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Bantam   Listen
noun
Bantam  n.  A variety of small barnyard fowl, with feathered legs, probably brought from Bantam, a district of Java.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bantam" Quotes from Famous Books



... and good mothers. The chicks of these breeds are hardy and thrifty. In addition to these breeds, there are many so-called fancy breeds that are prized for their looks rather than for their value. Among these are the Hamburg, Polish, Sultan, Silkie, and the many Bantam breeds. ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... monuments deface. Then all the Muses in one ruin be, And rhyme began to enervate poetry. 50 Thus, in a stupid military state, The pen and pencil find an equal fate. Flat faces, such as would disgrace a screen, Such as in Bantam's embassy were seen, Unraised, unrounded, were the rude delight Of brutal ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... in his possession a couple of bantam hens, which laid very small eggs, suddenly hit on a plan. Going the next morning to the fowl-run, Johnnie's father was surprised to find an ostrich egg tied to one of the beams, and above it a ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various

... being mixed up with much that is both doubtful and hazardous. We now, however, reach the period which may be regarded as the beginning of the authentic history of the discovery of New Holland. In 1606 the yacht DUYFHEN sailed from Bantam, and, coasting along the south-west shore of New Guinea, her commander unknowingly crossed the entrance of Torres Straits, and continued his voyage along the eastern side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, under the impression ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... in the search, From realm to realm, o'er land and water, Of Fate's fantastic, fickle daughter! Ah! slaves sincere of flying phantom! Just as their goddess they would clasp, The jilt divine eludes their grasp, And flits away to Bantam! Poor fellows! I bewail their lot. And here's the comfort of my ditty; For fools the mark of wrath are not So much, I'm sure, as pity. 'That man,' say they, and feed their hope, 'Raised cabbages—and now he's pope. Don't ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... in 1847, into a Virginia barroom, I accosted a little, puffy-looking man with "Major, can you"—whereupon, drawing up like a bantam, he snapped out, "You're mistaken; I am a colonel;" the colonel being in those days as peculiar to Southern society as the cross to southern constellations. I proceeded to anatomize this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... white bantam rooster hopped down from his perch. He strutted over to the big rooster and caused quite a flutter in the henhouse ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate

... out of my wits—I have left my mother at home with the strangest sort of man, who is inquiring after you: he has raised a mob before the door by the oddity of his appearance; his dress is like nothing I ever saw, and he talks of kings, and Bantam, and the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... off and get soberly to work till it has made two or three trips home with its booty. When other bees come, even if all from the same swarm, they quarrel and dispute over the box, and clip and dart at each other like bantam cocks. Apparently the ill feeling which the sight of the honey awakens is not one of jealousy or ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... difference between the race-horse and the Shetland pony, the bantam and the Shanghai fowl, the greyhound and the poodle dog, who altogether deny that impressions can be made on species, and see in the long succession of extinct forms, the ancient existence of which they must acknowledge, the evidences of a continuous and creative intervention, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... belonged to the Mogul emperor, the father of the great Aurungzebee. Its shape and size are like those of the pointed end of a hen's egg; and its value is estimated at two millions of pounds sterling.——News has been received of an insurrection against the Dutch government in the district of Bantam. The insurgents attacked the town of Anjear, in the Straits of Sunda, but, after burning the houses, were driven back to their fastnesses ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... waterspout that suspends its "tangles" of ice over a gaping tank, and, rebounding from that, with a quiver of his little black breast, bobbed through the network of wire and joined a few of his fellows in a forlorn hop round the henhouse in search of food. Two days ago my hilarious bantam-cock, saucy to the last, my cheeriest companion, was found frozen in his own water-trough, the corn-saucer in three pieces by his side. Since then I have taken the hens into the house. At meal-times they litter the hearth with each other's feathers; but for the most part they ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... at so wilful a loose end that I could not find it in my heart to refuse him an introduction to Lola. He manifested his delight by lifting the skirt of his dinner-jacket with his hands and rising on his spurs like a bantam cock. I left her to him for a moment and went over to say a civil word to the Misses Bostock of South Shields. I regret to say I noticed a certain frigidity in their demeanour. The well-conducted man in South Shields does not go out one night with a revolver tucked away in ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... the Far East. In 1606 a Dutch fleet of 12 ships under Matelieff de Jonge laid siege to Malacca, and gave up the attempt only after destroying 10 galleons sent to relieve the town. Matelieff then sailed to the neighboring islands, and established the authority of the company at Bantam, Amboyna, Ternate, and other ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... back to the air-lock and shove them out naked one at a time," he ordered curtly. "That's the way they would have treated us. Save the young bantam for the last. Now, where is this Evan Winford? I have an old score ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat

... bantam," he muttered grumblingly in his wheezy cracked voice, as he stooped to raise my precious box, "but I specs, young maister, yer'll soon ha' ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... of the old halls. Of the performance I remember a topical song which evoked enthusiastic applause. It was an incredibly stupid piece of doggerel about England's position in the world; and the shiny-faced exquisite who declaimed it strutted to and fro like a bantam cock at each fresh roar of applause from the heated house. When he used the word "fight" he waved an imaginary sword and assumed a ridiculous posture, which he evidently connected with warlike exercises of some kind. The song praised the Government—"A ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... "Stop, stop, my young bantam!" said Mr Cupples. "Don't think you're going to break into my privacy and get off with the booty so cheaply. Just you construe the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... proceed from their own default, or some accidental inconvenience: as to be situated in a bad clime, too far north, sterile, in a barren place, as the desert of Libya, deserts of Arabia, places void of waters, as those of Lop and Belgian in Asia, or in a bad air, as at Alexandretta, Bantam, Pisa, Durrazzo, S. John de Ulloa, &c., or in danger of the sea's continual inundations, as in many places of the Low Countries and elsewhere, or near some bad neighbours, as Hungarians to Turks, Podolians to Tartars, or almost ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... all probability, from a South Sea whaler; while one or two stray negroes chattered with all the volubility of their race, shaking their woolly heads and showing their white teeth. I got into conversation with one tall American; he was a native-born Kentuckian, and full of the bantam sort of consequence of his race. He predicted wonderful things from the discovery of the mineral treasures of California, observing that it would make a monetary revolution all over the world, and that nothing similar, at least to so great ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks

... express his displeasure, as well against the prince of Orange as the United Provinces. He gave the Algerine pirates, who preyed on the Dutch, a reception in his harbors, and liberty to dispose of their prizes. He revived some complaints of the East India Company with regard to the affair of Bantam,[*] He required the six British regiments in the Dutch service to be sent over. He began to put his navy in a formidable condition. And from all his movements, the Hollanders entertained apprehensions ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... poor Dr. Wolf to do? Could he sub-embezzle a Highlander's breeks? Could he subtract more than her skin from off the singed cat? Could he peel the core of a rotten apple? Could he pare a grated cheese rind? Could he flay a skinned flint? Could he fleece a hog after Satan had shaved it as clean as a bantam's egg? ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... of the sector. He was ridiculously like Cyrano de Bergerac as depicted by the late M. Coquelin, save that his nose was of more moderate proportion. The ruddy colouring, the bristling feline full-ended moustache, the solidity of pose, the backward tilt of the head, the general suggestion of the bantam cock, were all there facing us as he stood amid the leaves in the sunlight. Gauntlets and a long rapier—nothing else was wanting. Something had amused Cyrano. His moustache quivered with suppressed mirth, and his blue eyes were demurely gleaming. Then the joke came out. He had spotted a German working ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle

... weighed, we stood to the N.E. between Thwart-the-way-Island and the Cap, sounding from eighteen to twenty-eight fathom: We had but little wind all night, and having a strong current against us, we got no further by eight in the morning than Bantam Point. At this time the wind came to the N.E., and obliged us to anchor in two-and-twenty fathom, at about the distance of two miles from the shore; the point bore N.E. by E., distant one league, and here we found a strong current setting to the N.W. In the morning ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... Wessner lunged in self-defense, ducked under his arm as a bantam and punched him in the pit of the stomach so that he doubled with a groan. Before Wessner could straighten himself, Freckles was on him, fighting like the wildest fury that ever left the beautiful island. The Dutchman dealt thundering ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... that in the particular of the peculiar cry the Ceylon jungle fowl differs from that of the Dekkan, where I am told that it crows like a bantam cock.] ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... that peak you'd plant 'em, Your claws, bold Bantam, But I spy a phantom Which you may not see, Which may scare you slightly, Should you grip too tightly The unpleasant waters ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various

... grating such notices might be to some, who wanted neither power nor inclination to resent them at your cost. For, since there is a direct law against spreading false news, if you should venture to tell us in one of the Craftsmen that the Dey of Algiers had got the toothache, or the King of Bantam had taken a purge, and the facts should be contradicted in succeeding packets; I do not see what plea you could offer to avoid the utmost penalty of the law, because you are not supposed to be very gracious among those who are most ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... wives and daughters. We ought to be able to do what we always have done, direct them and control them through their affections," said Acres, turning up the ends of his moustache with a kind of bantam bravado. ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... "My bantam," said the big man, admiringly, "faith, but that was a tidy bito' footwork ye done down at Sunkhaze." Good-humored grins and rueful scowls chased one another over his face, according as he patted Parker's back ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... until the first frost. To do this we plant every ten days from about the 20th of April to the 20th of June. Our early variety is the Peep-O'Day, which is planted about the same time as the early beans. We also plant the Golden Bantam at this time. This is followed by Red Cob Cory, Pocahontas and some more Bantam. Then about May 15th to 20th we plant early and late Evergreen, Bantam ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... servant. He was very well treated, in every way, and he had little or no work to do, with the result that in a few days he became as fat as a quail, as round as a barrel, as red as a lobster, and as impudent as a bantam-cock. ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various

... him, it continually changed its lodgings; whilst others have lustily sworn that the soul was a vagrant, with no claim to any place of settlement whatever. Nevertheless, a vulgar notion has obtained that the soul dwelt on a little knob of the brain; and that there, like a vainglorious bantam-cock on a dunghill, it now claps its wings and crows all sorts of triumph—and now, silent and scratching, it thinks of nought but wheat and barley. The first step to knowledge is to confess to a late ignorance. We avow, then, our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... Vermont, Minnesota, and Early Corey are favorites. A most excellent extra early yellow sweet corn, with kernels looking like small field corn, is Golden Bantam; the ears are small and would probably not attract the market buyer, but for home use the variety is unexcelled (Plate XXIV). For later crop, Crosby, Hickox, Shoe Peg, and Stowell ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... two reached the chicken-houses Dicksie examined the nest where she was setting the bantam hen. "This miserable hen will not set," she exclaimed in despair. "See here, Mr. Smith, she has left her nest again and is scratching around on the ground. Isn't it a shame? I've tied a cord around her leg so she ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... head off if you bring my honesty into question," cried the Professor, standing on tip-toe like a bantam. "The best thing to do will be to take the matter into court. Then the law can decide, and I have little doubt but what it will ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... on your time which prevent your active co-operation with me in the matter. Of course, needless to say, your lack of support has killed what looked like being a promising scientific bantling (through stress of emotion I nearly wrote "bantam," which brings me to the subject of poultry. How are yours? I forgot to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various

... cloves, other spices, etc.; and the small bahar, about 150 kilos or 400 pounds avoirdupois, used for weighing quicksilver, various metals, certain drugs, etc. John Saris, writing of the commerce of Bantam, says: "A sacke is called a Timbang, and two Timbanges is one Peecull, three Peeculls is a small bahar, and foure Peeculls and an halfe a great Bahar, which is foure hundred fortie fiue Cattees ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... ther bantam!" shouted a big cow-puncher, slapping Jack on the back. "Say, I hear them say you're from Bosting. I'm goin' ter buy a hundred-pound sack o' beans myself ter-morrer an' begin trainin'. If beans'll do that fer you, a sack o' them will make me fit ter ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... sir," said the skipper, bridling like a bantam. "Didn't I try to save my cargo, off Savannah, and didn't I lose my sloop to boot? Didn't I now, sir?—Poor old girl, mebby she's our chaser out 'ere this ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... chanted Curly, in gratuitous insult of which only bantam shamelessness is capable. "Stop, will I? Who'll make me? You? ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... the family and household, down to the very cat and dog, and of the joy they were to give their little sisters by the presents with which their pockets were crammed; but the meeting to which they seemed to look forward with the greatest impatience was with Bantam, which I found to be a pony." When he had heard what a remarkable animal this pony was said to be, Irving gave his attention to other things until he heard a shout from the little travelers. Let him tell the rest of ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various

... already a popular boy with his fellows. He had a select band of admirers among the youth of the Second-Form, who cackled round him like hens round a bantam. Together they groaned over their Latin exercises and wrestled with their decimals; together they heard the dreaded summons to the master's desk; and side by side, I am sorry to say, they held out their open palms to receive his cane. If a slate bearing on its ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... bonnie Toop, a prayer of vengeance for that; an' Sandy Scott's twa-yir-auld gimmer, marterdum for that." "An' my braxsied wether," quoth a forester; "the rack for that, and finally the auld spay-wife's bantam cock, eyes and tongue cut out and set adrift again, for that." Now we set to work to clear his hole for "rough Toby" (a long-backed, short-legged, wire-haired terrier of Dandy Dinmont's breed) to enter; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various

... stone seven, and he's got to get down to eight stone four, for a bantam weight match—at an inn up the river here. I daresay you know it, sir. Or any one would tell you where it is. The 'Blue Boar,' it's called. You come there any time you like to name, sir, and ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... bantam," replies Heitman Michael, "it is quite true that she and I are acquainted. I may even boast of having despatched one or two stout warriors to serve her underground. Now, as I divine your meaning, you plan that I should decrease ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... breads that came stinging hot from the Dutch ovens. Toasts to this and that were flung back and forth, and jests and gibes, and the butt of many of these was that poor Federal government which (as one gentleman avowed) was like a bantam hen trying to cover a nestful of turkey's eggs, and clucking with importance all the time. This picture brought ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... towards a child. Had he quarrelled outright with me, I could have stomached it; at least I should have known what part to take; but to be humored and treated as a child in the presence of my mistress, when I felt all the bantam spirit of a little man swelling within me—gods, it ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... Museum were frequent, and it was very amusing to watch his new relations with Commodore Nutt, who strutted around like a bantam rooster whenever the General approached Lavinia. One day the rivals got into a friendly scuffle in the dressing-room, and the Commodore laid the General ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... whurr'd, woone day, the wooden bowl In such a veag at my poor poll; It brush'd the heaeir above my crown, An' whizz'd on down upon the groun', An' knock'd the bantam cock right down, But up he sprung, a-teaeken flight Wi' tothers, clucken in a fright, Vrom ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... ain't no parson! I don't go much on parsons, but when I calls for one I don't want no bantam chicken. No, sirree, horse! I don't want no blankety-blank, pink-and-white complected nursery kid foolin' round my graveyard. If you're goin' to bring along a parson, why bring him with his eye-teeth cut and his ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor

... how Daisy White had four kittens as white as herself; how Dorry had finished his water-wheel,—a wheel which turned in the bath-tub, and was "really ingenious," papa said; and Phil had "swapped" one of his bantam chicks for on of Eugene Slack's Bramapootras. It was not till they were all seated round the tea-table that anybody demanded an account of the visit. Elsie felt this a relief, and was just thinking how delicious every thing was, from the sliced peaches ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge

... angry. A man doesn't like to be coldly called a damfool at his own table. He rose on his spurs, in his little red bantam way. Was I too much of an idiot to see the connection? As soon as the Carlisle business became known, this young scoundrel flies the country. Couldn't I see an inch before my blind nose? Forbearing to question this remarkable figure of speech, I asked him how so confidential ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... advances she feared. Sukey Yates, who was only fourteen, had "company" every Sunday evening, and went to all the social frolics for miles around. Polly Kaster, not sixteen, was soon to be married to Bantam Rhodes. Many young men had looked longingly upon Rita, who was the most beautiful girl on Blue; but the Chief Justice, with her daughter's hearty approval, drove all suitors away. The girl was wholly satisfied with Dic, ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... citation omitted). Indeed, "precision of regulation must be the touchstone in an area so closely touching our most precious freedoms." Keyishian v. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. of the State of N.Y., 385 U.S. 589, 603 (1967) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 66 (1963) ("The separation of legitimate from illegitimate speech calls for sensitive tools.") (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Where the government draws content-based restrictions on speech in order to advance a compelling government ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

... his breakfast next morning when Mr. Dowler brought in no less a person than his friend, Angelo Cyrus Bantam, Esquire, to introduce to him, and to administer his stock greeting, "Welcome to Ba-ath, sir. This is, indeed, an acquisition. Most ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz

... all those noisy expressions of thought and feeling? By no means. I have lived for months in jungles where my hut was surrounded by jungle-fowl, and shot many of them for my table; but the only vocal sound I ever heard from their small throats was the absurdly shrill bantam-like crow of the cock. And even that led to several fatalities in the ranks of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... said Trevalyon, "is, on your return to England, to retire to the cool shades of oblivion and try the 'Bantam' system: that is if Owen Cunliffe does not send you there, for having while in Paris been attentive to the fair sex instead of to the interests ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... hardened, and the school-mistress's generosity weighed heavily upon ours. Repentance and the desire to make atonement seem to go pretty naturally together, and in my case they led to the following dialogue with Jem, on the subject of two exquisite little bantam hens and a cock, which were our joint property, and which were known in the farmyard as "the Major and ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... be exempt From pride, they treat a Phantom As something quite beneath contempt - Just as no Turkey ever dreamt Of noticing a Bantam." ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll

... I fear. See yon bantam cock! I doubt ye'll hae to be content," said the doctor, dropping ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... had built [in Java] a fort, which they named Batavia. This was besieged by the Sunda princes of Bantam and Jacatra in 1619, and it was on their defeat in that year that it was resolved to build a town on the ruins of the native one of Jacatra, and this took the name of the fort. Batavia has been the capital ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... year after the northern provinces of the Netherlands had renounced allegiance to Spain. Consequently they were free to attack not alone Spanish vessels and colonies, but also those previously belonging to Portugal. As early as 1596 Cornelius Houtman rounded the Cape and visited Sumatra and Bantam, and within fifty, years the Dutch had replaced the Portuguese in many of their Eastern possessions. In 1614 they took Malacca, and with it the command of the Spice Islands; by 1658 they had secured full possession of Ceylon. Much earlier, in ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... bantam, and fortunately at that moment Jessie returned to the Patience, and he could not ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... were brought up at the assizes at Winchester and sentenced to five years' penal servitude. Edgar gained a great deal of credit in the regiment from the affair, and came to be known by the nickname of "The Bantam." There were, of course, some men who were jealous of the young trumpeter's popularity, and two or three of the non-commissioned officers especially felt aggrieved at the notice taken of him. One of these was the corporal ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... disturbed. But then a new and dangerous rival appeared. The Dutch, already an enterprising and warlike nation, sweeping every sea with their commercial or military ambition,—so much have times been changed with them, too,—also fixed on Java, and formed a vigorous and thriving settlement at Bantam. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, the English, making a first and feeble attempt at eastern commerce, to the south of India, formed a factory at Bantam. But the Dutch, indignant at even the shadow of rivalry, broke down alike ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... a political feast, And strut like a peacock, and crow like a bantam, Yet feel at one's back, like a blast from the east, A be-robed and be-wigged and blood-curdling law phantom. Stentorian cheers, and uproarious hear-hears, Though welcome, won't banish the sense of "wet-blanket" (That's INGOLDSBY'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various

... BANTAM (Angela Cyrus), grand-master of the ceremonies at "Ba-ath," and a very mighty personage in the opinion of the elite of Bath.—C. Dickens, ...
— 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.

... that there was a time when he did not diffuse all this cold radiance of good example. Something tells us that he has been a sinner in his day—a rattler of the ivories at Almack's, and an ogler of wenches in the gardens of Vauxhall, a sanguine backer of the Negro against the Suffolk Bantam, and a devil of a fellow at boxing the watch and wrenching the knockers when Bow Bells were chiming the small hours. Nor do we feel that he is a penitent. He is too Olympian for that. He has merely put these things behind him—has calmly, as a matter of business, transferred his ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... horns; and these in succeeding years occasionally become attached to the skull. White and black bantams, both of which generally breed true, sometimes assume as they grow old a saffron or red plumage. For instance, a first-rate black bantam has been described, which during three seasons was perfectly black, but then annually became more and more red; and it deserves notice that this tendency to change, whenever it occurs in a bantam, "is almost certain to prove hereditary."[90] ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... Bantam hen, who was standing by, said to Betty, "Where can you have come from, and what sort of egg did you creep out of, not to have seen a duck swim before?" ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various

... have made almost any other lad hesitate before taking his initial spin in the company of experts. Not so little Jean Paul with his broad shoulders, the brace of an Admiral and his five-feet-six-inches; a veritable little bantam-cock, and game ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... because it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep that turbulent animal to the full extent of its time: however, my neighbour, a man of substance, who had no occasion to study every little advantage to a nicety, kept an half-bred Bantam sow, who was as thick as she was long, and whose belly swept on the ground, till she was advanced to her seventeenth year; at which period she showed some tokens of age by the decay of her teeth and the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... dog I call Nestor. He is a spaniel. And I have a bantam hen which has five little chickens. I have also two dear little kittens that I found in ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... wanted to laugh in the face of this specimen of bar-room chivalry, for he forcibly reminded him of a belligerent little bantam-rooster that paraded the barnyard of his mother's cottage at Pinchbrook; but he was prudent enough not to give any further cause of offense. Bestowing one glance at this champion of the tippler's coterie, he turned aside, and attempted to move ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... of the opinion that the pullus Parthicus is a kind of chicken that came originally from Asia, Parthia being a country of Asia, the present Persia or northern India, a chicken of small size with feathers on its feet, i.e., a bantam. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... half-awakened chaffinch hopped from twig to twig, too sleepy to chirrup. A streak of green appeared in the east, and the death-like stillness was broken by cock-crows. He could hear them far away in the country and close by, and when he entered his village a little bantam walked up the road shrilling and clapping his wings, advancing to the fight. The priest admired his courage, and allowed him to peck at his knees. Close by Tom Mulhare's dorking was crowing hoarsely, 'A hoarse bass,' said the ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... "black-breasted red" gamecock and you have him in all his glory except that his tail is drooping and he is more pheasant-like in his general bearing. The female was a trim little bird with a lilac sheen to her brown feathers and looked much like a well-kept game bantam hen. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... cadence, only to have his song broken in upon by a nearer bird who understands exactly the part he is to play in the fugue. And so it passes on from the one to the other, growing fainter and fainter in the distance as Shanghai sings to Bantam and Chittagong to Brahmapootra, until, at last, there is silence; and then, "O hark! O hear! How thin and clear!" far, far away some rooster sends out a delicate falsetto note that might have come from a microscopic cock who is practicing ventriloquism in the ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... yes. All were black-haired except one, who was brown— the first brown-haired child in the history of the house. 'Bantam' they used to call him when they were ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... Marguerite, with one of her merry infectious laughs, "look on that pretty picture—the English turkey and the French bantam." ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... the two champions of the ring who knock each other about for the belt and for five hundred pounds a side once in every two years. How they fly at each other, striking as though each blow should carry death if it were but possible! And yet there is no one whom the Birmingham Bantam respects so highly as he does Bill Burns the Brighton Bully, or with whom he has so much delight in discussing the merits of a pot of half-and-half. And so it was with Mr. Daubeny and Mr. Mildmay. In private life Mr. Daubeny ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... for two years. He left school at ten years of age, and from that time until his execution seems to have had a continuous career of thieving. He tells us that before he was eleven years old he had stolen a bantam cock from a woman belonging to the New Town of Edinburgh. He went with another boy to Currie, six miles from Edinburgh, and there stole a pony, but this was afterwards returned. When but twelve years of age he attended Leith races, and it was here that he enlisted in the Norfolk ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... going up the path from the stables, and he raced for the end of the melon-patch near the wall. There, in the warm litter about the melons, very cunningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs, about the size of a bantam's eggs, but with ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... hope not, sir. But as I was saying, I and this Jack Bosbury, and the Brummagem Bantam—a very pretty light-weight, sir—drank seven bottles of Burgundy to the three of us inside the eighty minutes. Jack, sir, was a little cut; but me and the Bantam went out and finished the evening on hot gin. Life, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson

... normal, but, as the little girl said of her pet bantam, they only lay about doing nothing. And when guests desired some of my fine fresh eggs boiled for breakfast, I used to go secretly to a neighbor and buy a dozen, but never gave away the ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn

... answered the Earl, "and his proud Scotch stomach will be up in an instant, and he will pay you with a shot for your pains.—Why, he thinks himself cock of the walk, this strutting bantam, notwithstanding the lesson I gave him before—And what do you think?—He has the impudence to talk about my attentions to Lady Binks as inconsistent with the prosecution of my suit to his sister! Yes, Hal—this awkward Scotch ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... will be Frenchified; and first, it's my belief, They'll dress you in their foreign style as a-la-mode as beef, With a little row of beehives, as a border to your frock, And a pair of frilly trousers, like a little bantam cock. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... sometime to come: in the meanwhile she was like a dear little bantam hen with one chick; while Ben himself was content to shelter under her wing, until it grew upon him that, loving her as he did, loving his mother—realising what it meant to be a mother, in thinking of Jenny herself with ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... front and the inexorable bantam guard behind, Coutlass came and stood before the railway official, who at last condescended not to seem engrossed in ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... Miss Heptonstall, fill up!" cried Ted, energetically; "eh, if you dunnot gi' it no more nor that, Victoria met jest as well be a bantam. He'll noan as mich as wet that great yaller beak of ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... the wreckage. The child, the dreamer, the optimist, the egoist, and the man alive in Jean Jacques sprang into vigour again. It was as though the Cock of Beaugard had really summoned him to action, and the crowing had not been that of a barnyard bantam not a hundred feet away from him. Jean Jacques' head ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... chickens had come near to where we stood listening on the green plot, and eyed us with expectant looks, as if accustomed to be fed or noticed. The elder brother indulged the foremost among the poultry group—a white bantam cock of courageous character—by giving him his foot to assault. Valiantly the little fellow flew at, and spurred, and pecked the boot and trousers; again and again he returned to the charge, while the blue-gray eyes beamed smilingly down from beneath ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... it was noticed at Anjer that the height of the dust and vapor-column, and likewise the explosions were again increasing. On the 24th a second column was seen rising. At length, Captain Ferzenaar, chief of the Topographical Survey of Bantam, visited Krakatoa island on August 11th. He found its forests destroyed, and the mantle of dust near the shores was twenty inches thick. Three large vapor-columns were noted, one marking the position of the crater of Perborwatan, while the other two were in the center of the island, ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... a bantam rooster so tame that he will allow me to pick him up and carry him in my arms. I have a kitchen-garden, too. In it there are potatoes, corn, tomatoes, water-melons, a pea-nut vine, and two fine tobacco plants. One of my tomato vines ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... a half-bred Pegasus, and far gone In spavin, curb, and half a hundred woes. And Byron's style is "jolter-headed jargon;" His verse is "only bearable in prose." So living poets write of those that ARE gone, And o'er the Eagle thus the Bantam crows; And Swinburne ends where Verisopht began, By owning you ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... Baltic. The 'spaniel' is from Spain; the 'barb' is a steed from Barbary; the pony called a 'galloway' from the county of Galloway in Scotland; the 'tarantula' is a poisonous spider, common in the neighbourhood of Tarentum. The 'pheasant' reached us from the banks of the Phasis; the 'bantam' from a Dutch settlement in Java so called; the 'canary' bird and wine, both from the island so named; the 'peach' (persica) declares itself a Persian fruit; 'currants' derived their name from Corinth, whence they were mostly shipped; ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... their tricks and their thoughtlessness; partly, I suspect, from jealousy. Jealousy seems a strange tragic passion to attribute to the inmates of the basse cour,—but only look at that strutting fellow of a bantam cock (evidently a favourite), who sidles up to his old mistress with an air half affronted and half tender, turning so scornfully from the barley-corns which Annie is flinging towards him, and say if he be not as jealous as Othello? Nothing can pacify him but Mrs. Allen's notice and a dole ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... Whenever she met him on the streets of the Cabanal, she always had one of her placid wistful smiles for him; and she spent her afternoons with sina Tona on the beach, just because the old lady was the mother of that bantam who was forever turning ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the day before? Whatever it was, it made no noise. Only, always the next morning some one was missing, and usually it was a little baby chick that was gone. The worst of it was that no one else knew any more about it than she did. To be sure, little Bantam Rooster had said it was the hawk. But then Bantam always thought he knew everything, and was almost always wrong, so that nobody ever believed ...
— The Wise Mamma Goose • Charlotte B. Herr

... in a drinking tavern. When he tired of the tumult of the bar-room and a sense of his better self came over him, some one said: "Give us another, Tom." Rising to his feet he said: "You remind me of a set of bantam chickens, picking the sore head of an eagle when his ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... young bantam!" exclaimed the old soldier, smiling at my warmth. "It's easy to defy danger when you don't know what the ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... various breeds of dogs that I have come across personally, I know of none more faithful than the little fox-terrier is to his first devotion. He is a perfect little bantam-cock to fight, and never so happy as when he is in a row. 'The most unredeemed thing in nature,' was a true remark I once heard made of one; and yet there is no dog more devoted to his master, or more gentle to the children ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... article entitled "What Women Might Do" to the Queen. A paper called Punch, if I remember the name aright, made a pun on the subject, which was partially intelligible with the aid of italics and the laryngoscope. For my own part, I was too much occupied in teaching my wife to ride a Bantam, and too busy upon a series of papers in Nature on the turpitude of the classical professoriate of the University of London, to give my undivided attention to the impending disaster. I cannot divide things easily; I am an indivisible man. But ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas

... writing of this fault in talking in his times, gives a letter which he says was written in King Charles the Second's reign by the "ambassador of Bantam to his royal master a little after his arrival in England." The following is a copy, which will show how in those days the double-tongued talked, and how the writer, a stranger in this ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... of the yard thereafter, there being no one to oppose him. He led a very peaceful life until our next door neighbor bought a large Shanghai rooster. I forgot now what particular breed our rooster was, {330} but he was small, not much larger than a bantam. The Shanghai rooster, which was a huge monster, had the most provoking crow, large, loud and aggressive. An alley intervened between the yard where he held forth and our yard. One day we came home from school and looked for our ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... after, she was laid out on the deck benches, vowing every minute that she would die. From that moment he commenced advancing in rank. He was not subject to seasickness, and walked the plunging deck like a bantam rooster. In a firm voice he ordered her to her state-room, where she remained till the evening of the next day. She came out a changed woman. She evidently viewed "Willie dear" as a superior being, whom the sea itself couldn't conquer, and whose attentions to her in her sickness—which ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley

... known in a rig'mint; or fwhat wud be the use av a Mess Sargint, or a Sargint's wife doin' wet-nurse to the Major's baby? To reshume. He was a bad dhrill was this Capt'n—a rotten bad dhrill—an' whin first I ran me eye over him, I sez to myself: 'My Militia bantam!' I sez, 'My cock av a Gosport dunghill'—'twas from Portsmouth he came to us—'there's combs to be cut,' sez I, 'an' by the grace av God, 'tis ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... away at the other end, startling in its suddenness and impetuosity, was a trisyllabic crow, so brief, piercing, and emphatic, that it could only have proceeded from that peppery uppish little bird, the bantam. And of the three syllables, the last, which should be the longest, was the shortest, "short and sharp like the shrill swallow's cry," or perhaps even more like the shrieky bark of an enraged little cur; not a reveille and silvern morning song in one, as a crow should be, but a challenge and ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... the I.B.H. "Brayco, Brummagem Bantam! His style of hitting is straight and smart, in the ring or out of it. Hope the over-rated Hawardian Old 'Un and his Company relish the pepper young JOE has administered to the shifty Veteran ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various

... sort of representation of the wing-feathers of the hand. He says: "In several distinct breeds of the pigeon and fowl the legs and the two outer toes are heavily feathered, so that, in the trumpeter pigeon, they appear like little wings. In the feather-legged bantam, the 'boots,' or feathers, which grow from the outside of the leg, and generally from the two outer toes, have, according to the excellent authority of Mr. Hewitt, been seen to exceed the wing-feathers in length, and in one case ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... right. Davis fumed and blustered, but though Frank was small, he was as game as a bantam rooster, and he gave Davis to understand that there had been a vast change in their relative positions; that the one, while still the same insolent swaggerer, had not regiments of infantry or batteries of artillery to emphasize his insolence, and the other ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... warp, in order to move the vessel. Just then a tug-boat hove in sight, and as the sea was calm, she backed in and made fast her hawser to the Mandalay, at the captain's desire. Though all on board heaved their best on the warp, and the tug-boat Bantam Cock made every effort, they were unable to move the Mandalay from her perilous position, and the tug-boat then gave the matter up as a bad job and later in the evening ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... giving over his irascible expletives, and adopting an air of unfeigned pleasure, "why, if it ain't young Master Greenhorn. Ha, ha! How do, my young bantam? Pretty ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... "Come, Bantam, don't crow so loud," interrupted the big Ohioan; "nobody's going to fight you on that statement; it's a shame, and no mistake. But ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... the acrostic is "mantrap"; the missing rhyme is "mishap." The entire solution was given in something under half an hour by Popsie Bantam. She was a very bright girl, and afterwards married a man in ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain

... can an ordinary mind retain the names of all the White Hopes or Black Despairs. At any moment some Terrible Magyar may wrest the bantam championship from us. You must learn to distinguish between WELLS, the reconstructor of the universe, and Knock-out WELLS. You must be acquainted with the doings and prospects of Dreadnought Brown and Mulekick Jones. You must know the F. E. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... exclaimed Sippens, jumping to his feet, putting on his hat and shoving it far back on his head. He looked like a chest-swollen bantam rooster. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... waddled down the path, declaring that she WOULD wring its neck; and Roxy went puffing after her, glad to rest. But the old summer-house was empty. No little girl, no ruffled bantam, appeared. Both had vanished like magic; and mistress and maid stared at each other in amazement, till they saw that the long-disused window was open, and a gleam of light came in from the narrow ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... back out of the darkness, and I knew that I was safe. 'The devil take thee for a hot-blooded young bantam to shoot thy best friend with powder and ball, that he was fool enough to give thee'; and by this time I had guessed 'twas Master Ratsey, and recognized his voice. 'I would have let thee hear soon enough ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... Iune there rowed a scute called a Prawen harde vnder the lande by vs, wee called him, but not against his will, and shewed him siluer, and other wares that liked him well, he bad vs make towards the strand, and told vs of Bantam, saying that there we should haue al kinds of Marchandise. Then we made signs vnto him that if he wold bring vs to Bantam, we wold pay him for his labor, he asked vs 5. rialles of 8. and a redcap, which we graunted vnto, and so one of the men in the scute came on bord the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt



Words linked to "Bantam" :   tiny, small, little, domestic fowl, petite, fowl



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