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More "Roost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Meyer to work with him. 'Will you faithfully exhort your people,' he said, 'that they may all help to quiet, soften, and promote the matter to the best of their power, that they may not scare the birds at roost.' He promised also, for his part, 'to do his ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... Pera roofs swept flocks of crows to roost in their garden rookeries at the center of the town. Across the harbor water, now too gloomy to reveal its thousands of jelly-fish, drifted the complaining cries of the loons. Then as the occasional city lamps began to twinkle, making the darkness murkier by their inadequacy, there ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... large number of hens, and Jacko went about among them with the most perfect indifference, never looking on them to lust after them, as I could see, and never touching an egg or a feather. So excellent was his reputation that I would have trusted him in the hen-roost in the dark without counting the hens. In short, he was domesticated, and I was fond of him and very proud of him, exhibiting him to all our visitors as an example of what affectionate treatment would do in subduing the brute instincts. I preferred him to my dog, whom ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... great affection for yonder town," observed Squire Harwood, pointing southward with his hand. "I cannot forget my father's account of the times when Red-nosed Noll ruled the roost, and that arch-traitor Hutchinson held the castle, and insulted all the Cavaliers in the town and neighbourhood by his preaching, and his cant, and his strict rules and regulations; and now, forsooth, every man and woman in the place thinks fit to ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... for the river had fallen to so low a level as to give cause for anxiety, even at this season of extreme ebb. Numbers of birds with ruffled feathers, with little splints on their legs, or with sadly drooping heads, were going to roost in small cages hung from the branches to protect them from cats and other beasts of prey; to each, as he went by, Rufinus spoke a kindly word, or chirruped to encourage and cheer it. Aromatic odors filled the garden, and rural silence; every object ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "I hope she has put all thought of Oliver out of her mind long since. Well!—I had a letter from Lady Felton last week—dear woman that!—all the love-affairs in the county come to roost in her mind. She talks of young Roughsedge. Perhaps you don't know ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... murd'ring errands toil'd, Lone from your savage homes exiled, The blood-stained roost, and sheep-cote spoiled My heart forgets, While pitiless the tempest wild ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... hawk menaces the hen-roost, in like manner, when such a danger as a voyage menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed with a ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming in the front of her brood, and in ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mastiff-bitch, lay basking before the door, perfectly contented with her situation and prospects; and little Fig was busily hunting among the shrubs, and barking at the small birds which he disturbed as they were preparing to roost. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... barge, as I have said, above Assmannshausen, probably at night, and then cross directly over the river. The first castle with which I intend to deal is that celebrated robber's roost, Rheinstein, standing two hundred and sixty feet above the water. Disembarking about a league up the river from Rheinstein, before daybreak we will all lie concealed in the forest within sight of the Castle gates. When the sun is well risen, Captain Blumenfels will navigate his boat ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... into this space like herrings in a barrel, and many merry evenings prolonged there until five bells, when the lights were ruthlessly extinguished and all must go to roost. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to their full blossom? Gustation was meant to be delightful; and cooking is certainly half as good as tasting. At times one may have longed for the old Roman custom of two meals a day, and going to bed at chicken-time, bringing the hour of roast near the hour of roost; but this was probably in families where there were three repasts, with lunch all the way between, and an incessant buying of cookies from the baker, lest the children should go hungry. After this surfeit one pardons a recoil. Or, in an enervating day of July, one may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... then told Brigham I would go hunting and get him a nice one for dinner the next day. I went out that night with Gully and hunted some time, but the snow was a foot deep or more, and a crust had frozen, so that it was difficult hunting. At last we found a large flock of turkeys at roost in the tall Cottonwood timber. I shot two by starlight; one fell in the river, and we lost it, but the other fell dead at the roots of the tree. This was a large and fat turkey. I considered that it would do, and we returned home with it. We had ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... rogue's-roost of dirt 'tis just now," said Will; "but a few pound spent in the right way will ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... with clean hands. I had started by rotting the other fellow's eggs and he finished by souring my milk. I wanted justice and I got it, but I didn't recognize it when it landed on me with all four feet. Chickens come home to roost, and my pigeons had found a nesting-place on my anatomy; and the spot they had chosen was ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... me all he knew as we lay up the next night at Pigeon Roost. There had not been time earlier, for he had hurried off to carry his pipe to the village of Flint Ridge as soon as he had called me, and we had padded out on the ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... in my lady's bower, (Oh! weary mother, drive the cows to roost;) They faintly droop for a little hour; My lady's head droops like ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... this clearly. I have a great mind to send Blacas over to Stowe. I can trust to him to look to the crates and coops, and to see that the pheasants have enough of air and water, and that the Governor of Calais finds a commodious place for them to roost in, forbidding the drums to beat and disturb them, evening or morning. The next night, according to my calculation, they repose at Montreuil. I must look at them before they are let loose. I cannot well imagine why the public men employed by England are usually, indeed ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... girl," said Barbesieur, trying to look amiable, "pray don't be so concise. Tell me the condition of the marquis, at once: I did not come to this old owl's roost for pastime. I came to see what could be done to restore its unhappy lord to reason. That you are observing, I remember; you proved it by the good care you took of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... earliest birds of the hostelry roost were about the big house at that hour. The new arrivals dodged scrub-women and sweepers in the office and on the stairs, and went to their rooms. The Duke, leaving his grandson at his bedroom door, suggested a bit stiffly that he would "call ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... wood, and Calypso sat at her loom, and sang with a lovely voice. And round about the cave was a grove of alders and poplars and cypresses, wherein many birds, falcons and owls and sea crows, were wont to roost; and all about the mouth of the cave was a vine with purple clusters of grapes; and there were four fountains which streamed four ways through meadows of parsley and violet. Very fair was the place, so that even a god might marvel at it, and Hermes stood and marvelled. Then went he into the ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... Professor says, these School Pills have proved to be a great success. One day while I was making them I happened to drop one of them, and one of Billina's chickens gobbled it up. A few minutes afterward this chick got upon a roost and recited 'The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck' without making a single mistake. Then it recited 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and afterwards 'Excelsior.' You see, the chicken had eaten an ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... turn of work. Ye shall have gay holyday times, and holyday fare, and anything the old man can do, and anything the old man can give to make you merry, he will do, and he will give, because you have come back gallantly, and have not brought dishonour to the roost where ye were hatched—but more than this I will not agree to. Ye would not abide at home, as I desired, and this therefore is no longer a home for you; ye would not be content to be forgers of weapons, but ye must e'en use them too, and ye have ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... cherry-pies, and green peas, and new potatoes, and string beans, and roasting-ears, and all such garden-stuff, and the fresh eggs, broken into the skillet before Speckle gets done cackling, and the cockerels we pick off the roost Saturday evenings (you see, we're thinning 'em out; no sense in keeping all of 'em over winter)—as a result, I say, of all this good eating, and the outdoor life, and the necessity of stirring around a little lively these days we feel pretty good. And yet we get kind of low in our minds, too. The ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... white, and the other brown, very beautiful Loryquets of 2 or 3 Sorts, Pidgeons, Doves, and a few other sorts of small Birds. The Sea or Water fowl are Herns, Whisling Ducks, which perch and, I believe, roost on Trees; Curlews, etc., and not many of these neither. Some of our Gentlemen who were in the Country heard and saw Wild Geese in ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... robbed my roost is sly; he keeps The cover warily; and, now the scent Is cold, the curs that yelp in scandal's pack Bay loud on many faults, but cannot ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by the gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs, they make fine dark shadows when the sun is low. They are also an excellent covert from hawks for many small birds that roost and build in them. Whole flocks perch in them at night, and I have seen three robins' nests in one which was six feet ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... nearer approach attracted their attention and broke the spell, whereupon they both bounded off in different directions. This, I am told by an authority, was a case of neurasthenia, or nerve-paralysis. A not quite similar occurrence was recorded some little time ago. A farmer saw a pheasant go to roost in a tree, standing alone in the field. Presently he saw a fox approach, go to the tree, and look up at the pheasant. After pausing for a moment, regarding the bird, he proceeded to run rapidly round the tree in a narrow circle. This he did for some time, continuing ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... course, were quite right; he had given her plenty of run and ignored her cackle, and now she had come home to roost. There is nothing like a knowledge of farming, and an acquaintance with the habits of domestic animals, to teach a man ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... clambered up into the loft under the high peaked roof, where lay numberless forgotten things covered with the dim dust of years. There a flock of pigeons had made their roost, and flapped noisily out into the sunlight when he pushed open the door from below. Here he hunted among the mouldering things of the past until, oh, joy of joys! in an ancient oaken chest he found a great lot of worm-eaten books, that had ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... all going to roost, and you must wait till morning to see the squabs, and broods of Brahmas and Leghorns. They look like snowballs rolling about after ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Admiralissimo was adjusted at Constantinople; and yet, in spite of these facts, the corsair had taken the very first opportunity which presented itself grossly to insult these men. It is true, as we shall see, that his injurious words came home to roost in the future; but arrogant, conquering, contemptuous, Barbarossa seems to have shouldered his way through life, fearing ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... ship; the gulls were as free as moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of the land, on a day of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost roaring like a battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful voices of the breakers that we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... son Willie, this night, This ae night wi' me; The best hen in a' my roost Sall be ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... her at least six pence at night, until at last she ran away from Screech-Owl and hid in a wood-yard for the night. Next day she was found, taken before a magistrate and sent to a reformatory as a vagrant until she was sixteen. It was a perfect paradise compared to Screech-Owl's miserable roost. But when she came out she fell into the hands of the Ogress who kept the inn they were now in. The clothes she stood in belonged to the Ogress, she owed her for board and lodgings and could not stir from her or she must be taken ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... we went down to the beach to bathe. The trees along the shore were occupied by immense crowds of exemplary sea-fowl, whose regular and primitive habits of life had sent them to roost at this early hour. Notwithstanding their webbed feet, they managed to perch securely among the branches, many of which were so heavily freighted, that they bent almost to the ground ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... but have subsided into the shade; the awkward squads are in bed; even the loungers are gone, the fan-flirting Spanish ladies, the sallow black-eyed children, and the trim white-jacketed dandies. A fife is heard from some craft at roost on the quiet waters somewhere; or a faint cheer from yonder black steamer at the Mole, which is about to set out on some night expedition. You forget that the town is at all like Wapping, and deliver ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... them enough to learn how sagacious and cunning and difficult to stalk they were, always seemed as provocative of excitement as larger game. This big fellow hopped up from limb to limb of the huge dead pine, and he bobbed around as if undecided, and tried each limb for a place to roost. Then he hopped farther up until we lost sight of him in the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... precipices, the condor reappears. From these facts it seems that the condors require perpendicular cliffs. In Chile, they haunt, during the greater part of the year, the lower country near the shores of the Pacific, and at night several roost together in one tree; but in the early part of summer, they retire to the most inaccessible parts of the inner Cordillera, there ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead — I plundered Singapore! I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... best, work only as mere mercenaries. They have not been guilty of great crimes; but it is only because they have not energy of mind to rise to any height of wickedness. They are not hawks or kites: they are only miserable fowls whose flight is not above their dunghill or hen-roost. But they tremble before the authors of these horrors. They admire them at a safe and respectful distance. There never was a mean and abject mind that did not admire an intrepid and dexterous villain. In the bottom ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that will be wisest," said Fritz. "But now let us arrange our bunks and have a bit of something to eat from the little basket the steward put up for us before coming ashore. After that, we must go to roost like the penguins outside, for ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... louder in one place, now lower in another, like the combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly varied for a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hear the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the Merry Men. At that hour there flashed into my mind the reason of the name that they were called. For the noise of them seemed almost mirthful, as it out-topped the other noises of the night; or if not mirthful, yet instinct with a portentous joviality. Nay, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and were never easy out of each other's sight. Prince Zany—that's what Pepper Whitcomb and I christened him one day, much to the disgust of the monkey, who bit a piece out of Pepper's nose—resided in the stable, and went to roost every night on the pony's back, where I usually found him in the morning. Whenever I rode out, I was obliged to secure his Highness the Prince with a stout cord to the fence, he chattering all ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... shouldn't they?" said Nick tolerantly. "Are you getting tired, my chicken? Do you want to go home to roost?" ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Island turkey. Employing these birds for the removal of refuse is a remedy almost as bad as the disease, since the habits of the huge, ungainly, ill-omened creatures are extremely disgusting. Clouds of them roost upon the eaves of the houses, the church belfries, and all exposed balconies, and would invade the patios of the dwellings were they not vigorously driven away and thus taught better manners. The cathedral facade on the plaza is sometimes black ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... after running the risk of catching cold in searching over the house, have this morning been at the expense of new fastenings to the doors and windows. The next time, however, you rise, Richard, to alarm the family, you shall in future roost with the hens or bed ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... every farmer is uplifted, are very shy and cunning; as is well known, they nearly always post a sentinel in some tree top to keep watch while the rest of the flock is feeding in the field below. In the fall and winter, large numbers of them flock, and at night all roost in one piece of woods; some of the "crow roosts" are of vast extent and contain thousands of individuals. Crows nest near the tops of large trees, preferably pines, either in woods or single trees in fields. ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... as sure as I am standing here, and by the looks of things, trying his best to roost in my birdhouse!" The Hermit chuckled as he looked up into the eyes of the animal, who did not seem at ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... light for his pipe. But as soon as he got inside the door the sheep gave him such a butt that he fell head foremost into the hearth. Then the pig began to bite him, and the goose to nip and peck him, and the cock upon the roost to crow and chatter, and as for the hare, he was so frightened that he ran about aloft and on the floor and scratched and scrambled in every corner of ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... a rum 'un, Master Roberts, sir," said Dick, solemnly. "Now, look here, sir, you being a boy like, and not wanted, if I was you, I'd just go down below, get on my perch, and tuck myself up and go to roost where I should ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... rest of the night curled up in the darkest corner, partly behind a box. All the time his nose was filled with the smell of fat hens. Every little while a hen who was being crowded too much on the roost would stir uneasily and protest in a sleepy voice. Just think of what Reddy suffered. Just think how you would feel to be very, very hungry and have right within reach the one thing you like best in all the world to eat and then not dare touch it. Some foolish folks in Reddy's place would have eaten ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess
... Pilgrim's Progress itself, the unreality of the spirits of fear, their secrecy and leniency, is very firmly and wittily told. They scream in their dens, sitting together, I have thought, like fowls in a roost. They come padding after the pilgrim, they show themselves obscurely, swollen by the mist at the corners of the road. They give the sense of being banded together in a numerous ambush, they can deceive eye and ear, and even nose with noisome stenches; ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wouldn't just say you're up to the level of books. But you might rise even to books if you'd cultivate your mind and brain. Well, I think I'll fly up to roost. I've got to take an early start in the morning and clean up on this neck of the woods tomorrow. Good ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... he ever heard me, for he never intermitted a muttered running-fire of the most horrible execrations that I ever listened to even in this hard-swearing country. Whether this ebullition of blasphemy comforted him at the moment I cannot say; but, if "curses come home to roost," a black brood was hatched that night, unless one whole page be blotted out from the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... fact, since I ask for nothing but a little give-and-take, it's annoying when people spoil my sport. Dowthwaite made himself unpleasant about his broken wall, the Askews turned the grouse back, and then I found the Allerby cottage children, ransacking Redmire Wood when the pheasants were going to roost." ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... to their nests. The chickens went to roost. The cows came home from the pasture and stood mooing at the gate. It grew so dark that the people could not see their ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... descend the companion ong route for higher spheres. Sounds like a contradiction that, but ain't so.—See you again when the docks 'as quitted this fond old floating 'earse of ours and took themselves back to their 'ereditary marble 'alls to roost." ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... aware, can repose in a chair, Chickens can roost upon rails; Puppies are able to sleep in a stable, And oysters can slumber in pails. But no one supposes A poor Camel dozes— ANY PLACE ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... continued George, with a bitter oath. "Don't you see what it is? They were billing and cooing this morning; they are billing and cooing now before going to roost. Had we not better both go into the garden, and pay our duty to our mamma and papa?" and he pointed to Mr. Washington, who was taking the widow's hand ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... soldier having a good deal of the machine about him, Harry stands fast, and Chunder pulls up short, grinning rolling his eyes, and twisting his hands about, just for all the world like as if he was robbing a hen-roost, and wringing all the ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... jackal ventures near a house, and perhaps enters a hen-roost, to steal a hen. But in such cases, he often shows himself to be as stupid as he is impudent; for even then, if he hears the yelling of his comrades chasing their game, he forgets himself, and yells as lustily as the rest of them. The result is as might be expected. The inmates of the ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... along, at no very considerable distance from our track. Some indeed there are marked in a Spanish chart; but the frequency of the birds seems to evince, that there are many more than have been hitherto discovered: For the greatest part of the birds we observed were such as are known to roost on shore; and the manner of their appearance sufficiently made out, that they came from some distant haunt every morning, and returned thither again in the evening; for we never saw them early or late; and the hour of their arrival ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... exulting chuckle; "and they'll keep you in the ropes, Mr. Guy; they've got you on your back, Mr. Guy; and I'm going to laugh at you all the way as you go. Ho! ho! ho! See if I don't laugh, till I scares away all your white owls from the roost." ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... with their hard skeleton ringers, trying to tuck it into their mouths; and so you bring them up into blue air, sprawling and astonished, but tenacious. You can put them through their paces where they roost under water, moving the beef about, and seeing them sidle and back on their aimless, Cousin Feenix-like legs: it is a sight to bring a freckle-nosed cousin almost into hysterics. But one day a vivacious girl had committed the offence of boasting too much of her skill in crab-catching, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... live anywhere. I was born to be a bird—to roost on trees." I had considerable difficulty in disentangling the words from his thick speech. He shut his eyes—then ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... girl confined in Chesholm jail, or her scoundrel brother? They remembered him well—like Ishmael of old, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him, the head and instigator of every poaching fray, or hen-roost robbery, every fight and evil deed done in Chesholm. Both brother and sister hated her—Inez Catheron that she had taken her lover from her—Juan Catheron that he had lost her himself. After Sir Victor he was heir-at-law. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... enough to roost in the fall, I expect we'll have to gather that crop with a gun," Hiram told ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... quite happy, and now set forth the beauty and harmony of the world, seen from the loftiness of the divine roost: below all was dark, unjust, sorrowful; seen from on high, it all became clear, luminous, ordered: the world was like the works of a ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the entrance door, and reached by means of a rude flight of steps. There he liked to roll on his straw and rags, whenever he was not busy, or felt especially lazy. On Friday evenings he climbed to his roost very early, before the family assembled for supper, and waited for his cue, which was the breaking-out of table talk after the blessing of the bread. Then Yakub began to clear his throat and kept on working at it until my father ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... for flying officers) tire of trying to be offensive on a patrol, and by now we are varying our rubber-neck searchings with furtive glances at the time, in the hopes that the watch-hands may be in the home-to-roost position. At length the leader heads for the lines, and the lords of the air (more war correspondentese) forget their high estate and ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... me. Our sick friend himself, whom I am sure we are both delighted to welcome back to life, has done it more than once, and made a very fair profit on the transaction. Indeed, from internal evidence, I am strongly of opinion that this present play is a case in point. Well, chickens come home to roost: I adapt from him. What ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... delightful experience can be gained by arranging to go down Bass's Trail, cross on his cable ferry, go up the Shinumo Trail to Powell Plateau, watch the herds of protected and preserved deer and antelope, look longingly upon the succulent and delicious pine-hens that live upon pinion nuts and roost in the branches of the pine trees of the Kaibab forest, and pleasantly saunter along out to Point Sublime. The guide will point out to you—or he is no guide—the spot where in 1873 Thomas Moran sat ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... sure enough double-in-brass roost," says I. "Don't say anything that sounds like ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... Ezra had exclaimed, after returning from a drive to Eastboro village, "I give you my word, Seth, they dummed nigh et me alive. They covered the horse all up, so that he looked for all the world like a sheep, woolly. I don't mind moskeeters in moderation, but when they roost on my eyelids and make 'em so heavy I can't open 'em, then I'm ready to swear. But I couldn't get even that relief, because every time I unbattened my mouth a million or so flew in and choked me. That's what I said—a million. Some moskeeters are fat, but these don't ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Sometimes the whole tract swung to one side, like the tail of a live serpent; sometimes, for a glimpse, it would all disappear and then boil up again. What it was I had no guess, which for the time increased my fear of it; but I now know it must have been the roost or tide-race, which had carried me away so fast and tumbled me about so cruelly, and at last, as if tired of that play, had flung out me and the spare yard upon its ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... reminded me the most directly of the fact that every region has its peculiar animal world, was that of the gallinaceous birds. The most frequent is the Cigana, to be seen in groups of fifteen or twenty, perched upon trees overhanging the water, and feeding upon berries. At night they roost in pairs, but in the daytime are always in larger companies. In their appearance they have something of the character of both the pheasant and peacock, and yet do not closely resemble either. It is a curious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... name is wrongly spelt in the "Origin of Species."]) experiments on seeds "in a box in the actual sea.") that my observations on the effects of sea-water have been confirmed. I still suspect that the legs of birds which roost on the ground may be an efficient means; but I was interrupted when going to make trials on this subject, and have ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... a little-girl, looked up from her knitting. "The hens are all quite snug, mother, Fluffy and Biddy and the rest. I peeped in just now, after they were gone to roost." ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... Eliza suggested that they should go out to the poultry-yard and get a quill. But it was already dark. They had, however, two lanterns, and the little boys borrowed the neighbors'. They set out in procession for the poultry-yard. When they got there, the fowls were all at roost, so they could look at ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... seldom feel much moral compunction about a war-policy. Lastly, among the causes of the war must be reckoned one which has received far too little attention from social and political philosophers—the tenacious and half-unconscious memories of a race. Injustice comes home to roost, sometimes after an astonishingly long interval. The disaffection of Catholic Ireland would be quite unintelligible without the massacres of the sixteenth century and the unjust trade-legislation of the seventeenth and eighteenth. The bitterness of the working ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... could easily pretend that he had originally made an honest mistake and was no longer positive of the defendant's identity, in which case when the grand jury threw out the case nobody would ever know the reason and no chickens would come home to roost ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... me with your charity and your allegories," says the wife angrily; "I tell you they are my relations, not yours, and they shall not roost here; they shall ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... our garden in Bailleul one evening at the end of April reading "The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne," three aeroplanes like great birds volplaned slowly down from the clouds—coming home to roost—until they were within 100 feet of the ground, just clearing the house tops as they dropped into their nesting ground on the other side of the town. I could see the ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... directions to his friend. "Duck back into the restaurant, Bob. Get a pocketful of dry rice from the Chink. Trail those birds to their nest and find where they roost. Then stick around like a burr. Scatter rice behind you, and I'll drift along later. First off, I got to stay and talk with Miss Joyce. And, say, take along a rope. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... Phineas, chewing some checkerberry-leaves as he spoke; "but I may have the fun of looking on, I suppose. But see, these fellows are kinder debating down there, and looking up, like hens when they are going to fly up on to the roost. Hadn't thee better give 'em a word of advice, before they come up, just to tell 'em handsomely they'll be ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... as he came upon he gave a wide berth except at night, and then he only approached them stealthily for such provender as he might filch. Before the week was up he had become an expert chicken thief, being able to rob a roost as quietly as the most finished carpetbagger on the sunny side of Mason and ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... chapter we pointed out that war is a characteristic feature of a civilization that has passed the top-point of its expansion and begun to decline. Then the chickens come home to roost. Civil war, colonial wars and wars between imperial rivals follow each other, creating emergencies in which demand for certain strategic goods and services rises steeply, with no corresponding increase in supply. Prices increase. The common defense requires ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... timid. In the evening, when he is put to roost in a close and dark room, he is afraid of the shadow of his perch that is cast by the light we carry in our hand; he eyes it, and utters a low cry, which stops when the candle is blown out and he cannot see the shadow any longer. He stands in dread ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... things there are, no doubt you know, To which a fox is used: A rooster that is bound to crow, A crow that's bound to roost, And whichsoever he espies He tells the ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... concern, and eventually flew away with an abstracted air, as if he had been another bird entirely. The paper got into a manzanita bush, where it remained suspended until the evening, when, being dislodged by a passing wild-cat on its way to Mulrady's hen-roost, it gave that delicately sensitive marauder such a turn that she fled ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... theory that the cabby's singleness of purpose and concentrated view of life are the results of the hansom's peculiar construction. The cock-of-the-roost sits aloft like Jupiter on an unsharable seat, holding your fate between two thongs of inconstant leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a toy mandarin, you sit like a rat in a trap—you, before whom butlers cringe on solid land—and must squeak upward through a slit in your ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... least a third of the year; fire, without which we could not bake a morsel of bread, and would have to eat our meat raw; fire, which lights up the night for us, and without which we should have to go to bed when the hens go to roost; fire, which subdues metals, and without which we should have neither iron, nor copper, nor silver, nor anything that is manufactured from those materials; fire, without which, in short, human industry could not rise to much higher results than that of the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... sore over the things that Felicity had said to him when Jimmy Patterson was thought lost, and he began the day with a flatly expressed determination that he was not going to let Felicity rule the roost. ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in point of temperature, and the soil being fertile exceedingly, the whole land is covered with a dense and rank vegetation. I have yet to find a square smig of it that is open ground, or one that is not the lair of some savage beast, the haunt of some venomous reptile, or the roost of some offensive bird. Crackers and Coons alike are long extinct, and these are ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... window, or to talk to some one opposite to it. He, of course, looks up; Pompilia looks down; the neighbours say, 'What of that?' The Count is uncomfortable, but he is only laughed at for his pains; the fox prowls round the hen-roost undisturbed. He wakes one morning, after a drugged sleep, to find the house ransacked, and Pompilia gone, and everyone able to inform him that she has gone with Caponsacchi, and to Rome. He pursues ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... we? Well, well, I daresay it's comfortable enough; so the sun shines in mornin's, thet's the most I care for. You'll make any kind o' house pooty to look at inside, an' I reckon we needn't roost on the fences outside, a-lookin' at it, any more'n we choose to. It does look, for all the world though, like 'Bijah Jenkins's old yaller barn; 'n' thet there jog's jest the way he jined on his cow-shed. I declare it's too redicklus." ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... at Louis's school. And as he worked, he talked, delightfully, easily, dramatically. He made the old life of Eden Valley pass before us. We heard the brisk tongue of my grandmother from the kitchen, that of Aunt Jen ruling as much of the roost as was permitted to her, but constantly made aware of herself ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... filled the air; it was the continuous plunge of a cascade somewhere near at hand among the mountains. The air struck chill, but tasted good and vigorous in the nostrils - a fine, dry, old mountain atmosphere. I was dead sleepy, but I returned to roost with a grateful mountain feeling ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were winging over toward their great roost in the pines when I turned toward the town. They, too, had had good picking along the creek flats and ditches of the meadows. Their powerful wing-beats and constant play told of full crops and no fear for the night, already softly gray across the white silent fields. ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... extreme end of a village a Fox one day went to have a peep at a hen-roost. He had the bad luck to fall into a well, where he swam first to this side, and then to that side, but could not get out with all his pains. At last, as chance would have it, a poor Goat came to the same place to seek for some drink. "So ho! friend Fox," said he, "you quaff it off there ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... the hour was the desire to put down by a strong hand the depredations of these lawless robber hordes. Not a house in the place but had suffered from them, not a farmer but had complaints to make of hen roost robbed or beasts driven off in the night. Others had darker tales to tell; and Will Ives clenched his fists and vowed that he would be glad indeed to see the day when he and Simon Dowsett might meet ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... makes me nigh crazy. I'll go out with a card of matches some night and burn 'em down. Damn pirates! Callin' themselves good Cape Cod names—names that don't belong to 'em! Baker's Bazaar! Ugh! Rheinstein's Robbers' Roost would be nigher the truth. . . . Say, Zoeth, we mustn't hint a word to Mary-'Gusta about this. We've got cash enough on hand to pay her clearance charges up there ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... day is done, and darkness From the wing of night is loosed, As a feather is wafted downward, From a chicken going to roost. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... has made the same remark to me, that the aboriginal parent must have been a species which roosted and built its nest on rocks; and I may add that it must have been a social bird. For all the domestic races are highly social, and none are known to build or habitually to roost on trees. The awkward manner in which some pigeons, kept by me in a summer-house near an old walnut-tree, occasionally alighted on the barer branches, was {181} evident.[317] Nevertheless, Mr. R. Scot Skirving informs me that he often saw crowds of pigeons in ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... rude wolf wool chew you soon rule could foot crew to noon tool would good brew shoe whom school should hood drew prove food spool woman wood threw broad whose roof shook stood screw moon tomb broom crook pull strew goose stoop roost hook bush shrewd took full brook ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... ebbery white man in de county 'cept about ten or twelve was inter it, an' dey wuz a gwine ter clean out nigger rule h'yer, shore. He sed de fust big thing they got on hand wuz ter break up dis buzzard-roost h'yer at Red Wing, an' he 'llowed dat wouldn't be no hard wuk kase dey'd got some pretty tough tings on Nimbus an" ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... they get big enough to roost in the fall, I expect we'll have to gather that crop with a gun," ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... foot of the hillock. The weathercock on the top of the church was glistening such a bright gold, that the wonder was how it could keep from breaking out into a crow that would rouse all the cocks of the neighbourhood, even although they were beginning to get sleepy, and thinking of going to roost. It was time for the cattle, Elsie's cow included, to go home; for, although the latter had not had such plenty to eat from as the rest, she had been at it all day, and had come upon several very nice little patches of clover, that had overflowed the edges of the fields into the levels ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... war at last, and I was not long in making acquaintance with it. I awoke to find, by the light of the lantern swung from the roost overhead, the dozen men in the loft awake and pulling on their boots. They had lain in their sodden clothes all night: but of their boots, I found, they were as careful as dandies, and to grease them would hoard up a lump of fat even while their stomachs craved ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in drill, and a British soldier having a good deal of the machine about him, Harry stands fast, and Chunder pulls up short, grinning rolling his eyes, and twisting his hands about, just for all the world like as if he was robbing a hen-roost, and wringing ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... only thing to do with an injury is to forgive it. Would revenge wipe out the wrong or in any way solve anything? No, there would only be one more wrong done in the world, to go on in ever-widening circles of hatred and misery. Curses, like chickens, come home to roost, and "getting even" ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... pots are fastened is nailed or screwed to a post or pole 10 or 12 ft. in height. The board is braced with lath or similar strips of wood, making a framework suitable for a roost. In designing the roost, the lath can be arranged to make it quite attractive, or the braces may be of twigs and branches of a tree to make a rustic effect. —Contributed by William ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... He was a lord ful fat and in good poynt; His eyn steepe, and rollyng in his heede, That stemde as a forneys of a leede;{36} His boots souple, his hors in gret estat. Now certeinly he was a fair prelat; He was not pale as a for-pyned goost. A fat swan lovede he best of eny roost. His palfrey was as broun as is a berye. A FRERE there was, a wantown and a merye, A lymytour,{37} a ful solempn man. In alle the ordres foure{38} is noon that can So moche of daliaunce and fair langage. He hadde i-mad ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... long, dingy arcades lay huddled and lifeless in the night, black and threatening against a cloudy sky. Presently, among the odd nocturnal sounds of a great city, the vague yelping of a dog, the scream of a locomotive, the furtive step of a prowler, the shrill cry of a feathered watchman from the roost, the ear caught a continuous rumble in the distance that changed as it grew nearer into the bumping and ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... continued, "if a fellow could but know the rights of the matter; if he could be sure that any good was to come from it all." Then turning his head and glancing at the western sky: "Anyway, I wish that blamed sun would hurry up and go to roost. Perhaps they'll stop ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... running-fire of the most horrible execrations that I ever listened to even in this hard-swearing country. Whether this ebullition of blasphemy comforted him at the moment I cannot say; but, if "curses come home to roost," a black brood was hatched that night, unless one whole page be blotted out from the register ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... to enable the bird to search the earth for food, or to fix itself more securely on the branches of trees, is evident, as they neither scratch the ground nor roost on trees. The lark makes its nest generally in grass fields, where it is liable to be injured either by cattle grazing over it, or by the mower. In case of alarm from either these or other causes, the parent birds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... discomfort and danger of our body, and the vexation of our soul! Pardon for such as they! Dalton we might pardon, we have reasons for it; but his ship—it shall burn upon the high seas, as an example to all like it; and, as to his crew,—why not a scoundrel could be found robbing a hen-roost who would not declare himself one of Hugh Dalton's gang! To send you, too, as ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... remaining in the house anxiously awaiting the result. After some time she heard the shotgun go off, and in a few minutes the farmer entered the house. 'What luck had you?' said she. 'I hid myself behind the woodpile,' said the old man, 'with the shot-gun pointed toward the hen-roost, and before long there appeared, not one skunk, but seven. I took aim, blazed away, and killed one—and he raised such a fearful smell I concluded it was best to let the other six alone.'" The Senators retired, and nothing more was heard from ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... And let me tell thee, Beauseant, a wise proverb The Arabs have,—"Curses are like young chickens, [Solemnly.] And still come home to roost!" ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Barton,' she exclaimed, further manifesting her maternal instincts by applying her apron to her offspring's nose. 'He's al'ys a-findin' faut wi' him, and a-poundin' him for nothin'. Let him goo an' eat his roost goose as is a-smellin' up in our noses while we're a-swallering them greasy broth, an' let ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... forgotten them, the Admiral sent for me. It was to show me, now without emotion, the two little visitors who had gone to roost in his room, perched upon a slender silken cord above his bed. They nestled closely together, two little balls of feathers, touching and almost merged one in the other, and slept without the slightest fear, sure of our pity. And those little Belgians sleeping side by side made me think of the two ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to MM. Marten's (381/4. For Marten's read Martins' [the name is wrongly spelt in the "Origin of Species."]) experiments on seeds "in a box in the actual sea.") that my observations on the effects of sea-water have been confirmed. I still suspect that the legs of birds which roost on the ground may be an efficient means; but I was interrupted when going to make trials on this subject, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... commentary thereon, here and there an unmusical chatter or mew:—truest, tragicalest Humbug conceivable by the mind of man or ape! They made no use of their souls; and so have lost them. Their worship on the Sabbath now is to roost there, with unmusical screeches, and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Those that are to be kept for sale or use as breeding birds should be early separated from the pullets. Coops for growing chickens, especially Leghorns, cannot be put among trees, as the birds will learn to roost in the trees, causing no end of trouble to get them broken ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... people packed into this space like herrings in a barrel, and many merry evenings prolonged there until five bells, when the lights were ruthlessly extinguished and all must go to roost. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up; they had to! There! Ma Sills certinly did rule the roost, and no mistake. She'd been a widder ever since the boys were a year old, so she had to do for herself and them, and she done it. She was a master hand; ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... lie in my lady's bower, (Oh! weary mother, drive the cows to roost;) They faintly droop for a little hour; My lady's head droops like ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... troops were received in America with boundless enthusiasm. Their discipline was admirable. Their respect for the rights of property was such, that not a barn, orchard or hen-roost was robbed. ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... is now known that the battle was only skirmish. The rebels attacked a hen-roost in search ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... had to stop for breath; and her neighbors all looked at one another, feeling undecided whether to own they were wrong, or to put Mrs. Wing down. Every one twittered and chirped, and made a great noise; but no one would give up, and all went to roost in a great state of uncertainty. But, the next day, it became evident that Mrs. Wing was right; for Major Bumble-bee came buzzing in to tell them that old Daddy Winter's hut was empty, and his white head had been seen in the sunny porch of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... enough double-in-brass roost," says I. "Don't say anything that sounds like contract, ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... she was on the road she would feel safer. But while she walked the gray of evening came on; then somewhere in the distance a coyote barked. Her courage began to depart, as the dusk deepened; it seemed to her as if all the loneliness in the world had come home to roost. It was no use to watch for the fence now; it would apprise her of its presence when she came to it. Regardless of the possibility of running into its iron barbs, she walked faster; at times she ran. A star came ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... however bright it burns For what it holds roost fond, Is tainted by its unconcern For ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... time he clambered up into the loft under the high peaked roof, where lay numberless forgotten things covered with the dim dust of years. There a flock of pigeons had made their roost, and flapped noisily out into the sunlight when he pushed open the door from below. Here he hunted among the mouldering things of the past until, oh, joy of joys! in an ancient oaken chest he found ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... had finished, they put out the light, and each one looked out for a suitable and comfortable sleeping-place. The donkey lay down on the dunghill, the dog behind the door, the cat on the hearth near the warm ashes, and the cock set himself on the hen-roost; and, as they were all tired with their long journey, they soon went to sleep. Soon after midnight, as the robbers in the distance could see that no more lights were burning in the house, and as all seemed quiet, ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... dead vulture was lying near the buffalo carcase; this had been killed, probably, by the cub; the fact showed that the buffalo had been attacked that morning during daylight, and not during the preceding night, when the vultures would have been at roost. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... frowning slightly, "what is the good of going over that now? Uncle Tom has been in his grave for the last six years, hasn't he? and Aunt Susan rules the roost. It's Aunt Susan we have got to think about. What did she say in ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... No doubt, too, Solomon was disliked by his brethren as the child of Bathsheba, and the shame of David's crime was an obstacle in his younger son's way. Thus, as ever, his evil deeds came home to roost, and the poisonous seed which he had sown grew up and waved, a bitter harvest, which he had to reap. Repentance and forgiveness did not neutralise the natural consequences of his sin. Nor will they do so for us. God often leaves them to be experienced, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... cracked voices cried unmelodiously from all the minaret tops. Immediately, as if it were their signal, all the crows arose from the town, hovered around in batches for a moment, chattering, and flew away up the hill to roost in the trees round the hospital ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... know of. When the young birds were old enough, he would bring them home with him, feed them, and teach them to fly about the cottage unconfined by cages. One of his blackbirds became so tame, that, after flying about the doors all day, and in and out of the cottage, it would take up its roost upon the bed-head at night. And most singular of all, the bird would disappear in the spring and summer months, when it was supposed to go into the woods to pair and rear its young, after which it would reappear at the cottage, and resume its social ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... quarreled for nothing, they saw; And when they had fed, "Neighbor Hen," the pig said, "Won't you stay here and roost in my straw?" ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... gathered when she made me take that oath. I suppose she's head girl and that's why she rules the roost? Is she decent or does she keep you petrified? I don't know whether I'm expected to say 'Bow-wow,' or to listen in respectful humility when she deigns ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... strolled about among the saloons and gambling-dens, watched the playing, but neither drank nor gambled, and at last, tiring of looking on, went to his roost and turned in for the night, an object of curiosity to all, yet also of admiration, for a man who would volunteer to drive the coach over that trail was one to command respect in ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... beginning it was not so simple. Alas! for that first story of mine—the raven I sent you of my ark and never saw again. Unlike the proverbial curse, it did not come home to roost; it stayed where I had sent it. The only thing I ever heard of it again was a polite letter from the editor in whose office it lay, telling me I could have it back if I enclosed stamps to the amount of twopence halfpenny, otherwise he should feel it his unpleasant duty to 'consign it to the ...
— How I write my novels • Mrs. Hungerford
... society leaders? In the matter of dress also are they not slaves, abjectly following new-fangled fashions imported from Paris? In domestic circles are not many husbands hen-pecked by their wives, because they, and not the men, rule the roost? Are not many women practically governed by their husbands, whose word is their law? The eager hunger for "the almighty dollar" leads most Americans to sacrifice their time, health, and liberty in the acquisition ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... wide stairs that led from the great hall. For while in summer the shadows on some vine-covered porch swallowed the lovers, in winter the stairs were generally the trysting-place—and the top step the one most sought—because there was nobody behind to see. This was the roost for which Kate and Harry scampered, and there they intended to sit until the music ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... tell, he proved himself as great a thief as he was a genealogist among them. Many a time the unfortunate foxes from some neighboring cover were cursed and banned, when, if the truth had been known, the only fox that despoiled the roost was Raymond-na-hattha. One thing, however, was certain, that unless the cock was thoroughly game he might enjoy his liberty and ease long enough without molestation from Raymond. We had well nigh forgotten to ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... probably cannot! In the Pilgrim's Progress itself, the unreality of the spirits of fear, their secrecy and leniency, is very firmly and wittily told. They scream in their dens, sitting together, I have thought, like fowls in a roost. They come padding after the pilgrim, they show themselves obscurely, swollen by the mist at the corners of the road. They give the sense of being banded together in a numerous ambush, they can deceive eye ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... friendship I formed in my youth," observed the former; "but I tell thee, Wenlock, if this trial goes against those twelve honest men, I will forswear my country, and go and seek thy fortune and mine in some other land, where knaves do not, as here, 'rule the roost.'" When, however, the twelve judges gave an almost unanimous verdict in favour of the jurymen, Christison agreed that, after all, there were more honest men in the country than he had feared was ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... few fish out of the multitudes which swarmed in the streams, so it was hardly worth while to waste powder and shot on the vast flocks of pigeons which visited New Jersey in those days. When they came to roost in the forests, they could be knocked down with poles and stones; and thousands and thousands of them were thus obtained by the men and boys, and very good eating ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... desert, Mr. Muir pointed to a lofty plateau toward which we were tending,—"Robbers' Roost,"—where sheep-stealers hie themselves, commanding the view for hundreds of miles in every direction. I wish I could make vivid the panorama we saw from this vantage-ground—the desert in the foreground, and far away against the sky the curiously carved ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Minister to the Court of Madrid, that wonderful Spanish city with its Court so full of interest and beauty. She had been learning about it in her history. But this old house was not grand, only in its splendid elms and maples and lindens and tall arbor-vitaes. Wolfert's Roost was almost hidden by them; but you could catch glimpses of its curious roof, full of quaint corners and projections, and the old-fashioned stone mansion said to be modelled after the cocked hat of Peter the Headstrong. Its low stories were full of nooks and angles. There were ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... though alive, yet not a breath of air was stirring. His wonder at the beautiful spectacle was so great, that he ceased moving the paddle and drifted with the current toward the snowy looking tree. When opposite, he saw it was a roost for some sort of water fowl. He shouted and a cloud of white heron rose in the air ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... farther imaginings do we greet the day, and how variously! Our eyes do not require a visual picture of the lone wild turkey on his cypress roost to know that he is ruffling his feathers, craning his neck inquisitively downward in all directions, before chancing to descend to earth and breakfast; nor need we see the panther skulking from his lair to know that he has stopped to lick his paw and pass ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... end of a village a Fox one day went to have a peep at a hen-roost. He had the bad luck to fall into a well, where he swam first to this side, and then to that side, but could not get out with all his pains. At last, as chance would have it, a poor Goat came to the same place to seek for some drink. "So ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... in Dutch, and of which he gave me the best interpretation he was able; The general purport of it was, that he had heard a letter had been sent to me, charging him, in conjunction with the king of Bony, with a design to cut us off: That the letter was altogether false, exculpating himself with the roost solemn protestations, and requiring the letter to be delivered up, that the writer might be brought to such punishment as he deserved. It is scarcely necessary to say, that I did not deliver up the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... abroad from its eyrie, and the cries of whole clouds of sea-birds which inhabit the islets; and all these sounds are mingled and multiplied by the strong echoes, till they become a din as loud as that of a city. Even at night, when the flocks are in the fold, and the birds at roost, and the echoes themselves seem to be asleep, there is occasionally a sweet music heard, too soft for even the listening ear to catch by day. Every breath of summer wind that steals through the pine-forests ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... and a heavy thud informed the scouts that the bullet was fatal! Instantly, however, there was such a commotion in the leaves, and such a Bedlam of screeching! Finally a great flock of crows swept out of the high tree and flew away to find a less dangerous roost. ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... contented sigh. "New York was very grand and rich, but I'm glad to be back in this queer, shabby old house. Aunt Jemima asked all about everything, Mother—whether you had left the stuffed horse's head on the wall, whether the turkeys still tried to roost on the front porch, what you had done with father's old servants, especially Mahaly—she seemed to be particularly interested in Mahaly, for some reason or other. I told her everything was just as it had ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... the sounds of day died away, and the family and our servants gone to roost, than a pack of jackals set up that plaintive and mournful wail by which they seem to announce to the world that they are in a starving condition. They came so close to the village that all the dogs in it set up a furious barking. This woke the baby, of whose ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... used to love to hear it. There were great flocks of them and millions of passenger pigeons. Their call of "pigie! pigie!" was very companionable on that lonely prairie. Sometimes when they were flying to roost they would darken the sun, there were such numbers of them. Geese and ducks were very numerous, too. Black birds were so thick they were a menace to the growing crops. I used to shoot them when I ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... America. Every farmer knows it to be an industrious scavenger, devouring at all times the putrid or decomposing flesh of carcasses. They are found in flocks, not only flying and feeding in company, but resorting to the same spot to roost; nesting also in communities; depositing their eggs on the ground, on rocks, or in hollow logs and stumps, usually in thick woods or in a sycamore grove, in the bend or fork of a stream. The nest is frequently built in a tree, or in the cavity of a sycamore stump, though a favorite ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... and even the horses whinnied a little, though they were not what you might call children's pets, being broncos, and more apt to take a kick at you than to try to throw you a kiss. The chickens had gone to roost and didn't have much to say. They refused to come down for their supper, but the horses and the cow were very glad to get theirs. Then I milked the cow, told them all good-night, made everything about the barn as snug as I could, and shouldered my way through ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... conquest, and a ship of war having made her appearance, led the French to imagine that there was something strange going on. Indeed they expected a fleet as well as ourselves, and this arrival brought them out of their trenches, as thick as midges; they appeared to us like so many pigeons upon a roost! whilst they were gaping at us in such an exposed position, they received a salute from the whole line of our guns, extending from Cape Diamond down to the Barrack Bastion, and yet they went off almost like a single ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Dowthwaite made himself unpleasant about his broken wall, the Askews turned the grouse back, and then I found the Allerby cottage children, ransacking Redmire Wood when the pheasants were going to roost." ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... craws on the brows of Ben-Connal, He kens of his bed in a sweet mossy hame; The eagle that soars o'er the cliffs of Clan-Ronald, Unawed and unhunted his eyrie can claim; The solan can sleep on the shelve of the shore, The cormorant roost on his rock of the sea, But, ah! there is one whose hard fate I deplore, Nor house, ha', nor hame in his country has he: The conflict is past, and our name is no more— There 's nought left but ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... old mutton, fed on the fragrant herbage of the mountains, that might vie with venison in juice and flavour; my delicious veal, fattened with nothing but the mother's milk, that fills the dish with gravy; my poultry from the barn-door, that never knew confinement, but when they were at roost; my rabbits panting from the warren; my game fresh from the moors; my trout and salmon struggling from the stream; oysters from their native banks; and herrings, with other sea fish, I can eat in four hours after they are taken — My sallads, roots, and potherbs, my own garden yields in ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... of a wall was not the aim of Mr Vladimir's menaces, but the production of a moral effect. With much trouble and distress on Mr Verloc's part the effect might be said to have been produced. When, however, most unexpectedly, it came home to roost in Brett Street, Mr Verloc, who had been struggling like a man in a nightmare for the preservation of his position, accepted the blow in the spirit of a convinced fatalist. The position was gone through ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Tennyson was fond of quoting this line as one of his roost successful individual lines. Its ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... They won't sit up after midnight. They have taken to sleeping out of doors, on porches and pergolas. Some, I understand, merely roost on plain wooden bars. They rise early. They take deep breathing. They bathe in ice water. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... women wear a single garment like a petticoat, made of pelican skin; the children are naked. Not far from Tiburon, which is about thirty miles long by fifteen miles wide, there is a smaller island where pelicans roost in vast numbers. The Seris go at night and with sticks knock over as many birds ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... thirds of the group were barren rock, inhabited only by clak-claks and creatures closer to true Terran birds in that they wore a body plumage which resembled feathers, though their heads were naked and leathery. And, Shann noted, the clak-claks and the birds did not roost on the same islands, each choosing their own particular home while the other species did not ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... as a rule Aren't looked on as man-killers, and although I'd rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep Under it all, his door sealed up and lost, Than the man fighting it to keep above it, Yet think of the small birds at roost and not In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are? Their bulk in water would be frozen rock In no time out to-night. And yet to-morrow They will come budding boughs from tree to tree Flirting their wings and saying Chickadee, As if not ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... ear, and he shouted. Two sportsmen were returning from the Upper Lakes, and right welcome was the answer they returned to his call. He was glad enough to be released from his rock, upon which, as he said, 'he had made up his mind that he should be compelled to roost, like a turkey on the ridge of a barn, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... New York every two weeks to see a show,' says the farmer, hanging up the receiver. 'I catch the eighteen-hour flyer at Indianapolis, spend ten hours in the heyday of night on the Yappian Way, and get home in time to see the chickens go to roost forty-eight hours later. Oh, the pristine Hubbard squasherino of the cave-dwelling period is getting geared up some for the annual meeting of the Don't-Blow-Out-the-Gas Association, don't ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... "days." For one night his mother came home with a fat hen slung across her shoulders. She had been down to Farmer Green's hen- house, right in the middle of the night, when Farmer Green and his family were asleep; and she had snatched one of the sleeping hens off the roost and stolen away with it without ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... no doubt you know, To which a fox is used: A rooster that is bound to crow, A crow that's bound to roost, And whichsoever he espies He tells the ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... post-office, he justified himself in putting writing off, sometimes several weeks, because it ruined a whole day and tired out a horse to mail a letter. Hardships were enjoyed. They thought nothing of spending a whole night going from one turkey roost to another, if half a dozen fine birds were the reward. They would saddle up in the evening and ride ten miles, sleeping out all night by a fire in order to stalk a buck at daybreak, having located ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... for the most part, like ostrich-eggs; the giver never knows what is hatched out of them. But once in a thousand times they act as curses are said to,—come home to roost. Give them often enough, until it gets to be a mechanical business, and, some day or other, you will get caught warranting somebody's ice not to melt in any climate, or somebody's razors to be safe in the hands of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... have not been guilty of great crimes; but it is only because they have not energy of mind to rise to any height of wickedness. They are not hawks or kites: they are only miserable fowls whose flight is not above their dunghill or hen-roost. But they tremble before the authors of these horrors. They admire them at a safe and respectful distance. There never was a mean and abject mind that did not admire an intrepid and dexterous villain. In the bottom of their hearts they believe such hardy miscreants ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... remember that a basket of eggs in the cabin were hatched in a few minutes, and looking up from a book I was reading, I saw a whole brood of chickens and ducks squattering about the deck, not knowing where they'd come from, or what to do with themselves. The chickens, however, soon went to roost in a corner, for it was too hot to keep awake, and the ducks waddled up on deck, and were making the best of their way over the vessel's side into the element in which they delight, when we turned them into a water-butt, which contented ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Peter had said, "and you can bet your boots no jailbird will ever roost on it if he thinks twice. And it's just that sort of thing that makes a ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... to you, George, that one of the most uncomfortable things in the world must be to outlive your age? To have all the reforms of your boyish liberalism coming home to roost, just as you are settling down ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... a place!" repeated Cabot. "It's enough to give anybody the mulligrubs. Why in the world do you come over here and—and go to roost by yourself? Do you actually ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... so sure of that. Trust a woman to find a place where she can't ruin her hat. My word for it, Cecil, she's found a safe roost. I say, by Jove!" The duke was staring more intently than ever at the windows far above. "I have it! Isn't it rather odd that a house should be lighted so brilliantly at this hour ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of the land, on a day of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost roaring, like a battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful voices of the breakers that we call ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... supposing there was any on the island, had taken the eggs, it would not have been so careful to hide the egg-shells. So, this morning, I fastened up the door of the hen-house, and only left open the little sliding door, by which the fowls go in to roost; and then, after you were up, I watched behind the trees, and saw Tommy come out, and go to the hen-house. He tried the door, and finding it fast, crept into the hen-house by the little sliding-door. As soon as he was in I let down the slide, and fastened it ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Bedloe,—he'll get called in, he'll come home to roost like the rest of them," said Mr. Plimpton, cheerfully. "The people can't govern themselves,—only Bedloe doesn't know it. Some day he'll find ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dat's de way turkey buzzards does. Dey pukes on folks to keep dem away, and you can't go near kaise it be's so nasty; but dem buzzards don't waste nothing. Little young buzzards looks like down till dey gits over three days old. You can go to a buzzard roost and see for yourself, but you sho better stay out'n de way of de old buzzard's puke. Dey sets around de little ones and keeps everything off ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... Love, Unto thy Hinde, thy Mullet and thy Dove, Who neither joys in pasture, house nor streams, The substance gone, O me, these are but dreams, Together at one Tree, O let us brouse, And like two Turtles roost within one house. And like the Mullets in one River glide, Let's still remain one till death divide. Thy loving Love and Dearest Dear, At home, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... person at the head of the Militia Department known as Lieut.-General Sam Hughes, K.C.B. But there was no longer in Canada any such man as old Sam Hughes. The Fate chickens hatched in 1914 were coming home to roost. For two years the Government had carried on two wars, one with the Kaiser Wilhelm, the other with Kaiser Sam. It had to be determined that whatever defects government may have because it is a democracy—even such democracy as was left in 1916—it is bigger ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... seasons. They've pinched hard for the child's poor little outfit. He's got into debt for it. He's a Britisher, and has got two brothers fighting. Very dubious, dark children have been admitted already, as presumably Dutch. Dutch and colonials rule the roost here. And to leave Christianity alone, where does British Imperialism come in? It's risking spoiling a life, and the life ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... wall of my house about it. Here, where there are never less than eight or ten boats lying for full three months, the loss to the fellaheen is serious, and our Consul Mustapha A'gha is afraid to say anything. I have given my neighbours permission to call the pigeons mine, as they roost in flocks on my roof, and to go out and say that the Sitt objects to her poultry being shot, especially as I have had them shot off my ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... was dark and still as they approached it. No welcoming light in the dining-room windows, no open door, no shrill voice demanding to know where the wandering brother had been "all this everlastin' time." Even the hens had gone to roost. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was made, but the thieves did not turn honest,—the scheme still shows the mark of the burglar's tools. Sins, like chickens, come home to roost. The South paid a fearful price for the wrong of negro slavery; in some form or other it will doubtless reap the fruits of this ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... she continued, beginning to unload the large basket—"dar's a tukky an' two chickuns offen my own precious roost; nor likewise beholden to ole mis for dem nyder. An' dar! dar's sassidges and blood puddin's out'n our own dear pig as me an' ole man Jov'al ris an' kilt ourselves; an' in course no ways beholden to ole mis'," she concluded, arranging these edibles ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... most perfect indifference, never looking on them to lust after them, as I could see, and never touching an egg or a feather. So excellent was his reputation that I would have trusted him in the hen-roost in the dark without counting the hens. In short, he was domesticated, and I was fond of him and very proud of him, exhibiting him to all our visitors as an example of what affectionate treatment would do in subduing the brute ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Behind the back door stood a common pine bedstead, with an enormous bed upon it. How any bedstead held such a bed was remarkable; for Phillis believed there was a virtue in feathers even in the hottest weather, and she would rather have gone to roost on the nearest tree than to have slept on any thing else. The quilt was of a domestic blue and white, her own manufacture, and the cases to the pillows were very white and smooth. A little, common trundle ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... coming to see why Manuello doesn't show up with the cows," remarked the Captain, "we don't want to stir up this hen roost as we've got other chicken to ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... that afternoon it began to snow and it forgot to stop. He had hard work to get home and still harder to get out and attend to the little stock. The chickens, he found, had had the sense to go to roost before time; both Brownie and the cat were safe indoor; they could look out for themselves, but the gentle, fawn-like Jersey (quite a different animal from the wild-eyed beast of three years agone) had expectations, and she must needs ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... each farm had its two crows, either as guardians of the farm—for two crows implied good luck—or as if they were located by couples in various places, which places became their feeding ground and homes. This, however, is not true of rooks, which feed in flocks and roost ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... ferry-boat, and took twelve men with him; and Thorarin, his brother-in-law, and Osk, Thorstein's daughter, and Hild, her daughter, who was three years old, went with them too. Thorstein fell in with a high south-westerly gale, and they sailed up towards the roosts, and into that roost which is called Coal-chest-Roost, which is the biggest of the currents in Broadfirth. [Sidenote: The wreck] They made little way sailing, chiefly because the tide was ebbing, and the wind was not favourable, the weather ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... to with Care and Dispatch, etc., etc.," so read the sign. The house was situated in "Phinney's Lane," the crooked little byway off "Cross Street," between the "Shore Road" at the foot of the slope and the "Hill Boulevard"—formerly "Higgins's Roost"—at the top. From the Phinney gate the view was extensive and, for the most part, wet. The hill descended sharply, past the "Shore Road," over the barren fields and knolls covered with bayberry bushes and "poverty grass," ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... orchestra, consisting of a lady pianist and a lady violinist, was giving the closing piece of the afternoon concert. The dining-room was painted a self-righteous olive-green; it was thoroughly netted against the flies, which used to roost in myriads on the cut-paper around the tops of the pillars, and a college-student head waiter ushered Gaites through the gloom to his place with a warning and hushing hand which made him feel as if he were being shown ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... she would not yield, But it was she that rul'd the roost;[1] Until by proof, she did confess, If he were gone, ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... on, and they will not go on the time there is too much attention given to dreams. A dream is a sort of a shadow, no profit in it to anyone at all. A coach now is a real thing and a thing that will last for generations and be made use of the last, and maybe turn to be a hen-roost at its latter end. ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... feared the Earl would be so little content with him that he had better not go near him but seek some other master. And when they had descended the stair and were come into the street he advised him to go to the house of a certain Widow Rippet, that let dry lodgings in the Grass-market, and roost there for that night. The which my grandfather in a manner signified he would do, and ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... the egoist. The more humorous spectacle is the one in which man finds himself awed by his own lies. His Gods, his myths, his phantoms come home to roost. He stands blinking in a veritable storm of lies. His yesterday's lies, his today's lies, his tomorrow's lies—all his obsolete interpretations, his canonized interpretations; all his systems, his philosophies; all his Gods and Phantoms—these riot and war around him. ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... un fol, who sayes a multitude sayes a fool. C'est tousiours plus mal-aise de faire mal que bien, its easier to do a thing the right way then the wrong, as in opening a door. Il n'y a marchand qui gaigne tousjours. Nemo ubique potest foelici,[373] etc., its a good roost that drapes aye.[374] Of him that out of scarcity tauntes his neihbour wt the same scorne wt which he scorned him, the Frenchman sayes, il ne vaut rien pour prendre la bal a la seconde enleuement, at the 2d stot. He is a man of a 1000 ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... "I wouldn't just say you're up to the level of books. But you might rise even to books if you'd cultivate your mind and brain. Well, I think I'll fly up to roost. I've got to take an early start in the morning and clean up on this neck of the woods tomorrow. ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... turkey pecked me. It's Jim. Ah wuz out in de woods and hand don squatted down before he got dere. Ah know jus' where dat ole gobbler roost at. Soon's he hit de limb an' squatted hisself, Ah let 'im have it. He flopped his wings an' tried to fly off but here he come tumblin' down right by dem ole mule bones. Jim, he was jus' comin' up when Ah fired. So when he seen dat turkey fallin', whut do he do? He fires off his gun an' make out ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... "intelligent contraband" who, when asked his opinion of an offending white brother, delicately hinted his distrust by replying: "Sar, if I was a chicken, and that man was about, I should take care to roost high." Well, all that we can say of China is, that for a long time she "roosted high"—withdrew suspiciously into her own civilization to escape the rough contact with the harsher ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... is a name given to a large family of degenerates. It is not the real name of any family, but a general term applied to forty-two different names borne by those in whose veins flows the blood of one man. The word "jukes" means "to roost." It refers to the habit of fowls to have no home, no nest, no coop, preferring to fly into the trees and roost away from the places where they belong. The word has also come to mean people who are too indolent and lazy to stand ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... one; so, if you please, I'll go to roost." And thus there was nothing more said about ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... out of each other's sight. Prince Zany—that's what Pepper Whitcomb and I christened him one day, much to the disgust of the monkey, who bit a piece out of Pepper's nose—resided in the stable, and went to roost every night on the pony's back, where I usually found him in the morning. Whenever I rode out, I was obliged to secure his Highness the Prince with a stout cord to the fence, he chattering all the ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... against the Tories that her irritation rose. As the time for her wedding approached, her temper grew steadily sharper and more arbitrary. Queen Adelaide annoyed her. King Leopold, too, was "ungracious" in his correspondence; "Dear Uncle," she told Albert, "is given to believe that he must rule the roost everywhere. However," she added with asperity, "that is not a necessity." Even Albert himself was not impeccable. Engulfed in Coburgs, he failed to appreciate the complexity of English affairs. There were difficulties ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... now set forth the beauty and harmony of the world, seen from the loftiness of the divine roost: below all was dark, unjust, sorrowful; seen from on high, it all became clear, luminous, ordered: the world was like the works of a clock, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... correspondentese for flying officers) tire of trying to be offensive on a patrol, and by now we are varying our rubber-neck searchings with furtive glances at the time, in the hopes that the watch-hands may be in the home-to-roost position. At length the leader heads for the lines, and the lords of the air (more war correspondentese) forget their high estate ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... cared as little for the housemaid as for David Hume. The interests of youth are rarely frank; his passions, like Noah's dove, come home to roost. The fire, sensibility, and volume of his own nature, that is all that he has learned to recognise. The tumultuary and gray tide of life, the empire of routine, the unrejoicing faces of his elders, fill him with contemptuous surprise; there also ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you, w'y you kin tie me ter er tree an' whup me ef you wants ter, but I got ter tell you. Not laung ergo, I stole er chicken from yo' roost. An' ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... after her own fashion, by stealing. All she seemed to care about as her reward was pilfering, and a crown put into her hand, gave her less pleasure than a halfpenny which she had stolen. Neither was it any use to dream of ruling her as the sole male, or as the proud master of the hen roost, for which of them, no matter how broad shouldered he was, would have been capable of it? Some had tried to vanquish ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... to be calm! It is not in human nature to bear such a wrong in peace. Take away the Edera! Take away the water! They had better cut our throats. What! a poor wretch who steals a few grapes off a vine, a few eggs from a hen roost, is called a thief and hounded to the galleys, and such robbery as this is to be borne in silence because the thieves wear broadcloth! It cannot be. It cannot be; I swear it shall never be whilst I have life. The ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... face—quick! Your back's prettier than your face, and besides, I want to know whether your hip-pockets are empty. I've heard it's the habit of you gentry to pack guns in your clothes.... None? That's all right, then. Now roost on the transom, over there in the corner, Stryker, and don't move. Don't let me hear a ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... home with him, feed them, and teach them to fly about the cottage unconfined by cages. One of his blackbirds became so tame, that, after flying about the doors all day, and in and out of the cottage, it would take up its roost upon the bed-head at night. And most singular of all, the bird would disappear in the spring and summer months, when it was supposed to go into the woods to pair and rear its young, after which it would reappear at the cottage, and resume its social ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... plates. The roof was supported by a line of wooden stanchions. There were arm racks round the stanchions, containing muskets, cutlasses, and long, double-barrelled pistols. As I expected, there were several bee-skeps hanging from nails, or lying on the floor. I was in the smugglers' roost, perhaps in the ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... finished, they put out the light, and each one looked out for a suitable and comfortable sleeping-place. The donkey lay down on the dunghill, the dog behind the door, the cat on the hearth near the warm ashes, and the cock set himself on the hen-roost; and, as they were all tired with their long journey, they soon went to sleep. Soon after midnight, as the robbers in the distance could see that no more lights were burning in the house, and as ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... birth, in consideration of a substantial dowry attached to each bride, and a solemn obligation, accepted and signed by the paternal Puddle, forever to feed at home her and her improved progeny. So the fifty continue to roost in the old paternal coops, while Kooleen, like a pampered Brahmapootra, struts, in pompous patronage, from one to the other, his sense of duty satisfied when he has left a crow and a cackle behind him. It is said that many fine fowls of the Brahmin ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... were friends and went to fight in many towns. If the people in the town caught them in the way when they went home from fighting, or when they were in the river, Sayen could be a fish and hide. They fought in one town. Sayen became a chicken after fighting. He went under the house where the chickens roost. He did that many times and the people in the town noticed that Sayen could be a chicken or a fish. When he came with Kaboniyan to the town to fight the people, he went under the house to the chickens' place. The people said to themselves, ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... is about 150 feet and its volume is twice that of the Cosireni. The climate is very trying. The nights are hot. Insect pests are numerous. Mr. Heller found that "the forest was filled with annoying, though sting-less, bees which persisted in attempting to roost on the countenance of any human being available." On the banks of the Comberciato he found several families of savages. All the men were keen hunters and fishermen. Their weapons consisted of powerful bows made from the wood of a small palm and long arrows made of reeds ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... occupied by the barbarians. Fortunately it was not so. But, as I said, Choo Hoo, retiring to the top of a lofty fir-tree, and filled with these ideas, surveyed from thence the masses of his countrymen returning to the woods to roost as the sun declined, and resolved to lose no time in endeavouring to win them to his will, and to persuade them to embark upon the extraordinary enterprise ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... child compared with Ned Blossett. Ask any of the old gang in New York, ask the blistering police if you like; and as to the rest of you, who are you? A set of whitefaced mechanics, without pluck enough to rob a hen-roost. ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... Heigham? I suppose Angela has gone upstairs; she goes to roost very early. I hope that she has not bored you, and that old Pigott hasn't talked your head off. I told you that we were an odd lot, you know; but, if you find us odder than you bargained for, I should advise ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... have scarcely thought of him, but to tell you the truth when he has been here on business I have involuntarily thought of a mousing cat, or the animal he is named after on the scent of a hen- roost. But of course I can be civil or even polite to him ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... found Miss Comstock. She had come to Paris, of course, by the first train the day before, arriving at the studio shortly after they had left in search of food. She had vibrated between the studio and the Neuilly villa ever since, sure that when Adelle was short of funds she would go home to roost. And Pussy had taken immediate measures to cut off funds by cabling to the trust company the exact facts of Adelle's disappearance in company with the ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... not intended as a shelter from storms, but chiefly to keep off the sun. The men and women wear a single garment like a petticoat, made of pelican skin; the children are naked. Not far from Tiburon, which is about thirty miles long by fifteen miles wide, there is a smaller island where pelicans roost in vast numbers. The Seris go at night and with sticks knock over as many ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... "Nigel, I believe in certain things you do not believe in. I believe black thoughts breed black ills to those who think them. It is not a new idea. There is an old Oriental proverb which says, 'Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.' I believe also that the worst—the very worst CANNOT be done to those who think steadily—steadily—only of the best. To you that is merely superstition to be laughed at. That is a matter of opinion. But—don't go on with this thing—DON'T ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... inactive life, Blackbeard afterward resumed his piratical career. He cruised around in the rivers and inlets and sounds of North Carolina for a while, ruling the roost and with never a one to say him nay, until there was no bearing with such a pest any longer. So they sent a deputation up to the Governor of Virginia asking if he would be pleased to help them in ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... the others came up to roost they all came and squatted on Oswald's bed and said how sorry they were. He waived their apologies with noble dignity, because there wasn't much time, and said he had an idea that would knock the council's plan into a cocked ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... amid the roost tumultuous cheers. All cried, "Long live the Emperor Francis! Down ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... long ago. He lives on his pension!" Johannes laughed. "He breaks stones on the roadside now. He's as hard as ever and will rule the roost. He fights with the peasants as they pass, and swears at them because they drive on his ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... slowly into the station of the little seaport town. It was late, as always at this turning-point of the season, when the summer population was changing its roost from sea to mountain or from the north to the south shore. Falkner, glancing anxiously along the line of cars for a certain figure, said again to himself, 'If she shouldn't come—at the last moment!' and ashamed of his doubt, replied, 'She will, if humanly ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... a nuisance to live anywhere. I was born to be a bird—to roost on trees." I had considerable difficulty in disentangling the words from his thick speech. He shut his eyes—then ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... struck Pipeclay Creek again lower down. He turned down the track towards the river, and at the junction left word at Lowe's—one of the old land-grant families. The dogs woke an old handy man (who had been "sent out" in past ages for "knocking a donkey off a hen-roost"-as most of them were) and Ben told ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... species. The buzzards are the shyer birds; and they are less disposed to keep together in flocks. It has even been said that these are not gregarious, as they are often seen alone in the high regions of the air. But it is certain that not only do numbers of them roost together at night, but they even associate with the ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... lying in white, even banks. Once or twice I went by a lonely cottage with a smell of earthy turf coming from the chimney, weeds or oats sprouting on the thatch, and a broken cart before the door, with many straggling hens going to roost on the shafts. Near these cottages little bands of half-naked children, filled with the excitement of evening, were running and screaming over the bogs, where the heather was purple already, giving me the strained feeling of regret one has so often in these ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... not be carelessly hung on the hat rack in the royal hall for the flies to roost upon, but it should be thoroughly cleaned and put away as soon as the weather becomes too hot to ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... lay up his siller in is his ain hert. And I'll tell ye hoo that is. Ye ken whan meal's laid up ower lang it breeds worms, and they eat the meal. But they do little hairm forbye, for they're saft craters, and their teeth canna do muckle ill to the girnell. But there's a kin' o' roost that gathers and a kin' o' moth that breeds i' the gowd and siller whan they're laid up i' the hert; and the roost's an awfu' thing for eatin' awa', and the moth-craters hae teeth as hard's the siller that breeds them; and instead o' eatin' the siller, like the meal-worms, they fa' upo' the girnel ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Elizabeth Eliza suggested that they should go out to the poultry-yard and get a quill. But it was already dark. They had, however, two lanterns, and the little boys borrowed the neighbors'. They set out in procession for the poultry-yard. When they got there, the fowls were all at roost, so they could look ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... because he is firing peas out of a pea-shooter against an iron-clad war vessel. That is what it amounts to; but for himself it amounts to something more. It is a true saying that "Curses return home to roost." I think if we study these things, and consider that there is a reason for them, we need not be in the least alarmed about negative suggestion, or malicious magnetism, of being brought under the power of other ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... years before, I had spent a week in trying to beat through the Roost of Sumburgh under double-reefed trysails, I was at home in the weather; and guessing we were in for it, sent down the topmasts, stowed the boats on board, handed the foresail, rove the ridge-ropes, and reefed all down. ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... It is nothing. The boy held the Master Word. I could have done no less," and Rann circled up again to his roost. ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... wouldn't face the shame; she told him I—I'd kill my own father, and that the blood would be on his hands; she told him if he'd let me go to the devil without another chance—me that had been named after him—that a curse would roost on his chest. He didn't want to give in to her—he didn't want to; but she scared him, and she's a woman and she knew how to get inside of him—she knew how. They're going to send me out to his mines, where I can start over, Renie. Out West, where it'll make a new man of me; where I can begin ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... have been skinnin' rattlers and stretchin' their hides," he said, "until the camp stinks like a buzzard roost. I'm due to have some bad dreams to-night anyhow, on the strength of this snake-killin', but it'd give me the jumpin' jimjams if I had to sleep next to them remains. Didn't git back in time to join in, did ye? Well, no great loss. I always did intend to clean out that snake ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... care of it; and, to do Master Fred justice, he executed the job in a small way quite creditably. He chose a sunny sloping bank covered with a thick growth of bushes, and erected there a nice little hen-house, with two glass windows, a little door, and a good pole for his family to roost on. He made, moreover, a row of nice little boxes with hay in them for nests, and he bought three or four little smooth white china eggs to put in them, so that, when his hens did lay, he might carry off their eggs ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... to look at from the street, but pierced by a maze of foul alleys, in the depths of which skulked the tramp and the outcast thief with loathsome wrecks that had once laid claim to the name of woman. Every foot of it reeked with incest and murder. Bandits' Roost, Bottle Alley, were names synonymous with robbery and red-handed outrage. By night, in its worst days, I have gone poking about their shuddering haunts with a policeman on the beat, and come away in ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... words he biffed off; and I, having given him a minute or two to get out of the way, rose and made for the drawing-room. The tendency of females to roost in drawing-rooms after dinner being well marked, I expected to find Angela there. It was my intention to have a word ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... accident not only widowed the poor soul, but brought all her little jealousies, as you might say, home to roost. She couldn't abide Nandy, and Nandy had reached an age when boys aren't at their best. But adopt him she had to; and, what tried her worse, she was forced to look after his health with more than a mother's care. For, outside of a stockingful of guineas, all her capital was sunk in ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sat out in our garden in Bailleul one evening at the end of April reading "The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne," three aeroplanes like great birds volplaned slowly down from the clouds—coming home to roost—until they were within 100 feet of the ground, just clearing the house tops as they dropped into their nesting ground on the other side of the town. I could see ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... dainty way, that I'd have her at the head of my table in a fine, new house, or bust a trace. I'm to come out again next Sunday. In the mean time I'm going to try to think up some way to choke that old pair of hens off my roost." ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... fine guy to tell a fellow how to live on wine, women and horses," exclaimed Douglas, "and then raise the devil when your chickens come home to roost. We all know Little Marion was born a ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... attracted their attention and broke the spell, whereupon they both bounded off in different directions. This, I am told by an authority, was a case of neurasthenia, or nerve-paralysis. A not quite similar occurrence was recorded some little time ago. A farmer saw a pheasant go to roost in a tree, standing alone in the field. Presently he saw a fox approach, go to the tree, and look up at the pheasant. After pausing for a moment, regarding the bird, he proceeded to run rapidly round the tree in a narrow circle. This he did for some time, continuing his circuit without intermission; ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Arnold City, Justice of the Peace John Reisinger hit upon a "Solomonesque" solution. "Take this fowl to Arnold City," he directed his constable, "and release it near the poultry yards of these two men. In whose hen house it goes to roost, to him it belongs." The constable, accompanied by Bass and Nedrow, did as directed. When liberated, the bird promptly flew into the chicken yard of Charles Black, where the constable decided it would have to stay under the justice's ruling. The costs in the ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... whose sensibilities had been wounded by the events of the evening, "I didn't cut no el'phant ner no cow, ner rob no hen roost neither, but I guess he won't starve 'fore mornin'," and with that he proceeded to fill up the stove and ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... of it flies here and there, if a mon lets all of it roost, 'twill stale his pace of mind like the thaving ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... passed, and the destinies of our friend began to take final shape. The bread cast upon the waters returned. The chickens came home to roost. ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... about Bedloe,—he'll get called in, he'll come home to roost like the rest of them," said Mr. Plimpton, cheerfully. "The people can't govern themselves,—only Bedloe doesn't know it. Some day he'll find it out." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the flowers in the mead, Then love I roost these flowers white and rede, Such that men callen ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... days before I was fit to be seen— pretty smart work; and that's how the servant the old gentleman sent out missed me. At last I set out for the sea; but I was very hungry, and I can't say if I'd fallen in with a hen-roost what I'd have done. I got some nuts and fruit though, enough to keep body and soul together. Three days I wandered on, when I found myself in this very wood. I was getting wickedly hungry, and I was thinking I must ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... of each other's sight. Prince Zany—that's what Pepper Whitcomb and I christened him one day, much to the disgust of the monkey, who bit a piece out of Pepper's nose—resided in the stable, and went to roost every night on the pony's back, where I usually found him in the morning. Whenever I rode out, I was obliged to secure his Highness the Prince with a stout cord to the fence, he chattering all the time ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... bring every brooding failure carrion-crow in the Universe to roost on the top rail of your iron bedstead. Think success, look success, live success,—and success walks in at your front door, while everyone helps you along the same way with each thought he gives your apparent success, even if his thought be ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... farmer you are!" sneered Mortimer. "I believe you roost on the foot-board of your bed, like a confounded turkey. Come on! You'd better begin training, you know. People in this town are not going to stand for the merry ploughboy ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... Yakub the choreman partook of the festival with us. He slept on a bunk built over the entrance door, and reached by means of a rude flight of steps. There he liked to roll on his straw and rags, whenever he was not busy, or felt especially lazy. On Friday evenings he climbed to his roost very early, before the family assembled for supper, and waited for his cue, which was the breaking-out of table talk after the blessing of the bread. Then Yakub began to clear his throat and kept on working at it until my father called to him to come down and have a glass of vodka. Sometimes ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... doubt that the senses are entitled to their full blossom? Gustation was meant to be delightful; and cooking is certainly half as good as tasting. At times one may have longed for the old Roman custom of two meals a day, and going to bed at chicken-time, bringing the hour of roast near the hour of roost; but this was probably in families where there were three repasts, with lunch all the way between, and an incessant buying of cookies from the baker, lest the children should go hungry. After this surfeit one pardons a recoil. Or, in an enervating day of July, one may have longed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... sun set clear, casting pale gold streams of light over the meadows, and leaving a long, lingering, rosy twilight. The young art-student drank in beauty with every breath. The cows were driven home; the ducks came slowly up out of the stream, and all the winged creatures went to roost. Night came, and repose was welcome after the pleasures and fatigues of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... the other officer, "this is a feather out of your cap. I thought your fellows had cleared out every hen-roost within ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... mine to command; have I not brought her up to this? She shall have him. I'll rule the roost for that. I'll give her pounds and crowns, gold and silver. I'll weigh her down in pure angel gold. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the curse of war came home to roost. Henry V's abler but less brilliant brother, Bedford, stemmed till his death the rising tide of English faction and French patriotism. Then the expulsion of the English from France began, and a long tale of failure discredited the government. The nation had ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... little brother Tom looks so admiringly! What a dinner that was, that last dinner, when little and grown children assembled together, and all tried to be cheerful! What a night was that last night, when the young ones were at roost for the last time together under the same roof, and the mother lay alone in her chamber counting the fatal hours as they tolled one after another, amidst her tears, her watching, her fond prayers. What a night that was, and yet how quickly the melancholy dawn came! ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... plunge of a cascade somewhere near at hand among the mountains. The air struck chill, but tasted good and vigorous in the nostrils - a fine, dry, old mountain atmosphere. I was dead sleepy, but I returned to roost with a grateful mountain ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... replied Bill. "I tell you what, Frank, if it wasn't for being cock of the roost myself, I should wish that Stewart headed this watch now. What fine times we used to have, eh?—but he has altered as well as the times—how odd he has acted by spells ever since we got that packet at Malta. I'm d—d if ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the steamer soon gets entirely away from land. All night long she battles through the surges, passes about 2 a.m. the lonely Fair Isle, encompassed by the rushing roost, and two hours later Sumburgh Head is visible. The approach to Bressay, especially if the rocks and precipices are half seen through driving haze, is suggestive, to a student, of the landscape of "Beowulf," with its windy walls, shadow-helms, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Sherman's Atlanta Campaign commenced, and, simultaneously, General Grant began his movement toward Richmond. In quick succession came the news of the bloody battles of the Wilderness, and those around Spottsylvania, Va.; at Buzzard Roost Gap, Snake Creek Gap, and Dalton, Ga.; Drury's Bluff, Va.; Resaca, Ga.; the battles of the North Anna, Va.; those around Dallas, and New Hope church, Ga; the crossing of Grant's forces to the South side of the James and the assault on Petersburg. While the Union Armies were thus ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... horse steps on it, the wheel crushes it; it falls into the cistern or the swill barrel; it is drenched by showers or stiffened by frosts, and, as the English say, it has a "rather indifferent time of it." If it survive the summer, and some chickens do, it will roost and shiver on the limb of an apple tree. Its nest will be accessible only to the mink and the rat; and, like Rachel, it will mourn for its ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... look into the gorge by which the railroad passed through a straight and well-defined range of mountains, presenting sharp palisade faces, and known as "Rocky Face." The gorge itself was called the "Buzzard Roost." We could plainly see the enemy in this gorge and behind it, and Mill Creek which formed the gorge, flowing toward Dalton, had been dammed up, making a sort of irregular lake, filling the road, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... her intention of retiring to roost. Not that she was likely to sleep a blink, she said; but she thought all early-Victorian old ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... that he doubted his own power, or failed to believe that he could himself take a high part in high affairs when his own turn came. He was biding his time, and patiently looking forward to the days when he himself would sit authoritative at some board, and talk and direct, and rule the roost, while lesser stars sat round and obeyed, as he had so ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... little give-and-take, it's annoying when people spoil my sport. Dowthwaite made himself unpleasant about his broken wall, the Askews turned the grouse back, and then I found the Allerby cottage children, ransacking Redmire Wood when the pheasants were going to roost." ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... was not thoroughly acquainted; and, truth to tell, he proved himself as great a thief as he was a genealogist among them. Many a time the unfortunate foxes from some neighboring cover were cursed and banned, when, if the truth had been known, the only fox that despoiled the roost was Raymond-na-hattha. One thing, however, was certain, that unless the cock was thoroughly game he might enjoy his liberty and ease long enough without molestation from Raymond. We had well nigh forgotten ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... winter morning some years ago, my friend, the old fox-hunter, rose at daylight for a run with the dogs over the new-fallen snow. Just before calling his hounds, he went to his hen-house, some distance away, to throw the chickens some corn for the day. As he reached the roost, his steps making no sound in the snow, he noticed the trail of a fox crossing the yard and entering the coop through a low opening sometimes used by the chickens. No trail came out; it flashed upon him that the fox must ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... consisted of nothing but unleavened bread. Perhaps the angels, who had dined heavily with Abraham on veal, butter, and milk, were afraid of bad dreams, and only wanted a light supper before going to roost. ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... Skirmish and run To forest and fastness, Teuton and Hun, From the banks of the Rhine to the Danube's shore, And back to the banks of the Rhine once more; Retreat from the face of an armed foe, Robbing garden and hen-roost where'er you go. Let the short alliance betwixt us cease, I and my Norsemen will go in peace! I wot it never will suit with us, Such existence, tame and inglorious; I could live no worse, living single-handed, And better with half ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... awake. Roddy's bed was too short for her, and there was no ease in it, even had her mind and heart been at rest. All the fantasies she had beguiled from the boy's brain had come to roost in her own, with a hundred other vivid and painful impressions. The night, too, was fuller than usual of disquietude. The wind, which had been rising steadily, now tore at the shutters and rushed shrieking through the trees. There was a savage rumble ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... long, low room with a French window standing wide open to the garden just a step or two below. On the evening breeze wafted in the scent of mignonette and flowers, and the low sleepy clucking of the hens, about to go to roost. Near the window stood the table, with a silver kettle boiling merrily on its stand, and fruit and flowers and pretty china in abundance, all looking as dainty and tempting as heart could desire. There was an abundance too of more substantial fare, eggs and fish, and jam and ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... most famous practiser of them,—and then quietly reaching out and grasping a higher order of truths, which no one had even thought of competing for. I suppose it is not assumed for a moment that "Wolfert's Roost," the "Tales of a Traveller," the story of "Rip Van Winkle," the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and the picturesque but evanescent tales of "The Alhambra" can be brought into discussion on the same terms with Hawthorne's romances, as works of art; and they assuredly cannot be as studies ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... "like a bull in a China shop"? You remember, sir, that "intelligent contraband" who, when asked his opinion of an offending white brother, delicately hinted his distrust by replying: "Sar, if I was a chicken, and that man was about, I should take care to roost high." Well, all that we can say of China is, that for a long time she "roosted high"—withdrew suspiciously into her own civilization to escape the rough contact with the harsher side ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... all right," nodded Flanders, "but then it's happened the same way with others I could tell about. As long as he was winnin' Sandy was the king of any roost. The minute he lost a fight he wasn't worth so many pounds of salt pork. Take a hoss; a fine hoss is often jest the same. Long as it wins nothin' can touch some of them blooded boys. But let 'em go under the wire second, ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... heavens, but between ten o'clock in the evening and four in the morning there is a sensible change. Colour tints and lines of demarcation on sea and ships are harder to distinguish, shadows less clearcut. Birds roost and even flowers close, Nature whispering to both that, if they would reproduce after their kind in the short Arctic summer, energies must be conserved. Surely the world holds nothing more beautiful than this Polar night, this compelling gloaming, the "cockshut light" of Francis Thompson. Here the ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... whistling, past Dr. Gardner's house, past the deanery; they and the cathedral tower, rising above them, looked grey in the moonlight. He picked up a stone and sent it right into one of the elm trees; some of the birds, disturbed from their roost, flew out, croaking, over his head. In the old days of superstition it might have been looked upon as an evil omen, coupled with what was to follow. Ah, Charley! if you could only foresee what is before you! If Mrs. Channing, from her far-off sojourn, could ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... wandered through the old house for the last time, sniffing the agreeable odor of aged hypo still permeating the dark room, re-covering the empty stains of skins and traces of maps on the walls, and re-filling in my mind the vacant shelves. The vampires had returned to their chosen roost, the martins still swept through the corridors, and as I went down the hill, a moriche oriole sent a silver shaft of song after me from the sentinel palm, just as he had ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... all these many days' journey. But it would be wise to keep to a little vigilance, though I doubt whether they will trouble us much here.—Jack," he continued, rising, "we'll take the guns and have a walk round, to look at the cattle before going to roost for the night, while the girls get the place ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... as long as this nigger rules the roost," said Milly, wiping one of the silver tea-spoons with a corner of her apron, and then placing it in the cup destined for Mabel, who, not having seen her breakfast prepared, relished it highly, thinking the world was not, after ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... bushes and small trees, of which the most conspicuous is a Bombax or cotton-tree, 20 to 30 feet in height, with leafless horizontal branches bearing both flowers and fruit. Numbers of the Torres Strait Pigeon (Carpophaga luctuosa) crossed over from the mainland towards evening to roost; and at that time, and early in the morning, great havoc was usually made among them. Even this small spot produced a fine white, brown-banded Helix, not found elsewhere—it occurred on ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... titbit with strange monkey-like motions, and nip it with their hard skeleton ringers, trying to tuck it into their mouths; and so you bring them up into blue air, sprawling and astonished, but tenacious. You can put them through their paces where they roost under water, moving the beef about, and seeing them sidle and back on their aimless, Cousin Feenix-like legs: it is a sight to bring a freckle-nosed cousin almost into hysterics. But one day a vivacious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... on the 6th of May, with the Armies of the Cumberland, Tennessee, and Ohio, commanded, respectively, by Generals Thomas McPherson, and Schofield, upon Johnston's army at Dalton; but finding the enemy's position at Buzzard's Roost, covering Dalton, too strong to be assaulted, General McPherson was sent through Snake Gap to turn it, while Generals Thomas and Schofield threatened it in front and on the north. This movement was successful. Johnston, finding his retreat likely ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... they've given it up, they're on their way home. We will climb back to our roost again, and let ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of Fate in grounds of tea, Who, versed in every modest lore, Can a lost maidenhead restore, 120 Or, if their pupils rather choose it, Can show the readiest way to lose it; Gypsies, who every ill can cure, Except the ill of being poor, Who charms 'gainst love and agues sell, Who can in hen-roost set a spell, Prepared by arts, to them best known, To catch all feet except their own, Who, as to fortune, can unlock it As easily as pick a pocket; 130 Scotchmen, who, in their country's right, Possess the gift of second-sight, Who (when their barren heaths they quit, Sure argument of prudent ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... you but two or three days in the year? I thought you would at last come and while away the remainder of life on the banks of the Thames in gaiety and old tales. I have quitted the stage, and the Clive[1] is preparing to leave it. We shall neither of us ever be grave: dowagers roost all around us, and you could never want cards or mirth. Will you end like a fat farmer, repeating annually the price of oats, and discussing stale newspapers? There have you got, I hear, into an old gallery, that has not been glazed since Queen Elizabeth, and under ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... but he did not. From the hour he decided to stay misfortune began. Willie Haslam, the clerk at the Company's Post, had learned a trick or two at cards in the east, and imagined that he could, as he said himself, "roast the cock o' the roost"—meaning Pierre. He did so for one or two evenings, and then Pierre had a sudden increase of luck (or design), and the lad, seeing no chance of redeeming the I O U, representing two years' salary, went ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... vast numbers, that they do almost darken the Sky, flying to such an height, as they go out of sight, and so keep flying till they fall down dead at last upon the Earth. The Birds that tarry up late, and are not yet gone to roost, fly among them and ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... years now his life had been without blemish. It was impossible to believe that even in his youth he could have sown any wild oats; terrible to think that these wild oats might now be coming home to roost. ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... himself with his wings, but without flying. Its cry is seldom heard and never long continued. At noon, sometimes from sixty to eighty of these birds perch themselves on the tops of the houses or on the adjoining walls, and with the heads under the wing they all go to roost. They are extremely voracious, and devour every sort of animal substance they can find, however filthy it may be. They are not in the least degree shy, for they hop about among men and cattle in the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... 'O stay, my son Willie, this night, This ae night wi' me; The best hen in a' my roost Sall be well ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... road so little used; spring was early here, and the boughs were getting quite dense already. How pleasant to see the broad red moon go up behind the feathery branches, and listen to the evensong of the thrush, just departing to roost, and leaving the field clear for the woodlark all night. There were a few sounds from the village, a lowing of cows, and the noise of the boys at play; but they were so tempered down by the distance, that they only added to ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... in the dust, while his armour rang rattling round him. But Minerva laughed and vaunted over him saying, "Idiot, have you not learned how far stronger I am than you, but you must still match yourself against me? Thus do your mother's curses now roost upon you, for she is angry and would do you mischief because you have deserted the Achaeans and ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... world. Was not all she had done for the good of others? Nothing had been placed in the balance to her credit. She was condemned as a selfish criminal, with no account taken of motives. Was it for herself she forged? Was it for herself she lied, when her sin came home to roost? Was it through any lack of love for Dick that she allowed the foul slander to besmirch his memory, when everybody had believed him dead? No, ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... you drunken wag, It was any thing to brag, To be cornered in my hen-roost, with two pullets in a bag? You are used to dirty dens; You have often slept in pens; I've a mind to take you out there now, and ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... the light in the evening when Indra has gone to sleep, or boldly rears his black form against the sky during the daytime, causing darkness to spread over the earth, would make little difference to the framers of the myth. To a chicken a solar eclipse is the same thing as nightfall, and he goes to roost accordingly. Why, then, should the primitive thinker have made a distinction between the darkening of the sky caused by black clouds and that caused by the rotation of the earth? He had no more conception of the scientific explanation ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... when father did, and the brindle calf was glad that she had not gone away from the farmyard when she saw her mother come in from the clover lot. The chickens went to roost, and the horses were fed; but no brown colt came in sight, although Dick and Fleet went down the lane to ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... each minute a black traitor, Whose blood and thoughts have twin conception: Study to act deeds yet unchronicled; Cast native monsters in the moulds of men; Case vicious devils under sancted rochets; Unhasp the wicket, where all perjureds roost, And swarm this ball with treasons. Do thy worst; Thou canst not (hell-hound) cross my star[A] to-night. [A] [Old copy, steare.] Nor blind that ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... your uncle, starting up from the uncouth litter of branches, rudely torn from the trees, and upon which he was carried, cried out—'I did it!—my hand brought him down from his watch-box, like a crow from its roost!' ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... with an air of extreme gravity, "it was no plan of mine. There is a man among us who is determined to have everything his own way. You may express your opinion; but don't expect him to listen. You may be as reasonable as you like: oh, it all goes for nothing! That man is resolved to rule the roost and he'll set his face against any plan that he ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... clucking until the little chicks were let out, when every one of them ran to its own mother, and each hen strutted off with her own brood. That is the absolute truth, but is not all. When night came the chickens went back to their boxes to roost—all but the small ones. Those were left outside with their mothers, and just before daylight Charlie raised a great commotion when he put them up ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... of sweetmeats. But least of all were the nuns disappointed. Everything that they had fancied possible in a human plaything fell short of what pussy realized in racketing, racing, and eternal plots against the peace of the elder nuns. No fox ever kept a hen-roost in such alarm as pussy kept the dormitory of the senior sisters; whilst the younger ladies were run off their legs by the eternal wiles, and had their chapel gravity discomposed, even in chapel, by the eternal antics of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... roost on this side-hill for a month, if a lady told me to," he sneered, speaking aloud as he frequently did in the solitude of the range land. He glanced from ribbon to note, ended his indecision by stuffing the note carelessly into his coat pocket and letting the ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... the plain there stands near the shrine a poplar with its crown of countless leaves, whereon often chattering crows would roost. One of them meantime as she clapped her wings aloft in the brandies ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... on at de plantation helpin' on de farm, but in 'bout a year Mis' 'Riah took sick. Mis' Betty wanted to sen' for Mis' Laughter, but Mis' 'Riah wouldn' even answer, but Mis' Betty sent for her anyhow an' kept her down stairs. Den one day de sun turned black an' de chickens went to roost in de day time. Gran'mammy flung her apron over her face an' 'gun to pray kase she knew de death angel was comin' after Mis' 'Riah. Mis' Betty got Mis' Laughter an' when she come up de stairs all us house niggers stood in de hall watchin' her go in to see Mis' 'Riah. She ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... back, and then started down the slope. It was steep and rutted. He had not gone far when he stumbled and fell. His blanket-roll had pitched ahead of him. He fumbled about for it and finally found it. "Them as believes in signs would say it was about time to go to roost," he remarked, nursing his knee that had been cut on a fragment of ragged tufa. A coyote wailed. Sundown started up. "Some lonesome. But she sure is one grand old ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... child, a little-girl, looked up from her knitting. "The hens are all quite snug, mother, Fluffy and Biddy and the rest. I peeped in just now, after they were gone to roost." ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... the horns frightened the birds at roost in the melancholy grove, and taking wing, they ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... imagination—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Of crook-clawed birds, did I make clear to man— And how they soar upon the right, for weal, How, on the left, for evil; how they dwell, Each in its kind, and what their loves and hates, And which can flock and roost in harmony. From me, men learned what deep significance Lay in the smoothness of the entrails set For sacrifice, and which, of various hues, Showed them a gift accepted of the gods; They learned what streaked and varied comeliness Of gall and liver told; ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... gatherings, a chicken-roast was generally in order, and the fowl used was usually taken from some hen-roost not far distant. On this particular occasion when the party was about to break up, John heard the roughest of ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum
... barn-sprinkled background. I could observe her easily without her knowledge, for she was looking up, as we so often used to at twilight, to the old plank high above the sagging mill, where the turkeys fly to roost towards evening, so awkwardly and comically, with a great breathless whirring of wings. I saw her lift her arms to them with a swift, urging gesture, as though to steady their ungainly flight, and I could not be certain that she was not talking to them. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to hasten on; while the children, in noisy bands, chased the fowls about and pelted them with stones. In the churchyard a couple of scapegraces, a lad and a girl, were creeping along under the shelter of the wall in order to escape notice. Swarms of sparrows were retiring to roost beneath the eaves of the church; and, on the steps of the parsonage, a blue calico skirt had just appeared, of such spreading dimensions as to quite block ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... employed in attaining the greatest success with this vegetable. In England, pigeon-dung and the cleanings of the pigsty are extensively employed. In this country the sweepings of the hen-roost are generally recommended. It should be remembered that all these are strong agents, and if brought in contact with the roots of any vegetable while in a crude, undiluted state, burn like fire, especially ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... time she heard the shotgun go off, and in a few minutes the farmer entered the house. 'What luck had you?' said she. 'I hid myself behind the woodpile,' said the old man, 'with the shot-gun pointed toward the hen-roost, and before long there appeared, not one skunk, but seven. I took aim, blazed away, and killed one—and he raised such a fearful smell I concluded it was best to let the other six alone.'" The Senators retired, and nothing more was heard from ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... was necessary, for purposes of effect, that the dreary sublimities of Shetland should be wrought up into the same piece of rich tissue with the imposing antiquities of Orkney,—Sumburgh Head and Roost with the ancient Cathedral of St. Magnus and the earl's palace, and Fitful Head and the sand-enveloped kirk of St. Ringan with the Standing Stones of Stennis and the Dwarfie Stone of Hoy; and so the little ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... only Love, Unto thy Hinde, thy Mullet and thy Dove, Who neither joys in pasture, house nor streams, The substance gone, O me, these are but dreams, Together at one Tree, O let us brouse, And like two Turtles roost within one house. And like the Mullets in one River glide, Let's still remain one till death divide. Thy loving Love and Dearest Dear, At home, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... tensely strung with anxiety and suspense waiting to catch the first sound of that coming strife, where we knew so many of our bravest and best must fall. At last came the news of that terrible fight at Buzzard's Roost or Rocky Face Ridge, and the evening after, in came Dr. S. —— straight from the front, and said, 'The hospital-train is at the depot, wouldn't you like to see it?' 'Of course we would,' chorused Mrs. Dr. S. —— and myself, and forthwith ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... one of, make one at; look on, attend, remain; find oneself, present oneself; show one's face; fall in the way of, occur in a place; lie, stand; occupy; be there. people; inhabit, dwell, reside, stay, sojourn, live, abide, lodge, nestle, roost, perch; take up one's abode &c. (be located) 184; tenant. resort to, frequent, haunt; revisit. fill, pervade, permeate; be diffused, be disseminated, be through; over spread, overrun; run through; meet one at every turn. Adj. present; occupying, inhabiting &c. v.; moored &c. 184; resiant[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... many yards from the back door of it. I have said there were still a few vaulted places on the ground-level used by the family. The vault over the wood-house was perfectly sound and weather-tight, and, therefore, as Willie and the carpenter agreed, quite safe to roost upon. In a corner outside, and now open to the elements, had once been a small winding stone stair, which led to the room above, on the few broken fragments of which, projecting from the two sides of the corner, it was just possible to climb, and so reach the top of the vault. Willie ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... mine in regard to the incomplete state of several of the stories of "Wolfert's Roost," he said: "Yes, we do not get through all we lay out. Some of those sketches had lain in my mind for a great many years; they made a sort of garret-trumpery, of which I thought I would make a general clearance, leaving ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... Farallones, and their large green eggs hatch out nestlings that are ugly and awkward and helpless on land. But they ride the great ocean-breakers, or dive into their clear depths easily and gracefully; and as they live upon fish or small sea-creatures, the divers only seek land to roost at night and to raise ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... her reward was pilfering, and a crown put into her hand, gave her less pleasure than a halfpenny which she had stolen. Neither was it any use to dream of ruling her as the sole male, or as the proud master of the hen roost, for which of them, no matter how broad shouldered he was, would have been capable of it? Some had tried to vanquish her, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... his ear, and he shouted. Two sportsmen were returning from the Upper Lakes, and right welcome was the answer they returned to his call. He was glad enough to be released from his rock, upon which, as he said, 'he had made up his mind that he should be compelled to roost, like a turkey on the ridge of a barn, for ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... not yield, But it was she that rul'd the roost;[1] Until by proof, she did confess, If he were gone, her joy ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... often flew over the house. Doves cooed, blackbirds whistled, thrushes sang, jays called, wood-pigeons uttered the old familiar notes in the little copse hard by. Even a heron went over now and then, and in the evening from the window I could hear partridges calling each other to roost. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... with amazing success. That was their capital error. . . . Have you never observed, my good Bonaday, how fatally miracles come home to roost? Jonah spends three days and three nights in the whale's belly—why? Simply to get his tale believed. Credo quia impossibile seldom misses to work well for a while. He doesn't foresee, poor fellow, that what makes his ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sooner had the sounds of day died away, and the family and our servants gone to roost, than a pack of jackals set up that plaintive and mournful wail by which they seem to announce to the world that they are in a starving condition. They came so close to the village that all the dogs in it set up a furious barking. This woke the baby, of whose vocal ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... It was their honest pride to see a well-furnished dresser, showing copper and pewter in shining splendor as if for ornament rather than for use. In all this they differed widely from the Germans, a people with whom they have been erroneously and often confounded. Roost fowls and ducks are not more different. As water draws one it repels ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... out of blue stone; trees with stems dark-veined as marble rose up to give rest to boughs which drooped the altered hues of their foliage like the feathers of peacocks at roost. Jewel within jewel they burned through every shade from blue to onyx. The white blossoms of a cherry-tree had become changed into turquoise, and the tossing spray of a fountain as it drifted and swung was like a column of ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... tide, were all swept out to sea and drowned. I observed that many horses were still turned out to pasture all summer on the islands and beaches in Wellfleet, Eastham, and Orleans, as a kind of common. He also described the killing of what he called "wild hens" here, after they had gone to roost in the woods, when he was a boy. Perhaps they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... point of temperature, and the soil being fertile exceedingly, the whole land is covered with a dense and rank vegetation. I have yet to find a square smig of it that is open ground, or one that is not the lair of some savage beast, the haunt of some venomous reptile, or the roost of some offensive bird. Crackers and Coons alike are long extinct, and ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... ground of the guide-books. For my part I have no belief in the romance of old-world life. In the modern Tell I behold a hireling, ready to barter his brawny limbs to the use of whatever tyrant; and the picturesque Mazzaroni, upon closer acquaintance, dwindles down to the standard of a hen-roost thief. Amid the crumbling walls of Athens and the ruins of Rome I encounter inhospitality and hunger. I am not a believer in the picturesqueness of poverty. I have no relish ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... sed dat ebbery white man in de county 'cept about ten or twelve was inter it, an' dey wuz a gwine ter clean out nigger rule h'yer, shore. He sed de fust big thing they got on hand wuz ter break up dis buzzard-roost h'yer at Red Wing, an' he 'llowed dat wouldn't be no hard wuk kase dey'd got some pretty tough tings on ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... to me—'It is time that I settled down.' I don't know where the idea came from; one hears it often enough and it always seems to apply to some one else, but I don't know what brought it to roost with me. I was foolish, too: I bought ties and differently shaped collars, and took to creasing my trousers by folding them under the bed and lying on them all night—It never struck me that I was more than three times ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... unlike the original. Rather too many chimneys by about half-a-dozen; and where did you find that steeple immediately over the window marked "Dairy?" The pigs are somewhat too sumptuously lodged in that elegant sty, and the hen-roost might accommodate a phoenix. But the features of the chief porch are very happily hit off—you have caught the very attic spirit of the roof—and some of the windows may be justly said to be staring likenesses.—Ivy-cottage is slipped into our portfolio, and we shall ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... never be defiled through use. Beside the Bible, lay the plush album with its Lombroso-like villainous gallery of countenances upon which transient vandals had pencilled mustaches regardless of sex. She looked at the fly-roost of pampas grass in the sky-blue vase on the shelf from which hung an old-gold lambriquin that represented the highest art of the Kensington cult—water lilies on plush—and at the crowning glory of the parlor, a pier ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... not an extravagant theory that the cabby's singleness of purpose and concentrated view of life are the results of the hansom's peculiar construction. The cock-of-the-roost sits aloft like Jupiter on an unsharable seat, holding your fate between two thongs of inconstant leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a toy mandarin, you sit like a rat in a trap—you, before whom butlers cringe on solid land—and must squeak upward through a slit in your peripatetic ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... out, when every one of them ran to its own mother, and each hen strutted off with her own brood. That is the absolute truth, but is not all. When night came the chickens went back to their boxes to roost—all but the small ones. Those were left outside with their mothers, and just before daylight Charlie raised a great commotion when he put them up ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... a good neighbour—though he was carried off from his allegiance in the late times by a d—d Presbyterian scoundrel, who calls himself a parson, and whom I hope to fetch down from his perch presently, with a wannion to him! He has been cock of the roost long enough.—There are rods in pickle to switch the Geneva cloak with, I can tell the sour-faced rogues that much. But this child is the daughter of Bridgenorth—neighbour Bridgenorth, of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the farmer raised turkeys for the market and, although the season was late, there were a few birds left for seed. I went out to the barn with a lantern and picked the plumpest gobbler I could find off the roost, and an hour later had him in the oven. This was at eight o'clock in the evening. While he was baking I canvassed the old farmer's wardrobe. I'd grown like a mushroom those last years and, though I was only sixteen, a suit of his ready-made clothes was a fair fit. I got into ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... time Eleanore visited Daniel it was along toward evening. She heard from a distance the piano and the shrill crowing of Daniel's voice. Down in the hall she saw three white figures cuddled up close to each other like hens on a roost. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... a crude and obscure condition, and the people's minds are unsophisticated. They roost in nests or dwell in caves. Their manners are simply what is customary. Now if a great man were to establish laws, justice could not fail to flourish. And even if some gain should accrue to the people, in what way would this interfere with the sage's action? Moreover it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding, Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh, Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the high weeds, Where band-neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out, Where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates of a cemetery, Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees, Where the yellow-crown'd heron comes ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... mistress, who, thinking she had not changed for the better, dismissed my successor, and received me into favour again. I was, like many greater men, immediately reinstated in office when it was discovered that they could not do without me. I once more became chancellor of the hen-roost and ranger of the orchard, with greater power than I had possessed before my disgrace. Had my mistress looked half as much in my face as she did into my hatful of eggs, she would have read my guilt; for at that unsophisticated age I could blush, a habit long since discarded in the course of ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... fire of sweet-smelling wood, and Calypso sat at her loom, and sang with a lovely voice. And round about the cave was a grove of alders and poplars and cypresses, wherein many birds, falcons and owls and sea crows, were wont to roost; and all about the mouth of the cave was a vine with purple clusters of grapes; and there were four fountains which streamed four ways through meadows of parsley and violet. Very fair was the place, so that even a god might marvel at it, and Hermes stood and marvelled. Then went he ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... power with a party largely composed of negroes was a contest for their civilization itself. They thought it like a fight for life with a pack of wolves. In some parts of the South there were men as ready to murder a negro who tried to get an office as to kill a fox they found prowling about a hen roost. These brave and haughty men who had governed the country for half a century, who had held the power of the United States at bay for four years, who had never doffed their hats to any prince or noble on earth, even in whose faults or vices there was ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... big enough to roost in the fall, I expect we'll have to gather that crop with a gun," ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... again lower down. He turned down the track towards the river, and at the junction left word at Lowe's—one of the old land-grant families. The dogs woke an old handy man (who had been "sent out" in past ages for "knocking a donkey off a hen-roost"-as most of them were) and Ben told ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... which, well mixed with scattered bark, scantily covered the surface of its huge foundation rock. There was no pavement, and it was the less needed that the ways were rarely used by wheels of any description. The village was but a roost, like the dwellings of the sea birds which also haunted ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the hostelry roost were about the big house at that hour. The new arrivals dodged scrub-women and sweepers in the office and on the stairs, and went to their rooms. The Duke, leaving his grandson at his bedroom door, suggested a bit stiffly that he would "call around about eight o'clock and open ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... check on the whig officer, whom he equally feared and hated. A libertine in principle, and a profligate in practice, he scrupled at no means to attain his object, and a violent attack on the peaceful dwelling of a defenceless woman was as consonant with his views as robbing a hen-roost. ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... large and heavy as she was, and, standing upon its edge, would flap her arms and flutter back in a frightened manner and brace herself to the leap, as Gilby had done. She was aided in this representation by her familiarity with the habits of chickens when they try to get down from a high roost. The resemblance struck her; she would cry aloud ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... poor little outfit. He's got into debt for it. He's a Britisher, and has got two brothers fighting. Very dubious, dark children have been admitted already, as presumably Dutch. Dutch and colonials rule the roost here. And to leave Christianity alone, where does British Imperialism come in? It's risking spoiling a life, and the life of ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught, But now and then, with pressure of his thumb To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud Streams far behind him, scenting all the air. Now from the roost, or from the neighboring pale, Where, diligent to cast the first faint gleam Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side, Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call The feathered tribes domestic. Half on wing, And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood, Conscious and fearful of too deep a ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... I sat and saw the sun go down behind a yellow gullied hill. From afar up and down the valley came the lonesome "pig-oo-ee!" of the farmers, calling their hogs for the evening's feed. We heard the flutter of the chickens, flying to roost, and the night hawk heard them, too, for his eager, hungry scream pierced the still air. On a smooth old rock at the verge of the ravine the girl's brother stood, arms folded, looking out over the darkening low land, and from within the house, where Mrs. Jucklin sat alone, there came a sad ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... about the size of a large Rhode Island turkey. Employing these birds for the removal of refuse is a remedy almost as bad as the disease, since the habits of the huge, ungainly, ill-omened creatures are extremely disgusting. Clouds of them roost upon the eaves of the houses, the church belfries, and all exposed balconies, and would invade the patios of the dwellings were they not vigorously driven away and thus taught better manners. The cathedral facade on the plaza is sometimes ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... does. Dey pukes on folks to keep dem away, and you can't go near kaise it be's so nasty; but dem buzzards don't waste nothing. Little young buzzards looks like down till dey gits over three days old. You can go to a buzzard roost and see for yourself, but you sho better stay out'n de way of de old buzzard's puke. Dey sets around de little ones and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... carved out of blue stone; trees with stems dark-veined as marble rose up to give rest to boughs which drooped the altered hues of their foliage like the feathers of peacocks at roost. Jewel within jewel they burned through every shade from blue to onyx. The white blossoms of a cherry-tree had become changed into turquoise, and the tossing spray of a fountain as it drifted and swung was like a column of blue fire. Where ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... daylight for a run with the dogs over the new-fallen snow. Just before calling his hounds, he went to his hen-house, some distance away, to throw the chickens some corn for the day. As he reached the roost, his steps making no sound in the snow, he noticed the trail of a fox crossing the yard and entering the coop through a low opening sometimes used by the chickens. No trail came out; it flashed upon him that the fox must ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... Some indeed there are marked in a Spanish chart; but the frequency of the birds seems to evince, that there are many more than have been hitherto discovered: For the greatest part of the birds we observed were such as are known to roost on shore; and the manner of their appearance sufficiently made out, that they came from some distant haunt every morning, and returned thither again in the evening; for we never saw them early or late; and the hour ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... mine. There is a man among us who is determined to have everything his own way. You may express your opinion; but don't expect him to listen. You may be as reasonable as you like: oh, it all goes for nothing! That man is resolved to rule the roost and he'll set his face against any plan that ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... came upon me a feeling of desolation, a consciousness that I was homeless. I made up my mind never to return to my mother and the Chatterer. I would go far away through the terrible forest, and find some tree for myself in which to roost. As for food, I knew where to find it. For the last year at least I had not been beholden to my mother for food. All she had furnished ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... mon bon, I must babble about The Merry Men, my favourite work. It is a fantastic sonata about the sea and wrecks. Chapter I. "Eilean Aros"—the island, the roost, the "merry men," the three people there living—sea superstitions. Chapter II. "What the Wreck had brought to Aros." Eh, boy? what had it? Silver and clocks and brocades, and what a conscience, what a mad brain! Chapter III. "Past and Present in Sandag Bay"—the new wreck ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and Hilda led his steps through the woodland with tales of hero and scald. Alone of our House, he had the gift of the Dane in the flow of fierce song, and for him things lifeless had being. Stately tree, from which all the birds of heaven sent their carol; where the falcon took roost, whence the mavis flew forth in its glee,—how art thou blasted and seared, bough and core!—smit by the lightning and consumed by ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chased the fowls about and pelted them with stones. In the churchyard a couple of scapegraces, a lad and a girl, were creeping along under the shelter of the wall in order to escape notice. Swarms of sparrows were retiring to roost beneath the eaves of the church; and, on the steps of the parsonage, a blue calico skirt had just appeared, of such spreading dimensions as to quite ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... too black a name in the Andredsweald. We should have to answer for every peasant we have hanged or hen roost ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... 1839 he paid a visit of about three weeks to his often-regretted England, staying with one of his oldest and most intimate friends, Mr. Dilke, then editor of the Athenaeum. Another of his best friends—one indeed who continued to the end roost unwearied and affectionate in his professional and other attentions, Dr. Elliot—now made a medical examination of Hood's condition. He pronounced the lungs to be organically sound; the chief seat ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... with venison in juice and flavour; my delicious veal, fattened with nothing but the mother's milk, that fills the dish with gravy; my poultry from the barn-door, that never knew confinement, but when they were at roost; my rabbits panting from the warren; my game fresh from the moors; my trout and salmon struggling from the stream; oysters from their native banks; and herrings, with other sea fish, I can eat in four hours after they are taken — My sallads, roots, and potherbs, my own garden ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... air for a moment like a rotund fowl about to seek its roost. Suddenly he ran distractedly at ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... And other night fowls, And I tell you What I know to be true: An owl cannot roost With his limbs so unloosed; No owl in this world Ever had his claws curled, Ever had his legs slanted, Ever had his bill canted, Ever had his neck screwed Into that attitude. He can't do it, because 'Tis against all bird laws. Anatomy ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... team of Cambridge 'Varsity, and Godfrey Staunton is my best man. To-morrow we play Oxford. Yesterday we all came up, and we settled at Bentley's private hotel. At ten o'clock I went round and saw that all the fellows had gone to roost, for I believe in strict training and plenty of sleep to keep a team fit. I had a word or two with Godfrey before he turned in. He seemed to me to be pale and bothered. I asked him what was the matter. He said he was all right—just ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dish on which the hostess had evidently striven to use her best art was of orange mushrooms in a sauce of verjuice; but the substantial one was a roast fowl—an unfortunate bird that was just going to roost with an easy mind, when my coming upset the arrangements of the inn and the poultry house. One fowl, at all events, had had good reason to think it was an ill wind that blew me ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Baron Fagoni feeds well, bekase he's the cock o' the roost; but the poor Naygurs are not overly well fed, and the critters are up to their knees in wather all day, washing di'monds; so they suffer much from rheumatiz and colds. Och, but it's murther entirely; an' I've more than wance felt inclined to fill their pockets ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... building must go on, and they will not go on the time there is too much attention given to dreams. A dream is a sort of a shadow, no profit in it to anyone at all. A coach now is a real thing and a thing that will last for generations and be made use of the last, and maybe turn to be a hen-roost at its latter end. ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... for breath; and her neighbors all looked at one another, feeling undecided whether to own they were wrong, or to put Mrs. Wing down. Every one twittered and chirped, and made a great noise; but no one would give up, and all went to roost in a great state of uncertainty. But, the next day, it became evident that Mrs. Wing was right; for Major Bumble-bee came buzzing in to tell them that old Daddy Winter's hut was empty, and his white head had been seen in the sunny porch ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... you, sir,' said Mr. Healy at an Irish political meeting, 'that there are at the present moment crystallizing in this city precedents which will some day come home to roost ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... in an inconsistency!" he answered. "I've been afraid, though, that this desire to roost in one place was a ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... discover the body of any animal that may have been killed. Should one or more of these birds be perched in the trees after sunset, near the carcase of an animal, and should it utter a "caw," when at that late hour it should have gone to roost, you may be assured that it has espied an approaching leopard, although it may be invisible to your own sight. The watcher should be careful not to move, but to redouble his vigilance in keeping a bright look-out, as the leopard ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... traitor, Whose blood and thoughts have twin conception: Study to act deeds yet unchronicled; Cast native monsters in the moulds of men; Case vicious devils under sancted rochets; Unhasp the wicket, where all perjureds roost, And swarm this ball with treasons. Do thy worst; Thou canst not (hell-hound) cross my star[A] to-night. [A] [Old copy, steare.] Nor blind that glory, where I ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... Mellersh, profoundly indignant, besides having his intended treat coming back on him like a blessing to roost, cross-examined her with the utmost severity. He demanded that she refuse the invitation. He demanded that, since she had so outrageously accepted it without consulting him, she should write and cancel her acceptance. ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... those dissipations of his, which, after all, had touched him but lightly—these had, like chickens, come home to roost! And how these chickens had multiplied and grown! On the way home it seemed that everybody had striven to fatten them up a bit and add surreptitiously a chicken or two of his own. Oh, these meddlers, these idle tongues! None of them would set to work ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... that ar party done gone up-stairs to roost," said the minister. "I reckon my dog'll keep 'em thar. We better jest tote these men inter the house an' have a prayin' bee. I've got a right smart good chanct, now, to whop ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... afterwards, that he might, after all, be as devoted to his country as they were. For years now his life had been without blemish. It was impossible to believe that even in his youth he could have sown any wild oats; terrible to think that these wild oats might now be coming home to roost. ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... other strings. With the worthless portions we made huge bonfires. The flax, Mother would mass upon her distaff and spin into threads. The last I saw of the old crackle, fifty or more years ago, it served as a hen roost under the shed, and the savage old hetchel was doing duty behind the old churner when he sulked and pulled back so as to stop the churning machine. It was hetcheling wool then instead of flax. The flax was spun on a quill which ran by the foot and the ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... South America. Every farmer knows it to be an industrious scavenger, devouring at all times the putrid or decomposing flesh of carcasses. They are found in flocks, not only flying and feeding in company, but resorting to the same spot to roost; nesting also in communities; depositing their eggs on the ground, on rocks, or in hollow logs and stumps, usually in thick woods or in a sycamore grove, in the bend or fork of a stream. The nest is frequently ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... which inhabit the islets; and all these sounds are mingled and multiplied by the strong echoes, till they become a din as loud as that of a city. Even at night, when the flocks are in the fold, and the birds at roost, and the echoes themselves seem to be asleep, there is occasionally a sweet music heard, too soft for even the listening ear to catch by day. Every breath of summer wind that steals through the pine-forests wakes ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... pigeons roost among S. Mark's statuary and on convenient ledges in the neighbourhood; by day, when not on the pavement of the Piazza, the bulk of the flock are dotted about among the reliefs of ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Christmasnever mind the venison, boy, and remember Indian John; his yarbs are better than all the foreign intments. Here, Judge, holding up the bird again, do you think a smooth-bore would pick game off their roost, and not ruffle a feather? The old man gave another of his remarkable laughs, which partook so largely of exultation, mirth, and irony, and, shaking his head, he turned, with his rifle at a trail, and moved into the forest with steps that were between a walk and a trot. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... been employed in attaining the greatest success with this vegetable. In England, pigeon-dung and the cleanings of the pigsty are extensively employed. In this country the sweepings of the hen-roost are generally recommended. It should be remembered that all these are strong agents, and if brought in contact with the roots of any vegetable while in a crude, undiluted state, burn like fire, especially in our climate. What can be done in safety in ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... his own power, or failed to believe that he could himself take a high part in high affairs when his own turn came. He was biding his time, and patiently looking forward to the days when he himself would sit authoritative at some board, and talk and direct, and rule the roost, while lesser stars sat round and obeyed, as he had so well accustomed himself ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... dead, barn-sprinkled background. I could observe her easily without her knowledge, for she was looking up, as we so often used to at twilight, to the old plank high above the sagging mill, where the turkeys fly to roost towards evening, so awkwardly and comically, with a great breathless whirring of wings. I saw her lift her arms to them with a swift, urging gesture, as though to steady their ungainly flight, and I could not be certain that she ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and barn-door fowls were a drug. In the midst of all these fears, it began to be whispered about, that if any chickens were concerned in the motion, it was Cary's chickens; and that the attack, though nominally on the hen-roost, was in reality on the wood. It was now the depth of winter; snowy showers were succeeded by biting frosts; the very smoothness of the surface of the wooden pavement was against it; for as no steps were taken to prevent slipperiness, by cleansing or sanding the street—or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... public charities? what your best institutions? How few of the multitude are relieved at all; how few of that few relieved permanently! Men die, suffer, starve just as soon, and just as numerously; these public institutions are only trees for the public conscience to go to roost upon. No, my dear fellow, everything I see in the world says, Take care of thyself. This is the true moral of life; every one who minds it gets on, thrives, and fattens; they who don't, come to us to borrow money, if gentlemen; or fall upon the parish, if plebeians. I mind it, ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... southwards as he had done for years, and behind him Camorak went. And when at last they climbed from the third valley, and stood on the hill's summit in the golden sunlight of evening, their aged eyes saw only miles of forest and the birds going to roost. ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... feet wide, through which the seas rush darkly with horrible gurglings. The cleft goes down sheer, and was cut, they say, with one stroke of a giant's sword. Beyond it the headland rises grim and stark—a very Gibraltar of the birds, that roost in regiments on its ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... now past midnight, the bird of prey went straight to roost. At mid-day following he reappeared at the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, in the character, not new to him, of a witness ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... dirt; upon pedlers' carts and rag-pickers staggering under burdens that threatened to crush them at every step. Shone upon unnumbered Pasquales dwelling, working, idling, and gambling there. Shone upon the filthiest and foulest of New York's tenements, upon Bandit's Roost, upon Bottle Alley, upon the hidden byways that lead to the tramps' burrows. Shone upon the scene of annual infant slaughter. Shone into the foul core of New York's slums that was at last to go to the realm ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... that is. Ye ken whan meal's laid up ower lang it breeds worms, and they eat the meal. But they do little hairm forbye, for they're saft craters, and their teeth canna do muckle ill to the girnell. But there's a kin' o' roost that gathers and a kin' o' moth that breeds i' the gowd and siller whan they're laid up i' the hert; and the roost's an awfu' thing for eatin' awa', and the moth-craters hae teeth as hard's the siller that breeds ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... bursting open Jaimihr's buzzard roost!" he intimated mildly. "He held a man of mine. I ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... things easy, the heavens in the east assumed a most wonderful range of various delicate tints that made even Perk gasp with admiration. Birds started singing, mocking birds and cardinals among others, crows could be heard cawing close by as though there might be a hidden bird roost not far distant. This was corroborated later on when streams of white egrets flew past, scattering to find their ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... give him a share of their game in exchange for his music, and Bob was always ready to get up a carousal, whenever there was a party returning from a hunting expedition. The present frolic was to take place at Bob Mosely's own house, which was on the Pigeon Roost Fork of the Muddy, which is a branch of Rough Creek, which is a ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... all that 'twas plain that Block ruled the roost, for there was silence for a minute, and then one said, 'Ay, Master Elzevir is right; let us away, the night is far spent, and we have nothing but the sweeps to take the lugger out of ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... continued, beginning to unload the large basket—"dar's a tukky an' two chickuns offen my own precious roost; nor likewise beholden to ole mis for dem nyder. An' dar! dar's sassidges and blood puddin's out'n our own dear pig as me an' ole man Jov'al ris an' kilt ourselves; an' in course no ways beholden to ole mis'," she concluded, arranging ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the Skipper; "look ye, Master—I crave your pardon—Sir Robert Cecil; as soon could one of Mother Carey's chickens mount a hen-roost, or bring up a brood of lubberly turkies, as I, Hugh Dalton, master and owner of the good brigantine, that sits the waters like a swan, and cuts them like an arrow—live quietly, quietly, on shore! Santa Maria! have I not panted under the hot sun off the Caribbees? Have I not ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead—I plundered Singapore! I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... made, but the thieves did not turn honest,—the scheme still shows the mark of the burglar's tools. Sins, like chickens, come home to roost. The South paid a fearful price for the wrong of negro slavery; in some form or other it will doubtless reap the fruits of this ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... was low when our meal came to an end. The fowls came round us to pick up the stray crumbs we had let fall, and my wife took out her bag of grain and fed the cocks and hens, and sent them to roost on the top ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... face the shame; she told him I—I'd kill my own father, and that the blood would be on his hands; she told him if he'd let me go to the devil without another chance—me that had been named after him—that a curse would roost on his chest. He didn't want to give in to her—he didn't want to; but she scared him, and she's a woman and she knew how to get inside of him—she knew how. They're going to send me out to his mines, where I can start over, Renie. Out West, where it'll make a new man of me; where I can begin ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... has been my sad lot to witness a most fearful sight. That dog whom you keep down below to guard the house slipped in at the door, and going to the corner where the lovely young chickens roost, quicker than thought killed two that were more beautiful than angels. I was chasing a mouse under the stairs at the time, and happened to come up just as the dreadful deed was done, and I saw the robber making off with his ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... hadn't the courage to push her away, and I used to stoop down a little to let her get well up. She always wanted to ride when we went up to the dormitory. It was very hard for her to get up the stairs. She used to laugh about it herself, saying that she hopped up like an old hen going to roost. As Sister Marie-Aimee always went upstairs first, I used to wait and go up among the last girls. But sometimes Sister Marie-Aimee would turn round suddenly. Then Ismerie slipped down my body to the ground ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... those new stores came it makes me nigh crazy. I'll go out with a card of matches some night and burn 'em down. Damn pirates! Callin' themselves good Cape Cod names—names that don't belong to 'em! Baker's Bazaar! Ugh! Rheinstein's Robbers' Roost would be nigher the truth. . . . Say, Zoeth, we mustn't hint a word to Mary-'Gusta about this. We've got cash enough on hand to pay her clearance charges up there at ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the fowls are all going to roost, and you must wait till morning to see the squabs, and broods of Brahmas and Leghorns. They look like snowballs rolling about after ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... terrible accident not only widowed the poor soul, but brought all her little jealousies, as you might say, home to roost. She couldn't abide Nandy, and Nandy had reached an age when boys aren't at their best. But adopt him she had to; and, what tried her worse, she was forced to look after his health with more than a mother's care. ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... laughed the other officer, "this is a feather out of your cap. I thought your fellows had cleared out every hen-roost within twenty miles ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... had started by rotting the other fellow's eggs and he finished by souring my milk. I wanted justice and I got it, but I didn't recognize it when it landed on me with all four feet. Chickens come home to roost, and my pigeons had found a nesting-place on my anatomy; and the spot they had chosen was right ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... been skinnin' rattlers and stretchin' their hides," he said, "until the camp stinks like a buzzard roost. I'm due to have some bad dreams to-night anyhow, on the strength of this snake-killin', but it'd give me the jumpin' jimjams if I had to sleep next to them remains. Didn't git back in time to join in, did ye? Well, no great loss. I always did intend to clean out that snake ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... hands of you," said the old man. "Fun is all right in its place, but fun that hurts somebody else has a way of coming home to roost. Don't ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... I are going to help. We are your debtors, as well as Belle, and demand the privilege of paying up. Blessings, like curses, come home to roost, Fan." ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... chicken-grower!' Revolving such revenge within, When night had still'd the various din, And poppies seem'd to bear full sway O'er man and dog, as lock'd they lay Alike secure in slumber deep, And cocks and hens were fast asleep, Upon the populous roost he stole. By negligence,—a common sin,— The farmer left unclosed the hole, And, stooping down, the fox went in. The blood of every fowl was spill'd, The citadel with murder fill'd. The dawn disclosed sad sights, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... dinner in the dining-room, an orchestra, consisting of a lady pianist and a lady violinist, was giving the closing piece of the afternoon concert. The dining-room was painted a self-righteous olive-green; it was thoroughly netted against the flies, which used to roost in myriads on the cut-paper around the tops of the pillars, and a college-student head waiter ushered Gaites through the gloom to his place with a warning and hushing hand which made him feel as if he were being shown to ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... and hospitality, she displayed a refinement of feeling and good breeding. She was daughter of the celebrated Daniel Boone, a name which has acquired a reputation even in Europe. She immediately ransacked her pantry, her hen-roost, and garden, and when we returned from the cotton-mill, to which our host, in his farmer's pride, had conducted us, we found, upon an immense table, a meal which would have satisfied fifty of those voracious Bostonians whom we had met with ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... had forgotten them, the Admiral sent for me. It was to show me, now without emotion, the two little visitors who had gone to roost in his room, perched upon a slender silken cord above his bed. They nestled closely together, two little balls of feathers, touching and almost merged one in the other, and slept without the slightest fear, sure of our pity. And those little Belgians ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that light being in a sitting-room. Now they had been some hours watching the house and that light had been there all the time, therefore, argued mephistopheles, "It is not a farthing glim in a bedroom or we should have seen it lighted. It is some one up. We must wait till they roost." ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... and looking up from a book I was reading, I saw a whole brood of chickens and ducks squattering about the deck, not knowing where they'd come from, or what to do with themselves. The chickens, however, soon went to roost in a corner, for it was too hot to keep awake, and the ducks waddled up on deck, and were making the best of their way over the vessel's side into the element in which they delight, when we turned them into a water-butt, which contented ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Private Smith, he of the fever and ague, "we are landed in La Crosse in the night. We've got to stay somewhere till mornin'. Now, I ain't got no two dollars to waste on a hotel. I've got a wife and children, so I'm goin' to roost on a bench and take the cost of a ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... studied them at least half a dozen distinct modifications. In the fledgling male who just begins to feel the spirit of his kind, and who goes through his performance in the adolescent way, it is a cheap and often pitiful call. From the open roost in the trees, where the birds are gradually aroused by the slow-coming day, we can often hear the note of the half-awakened cock, as full of the sense of slumber as the speech of a sleeping man. As the creature gradually awakens, his cry becomes more resonant until it has the true ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... called in, he'll come home to roost like the rest of them," said Mr. Plimpton, cheerfully. "The people can't govern themselves,—only Bedloe doesn't know it. Some day he'll find it out." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... work only as mere mercenaries. They have not been guilty of great crimes; but it is only because they have not energy of mind to rise to any height of wickedness. They are not hawks or kites: they are only miserable fowls whose flight is not above their dunghill or hen-roost. But they tremble before the authors of these horrors. They admire them at a safe and respectful distance. There never was a mean and abject mind that did not admire an intrepid and dexterous villain. In the bottom of their hearts they believe such ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... pieces of candy that the schoolgirls would give him as they passed. He became as gentle as a dog, and would answer to his name. He had the freedom of the town, and went where he pleased, returning at meal-times, and at night to roost on the western end of the kitchen-roof. He would eat from our hands, looking at us with a sort of human expression in his shiny eyes. If he were a hundred yards away, all we had to do was to go to the door and ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... dearest friends. There was Harriet, for example, dear, serious, practical Harriet. I used to be fretted by the way she was forever trying to clip my wing feathers—I suppose to keep me close to the quiet and friendly and unadventurous roost! We come by such a long, long road, sometimes, to the acceptance of our nearest friends for exactly what they are. Because we are so fond of them we try to make them over to suit some curious ideal of perfection of our own—until ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... poor rude wolf wool chew you soon rule could foot crew to noon tool would good brew shoe whom school should hood drew prove food spool woman wood threw broad whose roof shook stood screw moon tomb broom crook pull strew goose stoop roost hook bush shrewd took full brook put ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... Pamlico Sound I once got some fishermen to cover me with sand and sea-shells, and in that way managed to get a close view of {17} the large flocks of Cormorants that came there to roost every night. The island was small and perfectly barren, and any other method of attempted concealment would have ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... That by which it is referred to in the foregoing notes is not, perhaps, the most satisfactory, since, with the possible exception of the smaller stock-dove, which lays its eggs in rabbit burrows, and the rock-dove, which nests in the cliffs, all the members of the family need trees, if only to roost and nest in. A more descriptive name is that of ringdove, easily explained by the white collar, but the bird is also known as cushat, queest, or even culver. The last-named, however, which will be familiar to ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... your rep as a bad man to monkey with, and pushing out your wishbone over it for quite a spell, now—why don't yuh get busy and collect another bunch uh admiration from these fellows? I ain't no lightning-shot man! Papa Death don't roost on the end uh my six-gun—or I never suspicioned before that he did; but from the save-me-quick look on yuh, I believe yuh'd faint plumb away if I let yuh take a look at the end uh my gun, with the ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... Gipsy's faggot—there we stood and gaz'd; Gaz'd on her sun-burnt face with silent awe, Her tatter'd mantle, and her hood of straw; Her moving lips, her caldron brimming o'er; The drowsy brood that on her back she bore, Imps, in the barn with mousing owlet bred, From rifled roost at nightly revel fed; Whose dark eyes flash'd thro' locks of blackest shade, When in the breeze the distant watch-dog bay'd:— And heroes fled the Sibyl's mutter'd call, Whose elfin prowess scal'd the orchard-wall. As o'er my palm the silver piece she drew, ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... she murmured. "I know I'm very mean. But I had such a bad night. I thought that all the devils in hell were jeering at me because I had told you my romance was dead. Oh, Jack! it was a great big lie, and it's come home to roost. I can't get rid of ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... spent the rest of the night curled up in the darkest corner, partly behind a box. All the time his nose was filled with the smell of fat hens. Every little while a hen who was being crowded too much on the roost would stir uneasily and protest in a sleepy voice. Just think of what Reddy suffered. Just think how you would feel to be very, very hungry and have right within reach the one thing you like best in all the world to eat and then not dare touch ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess
... must be clean, secluded and plentiful. Boxes under the roost-platform will answer, but a better plan is to have the nest upon a shelf along a side wall so arranged as to allow the hen to enter from the rear side. Nests should be constructed so that all parts are accessible to a white-wash ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... sniffing the agreeable odor of aged hypo still permeating the dark room, re-covering the empty stains of skins and traces of maps on the walls, and re-filling in my mind the vacant shelves. The vampires had returned to their chosen roost, the martins still swept through the corridors, and as I went down the hill, a moriche oriole sent a silver shaft of song after me from the sentinel palm, just as he had ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... you want to catch that fellow, I'll tell you how to do it. He has promised to bring me some food to-night, when all the rest are at roost. He will hide and not get shut up; then, when those cross old biddies are asleep, he will cluck softly, and I am to go in and eat all I want out of the pan. You hide on the top of the hen-house; and while he talks to me, you can pounce on him. Then I shall be the only cock ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... aboriginal parent must have been a species which roosted and built its nest on rocks; and I may add that it must have been a social bird. For all the domestic races are highly social, and none are known to build or habitually to roost on trees. The awkward manner in which some pigeons, kept by me in a summer-house near an old walnut-tree, occasionally alighted on the barer branches, was evident. (6/2. I have heard through Sir C. Lyell from Miss Buckley, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... the region were very shy of the old woman and her strange hens. The timid never ventured past her door after dark, after her hens went to roost. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... over, peacocks and pigeons had gone to roost among the trees that shadowed the Lake; and the light behind the hills had passed swiftly from gold to flame-colour, from flame-colour to rose. For the sun, that had already departed in effect, was now setting ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... loot, in wine, in dark-eyed captives at the sacking of a tribe, to be the next day famished, scorched, dragging their weary limbs, or urging their sinking horses through endless sand and burning heat, glad to sell a cartouche if they dared so break regimental orders, or to rifle a hen-roost if they came near one, to get a mouthful of food; changing everything in their haversack for a sup of dirty water, and driven to pay with the thrust of a saber for a lock of wretched grass to keep their beasts alive through the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the door to the turret chamber. Let the owls and bats have their quarters if they wanted to. There was plenty of room in that great castle for himself and chums to sleep without ousting, the happy family from their roost. ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... Thorarin, his brother-in-law, and Osk, Thorstein's daughter, and Hild, her daughter, who was three years old, went with them too. Thorstein fell in with a high south-westerly gale, and they sailed up towards the roosts, and into that roost which is called Coal-chest-Roost, which is the biggest of the currents in Broadfirth. [Sidenote: The wreck] They made little way sailing, chiefly because the tide was ebbing, and the wind was not favourable, the weather being squally, with ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... attend, remain; find oneself, present oneself; show one's face; fall in the way of, occur in a place; lie, stand; occupy; be there. people; inhabit, dwell, reside, stay, sojourn, live, abide, lodge, nestle, roost, perch; take up one's abode &c (be located) 184; tenant. resort to, frequent, haunt; revisit. fill, pervade, permeate; be diffused, be disseminated, be through; over spread, overrun; run through; meet one at every turn. Adj. present; occupying, inhabiting &c v.; moored &c 184; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... her to visit the poultry yard. She readily accepted, but for want of Queen Bee to hurry her, kept her grandmamma waiting longer than she liked, and had more of a scolding than was agreeable. The chickens were all gone to roost by the time they arrived, the cock just peering down at them with his coral-bordered eye, and the ducks waddling stealthily in one by one, the feeding was over, the hen-wife gone, and Mrs. Langford vexed at being ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little they walk out of the village, without saying a word to each other, and look towards the dark streak of the forest. The whole sky above the forest is studded with moving black spots, the rooks flying home to roost. The snow, lying white here and there on the dark brown plough-land, is lightly flecked with gold ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Godavery there stood a large silk-cotton-tree, and thither at night, from all quarters and regions, the birds came to roost. Now once, when the night was just spent, and his Radiance the Moon, Lover of the white lotus, was about to retire behind the western hills, a Crow who perched there, 'Light o' Leap' by name, upon awakening, saw to ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... to-day; one had dropped from the roost and frozen; it was cracked, but it will do for the ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... your charity and your allegories," says the wife angrily; "I tell you they are my relations, not yours, and they shall not roost here; they shall go to ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... hooks and lines to catch a few fish out of the multitudes which swarmed in the streams, so it was hardly worth while to waste powder and shot on the vast flocks of pigeons which visited New Jersey in those days. When they came to roost in the forests, they could be knocked down with poles and stones; and thousands and thousands of them were thus obtained by the men and boys, and very good eating ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... for consultation. "Now if you'd gone in for breedin' insecks, you could be as proud as Cuffy an' exhibit 'em at the County Fair! They'd give yer prizes for size an' numbers an' speed, I guess! Why, say, they're real crowded for room—the plants ain't give 'em enough leaves to roost on! Have ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... nodded Flanders, "but then it's happened the same way with others I could tell about. As long as he was winnin' Sandy was the king of any roost. The minute he lost a fight he wasn't worth so many pounds of salt pork. Take a hoss; a fine hoss is often jest the same. Long as it wins nothin' can touch some of them blooded boys. But let 'em go under the wire second, maybe jest because they's packing twenty pounds ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... St. Sylvester's day—St. Sylvester! Why, that is his birthday! Ungrateful friend, to give no thought to it! Quick! my coat, my stick, my hat, and let me run to see these two early birds before they seek their roost. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... the conclusion that they were plotting mischief; but he could form no idea of the nature of the plot—whether it was to rob a hen-roost on shore, or capture the wooden fort that frowned upon them from the heights above. He was sorry to see John permitted to enter this conclave of mischief; but because his brother apparently acquiesced in the plan, he hoped that no serious roguery ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... go a step further and betray his mother, so, if you take my advice, you will keep an eye upon the young man. Also I am bound to remind you that it is more or less your own fault. It is a most unlucky thing to curse a child before it is born—you remember the incident? That curse has come home to roost with a vengeance. What a warning against giving way to ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... a summer resort of foreigners from Hankow and other parts of the interior. I visited this place in 1905. In Chinese, the plateau on which it stands is called, from a projecting rock, the "Rooster's Crest"; shortened into the more expressive name, the "Roost," it is suggestive of the repose of summer. It presents a magnificent prospect, extending over a broad belt ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... the French, of which we hear so much, we see that the young men among these peasants are not unlike the shy and awkward country lads of Yankee land. Before and between the services they roost on the fence opposite the church, while the young girls—totally oblivious of their proximity, of course—gather in groups on the other side of the road, gossiping. We infer that many have come a long distance to attend service, as we see several families eating their lunch, picnic ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... reminded me of Violet's parrot and the parrot reminded me of a Plymouth Rock rooster I had that used to roost in the pigpen nights—wouldn't use the henhouse no more'n you nor I would—and that, naturally, made me think of pigs, and pigs fetched Josiah's uncle's pig to mind and there I was all ready to start ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... There are thousands of them that roost among the hills in that quarter. I know the place thoroughly. The heights are the greatest that we have in the surrounding country. The distance from this spot is about five miles. He, no doubt, has some fish, or bird ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... outside kitchen beyond a paved square at the back. Half intelligible words floated to him as he approached, and from an old pear-tree near the door there was a flutter of wings where a brood of white turkeys settled to roost. Beyond the bole of the tree a small negro in short skirts was "shooin'" a large rooster into the henhouse, but at the muffled fall of Gay's horse's hoofs on the dead leaves, she turned with a choking sound, and fled to the shelter of the kitchen ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... in the summer, blinked satirically at us from the centre of Peg's bed. Another, a dilapidated, striped beastie, with both ears and one eye gone, glared at us from the sofa in the corner. A dog, with only three legs, lay behind the stove; a crow sat on a roost above our heads, in company with a matronly old hen; and on the clock shelf were a stuffed monkey and a grinning skull. We had heard that a sailor had given Peg the monkey. But where had she got the skull? And whose was ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... about the best plan for building hen houses. My plan is, for 100 fowls, to build a house for them to roost in, eight or even ten feet wide and sixteen feet long, one story high with tight floor of yellow pine flooring. I prefer a tight floor because it is easily cleaned out, and every time it is cleaned out and swept the floor should be well covered with slaked lime; ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... are, no doubt you know, To which a fox is used: A rooster that is bound to crow, A crow that's bound to roost, And whichsoever he espies He tells ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... musings by a rustling of the branches behind me, and I turned, expecting—not to see a bear or a fox, but my fancies incorporate. The leaves were still quivering, but I saw no apparent cause for so much disturbance. I probably had startled a brace of partridges from their roost. They brought me back to the actual world, and I came home to an excellent dinner, which I found ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... farm, with floor swept clean and the wooden shutters opened for light, where the minister preached against a mixed background of fanners, corn measures, piles of sacks, and spare implements of the finer sort; and the congregation, who had come up a ladder cautiously like hens going to roost—being severally warned about the second highest step—sat on bags stuffed with straw, boards resting on upturned pails, while a few older folk were accommodated with chairs, and some youngsters disdained not the floor. It was pleasanter in the barn, a cool, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... tell thee, Wenlock, if this trial goes against those twelve honest men, I will forswear my country, and go and seek thy fortune and mine in some other land, where knaves do not, as here, 'rule the roost.'" When, however, the twelve judges gave an almost unanimous verdict in favour of the jurymen, Christison agreed that, after all, there were more honest men in the country than he ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... converse, fell upon his ear, and he shouted. Two sportsmen were returning from the Upper Lakes, and right welcome was the answer they returned to his call. He was glad enough to be released from his rock, upon which, as he said, 'he had made up his mind that he should be compelled to roost, like a turkey on the ridge of a barn, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... was as sorry as anybody. I climbed down from my cormorant roost, and picked my way between the alleys of aromatic piled lumber in order to avoid the press, and cursed the little gods heartily for undue partiality in the wrong direction. In this manner I happened on ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... a fountain, never to be play'd, And there a summer-house that knows no shade; Here Amphitrite sails thro' myrtle bow'rs, There gladiators fight or die in flow'rs; Unwater'd see the drooping sea-horse mourn, And swallows roost in Nilus' dusty urn." ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... large white bird that accompanies cattle in order to secure the insects put up by the grazing quadrupeds. Taking advantage of the social habits of these egrets the plume-hunters issue forth early in May and betake themselves, in parties of five or six, to the villages where the birds roost. Their apparatus consists of two nets, each some eight feet long and three broad. These are laid flat on the ground in shallow water, parallel to one another, about a yard apart. The inner side of each net is securely pegged to the ground. By an ingenious arrangement of sticks and ropes ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... counter. "No room," was the nearly uniform answer, and the travelers had the satisfaction of writing their names and going their way in search of entertainment. "We've eight hundred people stowed away," said the clerk, "and not a spot left for a hen to roost." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Barbesieur, trying to look amiable, "pray don't be so concise. Tell me the condition of the marquis, at once: I did not come to this old owl's roost for pastime. I came to see what could be done to restore its unhappy lord to reason. That you are observing, I remember; you proved it by the good care you took ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... willingness to visit London occasionally to superintend the progress of the work. Treated myself, being considerably fagged, with a glass of poor Glengarry's super-excellent whisky and a cigar, made up my Journal, wrote to the girls, and so to roost upon a crust of bread and a glass of small beer, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... his great helm turned our way, and a strange shudder took my limbs, as he seemed to look upward to our roost, and ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... The death of the year brings gloomy thoughts, the thirty-first of December, St. Sylvester's day—St. Sylvester! Why, that is his birthday! Ungrateful friend, to give no thought to it! Quick! my coat, my stick, my hat, and let me run to see these two early birds before they seek their roost. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to stop for breath; and her neighbors all looked at one another, feeling undecided whether to own they were wrong, or to put Mrs. Wing down. Every one twittered and chirped, and made a great noise; but no one would give up, and all went to roost in a great state of uncertainty. But, the next day, it became evident that Mrs. Wing was right; for Major Bumble-bee came buzzing in to tell them that old Daddy Winter's hut was empty, and his white head had been seen in the sunny porch ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... was universal in civilized communities, labour, as conducted under that regime, was a curse, and this at length came home to roost on the gaunt wreckage of imperialism. Thereafter came slowly increasing liberty under the feudal system with its small social units and its system of production for use not profits, monasticism with its ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... cooking is certainly half as good as tasting. At times one may have longed for the old Roman custom of two meals a day, and going to bed at chicken-time, bringing the hour of roast near the hour of roost; but this was probably in families where there were three repasts, with lunch all the way between, and an incessant buying of cookies from the baker, lest the children should go hungry. After this surfeit one pardons a recoil. Or, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... benignant smile, "despot, demagogue, dictator, oligarch, lord of the roost and cock of the walk! It's a great thing to be monarch of ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... son of a gun," he cried exuberantly between punches. "You've ce'tainly struck pure gold, Tennessee. Looks like Old Man Good Luck has come home to roost with ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... reaching out a hand to grasp the lad's and gazing with fatherly affection and pride into the handsome young face glowing with health and happiness, "she is the earliest young bird in the family nest. However, she seeks her roost earlier than ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... sat as if to challenge him to a race, and then went their way. I have seen it stated that these birds, when suddenly surprised by a hawk, will dive beneath the snow to escape him. They doubtless roost upon the ground, as do most ground-builders, and hence must often be covered ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... to his voluminous correspondence with the leading radicals of the day. Then he retires for the night, also Esther, after the farewell scrub of the dishes, table, and the rest, and the kids, too, go to roost. When I was there, I also went to bed, though it was only about ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... Buckheath darkly. "She won't have to. If Gray Stoddard marries Johnnie Consadine, you and me will just about roost in the penitentiary for the rest of ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... menaces the hen-roost, in like manner, when such a danger as a voyage menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed with a ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming in the front of her brood, and in the face of circumstances, succeeds, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Petullo. "Likely the Baron's thrawn. Man, he hasna a roost, and he should be glad—" He stopped on reflection that the Frenchman was an intimate of the family he spoke of, and hastily returned to his side without seeing ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... fluttered his excited imagination—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... moment and then said: "Boys, it's mighty close times up at our house; fried chicken and pound cake don't come our way, turkeys roost too high for us, and, and—well, boys, if you must know it, about the only good thing we kids have up there is our mother's love. See these patches! My mother put them on. See these stockings! My mother ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... without a playmate, and if he has no one to play with, he will be almost sure to get into mischief. One will want to boss the other, but they can generally be left to settle their own quarrels. In every pack there is a master hound who rules the roost, but if he degenerates into an intolerable bully, he may, not improbably, be killed and eaten by the others, an occurrence which Mr. Mills tells us took place in Mr. Conyer's kennel ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... Cinara in youth Death came with great celerity; Egad, that never can be said of you with any verity! The old crow that you are, the teasing boys will jeer, compelling you To roost at home. Reflect, all this is straight ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... nests. The chickens went to roost. The cows came home from the pasture and stood mooing at the gate. It grew so dark that the people could not see their way ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... early morning better than any other part of the day; it's fresh and sweet and unspoiled—like some Irish actresses. There—please don't mind my crude attempt at poetic—simile," for Patsy's eyes had snapped dangerously. "If you only knew how rarely poetry or compliments ever came to roost on this dry tongue, you really wouldn't want to discourage them when it does happen. Besides, there was another reason for my ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... this multitude were cities of nest houses, roost houses, and the like. Huge structures elevated on poles swarmed with doves. A duck pond even had been provided for its ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... stair leads into "Organ-grinders' Roost," in the garret. To "Organ-grinders' Roost" the detective ascends. If, reader, you have ever pictured in your mind the cave of despair, peopled by beings human only in shape, you may form a faint idea of the wretchedness presented in "Organ-grinders' Roost," ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... smaller end. This species usually arrives from the valleys of the Dhoon about the middle of March; and, until they begin to sit on their eggs, they congregate every morning and evening into small flocks, and roost together in trees near houses; in the morning they separate for the day into pairs, and proceed with the building of nests or laying of eggs. After the young are hatched and well able to fly, all betake themselves to the ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... got tired of that gang down there," Johnny observed. "They were ruling the roost when we left. Do you know, I saw one of those fellows this afternoon—perhaps you remember him—a man with a queer sort of blue scar over one cheekbone. I swear I saw him in San Francisco. There's our chance ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... down to you, Silas, I may lay my belt across your shoulders," Aylward answered, amid a general shout of laughter. "But it is time young chickens went to roost when they dare cackle against their ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... received in America with boundless enthusiasm. Their discipline was admirable. Their respect for the rights of property was such, that not a barn, orchard or hen-roost was robbed. ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Military aspect of the Rebellion was concerned. Early in May, Sherman's Atlanta Campaign commenced, and, simultaneously, General Grant began his movement toward Richmond. In quick succession came the news of the bloody battles of the Wilderness, and those around Spottsylvania, Va.; at Buzzard Roost Gap, Snake Creek Gap, and Dalton, Ga.; Drury's Bluff, Va.; Resaca, Ga.; the battles of the North Anna, Va.; those around Dallas, and New Hope church, Ga; the crossing of Grant's forces to the South side of the James and the assault on Petersburg. While the Union Armies were thus valiantly attacking ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... you are, a lot of grown men with fat bank accounts sitting around in a blue funk because Grant Adams does a little more or less objectionable talking. I don't agree with Grant much more than you do. But you're a lot of old hens, cackling around here because Grant Adams invades the roost to air his views. Let him talk. Let 'em all talk. Talk is cheap; otherwise we wouldn't have free speech." He grinned cynically as he asked, "Haven't you any faith in the Constitution of the fathers? They were smart enough to know that free speech ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... up in the morning," said Mr. Tucker. "We go to bed early here. The paupers go to roost at seven, and me and my wife and Zeke at eight. You'd better go ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... well-furnished dresser, showing copper and pewter in shining splendor as if for ornament rather than for use. In all this they differed widely from the Germans, a people with whom they have been erroneously and often confounded. Roost fowls and ducks are not more different. As water draws one it repels ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... later came the act, but on a more generous scale than the master had anticipated. White Fang had observed closely the chicken-yards and the habits of the chickens. In the night-time, after they had gone to roost, he climbed to the top of a pile of newly hauled lumber. From there he gained the roof of a chicken-house, passed over the ridgepole and dropped to the ground inside. A moment later he was inside the house, and the ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... seen Which bless or ban a journey, and the flight Of crook-clawed birds, did I make clear to man— And how they soar upon the right, for weal, How, on the left, for evil; how they dwell, Each in its kind, and what their loves and hates, And which can flock and roost in harmony. From me, men learned what deep significance Lay in the smoothness of the entrails set For sacrifice, and which, of various hues, Showed them a gift accepted of the gods; They learned what streaked and varied comeliness Of gall and liver told; I led them, too, (By ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... the water-lilies floating on the surface of the stream, the distant voices in boats borne musically towards him on the ripple of the water and the evening air, were all expressive of rest. In the occasional leap of a fish, or dip of an oar, or twittering of a bird not yet at roost, or distant barking of a dog, or lowing of a cow—in all such sounds, there was the prevailing breath of rest, which seemed to encompass him in every scent that sweetened the fragrant air. The long lines of red and gold in the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... train pulled slowly into the station of the little seaport town. It was late, as always at this turning-point of the season, when the summer population was changing its roost from sea to mountain or from the north to the south shore. Falkner, glancing anxiously along the line of cars for a certain figure, said again to himself, 'If she shouldn't come—at the last moment!' and ashamed of his doubt, replied, 'She will, if humanly possible.' ... At last ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... slender meal was dispatched, the chief warder paid me another visit to instruct me how to roost. Under his tuition I received my first lesson in prison bed-making. A strip of thick canvas was stretched across the cell and fastened at each end by leather straps running through those mysterious rings. A coarse sheet was spread on this, then a rough blanket, and finally a sieve-like ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... past midnight, the bird of prey went straight to roost. At mid-day following he reappeared at the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, in the character, not new to him, of a witness before ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... still a person at the head of the Militia Department known as Lieut.-General Sam Hughes, K.C.B. But there was no longer in Canada any such man as old Sam Hughes. The Fate chickens hatched in 1914 were coming home to roost. For two years the Government had carried on two wars, one with the Kaiser Wilhelm, the other with Kaiser Sam. It had to be determined that whatever defects government may have because it is a democracy—even such democracy as was left in 1916—it is bigger than any one man. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... Cockatoos.) of 2 Sorts, the one white, and the other brown, very beautiful Loryquets of 2 or 3 Sorts, Pidgeons, Doves, and a few other sorts of small Birds. The Sea or Water fowl are Herns, Whisling Ducks, which perch and, I believe, roost on Trees; Curlews, etc., and not many of these neither. Some of our Gentlemen who were in the Country heard and saw ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... the job with no peepers to spy me. All the chickens were gone to roost. The shiners are three feet underground behind some wine-bottles. And I spread some stones and mortar ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the most conspicuous is a Bombax or cotton-tree, 20 to 30 feet in height, with leafless horizontal branches bearing both flowers and fruit. Numbers of the Torres Strait Pigeon (Carpophaga luctuosa) crossed over from the mainland towards evening to roost; and at that time, and early in the morning, great havoc was usually made among them. Even this small spot produced a fine white, brown-banded Helix, not found elsewhere—it occurred on the branches of ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... located a robin roost up the Trinity River, six miles from Dallas, and prevailed on six Dallas sportsmen to go with me on a torch-light bird hunt. This style of hunting was, of course, new to the Texans, but they finally consented to go, and I had the pleasure of showing ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... was going down, and by nightfall we had got back to where the house had stood. Every vestige of the once pretty homestead had disappeared, with sheep and cattle, though the fowls had managed to find a roost on the topmost branches of some orange trees, which alone remained to ...
— True Stories of Wonderful Deeds - Pictures and Stories for Little Folk • Anonymous
... was clumpy, and once behind a clump I wriggled forward faster. With the clump between me and the grouse I approached as close as I dared. The grouse was only four or five feet away. It must be now or never, for when once the grouse began to fly for their night's roost ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... will be wisest," said Fritz. "But now let us arrange our bunks and have a bit of something to eat from the little basket the steward put up for us before coming ashore. After that, we must go to roost like the penguins outside, ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... we'll tickle their turnips, we'll butter their boxes. Shall strangers rule the roost? yes; but we'll baste the roost. Come, come; a ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... side of the barrel, the projecting platform on which it rested, and a yard or more of the mast, from its summit down—or, to be accurate, it shed a pale radiance on a youthful figure, clinging there by its legs, and upon a hand and arm reaching over the platform to rob the roost. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... she was quite well again, I restored her to her rightful owner. Perhaps she had grown weary of her solitary life, for she seemed delighted to rejoin her old companions; but every day she made us a visit, and at night came regularly to roost ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... in impatiently. "It's us that's failin' fast! And maybe when we've waited and waited, and stayed away for 'er, she'll go and leave it all to some Old Cats' 'Ome or Old Hens' Roost, or some other beastly charity. I don't trust 'er—'any woman that 'olds on to life the way she does—'er with one foot in the grave, and 'er will all made ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... growing dusk outside. Chickens were going to roost with a great chattering in some locust-trees in one corner of the yard. An aged darkey was swinging an axe at the woodpile and two little pickaninnies were gathering a basket of chips. Already the air was filled with the twilight sounds of the farm—the lowing of cattle, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... Bantams fell in value, and barn-door fowls were a drug. In the midst of all these fears, it began to be whispered about, that if any chickens were concerned in the motion, it was Cary's chickens; and that the attack, though nominally on the hen-roost, was in reality on the wood. It was now the depth of winter; snowy showers were succeeded by biting frosts; the very smoothness of the surface of the wooden pavement was against it; for as no steps were taken to prevent slipperiness, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... unable to catch up with him for several hours. Belle was not allowed her liberty, as we saw more trouble ahead. A large yard, inclosed top and sides with wire netting, at last restrained their roving ambition. But they were not happy. Peacocks disdain a "roost" and seek the top of some tall tree; they are also rovers by nature and hate confinement. They pined and failed, and seemed slowly dying; so I had to let them out. Total cost of peacock hunts by the boys of the village, $11.33. I found that Beauty was happy only when admiring ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... the Cottonwoods. The barn, however, with its low open-sided shed, stood just inside the gate. The cows had been brought in for milking. A lusty calf was trying to steal milk from its mother. Chickens were going to roost. Pan did not believe that any of these had made the call. He was about to ride on by when suddenly he again caught a strange cry that appeared to come from the barn or shed. It excited rather than frightened him. Sliding off Curly he ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... abrupt and guttural, mingling with others more clear and soul-piercing than ever human lips drew from reed or metal. It soon ended; up sprang the vocalists like a fountain of fire and fled away to their roost among the hills, then silence reigned once more. What brilliant hues, what gay, fantastic music! Were they indeed birds, or the glad, winged inhabitants of a mystic region, resembling earth, but sweeter than earth and never entered by death, upon whose threshold I had stumbled ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... told Ellen you would. I knew it would only take a minute. Now, girl, you go home and tell Ellen, and we'll have a wedding in a fortnight and you'll come and live with us. We shan't leave you to roost on that hill-top like a lonely crow—don't you worry. I know you hate me, but, Lord, it'll be great fun living with some one that hates me. Life'll have some spice in it after this. Ellen will roast me and you'll freeze me. I ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... water-wagtails, both yellow and pied. They turn up in small flocks so early in the summer that one might almost doubt if they could fly well enough to take care of themselves. On June 26th last summer nearly forty were flying about in the evening, and went across to roost on the eyot. Later numbers of blackbirds arrive, also moving down the river. Sand-martins, when beginning the migration, travel down the Thames in small flocks, and sleep each night in different osier beds. How many stages they make when "going easy" down the river no one ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... Building Mover, Cranberry Bogs Seen to with Care and Dispatch, etc., etc.," so read the sign. The house was situated in "Phinney's Lane," the crooked little byway off "Cross Street," between the "Shore Road" at the foot of the slope and the "Hill Boulevard"—formerly "Higgins's Roost"—at the top. From the Phinney gate the view was extensive and, for the most part, wet. The hill descended sharply, past the "Shore Road," over the barren fields and knolls covered with bayberry bushes and "poverty grass," to the yellow sand of the beach and the gray, weather-beaten fish-houses ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the cliff-top Lie strewn the white flocks. On the cliff-side the pigeons Roost deep ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... from one to four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by the gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs, they make fine dark shadows when the sun is low. They are also an excellent covert from hawks for many small birds that roost and build in them. Whole flocks perch in them at night, and I have seen three robins' nests in one which was ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... is my preachment, and here follows the reason and purpose of it. I want you to run over here, roost over the machine a week and satisfy yourself, and then go to John P. Jones or to whom you please, and sell me a hundred thousand dollars' worth of this property and take ten per cent in cash or the "property" for your trouble—the latter, if you are wise, because the price I ask is a long way ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the strawberry shortcakes, and cherry-pies, and green peas, and new potatoes, and string beans, and roasting-ears, and all such garden-stuff, and the fresh eggs, broken into the skillet before Speckle gets done cackling, and the cockerels we pick off the roost Saturday evenings (you see, we're thinning 'em out; no sense in keeping all of 'em over winter)—as a result, I say, of all this good eating, and the outdoor life, and the necessity of stirring around a little ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... musicians had finished, they put out the light, and each one looked out for a suitable and comfortable sleeping-place. The donkey lay down on the dunghill, the dog behind the door, the cat on the hearth near the warm ashes, and the cock set himself on the hen-roost; and, as they were all tired with their long journey, they soon went to sleep. Soon after midnight, as the robbers in the distance could see that no more lights were burning in the house, and as all seemed quiet, the captain said, "We ought not ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... to tell a fellow how to live on wine, women and horses," exclaimed Douglas, "and then raise the devil when your chickens come home to roost. We all know Little Marion was born a ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... thought it like a fight for life with a pack of wolves. In some parts of the South there were men as ready to murder a negro who tried to get an office as to kill a fox they found prowling about a hen roost. These brave and haughty men who had governed the country for half a century, who had held the power of the United States at bay for four years, who had never doffed their hats to any prince or noble on earth, even in whose faults or vices there was nothing mean or petty, never having been suspected ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... in de market reckoned it was high time fancy niggers was drov into de swamp, and I allowed that loafers and beggars had better roost high when workin' folks was around, and Marse Tom said he'd cut my ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... centipedes come in through the open screen, too, don't they, and roost in the dishpan hanging on the wall! That is where I found one not long ago, and I caught another stowed away in my clothes when I went to dress yesterday. I don't dare go to sleep nights any more for fear they will bite me. Life is a ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... my lady's bower, (Oh! weary mother, drive the cows to roost;) They faintly droop for a little hour; My lady's head ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... the goose would cackle, and run at the person she supposed the dog barked at, and try to bite him by the heels. Sometimes she would attempt to feed with the dog; but this the dog, who treated his faithful companion with indifference, would not suffer. This bird would not go to roost with the others at night, unless driven by main force; and when in the morning they were turned into the field, she would never stir from the yard gate, but sit there the whole day in sight of the dog. At length orders ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... hard ones. They always come home to roost. But I'm glad you do some credit to your upraisin', and did remember that somebody else, except yourself, might be hungry. Wait, Gabriell'. Don't you worry about that Indian. I'll just step in and fix ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... sea was smooth as glass. Not a ripple was heard against the prow. Even the white sea-birds that roost among the caves of Capri pursued ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... had not come back. It was dark now. The cows and horses had been fed. The chickens had had their supper, and gone to roost long ago. Bunny, Sue and all the others had had a good meal. But Ben was ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... this spirit he earnestly entreated Meyer to work with him. 'Will you faithfully exhort your people,' he said, 'that they may all help to quiet, soften, and promote the matter to the best of their power, that they may not scare the birds at roost.' He promised also, for his part, 'to do his utmost ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... white clusters of feathery-like blossoms, which swayed to and fro as though alive, yet not a breath of air was stirring. His wonder at the beautiful spectacle was so great, that he ceased moving the paddle and drifted with the current toward the snowy looking tree. When opposite, he saw it was a roost for some sort of water fowl. He shouted and a cloud of white heron rose in ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... untold energy trying to make over my dearest friends. There was Harriet, for example, dear, serious, practical Harriet. I used to be fretted by the way she was forever trying to clip my wing feathers—I suppose to keep me close to the quiet and friendly and unadventurous roost! We come by such a long, long road, sometimes, to the acceptance of our nearest friends for exactly what they are. Because we are so fond of them we try to make them over to suit some curious ideal of perfection of our own—until ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... the stall and sheep in the fold; Clouds in the west, deep crimson and gold; A heron's far flight to a roost somewhere; The twitter of killdees keen in the air; The noise of a wagon that jolts through the gloam ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... very small then. There's the old barn. We use it for cows now. And do you remember when you pulled down the old granary, and built the new one in the shape of an elevator? And do you remember, Ma wouldn't speak to us for a whole day because we pulled the old hen-roost to pieces and established the hogs there? She said it was flying in the face of Providence having the smelly old things so near the house. And now we're going to leave it all. We're farmers, aren't we, Seth? But Pa ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... to be Protestant; and no Marken man would dream of crossing to Papist Volendam for a wife, though Volendam's celebrated for beautiful girls. Nor would any of the 'fierce, tropical birds,' as you call them, exchange their island roost for the mainland, although Marken, in times of flood, is a most uncomfortable perch, and the birds have to go about in boats. But here we come to Volendam, and you'll be able to make up your mind which of the two fishing-villages ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... left behind them the noble city, which all love who once have seen it, and of which we think afterwards ever with the kindness and the regard of home. They dashed across the Campagna and over the beautiful hills of Albano, and sped through the solemn Pontine Marshes, and stopped to roost at Terracing (which was not at all like Fra Diavolo's Terracing at Covent Garden, as J. J. was distressed to remark), and so, galloping onwards through a hundred ancient cities that crumble on the shores of the beautiful Mediterranean, behold, on the second day as they ascended a hill about ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he clambered up into the loft under the high peaked roof, where lay numberless forgotten things covered with the dim dust of years. There a flock of pigeons had made their roost, and flapped noisily out into the sunlight when he pushed open the door from below. Here he hunted among the mouldering things of the past until, oh, joy of joys! in an ancient oaken chest he found a great lot of worm-eaten books, that had belonged to some ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... the aboriginal parent must have been a species which roosted and built its nest on rocks; and I may add that it must have been a social bird. For all the domestic races are highly social, and none are known to build or habitually to roost on trees. The awkward manner in which some pigeons, kept by me in a summer-house near an old walnut-tree, occasionally alighted on the barer branches, was {181} evident.[317] Nevertheless, Mr. R. Scot Skirving informs me that he often saw ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to get out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the brightest of times, being birds of night who roost when the sun is high and are wide awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Behind dingy blind and curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking more or less under false names, false hair, false titles, false jewellery, and false histories, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... with an odd smile; 'I haven't turned gambler, I assure you. You've heard that I've joined the Pigeon Trap? That's what they call it in the City. I prefer to call it the Hawks' Roost. There are too few pigeons go there to be plucked to justify the other title, and I give you my word of honour, Mr. Brown, that I'm not one ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... Hens and Geese kept roost, And perched at his side; Whereat the last the watchful Cock, Made known the ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... the young man. Also I am bound to remind you that it is more or less your own fault. It is a most unlucky thing to curse a child before it is born—you remember the incident? That curse has come home to roost with a vengeance. What a warning against giving way to the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... remembers the Big Eclipse of the sun or the "Day of Dark" as she called it. The chickens all went to roost and the darkies all thought the end of the world had come. The cattle lowed and everyone was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... houses should be a door by which the gallinarius who takes care of them, may have access. Within the houses enough poles are arranged to serve as roosts for all the chickens: opposite each roost a nest should be set in the wall. In front of the house should be an enclosed yard to which the fowls may have access in the day time and where they can dust themselves,[182] and there should be constructed ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... bodkin. Therefore, the gloom is to be charged to my bad luck. Then, as to the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous Hen and Chickens [2] to which usually my destiny brought me, but I had reason to complain that the discreet hen did not gather her vagrant flock to roost at less variable hours. Till two or three, I was kept waking by those who were retiring; and about three commenced the morning functions of the porter, or of "boots," or of "underboots," who began their rounds for collecting the several freights for the Highflyer, or ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... red-handed in crime—were lashed and sent to prison for two years. One or two got off with a caution, and with instructions to preach to the locations on the heinousness of hooliganism, and of the power of Martial Law to hang "boys" for less than murder—as the next roost-robber would learn to his cost. No remarkable curiosity to be learned in the "Law" was afterwards manifested ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... stay, my son Willie, this night, This ae night wi' me; The best hen in a' my roost Sall be well made ready ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... all parts of Delamere Forest, in order to celebrate the "great magpie marriage." Some years ago these birds abounded in extraordinary numbers, so that a gamekeeper killed in one morning nineteen males, and another killed by a single shot seven birds at roost together. They then had the habit of assembling very early in the spring at particular spots, where they could be seen in flocks, chattering, sometimes fighting, bustling and flying about the trees. The ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... heights which would make an archangel dizzy; who from paroxysms of anguish at the condition of those whose burning bodies are lighting the fires of hell, will go off and commit adultery or rob a hen-roost as complacently as if to do so were a part of their religion. This is not fiction. Religion has not meant chastity, for slavery made that impossible; it has not meant justice, for injustice forged their chains; it has not meant generosity, for they had nothing; it has ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... the sounds of daily life died away into silence; the children's voices were no more heard; the poultry were all gone to roost; the beasts of burden to their stables; and travellers were housed. Then Thekla came in softly and quietly, and took up her appointed place, after she had done all in her power for my comfort. I felt that I was in no state to be left all those weary hours which intervened ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... 2 A.M. there was a sound throughout the town of fowls cackling, as though they were being disturbed and caught while at roost. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Spanish Authorities.)—It is now known that the battle was only skirmish. The rebels attacked a hen-roost in search of eggs, but ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... desert some of the things that have made city life enjoyable. For one thing, with all our growling at the landlord, we have been able to cast upon him many burdens that we are now to take upon ourselves. Some of our sarcasms are quite certain to come home to roost. The details of purchasing fuel, of maintaining heat, of making repairs, are now to come under our jurisdiction, and we shall see whether we manage these duties better than the man who is paid a ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... to the bunkhouse!" said Weary under his breath, and glanced back over his shoulder at the White House bulking large in the night. "Let's go on down to the stable and roost ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... But it would be wise to keep to a little vigilance, though I doubt whether they will trouble us much here.—Jack," he continued, rising, "we'll take the guns and have a walk round, to look at the cattle before going to roost for the night, while the girls get the place ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... came, the King said to his men, "Go, fetch the carcass of that insolent bird, and give the Chickens an extra bushel of corn." But when they entered the henhouse, Blackbird was singing away merrily on the roost, and all the fowls lay around in ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... just been informing his companions that the lady approaching them was not to be sneezed at in any particular whatever, as she ruled the roost of Piney Cove, and had, everybody said, laid up lots of rocks; besides, as for cooking—well, he said nothing, it was not necessary; they would see what Clorinda was in that line when the supper came on. She had learned down South where people ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... and reeds, mysteriously still. Rose-coloured clouds descended, revealing many new and beautiful mountain forms, every pass and every crest distinguishable. It was the hour when the cormorants come home to roost, and he saw three black specks flying low about the glittering surface; rising from the water, they alighted with a flutter of wings on the corner wall of what remained of Castle Hag, 'and they will sleep there till morning,' he said, as he toiled up a little path, twisting ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... "Yet that curse, like others, came back to roost, for if Jana is dead and his people fled, where are the Child and many of its people? What will you ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... which saved them the present trouble. It was already dusk, but the beds were made, and Christo the cook (who was a capital fellow for speed in preparing a dinner) was enveloped in savoury steam, when the usual inmates of the hut quietly invaded us. Cocks and hens marched in, and went to roost upon some sticks within a corner; two or three dogs arrived, evidently with the intention of staying through the night; a donkey at length walked composedly through the entrance door and steered for his accustomed corner. We had caused ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the river is about 150 feet and its volume is twice that of the Cosireni. The climate is very trying. The nights are hot. Insect pests are numerous. Mr. Heller found that "the forest was filled with annoying, though sting-less, bees which persisted in attempting to roost on the countenance of any human being available." On the banks of the Comberciato he found several families of savages. All the men were keen hunters and fishermen. Their weapons consisted of powerful bows made from the wood of a ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... snow-storms as a rule Aren't looked on as man-killers, and although I'd rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep Under it all, his door sealed up and lost, Than the man fighting it to keep above it, Yet think of the small birds at roost and not In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are? Their bulk in water would be frozen rock In no time out to-night. And yet to-morrow They will come budding boughs from tree to tree Flirting their wings and saying ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... a name given to a large family of degenerates. It is not the real name of any family, but a general term applied to forty-two different names borne by those in whose veins flows the blood of one man. The word "jukes" means "to roost." It refers to the habit of fowls to have no home, no nest, no coop, preferring to fly into the trees and roost away from the places where they belong. The word has also come to mean people who are too indolent and lazy to stand up or sit up, but sprawl out anywhere. "The Jukes" ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... with a long-handled broom, her cap-frills flying, her spectacles awry, the Widow Sprigg was vainly endeavoring to restore peace between Punch, the newcomer, and Sir Philip Sidney, the venerable Angora cat which had hitherto "ruled the roost." ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... a hen fight? Carol, you stop admiring yourself as the Joan of Arc of the hired girls, or I'll spank you. You come over here and talk libraries with Ethel Villets. Boooooo! If there's any more pecking, I'll take charge of the hen roost myself!" ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... on the mend, for I was peevish, and complained: "I detest your jingle. Your Azore should be at roost, and would have been were it a respectable bird!" I begged he would tie a rope-yarn on the rest of the song, if there was any more of it. I was still in agony. Great seas were boarding the Spray, but in my fevered brain I thought they were boats ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... her. It was a hard task even for that best and roost tactful of gentlemen, Mr. Brinsmade. He too ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... almost the whole fire. She then ordered a chicken to be broiled that instant, declaring, if it was not ready in a quarter of an hour, she would not stay for it. Now, though the said chicken was then at roost in the stable, and required the several ceremonies of catching, killing, and picking, before it was brought to the gridiron, my landlady would nevertheless have undertaken to do all within the time; but the guest, being unfortunately admitted behind the scenes, must have been witness ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Fagoni feeds well, bekase he's the cock o' the roost; but the poor Naygurs are not overly well fed, and the critters are up to their knees in wather all day, washing di'monds; so they suffer much from rheumatiz and colds. Och, but it's murther entirely; an' I've more than wance felt inclined to fill their pockets ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... reseau-work. And when I considered that what I looked down on—this, with its arteries and nodules of public traffic—was a nation; that each silent nodule held some thousands of men, each man moderately ready to die in defence of his shopboard and hen-roost; it came into my mind that my Emperor's emblem was the bee, and this Britain the spider's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was called the Pigeon Roost settlement at the fork of the White River. The Kickapoos and Winnebagoes did it. There were about two ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... cat, he turned about, all bristling, and went too. He went straight up to, and through, the wood, disturbing in clouds the starlings, who had just come in to roost in the rhododendrons, so that they rose with a rushing of wings like the voice of a thunder-shower on forest leaves, and incidentally drenched the cat with a deluge of raindrops collected in the leaves as ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... had not yet touched the outstretched arms of the prickly pear upon the kopje, and the early cocks and hens still strutted about stiffly after the night's roost, when Waldo stood before the wagon-house saddling the grey mare. Every now and then he glanced up at the old familiar objects: they had a new aspect that morning. Even the cocks, seen in the light of parting, had a ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... not so sure of that. Trust a woman to find a place where she can't ruin her hat. My word for it, Cecil, she's found a safe roost. I say, by Jove!" The duke was staring more intently than ever at the windows far above. "I have it! Isn't it rather odd that a house should be lighted so brilliantly ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... and then pass on. As it was unnecessary to use hooks and lines to catch a few fish out of the multitudes which swarmed in the streams, so it was hardly worth while to waste powder and shot on the vast flocks of pigeons which visited New Jersey in those days. When they came to roost in the forests, they could be knocked down with poles and stones; and thousands and thousands of them were thus obtained by the men and boys, and very good eating ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... regular traders used to meet monthly; but it was necessary, for purposes of effect, that the dreary sublimities of Shetland should be wrought up into the same piece of rich tissue with the imposing antiquities of Orkney,—Sumburgh Head and Roost with the ancient Cathedral of St. Magnus and the earl's palace, and Fitful Head and the sand-enveloped kirk of St. Ringan with the Standing Stones of Stennis and the Dwarfie Stone of Hoy; and so the little jury-court probabilities have been sacrificed without scruple, and ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... east assumed a most wonderful range of various delicate tints that made even Perk gasp with admiration. Birds started singing, mocking birds and cardinals among others, crows could be heard cawing close by as though there might be a hidden bird roost not far distant. This was corroborated later on when streams of white egrets flew past, scattering to find ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... the risk of catching cold in searching over the house, have this morning been at the expense of new fastenings to the doors and windows. The next time, however, you rise, Richard, to alarm the family, you shall in future roost with the hens or ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... my son Willie, this night, This ae night wi' me; The best hen in a' my roost Sall be well ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... he equally feared and hated. A libertine in principle, and a profligate in practice, he scrupled at no means to attain his object, and a violent attack on the peaceful dwelling of a defenceless woman was as consonant with his views as robbing a hen-roost. ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... grove there," replied Henry. "Having killed one turkey, he'd be on the look-out for another, and he knows that they roost in tall trees." ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... above ground, sat a Japanese fireman, wrapped up in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. He looked unpleasantly like a Bulgarian atrocity or a Burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,' being very still and all huddled up in his roost. That was a superb picture and it arranged itself to admiration. Now, disregarding these things and others—wonders and miracles all—men are content to sit in studios and, by light that is not light, to fake subjects from pots and pans ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... instead of being my niece, is to be Mrs. Bob Brudenel. What foolish birds are turtles when they have scarce a hole to roost in! Adieu! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Rochester had made a similar remark to Charles II. when he noticed a construction near Shoreditch: and the story of the man who complained that the chicken brought up for his dinner had only one leg, and was told to go and look into the roost-house, is to be found in an old Turkish jest-book of the fifteenth century. When Byron said of Southey's poems that "they would be read when Homer and Virgil were forgotten—but not till then," he was no doubt repeating what Porson said of Sir Richard ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... depths—on he went with hopping, lurching jerks, with whispering lips. Street after street he passed, and then at a corner he turned and went East—not far, only to the side entrance of the saloon on the corner known, to those who knew, as the "Roost." ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... the birds to wake up. But they did not seem disposed to go anywhere that morning; but fluttered about as if to amuse themselves, in search of food, and flew from one tree-top to another till evening, when they returned to roost at their old quarters. On the second day it was just the same. However, on the third morning one bird said to the other, "We must go to the spring to-day, to see the Hell-Maiden washing her face." They waited till noon, and then flew away direct towards the south. The young man's heart beat with ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... charity and your allegories," says the wife angrily; "I tell you they are my relations, not yours, and they shall not roost here; they ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... is weakmindeder then thet she air a—she hev the mine uv a female, an' nachully not able ter hannel proppity. An' I haint sayin' she aint gettin' mighty well took keer uv by Lige, nuther. The last time I war theer she war roolin' the roost. She slep' in the bes' bed, an' et offen the bes' plate, an' had the bes' corn dodger an' shote; but what I air—that is what some air thinkin' about air whence Lige onct gits the hull er thet proppity in bulk, air hit goin' ter be thet away? Mine you, I aint asten ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... the females in a hole in a tree, with only a small hole left in the plaster through which the males feed them and their young when hatched; how it is that the male wrens (Troglodytes) of North America, build "cock-nests," to roost in, like the males of our Kitty-wrens,—a habit wholly unlike that of any other known bird. Finally, it may not be a logical deduction, but to my imagination it is far more satisfactory to look at such instincts as the young cuckoo ejecting its foster-brothers, ants making slaves, the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... initiate into mysteries, things changed but little through eons on the surface of the world, where men loved and hated, bred and slew, triumphed and failed, lorded and cringed as had been the way since the beginning, when the cave man that handled the heavier knuckle-bone ruled the roost. But to the unphilosophic eye of the majority of mankind things seemed to change greatly in a very little while; and it seemed, therefore, to the superficial, that many things had happened in France and in Paris during the seventeen years that had ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the babies, and undoubtedly would destroy every one within a few moments. All the weasel family, to which the polecat belongs, kill for the pure joy of killing, and in China one such animal will entirely depopulate a hen-roost in a ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... hand of every farmer is uplifted, are very shy and cunning; as is well known, they nearly always post a sentinel in some tree top to keep watch while the rest of the flock is feeding in the field below. In the fall and winter, large numbers of them flock, and at night all roost in one piece of woods; some of the "crow roosts" are of vast extent and contain thousands of individuals. Crows nest near the tops of large trees, preferably pines, either in woods or single trees in fields. Their nests are made of sticks and ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... part, like ostrich-eggs; the giver never knows what is hatched out of them. But once in a thousand times they act as curses are said to,—come home to roost. Give them often enough, until it gets to be a mechanical business, and, some day or other, you will get caught warranting somebody's ice not to melt in any climate, or somebody's razors to be safe in the hands of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that we are also to desert some of the things that have made city life enjoyable. For one thing, with all our growling at the landlord, we have been able to cast upon him many burdens that we are now to take upon ourselves. Some of our sarcasms are quite certain to come home to roost. The details of purchasing fuel, of maintaining heat, of making repairs, are now to come under our jurisdiction, and we shall see whether we manage these duties better than the man who is paid a lump sum ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... Florence, frowning slightly, "what is the good of going over that now? Uncle Tom has been in his grave for the last six years, hasn't he? and Aunt Susan rules the roost. It's Aunt Susan we have got to think about. What did she say in ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... right toward the mark; nor stops for aught, But now and then, with pressure of his thumb To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud Streams far behind him, scenting all the air. Now from the roost, or from the neighboring pale, Where, diligent to cast the first faint gleam Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side, Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call The feathered tribes domestic. Half on wing, And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood, Conscious and fearful of too deep ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... the consecutiveness of his historical attempts: "Life of Columbus," "Spanish Voyages," "Conquest of Grenada," "Conquest of Spain," "Moorish Chronicles," and "Life of Mohammed." The influence of this historical research, too, you shall find in reading his romances: "Wolfert's Roost," "Legends of the Conquest of ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... out to the further attentions of the soldiery. But during that afternoon zu Pfeiffer became conscious of a subtle air of defiance, a restlessness and exchanging of glances, so that the demon which Bakunjala had once seen so vividly came back to roost somewhere beneath the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... habitations. The two last gossips of the evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed me to the inn. The landlady was getting her chicks to bed; the fire was already out, and had, not without grumbling, to be rekindled; half an hour later, and I must have gone supperless to roost. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pontoons should be watertight; and this of course was very easily managed. But, simple as the work was, it was fully a month before the raft was ready for service, though when they at length got her afloat and tried her under sail the result was satisfactory, far beyond their roost sanguine anticipations. ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... visited Daniel it was along toward evening. She heard from a distance the piano and the shrill crowing of Daniel's voice. Down in the hall she saw three white figures cuddled up close to each other like hens on a roost. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... several hours. Belle was not allowed her liberty, as we saw more trouble ahead. A large yard, inclosed top and sides with wire netting, at last restrained their roving ambition. But they were not happy. Peacocks disdain a "roost" and seek the top of some tall tree; they are also rovers by nature and hate confinement. They pined and failed, and seemed slowly dying; so I had to let them out. Total cost of peacock hunts by the boys of the village, $11.33. I found that Beauty ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... the last fair bundle of shawls into her carriage. While the light burns, you know, the moth hangs around it, but when the flame goes out, spent in a weary flicker, after 'braving it' for a whole night, the moth goes to roost, when he has not been singed, or otherwise personally damaged without insurance. Well, what are you thinking of now? when you cross your arms, bury your gaze in the fire and strike your slipper with such measured beat on the fender, I know you're ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... before, I had spent a week in trying to beat through the Roost of Sumburgh under double-reefed trysails, I was at home in the weather; and guessing we were in for it, sent down the topmasts, stowed the boats on board, handed the foresail, rove the ridge-ropes, and reefed ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... join the barge, as I have said, above Assmannshausen, probably at night, and then cross directly over the river. The first castle with which I intend to deal is that celebrated robber's roost, Rheinstein, standing two hundred and sixty feet above the water. Disembarking about a league up the river from Rheinstein, before daybreak we will all lie concealed in the forest within sight of the Castle gates. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... himself take a high part in high affairs when his own turn came. He was biding his time, and patiently looking forward to the days when he himself would sit authoritative at some board, and talk and direct, and rule the roost, while lesser stars sat round and obeyed, as he had so well accustomed himself ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... be caught in an inconsistency!" he answered. "I've been afraid, though, that this desire to roost in one place was a sign ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... time all the wild crows that had nested in that part of the country flew every night from far and wide to the famous crow-roost, not far from a big peach orchard. They came down from the mountain that showed like a long blue ridge against the sky. They flew across a road that looked, on account of the color of the dirt, like a pinkish-red ribbon stretching off and away. They left the river-edge and the fields. ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... was as dark as early night, and the birds sang their evening songs and disappeared. Some of the smaller ones, frightened and fluttering, flew into the houses or dashed themselves against the window panes. Chickens went to roost, the cows came home from pasture, and the frogs ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... deed?—the girl confined in Chesholm jail, or her scoundrel brother? They remembered him well—like Ishmael of old, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him, the head and instigator of every poaching fray, or hen-roost robbery, every fight and evil deed done in Chesholm. Both brother and sister hated her—Inez Catheron that she had taken her lover from her—Juan Catheron that he had lost her himself. After Sir Victor he was heir-at-law. Failing the life of the infant son, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... prevailed slavery was universal in civilized communities, labour, as conducted under that regime, was a curse, and this at length came home to roost on the gaunt wreckage of imperialism. Thereafter came slowly increasing liberty under the feudal system with its small social units and its system of production for use not profits, monasticism with its doctrine and practice of the sanctity of work, and the Church with its progressive emancipation ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... Wiltshire man, however (if all tales be true), who determined to cure the filthy habits of his hogs by making them roost upon the branches of a tree, like birds. Night after night the pigs were hoisted up to their perch, and every morning one of them was found with its neck broken, until at last there were none left.—And quite as witless, surely, was the device of the men of Belmont, who once desired ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... prefix 'mother' in Australia mostly means 'old hag', and is applied in that sense. In early boyhood we understood, from old diggers, that Mother Middleton—in common with most other 'old hands'—had been sent out for 'knocking a donkey off a hen-roost.' We had never seen a donkey. She drank like a fish and swore like a trooper when the spirit moved her; she went on periodical sprees, and swore on most occasions. There was a fearsome yarn, which impressed us greatly as boys, to the effect that once, in her best (or ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... nuisance to live anywhere. I was born to be a bird—to roost on trees." I had considerable difficulty in disentangling the words from his thick speech. He shut ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... rattling round him. But Minerva laughed and vaunted over him saying, "Idiot, have you not learned how far stronger I am than you, but you must still match yourself against me? Thus do your mother's curses now roost upon you, for she is angry and would do you mischief because you have deserted the Achaeans and are helping ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... of a village a Fox one day went to have a peep at a hen-roost. He had the bad luck to fall into a well, where he swam first to this side, and then to that side, but could not get out with all his pains. At last, as chance would have it, a poor Goat came to the same place to seek for some drink. "So ho! friend Fox," said ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... way or another," observed the Wizard, with a smile; "and, as our Professor says, these School Pills have proved to be a great success. One day while I was making them I happened to drop one of them, and one of Billina's chickens gobbled it up. A few minutes afterward this chick got upon a roost and recited 'The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck' without making a single mistake. Then it recited 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and afterwards 'Excelsior.' You see, the chicken had eaten an ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... friends. There was Harriet, for example, dear, serious, practical Harriet. I used to be fretted by the way she was forever trying to clip my wing feathers—I suppose to keep me close to the quiet and friendly and unadventurous roost! We come by such a long, long road, sometimes, to the acceptance of our nearest friends for exactly what they are. Because we are so fond of them we try to make them over to suit some curious ideal of perfection of our own—until one day we ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... and took twelve men with him; and Thorarin, his brother-in-law, and Osk, Thorstein's daughter, and Hild, her daughter, who was three years old, went with them too. Thorstein fell in with a high south-westerly gale, and they sailed up towards the roosts, and into that roost which is called Coal-chest-Roost, which is the biggest of the currents in Broadfirth. [Sidenote: The wreck] They made little way sailing, chiefly because the tide was ebbing, and the wind was not favourable, ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... in the morning," said Mr. Tucker. "We go to bed early here. The paupers go to roost at seven, and me and my wife and Zeke at eight. You'd better ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... Street, where I've seen it a score of times and spelled out the writing, "C. L."—for Christian Lebow—"1768"). And concerning this Election you must know that "the Duke's interest," as they called it—that's to say, the Whigs—had ruled the roost in Ardevora for more than fifty years; mainly through the Duke's agent, old Squire Martin of Tregoose, that collected the rents, held pretty well all the public offices inside his ten fingers, and would save up a grudge for time-out-of-mind against any man that crossed him. Two members we returned ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tossed about with a high wind. At last, when they were tired of watching his motions, and some of the boldest, now grown familiar with him and no longer chilled with fear, talked of stoning him from his roost, he cried out, pointing with his finger, "Look yonder!" They now beheld, in the direction he bade them look, far away on the foaming bosom of the Great Lake, something resembling a great, white fowl. It was moving ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... suitable to the occasion. Among other things, the farmer raised turkeys for the market and, although the season was late, there were a few birds left for seed. I went out to the barn with a lantern and picked the plumpest gobbler I could find off the roost, and an hour later had him in the oven. This was at eight o'clock in the evening. While he was baking I canvassed the old farmer's wardrobe. I'd grown like a mushroom those last years and, though I was only sixteen, a suit of his ready-made ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... to be shooting gold arrows into the river. I can see the tip top of Mount Washington where the peak of its snow-cap touches the pink sky. The hen-house door is open. The chickens are all on their roost, with their ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... approached, her temper grew steadily sharper and more arbitrary. Queen Adelaide annoyed her. King Leopold, too, was "ungracious" in his correspondence; "Dear Uncle," she told Albert, "is given to believe that he must rule the roost everywhere. However," she added with asperity, "that is not a necessity." Even Albert himself was not impeccable. Engulfed in Coburgs, he failed to appreciate the complexity of English affairs. There were difficulties about his household. He had a notion ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... I have scarcely thought of him, but to tell you the truth when he has been here on business I have involuntarily thought of a mousing cat, or the animal he is named after on the scent of a hen- roost. But of course I can be civil or even polite to him if you ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... pieces, so to speak, criticising the details of high-explosive shell or of fuses from every point of view, and showing greater disposition to worry over such points than to get the stuff into the field and to kill Germans with it. The technicalist, indeed, almost seemed to rule the roost, although this unfortunately did not lead to even reasonably good care being taken of war material that arrived in the country. The Russians had done wonders in respect to developing the port of Archangel; they had performed the miracle actually during the war. But if they had achieved a veritable ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... senses are entitled to their full blossom? Gustation was meant to be delightful; and cooking is certainly half as good as tasting. At times one may have longed for the old Roman custom of two meals a day, and going to bed at chicken-time, bringing the hour of roast near the hour of roost; but this was probably in families where there were three repasts, with lunch all the way between, and an incessant buying of cookies from the baker, lest the children should go hungry. After this surfeit one pardons a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... thirty-first of December, St. Sylvester's day—St. Sylvester! Why, that is his birthday! Ungrateful friend, to give no thought to it! Quick! my coat, my stick, my hat, and let me run to see these two early birds before they seek their roost. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... moist retreat, Heard not the falling of their feet; On his dark roost the gray owl slept, Time, with his drum the partridge kept; Nor left the deer his watering-place, So hushed, so noiseless ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... the veins, and keep their victim quiet by flapping their wings over its head; they also fasten themselves upon the tail for the first reason, and a great loss of blood frequently ensues. Fowls are frequently killed by them as they roost upon their perches, for so noiseless and gentle are they in their flight and operations, that animals are not awakened out of their sleep by their attacks. The teeth are so disposed that they make a deep and triple puncture, and one ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... in the west snapped asunder suddenly, and a single forked flame shot above the jagged pines and went out in the dove-coloured clouds. In a huge oak beyond the rail fence there was a harsh rustling of wings where a flock of buzzards settled to roost. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... over to New York every two weeks to see a show,' says the farmer, hanging up the receiver. 'I catch the eighteen-hour flyer at Indianapolis, spend ten hours in the heyday of night on the Yappian Way, and get home in time to see the chickens go to roost forty-eight hours later. Oh, the pristine Hubbard squasherino of the cave-dwelling period is getting geared up some for the annual meeting of the Don't-Blow-Out-the-Gas Association, don't ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... under the heavy dew. In one corner of the yard there was a spreading peach-tree, on which the shriveled little peaches ripened out of season, and against the narrow porch sprawled a gray and crippled aspen, where a flock of turkeys had settled to roost along its ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... them and the noisy bar-room. There was a rustling noise under the porch, as of a fowl disturbed on its roost, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... confirming a pleasant surprise. "Is it not strange," he said, "how genius will roost on any perch? It is true, then, that he is a person who offends your taste? That is bad. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... hatched out a rope yet! And look at Glyco! He's smoked himself out in fine shape, and as long as he lives, he'll carry that stain! No one but the devil himself can wipe that out, but chickens always come home to roost. My nose tells me that Mammaea will set out a spread: two bits apiece for me and mine! And he'll nick Norbanus out of his political pull if he does; you all know that it's to his interest to hump himself to get ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... position of the sequestered little world could still be distinguished by a few faint lights, winking more or less ineffectually through the leafless boughs, and the undiscerned songsters they bore, in the form of balls of feathers, at roost among them. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... to help. We are your debtors, as well as Belle, and demand the privilege of paying up. Blessings, like curses, come home to roost, Fan." ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... in the morning, after a fresh fall of snow, and see at all points where he has crossed the road. Here he has leisurely passed within rifle-range of the house, evidently reconnoitring the premises with an eye to the hen-roost. That clear, sharp track,—there is no mistaking it for the clumsy footprint of a little dog. All his wildness and agility are photographed in it. Here he has taken fright, or suddenly recollected an engagement, and in long, graceful leaps, barely touching the fence, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... of his phrases always vexed her, and 'roost' was one of these phrases. In a flash he fell from a creature engagingly masculine to the use-worn daily sharer ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... wrongly spelt in the "Origin of Species."]) experiments on seeds "in a box in the actual sea.") that my observations on the effects of sea-water have been confirmed. I still suspect that the legs of birds which roost on the ground may be an efficient means; but I was interrupted when going to make trials on this subject, and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... this by the bank, I see the black, clear-cut reflection of them far below, flying through the watery looking-glass, by ones, twos, or long strings. All last night I heard the noises from their great roost in a ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... breath of air was stirring. His wonder at the beautiful spectacle was so great, that he ceased moving the paddle and drifted with the current toward the snowy looking tree. When opposite, he saw it was a roost for some sort of water fowl. He shouted and a cloud of white heron rose in the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... endowment of a college of science at South Kensington. Why should not the humanitarianism of Mr. Tate induce him to give his money to science instead of to art? As well build a hothouse for swallows to winter in as a British Luxembourg; but science is a good old barn-door fowl; build her a hen-roost, and she will lay you eggs, and golden eggs. Give your money to science, for there is an evil side to every other kind of almsgiving. It is well to save life, but the world is already overstocked with ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... party largely composed of negroes was a contest for their civilization itself. They thought it like a fight for life with a pack of wolves. In some parts of the South there were men as ready to murder a negro who tried to get an office as to kill a fox they found prowling about a hen roost. These brave and haughty men who had governed the country for half a century, who had held the power of the United States at bay for four years, who had never doffed their hats to any prince or noble on earth, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... nothing out of it, because he is firing peas out of a pea-shooter against an iron-clad war vessel. That is what it amounts to; but for himself it amounts to something more. It is a true saying that "Curses return home to roost." I think if we study these things, and consider that there is a reason for them, we need not be in the least alarmed about negative suggestion, or malicious magnetism, of being brought under the power ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... away, but he did not. From the hour he decided to stay misfortune began. Willie Haslam, the clerk at the Company's Post, had learned a trick or two at cards in the east, and imagined that he could, as he said himself, "roast the cock o' the roost"—meaning Pierre. He did so for one or two evenings, and then Pierre had a sudden increase of luck (or design), and the lad, seeing no chance of redeeming the I O U, representing two years' salary, went down to the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... street of once dignified and elegant homes whose occupants have moved away and left them a prey to neglect and gradual ruin and progressive degradation; a descent which reaches bottom at last, when the street becomes a roost for humble professionals of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to go to roost," replied Sheppard. "So, stir your stumps, Saint Giles; and, if you mean to ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ez the North hez took to brustlin' At bein' scrouged frum off the roost, I 'll tell ye wut 'll save all tusslin' An' give our side a harnsome boost,— Tell 'em thet on the Slavery question I 'm RIGHT, although to speak I 'm lawth; This gives you a safe pint to rest on, An' leaves me ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... at last, and I was not long in making acquaintance with it. I awoke to find, by the light of the lantern swung from the roost overhead, the dozen men in the loft awake and pulling on their boots. They had lain in their sodden clothes all night: but of their boots, I found, they were as careful as dandies, and to grease them would hoard up a lump of fat even ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of it is that she just fits into the scenery here, and I don't. You know, father, I never could wax enthusiastic over shooing the cows to roost and things ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... and cherry-pies, and green peas, and new potatoes, and string beans, and roasting-ears, and all such garden-stuff, and the fresh eggs, broken into the skillet before Speckle gets done cackling, and the cockerels we pick off the roost Saturday evenings (you see, we're thinning 'em out; no sense in keeping all of 'em over winter)—as a result, I say, of all this good eating, and the outdoor life, and the necessity of stirring around a little lively these days we feel pretty ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... care of Hartlepool's Wonder, won't you?" said Vera. "His mother took three firsts at Birmingham, and he was second in the cockerel class last year at Gloucester. He'll probably roost on the rail at the bottom of your bed. I wonder if he'd feel more at home if some of his wives were up here with him? The hens are all in the pantry, and I think I could pick out Hartlepool Helen; she's ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... Inscrutable before; the omens seen Which bless or ban a journey, and the flight Of crook-clawed birds, did I make clear to man— And how they soar upon the right, for weal, How, on the left, for evil; how they dwell, Each in its kind, and what their loves and hates, And which can flock and roost in harmony. From me, men learned what deep significance Lay in the smoothness of the entrails set For sacrifice, and which, of various hues, Showed them a gift accepted of the gods; They learned what streaked ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... flowering prairie. In the morning we could hear the clear call of the prairie chickens. I used to love to hear it. There were great flocks of them and millions of passenger pigeons. Their call of "pigie! pigie!" was very companionable on that lonely prairie. Sometimes when they were flying to roost they would darken the sun, there were such numbers of them. Geese and ducks were very numerous, too. Black birds were so thick they were a menace to the growing crops. I used to shoot them when I was twelve ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... that she had no notion of forgettin'. She hobbled off fingering her beloved pipe, and Roseen, sitting by the window, watched the twilight deepen and saw the world grow misty and indistinct, and heard the birds twittering as they went to roost. Then the stars came out one by one, and a pale young moon showed faintly in the sky; it was night now, but Judy had not returned. Was it possible that Mike had failed to appear at ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... with their kerchiefs tied over their caps, To see if their poultry were free from mishaps; The turkeys they gobbled, the geese screamed aloud, And the hens crept to roost in a terrified crowd; There was rearing of ladders, and logs laying on, Where the thatch from the roof threatened ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... there was a sound throughout the town of fowls cackling, as though they were being disturbed and caught while at roost. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... a fine guy to tell a fellow how to live on wine, women and horses," exclaimed Douglas, "and then raise the devil when your chickens come home to roost. We all know Little Marion was born a month before you ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... sorry for one thing, boys," remarked Farmer Trotter's wife, who had apparently hailed the decision of the seven bold scouts to guard her fowl-roost with undeniable joy. ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... there had been no more raids upon barn or chicken-roost, and no more bear-tracks about the garden, Mrs. Gammit knew that her victory had been final, and she felt so elated that she was even able to enjoy her continuing diet of cold turkey. Then, one pleasant morning when a fresh, sweet-smelling wind made tumult in the ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... roving all over the farm; but never was there a better behaved, or more thoroughly trained set of children. If a hawk, or even a big robin, went sailing over head, how quickly they scampered, and hid themselves at their mother's note of warning! and how meekly they all trotted roost-ward at the first sound of her brooding-call! I wish all little folks were as ready to go to ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... scared of you, Abby," relented Mrs. Black. "But I says to myself, 'I'm goin' to let Lydia Orr stand on her two own feet in this town,' I says. She can say what she likes about herself, an' there won't be no lies coming home to roost at my house. I guess you'd feel the very same way if you ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... home when father did, and the brindle calf was glad that she had not gone away from the farmyard when she saw her mother come in from the clover lot. The chickens went to roost, and the horses were fed; but no brown colt came in sight, although Dick and Fleet went down the lane to look, a ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... rose at daylight for a run with the dogs over the new-fallen snow. Just before calling his hounds, he went to his hen-house, some distance away, to throw the chickens some corn for the day. As he reached the roost, his steps making no sound in the snow, he noticed the trail of a fox crossing the yard and entering the coop through a low opening sometimes used by the chickens. No trail came out; it flashed upon him that the fox must be inside at ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... with her daughter, the news of Mary Virginia's unannounced engagement had sifted pretty thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of Appleboro; a town where an unfledged and callow rumor will start out of a morning and come home to roost at night ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... were returning from the Upper Lakes, and right welcome was the answer they returned to his call. He was glad enough to be released from his rock, upon which, as he said, 'he had made up his mind that he should be compelled to roost, like a turkey on the ridge of ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... we sit at Eagle Roost and make our Twelfth Night cheer, Full well we know the solemn ass will not disturb us here: For pleasure rules the roost to-night, by order of the King, And every one must play his part, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
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