"Hen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... even Madame Putois, who did not like drunkards. That squint-eyed Augustine was cackling like a hen, suffocating with her mouth wide open. Gervaise, however, suspected Coupeau of not having come straight home, but of having passed an hour with the Lorilleuxs who were always filling his head with unpleasant ideas. When ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... noises of it, like a phantasmagoria of vision, sound, impressions—the echoes of station activity; the Chinamen's pidgin English as they weeded the front garden; Tommy Hensor's voice when he brought the cook a nestful of eggs some vagrant hen had laid in the grass-tussocks, the men going forth with the tailing-mob—and at intervals the scorching recollection of that hinted scandal concerning Colin and Mrs Hensor of which Maule had told her.... ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the assistance of the others to cut the yards adrift and separate the topmast from the lower-mast, I took another cruise with the warp, and was fortunate enough, after swimming about for over an hour, to bag a half-burned hen-coop with four dead fowls still therein, three hatches, and the remains of the mainmast with topmast attached, the latter spar being still in good enough condition to be serviceable, and the jibboom. All these things I contrived to get alongside the foremast without ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... gaping neighbours came next day— They found all vanished from the shore: The Bible, whence he used to pray, Half scorched under a hen-coop lay; ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the engines of destruction.—A Mandan bow, and quiver of arrows; also some Ricara tobacco-seed, and an ear of Mandan corn: to these were added a box of plants, another of insects, and three cases containing a burrowing squirrel, a prairie hen, and four magpies, all alive." . ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... back of my hotel, and contemplate the yard. The extraordinary life of the place flows round and near my room—for here no one, man or woman, scruples to come through one's room at any moment, if it happens to be a shortcut. By day nothing much happens in the yard—except when a horse tried to eat a hen, the other afternoon. But by night, after ten, it is filled with flitting figures of girls, with wreaths of white flowers, keeping assignations.... It is all—all Papeete—like a Renaissance Italy with the venom taken out, No, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... The married women, he says, were against the community. "It was to them like the brassy and lacquered life in hotels. The common school was well enough, but to the common nursery they had grave objections. Eggs might be hatched in ovens, but the hen on her own account much preferred the old way. A hen without her chickens was but half a hen." Is not the inaudible, inward laughter of Emerson more refreshing than the explosions ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, Tiktok, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger; Besides Other Good People too Numerous to Mention Faithfully ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... constituted the school, and he and the schoolmaster walked back and forth from the village to the little cabin every day; while the only interest that the townspeople seemed to take in them was shown by their laughing at the schoolmaster, and comparing him to a hen with one chicken. It must not be supposed that it was because the citizens did not believe in education; but, as they had been in the habit of sending their children away to school, they thought that that was the proper thing to do, and, as there never had been a school in the town, they saw ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... a black list that has been growing through life; things I wish never to have again: tapioca pudding, fresh eggs if I have to hear the hen brag about it at 5 A.M., tripe, and home-grown milk, and to this list I have lately added cheese. Every one is familiar with the maxim that rest is a change of occupation. J——, being tired of Latin verbs, Greek roots, and dull scholars generally, took up some interesting laboratory work ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... Khalid once smashed the icon of the Holy Virgin for whetting not his wits, for hearing not his prayers. It may be he was learning then the use of the sling, and instead of killing his neighbour's laying-hen, he broke the sacred effigy. No, we are not warranted to draw from these trivialities the grand results which send Shakib in ecstasies about his Master's genius. Nor do we for a moment believe that the waywardness of a genius or a prophet in boyhood is always a significant ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... in. Hank thinks it's Elmira come to get him out. He allows he'll keep quiet in there and make believe he is drowned and give her a good scare and make her sorry fur him. But when the cistern door is opened, he hears a lot of clacking tongues all of a sudden like they was a hen convention on. He allows she has told some of the neighbours, and he'll scare them too. So Hank, he laid low. And the woman as looks in sees nothing, for it's as dark down there as the insides of the whale what swallered Noah. But she leaves the door open ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... cats, and guinea-pigs they have killed?—not one. So, then, the rabbit dies, and justice takes no notice. This rabbit dead, the Abbe Adelmonte has its entrails taken out by his cook and thrown on the dunghill; on this dunghill is a hen, who, pecking these intestines, is in her turn taken ill, and dies next day. At the moment when she is struggling in the convulsions of death, a vulture is flying by (there are a good many vultures in Adelmonte's country); this bird darts on the dead fowl, and carries ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he, "chickens is my best holt. Last spring I had a favorite speckled hen—she was the specklest biped which ever wore feathers. One day, I sot her on 300 eggs. That fowl done her level best and spread evry feather, but she hadent enuff elasticity to cover so much territory ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... look for a wife, then?" said the Fairy, laughing at him. "Do you expect one to come and look for you? Fly up, and sing a beautiful song in the sky, and then perhaps some pretty hen will hear you; and perhaps, if you tell her that you will help her to build a capital nest, and that you will sing to her all day long, she will consent to ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... way. Is it possible that you don't grasp—" He hesitated and turned his face toward the parlor whence came again the cough, hollow and distressing. The sound died away, echoing down the hall, and a hen clucked on the porch and a ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... loopholed for rifles and commanded the road in both directions. These were designed to retard German scouting parties or halt German mitrailleuse automobiles. The barriers were built of an extraordinary variety of material: trees, paving-stones, barrels, carts, hen-coops, sandbags, boxes, and fence-rails. At each barrier were stationed a score or more of soldiers, and as one approached, one saw the gleam of bayonets and heard a sharp, imperative "Halte-la!" When we came to a full stop, two ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... surmises never ventured to the hazardous period of infancy, or risked the doubtful thought that kith or kin could have loved him; but I have often wondered if there ever was a time when his rapacity found employment in the robbing of a hen's nest, or his grasping ambition culminated in the swop of a jack-knife. I wondered if in all the grotesque concomitants that congregated to make up the hideous whole, there existed a redeeming trait. Yes, there was one,—one I discovered in the ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... indulge in a family argument. I didn't pay much notice to the preamble, but as they warmed up to it I couldn't help from gettin' the drift. It was all about the time of year that a feller by the name of Hen Dorsett had been run over by the cars ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... fate hands out as it would be to wear furs in all kinds of weather, even the dog-days. What's the use of pretending that the sun is shining when everybody can see that the rain's simply drenching you and that you're as bedraggled as a wet hen?" ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... about the floor; one had lost her tail; a traveller, who wished to be a hunter, had shot it off, because the creature had taken the hen for a bird ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... The man walked up to Dennis this time, and stood over him like a pine-tree over a sucker. "Yer's yer hat," pulling an old straw article, over-worn, from Dennis's head. "No wind's a blowin' to blow hats into graveyards. Or did you set yer hat under a hen ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... goopher de grapevimes. She sa'ntered 'roun' 'mongs' de vimes, en tuk a leaf fum dis one, en a grape-hull fum dat one, en a grape-seed fum anudder one; en den a little twig fum here, en a little pinch er dirt fum dere,—en put it all in a big black bottle, wid a snake's toof en a speckle' hen's gall en some ha'rs fum a black cat's tail, en den fill' de bottle wid scuppernon' wine. Wen she got de goopher all ready en fix', she tuk 'n went out in de woods en buried it under de root uv a red oak tree, en den come ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Hen was an empty-headed creature with strange notions. She never laid an egg without making a great fuss ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... as his name, he seemed to expect but little from life. So, one morning before departing on his daily journey, the Mule was unobtrusively married to Caterina in the little pink stucco chapel that broods over the village of San Celoni like a hen over her chickens. And Cristofero Colon and ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... customary to perform a sacrifice to the first mother, "Ka Iawbei." They first of all take an augury by breaking eggs, and if it appears from the broken egg-shells that Ka Iawbei is offended, they offer to her a cotton cloth, and sacrifice a hen. On these occasions incantations are muttered, and a small drum, called, "Ka 'sing ding dong," is beaten. It is not unlikely that the Khasi household deities, Ka lei iing and Ka ksaw ka jirngam, to whom pujas are offered for ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... cat, a dog, a silly hen, An owl, a bat,—where they are wont to lodge That still sojourn, nor care to shift their quarters. Thou'rt constancy? I am glad I know thy name! The spider comes of the same family, That in his meshy fortress spends his life, Unless you pull it down and scare him from ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... a man of you, to be sure,' the gentleman answered. 'You are spoiling here in this hen-coop. Now, Lancelot loves you like a brother, and I love Lancelot like a father, and I am quite prepared to take you to my heart for Lancelot's sake, for he is scarce likely to be deceived in you. You must know that I am going to embark ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the next world, be called upon to carry and pile logs of wood, as big as cocoa-nut trees, to the number of the hairs on the beast's body. Therefore cats are not killed; but, if they become too daring in their raids on the hen-coop, or the food rack, they are tied to a raft and sent floating down-stream, to perish miserably of hunger. The people of the villages, by which they pass, make haste to push the raft out again into ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... twenty times the regulated postage. It is probable, therefore, that the people of the Crater and the Peak felt, that in supporting a general system, which embraced the good of all, they did more towards extending civilization, than if they killed the hen, at once, in order to come at the depository of the golden eggs, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... ou tes basileias ouk estai telos. Kai eis pneuma to hagion, to kurion, to zoopoion, to ek tou patros ekporeuomenon, to sun patri kai huio sumproskunoumenon kai sundoxazovmenon, to lalesan dia ton propheton, eis mian hagian katholiken kai apostoliken ekklesian. Homologoumen hen baptisma eis aphesin hamartion; prosdokomen anastasin nekron, kai zwen tou mellontos ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... these holes are not an hundredth part scarce of their bigness; the Shell, when the young ones were hatch'd (which I found an easie thing to do, if the Eggs were kept in a warm place) appear'd no thicker in proportion to its bulk, then that of an Hen's or Goos's Egg is to its bulk, and all the Shell appear'd very white (which seem'd to proceed from its transparency) whence all those pittings did almost vanish, so that they could not, without much difficulty, be discern'd, the inside of the Shell seem'd to be lin'd also with a kind ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... seems that she studies French, Italian, German, piano and vocal music; and has some down-and-out old hen read with her. I believe her ambition is to take the regular Harvard course as nearly as possible. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... sensible as the conundrum, 'Why is a hen?'" said Stella. "Must I ask the question and get caught? All right, here goes. What is a 'rent rag'? Now, don't tell me, some one, that it is a rag that has been torn, for ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... is so devil. Yesterday, for example, Mr. le Cure give him a pretty card postal with the image of angels and tell him he must apply to resemble to them; and Jean responded, "no I want not to be the angel and have wings like one hen!" Mr. le Cure say it is Satan that commands the wicked words like that, and when he go to fall in temptation Jean must say, "Vade retro Satanas," and that make Satan go behind. And Jean say, "yes but then Satan go at my back and push hard, so I fall!" It is very sad little ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... brought water and leaving the door ajar for the first time, he soon started a draft; that with the coming of cooler evening lowered the child's temperature, and made her hungry. As he worked Mickey talked. The grass, the blooming orchard, the hen and her little downy chickens, the big cool porch, the wonderful woman and man, the boy whom they expected and who did not come; and then cautiously, slowly, making sure she understood, he developed his plan to take her to the country. Peaches drew back and opened ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... emotions, highest hopes, and most awful failures. "O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!" he had said in sadness as he thought of Israel's holy city, "which killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!" ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... pug dog; Uncle Jason, who has needed a bath ever since I knew him—I want he should spend his legacy for soap—and his epileptic stepson, whose name I forget, though he lived with me five years hand-running; lying Sally Simmons and her half-witted daughter; that old hen, Belinda Dodd; that skunk, Harold Vernon Perkins, who never did a stroke of honest work in his life till he began to dig for this box; monkey-faced Lucretia and the four thieving little Riley children, who are likely ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... came to the honest mans house, he entertained and feasted my master exceedingly. And it fortuned while they eate and dranke together as signe of great amity there chanced a strange and dreadfull case: for there was a Hen which ran kackling about the yard, as though she would have layed an Egge. The good man of the house perceiving her, said: O good and profitable pullet that feedest us every day with thy fruit, thou seemest as though thou wouldest ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... family wash was not spread upon the grass. From here I followed a narrow path through a wheat-field, the grain up to my shoulders, toward the log dwelling. A mangy little cur disputed my right to knock at the door; but, flourishing my two tin pails at him, he flew yelping to take refuge in the hen-coop. To my summons at the portal, there came no response, save the mewing of the cat within. It was clear that the people of Point Sandy were ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... "Dumb" beast suggests an animal that has no thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of communicating what is in its mind. We know that a hen HAS speech. We cannot understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her phrases. We know when she is saying, "I have laid an egg"; we know when she is saying to the chicks, "Run here, dears, I've found a worm"; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... table, with its white cloth folded and laid upon it; the hickory-bound cedar water-bucket, with its crooked handled gourd; the red corner-cupboard, with its store of Johnny-cakes and cold potatoes for quiet enjoyment between meals; old Cornwallis; the red rooster; the speckled hen; the yellow tomcat—with all these loved images passing with sudden vividness before his remembrance at the sound of the old home voice in that lonely place, the delinquent Bushie, now thoroughly penitent, lifted ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... inherited from her father some shares in that enterprise, which is not yet fully developed, though it doubtless will become a very valuable property. The law of Maine then forbade stockholders to appear by proxy at such meetings. Polly disliked to go, not being, in fact, a "hens'-rights hen," transferred her stock to me. I, after going once, disliked it more than she. But Dennis went to the next meeting, and liked it very much. He said the arm-chairs were good, the collation good, and the free rides to stockholders pleasant. He was a little ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... the female that did don man's attire and flirt about with foppish airs is trying to play the hen and has made a nest and gone to setting on spoiled eggs that will hatch nothing but shades, and wraiths, and mandrakes!" And he lifted a cocoanut, from which the milk was oozing out slowly ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... a tame cheater, i' faith; you may stroke him as gently as a puppy greyhound: he'll not swagger with a Barbary hen, if her feathers turn back in any show of resistance. ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... a symbol of ingratitude; for when they are old enough no longer to need to be fed, they begin to fight with their father, and this struggle does not end until the young one drives the father out and takes the hen and ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Washington inside of ten days from the time we sent them. In this we were disappointed, and were compelled, to use "the kid" several times to carry out "de exchange act" "wid de ole hen," as ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... 'Teithi Hen, the son of Gwynham—(his domains were swallowed up by the sea, and he himself hardly escaped, and he came to Arthur, and his knife had this peculiarity, that from the time that he came there no haft would ever remain upon it, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... in this world is not to be too particular. I have hit upon the very place to make them thankful by-and-by, when they come to look back upon it—a sweet little hole, half a league away from anybody. All is arranged—a frying-pan, a brown-ware tea-pot, a skin of lard, a cock and a hen, to lay some eggs; a hundredweight of ship biscuits, warranted free from weevil, and a knife and fork. Also a way to the sea, and a net, for them to fish together. Nothing more delightful can be imagined. Under such circumstances, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... off a bumper of wine. No sippings and swallowings for me! I laid my tongue well down in the bottom of my mouth that the liquor might have fair passage to my gullet, and threw my head back as you see a hen do (in thanks to heaven, they say, though she drinks only water). Then I tilted the cup, and my mouth was full of the wine. I was conscious of a taste in it, a strange acrid taste. Why, it was poor wine, turned sour; it should go back to-morrow; that fool Jonah was a fool in all things; ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... of Plato, why a picked chicken, which was clearly "a biped without feathers," was not, according to his own definition, a man? But I am not to be bothered by any similar query. Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man. It will take an entire hen-coop of picked ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... him with want of courage, and called him a "night-cap" and a "hen-pecked coon," all of which made Nils uncomfortable. He made two or three attempts to persuade his wife to change her mind in regard to little Hans, but the last time she got so frightened that she ran out of the ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... purposes a vase which much resembled an enormous egg, and on questioning him was informed that many such were to be found in the interior of the island. The largest of these eggs would hold two gallons. The volume equals that of 135 hen's eggs. Some doubts were at first entertained as to the nature of the animal to which the fossil bones belonged; but M. St Hilliare—a competent judge in such matters—has pronounced them to be those of a bird to which he has given the name ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Mr. Darwin. also notices, which detract more than he seems willing to allow, from the relevancy of these facts. The development of ornaments at breeding-time sometimes takes place in both sexes, indicating some latent connexion with the reproductive organs; thus the comb of the domestic hen becomes a bright red, as well as that of the cock. It would appear then that the object of the change is not to render the cock more attractive to the hens, for how could it serve the hens (if the choice lies with them) to be made more attractive to the cocks? Then again an old hen who is past ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... though they were only cattle or draught horses. Their nerves are nothing, their domestic comfort is nothing, their happiness is nothing. They have no more sympathy for them than a hound has for a hare, or a hawk for a hen, or a tiger for a calf. When Jean Valjean, the greatest hero of Victor Hugo's writings, after a life of suffering and brave endurance, goes into incarceration and death, they clap the book shut and say, "Good for him!" They stamp their feet with ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... him the fisher king: the wags called him the kingfisher, and laughed at the oddity of his taste in preferring what he called his duty to the pleasures of the season. But the marquis found even the hen pecked Partan a nobler and more elevating presence than any strutting platitude of Bond Street. And when he was at home, he was always about amongst the people. Almost every day he would look in at some door in the Seaton, and call out a salutation to the busy housewife—perhaps ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... when Aaron woke up and tried to piece together the dream of which these are mere fragments, he could remember having just seen an idol. An Astarte he knew it as, seated by the road, and in her open lap, were some eggs: smallish hen's eggs, and one or two bigger eggs, like swan's, and one single little roll of bread. These lay in the lap of the roadside Astarte.... And then he ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... they'll change their minds," he said, as he threw down a handful of corn. "Now isn't that just like a hen?" he ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... "All that ails you, Hen Dutcher, is that you didn't get your name in the paper," called Tom denouncingly. "But you will, one of these days. It'll be in the police-court news, ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... one morning, just before daybreak, as the otters were returning to the river from a visit to a hen-coop, where they had found an open door and a solitary chicken. The trap was placed on the grass by the verge of the stream. A light fall of snow had covered it, but had left exposed the entrails of a chicken which, by coincidence, formed the tempting bait. Distressed and perplexed, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... shelters ere too severe a winter come to the farm, and also diligently prepare the soil. In winter one should plough and in severe frosts cleave timber, make an orchard, and do many affairs indoors, thresh, cleave wood, put the cattle in stalls and the swine in pigstyes, and provide a hen roost. In spring one should plough and graft, sow beans, set a vineyard, make ditches, hew wood for a wild deer fence; and soon after that, if the weather permit, set madder, sow flax seed and woad seed, plant a garden and do many things which ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... brought in for eatin' purposes, but stood around lookin' bored when there wasn't no sport doin'. They got to be just like that Four Hundred you read about in the papers. It was one continual round of grasshopper balls, race meets, and afternoon hen-parties. They got idle and haughty, just like folks. Then come race suicide. They got to feelin' so aristocratic the hens wouldn't have ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... dish of beef-steak on the same day; in consequence of which, the heart, which ought properly to be soaring in the clouds, or, at all events, in a castle half way up, is more generally to be found grovelling about a hen-roost, in the vain hope, that, if it cannot get hold of the hen herself, it may at least hit upon an egg; and such, I remember, was the state of my feelings on this occasion, in consequence of my having dined the three preceding days on the half of ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... I should fall in love with her if I hadn't the artist before me. Sweet innocent! she's thinking there will come a time when she will be wooed and won like that pretty hen-dove by as fond and fervent a lover; and she's thinking how pleasant it will be, and how tender and faithful he will ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the Moon to me, "I looked down upon a small courtyard surrounded on all sides by houses. In the courtyard sat a clucking hen with eleven chickens; and a pretty little girl was running and jumping around them. The hen was frightened, and screamed, and spread out her wings over the little brood. Then the girl's father came out and scolded her; and I glided away and thought ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... close, then,' said Jesse. 'It don't sometimes look to me as if Mary has her natural rightful feelin's. She don't put on an apron o' Mondays 'thout being druv to it—in the kitchen or the hen-house. She's studyin' to be a school-teacher. She'll make a beauty! I never knowed her show any sort o' kindness to nobody—not even when Jim's mother was took dumb. No! 'Twadn't no stroke. It stifled the old lady in the throat here. First she couldn't shape her words no shape; ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... always stepped in to cheer and help, so that I have wanted for nothing. My husband has developed wonderfully as house-father and nurse. You would laugh to see him in his spectacles gravely marching the little troop in their nightgowns up to bed, tagging after them, as he says, like an old hen after a flock of ducks. The money for my journey has been sent in from an unknown hand in a wonderful manner. All this shows the care of our Father, and encourages me to rejoice and to ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... country and carried my slates thither, wrapped in double folds of black muslin. The days and weeks rolled on. Two months passed. The slates were as clean as when they came into my possession. I would go on to three months. Does not a hen sit for three weeks? Where a hen gives a week, shall not I give a month? Is not a Medium worth ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... the women to sew in the other way, all by this indefatigable Mr. Moffatt; and they taught him on their part how to do the CLUCK, and Mr. Moffatt did it for me. It is indescribable and inimitable. It is not so loud as a hen's cluck to her chickens, but ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... shower. Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep Meagre from its celled sleep; And the snake all winter-thin Cast on sunny bank its skin; Freckled nest eggs thou shalt see Hatching in the hawthorn-tree, When the hen-bird's wing doth rest Quiet on her mossy nest; Then the hurry and alarm When the bee-hive casts its swarm; Acorns ripe down-pattering ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... them far more closely, for, despite the many duties which had come upon her, there never disappeared the mother's tenderness and watchfulness. And so it was with Moonface, whose brood was so great, and who was like a noisy hen with chickens. So existed the hovering mother instinct with all the women of the valley, though then the mothers fished and hunted and had stirring events to distract them from domesticity and close affection almost as much as had ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... winter the porphyrion sails down the willowy streams beside the sultan-hen that is to be his love, and sees her not, and stays not her passage upon the water or through the air; she does not live as yet to him. But when the breath of the spring brings the catkins from the willows, and the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... could not believe that Diodorus was in earnest, in what he relates concerning the Egyptian industry,(377) viz. that this people had found out a way, by an artificial fecundity, to hatch eggs without the sitting of the hen; but all modern travellers declare it to be a fact, which certainly is worthy our investigation, and is said to be practised also in Europe. Their relations inform us, that the Egyptians stow eggs in ovens, which are heated to such a temperament, and with such just ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... up, and making stove-wood of a number of dead and decaying apple trees. Some of them had been dead and dying for two or three years. In splitting up the body and roots of one of these, I dislodged scores of the borers, of all ages and sizes—making quite a dinner for a hen and chickens that happened to be nigh. This fact brought forcibly to my mind what I should have thought of before, namely—that these dead and dying trees ought not to be allowed to remain a day after their usefulness has departed; ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... blessed old buffer can't speak anything but his French gibberish. 'Madame?' I said, bawling into his stupid old ear. 'Mossoo and Madame Hostin? comprenny?' and he says, 'Ya-ase,' and then bursts out laughing, and looks as proud as a hen that's just laid a hegg—' ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Cain adds (l.c., April, 1879, p. 106): "The women are called 'hens' by their husbands, and the male and female children 'cock children' and 'hen children' respectively." ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... and sturdy royalist, Peter Heylin, whether Old Tom is not sometimes more facetious than correct; and whether, in the extract given above, we should not read Richard I. for Edward I. In Knyghton's Chronicle, lib. II. cap. viii. sub Hen. I., we find, "Mercatorum falsam ulnam castigavit adhibita brachii sui mensura." See also William of Malmsbury in Vita Hen. I., and Spelm. Hen. I. apud Wilkins, 299., who inform us, that a new standard of longitudinal measure was ascertained by Henry ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... "My little cousin thought I was scolding her, Mr. Graham. The truth is, I'm the one who should be scolded. I chose the work I cared for at about Elsie's age and went in for it; and yet when she chooses hers, which happens to be the stage, I act the hen-with-the-duckling." ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... the kangaroo and wombat, to the insulated continent that contains the bones of the extinct macropus and phalcolomys; and the New Zealand birds, including its heavy flying quails and its wingless wood-hen, to those remote islands of the Pacific in which the skeletons of Palapteryx ingens and Dinornus giganteus lie entombed. Nor will it avail aught to urge, with certain assertors of a universal deluge, that during the cataclysm, sea and land changed their places, and that ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... found that Lee and Nielsen had wasted some shells. R.C. and Romer came wagging up the hill, both red and wet and tired. R.C. carried a small turkey, about the size of a chicken. He told me, between pants, that they chased the four large turkeys, and were just about to get a shot when up jumped a hen-turkey with a flock of young ones. They ran every way. He got one. Then he told me, between more pants and some laughs, that Romer had chased the little turkeys all over the ravine, almost catching several. Romer said for himself: "I just almost pulled ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... embroidery frame, working with golden threads. From this room she led him into another, where a second maiden was spinning gold thread, and at last into a room where a third maiden was stringing pearls, while at her feet a golden hen, with a brood of chickens, was picking up pearls ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... St. Valentine's Eve Lost Lilybell Gone Life Dreams Aeolus and Aurora; or, the Music of the Gods Sonnet Sleeping in the Snow With the Rain Ode, on the Death of a Friend Lines: to a Young Lady who had jilted her Lover Vicarious Martyrs: to a Hen-pecked Schoolmaster Stanzas: on seeing Lady Noel Byron To Louisa The Orator and the Cask The Maid of the War Impromptu: on being asked by a Lady to write a Verse in her Album Mary: a Monody On the Marriage of Miss Nicholl ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... be some reason for this reckless display; I sought the cause, and found a nest, a mere depression in the ground, and one sorry-looking youngster, the sole survivor of the perils of the situation. Over that one nestling they were as concerned as the proverbial hen with one chicken, and they flitted about in distress while I looked at their half-fledged bantling, and hoped it was a singer to ring the delightful silver-toned tremolo that had charmed ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... coquettish tricks? Was her encouragement of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival? Heaven only knows, not I! Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one who had been sacking a hen-roost, rather than a fair lady's heart. Without looking to the right or left to notice the scene of rural wealth on which he had so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with several hearty cuffs and kicks roused his steed most uncourteously ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... gathering these experiences, the free spirit of Raoul Innerarity was chafing in the shop like an eagle in a hen-coop. One moment after another brought him straggling evidences, now of one sort, now of another, of the "never more peaceable" state of affairs without. If only some pretext could be conjured up, plausible or flimsy, no matter; if only some man would pass with a gun on his shoulder, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... passed the dark old house, spreading its wide roofs, like a hen gathering her chickens under her wing, he became suddenly silent. A white curtain flapped in and out of an upper window. It was the window of the boys' room; but Evesham's instincts ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... eggs. By the way, Clarence Jones, who sings in the choir,—you know, the man with the pink cheeks and corn-silk hair,—advertises in the 'Daily Press' for a 'live partner.' Now, there 's a chance on an established hen-ranch, if he does n't demand capital ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... juicy mutton, the venison; there was the game, now just in season,—the half-tame wild fowl of English covers, the half-domesticated wild deer of English parks, the heathcock from the far-off hills of Scotland, and one little prairie hen, and some canvas- back ducks—obtained, Heaven knows how, in compliment to Redclyffe— from his native shores. O, the old jolly kitchen! how rich the flavored smoke that went up its vast chimney! how inestimable the atmosphere of steam that was diffused through it! How did the old ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... two .38's dealt him by a halfbreed Sioux; but when a real bad man from Taunton, Massachusetts, opened up on him across the table with a .45, he just naturally got discouraged. Good old dad! He meant well when he left me in Dobie and had me adopted by Uncle Hen. Phemey, you needn't listen ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... I can see," she said, hovering around her like a clucking hen; "but a wash-up and a good dish o' chicken pie will put you all to ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... when I came to notice it, the oddest breakfast imaginable, yet it had a tempting air. There was a tiny glass vase of flowers at each person's place, and the middle of the table was occupied by a china hen sitting on her nest. The eggs which she protected were hard-boiled; and ranged round the nest were platters of every kind of cold smoked meat, and cold smoked fish, dreamed of in the philosophy of cooks. There was ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... He had took a few snifters, and was feelin' melancholy over them papers, and I tried to cheer him up by tellin' him jest what I've told you, that as long as I had my roll back, I wouldn't care about all the hen-tracks that spoiled nice white paper. He chirked up a bit at that, and got confidential and told me about this thousand-dollar bill. They say it ain't the only one he had. The story is that he sprung one on an Injun the other day in payment for a bunch o' steers. There must be lots more ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... the prophets, and stonest those sent to her; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! (38)Behold, your house is left to you desolate. (39)For I say to you, ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say: Blessed is he that comes in the ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... de state of Nashfille, In de town of Tennessee, Der Breitmann vonce vas quarderd Mit all his cavallrie. Der Sheneral kept him glose in gamp, He vouldn't let dem go; Dey couldn't shdeal de first plack hen, Or make ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... passes through them, and then there would be three numerical [Greek: Boulaemata], as well as three numerical Persons: 'ergo', [Greek: treis theoi ae theatai] (according to Gregory Nyssen's shallow and disprovable etymology), which would be Tritheism: or [Greek: hen ti ginetai Boulaema], and then the Son and Holy Ghost are but terms of relation, which is Sabellianism. But in fact this Gregory and the others were Tritheists in the mode of their conception, though they did not wish to be so, and refused ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in which a bean falls to the ground, and an old man, the Sun, climbs up by it to heaven. "The ogre in the land above the skies," observes Mr. Baring Gould, "who was once the all-father, possessed three treasures—a harp, which played of itself enchanting music; bags of gold and diamonds; and a hen which daily laid a golden egg. The harp is the wind, the bags of gold are the clouds dropping the sparkling rain, and the golden egg laid every day by the red hen is the producing sun." The same idea in "Jack and the Beanstalk" occurs in the fairy legends of the North and the East, as ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... French galloches, which signified of old a certain shoe worn by the Gauls in foul weather, as at present the signification with us does not much differ. It is mentioned 4 Edw. IV. cap. 7., and 14 & 15 Hen. VIII. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... certain number of grains of wheat which asked only to sprout, to turn green in the sun, to shoot up into tall stalks crowned with ears. They died that we might live. Here are some eggs. Left undisturbed with the Hen, they would have emitted the Chickens' gentle cheep. They died that we might live. Here is beef, mutton, poultry. Horror, it smells of blood, it is eloquent of murder! If we gave it a thought, we should not dare to sit down to table, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... grease-wood and sage brush;—the former prickly and repellant, but having a waxy or resinous property which renders it useful to emigrants as fuel; the latter affording shelter and subsistence to rabbits and a poor species of grouse known as the 'sage hen,' but utterly worthless to man and to the beasts ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... shifts every day, and the whole blooming gang have gone so noodley that they won't even stop to buy me a drink, and you can take it from me that when those guys overlook a chance to do something for somebody in distress something has gone wrong, or there is a big hen on. ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... answer to her call a grey hen fluttered toward her; this she gave to the young people. "When the moon rises," she said, "take the hen and place it where you wish ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... big dog, had carried away the Stuffed Elephant when Archie set his Christmas toy down on the barn floor for a moment. And, coming back, after having gone to look for the nest of a cackling hen, Archie did not find his Elephant awaiting him as ...
— The Story of a Stuffed Elephant • Laura Lee Hope
... down and disfigured by the transit of thousands of men. A family cat was watching the birds that were beginning to return to their haunts. With timid flutterings they were picking at what the horses had left, and an ownerless hen was disputing the banquet with the winged band, until then hidden in the trees and roofs. The silence intensified the rustling of the leaves, the hum of the insects, the summer respiration of the sunburnt soil which appeared to ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Fillets of Flounder, Piedmont Guinea Hen, Marie Cranberry Jelly Candied Sweet Potatoes Cauliflower Coleslaw Pumpkin Tarts Coffee Cheese ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security, for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by their knavery. But damn ye altogether for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls! They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is the only difference that they rob the poor under cover of the law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. Had you not better make one of ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... straight in the face, and, with the most scanty resources, bore herself as though she possessed thousands. She had not been able to endure the deceased Kalitin, and as soon as her niece married him, she retired to her tiny estate, where she lived for ten whole years in the hen-house of a peasant. Marya Dmitrievna was afraid of her. Black-haired and brisk-eyed even in her old age, tiny, sharp-nosed Marfa Timofeevna walked quickly, held herself upright, and talked rapidly and intelligibly, in a shrill, ringing voice. ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... they ain't. I see 'em: they was an old cock and hen as we chivied into that burnt house this mornin', and Corp'ral shot one, and Mick Toole run his bay'net ...
— Our Soldier Boy • George Manville Fenn
... Boulton also joined in opposition. They wisely held that for a manufacturing nation "to tax raw materials was suicidal: let taxes be laid upon luxuries, upon vices, and, if you like, upon property; tax riches when got, but not the means of getting them. Of all things don't cut open the hen ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... played by male impersonators. Directly she saw Mavis, Mrs Bale hurried to the bedside and seized the baby, to dandle it in her arms, the while she made a clucking noise not unlike the cackling of a hen. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... dear. Give my kindest love to Dorothy. I am thinking of your return with earnest longing.... As we passed the evening at the Hen and Chickens, in the same room where I began reading you "Les Maitres Mosaistes," on our return through Birmingham from the lately formed association, your image was naturally ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Hen and Its Folly. In our own country there exists a grouse species so foolish in its mind, and so destitute of the most ordinary instinct of self-preservation that it has been known for many years as "the Fool Hen." ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... come on, and the days were very hot,—so hot and changeless, with their unclouded skies and their glowing centre, that they seemed to grow stupid with their own heat. It was as if—like a hen brooding over her chickens—the day, brooding over its coming harvests, grew dull and sleepy, living only in what was to come. Notwithstanding the feelings I have just recorded, I began to long for a wider horizon, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... spring again, Spring again, I shall go where went I when Down the moor-cock splashed, and hen, Seeing me not, amid their flounder, Standing with my arm around her; If it's ever spring again, Spring again, I shall go where went ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... Creator, Flashing light through all the heaven; The Great Serpent, the Kenabeek, With his bloody crest erected, Creeping, looking into heaven; In the sky the sun, that listens, And the moon eclipsed and dying; Owl and eagle, crane and hen-hawk, And the cormorant, bird of magic; Headless men, that walk the heavens, Bodies lying pierced with arrows, Bloody hands of death uplifted, Flags on graves, and great war-captains Grasping both ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... canned fruit and vegetables, the other boys removed the old oak stumps from the north field, drained a slough covering four acres of land, cleaned twenty acres of land for cultivation and built 160 rods of good fence around it. They also built a pretty and very convenient semi-monitor hen house, with ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... come from some of their own folks—but I hearn that California had the best exhibits of all kinds of any of the States. But I wouldn't want it told from me. I don't want to git thirty or forty States mad as a hen at me; the States are dretful touchy, anyway, in the matter ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... At length I spied a pair of doves with a nest in a small cavity in the stone at the back of a narrow ledge about seventy feet from the ground, and by standing back some distance I could see the hen bird sitting on the nest, while the cock stood outside on the ledge keeping guard. I watched this pair for some hours and saw a jackdaw sweep down on them a dozen or more times at long intervals. Sometimes after swooping down ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... government of the country in the hands of his wife Ethwije, sister of Richard of Normandy. As he was about to set out on his pilgrimage the falcon which he carried on his wrist after the manner of the nobles of the period, swooped down on and killed the hen of a poor peasant woman. The woman in a rage seized a large stone and cast it at the bird with such violence that it slew not only the falcon but the Duke himself. The death of the Duke was followed by a most desperate insurrection ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... your other neighbour come fluttering into your garden, and scratch and chuckle and fluff themselves under your plumbago bush; but you don't worry. Why should you? They can't hurt it; and, besides, you know that the small black hen and the big yellow one, who have disappeared from the throng, are even now laying their daily egg for ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the man had bustled off, "you are a pretty object at present. There is a lump as large as a hen's egg on your head, and your face is covered with bruises, which will show more distinctly when we ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... another advantage in being a sheep, or a cow, or a hen; animals of that sort never lost anything—didn't ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... various sports. But the fact that it may under stress of circumstances eventuate in inanities no more disproves the presence of the instinct than the reality of the brooding instinct is disproved by inducing a hen to sit on a ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... said the crow. "Am I?" the hen answered. "Certainly you are a fool. You sit in a dark corner hatching eggs, when there are live chickens for the asking over yonder." So the hen left her nest in search of ready-made chickens, and the crow, made a square meat. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... again." "And yet," adds the writer, "this gentleman (had an officer been billeted there) would have sold him a bottle of wine out of his cellar, or a billet of wood from his stack, or an egg from his hen-house, at a profit of fifty per cent., not only without scruple, but upon no other terms. It was as common as ordering wine at a tavern, to call the servant of any man's establishment where we happened to be quartered, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... a yellow hen, and a great friend of mine. You're sure to like Billina, when you know ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... it is after two o'clock; we shall never be ready in time if you don't make haste—and it won't do to keep the Bishop waiting.' Like a hen gathering her chickens, the Sister hurried away with Violet, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... earth) doth shine These might as lace set out her garments fine. The fearfull bird his little house now builds In trees and walls, in Cities and in fields. The outside strong, the inside warm and neat; A natural Artificer compleat. The clocking hen her chirping chickins leads With wings & beak defends them from the gleads My next and last is fruitfull pleasant May, Wherein the earth is clad in rich aray, The Sun now enters loving Gemini, And heats us with the glances of his eye, Our thicker rayment makes us lay aside Lest by ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... This noble seminary of learning was founded by Hen. VI. in 1440. Its establishment was then on a limited scale; it has long since been enlarged, and now consists of a provost, vice-provost, six fellows, two schoolmasters, with their assistants, seventy scholars, seven clerks, and ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... (Strix brachyotus,) which he had winged when flying in the midst of a covey of partridges; and after having tended the wounded limb, and endeavoured to make a cure, we thought of soothing the prisoner's captivity by a larger degree of freedom than he had in the hen-coop which he inhabited. No sooner, however, had our former acquaintance, the hawk, got sight of him, than he fell upon the poor owl most unmercifully; and from that instant, whenever they came in contact, a series of combats commenced, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... reader who is unacquainted with his works, an idea either of their infinitude of aims, on the one hand, or of the kind of feeling which prevades them all, on the other. No subject was too low or too high for him; we find him one day hard at work on a cock and hen, with their family of chickens in a farm-yard; and bringing all the refinement of his execution into play to express the texture of the plumage; next day, he is drawing the Dragon of Colchis. One hour he is much interested in a gust of wind ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... packed about the Blanco so close that MacRae left his dinghy on the outer fringe and walked across their decks to the deck of his own vessel. The Blanco loomed in the midst of these lesser craft like a hen over her brood of chicks. The fishermen had gathered on the nearest boats. A dozen had clambered up and taken seats on the Blanco's low bulwarks. MacRae gained his own deck and ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... I know? As soon as ever I had the sandwiches made for him I went to feed the fowl, and by reason of the way the white hen has of rambling and her chickens along ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... avail, an appeal, might be made to the King's better judgment with the aid of our six guns and brass bowchaser. It is certain that pearls of great size do exist on these islands. The King wore one in his crown the size of a hen's egg. ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... hate to be outgrown). Grubby, the young idea that shoots, Outgrew the ages like old boots; While still, to all appearance, small, Would have no Miracles at all; And just before the age of ten Firmly refused Free Will to men. The altars reeled, the hen-ens shook, Just as he read of in the book; Flung from his house went forth the youth Alone with tempests and the Truth, Up to the distant city and dim Where his papa had bought for him A partnership in Chepe ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... is there ready for use. Bright pictures are on the walls, well drawn and well coloured, some from nursery rhymes, some of Caldecott's, a frieze of hen and chickens, etc. Boxes for houses and shops are not in evidence, but their place is taken by bricks of such size and quantity that houses, shops, motors, engines and anything else may be built large enough for the children themselves to be shopkeepers or drivers, and there are also pieces ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... resting on the white dust; let me hear the humble-bees, and stay to look down on the yellow dandelion disk. Let me see the very thistles opening their great crowns—I should miss the thistles; the reed grasses hiding the moor-hen; the bryony bine, at first crudely ambitious and lifted by force of youthful sap straight above the hedgerow to sink of its weight presently and progress with crafty tendrils; swifts shot through the air with outstretched wings like crescent-headed shaftless arrows darted from the ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... for the Tahitian, approaches the end. The Tahitian never quite understands the white man who consorts with the French officials, although many do. 'For are not these men of Farane,' says the native, 'like the hen that talks without feathers?'—whatever that may mean, but it suggests at once the talkative Frenchman denuding himself on hot evenings, and wearing but the native pareu to hide ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... in Central and Western Asia, David et Oustalet, Oiseaux de la Chine, 401-421; the Phasianus Reevesii or veneratus is called by the Chinese of Tung-lin, near Peking, Djeu-ky (hen-arrow); the Crossoptilon auritum is named ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... said Myles; "seest thou not yon hole in the ivy branches? Methinks there is a window at that place. An I mistake not, it is in reach of the stable eaves. A body might come up by the fagot pile to the roof of the hen-house, and then by the long stable to the north stable, and so ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... fair show of game too. The lowan (Mallee hen, they're mostly called) and talegalla (brush turkey) were thick enough in some of the scrubby corners. Warrigal used to get the lowan eggs—beautiful pink thin-shelled ones they are, first-rate to eat, and one of 'em ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... the lanthorn. Come, heave in the sack—We were d—mn'd fools, for taking such a hen-hearted fellow among us. Lift the sack an end. Why don't you lend a hand, and keep it steady, while I untie it? Do you think a dead man can stand on his legs? D—mn my body, the fool ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... in, The birds from the sky. Allie calls, Allie sings, Down they all fly. First there came Two white doves Then a sparrow from his nest, Then a clucking bantam hen, ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... don't want to go to school with a bunch of whey-faced gets, and masters lean and mean as rats, and a principal puffed out like a setting hen." ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... To fly from trouble men must have eagle's wings. Alteration is not always improvement, as the pigeon said when she got out of the net and into the pie. There is a proper time for changing, and then mind you bestir yourself, for a sitting hen gets no barley; but do not be forever on the shift, for a rolling stone gathers no moss. Stick-to-it is the conqueror. He who can wait long enough will win. This, that, and the other, any thing ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... that girl was sent to be a blessing to me," she said to herself; "and my dear old friend's child, too. Oh, why was I given such a creature as Irene to bring up and look after? I can no more manage her than an old hen could ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... wild. The girl vows she won't live with me as my wife. Well, I shall hold Ahmara as a threat over her head till she sees the error of her ways. It's the one thing to do, as I look at it. Besides, if I try to pack Ahmara back to Touggourt she'll screech like a hen with her head cut off. I won't be made a laughing stock before my men, at the start, before I've shown them what sort of a leader they've got. Ahmara comes from the south. If Sanda decides to behave herself I'll drop the dancer at her own place, en route. Meanwhile, I'll have time ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... sleep in him for years, and then would suddenly awake in him in a musical form. On these occasions he would cry out with happiness. "Do you know?" he wrote to Mueller, "I simply shouted with joy." Mueller said he was like an old hen after it had ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland |
