought-form he generated, is thrown into respondent vibrations, and suffers the destructive effects he had intended to cause to another. Thus "curses [and blessings] come home to roost." From this arise also the very serious effects of hating or suspecting a good and highly-advanced man; the thought-forms sent against him cannot injure him, and they rebound against their projectors, shattering them mentally, morally, or ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant

... Buckheath darkly. "She won't have to. If Gray Stoddard marries Johnnie Consadine, you and me will just about roost in the penitentiary for the rest ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... pairs use the same mound. The eggs are deposited at a depth of from one to three feet; the heat at that depth is very great, more than the hand can bear for any length of time. I cannot say whether the young, when released from the mounds, are tended by the parents; they, however, return and roost in the mounds at night. The flesh of the 'Megapodius' is dark and flavorless, being a mass of hard muscle and sinew. birds, which may be called game, are not numerous. The brush turkey ('Talegalla'), the 'Megapodius', several species of pigeon, with ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine

... sure of that. Trust a woman to find a place where she can't ruin her hat. My word for it, Cecil, she's found a safe roost. I say, by Jove!" The duke was staring more intently than ever at the windows far above. "I have it! Isn't it rather odd that a house should be lighted so brilliantly ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... undisturbed, and indulge the sweets of domestic and rural life, which of all things lay nearest his heart. And these two undertakings compelled him to be diligent with his pen to the end of his life. The spot he chose for his "Roost" was a little farm on the bank of the river at Tarrytown, close to his old Sleepy Hollow haunt, one of the loveliest, if not the most picturesque, situations on the Hudson. At first he intended nothing more than a summer retreat, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... son Willie, this night, This ae night wi' me; The best hen in a' my roost Sall be well made ready ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various

... the ground of the guide-books. For my part I have no belief in the romance of old-world life. In the modern Tell I behold a hireling, ready to barter his brawny limbs to the use of whatever tyrant; and the picturesque Mazzaroni, upon closer acquaintance, dwindles down to the standard of a hen-roost thief. Amid the crumbling walls of Athens and the ruins of Rome I encounter inhospitality and hunger. I am not a believer in the picturesqueness of poverty. I have no relish for ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... in an inconsistency!" he answered. "I've been afraid, though, that this desire to roost in one place was a sign of incipient ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... burning feeling of the hour was the desire to put down by a strong hand the depredations of these lawless robber hordes. Not a house in the place but had suffered from them, not a farmer but had complaints to make of hen roost robbed or beasts driven off in the night. Others had darker tales to tell; and Will Ives clenched his fists and vowed that he would be glad indeed to see the day when he and Simon Dowsett might meet face to face in equal combat. But it would be impossible to attack the robbers in their forest fastnesses ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... about as her reward was pilfering, and a crown put into her hand, gave her less pleasure than a halfpenny which she had stolen. Neither was it any use to dream of ruling her as the sole male, or as the proud master of the hen roost, for which of them, no matter how broad shouldered he was, would have been capable of it? Some had tried to vanquish her, but ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... was more wonderful in the country. The leaves and withering foliage assumed a most singular tint of green, changing, like that of the grass, to a brownish hue; fowls went to roost, and the animal creation must have been greatly mystified by a phenomenon such as they ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... the drawing room of her father's home about ten years later. Since the death of Matilda Hoffman, he had grown to be a very close friend of the Gratz family, never failing when in Philadelphia to visit their home where he might "roost," as he put it, in the large, comfortable guest room. He had never referred to his intimate conversation with Rebecca when she had tried to comfort him after Matilda's death; yet their mutual grief and confidence had created ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... buzzards are the shyer birds; and they are less disposed to keep together in flocks. It has even been said that these are not gregarious, as they are often seen alone in the high regions of the air. But it is certain that not only do numbers of them roost together at night, but they even associate with the black vultures at ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... was it made the place seem so different from even the most expensive hotel suites? The furniture was very plain. The decorations were soft-toned and simple. "It's—it's because the Rose Girl lives here, I guess," he soliloquized. "Now this kind of a roost would jest suit Billy, but it makes me feel like walkin' on eggs. This here grazin' is too good ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs



Words linked to "Roost" :   settle, sit down, sit, rest, perch, shelter, steady down, root, take root, henroost



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