"Weathercock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Whether she was admired or not, And never blush'd to show her face At any time in any place, In her own shape, without disguise, And visible to mortal eyes, On 'Change exact at seven o'clock Alighted on the weathercock, 570 Which, planted there time out of mind To note the changes of the wind, Might no improper emblem be Of her own mutability. Thrice did she sound her trump, (the same Which from the first belong'd to Fame, An old ill-favour'd instrument, With which the goddess was content, Though under ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... he hears the Meeting means to disown us? It troubles me deeply. My father is trembling too, for since a month he is all for resisting oppression, and who has been talking to him I do not know. Miss Wynne called him a decrepit weathercock to me last month, and then was in a fury at herself, and sorry too; but she will talk with him no more. It cannot be because he has sold his Holland cloths so well to the clothier- general. I ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... is the nature of a girl to change with every wind that blows. It is only the female prig who acts consistently under all circumstances. In a world the leading of which is its men, inconsistency is the best nature of a healthy girl made to be loved by men. One doesn't sneer at the weathercock because one hour it points to the north and the next to the east. 'Tis its nature to. 'Tis our nature to change with every breeze of man that bears down on us. That's why they love us and detest the prigs. Here we are at your house. I hope you don't keep your maid up for you. I would scorn to keep ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors and small windows on every floor, the date of its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front, and on the top of the roof was perched a fierce little weathercock, to let the family into the important secret which way the wind blew. These, like the weathercocks on the tops of our steeples, pointed so many different ways that every man could have a wind to his mind; the most stanch and loyal citizens, however, always went ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... north," said Colline, gravely, pointing to a weathercock on a neighboring roof. "We shall not breakfast today, the elements are opposed ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Eva either, especially as she was more religious than any one in the whole house. Spite of her marvellous beauty—Katterle knew that there was nothing false about it—she would probably end by joining the nuns in the convent. But her mood changed with every breath, like the weathercock on the steeple. If she got out of bed the wrong way, or one did not guess her wishes before they were uttered, she would fly into a rage at the least trifle. Then she sometimes used very unkind words; but no one could cherish anger against her long, for she had an indescribably lovely manner of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... its tower, yellow spire, old clock and weathercock, seems to me as I look back on it to have been a very attractive piece of architecture. It was that church which suggested to Emerson the leading thought in one of his most famous ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... say my old grammatical exercises," answered her brother; "and I must trust her, were she as changeable as a weathercock.—And yet—if she should jilt me!—What will you do—what will you say, Clara, if I am unable, contrary to my hope, trust, and expectation, to repay you this money within ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... call me a weathercock,' said the matron, putting on the look of a good woman; 'but I have reasoned it out, and at last, thank God, I have got over my ambition. The Lovedays are our true and only friends, and Mr. Festus Derriman, with all his money, is ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... sell your own flesh and blood?" said Joe. "Sell? What's thy mare's nest now, thou weathercock? One wouldn't think that butter wad melt in thy mouth sometimes, and ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple! My master sues to her; and she hath taught her suitor, He being her pupil, to become her tutor. O excellent device! Was there ever heard a better, That my master, being scribe, to ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... alarms in the beginning. On the first night, I was knocked up by Jack with a most wonderful ship's lantern in his hand, like the gills of some monster of the deep, who informed me that he "was going aloft to the main truck," to have the weathercock down. It was a stormy night and I remonstrated; but Jack called my attention to its making a sound like a cry of despair, and said somebody would be "hailing a ghost" presently, if it wasn't done. So, up to the top of the house, where ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... roses blossomed out sweet and profuse, for it was the time of roses, amid convolvulus and campion. The quaint old dove-cot near the house had almost disappeared behind the trees that had crowded up round it, and held aloft its weathercock in silent protest at their encroachment. The stables close at hand, with their worn-out clock and silent bell, were tenantless. The coach-houses were full of useless old chariots and carriages. Into one splendid court coach the pigeons had found their ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... at him, a pygmy flashed with sun. A weathercock or scarecrow or both things in one? As bright as a jewelled crown ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... might of the great hive hummed at the verge of her haven of peace without disturbing. There she had been what none had known of her: an ambitious girl, modest merely for lack of intrepidity; paralyzed by her masterful lord; aiming her highest at a gilt weathercock; and a disappointed creature, her breast a home of serpents; never herself. She thought and hoped she was herself now. Alarm lest this might be another of her moods, victim of moods as she had latterly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Rita, turning away half-petulantly. "Of course I know you are as changeable as a weathercock, Manuela. But as you were saying, if we had a few nails, we should do well enough here. I will go ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... he, a touch of irony in his accent, himself looking a droll figure, hunched round his books and turning like a weathercock jerkily to keep the umbrella between him and the wind that strained its whalebone ribs ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... vogue about Christmas, had been enormously magnified, and shipped to Labrador. There, too, and in similar colors, is the long chapel, on the centre of whose roof there is a belfry, which looks like two thirds of immense red egg, drawn up at the top into a spindle, and this surmounted by a weathercock,—as if some giant had attempted to blow the egg from beneath, and had only blown out of it this small bird with a stick to stand on! Ah, yes! and there is the pig-sty,—not in keeping with the rest, by any means! It must be that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... see, or read, our present Whitechapel Murder—a nasty thing, not at all to my liking. The Name of the Murderer—as no one doubts he is, whatever the Lawyers may disprove—is the same as that famous Man of Taste who wrote on the Fine Arts in the London Magazine under the name of Janus Weathercock, {90a} and poisoned Wife, Wife's Mother and Sister after insuring their Lives. De Quincey (who was one of the Magazine) has one of his Essays ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... head like a blue-coat boy. You needn't think it an unmanly or quizzical thing to be particular about your nightcap, for I have often heard your poor dear papa, and the Reverend Mr What's-his-name, who used to read prayers in that old church with the curious little steeple that the weathercock was blown off the night week before you were born,—I have often heard them say, that the young men at college are uncommonly particular about their nightcaps, and that the Oxford nightcaps are quite celebrated for their strength and goodness; ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... sultry dog-days, there would be little chance of sport when the sun was well up. So he let himself gently out of the hall door—paused a moment on the steps to fill his chest with the fresh morning air, as he glanced at the weathercock over the stables—and then set to work to put his tackle together on the lawn, humming a tune to himself as he selected an insinuating red hackle and alder fly from his well-worn book, and tied them on to his cast. Then he slung his creel over his shoulder, picked up his ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... mention of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (see note below), who sometimes wrote in the London over the pseudonym Janus Weathercock. John Taylor, Hood and perhaps John Hamilton Reynolds, made up the magazine for press. In the May number, in addition to Lamb's "Poor Relations," were contributions from De Quincey, Hartley Coleridge, Cary, and Barton. But it was not what it ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... letter to Longfellow written in 1845, he made a more explicit statement of his attitude: "Christ has declared war against the Christianity of the world, and it must down. There is no help for it. The church, that great bulwark of our practical paganism, must be reformed from foundation to weathercock."[12] These passages indicate his dissatisfaction with an external religion and with dogmatic theology. On the other hand, his letters and his poems prove that he was strongly grounded in the faith of the spirit. In that faith he lived and died; and, ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... regions beyond, he had the intensest desire to climb upward—so that without shifting his horizon, he could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of vision. "I envied every bird," he goes on, "that sat singing on the topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weathercock on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and to rise from the earth in a balloon was a bliss which I would almost have given my life to enjoy." His desire to ascend soon took the practical form of wishing to climb a mountain. ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... and which at once prevented the Prince's armament from sailing and brought fresh Irish regiments from Dublin to Chester, were bitterly cursed and reviled by the common people. The weather, it was said, was Popish. Crowds stood in Cheapside gazing intently at the weathercock on the graceful steeple of Bow Church, and praying for a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... out of the Carlisle hotel, but before it had occurred to them that Lord George had been concerned in the robbery, and possibly Lady Eustace herself. Men had been sent down from London, of course at considerable expense, and Portray Castle had been searched, with the consent of its owner, from the weathercock to the foundation-stone,—much to the consternation of Miss Macnulty, and to the delight of Andy Gowran. No trace of the diamonds was found, and Lizzie had so far fraternised with the police. But when Mr. Bunfit called upon her, perhaps for the fifth ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... that I was glad when I found our nebs turned homeward; and, when we got over the turn of the brae at the old quarry-holes, to see the blue smoke of our own Dalkeith, hanging like a thin cloud over the tops of the green trees, through which I perceived the glittering weathercock on the old kirk steeple. Tammie, poor creature, I observed, was a whit ree with the good cheer; and, as he sat on the fore-tram, with his whip-hand thrown over the beast's haunches, he sang, half ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... out, a crooked gable, and a husky old dog in the recess under the steps at the door. Behind the house a wide yard with nettles, wormwood, and burdocks in the corners, outbuildings with doors that stick, doves and rooks on the thatched roofs, a little storehouse with a rusty weathercock, two or three birch-trees with rooks' nests in their bare top branches, and beyond—the road with cushions of soft dust in the ruts and a field and the long hurdles of the hemp patches, and the grey little huts of ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... away, is observed the weathercock of a chapel-spire, plainly indicating the location of the European quarter. Taking a branch road leading in that direction, I discover a party of English and native gentlemen playing a game of lawn-tennis. Arriving on the scene just as ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... town that the men, when halted, just dropped in the streets and slept, so that passers-by were forced to step over them, but in spite of starvation and weariness the old indomitable spirit would assert itself. One of the poor fellows, while the column was passing by Christ Church, looked up at the weathercock and remarked to a comrade that it was the first and only instance of Wheeler's boys seeing a chicken which they could not ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Take four such dove-cots and place them back to back so as to form a sort of square; on the top of these place three more dove-cots, also back to back; above these set up two more dove-cots, and one on the top of all, with a short steeple above it, and a spire with an enormous weathercock on the top of that, and the building will not be a bad model of a Norwegian church, especially if you paint the sides white, ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... dominie chanted the song of Saint Nicolaus, and the goblin, unable to endure either its spiritual potency or the worthy parson's singing, shot upward like a ball and rode off on the gale, carrying with him the nightcap of the parson's wife, which he hung on the weathercock of Esopus ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... stockbroking, but quitting it for journalism he soon established a reputation as a ready, vivacious writer, and in 1836 started La Presse, the first French penny paper; his rapid change of front in politics earned for him the nickname of "The Weathercock"; latterly he adhered to the Republican cause, and founded La France in its interest; he published many political brochures and a few plays, and was for some years editor of La Liberte (1806-1881).—His wife, DELPHINE GAY, enjoyed a wide celebrity ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... could. I can't understand her, for she acts like a weathercock, and I never know how I 'm going to find her. I hate to have her mope so, but, upon my life, I don't know what to do," said Tom; but as he uttered the words, something was suggested by the sight before him. Chairs were few, and Polly had taken half of Will's when they ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... transformed into a country road, with wide, grassy borders and footpaths close to the rail fences, while just ahead lay the silent village, with the small, brown, one-storey, one-roomed school-house on one side of the green, and the little white box of a meeting-house, with its gilt weathercock, ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple! 125 My master sues to her; and she hath taught her suitor, He being her pupil, to become her tutor. O excellent device! was there ever heard a better, That my master, being scribe, to ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... of their wonted solemn gait, holding, perchance, their shovel-hat firmly on with both hands; and finally, there is neither pathos nor glory in having your head broken by a chimney-pot, or volant weathercock. No, the wide sea is an emblem of all that is deceitful and false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind is only one shade more respectable—nay, perchance the worse of the two; for the waters, in the self-justifying, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... looked westerly the patient weathercock, But even the birches on the hill stood motionless as rocks. No sound was in the woodlands, save the squirrel's dropping shell, And the yellow leaves among the boughs, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... into a narrow, winding passage which led to an old court, surrounded by rubble walls, with little moss-covered galleries under the roof and a weathercock upon the peak, as in the Tanner's Lane in Strasbourg. To the right was the brewery, and in a corner a great wheel, turned by an enormous dog, which pumped the beer to every ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... have kept yourself clear, the less blood of the damned will fall upon your head: I know you not by face, much less your personal practice; yet I have heard as if blood might pursue you, for your unstable weathercock spirit, which doubtless could not but stumble the weak, and give advantage to the adversary to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... general believed to be the case, fancying it to be a church of the Christians; which he the more readily believed, as he saw seven little bells hung over the principal door. In front of this entry, there stood a pillar made of wire as tall as the mast of a ship, on the top of which was a weathercock likewise made of wire. This church was as large as a moderate convent, all built of freestone, and covered, or vaulted over with brick, having a fine outward appearance as if its inside were of splendid workmanship. Our general was much pleased with this church, as he actually believed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... extensive stabling and cart-sheds on the left, and on the right hand the entrance to the cellars. Facing us is an unpretending-looking edifice, where the firm has its counting-houses, with a little corner tower surmounted by a characteristic weathercock consisting of a figure of Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a bottle in one hand and a goblet in the other. The old Remish Commanderie of the Knights Templars existed until the epoch of the ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... this chateau had taken Raoul back fifty leagues westward and had caused him to review his life from the moment when he had taken leave of little Louise to that in which he had seen her for the first time; and every branch of oak, every gilded weathercock on roof of slates, reminded him that, instead of returning to the friends of his childhood, every instant estranged him further and that perhaps he ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not serve, I shan't ask license of you, sir, nor the weathercock your companion. I direct my discourse to the lady, sir. 'Tis like my aunt may have told you, madam? Yes, I have settled my concerns, I may say now, and am minded to see foreign parts. If an how that the peace holds, whereby, that is, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... erected by Andronicus Cyrrhestes about B.C. 100, contained a weathercock, a sun dial, and a water clock. It is an octagonal building, with reliefs on the frieze, representing by appropriate figures the eight winds into which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... steeple! There the foul blast roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver! High up in the steeple, where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by the changing weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... those who were still all athirst for action. How dumb and [233] stupid the place seemed, in its useless defiance of conquerors, anxious, for reasons not indeed apparent, but which they were undoubtedly within their rights in holding to, not to blow it at once into the air—the steeple, the perky weathercock—to James Stokes in particular, always eloquent in action, longing for heroic effort, and ready to pay its price, maddened now by the palpable imposture in front of him morning after morning, as he demonstrates ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... little circles of deerskin and one of ruby velvet, stitched together in the centre. Then, standing on the velvet is a yellow wooden chick, with little eyes of beads, and a little wooden bill stuck in most quaintly, and a head that twists like a weathercock. It has such a piquant silliness of look that I laugh at it most heartily, and I have an almost elfish fun in smearing its downy feathers. I am sure you did not think I could be amused so easily. You shall see this silly chick one day, humorously ugly ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... government are necessary; and I shall always think—as I did think then—that the wisdom of its action and the wisdom of its abstinence from action were very good. And now again the fields in Ireland are green, and the markets are busy, and money is chucked to and fro like a weathercock which the players do not wish to have abiding with them; and the tardy speculator going over to look for a bit of land comes back muttering angrily that fancy prices are demanded. "They'll run you up to thirty-three ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... often cried about you, for I was afraid lest you were drowned and lying at the bottom of the sea. Many a time I got up in the night and looked if the weathercock had turned; it turned often, but you did not return. I remember one day distinctly: the rain was pouring down in torrents; the dust-man had come to the house where I was in service; I went down with the dust-bin and stood for a moment in the doorway, and looked at the dreadful ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... government continued unchanged in the family mansion,— a Dutch-built house, with a front, or rather gable end, of yellow brick, tapering to a point, with the customary iron weathercock at the top. Everything about the building bore the air of long- settled ease and security. Flights of martins peopled the little coops nailed against its walls, and swallows built their nests under the eaves, and everyone knows ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... spirit. Fired by the lady's coldness, he poured forth a volley of reproaches; and ended by wishing, as he said, a good morning, for ever and ever, to one who could change her opinion, point blank, like the weathercock. "I am, miss, your most obedient; and I expect you'll never think no more of poor Brian O'Neill, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the sensitiveness of the apparatus, especially when the rod has to traverse several stories. Mr. Emile Richard, inspector of the Versailles waterworks, has just devised an ingenious system which, while considerably reducing the weight of the movable part, allows the weathercock to preserve all its sensitiveness. This apparatus consists of two principal parts—one fixed and the other movable. The stationary part is designated in the accompanying figure by the letters A and B and by cross-hatchings. This forms the rod or support. An iron tube, T, with clamps, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... that the motives which prompted our youthful actions are not very different from those now inciting children of a larger growth to band together, blackball their friends, crown queens, and perform other senseless mummeries, such as having the weathercock of a departed meeting-house brought in during a banquet, and dressing restaurant waiters in knickerbockers ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... weathercock, and goes whichever way the wind blows, monsieur—today he is with the Admiral, tomorrow he ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... political morality changes, it seems, with men and with seasons. What was infamy in Espartero and Zurbano, is heroism and glory in Narvaez and Prim. What is more infamous than all this is the press, that thus displays itself in the light of a moral weathercock, shifting round to ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... both stone-dead. At this moment the "Baby" was pushed into my hand by Hadji Ali just in time to take the shoulder of the last of the herd, who had already charged headlong after his comrades, and was disappearing in the jungle. Bang! went the "Baby;" round I spun like a weathercock, with the blood pouring from my nose, as the recoil had driven the sharp top of the hammer deep into the bridge. My "Baby" not only screamed, but kicked viciously. However, I knew that the elephant must be bagged, as the half-pound ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... government continued unchanged in the family mansion:—a Dutch-built house, with a front, or rather gable-end of yellow brick, tapering to a point, with the customary iron weathercock at the top. Every thing about the building bore the air of long-settled ease and security. Flights of martins peopled the little coops nailed against the walls, and swallows built their nests under the eaves; and every one knows that these ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... fowl, like the more domestic weathercock, may often be seen wheeling through the air on the approach of a storm, and exhibits unmistakable signs of exultation when it is going to thunder. It is not a bird of song, but is unsurpassed as a screamer. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... fashioned as befits the place and time: a poet indeed! and, what is more, never wert thou turned from thy chosen path of duty by praise or purse—although a poet and poor all the days of thy most checkered life. Alas! must we contrast thee with the weathercock of the rhyming folk, bowing to kings, protector, lords, and all that could pay golden coin for his poesy? Many there be among the scribbling tribe who emulate a Waller's practice, and amble in his ill-chosen path; how few have the redeeming gift ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... East Lynne, the mile of road was very solitary, being much overshadowed with trees. One house alone stood there, and that was about three-quarters of a mile before you came to East Lynne. It was on the left hand side, a square, ugly, red brick house with a weathercock on the top, standing some little distance from the road. A flat lawn extended before it, and close to the palings, which divided it from the road, was a grove of trees, some yards in depth. The lawn ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the weathercock look handsome, with his gilt feathers shining brightly in the rays of the morning sun as he turned to and fro with every little ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... admired indeed. "He is as beautiful as a weathercock," remarked one of the Town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; "only not quite so useful," he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... game the fairies play, The best game of all, Is sliding down steeples— You know they're very tall. You fly to the weathercock And when you hear it crow You fold your wings and clutch your things, And then you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... could," she whispered into her pillow, "I'd try. But I daren't. I'm afraid. It's just a mood, I know it is. I've had it before. A—ah! I'm a spineless jellyfish, a weathercock that whirls to every emotional breeze. And I won't be. I'll stand on my own feet if I can—so help ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... big toe!" muttered Bill, using his clasp-knife for a tooth-pick. "It's as tough as a rifle sling. Yer must have got hold of the bloomin' weathercock." ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... then go and see how the wind was. I took this my first admonitory hint in its literal sense and meaning; but having a very imperfect idea of the points of the compass, I own I felt a little puzzled how I should obtain the necessary information. Fortunately for me, there was a weathercock on the old church-steeple; it had four letters, which I certainly did know were meant to represent the cardinal points. One of these seemed so exactly to correspond with the dial above it, that I made up my mind the wind ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... came to the Abbey, now a Cathedral, amidst much curious pageantry, and for the first time a Bible was presented to the sovereign.... Mary's procession to the Abbey is signalised by the exploits of a Dutchman, who sat astride on the weathercock of St. Paul's five hundred feet in the air, as the Queen passed. The two Archbishops and the Bishop of London were all in the Tower, so Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, put the crown on Mary's head. On Jan. 14th, 1559, London was wild with joy, as Elizabeth passed ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... little rise, he saw the weathercock and one turret of a church tower peering over the edge of a small steep hill, close at hand, and turning toward it he went briskly on, under the lee of a short fir plantation, all the grass being pure and fresh with hoar-frost, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... out to be a rock of a needle form, rising several hundred feet out of the sea, and would have been as Higson told him, if it had been a ship, bigger than the famed Mary Dunn, of Diver, whose flying jibboom swept the weathercock off Calais church steeple, while her spanker-boom end only just shaved clear of the white cliffs of old England. The scenery of Madeira, as they sailed along its shore, was pronounced very grand and beautiful; its lofty cliffs rising perpendicularly out of the blue ocean with a fringe of ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... confused and distressed by the hair that came wildly flapping about her head and face, and by the puffs of wind at her hoop, had sunk down in the centre of the little leaden square, clinging with all her might to the staff of the weathercock, and feeling as if the whole tower were rocking with her, absolutely seeing the battlements dance. How was she ever to be safely got down the rickety ladder leading to the crumbling stone stair? Ethel knelt by her, twisted up the fluttering ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Tom, in a tone of polite assent; "and there's a weathercock on the church-steeple but I never heard of either of 'em coming down to help a body, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... vane, a weathercock. too, also. vain, proud; empty. two, one and one. vein, a blood-vessel. trey, three at cards. waste, to consume; loss. tray, a shallow vessel. waist, part of the body. vale, a valley; a dell. ware, merchandise. veil, a cover; a curtain. wear, to use; to waste. wait, to tarry; to stay. way, a road; ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... under an oak-tree. And as for Lorenzo—dead and gone before his time—he was a man who had an eye for curious iron-work; and if anybody says he wanted to make himself a tyrant, I say, 'Sia; I'll not deny which way the wind blows when every man can see the weathercock.' But that only means that Lorenzo was a crested hawk, and there are plenty of hawks without crests whose claws and beaks are as good for tearing. Though if there was any chance of a real reform, so that Marzocco [the stone Lion, emblem of the Republic] might shake his ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... sleepers in postures so strange that beside them the writhing figures in Dore's illustrations of the Inferno would have straightened into tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden—its constancy shown by its weathercock ways, its innocence by the coating of gold that it has acquired, its devotion to style by its single, graceful flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of ever drawing the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture of swift flight to catch a Harlem train—remained ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... is over with my poor little maiden. Hare- brained and bewildered with schemes has he been as Romish King—how will it be with him as Kaisar? It is but of his wonted madness that he is here at all, when his Austrian states must be all astray for want of him. No, no; I would rather make a weathercock guardian to my daughter. You yourself are the only guard to whom I ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... That fills the snow-white lateen sail, Swiftly our light felucca flies. Around, the billows burst and foam; They lift her o'er the sunken rock, They beat her sides with many a shock, And then upon their flowing dome They poise her, like a weathercock! Between us and the western skies The hills of Corsica arise; Eastward, in yonder long, blue line, The summits of the Apennine, And southward, and still far away, Salerno, on its sunny bay. You cannot see it, where ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... weathercock at sunset Would lose the slanted ray, And I would climb the beacon That looked to Wales away And saw ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... he would think in those terms, naturally: but the rationalizing process that goes on in consciousness during the creation of a work of art, for all its appearance of directing matters, is the merest weathercock in the wind of the subconscious intention. As an example of how utterly it is possible to misunderstand the springs of inspiration in a poem, we may take the following remark of B. B. Rogers: It is much to be regretted that the phallus element should be so conspicuous in this play.... (This) ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... and where he resided till his death. The farm had on it a small Dutch cottage, built about a century before, and inhabited by the Van Tassels. This was enlarged, still preserving the quaint Dutch characteristics; it acquired a tower and a whimsical weathercock, the delight of the owner, and became one of the most snug and picturesque residences on the river. A slip of Melrose ivy was planted, and soon overrun the house; and there were shaded nooks and wooded retreats, and a ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... truth, just as you now are, in your mad vindication of Romanism. A tool for others to work with, till you have found yourself in a condition to use such tools as you yourself have been, you are now a trimmer and weathercock, leading on men of less sense than yourself, to such distinction as ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... a weathercock you are! It's impossible. I'm dining with the Grand Duke on Monday. You must make up your ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... Abruptly Kirkwood's weathercock humor shifted—amusement yielding to intrigued interest. After all, why not oblige the fellow? What did anything matter, now? What harm could visit him if he yielded to this corpulent adventurer's insistence? Both from ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... scandalised at this "appropriation of the sacred edifice to secular purposes," as she called it, but she met with no encouragement. The poor people somehow connected heaven with the stars, and Mr. Armstrong never undeceived them, so that they saw nothing improper in the big telescope under the weathercock. ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... front of the Province House, three stories high and surmounted by a cupola, on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible, with his bow bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the weathercock on the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this attitude for seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon Drowne, a cunning carver of wood, first stationed him on his long sentinel's ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mark the hour when the wind changes from north-east to south-west, and the contrary. This might be managed by making a communication from the vane of a weathercock to a clock; in such a manner, that if the vane mould revolve quite round, a tooth on its revolving axis should stop the clock, or put back a small bolt on the edge of a wheel revolving once in ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... and a small gate, rusting off its hinges, were placed, Caroline led the way towards the building. At this point of view it presented a large bay window that by a flight of four steps led into the garden. On one side rose a square, narrow turret, surmounted by a gilt dome and quaint weathercock, below the architrave of which was a sun-dial, set in the stonework; and another dial stood in the garden, with ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... France and the throne of his ancestors. She had returned with authority to organize the conspiracy of the royalists, and to give them the king's sanction. Talleyrand, the minister of Napoleon, the glittering weathercock in politics, had already experienced a change in disposition, in consequence of the shifting political wind, and when Countess Ducayla, provided with secret instructions for Talleyrand from Louis XVIII., entered his cabinet and said in a loud voice, "I come from Hartwell, ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... the tent! I see Mrs. Barker doing up the lunch in a hamper and a great basket. Now Mr. Laurence is looking up at the sky and the weathercock. I wish he would go too. There's Laurie, looking like a sailor, nice boy! Oh, mercy me! Here's a carriage full of people, a tall lady, a little girl, and two dreadful boys. One is lame, poor thing, he's got a crutch. Laurie didn't tell us that. Be quick, girls! It's getting late. Why, there is ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... summer time I thrust back the curtain, to watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple, which stands opposite my chamber-window. First, the weathercock begins to flash; then, a fainter lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower, and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold, as it points to the gilded figure of the hour. Now, the loftiest window gleams, and ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... neighborhood of that bleak hill-top upon which the Castle Inn reared its rickety walls. The cruel blasts raved wildly round that frail erection. They disported themselves with the shattered pigeon-house, the broken weathercock, the loose tiles, and unshapely chimneys; they rattled at the window-panes, and whistled in the crevices; they mocked the feeble building from foundation to roof, and battered, and banged, and tormented it in their fierce gambols, until ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... possessor of the Roost! I have repaired and renovated it with religious care, in the genuine Dutch style, and have adorned and illustrated it with sundry reliques of the glorious days of the New Netherlands. A venerable weathercock, of portly Dutch dimensions, which once battled with the wind on the top of the Stadt-House of New Amsterdam, in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, now erects its crest on the gable end of my edifice; a gilded horse in full gallop, once the weathercock of the great Vander Heyden Palace of Albany, now ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... their sockets, but the monk looked on without pity. He dragged him to that part of the tower whence the gilded weathercock could be seen toying with the free air of heaven. The sky shone blue and bright; never had it seemed so fair to the wretch that was looking his last upon its azure dome. He felt himself raised in the arms of the monk, firmly fastened ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... it. How'd you ever get on without us, d'you think? Like fish out of water! And yet we're reckoned as outcasts and all that. Devil take all your society women, I say. There's one I see pass by every day, a judge's wife, haughty and stuck up as a weathercock on a church spire. Think she'd look at one of us? But her ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... long journeys; each and all of them, old and young, healthy and sickly, would if they could take not merely the grand tour, but circulate round the two hemispheres with all the pleasure imaginable. At a certain period of the year, when the weathercock points the right way, the sun burns in the sign of the Lion, and the husbandman bends his weary form to gather in the golden corn, the legs of the rich Englishman begin to be nervously agitated, he feels a sense of suffocation, and pants for change—of air, of place, of everything; ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... discredited among nations, naked to her enemies. She lies here, between England and Prussia, as in a vise. God summons you, a Frenchman, to reign in Noumaria, and in addition affords you a chance to marry that weathercock of Badenburg's daughter. Ah, He never spoke more clearly, Louis. And you would reply with a shallow jest! Why, Badenburg and Noumaria just bridge that awkward space between France and Austria. Your accession would confirm the Empress,—Gaston de Puysange has it in her own hand, yonder ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... as clothes) porti. Wear away (decay by use) eluzi. Wear away (to decline) konsumigxi. Weariness enuo, laceco. Wearisome enua, enuiga. Weary, to enui. Weary laca, enua. Weather vetero. Weather, to kontrauxstari. Weathercock ventoflago. Weave teksi, plekti. Weaver teksisto, plektisto. Web (tissue) teksajxo. Wed (cf. marry) edzigxi. Wedding (cf. marry) edzigxo. Wedge kojno. Wedlock edzeco. Wednesday merkredo. Weed malbonherbo. Weed sarki. Weeding hook sarkilo. Week semajno. Weekly (adj.) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... and down his garden next day thinking of the contingency. The sense that the paths he was pacing, the cabbage-plots, the apple-trees, his dwelling, cider-cellar, wring-house, stables, and weathercock, were all slipping away over his head and beneath his feet, as if they were painted on a magic-lantern slide, was curious. In spite of John South's late indisposition he had not anticipated danger. To inquire concerning his health had been to show less sympathy than to remain silent, considering ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... time they reached the top floor Desnoyers could see floating above the boughs of his park dark clouds whose outlines were reddened by the sun. The top of the bell tower was the only thing that he could distinguish at that distance. Around the iron weathercock were flying long thin fringes like black cobwebs lifted by the breeze. An odor of burning wood came ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the while with cold, I opened my eyes. What then did I see? My first glance was upwards at the cold fleecy clouds, which as by some optical delusion appeared to stand still, while the steeple, the weathercock, and our two selves were carried swiftly along. Far away on one side could be seen the grassy plain, while on the other lay the sea bathed in translucent light. The Sund, or Sound as we call it, could be discovered beyond the point of Elsinore, crowded with white ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... man I take him for, would have sat still with joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. Why should we be busybodies and superserviceable? Action and inaction are alike to the true. One piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock and one for the sleeper of a bridge; the virtue of the wood ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... visited it occasionally. The household consisted of old Caiaphas, bedridden, and his two daughters and Goldie. Goldie was the tomcat, so termed by reason of his splendid tawniness. Goldie had more to do with the Ebag marriage than anyone or anything, except the weathercock on the top of the house. This may sound queer, but is as naught to the queerness ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... (as we judge) into the Saale, Merseburg way, or reverse-wise into the Unstrut, the last big branch of Saale. Southward from our Janus Height, eight or nine miles off, may be seen some vestige of Freiburg; steeple or gilt weathercock faintly visible, on the Unstrut yonder;—which I take to be Soubise's bread-basket at present. And farther off, and opposite the MOUTH of the Unstrut, well across the Saale, lies another namable Town (visible in clear weather, as a smoke-cloud at ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... madam," answered Mistress Margaret; "but, of all birds in the air, I would rather be the lark, that sings while he is drifting down the summer breeze, than the weathercock that sticks fast yonder upon his iron perch, and just moves so much as to discharge his duty, and tell us which ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... such a manner as to turn the bows in the direction of the arrow, as illustrated in Fig. 146, and the sail or sails abaft the mast turn the boat in the direction of the arrow A. The boat thus revolves upon the center of the mast much as a weathercock revolves upon its pivot. If there is more than one mast, all the sails carried abaft the mainmast serve to turn the boat in the direction A. The work of sailing depends greatly upon the skill in balancing these two effects ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... yet who this old weathercock is," cried Whipcord, turning again to my uncle. "What do they call you at home, old Stick- in-the-mud?" and he nudged him in the ribs by ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Mary was welcomed into the city by "one Peter, a Dutchman," who placed himself on the weathercock of St. Paul's, holding "a streamer in his hand five yards long;" occasionally kneeling down on the said weathercock, "to the great marvell of the people," and balancing himself sometimes on one foot and sometimes ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... power-mad woman, and they went back satisfied to their homes, leaving the city open to occupation by the partisans of Stephen, who entered it under pretense of an alliance with the citizens. The Bishop of Winchester, who seems to have been something of a weathercock in his political faith, turned again to his brothers side, set Stephen's banner afloat on Windsor Castle and converted his bishop's residence into a fortress. Robert of Gloucester came with Maud's troops to besiege it. The garrison set ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... good pattern of the real old-fashioned New England meeting-house. It was a large barn with windows, fronted by a square tower crowned with a kind of wooden bell inverted and raised on legs, out of which rose a slender spire with the sharp-billed weathercock at its summit. Inside, tall, square pews with flapping seats, and a gallery running round three sides of the building. On the fourth side the pulpit, with a huge, dusty sounding-board hanging over it. Here preached the Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, D. D., successor, after a number of generations, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... for ague had shaken the life almost out of him so often that shaking was become natural, and little else could be expected of him; and, furthermore, a pale face or unsteady joints are not always weathercock to a fainting spirit. In some constitutions these may come from other emotions than fear; and it often happens that your most lamentable shaker will stand you longer at the breach than the man of iron nerve, with a white liver. I have seen such. However, the majority ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... as a Chapel Royal for many years, and is now the home of the United Service Museum. For the magnificent ceiling painted by Rubens we are indebted to Charles I., who also designed to have the walls painted by Vandyck, a still more costly operation, which was never carried out. The weathercock on the north end was put up by order of James II., so that he might see whether the wind was for or against the dreaded Dutch fleet. The building has one association never to be forgotten. On that black day when England shamed herself ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... be subdivided into two classes, (1) those which do not require a wind vane or weathercock, (2) those which do. The Robinson anemometer, invented (1846) by Dr. Thomas Romney Robinson, of Armagh Observatory, is the best-known and most generally used instrument, and belongs to the first of these. It consists of four hemispherical cups, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... deceitful promises, who know how to shake hands in such a manner as to win hearts, how to say "My dear friend" in a certain tactful way to people he knows the least, to change his mind without suspecting it, to be carried away by each new idea, to be sincere in their weathercock convictions, to let themselves be deceived as they deceive others, to forget the next morning what ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... him a bushel of that grain for his trouble, a reward quite adequate to such an exploit. We have a similar story related, I think, of Charles II.: a posture master climbed up Grantham steeple, and then stood on his head upon the weathercock. The facetious monarch, after witnessing his ascent, told him he might forthwith have a patent that none should do ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... there was a weathercock it was my sister-in-law. Without even pretending to consult me, she made Colville, the chauffeur, turn the car round. (He was her chauffeur, after ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... the least a fortnight to have noted what is here set down; but it happened that the gentleman, being struck with the old house, or with the plump pigeons which were skimming and curtseying about it, or with the tall maypole, on the top of which a weathercock, which had been out of order for fifteen years, performed a perpetual walk to the music of its own creaking, sat for some little time looking round in silence. Hence John, standing with his hand upon the horse's ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... puzzled, he added: "Just like a weathercock, and by Keel-Surface I mean everything you can see when you view the Aeroplane from the side of it—the sides of the ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... now from my own stores impart unto thee what will avail to tame thee, shewing the utter hopelessness of standing on that golden weathercock which supporteth but one at ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... youth, I was reckoned a good actor. Besides Harrow speeches (in which I shone), I enacted Penruddock in the Wheel of Fortune, and Tristram Fickle in Allingham's farce of the Weathercock, for three nights (the duration of our compact), in some private theatricals at Southwell, in 1806, with great applause. The occasional prologue for our volunteer play was also of my composition. The other performers were young ladies and gentlemen of the neighbourhood, and the whole went off with ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore |
