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More "Snipe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The most renowmed souldier, 240 Epaminondas (as good authors say) Had no more suites then backes, but you two shar'd But one suite twixt you both, when both your studies Were not what meate to dine with, if your partridge, Your snipe, your wood-cocke, larke, or your red hering, 245 But where to begge it; whether at my house, Or at the Guises (for you know you were Ambitious beggars) or at some cookes-shop, T'eternize the cookes trust, and score it up. Dost ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... "That snipe!" Conny called Margaret's husband, Mr. Lawrence Pole. Larry, as he was known in his flourishing days when he loafed in brokers' offices, and idiotically dribbled away his own fortune and most of his wife's, rarely earned a better word than this epithet. "She ought ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... on a high ridge whence they can see wide about, and be in no danger of ambush, because the place is bare for the most part, nor is there any cover except here and there down in the dales a few hazels and blackthorn bushes, and the rushes of the becks in the marshy bottoms, wherein a snipe may hide, or a hare, but scarce a man; and note that there is no way up to that ridge but by a spur thereof as bare as my hand; so ye will be well seen as ye ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... which Sir James had previously obtained the sanction of government, was completely successful. The detachment consisted of the Standard, sixty-four, Captain Hollies; the Owen Glendower, thirty-six; Avenger, Rose, Ranger, sloops; and Snipe, gun-boat: this was reinforced by the marines of the Victory, under Captain Peter Jones, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... men armed to the teeth, and what happens in the lonely pine woods no one knows but the desperadoes themselves, albeit some of them never come back to the little fringe of settlements. The winter visitor from the North kicks up the jack-snipe along the beach or tarponizes in the estuaries of the Gulf, and when he comes to the hotel for dinner he eats Chicago dressed beef, but out in the wilderness low-browed cow-folks shoot and stab each other for the possession of scrawny creatures not fit for a pointer-dog to ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... circumstance that her mother had been dead many years, and her father bedridden, and not altogether rational for a little while before his death, they had few visitors but her uncle. He often stopped with them a month or two at a stretch, particularly in winter, as he was fond of shooting snipe, which are plentiful in the valley there. That she did not grow up a country hoyden is to be explained by the strictness of her governess and the influence of her uncle. But perhaps living in so ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... Monsieur Calyste, and snipe, and pancakes such as I know you can't get anywhere but here," said Mariotte, with a sly, triumphant look as she smoothed the cloth, a ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... I won't give you any trouble, either.... I reckon," mused the adventurer, jingling his manacles thoughtfully, "I'm a back-number, anyway. When a half-grown girl, a half-baked boy, a flub like Mulready—damn his eyes!—and a club-footed snipe from Scotland Yard can put it all over me this way,... why, I guess it's up to me to go home and retire to my country-place up the Hudson." ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... nide of pheasants, A wisp of snipe, A flight of doves or swallows, A muster of peacocks, A siege of herons, A building of rooks, A brood of grouse, A plump of wild fowl, A stand of plovers, A watch of nightingales, A clattering of choughs, A flock of geese, A herd ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... To war it was that he owed his power and glory. Without it, he said, he would have been nothing; by it, he was everything. Hence he felt for it not merely love, but gratitude; loving it both by instinct and calculation. He preferred the bivouac to the Tuileries. Just as the snipe-shooter prefers a marsh to a drawing-room, he was more at home under a tent than in a palace. To men who like the battle-field, war is the most intense of pleasures. They love it as the gamester loves play, with a real frenzy. They defeat ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... soon perceive the little larks, The lapwing, and the snipe, And tune their song like Nature's clerks, O'er meadow, muir, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Jude, an' ol' Lucy ain't a-goin' to take ye in. We gotta snipe somepin quick—or starve! Look, we'll go down to Mike's place, an' then come back here when it's out, and ye kin pinch a string, or somepin, eh? Gawd, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to crawl through a knot-hole without rubbing his clothes." Says I: "I suppose you made her think the moon rose in your head and set in your heels. I daresay you acted foolish enough round her to sicken a snipe, and if you makes fun of her now to please me, I let you know you have got holt of ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... the Italian, in conclusion, "game never failed us; deer, turkeys, ducks, snipe, two or three bears a week. But the sublimest thing was the rich land. Ah! one must see it to believe it. Plains and forests full of animals, lakes and bayous full of fish. Ah! fortune is there. For five years I have dreamed, I have worked, with but one object in view; and today the ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... a meaning to, the words—or sounds, rather—which he and his companions had gabbled through as they prowled around the kitchen clashing their wooden swords. That St. George had become King William was natural enough; but what is to be said of changing the Turkish Knight into the Turkey Snipe? That was one of the "howlers" this youth perpetrated, amongst many others less striking, perhaps, but not less instructive. The whole thing showed plainly where the difficulty lay at the night-school. The breaking up of the traditional life of the village had ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... yellow strip of sand by the river's margin, long-legged snipe were scurrying about. Two fishermen were rocking in a boat in the steamer's wash as they hauled their tackle. Floating from the shore there began to reach us such vocal sounds of morning as the crowing of cocks, the lowing of cattle, and the persistent ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... at the house of the "hairpin" bend simultaneously with a shell. The shell hit the house, the house did not hit Huggie, and the sniper forgot to snipe. ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... know of art, literature, and life. But, as I have remarked elsewhere in this volume, the Strindbergs and Wildes and Gorkis are having their day in Germany just now, and beneath this again is this large distribution of the lawless and sooty literature, frankly intended as a debauch for the gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the coarse, and in no line squeamish, Rabelais wrote that, "Science sans conscience n'est que ruine ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... numerous that it requires one half of the traveler's attention to avoid them In these plains I observed great numbers of the brown Curloos, a small species of curloo or plover of a brown colour about the size of the common snipe and not unlike it in form with a long celindric curved and pointed beak; it's wings are proportionately long and the tail short; in the act of liteing this bird lets itself down by an extention of it's wings without motion holding their points very much together above it's ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Gallup had in 1655 a "sea chest and a great white chest." These sea chests being made of cheap materials, have seldom been preserved. There would appear to be in addition to the various chests already named, a hanging chest. In 1737 Sir William Pepperell wrote to England for "4 dozen pair Snipe bills to hang small chissts." This may possibly refer to snipe-bill hinges to ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... faint bleat, as of a new-born lamb, high above her head; she started and looked up. Then a wail from the cliffs, as of a child in pain, answered by another from the opposite rocks. They were but the passing snipe, and the otter calling to her brood; but to her they were mysterious, supernatural goblins, come to answer to her call. Nevertheless, they only quickened her expectation; and the witch had told her not to fear them. If she performed the rite duly, nothing would harm her: but she ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... was good, And, turning on the poor hen, He clapt his hands, and stamped, and shooed, Hunting the exile tow'rd the wood, To house with snipe ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... SCOTCH SNIPE—Four slices bread buttered, one-half box sardines (one-half pound size), five drops of onion juice, six drops lemon juice, few grains salt, two level teaspoons grated cheese, one tablespoon thick cream. Remove the skins and bones from the sardines, mince fine and add seasonings, cheese ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes
... crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the corner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the neighbours and the ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... tide cormorants were flying, now wheeling like hawks, now beating seaward in a duck-like flight. I passed little, lonely pools on the moor, from which snipe rose with a startling squak! squak! and darted away inland as though ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... company, in a desert of dining room at a vast table loaded with masses of gold plate. The peaches are from South Africa; the strawberries from the Riviera. His chef ransacks the markets for pheasants, snipe, woodcock, Egyptian quail and canvasbacks. And at enormous distances from each other—so that the table may be decently full—sit, with their wives, his family doctor, his clergyman, his broker, his secretary, his lawyer, and ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... captain, who was a keen sportsman, took me with him out shooting. We had a famous day's sport, filled our game bags with partridges, ducks, and snipe, and were returning home on horseback when a solitary horseman, a nasty-looking fellow, armed to the teeth, rode up to us. As I knew a little Spanish we began to talk about shooting, &c. &c.; then he asked me to shoot a bird for him (the ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... in the form of a fillet, is never seen at a "sit-down" supper, and even a fillet is rather too heavy. Lobster in every form is a favorite supper delicacy, and the grouse; snipe, woodcock, teal; canvasback, and squab on ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... in his uniform, with medals strung on his breast and his new gold-handled sword. You'd never have taken him for the little white-headed snipe that the girls used to order about and make fun of. He just stood there for a minute, looking at Myra with a peculiar little smile on his face; and then he says to her, slow, and kind of holding on to ...
— Options • O. Henry
... from recent intoxication, the landlord was tearing madly about, his hat gone, and his hair and beard flying in the wind. He ran in little zigzags from one knot of people to another, whilst his peculiar appearance drew a running fire of witticisms as he went, so that he reminded me irresistibly of a snipe skimming along through a line of guns. We saw him stop for an instant by the yellow barouche, and hand something to Sir Lothian Hume. Then on he came again, until at last, catching sight of us, ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... snipe are good too, but they must be cooked right. They should first be cleaned, then sprinkled with bread crumbs, and roasted until they will crackle between the ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... in their immense flocks of sheep. The horses and mules of Algeria are noted; and the native cattle are an excellent stock on which to graft the better European varieties. Of birds, eagles, vultures, hawks, owls and quails are common; snipe, curlews, plovers, storks and herons frequent the marshy parts; and the ostrich the desert. Partridges and woodcocks are fairly common. Among the reptiles are various species of serpents, tortoises, turtles, lizards, &c. Locusts are common and sometimes do great damage. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... at all fit for food. I never expected to have seen more birds together than we had passed at the rookery under the cliffs in the morning; but we sailed by an island, of which birds of all descriptions had taken entire possession. There were various species of ducks, and geese, and snipe, and teal, and shags, and grebes, and penguins, and albatrosses, and sea-rooks, and oyster-catchers, and gulls with pink breasts, and many others, of whose names I have no note. As we believed that we ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... on the look- out for cants that he could catch and apply in season, and might have done himself some mischief thus if he had not been ready to throw over any cant as soon as he had come across another more nearly to his fancy; his friends used to say that when he rose he flew like a snipe, darting several times in various directions before he settled down to a steady straight flight, but when he had once got into this he would keep ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... own gained knowledge should profane Were I to waste myself with such a snipe But for my ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... two I came to a pond where were sitting five snipe. I killed the whole bunch, and they helped to make another square meal. We were now near the border of the Great Desert proper, where, out of the midst of a level plain, stood a lone mountain known as the "Old Crater," which, together with its ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... like coveys of snipe in a bog, rose shoals of fish, of the genus monoptera, which have no other fins but their tail. I recognized the Javanese, a real serpent two and a half feet long, of a livid colour underneath, and which might easily be ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... more entirely lost than I? When the gun fired, how should I dare to go down to the boats among those fiends, still smoking from their crime? Would not the first of them who saw me wring my neck like a snipe's? Would not my absence itself be an evidence to them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? It was all over, I thought. Good-by to the Hispaniola, good-by to the squire, the doctor, and the captain. There was nothing left for me but death by starvation, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with tropical luxuriancy. Intermingling their crooked roots, they form such a barrier as to make landing well nigh impossible. These small lakes, subject to the ebb and flow of the tides, are the resort of innumerable sea birds and water fowls of all sizes and descriptions; from the snipe to the crane, and brightly colored flamingos, from the screeching sea gulls to the serious looking pelican. They are attracted to these lakes by the solitude of the forests of mangroves that afford ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... alluded to a crowded Jersey stage-load is irresistible. A man with long legs, on a back seat, in one of these vehicles, suffers like a snipe shut up in a snuff-box. For this reason, the long-legged man should sit on the front seat with the driver; there, like the hen-turkey who tried to sit on a hundred eggs, he can "spread himself." The writer sat ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... should have a thrashing, you lying little snipe, always hanging around the petticoats! Don't you suppose I can ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... of the Cedre and other fragraunt oyntmentes, and oyles, to preserue it the longer: thei bewrye it in holy sepulture. If a man haue slayne any of these beastes willingly: he is codempned to death. But yf he haue slaine an catte or a snyte, [Footnote: A snipe, from the Saxon snyta. "Greene-plover, snyte, / Partridge, larke, cocke, and phessant." Heyw. Engl. Trav., Act i., Scene ii.] willingly or vnwillingly: the people ronneth vpon him vppon heapes, and withoute all ordre of Iustice or lawe, in moste miserable wise torment him to death. Vpon feare ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... "If a snipe were the size of a threepenny bit It would be a great deal harder to hit. But if it grew to the size of an emu It wouldn't be better to eat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... Captain Vye from the chimney-corner. "But I hope it is not my wood that he's burning... Ah, it was this time last year that I met with that man Venn, bringing home Thomasin Yeobright—to be sure it was! Well, who would have thought that girl's troubles would have ended so well? What a snipe you were in that matter, Eustacia! Has your husband written to ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the reedy tarn, and at his approach several snipe got up, and they flew above his head uttering sharp cries. His fishing-rod was a long hazel stick, and he threw the frog as far as he could into the lake. In doing this he roused some wild ducks; a mallard and two ducks got up, and they flew towards the larger lake. Margaret watched ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... the snipe As though clock-wakened, every jack, An hour ere dawn, dart in and out The mist-wreaths filling syke and slack, And flutter wheeling round about, And drumming out the Summer night. I lay star-gazing yet a bit; Then, chilly-skinned, I sat upright, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... Ingredients: Snipe, ham, larding bacon, herbs, Marsala, croutons, truffles, cocks' combs, mushrooms, ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... tasted of mud, whereas this ruffe, although so large was not coarse, but rich, and of excellent flavour—and so fat that the flakes fell into crumbs when fried. This day a bird of a new species was shot by Roach. It was of a swallow kind, about the size of a snipe, of a leaden colour, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... being tied to the branches of some wild fruit tree, upon which, when the fruit is ripe, the birds light and are caught by the bird lime. This is called ka riam thit. Another is a kind of spring bow made of bamboo which is laid on the ground in marshy places, such as are frequented by snipe and woodcock. This form of snare is unfortunately most common. A third is a cage into which birds are lured by means of a bait, the cage being hidden in the grass, and the entrance being so contrived that the birds can hop in but ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... other hand, was in no hurry, but remained sitting on his bed and talking to Jakoff about the best places to find plover and snipe. As I have said, there was nothing in the world he so much feared as to be suspected of any affection for his father, brother, and sister; so that, to escape any expression of that feeling, he often fell into the other extreme, and affected a coldness which shocked ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... is hoisted—the otter is now and then seen gliding in the farther nooks—and a quick eye may catch, particularly about the dam, where he generally burrows, a glimpse of the musk-rat as he dives down. Now and then too the wild duck will push his beautiful shape with his bright feet through it—the snipe will alight and "teter," as the children say, along the banks—the woodcock will show his brownish red bosom amongst the reeds as he comes to stick his long bill into the black ooze for sucking, as dock-boys stick straws into molasses ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... were the pride of Emain. (Throwing in clay.) There is Naisi was the best of three, the choicest of the choice of many. It was a clean death was your share, Naisi; and it is not I will quit your head, when it's many a dark night among the snipe and plover that you and I were whispering together. It is not I will quit your head, Naisi, when it's many a night we saw the stars among the clear trees of Glen da Ruadh, or the moon pausing to rest her on the edges of the hills. ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae [Lat.]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock^, duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. [domesticated mammals] horse &c (beast of burden) 271; cattle, kine^, ox; bull, bullock; cow, milch cow, calf, heifer, shorthorn; sheep; lamb, lambkin^; ewe, ram, tup; pig, swine, boar, hog, sow; steer, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... but to each family belongs its own quarrels, its own revenge. If the Big Throat should interfere too deeply, it would anger the other small families, who might fear the same treatment at some other time. And with Beaver, Snipe, Deer, and Potato united against us,—well, it ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... seized with a sudden sense of his duties as the owner of a repeating shotgun, hied him away along the protected inner shore of the key, and managed to gather in a full dozen snipe and shore birds of various species, some of which ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... and a French sentence, but his reception would have frightened a man in armour. His face blanched with horror at the storm, he had invoked, and he dropped limply back as if some one had shot him. "You tell this little snipe to let me alone! " cried Nora, to the dragoman. " If he dares to come around me with any more of those Parisian dude speeches, I-I don't know what I'll do! I won't have it, I say." The impression upon the dragoman ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... he forgot her, and again she laid her hand on his lips. When his thoughts came back to her he looked happier, though he had to think of her penitently. "I was a beast," he went on, "the coldest, cruellest beast. Do you know why I raged at you when you mentioned that little snipe you call Mr. Philip? I knew it was the roughest luck on you to have gone through that time with him. But I wasn't sorry for you. I was jealous. I felt you might have protected yourself from being looked at by any other man in the world except me, though ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... saw a seal asleep upon the water, and several bunches of sea-weed. The next day we saw more seaweed in bunches, and on the 29th, a bird, which we thought a land bird; it somewhat resembled a snipe, but had a short bill. On the 1st of October, we saw birds innumerable, and another seal asleep upon the water; it is a general opinion that seals never go out of soundings, or far from land, but those that we saw in these seas prove the contrary. Rock-weed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... of something else, "it has been praised quite enough." It is a sketch, worked out in a sort of monologue,[376] of something like Diderot's own character without his genius and without his good fellowship—a gutter-snipe of art and letters possessed of some talent and of infinite impudence. It shows Diderot's own power of observation and easy fluid representation of character and manners, but not, as I venture ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... sharks in the neighbourhood; but all around was deep, clear, green water. He kept hold of the cable, however, and seemed determined not to put himself in harm's way, until a little, wicked urchin, who used to wait on the warrant-officers' mess, a small meddling snipe of a creature, who got flogged in well behaved weeks only once, began to taunt my little ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... is known by various names: "Brant Bird," "Bead-bird," "Horse-foot-Snipe," "Sand-runner," "Calico-back," "Chicaric" and "Chickling." The two latter names have reference to its rasping notes, "Calico-back," to the variegated ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... ash from his cigarette with the tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe 'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat in a trap. If it ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... of Bombay, Who was smoking one sunshiny day; When a bird called a snipe Flew away with his pipe, Which vexed the fat ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... Society,' vol. xiii. 1843, p. 31.) Birds which seem ill-adapted for fighting engage in fierce conflicts; thus the stronger males of the pelican drive away the weaker ones, snapping with their huge beaks and giving heavy blows with their wings. Male snipe fight together, "tugging and pushing each other with their bills in the most curious manner imaginable." Some few birds are believed never to fight; this is the case, according to Audubon, with one of the woodpeckers of the United States ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... or sailor, in the October evenings, may hear the murmurings of the snipe, circling over the meadows, the most spirit-like sound in nature; and still later in the autumn, when the frosts have tinged the leaves, a solitary loon pays a visit to our retired ponds, where he may lurk undisturbed till the season of moulting is passed, making the woods ring ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... moment helping Alice to a snipe, answered carelessly, "Young lady? O, Miss Winnie Morris, sister of Wayland Morris, editor of ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... in the midst of the rolling splendours of the moorland proper. There were boulders of rock of unknown age, dark patches of peat land, where even in midsummer the mud oozed up at the lightest footfall, pools and sedgy places, the home and sometimes the breeding place of the melancholy snipe. Of colour there was singularly little. The heather bushes were stunted, their roots blackened as though with fire, and even the yellow of the gorse shone with a dimmer lustre. But in the distance, a flaming carpet of ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Ponto! Ponto!" as he traversed the stable-yard; the delighted pointer would come bounding at the call, and, after circling round his young master with agile grace and yelps of glee at the sight of the gun, dash forward to the well-known "bottoms" in eager expectancy of ducks and snipe. How fared it all this time with the lord of Scatterbrain? He became established, for the present, in a house that had been a long time to let in the neighbourhood, and his mother was placed at the head of it, and Oonah still remained under ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... by, when my naked feet were tripped By the honey-suckle's tangles where the water-lilies dipped, And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink, And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry And the splashing of the swimmer, in the ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... was grown to about thirty years old, he came, most unfortunately, upon a certain Sir John Snipe, Bart., that was a very scandalous young squire of Oxfordshire, and one that had published five lyrics and a play (enough to warn any Bull against him), who spoke to him somewhat in ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... now, and it is an altogether curious sensation to recline here in an easy-chair, reading some fine old book, and just taking the precaution not to stay in front of the glassless windows through which the sharpshooters can snipe at you from their posts in the thickets on the slopes of the plateau, not six hundred metres away. Sometimes our artillery opens up and then you lay down your book for a while, and, looking through a peek-hole, watch the 75's and 120's throw up fountains of dirt and debris all along the ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... hum. I can't kepe it heer coz ime afrade it will git stole. don't speke wun word tu a livin sole bout this coz I don't want nobodi tu kno i hav got enny mony. yu wont now wil yu. i am first rate heer, only that gude fur nuthin snipe of liz madwurth is heer yit—but i hop tu git red ov her now. yu no i rote yu bout her. give my luv to awl inquiren friends. this is from your sister til deth. ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... larks, The lapwing and the snipe, And tune their songs, like Nature's clerks, O'er meadow, muir, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... him. He is always fond of the young officers, and is not the less inclined to be so of one who is so dear and near to you. I wish he would have stayed longer, and hope that he shall come again. We have not much to offer in the way of amusement, but in January and February there is good snipe shooting. ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... waiter by inquiring. When that functionary recommended a bite of broiled tenderloin, prepared with Madeira sauce, and the addition of fresh mushrooms and a small sweetbread, he allowed himself to be persuaded. An English snipe, with chicory salad and some cheese, with coffee, completed his order. Oh, and a pint of ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... company, band; a sandpiper or robin snipe (Tringa canutus); flower-bed laid out in ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... of title. There was nothing said about records and patentees as long as you worked your ground; but, likewise, when you didn't work it, somebody else usually did. We had a thousand feet of as good dirt as ever laid out in the rain; but there was men around drulin' to snipe it, and I knowed it was risky to leave. However, I saw what was gnawin' at the boy, and if ever a man needed a friend and criminal lawyer, that was the time. According to the zodiac, certain persons, to the complainant unknown, had a mess of trouble comin' up and I wanted ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... countryside of long distances by windy roads, with scarcely ever a village as a focus for gossip, news flew fast. The next morning Ned Cromarty had set out with his gun towards a certain snipe marsh, but while he was still on the high road he met a man on a bicycle. The man had heard strange news and stopped to pass it on, and the next moment Ned was hurrying as fast as his long legs could take ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... treasures on exhibition in 47. There was "Shorty," for instance. "Shorty" was a jolly, ugly open-handed, four-eyed little snipe of a roughneck machinist who had lost "in the line of duty" two fingers highly useful in his trade. In consequence he was now, after the generous fashion of the I.C.C., on full pay for a year without work, providing he did ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... strangers over in the Fork have been paying cash and filled him up with conceit," said Union Mills, trying to dry his leg by alternately beating it or rubbing it against the cabin wall. "Once begin wrong with that kind of snipe and you drag ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Saturday was devoted to 'clean ship,' the officers doing [Page 78] their share of the scrubbing. In the forenoon the living-spaces were thoroughly cleaned, holes and corners were searched, and while the tub and scrubber held sway the deck became a 'snipe marsh.' At this time the holds also were cleared up, the bilges pumped out, the upper deck was 'squared up,' and a fresh layer of clean snow was sprinkled over that which had been soiled by the traffic of the week. Then a free ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... sharp slap at his hat. Instinct works on all brave men very much alike. McCloud dropped forward in his saddle, and, seeking no explanation, laid his head low and spurred Bill Dancing's horse for life or death. The horse, quite amazed, bolted and swerved down the grade like a snipe, with his rider crouching close for a second shot. But no second shot came, and after another mile McCloud ventured to take off his hat and put his finger through the holes in it, though he did not stop his horse to make the examination. When they reached the open country ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... a temper. It was a childish temper and soon over—still, a temper. "Lord," said she, "if you mean to say that you think your poor little snipe of a daughter, dressed like a little maid-of-all-work, can compare with that lovely little Lily Jennings, who ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the god of heaven sent down his daughter in the form of the bird Turi, a species of snipe, Charadrius fulvus. She flew about, but could find no resting-place, nothing but ocean. She returned to the heavens, but was again sent down by Tangaloa to search for land. First she observed spray, then lumpy places, then water breaking, then land above the surface, and then a dry place ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... mounted men, and of an exceptionally fearless type, have suffered in a very marked degree, in just such outpost affairs, by the arts and horrors of sniping. Sportsmen hide from the game they hunt, and bide their time to snipe it. It is in that school the Boer has been trained in his long warfare with savage men and savage beasts. A bayonet at the end of his rifle is to him of no use. He seldom comes to close quarters with hunted men or beasts till the life is well out of them; and so in this ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... Englishmen, in praise of sport and physical exercise, touched with a sentiment not far removed from poetry—the only poetry of which they are not half-ashamed. Audubon even joined in, forgetting for the moment his customary pose, and rhapsodizing with the rest over his favourite pursuits of snipe-shooting and cricket. Much of this talk was lost upon me, for I am nothing of a sportsman; but some touches there were that recalled experiences of my own, and for that reason, I suppose, have lingered in my memory. Thus, I recollect, some one spoke ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... dining tete-a-tete with Keene on the previous evening after a hard day's snipe shooting, and bore evident traces about him of a heavy night—a fact which he lost no time in alluding to, not without a certain pride, like the man in Congreve's play, who exults in having "been drunk in excellent company." "We had a very ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... them they will again increase and fill their old haunts. But we must ever be on the watch, for there will still be greedy hunters trying to evade the law until all our boys grow up with love and appreciation for the birds. The killdeer, snipe, and other plovers, whose habits make them the most interesting of the shore birds, especially need our protection. We have all seen these birds in our walks along the shore. Small and delicate their bodies are; each one would make scarcely a mouthful, ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... "My cousin, Jack Snipe, can," replied Longbill promptly. "He feeds the same way I do, only he likes marshy meadows instead of brushy ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... a whicker of wings Came a wisp of five snipe from a field full of springs; The gleam on their feathers went wavering past— And then some men booed him for ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... little." The behaviour of dogs and horses under many circumstances was watched. Cats and monkeys were most carefully scrutinised. At all moments Darwin seized upon and recorded the passing emotion and its associated movements. "I remember once seeing a boy who had just shot his first snipe on the wing, and his hands trembled to such a degree from delight, that he could not for some time reload his gun;" an instance of an emotional ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... master, youth, son, minor, junior, youngling, cadet, chap, urchin, bub, sprig, callant, younker, hobbledehoy; gamin, gutter-snipe. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... he disappears into the narrow lane cutting through the tall stems of sugarcanes; then he reaches the open meadow where the cricket chirps and where there is not a single man to be seen, only the snipe wagging their tails and poking at the mud with their bills. I can feel him coming nearer and nearer and ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... in all carrying the Pipe to the Miami villages, and though they fed us well at the towns where we stopped, we were as thin as snipe at the end of it. It was our first important running, you see, and we wished to make a record. We followed the main trails which followed the watersheds. Between these, we plunged down close-leaved, sweating tunnels of underbrush, through ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... that the earth was once covered with water and the sky alone was inhabited, until God sent his only begotten daughter in the form of a kuri, or snipe, to look for dry land. She found a spot, and brought down to it earth, and a creeping plant, which grew and decomposed into worms, and, lo! the worms ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... "You puppy, you gutter-snipe—I'll show you who I am. Wipe that off if you can;" and then almost shouting, he cried, "Here, Anna, come down and see what I've done to your little ewe lamb, come down and comfort ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... afterwards he was helped to two very greasy-looking entrees; he then despatched a plate of roast mutton; there then appeared before him the largest, and to my mind the hardest, slice of ham that ever figured on the table of a nobleman, yet it disappeared just in time to answer the enquiry of the butler, 'Snipe or pheasant, my lord?' He instantly replied, 'Pheasant,' thus completing his ninth dish of meat at that meal." A few weeks later the Speaker, in conversation with Palmerston, expressed a hope that he was taking ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... this fountain is celebrated as the resort of game, and yesterday a French gentleman of my acquaintance went there, provided with all the accoutrements of sport, not omitting a copious luncheon-basket—there might be snipe or partridges, or perhaps a hare, a gazelle, a ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... fishing-village—"no longer than your arm." I had tramped in wind and rain and the good sunlight over that great desert of pasty black clay at low tide. I had lain at high tide in a sand-pit at the edge of the open sea beyond the dunes, waiting for chance shots at curlew and snipe. I had known the bay at the first glimmer of dawn with a flight of silver plovers wheeling for a rush over my decoys. Dawn—the lazy, sparkling noon and the golden hours before the crisp, still twilight warned me it was high time to start back to Bar la Rose fourteen kilometres ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... roughness of the weather, our passage from Rio Janeiro to the Bay of Conception afforded us but few opportunities to add to our collections. A snipe blown out to sea from the Rio de la Plata, a specimen of Diomedea Albatros at Terra del Fuego, a large Salpa, and a Lepas, were all we were able to obtain. The Bay of Conception presents a rich field to the ornithologist. A kind of parrot, with a long tail, and naked round the eyes, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... feeder and outflow. There is a sluice at the outflow, and, for some reason, the farmer used to let most of the water out, in the summer of every year. In winter the tarn is used by the curling club. It is not deep, has rather a marshy bottom, and many ducks, snipe, and wild-fowl generally dwell among the reeds and marish plants of its sides. Nobody ever dreamed of fishing here, but one day a rustic, "glowering" idly over the wall of the adjacent road, saw fish rising. He mentioned his discovery to an angler, who is said ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... book on French furniture, so identical are they in every detail with the carved woodwork of Picau, of Cauner, or of Nilson, who designed the flamboyant frames of the time of Louis XV. Others have more individuality. In his mirror frames he introduced a peculiar bird with a long snipe-like beak, and rather impossible wings, an imitation of rockwork and dripping water, Chinese figures with pagodas and umbrellas; and sometimes the illustration of Aesop's fables interspersed with scrolls and flowers. ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... amusement. But never fear! You can not be always reading, and when the fine weather comes you will yield to the temptation; all the more likely because you have Claudet Sejournant with you. A jolly fellow he is; there is not one like him for killing a snipe or sticking a trout! Our trout here on the Aubette, Monsieur de Buxieres, are excellent—of the salmon kind, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... be painted on them no such superscription. He never sits up late but when he hunts the badger, the vowed foe of his lambs; nor uses he any cruelty but when he hunts the hare; nor subtilty but when he setteth snares for the snipe or pitfalls for the blackbird; nor oppression but when, in the month of July, he goes to the next river and shears his sheep. He allows of honest pastime, and thinks not the bones of the dead anything bruised or the worse for ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... short, well-rounded mouth, your diminutive but strong legs, almost hidden by the long, silky hair from your stomach, and hear you sing as you lie on the rug before a good fire in the winter, after a hard day's cock or snipe-shooting, wet and tired with your indefatigable exertions! Yes—strange as it may sound, Doll would sing in her way, as I have stated in a previous page; and such was her sagacity, that in process of time when I said, "Sing, Doll," she gave vent to the sounds, and varied them ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... ample means of gratifying their inclination. Besides bears, wolves, boars, foxes, roebucks, chamois, hares, and ermines, all of which are plentiful in parts of the country, birds of all kinds abound; grey and red-legged partridges, blackcock, ducks of various kinds, quail, and snipe, are the most common; while flights of geese and cranes pass in the spring and autumn, but only descend in spring. Swans and pelicans are also birds of passage, and occasionally visit these unknown lands. The natives are clever ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... about a little. Flat, bare country on every hand. Any driftwood we saw was buried in the sand and soaking wet. Not a bird to be seen except one or two snipe. We came to a lake, and out of the fog in front of me I heard the cry of a loon, but saw no living creature. Our view was blocked by a wall of fog whichever way we turned. There were plenty of reindeer tracks, but of course they were only those of the Samoyedes' ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... that on the Imperial preserves in the neighbourhood of Vienna the first snipe had been seen, the passionate huntsman said, 'I am exceedingly sorry, but I've no time for them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... much that was true and interesting about my younger brothers, who delighted in horses and dogs, hunted, shot, and fished, and played cricket; one of them bowled for Gloucestershire and Oxford. But about me the inquiring literary snipe only heard that "Andra was aye the stupid ane o' the fam'ly." Yet, I, too, had bowled for the local club, non sine gloria! ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... she says, a noble expanse, which, about a hundred years ago, was a wild swampy jungle, famous only for snipe-shooting. Strange to say, it is not, like most Indian plains, burned up and brown, but, from its vicinity to the river, and the frequent showers that visit it, as fresh and green as an English park. It has a few ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... rock, and looked up at the broad yellow moon, and wondered what she was, and thought that she looked at him. And he watched the moonlight on the rippling river, and the black heads of the firs, and the silver-frosted lawns, and listened to the owl's hoot, and the snipe's bleat, and the fox's bark, and the otter's laugh; and smelt the soft perfume of the birches, and the wafts of heather honey off the grouse moor far above; and felt very happy. You, of course, would have been very cold sitting there on a September night, without the least bit ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... show where in April the noisy Goose engulfs everything within reach of its foaming wings. The creek bed becomes in midsummer a mere sandy ford that may be crossed by a child—a dry map that prints the running feet of snipe and plover, the creeping tread of the mink and the muskrat, and the slouching trail of the coyote ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at the 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 ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... a fine rage. A situation, unique in his forty years of experience as a lumber and shipping magnate, was confronting him, with the prospects exceedingly bright for Cappy playing a role analogous to that of the simpleton who holds the sack on a snipe-hunting expedition. He summoned Mr. Skinner into his private office, and glared at the latter over the rims of his spectacles. "Skinner," he said solemnly, "there's ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... air. Tired of listless dreaming Through the lazy day: Jovial wind of winter Turn us out to play! Sweep the golden reed-beds; Crisp the lazy dyke; Hunger into madness Every plunging pike. Fill the lake with wild-fowl; Fill the marsh with snipe; While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snow-flakes Off the curdled sky. . . . . . Come; and strong within us Stir the Viking's blood; Bracing brain and sinew: Blow, thou ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... the eye of the sportsman—and the Lancashire gentlemen of the sixteenth century were keen lovers of sport—the country had a strong interest. Pendle forest abounded with game. Grouse, plover, and bittern were found upon its moors; woodcock and snipe on its marshes; mallard, teal, and widgeon upon its pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might follow the wolf to his lair in the mountains; might spear the boar in the oaken ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wood or pasture to another; now in great companies, and with protracted all-day or all-night flights. Who could ask a better stimulus for his imagination than the annual southing of this mighty host? Each member of it knows his own time and his own course. On such a day the snipe will be in such a meadow, and the golden plover in such a field. Some, no doubt, will lose their way. Numbers uncounted will perish by storm and flood; numbers more, alas, by human agency. As I write, with the sad note of a bluebird in my ear, I ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... boiling cider, while the newly opened bottles of grape juice filled the house with the tang of Concord and muscadine. It seemed to me I never got nicely fixed where I could take a sly dip in the cake dough or snipe a fat raisin from the mincemeat but Candace would say: "Don't you suppose the backlog is halfway down ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... in their duties; besides, the fat cattle would be finished very shortly and sent off to be sold in Dublin. Jack had announced his intention of stealing a holiday on the morrow, and taking Hayes to a certain famous "snipe bottom," when the game was, to use Dick's expression, "as thick as plums in one of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... hope so! We are such near neighbours." She was ready to say anything that would make him feel he was not being treated as a shopman. "And did you have your day's shooting? Were you successful?" "Well," with modest pride, "I came upon snipe unexpectedly, and brought home a couple of brace. If I had thought you would condescend to accept them, Miss Pennycuick—if I ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... in the 'Dunciad,' is only produced in perfection when the labour which would have made an ode has been concentrated upon a couple of lines. There is a celebrated recipe for dressing a lark, if we remember rightly, in which the lark is placed inside a snipe, and the snipe in a woodcock, and so on till you come to a turkey, or, if procurable, to an ostrich; then, the mass having been properly stewed, the superincumbent envelopes are all thrown away, and the essences ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Carolina. Eagle bald. Eagle gray. Fishing Hawk. Turkey Buzzard, or Vulture. Herring-tail'd Hawk. Goshawk. Falcon. Merlin. Sparrow-hawk. Hobby. Ring-tail. Raven. Crow. Black Birds, two sorts. Buntings two sorts. Pheasant. Woodcock. Snipe. Partridge. Moorhen. Jay. Green Plover. Plover gray or whistling. Pigeon. Turtle Dove. Parrakeeto. Thrush. Wood-Peckers, five sorts. Mocking-birds, two sorts. Cat-Bird. Cuckoo. Blue-Bird. Bulfinch. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... us plenty of soldiers, to help us. Instead, we are treated like the dogs of snipe-hunters; we are always sent ahead ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... The rest fly towards a little pool of dark water lying at a considerable distance from the common, a well-known rendezvous for those birds. Cautiously approaching, down wind, I reach the margin. Up springs a snipe; but just as my finger is on the trigger, and when too late to alter my intention, a duck and mallard rise from among the rushes and wheel round my head. One barrel is fortunately left, and the drake ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... somewhat after the manner of the otter. It has a most wide range of diet, and will eat almost anything which is at all eatable. Fishes, frogs, and muskrats are his especial delight, and he will occasionally succeed in pouncing upon a snipe or wild duck, which he will greedily devour. Crawfish, [Page 190] snails, and water insects of all kinds also come within the range of his diet, and he sometimes makes a stray visit to some neighboring poultry ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... friends. Sir William Temple's wife, Dorothea, became Dorinda; Esther Johnson, Stella; Hester Vanhomrigh, Vanessa; Lady Winchelsea, Ardelia; while to Lady Acheson he gave the nicknames of Skinnybonia, Snipe, and Lean. But all was taken by them in good part; for his rather dictatorial ways were softened by the fascinating geniality and humour which he knew so well how to employ when he used to "deafen them ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... one man there at least, perhaps a pair of them hiding somewhere around that desolate place. Why, Norton's Point is, I guess, about the meanest and loneliest place of all the Disston Swamp lumber company. Nobody hardly ever goes there except to shoot snipe and woodcock in the fall, and yet we happen to know there's one person hiding out there, and that he knows Todd Pemberton, for they've been exchanging signals through ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... Broom-Squire, assuming an air of confidence, "between you and me, as old acquaintances, and me as gave you the feathers out o' a snipe's wing to make your first brush—and, so to speak, launched you in your career of greatness—between you and me I'm in an awkward perdic'ment. Through the failure of the Wealden Bank, of which you've heard tell, I've ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... railroad for a rump and dozen; but, after all, there is nothing to grow frisky about, as Longinus does, who gets up the steam of a blue-stocking enthusiasm, and boils us a regular gallop of ranting, in which, like the conceited snipe[10] upon the Liverpool railroad, he thinks himself to run a match with Sampson; and, whilst affecting to admire Homer, is manifestly squinting at the reader to see how far he admires his own flourish of admiration; and, in the very ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... spurred lapwing, characteristic and most interesting resident of most of South America, we found tiny red- legged plover which also breed and are at home in the tropics. The contrasts in habits between closely allied species are wonderful. Among the plovers and bay snipe there are species that live all the year round in almost the same places, in tropical and subtropical lands; and other related forms which wander over the whole earth, and spend nearly all their time, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... from the breakers was drifting across the dunes, and the little tip-up snipe ran along the beach and teetered and whistled and spread their white-barred wings for a low, straight flight across the shingle, only to tip and run and sail on again. The salt sea-wind whistled and curled through the crested waves, blowing in perfumed puffs across thickets ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... religion. He is now buried on the west side of Binsey churchyard, near St. Margaret's well. Geffery selected Binsey for the place of his sepulchre, because he was partial to the spot, having often shot snipe there. In order to moisten his clay, he desired his friend Will Gardner, a boatman of Oxford, who was accustomed to row him down the river, to put now and then a bottle of ale by his grave when he came that way; an injunction which was ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... Soames bitterly, "I'm supposed to be dead or a traitor or something. But listen to me! You're a castaway and savages snipe at you. You want to make something like the thing that stops wind, but you want it to stop arrows instead. It's quite a job. Perhaps the only useful thing you've got on this savage world is a way to make magnetic fields with minus self-induction. That's ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... a bold sportsman may find game to his liking, and willing natives to guide him in his search after tigers, wild hogs, the huge boa, deer, snipe, and quail. In pursuit of the last, too many a fever is caught, through the imprudence of young men in staying out too late in the day, and in keeping on their wet and soiled clothes and shoes during their ride or drive home. A little attention ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... respectively by the clans of the wolf, bear, turtle, deer, beaver, falcon, crane and the plover. I find that there is a little difference in the clans of the Tuscaroras, which are the bear, wolf, turtle, beaver, deer, eel and snipe. It is contrary to the usage of the Indians that near kindred should intermarry, and the ancient rule interdicts all intermarriage between persons of the same clan. They must marry into a clan which is different from their own. A Bear or Wolf male cannot marry a Bear or Wolf female. By this ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... or Lesser Tell tale sometimes called Yellow-leg Snipe, and Little Cucu, inhabits the whole of North America, nesting in the cold temperate and subarctic districts of the northern continent, migrating south in winter to Argentine and Chili. It is much rarer in the western than eastern province ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... pink bully in particular? Which of us is there, who has not passed moments in the company of these brutes, such as might well 'score years from a strong man's life'? Some of us have been gored by the brutes, and most of us, who have pursued the crafty snipe bird in his native padi swamps, have put in various mauvais quarts d'heure, with some of these sullenly vindictive animals mouching after us, much in the way that a gendarme pursues a gamin. Then has entered upon the scene a Delivering Angel, in the shape of a ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... I would have given him fifty cents, or so. You know there is a law that if a Chinese accepts any amount of money after being injured, he has no redress." He went on to tell a story about using Chinese women to retrieve instead of dogs in snipe shooting. If these coolie women happen to stand up and get a stray shot, a few cents is given them, and it is called "square." One of the husbands of these women retrievers needed money, so his wife stood up in order to get a lot of shots. She got seven shots and went away ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... core; As dying breaths commingle, o'er them rose the call Of Eagle shrill: "Yon crowned couple, who supposed the world too small, Now one grave fill! Chiefs blinded by your rage! each bleached sapless bone Becomes a pipe Through which siroccos whistle, trodden 'mong the stone By quail and snipe. Folly's liege-men, what boots such murd'rous raid, And mortal feud? I, Eagle, dwell as friend with Leo—none afraid— In solitude: At the same pool we bathe and quaff in placid mood. Kings, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... opportunities for hunting. Therefore Herbert and Gideon Spilett, with Top in front, traversed more often than their companions the road to the corral, and with the capital guns which they carried, capybaras, agouties, kangaroos, and wild pigs for large game, ducks, tetras, grouse, jacamars, and snipe for small, were never wanting in the house. The produce of the warren, of the oyster-bed, several turtles which were taken, excellent salmon which came up the Mercy, vegetables from the plateau, wild fruit from the forest, were riches upon riches, ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... Saturday, from a day after snipe and teal, he found himself instinctively allotting the pick of his 'bag' to Miss Arden; just a complimentary attention; the sort of thing she would appreciate. Having refused a ride with her because of this outing, it seemed the least he ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... nowhere could a spot be found where the ship's boat could approach without extreme danger. The water was shallow everywhere, and the breakers were heavy. Fish of many kinds—more especially mullets,—geese, snipe, teal, and other birds of excellent flavour, were caught and killed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... week, and is as happy as can be, he says he never felt so well and never had such good snipe shooting. Little Darfour's amusement at Maurice is boundless; he grins at him all the time he waits at table, he marvels at his dirty boots, at his bathing, at his much walking out shooting, at his knowing no Arabic. The dyke burst ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... sat, and the profusion of wild flowers that spangled the bosom of the green glen, breathed their fragrance around him, and steeped, the emotions and remembrances which crowded thickly on him in deep and exquisite tenderness. Up in the air he heard the quavering hum of the snipe, as it rose and fell in undulating motion, and the creak of the rail in many directions around him. From an adjoining meadow in the distance, the merry voices of the village children came upon his ear, as they gathered the wild honey which dropped like dew from ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... behaviour of dogs and horses under many circumstances was watched. Cats and monkeys were most carefully scrutinised. At all moments Darwin seized upon and recorded the passing emotion and its associated movements. "I remember once seeing a boy who had just shot his first snipe on the wing, and his hands trembled to such a degree from delight, that he could not for some time reload his gun;" an instance of an emotional movement ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... preserue it the longer: thei bewrye it in holy sepulture. If a man haue slayne any of these beastes willingly: he is codempned to death. But yf he haue slaine an catte or a snyte, [Footnote: A snipe, from the Saxon snyta. "Greene-plover, snyte, / Partridge, larke, cocke, and phessant." Heyw. Engl. Trav., Act i., Scene ii.] willingly or vnwillingly: the people ronneth vpon him vppon heapes, and withoute all ordre of Iustice or lawe, in moste miserable ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... the ash from his cigarette with the tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe 'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of the trench with yer nose to ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... conclusion, "game never failed us; deer, turkeys, ducks, snipe, two or three bears a week. But the sublimest thing was the rich land. Ah! one must see it to believe it. Plains and forests full of animals, lakes and bayous full of fish. Ah! fortune is there. For five years I have dreamed, I have worked, with but ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... found that where it had been dry in spring one might now sink to his knees in the bog; also that the snipe which had vanished for a season were back at the old spot where they used to breed. It was a bitter day near the end of an unpleasant summer, with the wind back in the old hateful north-east quarter; but the sun shone, the sky was blue, and the flying clouds were of a dazzling ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... Mitrich, thank God!" remarked the watchman, Ignat, as he passed by with some buckets.... "Snipe will be about to-morrow, and we will have to hunt ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... four-horned antelope, the antelope, and the gazelle. Of the birds, I may mention 12 varieties of pigeons, 2 of sandgrouse, 2 of partridges, 8 of quail, peafowl, jungle-fowl, spenfowl, bustard, floriken (a kind of bustard), woodcock, woodsnipe, common snipe, jacksnipe, painted snipe, widgeon, 4 kinds of teal, and 5 of wild ducks. I may mention that there are 9 kinds of eagles, 20 kinds of hawks, and 13 varieties of owls. As regards reptiles, crocodiles are the only ones that sportsmen take any interest in, and they ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... had concluded, Terence led his glowing partner to a cool quiet corner, where leaving her, he flew to the side table, and in less time than he would take to bring down a snipe, he was again beside her with a large mugful of hot negus, into which he had put, by way of stiffener, a copious dash of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and the current is swift in some places, sluggish in others. The channel winds through heavy timber lands and between high, rocky cliffs. The mountains are not far away. The fishing is splendid, and woodcock and snipe are plentiful." ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... be heavy which a new hammerless gun by such a maker cannot do something towards lightening. So on the next morning he took this gun and went to the marshes by the river—where, he was credibly informed, several wisps of snipe had been seen—to attempt to shoot some of them and put the new ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... up. My Joe used tuh make a tidy lot of money trappin' animals in the swamp for ther skins, huntin' turkles like them terrapin they pay sech a big price fur, an' actin' as guide fur the shooters as come down along the coast after ducks and snipe and bay birds. No reason but what you could do the same. Only try and git on the good side of the ole woman, to begin with, lad. She's got a heart, tho' there's some as don't believe it. I know she's still a feelin' bad because ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... landlord was tearing madly about, his hat gone, and his hair and beard flying in the wind. He ran in little zigzags from one knot of people to another, whilst his peculiar appearance drew a running fire of witticisms as he went, so that he reminded me irresistibly of a snipe skimming along through a line of guns. We saw him stop for an instant by the yellow barouche, and hand something to Sir Lothian Hume. Then on he came again, until at last, catching sight of us, he gave a cry of joy, and ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... There are snipe to be shot in Australia; but wild duck is really the best kind of shooting we get, and far more easily obtainable. They are much more varied in kind than at home. Rabbits are generally too plentiful to afford much fun. I have pelted them by the score from ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... others, is well provided with good creeks which are navigable and very serviceable for fisheries. There is here a grist-mill driven by the water which they dam up in the creek; and it is hereabouts they go mostly to shoot snipe and wild geese. In the middle of this meadow there is a grove into which we went, and within which there was a good vale cleared off and planted. On our return from this ramble we found Jan Theunissen had come back with his company. He ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... your 'schemes,' young man; that fake fraternity and the snipe-hunts and an examination in English ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... (Puffinuria Berardii) which inhabits the inland sounds and resembles the auk in some particulars of habit and appearance. There are numerous species in these sheltered channels, inlets and sounds of geese, ducks, swans, cormorants, ibises, bitterns, red-beaks, curlew, snipe, plover and moorhens. Conspicuous among these are the great white swan (Cygnus anatoides), the black-necked swan (Anser nigricollis), the antarctic goose (Anas antarctica) and the "race-horse" or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... two or three rails, of a brown or yellowish colour, variegated with black, which feed about the small brooks, and are nearly as large as a common fowl. No other sort of game was seen, except a single snipe, which was shot, and differs but little ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... smoothbore. How can he possibly get a correct aim with "ball" out of a smoothbore, without squinting along the barrel and taking the muzzle-sight accurately? The fact is, that many persons fire so hastily at game that they take no sight at all, as though they were snipe-shooting with many hundred grains of shot in the charge. This will never do for ball-practice, and when the rifle is placed in such hands, the breech-sights naturally bother the eye which is not ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... leave,' Charlie wrote, 'shooting; the sport will be mostly snipe and other small game, but there's a chance of tigers. Now, I know you are a ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... all points extraordinarily close together. This means an immense strain on the men. They remain for hours together in cramped, unnatural positions, knowing from experience that an unwise move will bring a bullet from crack marksmen told off to snipe them. ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... "Pierre says you're grouching about your garret. How about me, and this job? You get out of yours to-night for keeps. What about me? I can't do anything but act as a damned blind for the rest of you with this fool store, just because I was born a freak that every gutter-snipe ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... aquatic animal, inhabiting small rivers and streams, and living somewhat after the manner of the otter. It has a most wide range of diet, and will eat almost anything which is at all eatable. Fishes, frogs, and muskrats are his especial delight, and he will occasionally succeed in pouncing upon a snipe or wild duck, which he will greedily devour. Crawfish, [Page 190] snails, and water insects of all kinds also come within the range of his diet, and he sometimes makes a stray visit to some neighboring poultry yard to satisfy the craving of his abnormal hunger. A meal off from his own offspring ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... month in which the avian population attains its maximum. Geese, ducks, teal, pelicans, cormorants, snake-birds and ospreys abound in the rivers and jhils; the marshes and swamps are the resort of millions of snipe and other waders; the fields and groves swarm with flycatchers, chats, starlings, warblers, finches, birds of prey and the other migrants which in winter visit the plains from the Himalayas and the ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... "tin-clads," were helpless against field guns, while heavy iron-clads could be driven off by riflemen protected by the timber and levees along streams. To fire ten-inch guns at skirmishers, widely disposed and under cover, was very like snipe-shooting with twelve-pounders; and in narrow waters gunboats required troops on shore ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... when she looked at you with those big grey eyes of hers. Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they had crowded much into it as one did in a strange land. The episode had been a green and dangerous spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at least. Well, there was none of that danger now, for her husband was dead-poor chap! It would be nice, in these dismal days, when nobody spent ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was simple and easily procured. The woods and waters furnished all that they required. A hare and some snipe and plover, with a few trout and a salmon, were the result of a short excursion, that did not extend much farther than a ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... about the 14th March. 2. Redwing, Turdus iliacus. About old Michaelmas. 3. Fieldfare, Turdus pilaris. Though a percher by day, roosts on the ground. 4. Royston-crow, Cornix cinerea. Most frequent on downs. 5. Woodcock, Scolopax. Appears about old Michaelmas. 6. Snipe, Gallinago minor. Some snipes constantly breed with us. 7. Jack-snipe, Gallinago minima. 8. Wood-pigeon, OEnas. Seldom appears till late; not in such plenty as formerly. 9. Wild-swan, Cygnus ferus. On some large waters. 10. Wild-goose, Anser ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... in fact, they form an attraction to many English sportsmen to visit the Island. Both my brother and A. L. T. were sportsmen, but our time was too limited to admit of the exercise of this taste. Among the birds may be noted swan, geese, duck, curlew, mallard, snipe, plover, ptarmigan,—90 species of birds, in fact, 54 of which are wildfowl. During our ride, A. L. T. shot a fine raven, and on our return to the ship, my brother skinned and stuffed it, as a memento of his inland ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... minute when the snipe As though clock-wakened, every jack, An hour ere dawn, dart in and out The mist-wreaths filling syke and slack, And flutter wheeling round about, And drumming out the Summer night. I lay star-gazing yet a bit; Then, chilly-skinned, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... my patience. I had never practised shooting with ball; I had frightened a few snipe, and wounded a few partridges, but that was the extent of my experience. I knew, however, that I could not by any possibility shoot worse than every body else had done, and might by ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... When they wanted us, German guards would come in, line up about twenty of us, and take us out to work in the fields. The first job they put us at was planting potatoes and we worked faithfully the first day, but when we came in that night I said to "Snipe," the new pal I had made, "By golly! Snipe, I don't like the idea of producing food for these 'square-heads,' let's see if we can't put one over them." "All right," said Snipe, "I'm game, but how in ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... narrow estuary which runs into and along the Jersey coast for more than half its extent, leaving outside a strip of sandy beach, never more than a mile wide. All kinds of sea fish and fowl take refuge in this bay and the interminable reedy marshes, and for a few weeks in the snipe-and duck-season sportsmen from New York find their way to "Shattuck's" and the houses of other old water-dogs along the bay. But during the rest of the year the wooden shed and its occupants are left to the companionship of the sea and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... his head, and hurried once more onward to keep the line, to hear soon afterwards scape, scape, uttered shrilly by a snipe which darted off ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... heating for pickles, a reminder of winesap and rambo in the boiling cider, while the newly opened bottles of grape juice filled the house with the tang of Concord and muscadine. It seemed to me I never got nicely fixed where I could take a sly dip in the cake dough or snipe a fat raisin from the mincemeat but Candace would say: "Don't you suppose the backlog is ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... grouse. I see no amusement in dawdling over a lowland moor where the packs are as thick as chickens in a poultry-yard. I like better than most things a day with my own dogs in scattered covers, when I know not what may rise—a woodcock, an odd pheasant, a snipe in the out-lying willow-bed, and perhaps a mallard or a teal. A hare or two falls in agreeably when the mistress of the house takes an interest in the bag. I detest battues and hot corners, and slaughter for slaughter's ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... where they form their nests. The birds were also very numerous, large flocks of black cockatoos, cockatoo parrots, galaas, budgerygars or grass parrots ('Melopsittacus Undulatus, Gould'), and some grey quail were frequently seen, and on one of the lagoons a solitary snipe was found. Another cow was abandoned to-day. The total day's stage was 8 miles. The party camped in the sandy bed of the river. A little rain was experienced at night. (Camp XXV.) Latitude 16 degrees ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... might have done himself some mischief thus if he had not been ready to throw over any cant as soon as he had come across another more nearly to his fancy; his friends used to say that when he rose he flew like a snipe, darting several times in various directions before he settled down to a steady straight flight, but when he had once got into this ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... heap rather lay off in the brush somewheres an' snipe Germans," Mr. Daniels pleaded. "On the level, boss, if they'll give me a Springfield rifle with telescopic sights I'll guarantee to sicken anythin' I get a fair sight on at a ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... as Lieutenant-Colonel: "the beauty of this Corps as well as the perfection of their EXERCITIA,"—ah yes, we know it, my dim old friend. The Marriage itself followed, at Berlin, after many exercitia, snipe-shootings, feastings, hautboyings; on the 30th of the month; with torch-dance and the other customary trimmings; "Bride's garter cut in snips" for dreaming upon "by his Royal Majesty himself." The LUSTBARKEITEN, the stupendous public entertainments having ended, there is ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... added Snap; who having devoted himself exclusively all his life to the sharpest practice of the criminal law, knew about as much of real property law as a snipe—but it would not have done to appear ignorant, or taking no part in the matter, in the presence of the heir-at-law, and the future great ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... The Snipe, Sandpipers, Plovers, Phalaropes, Curlews, etc., are great destroyers of insects. Moving as many of them do in great flocks and spreading out over the meadows, pastures, and hillsides, as well as among the cultivated fields, they do a large amount of careful police service in arresting ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... command the counsellor sent the Snipe and the Turnstone, Aiwohikupua's swiftest messengers, to go up and find out the truth ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... swift. Tortoises used to line the margin of the river in the evening, with their heads sticking out above water, while crowds of angry birds accused them from the wet mud of the shore. Wild duck, partridge, snipe, sand-grouse and doves were fairly numerous, and in the evenings it was possible to get a good bag. It was worth shooting jackals, for their skins were in very good condition. The hospital had a football ground and later on, towards the end of the hot ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... Day! 'Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth, peace and goodwill towards men.' So no great shells were fired into the Boer entrenchments at dawn, and the hostile camps remained tranquil throughout the day. Even the pickets forbore to snipe each other, and both armies attended divine service in the morning and implored Heaven's blessing on their righteous causes. In the afternoon the British held athletic sports, an impromptu military tournament, and a gymkhana, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... officers doing [Page 78] their share of the scrubbing. In the forenoon the living-spaces were thoroughly cleaned, holes and corners were searched, and while the tub and scrubber held sway the deck became a 'snipe marsh.' At this time the holds also were cleared up, the bilges pumped out, the upper deck was 'squared up,' and a fresh layer of clean snow was sprinkled over that which had been soiled by the traffic ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life! Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you! My brain it shall be your occult convolutions! Root of wash'd sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you! Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you! Sun so generous it shall be you! Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you! You sweaty brooks and dews ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... in a couple of days it would be fit for harrowing and sowing. Everything was capital, everything was cheering. Levin rode back across the streams, hoping the water would have gone down. And he did in fact get across, and startled two ducks. "There must be snipe too," he thought, and just as he reached the turning homewards he met the forest keeper, who confirmed his ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... beyond this fountain is celebrated as the resort of game, and yesterday a French gentleman of my acquaintance went there, provided with all the accoutrements of sport, not omitting a copious luncheon-basket—there might be snipe or partridges, or perhaps a hare, a gazelle, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... on the Imperial preserves in the neighbourhood of Vienna the first snipe had been seen, the passionate huntsman said, 'I am exceedingly sorry, but I've no time for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... looks, Jude, an' ol' Lucy ain't a-goin' to take ye in. We gotta snipe somepin quick—or starve! Look, we'll go down to Mike's place, an' then come back here when it's out, and ye kin pinch a string, or ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... "Swallows are generally seen for the last time this month, the house-martin the latest. The rooks return to the roost trees, and the tortoise begins to bury himself for the winter. Woodcocks begin to arrive, and keep dropping in from the Baltic singly or in pairs till December. The snipe also comes now;" and with the month, by a kind of savage charter, commences the destruction of the pheasant, to swell the catalogue of the created wants and luxuries of the table. "One of the most curious natural ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... handsome assortment of victuals on this occasion, chiefly venison and birds, and some of the latter were baked in bread, probably a sort of paste. The majority of the names on the list are familiar, but a few—the teal, the curlew, the crane, the stork, and the snipe—appear to be new. It is, in all these cases, almost impossible to be sure how much we owe to the poet's imagination and how much to his rhythmical poverty. From another passage it is to be inferred that baked venison was a favourite mode of ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... Snipe has some of the nocturnal habits of the Woodcock, and the same habit of soaring at twilight, when he performs a sort of musical medley, which Audubon has very graphically described in the following passage:—"The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... identical are they in every detail with the carved woodwork of Picau, of Cauner, or of Nilson, who designed the flamboyant frames of the time of Louis XV. Others have more individuality. In his mirror frames he introduced a peculiar bird with a long snipe-like beak, and rather impossible wings, an imitation of rockwork and dripping water, Chinese figures with pagodas and umbrellas; and sometimes the illustration of Aesop's fables interspersed with scrolls and flowers. By dividing the glass unequally, by the introduction ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... wonderful provision of nature. At the present moment he also is engaged in the operation of weeding. In his right hand is a small species of sickle called a koorpee, with which he investigates the root of each weed as a snipe feels in the mud for worms; then with his left hand he pulls it out, gently shakes the earth off it, and contributes it to a small heap beside him. When he has cleared a little space round him, he moves on like a toad, without lifting ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... we pushed into the breast-high grass, and the walking was easy. Once we crossed a patch of oozy turf from which arose a score of jack-snipe; again we skirted a drying pond whose boggy edges were the hunting ground of marsh hens. Yet other trails could be read here: deer, wildcat, raccoon, and innumerable wee things. And here, too, around the "bonnet" leaves, the ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... would soon be in it. I listened eagerly for some intermission, but it did not relax or recede, and I knew that the Turks must be holding on. The bullets became thicker—an ironic whistle, a sucking noise, a gluck like a snipe leaving mud, the squeal and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... good progress had been made, and they were now drawing close in to the island. It lay there, looking calm and peaceful in the morning sunlight. A few birds flew up from along the shore, some of them "teeter" snipe that had been feeding. Davy even pointed with his paddle to a big gray squirrel that ran along a log in plain view, and sat up on his haunches as if to curiously observe these approaching human beings who intended to invade ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the host, "in my youth I have shot many a snipe and wild duck with the Herr Baron's father. But Eva should spread the table; the gentlemen will certainly take supper, and a glass of good punch the Herr Baron will certainly not despise, if he is like ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... her, and again she laid her hand on his lips. When his thoughts came back to her he looked happier, though he had to think of her penitently. "I was a beast," he went on, "the coldest, cruellest beast. Do you know why I raged at you when you mentioned that little snipe you call Mr. Philip? I knew it was the roughest luck on you to have gone through that time with him. But I wasn't sorry for you. I was jealous. I felt you might have protected yourself from being looked at by any other man in ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... good-humouredly, plunged their hands into their (mostly empty) pockets, and wished him joy of his bargain. Now the Kylemore improvements are the wonder of Connemara. The long unknown mangold is seen to flourish on spots which once nourished about a snipe to an acre. Root crops are very largely grown, and it is to these that the climate and reclaimed bog of Connemara are more particularly favourable; but there is abundance of grain at Currywongoan, at ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... Goose," from the exceeding brilliancy of its plumage. But nowhere could a spot be found where the ship's boat could approach without extreme danger. The water was shallow everywhere, and the breakers were heavy. Fish of many kinds—more especially mullets,—geese, snipe, teal, and other birds of excellent flavour, were caught and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... are birds which are common enough in England in the winter, but which mostly go away to Norwegian breeding-grounds, such as geese, ducks, woodcock, and snipe; while bramblings, fieldfares, and redwings are birds of the North, and never nest in Great Britain. Besides these, there are a certain number of birds which have no claim to be termed British, and which are found in Norway all the year round—the nut-cracker, several kinds of woodpecker, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... stretches of a friendly bank—remain to show where in April the noisy Goose engulfs everything within reach of its foaming wings. The creek bed becomes in midsummer a mere sandy ford that may be crossed by a child—a dry map that prints the running feet of snipe and plover, the creeping tread of the mink and the muskrat, and the slouching trail of ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... on the committee who had ever done anything more dangerous than shooting snipe, nor one who had seen anything more inexplicable than spots before his eyes after too much dinner. Yet they mocked King and me, in a sort of way that monkeys in the tree-tops ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... when my wings gits stwaight agin, Where you all cwumpled 'em," he says, "I bet I'll ist fly clean away an' won't take you To old Miss Hoodjicum's at all!" he says. An' nen I ist weach out wite quick, I did, An' gwab the sassy little snipe agin— Nen tooked my topstwing an' tie down his wings So's he can't fly, 'less'n I want him to! An' nen I says: "Now, Mr. Squidjicum, You better ist light out," I says, "to old Miss Hoodjicum's, an' show me how to git ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... companions had gabbled through as they prowled around the kitchen clashing their wooden swords. That St. George had become King William was natural enough; but what is to be said of changing the Turkish Knight into the Turkey Snipe? That was one of the "howlers" this youth perpetrated, amongst many others less striking, perhaps, but not less instructive. The whole thing showed plainly where the difficulty lay at the night-school. The breaking up of the traditional ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... season, we dine at his house, with a mixed company, in a desert of dining room at a vast table loaded with masses of gold plate. The peaches are from South Africa; the strawberries from the Riviera. His chef ransacks the markets for pheasants, snipe, woodcock, Egyptian quail and canvasbacks. And at enormous distances from each other—so that the table may be decently full—sit, with their wives, his family doctor, his clergyman, his broker, his secretary, his lawyer, and a few of the more presentable relatives—a ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... shot several snipe and a fat turkey, when, as we were clambering up a bank, being somewhat before my companions, I was not a little surprised to see, within four paces of me, the huge head of a black bear, peering over the tops of the palmetto to ascertain what was approaching. I mechanically raised my rifle ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... fat man of Bombay, Who was smoking one sunshiny day, When a bird, called a snipe, Flew away with his pipe, Which vexed the fat man ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... balcony that would hold not more than three musicians. The candles of its former brightness have long since burned to socket. Vanished are "Sir Thomas Clubber, Lady Clubber and the Miss Clubbers!" Gone is the Honorable Wilmot Snipe and all the notables that once crowded it! Vanished is the punchbowl where the amorous Tracy Tupman drank too many cups of negus on that memorable night. I gave the dirty waiter a sixpence and ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... in plenty; wild ducks that swam across the lake at terrific speed as we approached; plover-snipe, tiny gray birds with long bills and white breasts, feeding along the edge of the lake peacefully at our very feet; an eagle carrying a trout to her nest. Brown squirrels came into the tents and ate our chocolate ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... skill, the myriads of pigeons that every where presented themselves, he passed from the skirt of the forest towards an extensive swamp, in the rear of Hartley's, which, abounding in golden plover and snipe, usually afforded him a plentiful supply. On this occasion he was singularly successful, and, having bagged as many birds as he could conveniently carry, was in the act of ramming down his last charge, when the report of a shot ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, 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 weather-cock 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 ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... longer do the ruffs trample the sedge into a hard floor in their fighting-rings, while the sober reeves stand round, admiring the tournament of their lovers, gay with ears and tippets, no two of them alike. Gone are ruffs and reeves, spoonbills, bitterns, avosets; the very snipe, one hears, disdains to breed. Gone, too, not only from Whittlesea but from the whole world, is that most exquisite of English butterflies, Lycaena dispar—the great copper; and many a curious insect more. Ah, well, at least we shall have wheat and mutton ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... neighbourhood of Solo, a bold sportsman may find game to his liking, and willing natives to guide him in his search after tigers, wild hogs, the huge boa, deer, snipe, and quail. In pursuit of the last, too many a fever is caught, through the imprudence of young men in staying out too late in the day, and in keeping on their wet and soiled clothes and shoes during their ride or drive home. A little attention to such apparent ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... French gutter-snipe, Virot—paused a moment to ride up to a window of the hall and discharge his revolver through the glass. Fortunately his aim was as evil as his intent. Beyond shattering a priceless vase, the ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... to prepare their traps for fox, lynx, otter, and bear. In December they shoot, as winter food for the family, does and young stags, but not old stags. They say the arctic hare is now very rare on their trapping lands; and snipe, geese, and ducks are far fewer than they were a few years ago. They appear to be very careful not to waste venison, never killing any deer they do not actually require ...
— Report by the Governor on a Visit to the Micmac Indians at Bay d'Espoir - Colonial Reports, Miscellaneous. No. 54. Newfoundland • William MacGregor
... be uneasy, Savarin adds, about your dinner; for a pheasant served in this way is fit for beings better than men. The pheasant itself is a very good bird; and, imbibing the dressing and the flavour of the truffle and snipe, it becomes ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... He preferred to take the journey on foot, and he may be here at almost any time. But, as I have told you, he is very uncertain. If he should happen to make the acquaintance of some interesting snipe, or crane, or plover, he may prefer its company to ours, and then there is no counting on him any longer. He may be as likely to turn up at the North Pole as at the ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the ecstasy of all the dogs, and, indeed he was surprised to find himself fully alive to the delight of forcing his way through a furze-brake, hearing the ice in the peaty bogs crackle beneath his feet; getting a good shot, bringing down his bird, finding snipe, and diving into the depths of the long, winding valleys and dingles, with the icicle-hung banks of their streamlets. He came home through the village at about half-past three o'clock, sending the keeper to leave some of his game ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vessel brought them. There is a rabbit-warren on the north-east of the island, belonging to the Duke of Argyle. Young Col intends to get some hares, of which there are none at present. There are no black-cock, muir-fowl, nor partridges; but there are snipe, wild-duck, wild-geese, and swans, in winter; wild-pidgeons, plover, and great number of starlings; of which I shot some, and found them pretty good eating. Woodcocks come hither, though there is not a tree upon the island. There are no rivers ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... old Jim Grimm moved south to Ruddy Cove of the Newfoundland coast, disgusted with the fishing of Buccaneer. It was before Jimmie Grimm had fallen in with Billy Topsail and Donald North, before he had ever clapped eyes on Bagg, the London gutter-snipe, or had bashfully pawed the gloved hand of Archie Armstrong, Sir Archibald's son. It was before Donald North cured himself of fear and the First Venture had broken into a blaze in a gale of wind off the Chunks. It was before Billy Topsail, a lad of ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... his advantage, and raises his gun, quick as for the shooting of a snipe. The crack comes; and, simultaneous with it, Richard Darke is seen to drop out of his saddle, and fall face foremost on the plain— his horse, with a wild neigh, bolting away ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... dead branches—sooty ibis, white pelicans, crows, kingfishers, and here and there, like sentinels on the topmost branches, a white-headed eagle, with his hooked bill, dominating the scene. Wheeling through the air were strings of duck and wisps of snipe in battalions, rows of cranes with their long legs trailing, and on the surface of the smooth water, on scores of small islands, formed originally by uprooted trees, and under the water, there were yet ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... street. His mother, if she 'knew he was out,' must have had a pretty long spell of uneasiness before she saw him back again. But Mr. Waterton, Baptist of a new generation in these mysteries, took that conceit out of Europe: the sloth, says he, cannot like a snipe or a plover run a race neck and neck with a first-class railway carriage; but is he, therefore, a slow coach? By no means: he would go from London to Edinburgh between seedtime and harvest. Now Gillman's Coleridge, vol. i., has no such speed: it has taken six ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... You know there is a law that if a Chinese accepts any amount of money after being injured, he has no redress." He went on to tell a story about using Chinese women to retrieve instead of dogs in snipe shooting. If these coolie women happen to stand up and get a stray shot, a few cents is given them, and it is called "square." One of the husbands of these women retrievers needed money, so his wife stood up in order to get a lot of ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... lapwing, characteristic and most interesting resident of most of South America, we found tiny red- legged plover which also breed and are at home in the tropics. The contrasts in habits between closely allied species are wonderful. Among the plovers and bay snipe there are species that live all the year round in almost the same places, in tropical and subtropical lands; and other related forms which wander over the whole earth, and spend nearly all their time, now in the arctic and cold temperate regions ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... the Iroquois were as follows: Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Tortoise, Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk. (Morgan, 79.) The clans of the Snipe and the Heron are the same designated in an early French document as La famille du Petit Pluvier and La famille du Grand Pluvier. (New York Colonial Documents, IX. 47.) The anonymous author of this document adds a ninth ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... fever for volunteering, which laid hold on the middle classes after the series of regrettable incidents of the winter, raged violently among the Irish Loyalists. Nowhere were the recruiting officers more fervently besieged than in Dublin. Youthful squireens who boasted of being admirable snipe shots, and possessed a knowledge of all that pertained to horses, struggled with prim youths out of banks for the privilege of serving as troopers. The sons of plump graziers in the West made up parties with footmen ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... and Jim's favourite rides; they never failed to take it when holidays brought the boy back to Billabong. They pushed along it for some time, eventually finding the slip rails, through which they got into the Swamp Paddock—so called because of a wide marsh in one corner, where black duck and snipe used to come freely. The new cattle had taken to the paddock like old hands. Satisfied with their inspection, Norah and Jim led the way back to the river, where presently they came to an ideal place to camp; a bend thickly shaded, with the river bank ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... red-light habitue has the supernal gall to ask us to make him lord over many things,—to accord him political promotion for dereliction of duty! In the name of Balaam's she-ass, does this snub-nosed little snipe suppose that we are all hopeless idiots? You are the state's hired hand, Charlie boy—duly employed to remain at Austin and display your anserine ignorance in the governor's office. The people don't care two whoops in hades ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... who having come a little way out of the thicket is beatifically listening.] And how do you, Snipe, ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... half changed from their snowy plumage to the brown of summer, and presenting a curious piebald appearance, were there in great numbers, cackling their guttural cry with its concluding notes closely resembling the "ko-ax, ko-ax" of the Frogs' Chorus in the comedy of Aristophanes; snipe whistled and curlews whirled all about us. Half-way across to the McKinley Fork it began to rain, thunder-peal succeeding thunder-peal, and each crash announcing a heavier downpour. Soon we were all wet through, and then the rain turned to hail that fell smartly until all the moss was ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... they very quickly lose their flavor. Wild pigeons, on the contrary, should hang a day or two in a cool place before they are dressed. Oranges cut into halves are used as a garnish for dishes of small birds, such as pigeons, quail, woodcock, squabs, snipe, etc. These small birds are either served whole or split down the back, ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... and lonely itself, but so close to a crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the corner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the neighbours and the police coming down ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... of water in boatloads from Puerto across the Bay is a regular trade. An English company had been formed to supply the parched seaport and the ships that call there with fresh water, and its reservoirs were situated at La Piedad. In the bowels of the flats below, where the snipe-shooting ought to be good, our countryman told me the water was to be sought. Galleries had been sunk in every direction in land which the company had purchased, and pumps and engines are soon to be erected that will raise the liquid collected there up to ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... growth of rushes intimates that water is near, and upon parting the bushes a little may be seen, all that has escaped evaporation in the shade. From one of these marshy spots I once—and once only—observed a snipe rise, and after wheeling round return and settle by another. As the wiry grass becomes paler with the fall of the year, the rushes, on the contrary, from green become faintly yellow, and presently brownish. Grey grass and brown rushes, dark furze, and fern, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... loitered, hand in hand, Where the snipe along the sand Of the river ran to meet them As the ripple meets the land, Till the dragon-fly, in light Gauzy armor, burnished bright, Came tilting down the waters ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... into line with another man's grove nearer by, and under that cover quicken to a gallop. Away, away; splash, splash, through the coolees, around the maraises, clouds of wild fowl that there is no time to shoot into rising now on this side, now on that; snipe without number, gray as the sky, with flashes of white, trilling petulantly as they flee; giant snowy cranes lifting and floating away on waving pinions, and myriads of ducks in great eruptions of hurtling, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... are different. They are just as courageous, but they take a wheelbarrow and push it from New York to San Francisco, or they starve forty days and forty nights and then eat watermelon and lecture, or they eat 800 snipe in 800 years, or get an inspiration ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the surface of the stagnant water, fluttered numbers of birds. Wild duck, teal, snipe lived there in flocks, and those fearless birds allowed themselves to ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... the earth was once covered with water and the sky alone was inhabited, until God sent his only begotten daughter in the form of a kuri, or snipe, to look for dry land. She found a spot, and brought down to it earth, and a creeping plant, which grew and decomposed into worms, and, lo! the worms turned into men ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... tumbled out of one deep ditch into another, scrambled perseveringly through brambles and brushwood, saw places where pheasants ought to have been, and places where they had been, but never saw a bird except a jack-snipe in the distance. The only sport we had was in the untiring energy of the lad already mentioned, who, long after the dogs had given it up as a bad job, continued to beat every bush as diligently as at first starting, and kept up a form of hortatory interjections addressed to the invisible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... good to me. Bunch," I agreed, and then we went out and ordered some more three-sheets and a flock of snipe. ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... wet ground, Griffin," he said, as he reluctantly yielded a little in his intention; "and Winchester would fancy a bird exceedingly in a day or two. I never was hit in my life that I did not feel a desire for game after the fever was gone. Snipe, too, must live on the banks of that stream. Snipe are coming in ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... wealth of the Arab tribes of the plateaus consists in their immense flocks of sheep. The horses and mules of Algeria are noted; and the native cattle are an excellent stock on which to graft the better European varieties. Of birds, eagles, vultures, hawks, owls and quails are common; snipe, curlews, plovers, storks and herons frequent the marshy parts; and the ostrich the desert. Partridges and woodcocks are fairly common. Among the reptiles are various species of serpents, tortoises, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... places. The priests' holes had offered to the persecuted clergy of old times the choice between being grilled erect behind a chimney, or of lying flat in a chamber about the size of a coffin near the roof, where the martyr Jesuits lived on suction, like the snipe, absorbing soup from a long straw passed through a ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... others rather coincided in his opinion. For several miles further on the road ran through a dangerous place, where men might lurk in ambush, and pick them off like so many snipe. They rather enjoyed a good fight, but did not care about being regularly shot down. So ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... midshipmen were very sorry for this, but they got over the loss of the ship with philosophical resignation, as other midshipmen have under like circumstances done before them; and with the rest of their shipmates amused themselves very well in shooting snipe and red-legged partridges, in wandering about, in trying to talk Greek, and in doing nothing, till a brig of war arrived and carried them all back to Malta. Captain Hartland and his officers were tried for the loss of ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... that scattered countryside of long distances by windy roads, with scarcely ever a village as a focus for gossip, news flew fast. The next morning Ned Cromarty had set out with his gun towards a certain snipe marsh, but while he was still on the high road he met a man on a bicycle. The man had heard strange news and stopped to pass it on, and the next moment Ned was hurrying as fast as his long legs could take him ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... themselves over in the air. Some birds have movements peculiar to the season of love: thus ring-doves, though strong and rapid at other times, yet in the spring hang about on the wing in a toying and playful manner; thus the cock-snipe, while breeding, forgetting his former flight, fans the air like the wind- hover; and the green-finch in particular exhibits such languishing and faltering gestures as to appear like a wounded and dying bird; the king-fisher darts along like an arrow; ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... at the hotels here. Japan abounds in fish and game in great variety. Woodcock, snipe, hares, and venison are cheap, and all of excellent quality. The beef and mutton are also good, as are the vegetables. Turnips, radishes and carrots are enormous, owing, I suppose to the depth and fineness of the soil. Vandy measured ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... larger expanse of land, formerly known as the "Upper Bijou," crowning the heights, overhanging the valley of the St. Charles, where existed the "Lower Bijou," marshy and green meadows, once sacred to snipe, and on which the populous suburb St. Sauveur has recently sprung up. It was granted in free and common soccage, to the late Charles Grey Stewart, Esq., in 18—; he resided ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Hawk Bobolink White-headed Eagle Meadow Lark Great Horned Owl Bluejay Snowy Owl Ruffed Grouse Red-headed Woodpecker Great Blue Heron Golden-winged Woodpecker Bittern Barn-swallow Wilson's Snipe Whip-poor-will Long-biller Curlew Night Hawk Purple Gallinule Belted Kingfisher Canada Goose Kingbird Wood Duck Woodthrush Hooded Merganser Catbird Double-crested Cormorant White-bellied Nuthatch Arctic Tern Brown Creeper Great Northern Diver Bohemian Chatterer ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... turn, a fowling-piece cracked sharply, close at hand; something splashed, and the ruffled body of a snipe bobbed ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... and cook them in a mirepoix made with plenty of ham, fat bacon, herbs, and a wine glass of Marsala. When they are cooked pour off the sauce, skim off the grease and reduce it. Take the two smallest snipe and make a forcemeat of them by pounding them in a mortar with the livers of all the snipe, then dilute this with reduced Espagnole sauce (No. 1) and add it to the first sauce. Cut twelve croutons of bread just large enough to hold a snipe each, and fry them in butter. Add some chopped herbs and ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... enough to crawl through a knot-hole without rubbing his clothes." Says I: "I suppose you made her think the moon rose in your head and set in your heels. I daresay you acted foolish enough round her to sicken a snipe, and if you makes fun of her now to please me, I let you know you have got holt ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... he would have been nothing; by it, he was everything. Hence he felt for it not merely love, but gratitude; loving it both by instinct and calculation. He preferred the bivouac to the Tuileries. Just as the snipe-shooter prefers a marsh to a drawing-room, he was more at home under a tent than in a palace. To men who like the battle-field, war is the most intense of pleasures. They love it as the gamester loves play, with a real frenzy. They defeat ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... rung the bell on me. I'm a sucker. I know it. I'm one of the few hundred other God-damned fools that you've managed to catch out shooting snipe. Now what I want to know is, how much is it going to cost me to get out of your corner? What's the figure? What do ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... swimming in paper. Only the tip of his nose was above the surface as I passed through. I never saw so many fellows working so hard at the same time in my life. All trying to catch the boss's eye, too, I suppose? It must make you feel like a snipe." ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... in the world. The sunrise and sunset effects on the lake are most beautiful. A steamer plies on the lake carrying mail and passengers. The bird life on this body of water and its shores is represented by swans, geese, ducks, cranes, pelicans, curlews, herons, plovers, and snipe. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... I came to a pond where were sitting five snipe. I killed the whole bunch, and they helped to make another square meal. We were now near the border of the Great Desert proper, where, out of the midst of a level plain, stood a lone mountain known as the "Old Crater," which, together with its surroundings, had all the appearance ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... there came A lovely youth of mystic name: He took a lodging in the house, And fell a-dodging snipe and grouse, For, oh! that mild scholastic one Let shooting ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... works on all brave men very much alike. McCloud dropped forward in his saddle, and, seeking no explanation, laid his head low and spurred Bill Dancing's horse for life or death. The horse, quite amazed, bolted and swerved down the grade like a snipe, with his rider crouching close for a second shot. But no second shot came, and after another mile McCloud ventured to take off his hat and put his finger through the holes in it, though he did not stop his horse to make the examination. When they reached the open ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... intoxicating draught; once I detested the hot brandy wine, and quaffed no other fount but nature's rill. It dashes not more quickly o'er the rocks than I did, as, with blunderbuss in hand, I brushed away the early morning dew, and shot the partridge, snipe, or antlered deer! Ah! well may England's dramatist remark, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!" Why did I steal my nephew's, my young Giglio's—? Steal! said I? no, no, no, not steal, not steal. Let me withdraw that odious expression. I took, and on my manly head I set, ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... careful. Use the methods of compromise. If you find your friend obstinately pinned to No. 5, when you have declared a preference for No. 6, meet him half-way, or even profess to be converted by his arguments. Or tell him the anecdote about the Irishman, who always shot snipe with No. 4, because, "being such a little bird, bedad, you want a bigger shot to get at the beggar." You can then inform him how you yourself once did dreadful execution among driven grouse in a gale of wind with No. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... cross, how comes it that this snipe of a stripling may speak from his mouth of what lieth beyond the grave? For this is death, and death is a matter concerning Holy Church alone. By what right doth he tell us of what she says no ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... face pressed against the glass of the window. Was Strangwise staying at "The Dyke Inn"? Nothing was more probable; for the latter had told him that he was going to spend his leave shooting in Essex, and Morstead Fen must abound in snipe and duck. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... the form of a fillet, is never seen at a "sit-down" supper, and even a fillet is rather too heavy. Lobster in every form is a favorite supper delicacy, and the grouse; snipe, woodcock, teal; canvasback, and squab on toast, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... did it well! He looks that peanut headed snipe straight in the eye all the time after that and takes what's comin' to him without turnin' a hair. It was "Yes, Mr. Piddie," and "No, Mr. Piddie"; but nothin' else. And the cooler and politer he was, ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... are they in every detail with the carved woodwork of Picau, of Cauner, or of Nilson, who designed the flamboyant frames of the time of Louis XV. Others have more individuality. In his mirror frames he introduced a peculiar bird with a long snipe-like beak, and rather impossible wings, an imitation of rockwork and dripping water, Chinese figures with pagodas and umbrellas; and sometimes the illustration of Aesop's fables interspersed with scrolls ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... anyone be more entirely lost than I? When the gun fired, how should I dare to go down to the boats among those fiends, still smoking from their crime? Would not the first of them who saw me wring my neck like a snipe's? Would not my absence itself be an evidence to them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? It was all over, I thought. Good-by to the Hispaniola, good-by to the squire, the doctor, and the captain. There was nothing left for me but ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stuff in him he would have made good. As it was, he attended to his duties in the most perfunctory and superficial manner. He showed not the slightest interest in the business. In fact, his position could have been ably filled by the veriest gutter-snipe. And he is the man who one day, in all probability, would have come into control of the Carmody millions! And he would have scattered them in a riot of dissipation the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... and stopped in a wide clearing remote from any habitation. The instant it touched the soil, all needful precautions were taken to hold it there firmly; and Kennedy, fowling-piece in hand, sallied out upon the sloping plain. Ere long, he returned with half a dozen wild ducks and a kind of snipe, which Joe served up in his best style. The meal was heartily relished, and the night was passed in ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... bleat, as of a new-born lamb, high above her head; she started and looked up. Then a wail from the cliffs, as of a child in pain, answered by another from the opposite rocks. They were but the passing snipe, and the otter calling to her brood; but to her they were mysterious, supernatural goblins, come to answer to her call. Nevertheless, they only quickened her expectation; and the witch had told her not to fear them. If she performed the rite ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... with him, thinking there might be a chance to pick up some shore birds, in the way of snipe or curlew. ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... treat ment such as this that makes women desperate; and if we cannot keep him we love, we make believe to love some one else, and flaunt our fancy in the deceiver's face. Do you think I cared for Buckingham, with his heart of ice; or for such a snipe as Jermyn; or for a low-born rope-dancer? No, Fareham; there has been more of rage and hate than of passion in my caprices. And he is with Frances Stewart to-night. She sets up for a model of chastity, and is to marry Richmond ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Lesser Tell tale sometimes called Yellow-leg Snipe, and Little Cucu, inhabits the whole of North America, nesting in the cold temperate and subarctic districts of the northern continent, migrating south in winter to Argentine and Chili. It is much rarer in the western than eastern province of North America, and is only accidental in Europe. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... neck for a mouthpiece, gave it to the boy to suck - and suck he did. In a few seconds his eyes dilated, his face became lividly white, and I had some trouble to tear the intoxicating bladder from his clutches. The moment I had done so, the true nature of the gutter-snipe exhibited itself. He began by cutting flip-flaps and turning windmills all round the room; then, before I could stop him, swept an armful of valuable apparatus from the tables, till the whole floor was strewn ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... suppose I made an awful ass of myself. But even if she is a public dancer, that snipe shouldn't have insulted her. Of course I'd found out long before that Miss Toots was no longer anything to ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... subject of Jung's shooting-party, I must remark, in justice to him as a sportsman, that he considers nothing less than a deer to be game at all. Tiger or rhinoceros shooting is his favourite sport, and he looks upon shooting a parrot, a snipe, a hawk, or a partridge as being equally unworthy of the name of sport, nor does he understand why some of those birds should be dignified with the name of ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... place in Suffolk, Nugget Towers. The best of the shooting is over, the partridges being very wild by now, and it is not a pheasant country, as there are no woods to speak of. But there are a good many snipe down towards the river, so you had better bring your gun. Besides we will have a day's partridge driving, for there are plenty, if you could only get at them. And there is a pack of foxhounds that meets about ten miles off once a week at least, and some harriers close ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... gone, and his hair and beard flying in the wind. He ran in little zigzags from one knot of people to another, whilst his peculiar appearance drew a running fire of witticisms as he went, so that he reminded me irresistibly of a snipe skimming along through a line of guns. We saw him stop for an instant by the yellow barouche, and hand something to Sir Lothian Hume. Then on he came again, until at last, catching sight of us, he gave a cry of joy, and ran for us full speed with ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in Europe.} Birds of Carolina. Eagle bald. Eagle gray. Fishing Hawk. Turkey Buzzard, or Vulture. Herring-tail'd Hawk. Goshawk. Falcon. Merlin. Sparrow-hawk. Hobby. Ring-tail. Raven. Crow. Black Birds, two sorts. Buntings two sorts. Pheasant. Woodcock. Snipe. Partridge. Moorhen. Jay. Green Plover. Plover gray or whistling. Pigeon. Turtle Dove. Parrakeeto. Thrush. Wood-Peckers, five sorts. Mocking-birds, two sorts. Cat-Bird. Cuckoo. Blue-Bird. Bulfinch. Nightingale. Hedge-Sparrow. Wren. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... Brackley came and told me of a delightful rough shooting he had rented in an obscure corner of Ireland. According to him it was a congested snipe area. You could not see the pools for wild-duck. The honking of wild-geese kept one awake at night. The drawback to the estate was that you were always tripping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... Arras, after the Ridge was in our possession, had to be seen to be appreciated. Heretofore such a thing as a pleasure walk or shopping tour was out of the question, as the sniping was continuous, and the only way now for Fritz to snipe the town was with his heavy naval pieces, six or seven miles off, and as these visitors are a hundred times scarcer than the callers from the short range boys, the peace and quiet of our fellows were correspondingly increased one ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... together than we had passed at the rookery under the cliffs in the morning; but we sailed by an island, of which birds of all descriptions had taken entire possession. There were various species of ducks, and geese, and snipe, and teal, and shags, and grebes, and penguins, and albatrosses, and sea-rooks, and oyster-catchers, and gulls with pink breasts, and many others, of whose names I have no note. As we believed that we had plenty of time, we landed ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the month in which the avian population attains its maximum. Geese, ducks, teal, pelicans, cormorants, snake-birds and ospreys abound in the rivers and jhils; the marshes and swamps are the resort of millions of snipe and other waders; the fields and groves swarm with flycatchers, chats, starlings, warblers, finches, birds of prey and the other migrants which in winter visit the plains from the Himalayas ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... so! We are such near neighbours." She was ready to say anything that would make him feel he was not being treated as a shopman. "And did you have your day's shooting? Were you successful?" "Well," with modest pride, "I came upon snipe unexpectedly, and brought home a couple of brace. If I had thought you would condescend to accept them, Miss Pennycuick—if I ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... Thus do I euer make my Foole, my purse: For I mine owne gain'd knowledge should prophane If I would time expend with such Snipe, But for my Sport, and Profit: I hate the Moore, And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets She ha's done my Office. I know not if't be true, But I, for meere suspition in that kinde, Will do, as if for Surety. He holds me well, The better shall my purpose worke on him: Cassio's a proper ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... on exhibition in 47. There was "Shorty," for instance. "Shorty" was a jolly, ugly open-handed, four-eyed little snipe of a roughneck machinist who had lost "in the line of duty" two fingers highly useful in his trade. In consequence he was now, after the generous fashion of the I.C.C., on full pay for a year without work, providing he did not leave the Zone. And while "Shorty," ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... reedy tarn, and at his approach several snipe got up, and they flew above his head uttering sharp cries. His fishing-rod was a long hazel stick, and he threw the frog as far as he could into the lake. In doing this he roused some wild ducks; ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... Jack Snipe Eats Tripe: It is therefore credible That tripe is edible. And therefore, perforce, It follows, of course, That the Devil will gripe All who do ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... beautiful. A steamer plies on the lake carrying mail and passengers. The bird life on this body of water and its shores is represented by swans, geese, ducks, cranes, pelicans, curlews, herons, plovers, and snipe. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... I got at least one loophole, from which men can snipe, for every section? Have I pointed out to Section Commanders the portion of the enemy's trench they are responsible for keeping under fire, and where his ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... was St. Elijah's day, July 20th—I came to stay with my brother and did not find him at home: he had been ordered off for a whole week somewhere. I did not want to go back to Petersburg; I sauntered about the neighbouring marshes, killed a brace of snipe and spent the evening with Tyeglev under the shelter of an empty barn where he had, as he expressed it, set up his summer residence. We had a little conversation but for the most part drank tea, smoked pipes and talked sometimes to our host, a Russianised Finn or to the pedlar who ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... railroads give free transportation to quantities among the hay used in packing; birds and animals lift many on their feet - Darwin raised 537 plants from a ball of mud carried between the toes of a snipe! - and such feathered and furred agents as feed on berries and other fruits sometimes drop the seeds a thousand miles from the parent. but it will be noticed that such vagabonds as travel by the hook or by crook method, getting a lift in the world ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... the latter part of my school life I became passionately fond of shooting; I do not believe that any one could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause than I did for shooting birds. How well I remember killing my first snipe, and my excitement was so great that I had much difficulty in reloading my gun from the trembling of my hands. This taste long continued, and I became a very good shot. When at Cambridge I used to practise throwing ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... English company had been formed to supply the parched seaport and the ships that call there with fresh water, and its reservoirs were situated at La Piedad. In the bowels of the flats below, where the snipe-shooting ought to be good, our countryman told me the water was to be sought. Galleries had been sunk in every direction in land which the company had purchased, and pumps and engines are soon to be erected that will raise the liquid collected there up to the reservoirs which have been hewn out ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Caryophylia with translucent tentacles, plus anemone with grassy tufts from the genus Zoantharia; and to complete the illusion, minnows flitted from branch to branch like a swarm of hummingbirds, while there rose underfoot, like a covey of snipe, yellow fish from the genus Lepisocanthus with bristling jaws and sharp scales, flying ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... inland sounds and resembles the auk in some particulars of habit and appearance. There are numerous species in these sheltered channels, inlets and sounds of geese, ducks, swans, cormorants, ibises, bitterns, red-beaks, curlew, snipe, plover and moorhens. Conspicuous among these are the great white swan (Cygnus anatoides), the black-necked swan (Anser nigricollis), the antarctic goose (Anas antarctica) and the "race-horse" or "steamer ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... in the neighbourhood; but all around was deep, clear, green water. He kept hold of the cable, however, and seemed determined not to put himself in harm's way, until a little wicked urchin, who used to wait on the warrant—officers mess, a small meddling snipe of a creature, who got flogged in well—behaved weeks only once, began to taunt ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... literature, and life. But, as I have remarked elsewhere in this volume, the Strindbergs and Wildes and Gorkis are having their day in Germany just now, and beneath this again is this large distribution of the lawless and sooty literature, frankly intended as a debauch for the gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the coarse, and in no line squeamish, Rabelais wrote that, "Science sans conscience n'est que ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... woe must indeed be heavy which a new hammerless gun by such a maker cannot do something towards lightening. So on the next morning he took this gun and went to the marshes by the river—where, he was credibly informed, several wisps of snipe had been seen—to attempt to shoot some of them and put the new weapon to ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the day, take a stroll outside the town, and you meet the heroes returning. "Well, what sport?" "Pas mal, mon cher. Not so bad," is the reply, in a tone of ill-concealed triumph; and plunging his hand into his game-bag, the chasseur produces—a phthisical snipe, a wood pigeon, an extenuated quail, and perhaps something which you at first take for a deformed blackbird, but which turns out to be a water-hen. As far as our own observations go, we do aver this to be a very handsome average of a French ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... plenty of soldiers, to help us. Instead, we are treated like the dogs of snipe-hunters; we are always sent ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... imperiousness, there is an affectionate simplicity in the fancy names he used to bestow upon his female friends. Sir William Temple's wife, Dorothea, became Dorinda; Esther Johnson, Stella; Hester Vanhomrigh, Vanessa; Lady Winchelsea, Ardelia; while to Lady Acheson he gave the nicknames of Skinnybonia, Snipe, and Lean. But all was taken by them in good part; for his rather dictatorial ways were softened by the fascinating geniality and humour which he knew so well how to employ when he used to "deafen them with puns ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... those new strangers over in the Fork have been paying cash and filled him up with conceit," said Union Mills, trying to dry his leg by alternately beating it or rubbing it against the cabin wall. "Once begin wrong with that kind of snipe and you drag ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... in the October evenings, may hear the murmurings of the snipe, circling over the meadows, the most spirit-like sound in nature; and still later in the autumn, when the frosts have tinged the leaves, a solitary loon pays a visit to our retired ponds, where he may lurk undisturbed till the season of moulting is passed, making the woods ring with his ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... I found that where it had been dry in spring one might now sink to his knees in the bog; also that the snipe which had vanished for a season were back at the old spot where they used to breed. It was a bitter day near the end of an unpleasant summer, with the wind back in the old hateful north-east quarter; but the sun shone, the sky was ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... geese here, and cranes and ducks and grouse—clouds and clouds of them! The gentry used to meet together for shooting, and one heard nothing but pouf-pouf-pouf! pouf-pouf-pouf! There was no end to the woodcocks, the snipe, and the little teals, and the water-snipe were as common as starlings, or let us say sparrows—lots and lots of them! And what has become of them all? We don't even see the birds of prey. The eagles, the hawks, and the owls have ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... always fond of the young officers, and is not the less inclined to be so of one who is so dear and near to you. I wish he would have stayed longer, and hope that he shall come again. We have not much to offer in the way of amusement, but in January and February there is good snipe shooting. ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... fox's, albeit slightly bloodshot, upon the contemptible white-faced person who had preferred spending the raw hours over his papers, within the radius of a glorious fire's warmth, to creeping slyly over treacherous quagmires in the pursuit of timid bog creatures (snipe shooting had been the order of the day)-the baron, I say, became aware of my existence and entered ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... it should lift up their hearts and no longer be oppressed with humility. But on the second I determined for a rousing Latin thing, such as men shouted round camp fires in the year 888 or thereabouts; so, the imagination fairly set going and taking wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and devil-may-care- for-the-rules, this seemed ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... 'Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth, peace and goodwill towards men.' So no great shells were fired into the Boer entrenchments at dawn, and the hostile camps remained tranquil throughout the day. Even the pickets forbore to snipe each other, and both armies attended divine service in the morning and implored Heaven's blessing on their righteous causes. In the afternoon the British held athletic sports, an impromptu military tournament, and a gymkhana, all of which caused much merriment and diversion, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... clash, telling that I was utterly incapable of any such thing, being a man of a guileless heart, and a spiritual simplicity, that would be ornamental in a child. We then had the latheron summoned before the session, and was not long of making her confess that the father was Nichol Snipe, Lord Glencairn's gamekeeper; and both her and Nichol were obligated to stand in the kirk: but Nichol was a graceless reprobate, for he came with two coats, one buttoned behind him, and another buttoned before him, and two wigs of my ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... water-fowl, including several varieties of duck, also shag, divers, pigmy geese, small teal, grebe, red-headed plover, spur-wing plover, curlew, sandpipers, snipe, swamp hen, water-rail, and many other birds. The red-headed plover were especially numerous, and ran about on the surface of the lake, which was covered with the water-lily leaves and a thick sort of mossy weed. All the birds seemed ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... family belongs its own quarrels, its own revenge. If the Big Throat should interfere too deeply, it would anger the other small families, who might fear the same treatment at some other time. And with Beaver, Snipe, Deer, and Potato united against us,—well, it is ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... bangs around me to remind me of that snipe-legged Alta Wood. Bangs may be all right for fellers with music boxes in their watches, but they don't go ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... wake of an easterly squall the sloop Arrow, Lemuel Vinton master and owner, was making her way along the low coast, southward, from Snipe Point, one of the islands in Florida Bay about twelve miles northeast ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... " 'This snipe,' says Luke to the judge, 'shot and willfully punctured with malice and forethought one of the most respected and prominent citizens of the town of Bildad, Texas, Your Honor. And in so doing laid himself liable to the penitence of law ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... found themselves, however, in the position of the hunter who, when he is out for a snipe, puts up a tiger. All went well with the expedition as far as Holspruit, the farm which they had started to search. Commandant Pretorius, to whom it belonged, was taken by the energy of Major Vaughan, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... big grey eyes of hers. Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they had crowded much into it as one did in a strange land. The episode had been a green and dangerous spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at least. Well, there was none of that danger now, for her husband was dead-poor chap! It would be nice, in these dismal days, when nobody spent any time whatever ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... field and I run and climbed up in one of 'em. A mosely tree grows crooked; I don't care how straight you put it in the ground, it's goin' to grow crooked. So I climb up in the mosely tree and begin to yell. My brother heard me and come 'cause he knowed what was up. He used to say, 'Now, Snipe, when you come 'cross that mosely field, don't you wear that old red dress 'cause they'll get you down and tear that dress off you.' I liked the dress 'cause he had give it to me. I had set the milk down at ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... artist about his art. To war it was that he owed his power and glory. Without it, he said, he would have been nothing; by it, he was everything. Hence he felt for it not merely love, but gratitude; loving it both by instinct and calculation. He preferred the bivouac to the Tuileries. Just as the snipe-shooter prefers a marsh to a drawing-room, he was more at home under a tent than in a palace. To men who like the battle-field, war is the most intense of pleasures. They love it as the gamester loves ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... not at all a bad place as headquarters for the sportsman. In the neighbourhood there is very good snipe-shooting in spring and autumn. The fishing too is excellent for trout and grayling. The bear, the wolf, and the chamois are to be met with on the heights, which form this portion of the great ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... three sappers are at work lengthening the hollows, watched by the Germans who, from point to point, can snipe the insufficiently protected places. At this end the last sentry guards about ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... obliged to pass the winter of 1615-6 in the Huron country. At that time it swarmed with game. Amongst birds, there were swans, white cranes, brent-geese, ducks, teal, the redbreasted thrush (which the Americans call "robin"), brown larks (Anthus), snipe, and other birds too numerous to mention, which Champlain seems to have brought down with his fowling-piece in sufficient quantities to feed the whole party whilst waiting for the capture of ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... states—"The raven is seen more frequently in the neighbourhood than in most parts of England: his croak over head is not at all an uncommon sound. A pair of buzzards will occasionally circle aloft for a considerable time. The snipe is found very early on the Forest, so much so that I have known in the month of July six killed in a day. The jack snipe particularly abounds about 'the Dam Pool.' The bittern has been twice shot near the same spot within the last twenty years. ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... my gun and strolled with the dogs into the narrow valley below the mill. The waterwheel was at work, and the people were engaged in cleaning cotton, as the machinery was adapted for both purposes of grinding corn or of ginning cotton when required. There were plenty of snipe in the marshes below the cotton-fields, for which rushes, low bushes of tamarisk and other shrubs, afforded excellent cover. I quickly bagged two couple and my first Francolin partridge, and was just in time, before dark, to assist ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the man's life. For his gallantry in going to treat wounded men at posts which were under fire, the French commander remembered him with a citation. He is the officer whom the Bolshevik artillery tried to snipe with three-inch shells, as he passed from post to post during a quiet time ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... progress had been made, and they were now drawing close in to the island. It lay there, looking calm and peaceful in the morning sunlight. A few birds flew up from along the shore, some of them "teeter" snipe that had been feeding. Davy even pointed with his paddle to a big gray squirrel that ran along a log in plain view, and sat up on his haunches as if to curiously observe these approaching human beings who intended to invade ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... pleased me so much. Well—I followed this little brook till it entered the river, and then took the path that runs along the bank. On the opposite side I observed several little birds running along the shore, and making a piping noise. They were brown and white, and about as big as a snipe. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... The American Snipe has some of the nocturnal habits of the Woodcock, and the same habit of soaring at twilight, when he performs a sort of musical medley, which Audubon has very graphically described in the following passage:—"The birds are met with in meadows and low grounds, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a thrashing, you lying little snipe, always hanging around the petticoats! Don't you suppose I can ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... varied tits; wagtails; five species of parrots; eight or nine species of wren; thrushes of a dozen species; ten species of robin; and, lastly, many species of waders such as florekin, cranes, plovers, snipe, sandpipers, coots, water-hen, storks, heron, cormorants, terns, divers, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... neither the hawk amid the cover nor its partner above nor the clamorous beaters could harm it. The King laughed at the mischance and rode on. Continually birds of various sorts were flushed, and each was pursued by the appropriate hawk, the snipe by the tercel, the partridge by the goshawk, even the lark by the little merlin. But the King soon tired of this petty sport and went slowly on his way, still with the magnificent silent ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... duck (canvas-back, mallard, teal, widgeon, and many other varieties) literally filled the lagoons and reed-beds, giving magnificent shooting as they flew in countless strings to and fro between the sea and the fresh water; whilst, farther inland, snipe were to be had in the swamps almost "for the asking." On the plains were antelope, and in the hills and in the Sierra Nevadas, deer and bears, both cinnamon and ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... where there are so few sources of amusement. But never fear! You can not be always reading, and when the fine weather comes you will yield to the temptation; all the more likely because you have Claudet Sejournant with you. A jolly fellow he is; there is not one like him for killing a snipe or sticking a trout! Our trout here on the Aubette, Monsieur de Buxieres, are excellent—of the salmon kind, and ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... month's leave,' Charlie wrote, 'shooting; the sport will be mostly snipe and other small game, but there's a chance of tigers. Now, I know you are a busy ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... of listless dreaming Through the lazy day: Jovial wind of winter Turns us out to play! Sweep the golden reed-beds; Crisp the lazy dyke; Hunger into madness Every plunging pike. Fill the lake with wild-fowl; Fill the marsh with snipe; While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir-forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snow-flakes Off the curdled sky. Hark! The brave North-easter! Breast-high lies the scent, On by holt and headland, Over ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... against some one black or pink bully in particular? Which of us is there, who has not passed moments in the company of these brutes, such as might well 'score years from a strong man's life'? Some of us have been gored by the brutes, and most of us, who have pursued the crafty snipe bird in his native padi swamps, have put in various mauvais quarts d'heure, with some of these sullenly vindictive animals mouching after us, much in the way that a gendarme pursues a gamin. Then has entered upon the scene a ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... to about thirty years old, he came, most unfortunately, upon a certain Sir John Snipe, Bart., that was a very scandalous young squire of Oxfordshire, and one that had published five lyrics and a play (enough to warn any Bull against him), who spoke to him somewhat ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... and walks on through the rye; then comes the sugarcane field and he disappears into the narrow lane cutting through the tall stems of sugarcanes; then he reaches the open meadow where the cricket chirps and where there is not a single man to be seen, only the snipe wagging their tails and poking at the mud with their bills. I can feel him coming nearer and nearer and my heart ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... your short, well-rounded mouth, your diminutive but strong legs, almost hidden by the long, silky hair from your stomach, and hear you sing as you lie on the rug before a good fire in the winter, after a hard day's cock or snipe-shooting, wet and tired with your indefatigable exertions! Yes—strange as it may sound, Doll would sing in her way, as I have stated in a previous page; and such was her sagacity, that in process of time when ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... that we are strangers, and not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the wild man and the wild beast and bird. But the exclusion reaches them also; reaches the climbing, flying, gliding, feathered and four-footed man. Fox and woodchuck, hawk and snipe and bittern, when nearly seen, have no more root in the deep world than man, and are just such superficial tenants of the globe. Then the new molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... generally full of suckers, as the road connected with the Galveston steamers at Burwick's Bay. Tom Brown and Holly Chappell, my partners, were both along; and as game was plenty along the road, we carried our shotguns along, and in the event of no bigger game were accustomed to get off and shoot snipe, catching the return train to the city in the evening. Sure enough, there was a party of traders aboard, and Brown lost no time in making their acquaintance and opening out. One of them commenced to cut his clothes the minute he got a glimpse of the corner after Chappell made one cap. To make matters ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... coarse, but rich, and of excellent flavour—and so fat that the flakes fell into crumbs when fried. This day a bird of a new species was shot by Roach. It was of a swallow kind, about the size of a snipe, of a leaden colour, with ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... The Lady of the Lake and The Lay of the Last Minstrel whose middle-aged author was just turning from poetry to win unprecedented success as a writer of fiction. In the spring he goes out shooting for snipe nearly every day; and he sends to Murray Bay for his fishing tackle. When a fellow officer falls ill he sends him down to Murray Bay for ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... of a footstep; but the tadpoles sported recklessly in the sunny water, for as yet their legs as well as their troubles were to come. I confess that this long morass by the sparkling Beuene, frequented by the heron, the snipe, the water-hen, and other creatures that seek the solitude, interested me more than the caverns which I had set out to see. I nevertheless followed the old man into them, and tried to admire all that ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... replied the domestic, with perfect gravity, "but there ought to be capital snipe ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... George Snipe was an ardent book-lover, and sat in the smoking car in a state of suspended ecstasy. He had been invited out to Mandrake Park to visit the library of Mr. Genial Girth, the well-known collector of rare autographed books. Devoted amateur of literature as he was, George's humble career rarely ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae [Lat.]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock^, duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. [domesticated mammals] horse &c (beast of burden) 271; cattle, kine^, ox; bull, bullock; cow, milch cow, calf, heifer, shorthorn; sheep; lamb, lambkin^; ewe, ram, tup; pig, swine, boar, hog, sow; steer, stot^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the time they took up the tomahawk and agreed to join their father, the king, they were promised plenty of white men to fight with them; "but the number is not now greater," said he, "than at the commencement of the war; and we are treated by them like the dogs of snipe hunters; we are always sent ahead to start the game: it is better that we should return to our country, and let the Americans come on and fight the British." To this proposition his followers agreed; but the Sioux and Chippewas, discovering his intention, went to him and insisted that inasmuch ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... three times a week. When they wanted us, German guards would come in, line up about twenty of us, and take us out to work in the fields. The first job they put us at was planting potatoes and we worked faithfully the first day, but when we came in that night I said to "Snipe," the new pal I had made, "By golly! Snipe, I don't like the idea of producing food for these 'square-heads,' let's see if we can't put one over them." "All right," said Snipe, "I'm game, but how in hell ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... hyenas, wolves, jackalls, foxes, hares, partridges, etc.; but not being a very capital shot, I have seldom made much devastation amongst them. Under the hill are swamps and paddy-fields, which abound in snipe and other game. Now, is not this a Zoological Garden on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... minutes, to the railway station, where in good time I caught the train for the West, and at daybreak I was ready to observe the beautiful country through which we passed. I had made no provision for breakfast, but one of my fellow travellers, who came from Tokio, had the courtesy to offer me two snipe with bacon, ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... bell on me. I'm a sucker. I know it. I'm one of the few hundred other God-damned fools that you've managed to catch out shooting snipe. Now what I want to know is, how much is it going to cost me to get out of your corner? What's the figure? ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... where the heath-cock was as jaunty, and the willow grouse and partridge were wise in covert to avoid the hungry snowy owl. Upon the river and lagoons and creeks the swan and wild goose and countless duck made constant clamor, and there were water-rail and snipe along the shallows. There were eggs to be found, and an egg baked in the ashes was a thing most excellent. It was with the waterfowl that the boys were most successful. The ducks would in their feeding approach close to the shores of the river banks or the little islands and would gather in bunches ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... four pounds weight. While Archer, who had gone forth with Garry only in the canoe, had picked up half a dozen wood-duck, two or three of the large yellow-legs, a little bittern, known by a far less elegant appellative throughout the country, and thirteen English snipe. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... find himself fully alive to the delight of forcing his way through a furze-brake, hearing the ice in the peaty bogs crackle beneath his feet; getting a good shot, bringing down his bird, finding snipe, and diving into the depths of the long, winding valleys and dingles, with the icicle-hung banks of their streamlets. He came home through the village at about half-past three o'clock, sending the keeper to leave some of his game at the parsonage, while he went himself ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... addition to the spurred lapwing, characteristic and most interesting resident of most of South America, we found tiny red- legged plover which also breed and are at home in the tropics. The contrasts in habits between closely allied species are wonderful. Among the plovers and bay snipe there are species that live all the year round in almost the same places, in tropical and subtropical lands; and other related forms which wander over the whole earth, and spend nearly all their time, now in the arctic and cold temperate regions of the ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... my wings gits stwaight agin, Where you all cwumpled 'em," he says, "I bet I'll ist fly clean away an' won't take you To old Miss Hoodjicum's at all!" he says. An' nen I ist weach out wite quick, I did, An' gwab the sassy little snipe agin— Nen tooked my topstwing an' tie down his wings So's he can't fly, 'less'n I want him to! An' nen I says: "Now, Mr. Squidjicum, You better ist light out," I says, "to old Miss Hoodjicum's, an' show ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... fen-men and others at night for taking lark, snipe, plover, etc, by dragging a long net of a certain construction over the fields and swamps. The actual originator of this method of capture as applied to snipe and such birds, appears to have been Mr. Daniel himself (vide "Rural Sports," vol. 3, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... are you when you listen behind doors to things you're not expected to hear? When you talk like a gutter snipe and act—" ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... his uniform, with medals strung on his breast and his new gold-handled sword. You'd never have taken him for the little white-headed snipe that the girls used to order about and make fun of. He just stood there for a minute, looking at Myra with a peculiar little smile on his face; and then he says to her, slow, and kind of holding on to his words with ...
— Options • O. Henry
... said to me. We then rejoined the rest of the party, and the engine having received its supply of water, the carriage was placed behind it, for it cannot turn, and was set off at its utmost speed, thirty-five miles an hour, swifter than a bird flies (for they tried the experiment with a snipe). You cannot conceive what that sensation of cutting the air was; the motion is as smooth as possible, too. I could either have read or written; and as it was, I stood up, and with my bonnet off 'drank the air before me.' The wind, which was strong, or perhaps ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... geological changes have taken place in the country. So much for the dead, and now for the living: there is a poor specimen of a bird which to my unornithological eyes appears to be a happy mixture of a lark, pigeon and snipe (No. 710). Mr. MacLeay himself never imagined such an inosculating creature: I suppose it will turn out to be some well-known bird, although it has quite baffled me. I have taken some interesting Amphibia; a new Trigonocephalus beautifully connecting in its habits Crotalus and the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... and a day in November: the day after I finished husking. Huldah reckoned a wild turkey wouldn't go with a bad relish, and so I shouldered the old gun in the morning, and letting Bose follow slyly along behind, I put away out into the woods. I killed three or four pigeons, and a squirrel, and snipe; but on and on, and round, I ranged, afore I could get a single crack at a turkey. But a flock flew up at last, and one proud old Tom taking a tall maple in sight, and swinging his red gorget ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... vague horrors that may be comprised in the additional 'all kinds.' Jack's account of the game on St. Simon's is really quite tantalising to me, who cannot carry a gun any more than if I were a slave. He says that partridges, woodcocks, snipe, and wild duck abound, so that, at any rate, our table ought to be well supplied. His account of the bears that are still to be found in the woods of the mainland, is not so pleasant, though he says they do no harm to the people, if they are not meddled with, but that they steal ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Ed let fall, fell, ez I say, on Sunday— Which is the reason we wuz shocked to see him sail in Monday A-puffin' at a snipe that sizzled like a Chinese cracker An' smelt fur all the world like rags instead uv like terbacker; Recoverin' from our first surprise, us fellows fell to pokin' A heap uv fun at "folks uz said how they had gin ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... little mountain-brooks which roll their limpid waters over silver sands; hurl by through whispering ledges, the resort of snipe and woodcock; or, varying this quiet and serene existence with occasional action, dart between abrupt banks over mossy rocks, laughing as they fly onward to ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... of the fairer sex, I am yet to see why it is allowable to render the female bird a bereaved widow, but totally forbidden to make the male a widower! Or why it is permissible to slay a minute bird such as a snipe, while a titlark is on no account to ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Captain in the Quartermaster's Department was arranged for, and she expected to have the young officer assigned to New York so that he could live at home in the comfort and luxury suitable to his wealth and condition. And what she wanted us to understand clearly was that no designing little gutter-snipe was to be allowed to compromise David's future. She concluded with an imaginative and most unflattering estimate of Mayme McCartney's character, manners, and morals, in the midst of which I ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... are not a man of energy, not a man to take things in your hands. The obstacles are too big. Those three husbands! You might even take that woman, that lovely, royal dancing woman—you, my dear sir, a common street snipe. What would a woman like that, with that novel, impassioned, barbaric, foreign dance, be worth to a man on your Broadway? Eh? But obstacles! Obstacles! You have her not on Broadway. It is too many thousand miles, and you have no money. But see, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... content," he replied, "if you will say nothing about it until you are well settled. After that I promise to send you a bill as long as a snipe's." ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... foot through the Mockerson; they are so numerous that it requires one half of the traveler's attention to avoid them In these plains I observed great numbers of the brown Curloos, a small species of curloo or plover of a brown colour about the size of the common snipe and not unlike it in form with a long celindric curved and pointed beak; it's wings are proportionately long and the tail short; in the act of liteing this bird lets itself down by an extention of it's wings without motion holding their points very much ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... raises his gun, quick as for the shooting of a snipe. The crack comes; and, simultaneous with it, Richard Darke is seen to drop out of his saddle, and fall face foremost on the plain— his horse, with a wild neigh, bolting ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... the fruit is ripe, the birds light and are caught by the bird lime. This is called ka riam thit. Another is a kind of spring bow made of bamboo which is laid on the ground in marshy places, such as are frequented by snipe and woodcock. This form of snare is unfortunately most common. A third is a cage into which birds are lured by means of a bait, the cage being hidden in the grass, and the entrance being so contrived that the birds can hop in but not out again. This is ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... A nide of pheasants, A wisp of snipe, A flight of doves or swallows, A muster of peacocks, A siege of herons, A building of rooks, A brood of grouse, A plump of wild fowl, A stand of plovers, A watch of nightingales, A clattering of choughs, A flock of geese, A herd or bunch of cattle, A bevy of quails, A cast of hawks, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... and as the really serious moment approached the old ranger was blessed with a sudden inspiration. He sprang forward and seizing Enoch Harding by the collar dragged him to his knees and whispered a command in his ear. "Quick, you young snipe you!" he exclaimed, as Enoch prepared to obey. "Run like the wind—and don't let 'em see you ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earths and looked across the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the snipe would ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... trolls off a wheelbarrow and a fearful cry at the same time; not in unison with his merchandise, for he has birds—quail, woodcock, and snipe—for sale, besides a string of dead nightingales, which he says he will 'sell cheap for a nice stew.' Think of stewed nightingales! One would as soon think of eating a boiled ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... thoroughly at home in their duties; besides, the fat cattle would be finished very shortly and sent off to be sold in Dublin. Jack had announced his intention of stealing a holiday on the morrow, and taking Hayes to a certain famous "snipe bottom," when the game was, to use Dick's expression, "as thick as plums in one of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... little larks, The lapwing, and the snipe, And tune their song like Nature's clerks, O'er meadow, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... mother, whoever they were, when they ran away from me, didn't run away with my appetite. I wonder how long master means to play with his knife and fork. As for Mr Brookes, what he eats wouldn't physic a snipe. What's your ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... we read that he was born eighty-three times as an ascetic, fifty-eight as a monarch, forty-three as a deva, twenty-four as a Brahman, eighteen as an ape; as a deer ten, an elephant six, a lion ten; at least once each as a thief, a gambler, a frog, a hare, a snipe. He was also embodied in a tree. But as a Bodisat he could not be born in hell, nor as vermin, nor as a woman! Says Spence Hardy, with a touch of irony: "He could descend no ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... winesap and rambo in the boiling cider, while the newly opened bottles of grape juice filled the house with the tang of Concord and muscadine. It seemed to me I never got nicely fixed where I could take a sly dip in the cake dough or snipe a fat raisin from the mincemeat but Candace would say: "Don't you suppose the backlog ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... behind them, at a pace which would leave any pheasant standing. As peacocks are regarded as sacred by Hindoos, the Maharajah had particularly begged us not to shoot any. There were plenty of other birds, snipe, partridges, florican and jungle-cocks, the two latter greatly esteemed for their flesh. I shot a jungle-cock, and was quite disappointed at finding him a facsimile of our barndoor game-cock, for I had imagined that he would have the velvety black wing starred ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... compelled to rise from time to time and tighten up my belt, until I must have resembled one of the ladies of fashion, so far as the waist was concerned. Again we came to marshy ground, filled with royal duck, teal, water-hens, snipe, etc, and forgot the pangs of past hunger. At such places we would fill our horns and drink the putrid water, or take off our shirts and wash them and our bodies. Mud had to serve for soap. Our washing, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... follern' 'em up. Enny man that'll do that is little enough to crawl through a knot-hole without rubbing his clothes." Says I: "I suppose you made her think the moon rose in your head and set in your heels. I daresay you acted foolish enough round her to sicken a snipe, and if you makes fun of her now to please me, I let you know you have got holt of the ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... we agreed on a former occasion, is the principal cause why animals change their places. The different tribes of wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take place; and I remember once in Italy, having been long waiting, in the end of March, for the arrival of double snipe, in the campagna of Rome; a great flight appeared on the third of April, and the day after, heavy rain set in, which greatly interfered with my sport. The vulture, upon the same principle, follows armies; and I have no doubt that the augury of the ancients ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... with a loud snap; another variety called tumblers turn themselves over in the air. Some birds have movements peculiar to the season of love: thus ring-doves, though strong and rapid at other times, yet in the spring hang about on the wing in a toying and playful manner; thus the cock-snipe, while breeding, forgetting his former flight, fans the air like the wind- hover; and the green-finch in particular exhibits such languishing and faltering gestures as to appear like a wounded and dying bird; the king-fisher darts along like an arrow; fern-owls, or goat- suckers, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... love to walk for hours in pursuit of game in the autumn, on the chance of bagging an occasional brace of partridges or a wild pheasant (for everything here is wild), or, in winter, when lake and fen are frostbound, by the river and its withybeds after snipe and wildfowl—for the Cotswold stream has never been ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... If the boy had been permitted to choose, it isn't likely that he would have thought of alighting there; but the birds probably looked upon this as a veritable paradise. Ducks and geese walked about and fed on the meadow; nearer the water, ran snipe, and other coast-birds. The loons lay in the sea and fished, but the life and movement was upon the long sea-weed banks along the coast. There the birds stood side by side close together and picked grub-worms—which ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... with a sentiment not far removed from poetry—the only poetry of which they are not half-ashamed. Audubon even joined in, forgetting for the moment his customary pose, and rhapsodizing with the rest over his favourite pursuits of snipe-shooting and cricket. Much of this talk was lost upon me, for I am nothing of a sportsman; but some touches there were that recalled experiences of my own, and for that reason, I suppose, have lingered in my memory. Thus, I recollect, some one ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... informed that on the Imperial preserves in the neighbourhood of Vienna the first snipe had been seen, the passionate huntsman said, 'I am exceedingly sorry, but I've no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... reading up in the library. We have cleaned this up now, and it is an altogether curious sensation to recline here in an easy-chair, reading some fine old book, and just taking the precaution not to stay in front of the glassless windows through which the sharpshooters can snipe at you from their posts in the thickets on the slopes of the plateau, not six hundred metres away. Sometimes our artillery opens up and then you lay down your book for a while, and, looking through a peek-hole, watch the 75's and 120's throw up fountains of dirt and debris all along the ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... on the surface of the stagnant water, fluttered numbers of birds. Wild duck, teal, snipe lived there in flocks, and those fearless birds allowed themselves ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... dance had concluded, Terence led his glowing partner to a cool quiet corner, where leaving her, he flew to the side table, and in less time than he would take to bring down a snipe, he was again beside her with a large mugful of hot negus, into which he had put, by way of stiffener, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... still keeping watch, when Harpstenah was called by her mother to assist her. The father's morning meal was prepared early, for he was going out to hunt. Wild duck, pigeons, and snipe, could be had in abundance; the timid grouse, too, could be roused up on the prairies. Larger game was there, too, for the deer flew swiftly past, and had even stopped to drink on the opposite shore of ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... the French gutter-snipe, Virot—paused a moment to ride up to a window of the hall and discharge his revolver through the glass. Fortunately his aim was as evil as his intent. Beyond shattering a priceless vase, the bullet ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... London was invited to go for "a day's snipe-shooting" in the country. The invitation was accepted, and host and guest shouldered guns and sallied forth in quest ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... more than half its extent, leaving outside a strip of sandy beach, never more than a mile wide. All kinds of sea fish and fowl take refuge in this bay and the interminable reedy marshes, and for a few weeks in the snipe-and duck-season sportsmen from New York find their way to "Shattuck's" and the houses of other old water-dogs along the bay. But during the rest of the year the wooden shed and its occupants are left to the companionship of the sea and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... merry companion, and his conversation was much courted." Geffery had but little sense of religion. He is now buried on the west side of Binsey churchyard, near St. Margaret's well. Geffery selected Binsey for the place of his sepulchre, because he was partial to the spot, having often shot snipe there. In order to moisten his clay, he desired his friend Will Gardner, a boatman of Oxford, who was accustomed to row him down the river, to put now and then a bottle of ale by his grave when he came that way; an injunction ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... who are ill-endowed from a musical point of view, have their wing feathers or tails peculiarly developed and stiffened, and are able to produce with them a strange snapping or cracking sound. Thus several species of snipe make drumming or "bleating" noises—something like the bleat of a goat—with their narrowed tails as they descend in flight.[74] Magpies have a still more curious method of call, by rapping on dry and ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... cannot fail; conspicuous on parade with them our Crown-Prince as Lieutenant-Colonel: "the beauty of this Corps as well as the perfection of their EXERCITIA,"—ah yes, we know it, my dim old friend. The Marriage itself followed, at Berlin, after many exercitia, snipe-shootings, feastings, hautboyings; on the 30th of the month; with torch-dance and the other customary trimmings; "Bride's garter cut in snips" for dreaming upon "by his Royal Majesty himself." ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... lately that an American vessel brought them. There is a rabbit-warren on the north-east of the island, belonging to the Duke of Argyle. Young Col intends to get some hares, of which there are none at present. There are no black-cock, muir-fowl, nor partridges; but there are snipe, wild-duck, wild-geese, and swans, in winter; wild-pidgeons, plover, and great number of starlings; of which I shot some, and found them pretty good eating. Woodcocks come hither, though there is not a tree upon the island. There are no rivers in Col; but only some brooks, in which there is a ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... fact, they form an attraction to many English sportsmen to visit the Island. Both my brother and A. L. T. were sportsmen, but our time was too limited to admit of the exercise of this taste. Among the birds may be noted swan, geese, duck, curlew, mallard, snipe, plover, ptarmigan,—90 species of birds, in fact, 54 of which are wildfowl. During our ride, A. L. T. shot a fine raven, and on our return to the ship, my brother skinned and stuffed it, as a memento of his inland trip. Many of the ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... much alike. McCloud dropped forward in his saddle, and, seeking no explanation, laid his head low and spurred Bill Dancing's horse for life or death. The horse, quite amazed, bolted and swerved down the grade like a snipe, with his rider crouching close for a second shot. But no second shot came, and after another mile McCloud ventured to take off his hat and put his finger through the holes in it, though he did ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... the juniper plant, which grows very plentifully in Belgium. A traveller through Belgium in the summer or early autumn should always make a point of ordering grives at a good restaurant. When grives go out of season, we have woodcock and snipe; and there are several houses which make a speciality of Becasses a la fine Champagne. At Mons and at Liege, and I think at Charleroi also, there is every year a woodcock feast, just as there is an oyster ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... tete-a-tete with Keene on the previous evening after a hard day's snipe shooting, and bore evident traces about him of a heavy night—a fact which he lost no time in alluding to, not without a certain pride, like the man in Congreve's play, who exults in having "been drunk in excellent ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... south to Ruddy Cove of the Newfoundland coast, disgusted with the fishing of Buccaneer. It was before Jimmie Grimm had fallen in with Billy Topsail and Donald North, before he had ever clapped eyes on Bagg, the London gutter-snipe, or had bashfully pawed the gloved hand of Archie Armstrong, Sir Archibald's son. It was before Donald North cured himself of fear and the First Venture had broken into a blaze in a gale of wind off the Chunks. It ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... the exceeding brilliancy of its plumage. But nowhere could a spot be found where the ship's boat could approach without extreme danger. The water was shallow everywhere, and the breakers were heavy. Fish of many kinds—more especially mullets,—geese, snipe, teal, and other birds of excellent flavour, were caught and killed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... covers. And bless you, what they thought was Dessie turned out to be a feather bolster. John snatched back the covers. The bed was empty except for that long feather bolster that strumpet had covered over lengthwise of the bed. Come to find out Dessie had sent John snipe huntin', so to speak, and she skipped out with a timber cruiser. Dyke was laid up for all of a week; took a deep cold on his chest from riding home ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... sun slanted up out of Behring Sea, they marched back towards the hills, their feet ankle-deep in the soft fresh moss, while the air tasted like a cool draught and a myriad of earthy odors rose up and encircled them. Snipe and reed birds were noisy in the hollows and from the misty tundra lakes came the honking of brant. After their weary weeks on shipboard, the dewy freshness livened them magically, cleansing from their memories the recent tragedy, so that the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... sparks around an' acts real entertainin', evenin's. I shouldn't wonder, with such a smart ma, if she caught a beau. I do wish, Janet, since you ain't got no one but Billy,—an' every one knows he's got 'bout as much gumption as a snipe,—I do wish you could land one of these boarders. They must be real easy from what ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... upon his female friends. Sir William Temple's wife, Dorothea, became Dorinda; Esther Johnson, Stella; Hester Vanhomrigh, Vanessa; Lady Winchelsea, Ardelia; while to Lady Acheson he gave the nicknames of Skinnybonia, Snipe, and Lean. But all was taken by them in good part; for his rather dictatorial ways were softened by the fascinating geniality and humour which he knew so well how to employ when he used to "deafen them with puns ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... be minute, cannot be unimportant; that it must be a fact of God; a message from God; a voice of God, as Bacon has it, revealed in things; and which therefore, just because it stands in solemn awe of such paltry facts as the Scolopax feather in a snipe's pinion, or the jagged leaves which appear capriciously in certain honeysuckles, believes that there is likely to be some deep and wide secret underlying them, which is worth years of thought to solve. That is reverence; a reverence which is growing, thank God, more and more common; ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... your body, you insignificant little snipe," roared Elliston. Instead, however, of making the attempt, the man drew a small derringer from his pocket, and lifting the hammer, leveled it at the head of his ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... the neighbourhood; but all around was deep, clear, green water. He kept hold of the cable, however, and seemed determined not to put himself in harm's way, until a little, wicked urchin, who used to wait on the warrant-officers' mess, a small meddling snipe of a creature, who got flogged in well behaved weeks only once, began to taunt my little ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... the field hospital himself and operated inside an hour, saving the man's life. For his gallantry in going to treat wounded men at posts which were under fire, the French commander remembered him with a citation. He is the officer whom the Bolshevik artillery tried to snipe with three-inch shells, as he passed from post to post during a quiet ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... of soldiers, to help us. Instead, we are treated like the dogs of snipe-hunters; we are always sent ahead to rouse ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... of you, and if I had really run over him, I would have given him fifty cents, or so. You know there is a law that if a Chinese accepts any amount of money after being injured, he has no redress." He went on to tell a story about using Chinese women to retrieve instead of dogs in snipe shooting. If these coolie women happen to stand up and get a stray shot, a few cents is given them, and it is called "square." One of the husbands of these women retrievers needed money, so his wife stood up in order to get a lot of shots. She got seven shots ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... it does give one very gentlemanly ideas, so take another glass, and you'll fancy yourself an emperor.—Your good health again." "The same to you, sir. And now wot do you call this chap?" "That is a quail, the other a snipe—which will you take?" "Vy, a bit of both, I think; and do you eat these chaps with them?" "Yes, nothing nicer—artichokes a la sauce blanche; you get the real eating part, you see, by having them ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... morasses, The haunts of the snipe and the hern - (I shall question the two upper classes On aquatiles, when we return) - Why, I see on them absolute masses Of filix ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... the gulf of time as I sit in my grandfather's chair and listen to the tick of my grandfather's clock I see a smaller but more picturesque London, in which I shot snipe in Battersea Fields, and the hoot of the owl in the Green Park was not yet drowned by the hoot of the motor-car—a London of chop-houses, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... clans of the Iroquois were as follows: Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Tortoise, Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk. (Morgan, 79.) The clans of the Snipe and the Heron are the same designated in an early French document as La famille du Petit Pluvier and La famille du Grand Pluvier. (New York Colonial ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... that'll do that is little enough to crawl through a knot-hole without rubbing his clothes." Says I: "I suppose you made her think the moon rose in your head and set in your heels. I daresay you acted foolish enough round her to sicken a snipe, and if you makes fun of her now to please me, I let you know you have got ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... which are common enough in England in the winter, but which mostly go away to Norwegian breeding-grounds, such as geese, ducks, woodcock, and snipe; while bramblings, fieldfares, and redwings are birds of the North, and never nest in Great Britain. Besides these, there are a certain number of birds which have no claim to be termed British, and which are found in Norway all the year round—the nut-cracker, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... ago there used to be geese here, and cranes and ducks and grouse—clouds and clouds of them! The gentry used to meet together for shooting, and one heard nothing but pouf-pouf-pouf! pouf-pouf-pouf! There was no end to the woodcocks, the snipe, and the little teals, and the water-snipe were as common as starlings, or let us say sparrows—lots and lots of them! And what has become of them all? We don't even see the birds of prey. The eagles, the hawks, and the owls have all gone.... There are fewer of every sort of wild ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... shout "Ponto! Ponto! Ponto!" as he traversed the stable-yard; the delighted pointer would come bounding at the call, and, after circling round his young master with agile grace and yelps of glee at the sight of the gun, dash forward to the well-known "bottoms" in eager expectancy of ducks and snipe. How fared it all this time with the lord of Scatterbrain? He became established, for the present, in a house that had been a long time to let in the neighbourhood, and his mother was placed at the head of it, and Oonah ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... principal cause why animals change their places. The different tribes of the wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take place; and I remember once, in Italy, having been long waiting, in the end of March, for the arrival of the double snipe in the Campagna of Rome, a great flight appeared on the 3rd of April, and the day after heavy rain set in, which greatly interfered with my sport. The vulture, upon the same principle, follows armies; and I have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... bird's-nest you have to stalk. That is to say, you watch a bird flying into a bush and guess where its nest is, and follow it up and find the nest. With some birds it is a most difficult thing to find their nests; take, for instance, the skylark or the snipe. But those who know the birds, especially the snipe, will recognize their call. The snipe when she is alarmed gives quite a different call from when she is happy and flying about. She has a particular call ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... McVickar" indicated, and felt that he should lose caste with the waiter by inquiring. When that functionary recommended a bite of broiled tenderloin, prepared with Madeira sauce, and the addition of fresh mushrooms and a small sweetbread, he allowed himself to be persuaded. An English snipe, with chicory salad and some cheese, with coffee, completed his order. Oh, and a pint of ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... to a crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the corner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the neighbours and the police ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... of eastern North America, wintering in southern parts of its range, and a famous game bird. A ground bird of marshy woods and near-by fields, though he belongs to the same family as the Snipe, and is therefore classed among the Birds that Wade. He has a plump body, with short, legs, neck, tail, and wings, a big head with the eyes set in its back upper corners, a very long bill which is soft, sensitive, and can be bent a little; and the three outside ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... of Anholt, for which Sir James had previously obtained the sanction of government, was completely successful. The detachment consisted of the Standard, sixty-four, Captain Hollies; the Owen Glendower, thirty-six; Avenger, Rose, Ranger, sloops; and Snipe, gun-boat: this was reinforced by the marines of the Victory, under Captain Peter Jones, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... the shadow where I lie concealed, I see the birds, late banished by my form, Appearing once more in their usual haunts Along the stream; the silver-breasted snipe Twitters and seesaws on the pebbly spots Bare in the channel—the brown swallow dips Its wings, swift darting round on every side; And from yon nook of clustered water-plants, The wood-duck, slaking its rich purple neck, Skims out, displaying through the liquid glass ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... to walk very quietly and to speak in whispers. In the last house of all, which was a combination of fort and dugout, absolute silence was necessary, for there were German soldiers only ten yards away, with trench-mortars and bombs and rifles always ready to snipe across the walls. Through a chink no wider than my finger I could see the red-brick ruins of the houses inhabited by the enemy and the road to Douai... The road to Douai as seen through this chink was a tangle of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the excessive roughness of the weather, our passage from Rio Janeiro to the Bay of Conception afforded us but few opportunities to add to our collections. A snipe blown out to sea from the Rio de la Plata, a specimen of Diomedea Albatros at Terra del Fuego, a large Salpa, and a Lepas, were all we were able to obtain. The Bay of Conception presents a rich field to the ornithologist. A kind of parrot, with a long tail, and naked round ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Friday, and Saturday was devoted to 'clean ship,' the officers doing [Page 78] their share of the scrubbing. In the forenoon the living-spaces were thoroughly cleaned, holes and corners were searched, and while the tub and scrubber held sway the deck became a 'snipe marsh.' At this time the holds also were cleared up, the bilges pumped out, the upper deck was 'squared up,' and a fresh layer of clean snow was sprinkled over that which had been soiled by the traffic of the week. Then a free afternoon for all hands followed, and after dinner in the wardroom the ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... a larger expanse of land, formerly known as the "Upper Bijou," crowning the heights, overhanging the valley of the St. Charles, where existed the "Lower Bijou," marshy and green meadows, once sacred to snipe, and on which the populous suburb St. Sauveur has recently sprung up. It was granted in free and common soccage, to the late Charles Grey Stewart, Esq., in 18—; ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... fulfilled by the voyage of the "Beagle". In the latter part of my school life I became passionately fond of shooting; I do not believe that any one could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause than I did for shooting birds. How well I remember killing my first snipe, and my excitement was so great that I had much difficulty in reloading my gun from the trembling of my hands. This taste long continued, and I became a very good shot. When at Cambridge I used to practise throwing up my gun to my shoulder ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... fat man of Bombay, Who was smoking one sunshiny day, When a bird called a snipe, Flew away with his pipe, Which vexed the fat man ...
— Denslow's Mother Goose • Anonymous
... the moment helping Alice to a snipe, answered carelessly, "Young lady? O, Miss Winnie Morris, sister of Wayland Morris, editor of our ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... rather holes, were dug on the side of the road. Behind them the ground sloped straight down to the canal. They could not actually see the enemy trenches; and there was no attempt made by either side to "snipe." ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... The birds were also very numerous, large flocks of black cockatoos, cockatoo parrots, galaas, budgerygars or grass parrots ('Melopsittacus Undulatus, Gould'), and some grey quail were frequently seen, and on one of the lagoons a solitary snipe was found. Another cow was abandoned to-day. The total day's stage was 8 miles. The party camped in the sandy bed of the river. A little rain was experienced at night. (Camp XXV.) Latitude 16 degrees ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... it entered the river, and then took the path that runs along the bank. On the opposite side I observed several little birds running along the shore, and making a piping noise. They were brown and white, and about as big as a snipe. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... time this month, the house-martin the latest. The rooks return to the roost trees, and the tortoise begins to bury himself for the winter. Woodcocks begin to arrive, and keep dropping in from the Baltic singly or in pairs till December. The snipe also comes now;" and with the month, by a kind of savage charter, commences the destruction of the pheasant, to swell the catalogue of the created wants and luxuries of the table. "One of the most curious natural appearances," says Mr. L. Hunt, ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... helpless against field guns, while heavy iron-clads could be driven off by riflemen protected by the timber and levees along streams. To fire ten-inch guns at skirmishers, widely disposed and under cover, was very like snipe-shooting with twelve-pounders; and in narrow waters gunboats required troops ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... flopped from a fillamaloo, Where the pollywog pinkled so pale, And the pipkin piped a petulant "pooh" To the garrulous gawp of the gale. "Oh, woe to the swap of the sweeping swipe That booms on the hobbling bay!" Snickered the snark to the snoozing snipe That ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... inclination. Besides bears, wolves, boars, foxes, roebucks, chamois, hares, and ermines, all of which are plentiful in parts of the country, birds of all kinds abound; grey and red-legged partridges, blackcock, ducks of various kinds, quail, and snipe, are the most common; while flights of geese and cranes pass in the spring and autumn, but only descend in spring. Swans and pelicans are also birds of passage, and occasionally visit these unknown lands. The natives are clever in trapping these animals. This they do either by ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... two very greasy-looking entrees; he then despatched a plate of roast mutton; there then appeared before him the largest, and to my mind the hardest, slice of ham that ever figured on the table of a nobleman, yet it disappeared just in time to answer the enquiry of the butler, 'Snipe or pheasant, my lord?' He instantly replied, 'Pheasant,' thus completing his ninth dish of meat at that meal." A few weeks later the Speaker, in conversation with Palmerston, expressed a hope that he was taking care of his health, to which the octogenarian ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... very good snipe and wild duck the other day, which Capt. D- brought home from a shooting party. I have got the moth-like wings of a golden snipe for R-'s hat, and those of a beautiful moor-hen. They got no 'boks', because of the violent south-easter which blew where they were. The ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... the counsellor sent the Snipe and the Turnstone, Aiwohikupua's swiftest messengers, to go up and find out the truth about ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... god of heaven sent down his daughter in the form of the bird Turi, a species of snipe, Charadrius fulvus. She flew about, but could find no resting-place, nothing but ocean. She returned to the heavens, but was again sent down by Tangaloa to search for land. First she observed spray, then lumpy places, then water breaking, then land above the surface, and ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... 1655 a "sea chest and a great white chest." These sea chests being made of cheap materials, have seldom been preserved. There would appear to be in addition to the various chests already named, a hanging chest. In 1737 Sir William Pepperell wrote to England for "4 dozen pair Snipe bills to hang small chissts." This may possibly refer to snipe-bill hinges to ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... animals change their places. The different tribes of wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take place; and I remember once in Italy, having been long waiting, in the end of March, for the arrival of double snipe, in the campagna of Rome; a great flight appeared on the third of April, and the day after, heavy rain set in, which greatly interfered with my sport. The vulture, upon the same principle, follows armies; and I have no doubt ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... hard for my five brace of grouse. I see no amusement in dawdling over a lowland moor where the packs are as thick as chickens in a poultry-yard. I like better than most things a day with my own dogs in scattered covers, when I know not what may rise—a woodcock, an odd pheasant, a snipe in the out-lying willow-bed, and perhaps a mallard or a teal. A hare or two falls in agreeably when the mistress of the house takes an interest in the bag. I detest battues and hot corners, and slaughter for slaughter's sake. I ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... gone by, when my naked feet were tripped By the honey-suckle's tangles where the water-lilies dipped, And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink, And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry And the splashing of the swimmer, in the days ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... smoothbore, without squinting along the barrel and taking the muzzle-sight accurately? The fact is, that many persons fire so hastily at game that they take no sight at all, as though they were snipe-shooting with many hundred grains of shot in the charge. This will never do for ball-practice, and when the rifle is placed in such hands, the breech-sights naturally bother the eye which is not accustomed to recognize any sight; and while the person is vainly ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... heath; one of these is secured. The rest fly towards a little pool of dark water lying at a considerable distance from the common, a well-known rendezvous for those birds. Cautiously approaching, down wind, I reach the margin. Up springs a snipe; but just as my finger is on the trigger, and when too late to alter my intention, a duck and mallard rise from among the rushes and wheel round my head. One barrel is fortunately left, and the drake comes ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... finished husking. Huldah reckoned a wild turkey wouldn't go with a bad relish, and so I shouldered the old gun in the morning, and letting Bose follow slyly along behind, I put away out into the woods. I killed three or four pigeons, and a squirrel, and snipe; but on and on, and round, I ranged, afore I could get a single crack at a turkey. But a flock flew up at last, and one proud old Tom taking a tall maple in sight, and swinging his red gorget as if to dare a shot, I fired, and plump he come to the ground, while ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... at all a bad place as headquarters for the sportsman. In the neighbourhood there is very good snipe-shooting in spring and autumn. The fishing too is excellent for trout and grayling. The bear, the wolf, and the chamois are to be met with on the heights, which form this portion of the great horseshoe ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... currents of water carry others; ships and railroads give free transportation to quantities among the hay used in packing; birds and animals lift many on their feet - Darwin raised 537 plants from a ball of mud carried between the toes of a snipe! - and such feathered and furred agents as feed on berries and other fruits sometimes drop the seeds a thousand miles from the parent. but it will be noticed that such vagabonds as travel by the hook or by crook method, getting a lift in the world frpm every ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Rose-Pompon, laughing, "your father was not a gutter-snipe by trade, but only for ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... flicking the ash from his cigarette with the tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe 'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of the trench with yer nose to the ground ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... known than the mosquito. In common with the woodcock, snipe, and other winged succubi, it breeds in wet places, yet is always dry. Like them it can sustain life on mud juleps, but prefers "cluret." It is a familiar creature, seems to regard the human family as its Blood relations, and is ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... long as they don't call me too late for dinner. Father and mother, whoever they were, when they ran away from me, didn't run away with my appetite. I wonder how long master means to play with his knife and fork. As for Mr Brookes, what he eats wouldn't physic a snipe. ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... geese, a small sort of duck, almost like that mentioned at Kerguelen's Land; another sort which none of us knew; and some of the black seapyes, with red bills, which we found at Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand. Some of the people who went on shore, killed a grouse, a snipe, and some plover. But though, upon the whole, the water-fowls were pretty numerous, especially the ducks and geese, which frequent the shores, they were so shy, that it was scarcely possible to get within shot; so that we obtained a very small ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... roots, they form such a barrier as to make landing well nigh impossible. These small lakes, subject to the ebb and flow of the tides, are the resort of innumerable sea birds and water fowls of all sizes and descriptions; from the snipe to the crane, and brightly colored flamingos, from the screeching sea gulls to the serious looking pelican. They are attracted to these lakes by the solitude of the forests of mangroves that afford them excellent shelter, where to build their nests, and ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... that an American vessel brought them. There is a rabbit-warren on the north-east of the island, belonging to the Duke of Argyle. Young Col intends to get some hares, of which there are none at present. There are no black-cock, muir-fowl, nor partridges; but there are snipe, wild-duck, wild-geese, and swans, in winter; wild-pidgeons, plover, and great number of starlings; of which I shot some, and found them pretty good eating. Woodcocks come hither, though there is not a tree upon the island. There are no rivers in Col; ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... chiefly venison and birds, and some of the latter were baked in bread, probably a sort of paste. The majority of the names on the list are familiar, but a few—the teal, the curlew, the crane, the stork, and the snipe—appear to be new. It is, in all these cases, almost impossible to be sure how much we owe to the poet's imagination and how much to his rhythmical poverty. From another passage it is to be inferred that baked venison was a favourite ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... inspired to write anything further for the Post. Twice during the next two years he contributed to the Journal; once something about Jim Wolfe, though it was not the story of the cats, and another burlesque on a rival editor whom he pictured as hunting snipe with a cannon, the explosion of which was said to have blown the snipe out of the country. No contributions of this time have been preserved. High prices have been offered for copies of the Hannibal journal containing them, but without success. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... sent to him seems to indicate a serious turn of mind. He is sending to Murray Bay The Lady of the Lake and The Lay of the Last Minstrel whose middle-aged author was just turning from poetry to win unprecedented success as a writer of fiction. In the spring he goes out shooting for snipe nearly every day; and he sends to Murray Bay for his fishing tackle. When a fellow officer falls ill he sends him down to Murray ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... green on the back, with a sharp-pointed, bright-yellow tail, the lower lobe of which is developed to twice the length of the upper. He has a very strange feature in the fact that his lower jaw resembles the bill of a snipe, being several inches long, sharp and pointed and hard; but he has no upper lip or beak at all. This half-bill must be used in relation to his food, but I do not have any idea how this ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... into a hard floor in their fighting-rings, while the sober reeves stand round, admiring the tournament of their lovers, gay with ears and tippets, no two of them alike. Gone are ruffs and reeves, spoonbills, bitterns, avosets; the very snipe, one hears, disdains to breed. Gone, too, not only from Whittlesea but from the whole world, is that most exquisite of English butterflies, Lycaena dispar—the great copper; and many a curious insect more. Ah, well, at least we shall have wheat and mutton instead, and no more typhus and ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... country is uniformly the same undulating moorland; the surface being covered by light brown withered grass and a few very small shrubs, all springing out of an elastic peaty soil. In the valleys here and there might be seen a small flock of wild geese, and everywhere the ground was so soft that the snipe were able to feed. Besides these two birds there were few others. There is one main range of hills, nearly two thousand feet in height, and composed of quartz rock, the rugged and barren crests of which gave us some trouble to cross. On the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of the French window upon a balcony now, he looked down the street. The newsboy was almost below. He whistled, and the lad looked up. In response to a beckoning finger the gutter-snipe took the doorway and the staircase at a bound. Like all his kind, he was a good judge of character, and one glance had assured him that he was speeding upon a visit of profit. Half a postman's knock—a sharp, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Dundee, better known as The Gaffer; David Faed, also of Dundee; George Lashman, of Cardiff; Long Ede, of Hayle, in Cornwall; Charles Silchester, otherwise The Snipe, of Ratcliff Highway or thereabouts; and Daniel Cooney, shipped at Tromso six weeks before the wreck, an Irish-American by birth and ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of his own class? The answer suggested itself; boys of his own class could teach him nothing; his own boyhood would supply him with all the necessary information about well-bred youth. But if he wanted a gutter-snipe in one of his plays, he would have to find a gutter-lad and paint him from life. That was probably the truth, I concluded. So satisfied was I with my discovery that I developed it to Gattie; but he ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the contemptible white-faced person who had preferred spending the raw hours over his papers, within the radius of a glorious fire's warmth, to creeping slyly over treacherous quagmires in the pursuit of timid bog creatures (snipe shooting had been the order of the day)-the baron, I say, became aware of my existence and ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... made unsparing slaughter of the birds that hovered over and around them. Nearly every species of the feathered tribe seemed to have its representative in that living cloud. There were wild ducks in thousands; snipe, larks, rooks, and swallows; a countless variety of sea-birds—widgeons, gulls, and seamews; beside a quantity of game—quails, partridges, and woodcocks. The sportsmen did their best; every shot told; and the depredators fell ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... proceeded towards Lake Winnipeg, and soon were moving slowly down its low-lying eastern shore. Here they had their first glimpse of the prairie country, with its green carpet of grass. Out from the water's edge grew tall, lank reeds, the lurking place of snipe and sand-piper. Doubtless, in the brief night-watches, they listened to the shrill cry of the restless lynx, or heard the yapping howl of the timber wolf as he slunk {53} away among the copses. But presently the boats were gliding in through the sand-choked outlet of the Red River, and they ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... If he had had the right stuff in him he would have made good. As it was, he attended to his duties in the most perfunctory and superficial manner. He showed not the slightest interest in the business. In fact, his position could have been ably filled by the veriest gutter-snipe. And he is the man who one day, in all probability, would have come into control of the Carmody millions! And he would have scattered them in a riot of dissipation the length and breadth ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... from a musical point of view, have their wing feathers or tails peculiarly developed and stiffened, and are able to produce with them a strange snapping or cracking sound. Thus several species of snipe make drumming or "bleating" noises—something like the bleat of a goat—with their narrowed tails as they descend in flight.[74] Magpies have a still more curious method of call, by rapping on dry and sonorous ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... sea-snipe, or trumpet-fish, but, oho, without a tooth! He made me think of a scorpion that has ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... also on the bank of a small stream. Shortly after our arrival on the ground, Thompson started out afoot, taking with him his gun. He had noticed a tract of marsh at no great distance off. He thought it promised well for snipe. ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... rite fade core gore lute five trade glide tone pole live plate wore cope lobe tore crave drive tube lane hive spore pride wipe bide save globe stove slate pore rave snipe snore mere flake cove stone spine store stole cave flame blade mute wide stale grove crime stake hone mete grape shave skate mine wake smite grime spike more wave white stride brake score slope drone spade spoke fume strife twine shape snake wade slime strive whale strike slave mode stripe ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... when taken in that river was coarse and tasted of mud, whereas this ruffe, although so large was not coarse, but rich, and of excellent flavour—and so fat that the flakes fell into crumbs when fried. This day a bird of a new species was shot by Roach. It was of a swallow kind, about the size of a snipe, of a leaden colour, with ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... hours in pursuit of game in the autumn, on the chance of bagging an occasional brace of partridges or a wild pheasant (for everything here is wild), or, in winter, when lake and fen are frostbound, by the river and its withybeds after snipe and wildfowl—for the Cotswold stream has never been known ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... thing, being a man of a guileless heart, and a spiritual simplicity, that would be ornamental in a child. We then had the latheron summoned before the session, and was not long of making her confess that the father was Nichol Snipe, Lord Glencairn's gamekeeper; and both her and Nichol were obligated to stand in the kirk: but Nichol was a graceless reprobate, for he came with two coats, one buttoned behind him, and another buttoned before him, and two wigs of my lord's, lent him by the valet-de-chamer; ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... then seen gliding in the farther nooks—and a quick eye may catch, particularly about the dam, where he generally burrows, a glimpse of the musk-rat as he dives down. Now and then too the wild duck will push his beautiful shape with his bright feet through it—the snipe will alight and "teter," as the children say, along the banks—the woodcock will show his brownish red bosom amongst the reeds as he comes to stick his long bill into the black ooze for sucking, as dock-boys ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... general intelligence of the pointer, the following is a proof. A gentleman shooting in Ireland, with a dog totally unused to fetch and carry, killed a snipe. It fell in soft, boggy ground, where he could not get to pick it up. After some vain efforts to approach it, he hied on the pointer, by saying, "Fetch it, Fan! fetch it." She seemed for a moment puzzled at such an unusual proceeding, and looked round inquisitively once or twice, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... wild snipe flying up into a birch-tree, and again flew on in a straight line. Instead of grass, we caught glimpses of tree-tops just under our feet. It was strange to see the forest from above, its bristling ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... yer looks, Jude, an' ol' Lucy ain't a-goin' to take ye in. We gotta snipe somepin quick—or starve! Look, we'll go down to Mike's place, an' then come back here when it's out, and ye kin pinch a string, or ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... now—" With the utmost deliberation he launched upon a tirade of abuse. "But, no, you are not a man of energy, not a man to take things in your hands. The obstacles are too big. Those three husbands! You might even take that woman, that lovely, royal dancing woman—you, my dear sir, a common street snipe. What would a woman like that, with that novel, impassioned, barbaric, foreign dance, be worth to a man on your Broadway? Eh? But obstacles! Obstacles! You have her not on Broadway. It is too many thousand miles, and you have no money. But see, if you were a man to grasp ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a fowling-piece cracked sharply, close at hand; something splashed, and the ruffled body of a snipe bobbed ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... "I suppose I made an awful ass of myself. But even if she is a public dancer, that snipe shouldn't have insulted her. Of course I'd found out long before that Miss Toots was no longer anything to ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... road, and saw him mount his bicycle and zig-zag like a snipe down the hill towards Achranich. Then I set off briskly northward. It was clear that the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... if she 'knew he was out,' must have had a pretty long spell of uneasiness before she saw him back again. But Mr. Waterton, Baptist of a new generation in these mysteries, took that conceit out of Europe: the sloth, says he, cannot like a snipe or a plover run a race neck and neck with a first-class railway carriage; but is he, therefore, a slow coach? By no means: he would go from London to Edinburgh between seedtime and harvest. Now Gillman's Coleridge, vol. i., has no such speed: it has taken six years to come up with ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... killed wild pigeons if they had got a chance, though you could not tell them from turtle-doves except by their size and the sound they made with their wings. But there were not many pigeons in the woods around the Boy's Town, and they were very shy. There were snipe along the river, and flocks of kildees on the Commons, but the bird that was mostly killed by these boys was the yellowhammer. They distinguished, again, in its case; and decided that it was not a ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... the pride of Emain. (Throwing in clay.) There is Naisi was the best of three, the choicest of the choice of many. It was a clean death was your share, Naisi; and it is not I will quit your head, when it's many a dark night among the snipe and plover that you and I were whispering together. It is not I will quit your head, Naisi, when it's many a night we saw the stars among the clear trees of Glen da Ruadh, or the moon pausing to rest her on the edges of the hills. OLD WOMAN. Conchubor is coming, surely. I see the glare ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... allied species (Puffinuria Berardii) which inhabits the inland sounds and resembles the auk in some particulars of habit and appearance. There are numerous species in these sheltered channels, inlets and sounds of geese, ducks, swans, cormorants, ibises, bitterns, red-beaks, curlew, snipe, plover and moorhens. Conspicuous among these are the great white swan (Cygnus anatoides), the black-necked swan (Anser nigricollis), the antarctic goose (Anas antarctica) and the "race-horse" or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... resident of most of South America, we found tiny red- legged plover which also breed and are at home in the tropics. The contrasts in habits between closely allied species are wonderful. Among the plovers and bay snipe there are species that live all the year round in almost the same places, in tropical and subtropical lands; and other related forms which wander over the whole earth, and spend nearly all their time, now in the arctic and cold temperate regions of the ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... forgot his sorrows, for the woe must indeed be heavy which a new hammerless gun by such a maker cannot do something towards lightening. So on the next morning he took this gun and went to the marshes by the river—where, he was credibly informed, several wisps of snipe had been seen—to attempt to shoot some of them and put the new weapon ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... agin, Where you all cwumpled 'em," he says, "I bet I'll ist fly clean away an' won't take you To old Miss Hoodjicum's at all!" he says. An' nen I ist weach out wite quick, I did, An' gwab the sassy little snipe agin— Nen tooked my topstwing an' tie down his wings So's he can't fly, 'less'n I want him to! An' nen I says: "Now, Mr. Squidjicum, You better ist light out," I says, "to old Miss Hoodjicum's, ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... eastward, would probably yield many delicate and brilliant little fishes; Gobies, brilliant Labri, blue, yellow, and orange, with tiny rabbit mouths, and powerful protruding teeth; pipe fishes (Syngnathi) (25) with strange snipe-bills (which they cannot open) and snake-like bodies; small cuttlefish (Sepiolae) of a white jelly mottled with brilliant metallic hues, with a ring of suckered arms round their tiny parrots' beaks, who, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... of an easterly squall the sloop Arrow, Lemuel Vinton master and owner, was making her way along the low coast, southward, from Snipe Point, one of the islands in Florida Bay about twelve ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... most renowmed souldier, 240 Epaminondas (as good authors say) Had no more suites then backes, but you two shar'd But one suite twixt you both, when both your studies Were not what meate to dine with, if your partridge, Your snipe, your wood-cocke, larke, or your red hering, 245 But where to begge it; whether at my house, Or at the Guises (for you know you were Ambitious beggars) or at some cookes-shop, T'eternize the cookes trust, and score it up. ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... impact creates a perceptible jar, and the lantern is disfigured with plashes of their blood. Upon stormy and foggy nights the destruction of birds is found to be greatest. When the weather is clear and fair many smaller birds, like robins, sparrows, doves, cuckoos, rail, snipe, etc., will circle about the light all night long, leaving only when the light is extinguished in the morning. Large cranes show themselves to be almost dangerous visitors. Recently one of these weighing 40 pounds struck the wrought iron guard railing about the lantern with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... all fit for food. I never expected to have seen more birds together than we had passed at the rookery under the cliffs in the morning; but we sailed by an island, of which birds of all descriptions had taken entire possession. There were various species of ducks, and geese, and snipe, and teal, and shags, and grebes, and penguins, and albatrosses, and sea-rooks, and oyster-catchers, and gulls with pink breasts, and many others, of whose names I have no note. As we believed that we had plenty of time, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... other camp fixtures, and a little simple food, are put into the boat, and off we go. Perhaps a gale springs up, and we are forced to make a harbor in some little island; or perhaps it falls calm, and we crawl into one, under oars. It is sure to be alive with ducks and geese and snipe. The shooting is superb. Happen what may, come storm or calm or fine weather, though often wet and cold, and frequently in danger, yet I have a grand time of it. I may be back in a day, two days, a week, or I may be gone a month. Then the winter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... honeysuckle, lupines—not yet quite in bloom—the sweetbrier and increasing quantities of the wild rose gave life to the always changing scene. Wild game of every sort was unspeakably abundant—deer and turkey in every bottom, thousands of grouse on the hills, vast flocks of snipe and plover, even numbers of the green parrakeets then so numerous along that latitude. The streams abounded in game fish. All ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... did manage to pay his bills annually, spent every shilling of it. He preserved his foxes loyally, and was quite as keen about the fishing of a little river that he owned, and which ran down from his demesne into Lough Corrib. He was particular also about his snipe, and would boast that in a little spinney at Ballytowngal were to be met the earliest woodcock found in the West of Ireland. He was a thorough sportsman;—but a Roman Catholic—and as a Roman Catholic he was hardly equal in standing to some of his Protestant ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... readily perce the foot through the Mockerson; they are so numerous that it requires one half of the traveler's attention to avoid them In these plains I observed great numbers of the brown Curloos, a small species of curloo or plover of a brown colour about the size of the common snipe and not unlike it in form with a long celindric curved and pointed beak; it's wings are proportionately long and the tail short; in the act of liteing this bird lets itself down by an extention of it's ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... meant. Good old Duggie wasn't going to have those eyes patrolling his spine if he knew it. He meant to keep away and conduct this business by letter. There was going to be no personal interview with sister, if he had to dodge about America like a snipe. ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... union, whose workhouse is already every winter filled with abler- bodied men than he, between starvation—and this—. Well, as for employing him, one would have thought that there was a little work waiting to be done in those five miles of heather and snipe-bog, which I used to tramp over last winter—but those, it seems, are still on the "margin of cultivation," and not a remunerative investment—that is, to capitalists. I wonder if any one had made Crawy a present of ten acres of them when he came of age, and commanded him to till that ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the paddle woke the drowsing red-winged blackbirds from the reeds; the gray snipe wheeled out across ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... for birds. Moorhens evidently migrate up or down the river in spring and autumn, and occasionally dabchicks; otherwise their sudden appearance and disappearance on the eyot could not be accounted for. Snipe follow the Thames up the valley. Formerly Chiswick Eyot was their first alighting place when east winds were blowing, after the fatigue of crossing London; and persons still living used to go out and shoot them. A friend of mine, whose family has resided in Chiswick for several generations, used ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... particular? Which of us is there, who has not passed moments in the company of these brutes, such as might well 'score years from a strong man's life'? Some of us have been gored by the brutes, and most of us, who have pursued the crafty snipe bird in his native padi swamps, have put in various mauvais quarts d'heure, with some of these sullenly vindictive animals mouching after us, much in the way that a gendarme pursues a gamin. Then has entered upon the scene a Delivering Angel, in the shape of a very small, very muddy, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... only a day too late for the Twelfth, he found the sport bad and he shot badly, but he enjoyed the healthful walks on the hill. His employments were curiously mixed. 'Sept. 8th.—In the bog for snipe with Sir J. Mackenzie. Read Timaeus. Began Byron's Life. My eyes refused progress. Verses. 15th.—Snipe-shooting with F. in the bog. Began Critias. 22nd.—Haddo. Otter-hunting, senz esito. Finished Plato's Laws. Hunting too in the library.' ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... days in all carrying the Pipe to the Miami villages, and though they fed us well at the towns where we stopped, we were as thin as snipe at the end of it. It was our first important running, you see, and we wished to make a record. We followed the main trails which followed the watersheds. Between these, we plunged down close-leaved, sweating tunnels of underbrush, ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... swimmer. The current is very swift. Tortoises used to line the margin of the river in the evening, with their heads sticking out above water, while crowds of angry birds accused them from the wet mud of the shore. Wild duck, partridge, snipe, sand-grouse and doves were fairly numerous, and in the evenings it was possible to get a good bag. It was worth shooting jackals, for their skins were in very good condition. The hospital had a football ground and later on, towards the end of the hot season, ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... requires a certain aim or action in one direction, have bills quite straight in form, as the heron and snipe; while those which are intended to come in contact with hard substances, as breaking shells, have the bills gently curved, in order that the shock may not be communicated to ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... situated on the edge of an extensive tract of marsh,—lagoon would be a more descriptive word for it, perhaps,—a splashy, ditch-divided district, extending along the borders of a lake for miles. Snipe-shooting was my motive there; and dull work it was in those dark, Novembry, October days, with "the low rain falling" half the time, and the yellow leaves all the time, and no snipe. But whether we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Queen." "You boast of your rank, Sir," the WATER-DOG cried As he shook his rough coat, that was scarcely yet dried, "But in sport who with me can compare?—have you seen, Where the bush-fringed pool is mantled with green, How I wind, thro' the reeds and the rushes, my way, And the haunt of the Snipe, or the Mallard betray? How, when loud sounds the Gun, aroused by the crash } (As the fall of the victim, is marked by the splash) } Leaping forward I bear off the prey at a dash?" } "Tis enough—you have merit—but I think it better To mention ...
— The Council of Dogs • William Roscoe
... surprised to find himself fully alive to the delight of forcing his way through a furze-brake, hearing the ice in the peaty bogs crackle beneath his feet; getting a good shot, bringing down his bird, finding snipe, and diving into the depths of the long, winding valleys and dingles, with the icicle-hung banks of their streamlets. He came home through the village at about half-past three o'clock, sending the keeper to leave some of his game at the parsonage, while he went ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the necessity of continually closing up. It was quite dark when the rearguard hove in sight of the passing trains, and then, to make matters thoroughly uncomfortable, some half-dozen waggons stuck firmly in a snipe-bog, scarcely a ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... much to the alarm of its inhabitants; viz. sundry cheetars, bore-butchers, (or leopards) hyenas, wolves, jackalls, foxes, hares, partridges, etc.; but not being a very capital shot, I have seldom made much devastation amongst them. Under the hill are swamps and paddy-fields, which abound in snipe and other game. Now, is not this a Zoological Garden on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... dolers, which i want yu to kepe for me till i cum hum. I can't kepe it heer coz ime afrade it will git stole. don't speke wun word tu a livin sole bout this coz I don't want nobodi tu kno i hav got enny mony. yu wont now wil yu. i am first rate heer, only that gude fur nuthin snipe of liz madwurth is heer yit—but i hop tu git red ov her now. yu no i rote yu bout her. give my luv to awl inquiren friends. this is from your ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... the ash out of his pipe with his finger, "it is early yet of course, but you never can tell with the snipe. The snipe's a bird that wants watching. If you are unlucky, you may sit waiting at home, and miss his flying over, and then you must wait till autumn. . . . It is a business! The snipe is not a rook. . . . Last year he was flying the week before Easter, ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... praise of sport and physical exercise, touched with a sentiment not far removed from poetry—the only poetry of which they are not half-ashamed. Audubon even joined in, forgetting for the moment his customary pose, and rhapsodizing with the rest over his favourite pursuits of snipe-shooting and cricket. Much of this talk was lost upon me, for I am nothing of a sportsman; but some touches there were that recalled experiences of my own, and for that reason, I suppose, have lingered in my memory. Thus, I recollect, some one spoke of skating ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... or two I came to a pond where were sitting five snipe. I killed the whole bunch, and they helped to make another square meal. We were now near the border of the Great Desert proper, where, out of the midst of a level plain, stood a lone mountain known as the "Old Crater," which, together with its surroundings, ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... with Keene on the previous evening after a hard day's snipe shooting, and bore evident traces about him of a heavy night—a fact which he lost no time in alluding to, not without a certain pride, like the man in Congreve's play, who exults in having "been drunk in excellent company." "We had a very big drink," he said, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... inhabiting small rivers and streams, and living somewhat after the manner of the otter. It has a most wide range of diet, and will eat almost anything which is at all eatable. Fishes, frogs, and muskrats are his especial delight, and he will occasionally succeed in pouncing upon a snipe or wild duck, which he will greedily devour. Crawfish, [Page 190] snails, and water insects of all kinds also come within the range of his diet, and he sometimes makes a stray visit to some neighboring poultry yard to satisfy the craving of his abnormal ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... thoughts came back to her he looked happier, though he had to think of her penitently. "I was a beast," he went on, "the coldest, cruellest beast. Do you know why I raged at you when you mentioned that little snipe you call Mr. Philip? I knew it was the roughest luck on you to have gone through that time with him. But I wasn't sorry for you. I was jealous. I felt you might have protected yourself from being looked at by any other man in the world except ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... the cavern larder that day, there was no prospect of famine before the persecuted people. In one part of that larder there was abundance of beef and pork, also of game, such as guinea-fowl, pheasants, partridges, peacocks, turkeys, geese, ducks, pigeons, turtle-doves, and snipe. In another place the vegetable and fruit-gatherers had piled up little mounds of bread-fruit, pine-apples, cocoa-nuts, yams, plantains, bananas, manioc-root, melons, etcetera, much of which had been gathered from regions at a considerable distance from their place of abode. ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the two islands, there is scarcely any diversity; of this the wattle bird, which is about the size of a snipe, and considered a very great delicacy, is the only instance which I ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... in abundance generally lies within reach, and nothing of its kind is more delightful than an afternoon with the spring snipe, or a shooting trip of a few days in company ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... days gone by, when my naked feet were tripped By the honeysuckle tangles where the water-lilies dipped, And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink, Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink, And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry And the splashing of the swimmer, in the ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... Housemaids at Wusterhausen," Don't I pay them myself? objects the auditing Papa, at that latter kind of items: No more of that. "For mending the flute, four GROSCHEN [or pence];" "Two Boxes of Colors, sixteen ditto;" "For a live snipe, twopence;" "For grinding the hanger [little swordkin];" "To a Boy whom the dog bit;" and chiefly of all, "To the KLINGBEUTEL,"—Collection-plate, or bag, at Church,—which comes upon us once, nay twice, and even thrice a week, eighteenpence each time, and eats deep into our straitened ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... their places. The different tribes of the wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take place; and I remember once, in Italy, having been long waiting, in the end of March, for the arrival of the double snipe in the Campagna of Rome, a great flight appeared on the 3rd of April, and the day after heavy rain set in, which greatly interfered with my sport. The vulture, upon the same principle, follows armies; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... madded me and I sez, "Well, you good-for-nothin' snipe you, instead of traipsin' all over the neighborhood tellin' of your wife's state, why hain't you to home buildin' a fire and heatin' soap stuns and bricks, and ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... chimney-corner. "But I hope it is not my wood that he's burning... Ah, it was this time last year that I met with that man Venn, bringing home Thomasin Yeobright—to be sure it was! Well, who would have thought that girl's troubles would have ended so well? What a snipe you were in that matter, Eustacia! Has your husband written ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... mine own gained knowledge should profane Were I to waste myself with such a snipe But for my sport ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... I also saw a sea-snipe, or trumpet-fish, but, oho, without a tooth! He made me think of a scorpion that has ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... anemone from the genus Caryophylia with translucent tentacles, plus anemone with grassy tufts from the genus Zoantharia; and to complete the illusion, minnows flitted from branch to branch like a swarm of hummingbirds, while there rose underfoot, like a covey of snipe, yellow fish from the genus Lepisocanthus with bristling jaws and sharp scales, flying ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... highest point of his spring I fired. I did not dare to wait, for I saw that he would clear the whole space and land right upon me. Without a sight, almost without aim, I fired, as one would fire a snap-shot at a snipe. The bullet told, for I distinctly heard its thud above the rushing sound caused by the passage of the lion through the air. Next second I was swept to the ground (luckily I fell into a low, creeper-clad ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... Cuban production. On the other hand the thickets are alive with pheasants, quail, pigeons, wild pigs and other descriptions of game. The waters swarm with the most excellent fish and innumerable turtles sport in the lagoons, while curlews, snipe, ducks and other aquatic fowls flock on their shores; and not the least of the gifts with which the munificent hand of nature has so bountifully endowed this delicious oasis of the ocean is its delightful and soft, ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... will buy the whole stock of eggs, a pound or two of butter, and three or four couples of fowls from one woman, who is glad to sell cheaply and so be free to return home at once. At Bordeaux he lays in a stock of snipe and other birds from the sand hills and marshes, oysters, and other such matters. He is a great favourite with the crew and, in cold weather or stormy nights, there is always hot ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... tip it off with Blake and the rest. No bridge for you tonight—early to bed and tomorrow morning you'll all start out in your natty knickers and short kilts to murder things that will fall in bloody feathery heaps at your feet. Native woodcock, jack snipe, black mallard, grouse, etc., the restless eager setters doing their own retrieving; the soft dank ground daintily overspread with the frond of marvelous fern like my window pane this morning with its delicate tracery in frost; the ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... to them. He told them, that at the time they took up the tomahawk and agreed to join their father, the king, they were promised plenty of white men to fight with them; "but the number is not now greater," said he, "than at the commencement of the war; and we are treated by them like the dogs of snipe hunters; we are always sent ahead to start the game: it is better that we should return to our country, and let the Americans come on and fight the British." To this proposition his followers agreed; but the Sioux and Chippewas, discovering ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... upsetting of the balance of nature. A great deal could be learnt from the excellent work already done all over the continent with regard to the farmer's and forester's wild friends and foes. A migrating flight of curlew, snipe, plover or sandpipers is worth much more to the farmer alive than dead. But by no means every farmer knows the value ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... garden, for a little while he forgot his sorrows, for the woe must indeed be heavy which a new hammerless gun by such a maker cannot do something towards lightening. So on the next morning he took this gun and went to the marshes by the river—where, he was credibly informed, several wisps of snipe had been seen—to attempt to shoot some of them and put the new weapon ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... species (Puffinuria Berardii) which inhabits the inland sounds and resembles the auk in some particulars of habit and appearance. There are numerous species in these sheltered channels, inlets and sounds of geese, ducks, swans, cormorants, ibises, bitterns, red-beaks, curlew, snipe, plover and moorhens. Conspicuous among these are the great white swan (Cygnus anatoides), the black-necked swan (Anser nigricollis), the antarctic goose (Anas antarctica) and the "race-horse" or "steamer ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... indeed he was surprised to find himself fully alive to the delight of forcing his way through a furze-brake, hearing the ice in the peaty bogs crackle beneath his feet; getting a good shot, bringing down his bird, finding snipe, and diving into the depths of the long, winding valleys and dingles, with the icicle-hung banks of their streamlets. He came home through the village at about half-past three o'clock, sending the keeper to leave some ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pleased, and tell him all de tings I want. Dat evening plenty of provisions came on board. Dere were—let me see— butter-birds and whistling ducks, snipe, red-tailed pigeons, turkeys, clucking hens, parrots, and plantation coots; dere was beef and pork and venison, and papaw fruit, squash, and plantains, calavansas, bananas, yams, Indian pepper, ginger, and all sorts ob oder tings. I pick out what I know make de best pie, putting in plenty ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... The species of Snipe known in Australia are—Scolopax australis, Lath.; Painted S., Rhynchaea australis, Gould. This bird breeds in Japan and winters in Australia. The name is also ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... despatched a plate of roast mutton; there then appeared before him the largest, and to my mind the hardest, slice of ham that ever figured on the table of a nobleman, yet it disappeared just in time to answer the enquiry of the butler, 'Snipe or pheasant, my lord?' He instantly replied, 'Pheasant,' thus completing his ninth dish of meat at that meal." A few weeks later the Speaker, in conversation with Palmerston, expressed a hope that he was taking care of his health, to which the octogenarian ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... birds together than we had passed at the rookery under the cliffs in the morning; but we sailed by an island, of which birds of all descriptions had taken entire possession. There were various species of ducks, and geese, and snipe, and teal, and shags, and grebes, and penguins, and albatrosses, and sea-rooks, and oyster-catchers, and gulls with pink breasts, and many others, of whose names I have no note. As we believed that we had plenty ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... of those little mountain-brooks which roll their limpid waters over silver sands; hurl by through whispering ledges, the resort of snipe and woodcock; or, varying this quiet and serene existence with occasional action, dart between abrupt banks over mossy rocks, laughing as they fly onward ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... in clouds with snap and buzz, and out of the luxurious stagnant marshes comes the ever-thickening chorus of the toads, while above them the kildees and the snipe shuttle to and fro in sounding flight. The blackbirds on the cat-tails sway and swing, uttering through lifted throats their liquid gurgle, mad with delight of the sun and the season—and over all, and laving all, moves the slow wind, heavy with the ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... where I lie concealed, I see the birds, late banished by my form, Appearing once more in their usual haunts Along the stream; the silver-breasted snipe Twitters and seesaws on the pebbly spots Bare in the channel—the brown swallow dips Its wings, swift darting round on every side; And from yon nook of clustered water-plants, The wood-duck, slaking its rich purple neck, Skims out, displaying through ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... of heaven sent down his daughter in the form of the bird Turi, a species of snipe, Charadrius fulvus. She flew about, but could find no resting-place, nothing but ocean. She returned to the heavens, but was again sent down by Tangaloa to search for land. First she observed spray, ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... good. As it was, he attended to his duties in the most perfunctory and superficial manner. He showed not the slightest interest in the business. In fact, his position could have been ably filled by the veriest gutter-snipe. And he is the man who one day, in all probability, would have come into control of the Carmody millions! And he would have scattered them in a riot of dissipation the length and ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... on me. I'm a sucker. I know it. I'm one of the few hundred other God-damned fools that you've managed to catch out shooting snipe. Now what I want to know is, how much is it going to cost me to get out of your corner? What's the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... to snipe us at times with their field guns and mountain guns, but generally at certain fixed places—down near the mouth of the Aghyl Dere, for example. The German snipes with them more generally. There is no place ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... ill-endowed from a musical point of view, have their wing feathers or tails peculiarly developed and stiffened, and are able to produce with them a strange snapping or cracking sound. Thus several species of snipe make drumming or "bleating" noises—something like the bleat of a goat—with their narrowed tails as they descend in flight.[74] Magpies have a still more curious method of call, by rapping on dry and sonorous branches, which they ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... lightly six snipe, saving the trail. When done let them get cold, then cut them up and remove the skin, and lay them in a buttered stewpan; pound the trimmings and bones in a mortar, and put them into a stewpan with two shallots, a clove, a bouquet of herbs, and ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... Everybody stiff. Took the left-hand creek that comes in here, and had a hard pull over a little cataract. This should be called Summit Creek. It doesn't seem to have any name. It runs narrow, and fringed with alders. Very crooked. Saw some jack-snipe and a robin to-day, up here on the summit of the Rockies, almost at the Arctic Sea ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... sources of amusement. But never fear! You can not be always reading, and when the fine weather comes you will yield to the temptation; all the more likely because you have Claudet Sejournant with you. A jolly fellow he is; there is not one like him for killing a snipe or sticking a trout! Our trout here on the Aubette, Monsieur de Buxieres, are excellent—of the salmon kind, and ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... rest of the company. Foremost in dignity was the Countess Auk, of Stornaway Rock, in the Hebrides; and with her were her two nieces, Lady Isabella Snipe and the Honourable Miss Woodcock. I saw Mr. Reynard, the celebrated member for Hollowoak, having a long gossip with the Countess and her young charges, for both of whom he seemed to profess great admiration. Mr. Jay, the ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... continued riding for some hours. For the few last miles the road was intricate, and it passed through a desert waste of marshes and lagoons. The scene by the dimmed light of the moon was most desolate. A few fireflies flitted by us; and the solitary snipe, as it rose, uttered its plaintive cry. The distant and sullen roar of the sea scarcely broke the stillness ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... heer sevente fiv dolers, which i want yu to kepe for me till i cum hum. I can't kepe it heer coz ime afrade it will git stole. don't speke wun word tu a livin sole bout this coz I don't want nobodi tu kno i hav got enny mony. yu wont now wil yu. i am first rate heer, only that gude fur nuthin snipe of liz madwurth is heer yit—but i hop tu git red ov her now. yu no i rote yu bout her. give my luv to awl inquiren friends. this is from your sister til deth. ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... and engine construction is shown by referring to the tables for 1918. At the Armistice of the twelve types—Avro, Bristol Fighter, Sopwith Snipe, S.E. 5a, de Havilland 4 and 9a, Vickers Vimy, Handley Page O/400 and V/1,500, Fairey Seaplane 3c, F. 2 A. and F. 5—all were British and, except the de Havilland 9a, which had an American engine, were fitted with engines of British manufacture. ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... causes of offence: Cassio has been preferred to him; he suspects him too of an intrigue with Emilia; and, lastly, Cassio has a daily beauty in his life which makes Iago ugly. In addition to these annoyances he wants Cassio's place. As for Roderigo, he calls him a snipe, and who can hate a snipe? But Roderigo knows too much; and he is becoming a nuisance, getting angry, and asking for the gold and jewels he handed to Iago to give to Desdemona. So Iago kills Roderigo. Then for ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... by the rifle flashes there were not more than twenty men in that flanking party. We still have to hear from another body, and I believe they are hiding in the mill, ready to snipe us from there. Besides, probably a smaller party has been sent from the flankers to lie in wait and get us as we go through the lagoon. It's a bad trap, Mr. Carmody, and we must move slowly, if we wish to ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... steady hand, and good judgment, to kill a partridge in November, when, with a rush of wings like an embryo whirlwind, he gets up under your feet, and brushes the dew from the underbrush with his whizzing wings. It is not every amateur that can kill woodcock in close cover, or well-grown snipe on a windy day; but there are few, who can do these things, who can kill with both barrels in their first goose-shooting. The size and number of the birds, the wary and cautious manner of their approach, the nice modulations necessary to "call" them successfully, and the reckless sweep ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... round the rocks to the eastward, would probably yield many delicate and brilliant little fishes; Gobies, brilliant Labri, blue, yellow, and orange, with tiny rabbit mouths, and powerful protruding teeth; pipe fishes (Syngnathi) (25) with strange snipe-bills (which they cannot open) and snake-like bodies; small cuttlefish (Sepiolae) of a white jelly mottled with brilliant metallic hues, with a ring of suckered arms round their tiny parrots' beaks, who, put ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... thither stole a happy boat To hear the ringdoves coo, To mark again the drumming snipe ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... is to go out into the forest before the sun is up and look for a snipe's nest. When you have found it, take out one of the young birds and keep it beside you for three days. Then go back into the wood and set the snipe free. The fever will leave you at once. The snipe has taken it away. So in Vedic times the Hindoos of old sent consumption ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... persuaded, by means of a heavy bribe and the promise of efficient protection, to undertake the removal of Ippolito. Whilst dallying with his former mistress, the Cardinal fell ill of malarial fever, common in the swampy plain of Garigliano, where he had gone shooting snipe. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... of rushes intimates that water is near, and upon parting the bushes a little may be seen, all that has escaped evaporation in the shade. From one of these marshy spots I once—and once only—observed a snipe rise, and after wheeling round return and settle by another. As the wiry grass becomes paler with the fall of the year, the rushes, on the contrary, from green become faintly yellow, and presently brownish. Grey grass and brown rushes, dark furze, and fern, almost copper in hue from frost, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... also very numerous, large flocks of black cockatoos, cockatoo parrots, galaas, budgerygars or grass parrots ('Melopsittacus Undulatus, Gould'), and some grey quail were frequently seen, and on one of the lagoons a solitary snipe was found. Another cow was abandoned to-day. The total day's stage was 8 miles. The party camped in the sandy bed of the river. A little rain was experienced at night. (Camp XXV.) Latitude 16 degrees ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... Ichabod Crane was small and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew.—W. Irving, Sketch-Book ("Legend of ...
— 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.
... lonely itself, but so close to a crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the corner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the neighbours and the ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... [The word "Olive"—the meat preparation, not the fruit—was written "Oline" everywhere in the Index, and occasionally in the body text. The unrelated "Olines" are birds.] Rabit [Note that the word is consistently spelled with one "b" except in the Index.] Snite [Probably a variant of "Snipe", but in some books it is understood as a different bird.] roast, toast [Both words can be applied to meats.] give it a walm [The word "walm" is always used in this construction. It appears to mean "bring to a boil". Some occurrences of "warm" may ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... shall be you! Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you! You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life! Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you! My brain it shall be your occult convolutions! Root of wash'd sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you! Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you! Sun so generous it shall be you! ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... several snipe and a fat turkey, when, as we were clambering up a bank, being somewhat before my companions, I was not a little surprised to see, within four paces of me, the huge head of a black bear, peering over the tops of the palmetto ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... streams, holding many pools, blue-fringed in May with iris, and osier beds, and vast fields of reeds, and breadths of forest with dense thorny underwood, where all wild birds came in their season, and where all was quiet save for a bittern's cry, a boar's snort, a snipe's scream, on the lands once crowded with the multitudes that gave the eagle of Persia and the brazen trumpets of Lydia ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... that I was utterly incapable of any such thing, being a man of a guileless heart, and a spiritual simplicity, that would be ornamental in a child. We then had the latheron summoned before the session, and was not long of making her confess that the father was Nichol Snipe, Lord Glencairn's gamekeeper; and both her and Nichol were obligated to stand in the kirk: but Nichol was a graceless reprobate, for he came with two coats, one buttoned behind him, and another buttoned before him, and two wigs of my lord's, lent him by the ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... go out every day—I am speaking of my own squadron—each officer taking his turn with twenty to fifty men, and sweep round the farms a few miles out; and we seldom come back without seeing Boers hanging round on the chance of a snipe at our flanks, or waiting to put up a trap if we go too far. The local commando fell on our cattle-guard the other day—a hundred and fifty to our twenty-five—and we suffered; it was a horrible bit of country. There was a young chap, Winstay—rather a pal of mine—he had a narrow squeak, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... cook them in a mirepoix made with plenty of ham, fat bacon, herbs, and a wine glass of Marsala. When they are cooked pour off the sauce, skim off the grease and reduce it. Take the two smallest snipe and make a forcemeat of them by pounding them in a mortar with the livers of all the snipe, then dilute this with reduced Espagnole sauce (No. 1) and add it to the first sauce. Cut twelve croutons of bread just large enough ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... launched upon a tirade of abuse. "But, no, you are not a man of energy, not a man to take things in your hands. The obstacles are too big. Those three husbands! You might even take that woman, that lovely, royal dancing woman—you, my dear sir, a common street snipe. What would a woman like that, with that novel, impassioned, barbaric, foreign dance, be worth to a man on your Broadway? Eh? But obstacles! Obstacles! You have her not on Broadway. It is too many thousand miles, and you ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... else, sir. Well, then, he said, sir—but sure I'm only repatin' his wicked words—he said, sir, that if you were cut up into the size of snipe shot, there would be as much roguery in the least grain of you, as would ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... cooked is delicately white and finely flavored. In marshy places and on the slimy banks of rivers, the jabiru (Mycteria americana, L.) loves to wade, together with the rose-colored spoon-bill (Platalea ajaja, L.); the fish-devouring ibis (Tantalus loculator, L.), the curved-billed snipe (Rhynchoea Hilaerea, Val.), the party-colored cranes, plovers, land-rails, shrites, and even sea-swallows.[91] In the rivers there are ducks: these birds are, perhaps, carried down by the currents from the Andes, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... sure," confidently added Snap; who having devoted himself exclusively all his life to the sharpest practice of the criminal law, knew about as much of real property law as a snipe—but it would not have done to appear ignorant, or taking no part in the matter, in the presence of the heir-at-law, and the future great client ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... for dinner. Father and mother, whoever they were, when they ran away from me, didn't run away with my appetite. I wonder how long master means to play with his knife and fork. As for Mr Brookes, what he eats wouldn't physic a snipe. What's ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... eye may catch, particularly about the dam, where he generally burrows, a glimpse of the musk-rat as he dives down. Now and then too the wild duck will push his beautiful shape with his bright feet through it—the snipe will alight and "teter," as the children say, along the banks—the woodcock will show his brownish red bosom amongst the reeds as he comes to stick his long bill into the black ooze for sucking, as dock-boys stick straws into molasses hogsheads—and once in a great while, the sawyer, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... himself at the Foreign Office in London and saw the Under-Secretary of State, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Hammond, who gave him some parting advice. "When you reach Hongkong," said he, "never venture into the sun without an umbrella, and never go snipe shooting without top boots pulled up well over the thighs." As no snipe have ever been seen on Hongkong, the last bit of counsel was as absurd as the ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... across him in the woods one afternoon when I had gone out snipe shooting alone. Whether he had followed me or whether we had chosen the same vicinity by chance, I do not know; but at any rate as I came out from the underbrush on the edge of a low, swampy place, I almost stepped ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... whereas this ruffe, although so large was not coarse, but rich, and of excellent flavour—and so fat that the flakes fell into crumbs when fried. This day a bird of a new species was shot by Roach. It was of a swallow kind, about the size of a snipe, of a leaden colour, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... of Arab politics to answer the question. The Sheik was not a good specimen of the effect produced by the diet to which he is subjected. He was very small, very spare, and sadly shrivelled, a poor, over-roasted snipe, a mere cinder of a man. I made him sit down by my side, and gave him a piece of bread and a cup of water from out of my goat-skins. This was not very tempting drink to look at, for it had become turbid, and was deeply reddened by some colouring matter contained ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... last house of all, which was a combination of fort and dugout, absolute silence was necessary, for there were German soldiers only ten yards away, with trench-mortars and bombs and rifles always ready to snipe across the walls. Through a chink no wider than my finger I could see the red-brick ruins of the houses inhabited by the enemy and the road to Douai... The road to Douai as seen through this chink was ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... half a league, when we entered a lake [156] which was some ten or twelve leagues in circuit, where there was a large amount of game, as swans, [157] white cranes, [158] outardes, [159] ducks, teal, song-thrush, [160] larks, [161] snipe, [162] geese, [163] and several other kinds of fowl too numerous to mention. Of these I killed a great number, which stood us in good stead while waiting for the capture of a deer. From there we proceeded to a certain place some ten leagues distant, where our savages ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... half-hour's progress gradually dispelled. We tumbled out of one deep ditch into another, scrambled perseveringly through brambles and brushwood, saw places where pheasants ought to have been, and places where they had been, but never saw a bird except a jack-snipe in the distance. The only sport we had was in the untiring energy of the lad already mentioned, who, long after the dogs had given it up as a bad job, continued to beat every bush as diligently as at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Iroquois were as follows: Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Tortoise, Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk. (Morgan, 79.) The clans of the Snipe and the Heron are the same designated in an early French document as La famille du Petit Pluvier and La famille du Grand Pluvier. (New York Colonial Documents, IX. 47.) The ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... urogallus) is found in the Balkan and Rhodope forests, the wild pheasant in the Tunja valley, the bustard (Otis tarda) in the Eastern Rumelian plain. Among the migratory birds are the crane, which hibernates in the Maritza valley, woodcock, snipe and quail; the great spotted cuckoo (Coccystes glandarius) is an occasional visitant. The red starling (Pastor roseus) sometimes appears in large flights. The stork, which is never molested, adds a picturesque feature to the Bulgarian ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... he alluded to a crowded Jersey stage-load is irresistible. A man with long legs, on a back seat, in one of these vehicles, suffers like a snipe shut up in a snuff-box. For this reason, the long-legged man should sit on the front seat with the driver; there, like the hen-turkey who tried to sit on a hundred eggs, he can "spread himself." The writer sat alongside the driver one morning, just at break of day, as the stage ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... curious piebald appearance, were there in great numbers, cackling their guttural cry with its concluding notes closely resembling the "ko-ax, ko-ax" of the Frogs' Chorus in the comedy of Aristophanes; snipe whistled and curlews whirled all about us. Half-way across to the McKinley Fork it began to rain, thunder-peal succeeding thunder-peal, and each crash announcing a heavier downpour. Soon we were all wet through, and then the rain turned to hail that fell ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... suthing onnat'ral and spell-like that's come over her through Ferrers. It ain't my Rosey. But it's Gospel truth, whether she's bewitched or not; whether it's them damn fool stories she reads—and it's like ez not he's just the kind o' snipe to write 'em hisself, and sorter advertise hisself, don't yer see—she's allus stuck up for him. They've had clandesent interviews, and when I taxed him with it he ez much ez allowed it was so, and reckoned he must leave, so ez he could run her off, you ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... the pointer, the following is a proof. A gentleman shooting in Ireland, with a dog totally unused to fetch and carry, killed a snipe. It fell in soft, boggy ground, where he could not get to pick it up. After some vain efforts to approach it, he hied on the pointer, by saying, "Fetch it, Fan! fetch it." She seemed for a moment puzzled ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... injuries, such as burns; and, in an especial manner, by the passage of a catheter. Of all emotions, fear notoriously is the most apt to induce trembling; but so do occasionally great anger and joy. I remember once seeing a boy who had just shot his first snipe on the wing, ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... they wanted us, German guards would come in, line up about twenty of us, and take us out to work in the fields. The first job they put us at was planting potatoes and we worked faithfully the first day, but when we came in that night I said to "Snipe," the new pal I had made, "By golly! Snipe, I don't like the idea of producing food for these 'square-heads,' let's see if we can't put one over them." "All right," said Snipe, "I'm game, but how in hell are you going to do it?" I said, "Well, ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... little. Flat, bare country on every hand. Any driftwood we saw was buried in the sand and soaking wet. Not a bird to be seen except one or two snipe. We came to a lake, and out of the fog in front of me I heard the cry of a loon, but saw no living creature. Our view was blocked by a wall of fog whichever way we turned. There were plenty of reindeer tracks, but of course they were only those of the Samoyedes' tame ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... pendent ears, your black expressive eyes, your short, well-rounded mouth, your diminutive but strong legs, almost hidden by the long, silky hair from your stomach, and hear you sing as you lie on the rug before a good fire in the winter, after a hard day's cock or snipe-shooting, wet and tired with your indefatigable exertions! Yes—strange as it may sound, Doll would sing in her way, as I have stated in a previous page; and such was her sagacity, that in process of time when I said, "Sing, Doll," she gave vent to the sounds, and varied them ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... ship,' the officers doing [Page 78] their share of the scrubbing. In the forenoon the living-spaces were thoroughly cleaned, holes and corners were searched, and while the tub and scrubber held sway the deck became a 'snipe marsh.' At this time the holds also were cleared up, the bilges pumped out, the upper deck was 'squared up,' and a fresh layer of clean snow was sprinkled over that which had been soiled by the traffic of the week. Then a free afternoon for all ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the snipe would gather ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... of powder to little purpose, for Tom, the best shot among them, had only killed one snipe, a troop of horses, led by several black cavaliers, dressed in leathern caps and high hoots, with belts round their waists, and duck-guns slung over their shoulders, and followed by a pack of hounds, made their appearance. Their leader announced ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... those; and I won't give you any trouble, either.... I reckon," mused the adventurer, jingling his manacles thoughtfully, "I'm a back-number, anyway. When a half-grown girl, a half-baked boy, a flub like Mulready—damn his eyes!—and a club-footed snipe from Scotland Yard can put it all over me this way,... why, I guess it's up to me to go home and retire to my country-place up ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... bog from early morning till dark without firing a shot. The snipe rose almost at his feet, and wheeling in circles through the air, dipped again into some dark crevice of the waste, unnoticed by him! One thought only possessed, and never left him, as he went. He had overheard Nina's ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... beach, which only appeared in sight when we reached the top of the last dune. It was a gently sloping sandy stretch, upon which a fine surf was beating. There were no pebbles save bits of water-worn coral and shell. Quantities of sea-gulls were flying about and flocks of little snipe ran down over the retreating surf, catching food, turning and running rapidly in before the coming wave. A single shot into the flock killed thirty-one of the little creatures, which later in the day supplied us ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... chairs, when Miss N. sat on the floor and played draughts with boys by the light of a candle standing in its own grease. I have seen her towed by the skirt through the rooms of the club by a boy whom the others called "Darkie," an almost perfect specimen of the London gutter snipe. There was a day when her purse was stolen. But I think the rest of the club would have lynched the thief if they ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... from the heaps of muscle-shells that were scattered about, there could be no doubt of its being much frequented by the natives. The grass being fairly burnt up, our animals found but little to eat, but they had a tolerable journey and did not attempt to wander in search of better food. I shot a snipe near the creek, much resembling the painted snipe of India; but I had not the means with ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... with much comfort, which is a wonderful provision of nature. At the present moment he also is engaged in the operation of weeding. In his right hand is a small species of sickle called a koorpee, with which he investigates the root of each weed as a snipe feels in the mud for worms; then with his left hand he pulls it out, gently shakes the earth off it, and contributes it to a small heap beside him. When he has cleared a little space round him, he moves on like a toad, without ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... day after day the rich smells of roast beef and the salt vapours of boiling hams trailed along the passages, and ascended through the banisters of the staircases in Beech Grove and Manly Park. Fifty chickens had been killed; presents of woodcock and snipe were received from all sides; salmon had arrived from Galway; cases of champagne from Dublin. As a wit said, 'Circe has prepared a banquet and is calling ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... In a rollickin' run Wid the rod or the gun, he's the foremost to figure. By Jupiter Ammon, What jack-snipe or salmon E'er rose to backgammon his tail-fly or trigger! And hark! the view-hollo! 'Tis Mack in full follow On black "Faugh-a-ballagh" the country-side sailin'. Och, but you'd think 'Twas old Nimrod in pink, Wid ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... of a larger expanse of land, formerly known as the "Upper Bijou," crowning the heights, overhanging the valley of the St. Charles, where existed the "Lower Bijou," marshy and green meadows, once sacred to snipe, and on which the populous suburb St. Sauveur has recently sprung up. It was granted in free and common soccage, to the late Charles Grey Stewart, Esq., in 18—; he resided there ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... some one black or pink bully in particular? Which of us is there, who has not passed moments in the company of these brutes, such as might well 'score years from a strong man's life'? Some of us have been gored by the brutes, and most of us, who have pursued the crafty snipe bird in his native padi swamps, have put in various mauvais quarts d'heure, with some of these sullenly vindictive animals mouching after us, much in the way that a gendarme pursues a gamin. ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... on Friday week, and is as happy as can be, he says he never felt so well and never had such good snipe shooting. Little Darfour's amusement at Maurice is boundless; he grins at him all the time he waits at table, he marvels at his dirty boots, at his bathing, at his much walking out shooting, at his knowing no Arabic. The dyke burst the other day up at ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... stick-built nests in a single water-killed tree. A blue heron flopped around as though it had broken a wing, to decoy us from its nest. The snowy white pelican waddled along the banks and mingled with the cormorants. There were great numbers of gulls, and occasional snipe. We were too late to see the ducks which come here, literally by the million, during the winter months. There were hawks' nests in the same groups of trees as the cranes, with the young hawks stretching their necks for the food which was to be had in such abundance. And on another ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... Billabong. They pushed along it for some time, eventually finding the slip rails, through which they got into the Swamp Paddock—so called because of a wide marsh in one corner, where black duck and snipe used to come freely. The new cattle had taken to the paddock like old hands. Satisfied with their inspection, Norah and Jim led the way back to the river, where presently they came to an ideal place to camp; a bend thickly shaded, ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... seems clear as print to me, lad. You have just brooded over it so long that it's natural you should begin to have doubts and fears. To me it's as sound as when you first gave it. That being so, we can't run an' leave them poor ignorant savages to be shot down maybe like snipe. It wouldn't be Christian like to go ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... November: the day after I finished husking. Huldah reckoned a wild turkey wouldn't go with a bad relish, and so I shouldered the old gun in the morning, and letting Bose follow slyly along behind, I put away out into the woods. I killed three or four pigeons, and a squirrel, and snipe; but on and on, and round, I ranged, afore I could get a single crack at a turkey. But a flock flew up at last, and one proud old Tom taking a tall maple in sight, and swinging his red gorget as if to dare a shot, I fired, ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... bone in your body, you insignificant little snipe," roared Elliston. Instead, however, of making the attempt, the man drew a small derringer from his pocket, and lifting the hammer, leveled it at the ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... carry others; ships and railroads give free transportation to quantities among the hay used in packing; birds and animals lift many on their feet - Darwin raised 537 plants from a ball of mud carried between the toes of a snipe! - and such feathered and furred agents as feed on berries and other fruits sometimes drop the seeds a thousand miles from the parent. but it will be noticed that such vagabonds as travel by the hook or by crook method, getting a lift in the world frpm every passer-by ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... profundo trolls off a wheelbarrow and a fearful cry at the same time; not in unison with his merchandise, for he has birds—quail, woodcock, and snipe—for sale, besides a string of dead nightingales, which he says he will 'sell cheap for a nice stew.' Think of stewed nightingales! One would as soon think of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of a Robin," and so on. Try to determine the true colours of the birds and record these. Also note the shape and approximate length of the bill. This, for example, may be short and conical like a Canary's, awl-shaped like the bill of a Warbler, or very long and slender like that of a Snipe. By failing to observe these simple rules the learner may be in despair when he tries to find out the name of his strange bird by examining a bird book, or may cause some kindly friend an ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... in latitude 28 deg. 59', longitude 169 deg. 5, we saw a seal asleep upon the water, and several bunches of sea-weed. The next day we saw more seaweed in bunches, and on the 29th, a bird, which we thought a land bird; it somewhat resembled a snipe, but had a short bill. On the 1st of October, we saw birds innumerable, and another seal asleep upon the water; it is a general opinion that seals never go out of soundings, or far from land, but those that we saw in these seas prove the contrary. Rock-weed is, however, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... St. Elijah's day, July 20th—I came to stay with my brother and did not find him at home: he had been ordered off for a whole week somewhere. I did not want to go back to Petersburg; I sauntered about the neighbouring marshes, killed a brace of snipe and spent the evening with Tyeglev under the shelter of an empty barn where he had, as he expressed it, set up his summer residence. We had a little conversation but for the most part drank tea, smoked pipes and talked sometimes to our host, a Russianised Finn or to the pedlar who used to ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Sir HENRY BULWER who took the first specimen home in 1874. These pheasants do not rise in the jungle and are, therefore, uninteresting to the Borneo sportsman. They are frequently trapped by the natives. There are many kinds of pigeons, which afford good sport. Snipe occur, but not plentifully. Curlew are numerous in some localities, but very wild. The small China quail are abundant on cleared spaces, as also is the painted plover, but cleared spaces in Borneo are somewhat few and far between. So much for ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... "Snipe, by all that's wonderful!" cried Bob, firing two barrels almost as he spoke, and bringing down four birds out of a flock that bore some resemblance to, but were double ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... best part of the fun comes in. And how lucky it is you've got a gun, Maurice, for there will be lots of chances while we travel down stream to pick up a mess of ducks, some snipe, and perhaps a big goose or two. Bob Fletcher told me he had shot 'em off the bars ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... have taken place in the country. So much for the dead, and now for the living: there is a poor specimen of a bird which to my unornithological eyes appears to be a happy mixture of a lark, pigeon and snipe (No. 710). Mr. MacLeay himself never imagined such an inosculating creature: I suppose it will turn out to be some well-known bird, although it has quite baffled me. I have taken some interesting ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... upon the contemptible white-faced person who had preferred spending the raw hours over his papers, within the radius of a glorious fire's warmth, to creeping slyly over treacherous quagmires in the pursuit of timid bog creatures (snipe shooting had been the order of the day)-the baron, I say, became aware of my existence and entered ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... wondered what she was, and thought that she looked at him. And he watched the moonlight on the rippling river, and the black heads of the firs, and the silver-frosted lawns, and listened to the owl's hoot, and the snipe's bleat, and the fox's bark, and the otter's laugh; and smelt the soft perfume of the birches, and the wafts of heather honey off the grouse moor far above; and felt very happy, though he could not well tell why. You, of course, would have been very ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... were alike shunned. The snipe and duck hunters forsook the marsh, and the wood-cutters abandoned the canal. Sometimes the hardier boys who ventured out there snake-shooting heard a slow thumping of oar-locks on the canal. They would look at each other for ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... used to go about saying he'd shoot me at one time; but I need 'ardly tell you he gave it up as a bad job, and went an' did what some folks call a worse instead. He didn't get much show 'ere, I can tell you; that little foreign snipe won't either, nor yet any other carrion that think they want my blood. I'd empty this shooter o' mine into their in'ards as soon as look at 'em, I don't give a curse who they are! Just as well I wasn't brought up to your ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... something else, "it has been praised quite enough." It is a sketch, worked out in a sort of monologue,[376] of something like Diderot's own character without his genius and without his good fellowship—a gutter-snipe of art and letters possessed of some talent and of infinite impudence. It shows Diderot's own power of observation and easy fluid representation of character and manners, but not, as I venture to think, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... quail," he said to himself, "for quails never have long bills and legs. I will have a new name, and it shall be snipe. I like the sound ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... breaths commingle, o'er them rose the call Of Eagle shrill: "Yon crowned couple, who supposed the world too small, Now one grave fill! Chiefs blinded by your rage! each bleached sapless bone Becomes a pipe Through which siroccos whistle, trodden 'mong the stone By quail and snipe. Folly's liege-men, what boots such murd'rous raid, And mortal feud? I, Eagle, dwell as friend with Leo—none afraid— In solitude: At the same pool we bathe and quaff in placid mood. Kings, he and I; For I ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... into the gulf of time as I sit in my grandfather's chair and listen to the tick of my grandfather's clock I see a smaller but more picturesque London, in which I shot snipe in Battersea Fields, and the hoot of the owl in the Green Park was not yet drowned by the hoot of the motor-car—a London of chop-houses, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... sure dandy-looking in his uniform, with medals strung on his breast and his new gold-handled sword. You'd never have taken him for the little white-headed snipe that the girls used to order about and make fun of. He just stood there for a minute, looking at Myra with a peculiar little smile on his face; and then he says to her, slow, and kind of holding on to his words with ...
— Options • O. Henry
... serious drawback to the comfort of a hunter in wild countries, it is quite impossible to avoid the difficulty, as there is no rifle that will combine the requirements for a great variety of game. As the wild goose demands B B shot and the snipe No. 8, in like manner the elephant requires the heavy bullet, and the deer is contented with ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... strolling along a small lagoon overgrown with water-lilies, he pointed out to me a pretty graceful little bird, about the size of a jack-snipe, but with longer legs, and most extraordinary claws. I am ashamed to say I shot this poor little fellow, to examine him, and found that each toe measured at least three inches from the leg to the extremity of the claw. This is to enable the bird to run ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... he did it well! He looks that peanut headed snipe straight in the eye all the time after that and takes what's comin' to him without turnin' a hair. It was "Yes, Mr. Piddie," and "No, Mr. Piddie"; but nothin' else. And the cooler and politer he was, the wilder Piddie got. When I hears him tell Mallory ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... eye of the sportsman—and the Lancashire gentlemen of the sixteenth century were keen lovers of sport—the country had a strong interest. Pendle forest abounded with game. Grouse, plover, and bittern were found upon its moors; woodcock and snipe on its marshes; mallard, teal, and widgeon upon its pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might follow the wolf to his lair in the mountains; ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... interested in their awkward, and at times comical, movements. As they are not good for food, only one or two were shot, as curiosities. Cranes stalked along on their long, slender legs in the marshy places, while snipe and many similar birds ran rapidly along the sandy shores. The ducks were everywhere, and so the shooting was everything that our enthusiastic ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... part strong Gales and Squally; remainder a fresh breeze and settled weather. At 1 p.m. was obliged to take in the Topsails, but set them again at 4. At 11 a.m. saw a Bird something like a Snipe, only it had a short bill; it had the appearance of a land bird. Several Albetrosses, Pintado birds, and Sheer Waters about the Ship, and a Number of Doves; of these we have seen more or less ever since the 31st of last Month, the day we first saw them. Wind South-West; ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... there. Instead of the high narrow trenches at Hill 60, they were mostly mere breastworks with little or no back protection. And the C.T.s were hardly deep enough to afford protection from sniping or indirect rifle fire. Fortunately the Germans did not snipe these trenches. There were three gaps in the front line, and two small posts in No Man's Land. A long winding C.T. brought you from Battalion H.Q., which were at Rossignol Farm about a mile from the front line trenches. The main features of the landscape were the Wytschaete ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... Redwing, Turdus iliacus. About old Michaelmas. 3. Fieldfare, Turdus pilaris. Though a percher by day, roosts on the ground. 4. Royston-crow, Cornix cinerea. Most frequent on downs. 5. Woodcock, Scolopax. Appears about old Michaelmas. 6. Snipe, Gallinago minor. Some snipes constantly breed with us. 7. Jack-snipe, Gallinago minima. 8. Wood-pigeon, OEnas. Seldom appears till late; not in such plenty as formerly. 9. Wild-swan, Cygnus ferus. On some large waters. 10. Wild-goose, Anser ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... houses have sprung up, concealing beneath unpromising exteriors, such as only London houses can show, comfort enough and to spare. This is a favourite residential quarter, though we now consider it in, not "conveniently near," town. Snipe were shot in the marshes of Brompton, and nursery gardens spread themselves over the area now devoted to the museums and institute. It is rather interesting to read the summary of John Timbs, F.S.A., writing so late as 1867: "Kensington, ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... the yellow strip of sand by the river's margin, long-legged snipe were scurrying about. Two fishermen were rocking in a boat in the steamer's wash as they hauled their tackle. Floating from the shore there began to reach us such vocal sounds of morning as the crowing of cocks, the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... on a month's leave,' Charlie wrote, 'shooting; the sport will be mostly snipe and other small game, but there's a chance of tigers. Now, I know you are ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... close together. This means an immense strain on the men. They remain for hours together in cramped, unnatural positions, knowing from experience that an unwise move will bring a bullet from crack marksmen told off to snipe them. ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... point to expose themselves momentarily and draw the fire of the enemy. This was of no avail. The hidden rifle with deliberate instancy cracked once more. The fleeing cowboy, slammed as if by a club, dashed on, but his right arm hung limp. No snipe ever made half the race for life that he put up in those fleeting seconds; and by his agility he earned then and there the nickname of the bird itself, for before the deadly sights could cover his flight again he threw himself into a slight depression that ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... youngest brother, James Edward, born 1696, became the famous philanthropist, General Oglethorpe, governor of Georgia, patron of the Wesleys, and, in extreme old age, the 'beau' of Hannah More, and the gentleman who remembered shooting snipe on the site of ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... hen or the Ionic snipe, Than olives newly gathered from the tree, That hangs abroad its clusters rich and ripe, Or sorrel, that doth love ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... no amusements, except snipe and tiger shooting; but the tigers have been long since hunted from their lairs in the rock-caves, and the snipe only come once a year. Narkarra one hundred and forty-three miles by road is the nearest station to Kashima. But Kashima never goes to Narkarra, ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... cheerful and inspiring. Certainly not the blue heron, standing midleg deep in the water, obviously catching cold in a reckless disregard of wet feet and consequences; nor the mournful curlew, the dejected plover, or the low-spirited snipe, who saw fit to join him in his suicidal contemplation; nor the impassive kingfisher—an ornithological Marius —reviewing the desolate expanse; nor the black raven that went to and fro over the face of the marsh continually, but evidently couldn't make ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the landlord was tearing madly about, his hat gone, and his hair and beard flying in the wind. He ran in little zigzags from one knot of people to another, whilst his peculiar appearance drew a running fire of witticisms as he went, so that he reminded me irresistibly of a snipe skimming along through a line of guns. We saw him stop for an instant by the yellow barouche, and hand something to Sir Lothian Hume. Then on he came again, until at last, catching sight of us, he gave a cry of joy, and ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
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