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Dormouse   Listen
noun
Dormouse  n.  (pl. dormice)  (Zool.) A small European rodent of the genus Myoxus, of several species. They live in trees and feed on nuts, acorns, etc.; so called because they are usually torpid in winter.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dormouse" Quotes from Famous Books



... up natural history and a whole lot of other subjects at the same time, and one can't remember everything, can one? I used to know the difference between the Sardinian dormouse and the ordinary kind, and whether the wry-neck arrives at our shores earlier than the cuckoo, or the other way round, and how long the walrus takes in growing to maturity; I daresay you knew all those sorts of things once, but I bet ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... if you roll up when you sleep, or lie flat," Peter said, not feeling at all anxious to go. "Aunt Dorothy always called me a dormouse at night—" ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield

... him to see whence the words had come, but he saw no one. The donkeys galloped, the wagon rolled on smoothly, the boys slept (Lamp-Wick snored like a dormouse) and the little, fat driver ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini

... and was in a hurry to look at the invalid first. Razumihin informed him that Raskolnikov was sleeping like a dormouse. Zossimov gave orders that they shouldn't wake him and promised to see ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... vig'rous stroke on stroke Striking, till, when he stopt, his back seem'd broke, And the strong arm dropt nerveless. What of that? There was a treasure hidden in his hat— A plaything for the young ones. He had found A dormouse nest; the living ball coil'd round For its long winter sleep; and all his thought As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of nought But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes, And graver Lizzy's quieter surprize, When he should yield, by guess, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... good, that I dread it still. The rapid decline of my strength during the last winter, has made me hope sometimes, that I see land. During summer, I enjoy its temperature, but I shudder at the approach of winter, and wish I could sleep through it, with the dormouse, and only wake with him in spring, if ever. They say that Starke could walk about his room. I am told you walk well and firmly. I can only reach my garden, and that with sensible fatigue. I ride, however, daily; but reading is my delight. I should wish never to put pen ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... was delivered in her politest manner, Fanny left the room with an elegant and cheerful air—to tear up-stairs with a flushed face as soon as she was out of hearing, pounce in upon her sister, call her a little Dormouse, shake her for the better opening of her eyes, tell her what had passed below, and ask her what ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... a time a dormouse lived in the wood with his mother. She had made a snug little nest, but Sleepy-head, as she called her little mousie, loved to roam about among the grass and fallen leaves, and it was a hard task to keep him at home. One day the mother went off as usual to look ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... such small deer there are only too many, though it is worth while to watch rats at play round a hay-rick on Sunday evenings, when they know they will not be persecuted, and sit up like little kangaroos. The vole, which is not a rat, is a goodly sight, and the smooth round dormouse (or sleep-mouse, as the children call it) is a favourite gift imprisoned in ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... from an old Greek family, the Hypnotidae, who came to Pantouflia during the Crusades. They wanted, they explained, not to be troubled with the Crusades, which they thought very injudicious and tiresome. The Crest of the regal house is a Dormouse, dormant, proper, on a field vert, and the Motto, when translated out of the original Greek, means, Anything ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang

... worshippers; and one of the ministers explained to Marius this pilgrim guise.—One chief source of the master's knowledge of healing had been observation of the remedies resorted to by animals labouring under disease or pain—what leaf or berry the lizard or dormouse lay upon its wounded fellow; to which purpose for long years he had led the life of a wanderer, in wild places. The boy took his place as the last comer, a little way behind the group of worshippers who stood in front of the image. There, with uplifted face, the palms ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... bear or rhinoceros, on the ground of Man being a species of more modern date, I ought equally to doubt the co-existence of all the other living species, such as the red deer, roe, wild cat, wild boar, wolf, fox, weasel, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog, mole, dormouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones of which he had found scattered everywhere indiscriminately through the same mud with the extinct quadrupeds. The year after this conversation I cited Schmerling's opinions, and the facts bearing on the antiquity ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... coming back again," he said, "and you'll take care of my pet fawn for me, Little John, and always remember to feed it well. And don't forget the dog and that dormouse we couldn't find, so that I can have it when I ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn

... 'whenever my poor father thought any part of the Dominie's dress wanted renewal, a servant was directed to enter his room by night, for he sleeps as fast as a dormouse, carry off the old vestment, and leave the new one; nor could any one observe that the Dominie exhibited the least consciousness of the change put upon ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... draws admiring throngs Whenever he sings his comic songs, And, really, it's no wonder! The dormouse has been highly rated (and justly) for his celebrated ...
— Mouser Cats' Story • Amy Prentice

... singing through Dallington Forest, and the woods below the Beacon. The children set out after dinner to find old Hobden, who had a three months' job in the Rough at the back of Pound's Wood. He had promised to get them a dormouse in its nest. The bright leaf Still clung to the beech coppice; the long chestnut leaves lay orange on the ground, and the rides were speckled with scarlet-lipped sprouting acorns. They worked their way by their ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... quietest little creature, has implored me to take him with me to England. I wish Rainie could see him, she would be so 'arprized' at his dark brown little face, so fein, and with eyes like a dormouse. He is a true little Arab—can run all day in the heat, sleeps on the stones and eats anything—quick, gentle and noiseless and fiercely jealous. If I speak to any other boy he rushes at him and drives him away, and while black Khayr was in the house, he suffered martyrdom ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... bucket is filled with tea-cups, or I shoulder the fire-shovel. The two weeks drag themselves away, and the cry is still, "Unfinished!" To prevent petrifying into a fossil remain, or relapsing into primitive barbarism, or degenerating into a dormouse, I rouse my energies and determine to put my own shoulder to the wheel and see if something cannot be accomplished. I rise early in the morning and walk to Dan, to hire a painter who is possessed of "gumption," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... hours, and when it was all spent, or in case of any change in the boy's state, to summon her from the ladies' tent; adding, however, "But what's the use of leaving a pert springald like thee in charge? Thou wilt sleep like a very dormouse, I'll warrant! I'd best call ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... she hastily called for a gallon of ice, Which a monkey in waiting served up in a trice. Then the jaguar, the couguar, and fierce Ocelot, And Sir Hans Armadillo, who came at full trot, Brother Jonathan Beaver, escaped from the trappers, Sloth, Tortoise, and Dormouse, notorious nappers. That beau, the musk-Ox, with his long scented hair, And John Bull just arrived on his travels, were there; Messrs. Martin, Hare, Squirrel, the Ermine, and Stoat, And the rock-mountain sheep, with his cousin, the goat; Then the sociable ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.

... sat down to table, and the fairy rang the little brass bell twice, and the weeny dwarf brought in two boiled snails in their shells, and when they had eaten the snails he brought in a dormouse, and when they had eaten the dormouse he brought in two wrens, and when they had eaten the wrens he brought in two nuts full of wine, and they became very merry, and the fairyman sang "Cooleen dhas," and the dwarf sang "The little blackbird ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... copyrighted material the authors and publishers express their indebtedness to The Independent for "Who Loves the Trees Best?" by Alice M. Douglas; to Oliver Herford and the Century Company for "The Elf and the Dormouse"; to the American Folklore Society for "How Brother Rabbit Fooled the Whale and the Elephant," by Alcee Fortier; to the Outlook for "Making the Best of It," by Frances M. Fox, and "Winter Nights," by Mary ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate

... called; but dawdled three hours in dressing. When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation),—sleep, eating, and swilling—buttoning and unbuttoning—how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... down flat on his back, and looked dreamily up at the pretty green roof made by the juniper boughs overhead. "I dess I'll take a nappy now," he murmured, and in five minutes was sleeping as soundly as a dormouse. Two striped squirrels, which may or may not have been the same which he had seen in the early morning, came out on a bough not a yard from his head, chattered, winked, put their paws to their noses ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. "Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse," thought Alice; "only as it's asleep, ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll

... either spoke. The old priest broke the silence. He was a gentle-faced old man, not unlike a very shrewd and wide-awake dormouse; and his white hair stood out in a mass beneath his biretta. But the words he used were unintelligible, ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... elicited the explanation, riddled by sobs, that Hester could never take an interest in life again, could never raise herself even to a sitting position, nor dry her eyes on her aunt's handkerchief, unless she were allowed to go to tea with Rachel and see her dormouse. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... more from each other than from books. I was unconsciously affected by your example. You dared to stretch out both hands to life and grasp it; you accepted the spontaneous natural living wisdom of your instincts when I was rolled up like a dormouse in the dead wisdom of codes and formulas, dogmas and opinions. I never told you how I became a priest. I did not know until quite lately. I think I began to suspect my vocation when you left ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... vainly had he fancied that thereby he might be remembered. A peach—a blushing, rich-flavored fruit, nestling in the trellis work on the garden-wall, hidden beneath its long, green leaves,—this little vegetable production, that a dormouse would nibble up without a thought, was sufficient to recall to the memory of this great monarch the mournful shade of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... not keep her eyes open at all. The stewardess—a colored woman—laughed when she saw the half-awake little passenger; but she was very good-natured, whipped off Eyebright's boots, hat, and jacket, in a twinkling, and tucked her into a little berth, where in three minutes she was napping like a dormouse. There was a great deal of whistling and screeching and ringing of bells when the boat left her dock, heavy feet trampled over the deck just above the berth, the water lapped and hissed; but not one of these ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge

... demand a special coach If one ant-eater goes; The dormouse wants a sleeping car; ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner

... never ring for Prayers? We have an eminent Lady of this Stamp in our Country, who pretends to Amusements very much above the rest of her Sex. She never carries a white Shock-dog with Bells under her Arm, nor a Squirrel or Dormouse in her Pocket, but always an abridg'd Piece of Morality to steal out when she is sure of being observ'd. When she went to the famous Ass-Race (which I must confess was but an odd Diversion to be encouraged by People of Rank and Figure) it was not, like other Ladies, to hear those poor Animals ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... him rather a washed-out specimen, but, I say, that fat fellow looks rather a sport. You know, the man like a dormouse." ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... what it is yet," grinned Elfreda. "The idea just came to me. I suppose," she continued reflectively, "we could have all the animals, like the March Hare, for instance, and the Dormouse. Then there's the Mock Turtle and the Jabberwock. No, that's been done to death. Besides, it's in 'Through the Looking Glass.' We could have the Griffon, though, and then, there's the Duchess, the King, the Queen, and the Mad Hatter. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... was the third son of the Vicar of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, where he was born, May 17, 1749. Before he was nine years of age he showed a growing taste for natural history, in forming a collection of the nests of the dormouse; and when at school at Cirencester he was fond of searching for fossils, which abound in that neighborhood. He was articled to a surgeon at Sudbury, near Bristol, and at the end of his apprenticeship came ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... butter. But where, where, dear dormouse, are the hatter and hare? Especially the sweet bunny rabbit that wriggled his ears and loved Gralice, the ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... to go running about en chemise, like the girl in the tale of the 'Midsummer Eve,' where she pulls the Saint Johns-wort flower, and has her wish to hear all the creatures talk. I liked it much, and Yvon slept so like the dormouse that he never heard me creep in and out. It was hard to bring much water, but the poor cabbages were so glad, and Mother Lobineau felt that ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... more about me than about the cat and not even so much. Tell your little mother, just that. Then I shall see you at last, all I want to for two days. Do you know that you are INACCESSIBLE in Paris? Poor old fellow, did you finally sleep like a dormouse in your cabin? I would like to give you a little of my sleep that nothing, not even a ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... in this volume "The Awakening of the Dormouse," "The Purple Emperor," "The Harvest Mouse," and "The Trivial Fortunes of Molge," I have to thank the Editor of the Girl's Realm, and for "The Story of a Field Vole," and "The Passing of the Black Rat," I am indebted to the courtesy of the ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... kindly man, as is set forth abundantly in all his works, he never paused to think that there could be a difference between his ideal free Liberal citizen, voting and exercising all his right of citizenship in a free commonwealth, after the fashion of a dormouse freely exercising his natural functions in the receiver of an air-pump, and a simple ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... been suppressed, like the dormouse in Alice's teapot. There is very little left of me. I had no idea your niece had such a taste for argument, Cunliffe. I take it rather unkindly that I was ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... brothers, and had gathered primroses and violets in the springtime. She could recognize the group of tall elms, and knew that if she kept to the right she might creep through a hole in the hedge, and make her way across some fields into the high road. As quietly as some little dormouse or night ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... whole of the party, not excluding the Squire himself, that Mrs Inglis very soon began to talk about bed; and toe had to talk very loudly, too, for Harry had curled himself up in the great easy chair, dormouse fashion; Fred was sitting at the table with a book, whose leaves he was keeping from flying open by resting his head upon them; while Philip was seated on a small ottoman by his father's knees, and resting against them, fast asleep, as ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... after a dream. ('Post-hypnotic suggestion.') But a savage is born to his kin-totem. A man is born a wolf of the Delawares, his totem is the wolf, he cannot help himself. But after, or in, his medicine fast and sleep, he may choose a dormouse or a squirrel for his manitou (tona, nagual) or private protecting animal. These are quite separate from totems, as Mr. Max ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... Fairy Book Norman Gale Fairy Songs William Shakespeare Queen Mab Ben Jonson The Elf and the Dormouse Oliver Herford "Oh! Where Do Fairies Hide Their Heads?" Thomas Haynes Bayly Fairy Song Leigh Hunt Dream Song Richard Middleton Fairy Song John Keats Queen Mab Thomas Hood The Fairies of the Caldon-Low Mary Howitt The Fairies William Allingham ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... the amiable persons were quite overcome by the idea of the journey. Madame Bonaparte, mere, supported the fatigues of this memorable day with the greatest courage; but Madame Bonaparte, Consulesse, did not show any. The two young ladies who sat in the dormouse, Mademoiselle Hortense and Madame Lavallette, were rival candidates for a bottle of Eau de Cologne; and every now and then the amiable M. Rapp made the carriage stop for the comfort of his poor little sick heart, which overflowed with bile: in fine, he ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... combined effect of wind and current, they concealed themselves on deck under a black tarpaulin—that is to say, it had been black, but wind and weather had reduced it to a dirty brown—and there, adopting for the occasion the habits of the dormouse, the bear, the caterpillar, and other ephemeral productions, they lay torpid. But the moment the vessel touched the quay, profiting by the commotion, they emerged, and signed certificates with chalk on my portmanteau; then vanished in the crowd. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... he isn't asleep! How a fellow can be such a dormouse-headed animal at a time like this ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... one-horsed sleighs, which resemble nothing so much as a packing-case with a pair of shafts attached. But these are all; for work has practically ceased in the agricultural regions, and a period of hibernation has begun, when, like the dormouse, rancher and farmer alike pass their slack time in repose from the arduous labors of the ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... with the scent of bum-gunshot at the walnut-tree taper, as is usual in his country of Mirebalais. Slacking, therefore, the topsail, and letting go the bowline with the brazen bullets, wherewith the mariners did by way of protestation bake in pastemeat great store of pulse interquilted with the dormouse, whose hawk's-bells were made with a puntinaria, after the manner of Hungary or Flanders lace, and which his brother-in-law carried in a pannier, lying near to three chevrons or bordered gules, whilst he was clean out of heart, drooping and crestfallen by the too narrow sifting, canvassing, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... explanations when she finds me conversing with a lady unbeknown to her. The Earthquaker won't do you any harm; it's only for safe keeping I'll put you with him. Why, he don't waken, not once in fifty years. He's quite the dormouse. Turns on his bed now and then, and things upstairs get upset, more or less; but, as a rule, a child could ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang

... with Lady Shalem was the Grafin von Tolb, a well-dressed woman of some fifty-six years, comfortable and placid in appearance, yet alert withal, rather suggesting a thoroughly wide-awake dormouse. Rich, amiable and intelligent were the adjectives which would best have described her character and her life-story. In her own rather difficult social circle at Paderborn she had earned for herself the reputation of being one of the most tactful and discerning hostesses ...
— When William Came • Saki

... had settled this Difference between John and his Wife, the Children (who had been sent out to play, while that Business was transacting) returned some in Tears, and others very disconsolate, for the Loss of a little Dormouse they were very fond of, and which was just dead. Mrs. Margery, who had the Art of moralizing and drawing Instructions from every Accident, took this Opportunity of reading them a Lecture on the Uncertainty of Life, and ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous

... monotony of a New England winter, which leaves so large a blank, so melancholy a death-spot, in lives so brief that they ought to be all summer-time." Even John Adams in his day so dreaded the tedious bitter New England winter that he longed to hibernate like a dormouse from ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... lank hair, and strong features—so much for her person; and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boy's plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for a garden; and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief—at least so it was conjectured ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... he leaned out, drew the hay and straw together, rearranged the ropes, so that no one could ever have dreamed a little mouse had been at them. Then he curled himself up again, this time more like a dormouse than anything else; and, being safe inside his dear Hirschvogel and intensely cold, he went fast asleep as if he were in his own bed at home with Albrecht, and Christof on either side of him. The train lumbered on, stopped often ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... half-an-hour ago; what the h—l's become of 'em? Surety none of the chaps is slipped off to have a yarn with old Steve; he won't thank 'em for disturbing of him at this time o' night, and rousing him out from between the guns, where I'll lay anything the old dormouse is snugly coiled away, instead of looking a'ter the brig, as is his dooty. I'll just slip down to the beach, and see if ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... light. They called a council to debate the matter, and to appoint some one to go and cut the cord—a very hazardous enterprise, for who dare go so near to the sun as would be necessary? The dormouse, however, undertook the task. At that time the dormouse was the largest animal in the world; when it stood up it looked like a mountain. It set out upon its mission, and, when it got to the place where the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous

... because it would be too dangerous to cross the flooded valleys in the darkness of the night. And, but for this consideration, I must have striven harder against the stealthy approach of slumber. But even so, it was very foolish to abandon watch, especially in such as I, who sleep like any dormouse. Moreover, I had chosen the very worst place in the world for such employment, with a goodly chance of awaking in a bed ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... to old Mr. John Taylor, Who "thinks he might pass as a dormouse," (Three years in bed and never ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter

... The dormouse squats and eats Choice little dainty bits Beneath the spreading roots of a broad lime; Nibbling his fill he stops from time to time And ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... quod est dulcis; que enim dulcia sunt desiderare solemus': gliscere therefore is equivalent to desiderare, crescere, pinguescere and several other words. After this we are not surprised at the following account of a dormouse. 'Glis a glisco: quoddam genus murium quod multum dormit. Et dicitur sic quod sompnus facit glires pingues et crescere.' Here is another piece of natural history. 'Irundo ab aer dicitur: quia non residens sed in aere capiens cibos edat, quasi in aere edens.' There is simplicity in the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... years. He waited at table, groomed the mare, gardened, blacked the abbe's boots, went on errands, chopped the wood, drove the carriole, and fetched the oats, straw, and hay from Prebaudet. He sat in the antechamber during the evening, where he slept like a dormouse. He was in love with Josette, a girl of thirty, whom Mademoiselle would have dismissed had she married him. So the poor fond pair laid by their wages, and loved each other silently, waiting, hoping for ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... were packed in like sardines. Men were retching and groaning, cussing and growling. At last I found a coil of rope. It was a huge coil with a hole in the centre—something like a large bird's nest. I got into this hole and curled up like a dormouse. Here I did not feel the cold so much, and lying down I didn't feel sick. The moon glittered on the great gray billows. The cattle-boat heaved up and slid down the mountains. She pitched and rolled and slithered sideways down the ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... her, and told her that I was going out, and did not suppose that I should be back till late, and that she could go to bed when she liked—which I knew would be a few minutes after she got permission. She is a sort of human dormouse and, nineteen times out of twenty, I have had to wait for my breakfast. I was in a fright as I walked down here, lest some one who knew me might run against me, but ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... of seven, with eyes black and sparkling as those of a dormouse, had just seen Tantaine in the doorway and pointed him out to ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... called out after her from the corner of the big sofa, where he lay curled up like a dormouse, "if you would do your best on my dress, instead of making me wear this old suit, it would strike a better average in ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... that the child should do it for her. Little Roger jumped up, boxed his brother's ears in a decided manner, and finally, burying his small hands in Edmund's light curly hair, gave him a dose of sensation which would have roused a dormouse. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... attractive, rapidly revolving machine in which the molasses, by centrifugal force, detaches itself from the sugar, and runs of its own accord down its appointed channels to the rum distillery, where Alice's Dormouse would have had the gratification of seeing a real treacle-well. In this latter place, where the smell of the fermenting molasses is awful, only East Indian coolies can be employed, a West Indian negro being unable to withstand its ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... "I apologize. Read. I'm as predisposed as I can be toward anything conceived by that little dormouse of a person ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... front teeth, both above and below, and are destitute of canine teeth. Their feet have claws, and are formed both for bounding and running. They feed on vegetables. The genera are, the porcupine, cavy, beaver, bat, marmot, squirrel, dormouse, jerboa, and hare. ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux

... The dormouse put out her head and said, "Really the sun shines brighter"; But the butterfly answered, "Not yet, not yet," And folded his ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot

... colour, dark, lank hair, and strong features. So much for her person; and not less propitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boys' sports, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy—nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rosebush. Indeed, she had no taste for a garden; and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief—at least, so it was conjectured from her habit of always preferring ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... my father seen spakin' was no use, he went on with his story.—By the same token, it was the story of Jim Soolivan and his ould goat he was tellin'—an' a pleasant story it is—an' there was so much divarsion in it, that it was enough to waken a dormouse, let alone to pervint a Christian goin' asleep. But, faix, the way my father tould it, I believe there never was the likes heerd sinst nor before for he bawled out every word av it, as if the life was fairly leavin' him thrying to keep ould Larry awake; but, faix, it was ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... Todd came out of his hole, gazed on the corrugated iron and saw visions, dreamed dreams. He handed the hole back to the rabbit and set to work to evolve a bungalow. By evening it was complete. He crawled within and went to sleep, slept like a drugged dormouse. At 10 P.M. a squadron of the Shetland Ponies (for the purpose of deceiving the enemy all names in this article are entirely fictitious) made our village. It was drizzling at the time, and the Field Officer in charge was getting most of it in the neck. He howled for his batman, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various

... months previously bought a dormouse in a cage at a bazaar, and after idolizing it for a week had forgotten all about it. Her husband had rescued it half starved; his assistant had fed it up in the laboratory, and they had tried a few experiments on it with painless drugs ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... said Septimus, and the door having closed behind Clem Sypher, he thrust the check beneath the bedclothes, curled himself up and went to sleep like a dormouse. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... Oh, mother! mother! Draw me close, hold me tight. Earth has no peace so holy as the blessed rest in a mother's clasping arms. After the long winter of separation, it is so sweet to bask in your presence, thawing like a numb dormouse in the sunshine of May. I knew I should find joy in the reunion, but how deep, how full, anticipation failed to paint; and only the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... the wall, to which he now added the gate key; and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner division or recess. The whole had a slovenly, confined, and sleepy look, like a cage for a human dormouse; while he, looming dark and heavy in the shadow of a corner by the window, looked like the human dormouse for whom it was fitted up,—as indeed ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... become rich and the favourite of the Bey, he began to think of settling down, it was to her that his thoughts went. The child had grown into a fat young woman, heavy and white. Her intelligence, dull in the first instance, had become still more obscured through the inertia of a dormouse's existence, the carelessness of a father given over to business, the use of opium-saturated tobacco and of preserves made from rose-leaves, the torpor of her Flemish blood, re-enforced by Oriental indolence. Furthermore, she was ill-bred, gluttonous, sensual, arrogant, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... brink of seventy-nine? And why should One litter the world at that age? Then, I thank God, I have vast blessings; I have preserved my eyes, ears, and teeth; I have no pain left; and I would bet with any dormouse that it cannot outsleep me. And when one can afford to pay for every relief, comfort, or assistance that can be procured at fourscore, dares one complain? Must not one reflect on the thousands of old poor, who are suffering martyrdom, and have none ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... be nice, though they do say 'as fat as a dormouse.' It is not a wonder they are fat, sleeping all day, and only waking to eat all night. Listen. Last year I had four apricots—they stole one, I had one nectarine, only one—well, sir, they ate half of it on the wall; a splendid nectarine—I ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... in the summer, comparatively speaking. Its nature is the reverse of that of the dormouse. Warm ambient air, loiterings abroad, gardenings, flowers to talk about, and preserves to make, soothed the wicked imp to slumber in the parish of Hollingford in summer-time. But when evenings grew short, and people ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... and unprovided with claws. These animals were all herbivorous. Amongst an immense number of others are found many new reptiles, some of them adapted for fresh water; species of birds allied to the sea-lark, curlew, quail, buzzard, owl, and pelican; species allied to the dormouse and squirrel; also the opossum and racoon; and species allied to the genette, fox, ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... never arrived at the Intelligencer office on time or quit after a proper day's work. He thought nothing of getting me out of bed before I'd had my eight hours' sleep to accompany him on some ridiculous errand. "Bertie, old dormouse, the grass is knocking at the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... Roughbrown! His wooing was very hopeless. And all the time he courted the imperious rose, who should be peeping at him from her home in the hedge but as plump and as sleek a little Miss Dormouse as ever you saw, and her eyes were ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... 3. The dormouse consumes but little of its food during the rigour of the season, for they roll themselves up, or sleep, or lie torpid the greatest part of the time; but on warm sunny days experience a short revival, and take ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... are lively," burst from Nan at the far end of the table. "How is Kitty Lorrimer, and how is Boris? And have they got as many pets as ever? Oh, can you tell me, please, father, if the dormouse has awakened yet? It was fast asleep when I was home at Christmas, and Boris said it mightn't wake again until May. Boris was so sorry it wasn't quite dead, because he wanted to stuff it; but he couldn't if it was alive, could he? That would ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade

... this theory of Hunter's as "a project which, if realized, he expected would make his fortune."[4] With this not altogether admirable object in view, his experiments upon freezing animals were doubtless made. A dormouse, confined in a cold mixture, he tells us, "showed signs of great uneasiness; sometimes it would curl itself into round form to preserve its extremities and confine the heat, and finding that ineffectual, would then endeavor ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... bed was a large pop-gun, a football, a dormouse in a cage, a punchball on a stand, a large box of "curios," and a buckskin which was his dearest possession and had been presented to him by an ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... standing on the bedroom hearth, in front of a blazing fire, in which the water froze solid. President John Adams so dreaded the bleak New England winter and the ill-warmed houses that he longed to sleep like a dormouse every year, from autumn to spring. In the Southern colonies, during the fewer cold days of the winter months, the temperature was not so low, but the houses were more open and lightly built than in the North, and were without cellars, and had fewer fireplaces; hence the discomfort from the cold ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... I really will work, with such a dear beautiful box!" cried Kate, opening it, and again peeping into all its little holes and contrivances. "Here is the very place for a dormouse to sleep in! And who is the ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... still, ye fools," whispered Long Allen to his mates; "by Saint Christopher, you will make our Dickon go beside himself, and we shall have his dagger presently fly at our costards. Leave him alone; in less than a minute he will sleep like a dormouse." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... extende it selfe, and leade towardes a large plaine, resounding all ouer with the sweete chirpings, melodious recordings, and loude singing of them. Wherein were leaping and running little Sqirrels, and the drowsie Dormouse, and other ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna

... big baskets of olives on their heads. The old dispossessed friar slumbers happily by the roadside. The little tables come out on to the pavement, and the society of the place forms itself afresh into buzzing groups of energetic conversers. The dormouse-life of winter is over, and the spring and the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... week—Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday—the presence of the open-air market rouses Versailles from her dormouse-like slumber and galvanises her into a state of activity that lasts for several hours. Long before dawn, the roads leading townwards are busy with all manner of vehicles, from the great waggon drawn by four white horses driven tandem, and laden with a moving stack of hay, to the ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... to the flowers. If it were not for the spring before it, the flower-root would rot in the ground, the tree canker at the core; the bird would speed south never to return; the insect would not retreat under shelter in the rain; the dormouse would not hibernate, the ant collect its stores, the bee its honey. There could be no life without expectation; and a life without hope in man or woman is that of a machine—not even that of an animal. Hope is the mainspring of every activity; it is the spur to all undertakings; it is the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... little room where Villagers are drinking tea, and the proprietress approaches to take your order. She is a good-looking young woman dressed in a bizarre red and blue effect, not unlike one of the Queens, but she prefers to be known as the "Dormouse"—not, however, that she shows the slightest tendency ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... sir,' said the old gentleman, 'has conferred upon me the ancient title o' grandfather vich had long laid dormouse, and wos s'posed to be nearly hex-tinct in our family. Sammy, relate a anecdote o' vun o' them boys, - that 'ere little anecdote about young Tony sayin' as he WOULD smoke a pipe unbeknown to ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... me to give the brute dinner, I now prepared to stop his mouth with cold chicken. While I was cautiously unfastening the hamper lid, Beauty remained quiet as a dormouse; and then he proceeded personally to assist the unfastening, with a vengeance. There was a bouncing volcanic eruption, a blood-curdling howl, a mixed-up whirling round the carriage, and then—smash!—bang through the window went Beauty!—leaving me doubled up on the ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... will recognize Vigoureux by the loss of his finger. He will at once admit that the lad followed him, and remained in the troupe for ten months. He was a good enough lad, but as grand as a peacock, and as lazy as a dormouse. He made great friends with an old Alsatian, called Fritz, who was the conductor of the orchestra, and by-and-by both were so fond of each other, that one day they went off in each other's company. Now you want to know what has become of Fritz? I know Vigoureux will ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... been throughout a puzzle and a game of chance, and that even in their case it might have turned out very differently, find themselves awaiting with a strange curiosity and anxiety the decision of some child of seventeen, knowing no more of the world than a baby dormouse. ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... him Sentronell? s'hart heele nod[119] presently: and he do not sleepe sitting upon the poynt of a Spanish needle, Dicke Bowyer's a very shittle-cocke. Nod! zounds, he is one of the nine sleepers, a very Dormouse: & I had a pageant to present of the seven deadly Sinnes[120], he should play Slouth; and he did not sleepe when he should speake his part ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... No further than that? Why, you might as well stay at home. Really, my dear, it's a great pity you don't go about and see some of your old friends; you can't mean to shut yourself up like a dormouse ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... hands with me as if with the fear that I may do them mischief. Such persons hold out civil finger-tips which they permit you to touch, and in the moment of contract they retreat, and inwardly you hope that you will not be called upon again to take that hand of "dormouse valour." It betokens a prudish mind, ungracious pride, and not seldom mistrust. It is the antipode to the hand of those ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... her to "Alice in Wonderland," Mr. Savile Clarke's play at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. The first act (Wonderland) goes well, specially the Mad Tea Party. Mr. Sydney Harcourt is a capital Hatter, and little Dorothy d'Alcourt (aet. 61/2) a delicious Dormouse. Phoebe Carlo is a splendid Alice. Her song and dance with the Cheshire Cat (Master C. Adeson, who played the Pirate King in "Pirates of Penzance") was a gem. As a whole ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... stage of self-trance," says Dr. Paul. "In this state the Yogis, like the bat, the hedge-hog, the marmot, the hamster and the dormouse, acquire the power of supporting the abstraction of atmospheric air, and the privation of food and drink. Of Samadhi or human hibernation there have been three cases within the last twenty-five years. The first case occurred in Calcutta, the second in Jesselmere, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... saucy long-haired boys rejoice To do the manager's commands. At morn 'tis not with empty hands The country pays its call, but some Bring honey in its native comb, Or cones of cheese; some think as good A sleepy dormouse from the wood; And honest tenants' big girls bring Baskets ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... sauruses, that could reach with their long necks and ponderous jaws across a street and pick up a man, if street and man there had been. Then came land animals, monstrous in growth, by the side of which the elephant dwindles to the diminutive stature of the dormouse. In all these advances, was a succession of steps, mounting higher and higher, in complication of structure, each more perfect in organism than its predecessor. Vegetation itself became more complicated, and as it approached ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... I scoop out a snug little nest in the bark and curl up in it like a dormouse, wrapped in this rug, which one of the men gave me. Besides, every morning early I take a plunge and a swim in the stream, and that ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... scrawled across it in pencil. "Why, it's your name!" she said wonderingly, and held the piece of wood in her hand. The place was all wood. There was wood here to last her weeks. Mouse cages—white mouse cages and dormouse cages, a wooden ruler with idle scratches all over it and "P.S." in the corner—boxes and boxes of things he wouldn't want; he'd say if he saw them now: "Throw it away"—boxes of glass tubes he had blown when he was fifteen, boxes of dried ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... Surgeon at Meridki, and we called him "Dormouse," because he was a round little, sleepy little man. He was a good Doctor and never quarreled with any one, not even with our Deputy Commissioner who had the manners of a bargee and the tact of a horse. He married a girl as round and ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... dormouse," said the Outlaw; "and never trust me but I am grieved for thy daughter. But I may not help it—The Templars lances are too strong for my archery in the open field—they would scatter us like dust. Had I but known it was Rebecca when she was borne off, something might have been done; ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... examination of my exterior and interior. Having apparently satisfied himself as to my value, he put me and the pipe back into his dreadful pocket, from which, even yet, the fumes of the "soldier" had not faded, and then curled himself up like a dormouse and composed ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... is as awkward as a turnspit when first put into the wheel, and as sleepy as a dormouse,' ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell

... much pleased with his nest, and forthwith curled himself up in it like a young dormouse, delighting in the conviction that no attendants despatched by his mother to capture him would ever find him here. Boys have been young pickles ever since the world began, and were just as full of pranks in the fifteenth century as ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... need be for a year, and in the end you will find her normal and restored, of that I am convinced," he had said; and in these words her husband found his greatest comfort, as he tucked his little dormouse in and tip-toed ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... the Lucrine wave; Choicer than new-polished ivory That the herds in Indian jungles gave; Choicer than Erythrae's marbles white, Snows new-fallen, lilies yet unsoiled: Softer were your tresses and more bright Than the locks by German maidens coiled: Than the finest fleeces Baetis shows, Than the dormouse with her golden hue: Lips more fragrant than the Paestan rose, Than the Attic bees' first honey-dew, Or an amber ball, new-pressed and warm; Paled the peacock's sheen in your compare; E'en the winsome squirrel lost his charm, And the Phoenix seemed no longer rare. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... little suggestive of the fairy in Jerry as she tumbled through the door at that moment, Pepperpot held high in her arms and Bigboy leaping at her side. They rudely disturbed the Maltese—Dormouse, Jerry called her—and then occupied in sprawling fashion the strip of ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... only knew who did this, yes, if I only knew, I would have the rascal put in the stocks. But you, you dormouse, yes you, you call yourself a man! you! Don't you wish to borrow my petticoat! To sleep when engaged in the noble art of hunting! To complain of fatigue! Fie upon such men! But can you not ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... bright, black, determined eyes, sat lumped up in the distant corners of their dens, ready 'to die game,' if die they must. Gay-colored finches, the gold and the green, graced the window in little brown bob cages; while mice of all colors, from the burnt sienna-colored dormouse, who was more than half asleep within the skin of an apple which it had scooped out, to the matronly white mouse, who was sitting composedly amid a progeny of thirteen young ones, attracted groups of little gazers, every now and then dispersed by the larger terrier, who ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... They had no light. They called a council to debate upon the matter, and to appoint some one to go and cut the cord—for this was a very hazardous enterprise, as the rays of the sun would burn whoever came so near to them. At last the dormouse undertook it—for at this time the dormouse was the largest animal in the world. When it stood up it looked like a mountain. When it got to the place where the sun was snared, its back began to smoke and burn with the intensity of the heat, and the top of its carcass was reduced to enormous ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... the sound of a south-west wind sweeping through them with the tune of running waters in its course. It is a well-practised ear that can tell whether the sound it hears be that of gently falling waters, or of wind flowing through the branches of firs. Sutherland's heart, reviving like a dormouse in its hole, began to be joyful at the sight of the genial motions of Nature, telling of warmth and blessedness at hand. Some goal of life, vague but sure, seemed to glimmer through the appearances around him, and to stimulate ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... to go and cut the cord, for this was a very hazardous enterprise, as the rays of the sun would burn up whoever came so near. At last the dormouse undertook it, for at this time the dormouse was the largest animal in the world" (the mastodon?); "when it stood up it looked like a mountain. When it got to the place where the sun was snared, its back began to smoke and burn with the intensity of the heat, and the top of its carcass was reduced ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... and got supper, strained and skimmed milk, set a sponge for bread, and slept all night like a dormouse. George Tucker never went ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... your pardon for keeping you waiting," she said; "I thought that dormouse Rose was still about. I must go ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... mathematical genius, had been able to pay his way through Cambridge University by the scholarships and prizes which he had won. One beautiful little dark-eyed daughter of seven was playing in a West End Theatre as the dormouse in "Alice in Wonderland." She was second fiddle to Alice herself, also, and could sing all her songs. Her pay was some five pounds a week, poor enough for the attraction she proved, but more than all the rest of the family put together earned. At that time I never went to theatres. Acquaintances ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... bushel of grasshoppers, and a broil of magpies seasoned with the slugs that infest certain green berries. One regards this announcement with more or less incredulity; but little doubt seems to hang over the assertion that the dormouse has just been introduced into the list of French game-dishes. The puzzle for the cooks seems to be with regard to the proper sauce for the new delicacy; but this matter does not trouble the little chimney-sweeps, who find the animal so long associated in poetry and in fact chiefly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... lingering half-forlorn, On Autumn loves to lean, And fields of slowly yellowing corn Are girt by woods still green; When hazel-nuts wax brown and plump, And apples rosy-red, And the owlet hoots from hollow stump, And the dormouse makes its bed; When crammed are all the granary floors, And the Hunter's moon is bright, And life again is sweet indoors, And logs again alight; Ay, even when the houseless wind Waileth through cleft and chink, And in the twilight maids grow kind, And jugs ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... more delightful than the picture, in "Alice in Wonderland," of the "Mad Tea Party?" Observe the hopelessly distraught expression of the March hare, and the eager incoherence of the hatter! A little further on the pair are trying to squeeze the dormouse into the teapot; and a few pages back the blue caterpillar is discovered smoking his hookah on the top of a mushroom. He was exactly three inches long, says the veracious chronicle, but what a dignity!—what an oriental flexibility of gesture! Speaking of animals, it must not be ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... the Grove, "and in this way: before we begin the battle, I will come up to your worship fair and softly, and give you three or four buffets, with which I shall stretch you at my feet and rouse your anger, though it were sleeping sounder than a dormouse." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Shee did shew fauour to the youth in your sight, onely to exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in your Heart, and brimstone in your Liuer: you should then haue accosted her, and with some excellent iests, fire-new from the mint, you should haue bangd the youth into dumbenesse: this was look'd for ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... was properly the Gerboa of Arabia and North Africa, which the Arabs also regard as a dainty. There is a kindred animal in Siberia, called Alactaga, and a kind of Kangaroo-rat (probably the same) is mentioned as very abundant on the Mongolian Steppe. There is also the Zieselmaus of Pallas, a Dormouse, I believe, which he says the Kalmaks, even of distinction, count a delicacy, especially cooked in sour milk. "They eat not only the flesh of all their different kinds of cattle, including horses and camels, but also that of many wild animals which other ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... again disappeared and she only returned after some ten minutes. "Home," she then said to Burton, climbing heavily into the car. "Yes, there he was, sleeping as peaceful as a dormouse in his silk pyjamas," she remarked. "I startled him some, I reckon, when I waked him up. No, he don't know anything about her. Wanted to jump up and look for her when I told him she was missing. Keep still, Mercedes—what do you mean by bouncing about like that—folks can see ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... led the animals! Fairy Fluffikins was a sad tease; she would creep into the nests where the fat baby dormice were asleep in bed while Mamma dormouse nodded over her knitting and Papa smoked his little acorn pipe; and she would tickle the babies till they screamed with laughter and nearly rolled out of bed, and Mamma scolded, and Papa said in a gruff voice—"What a plague ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless

... said that was for the three ladies to arrange. Of course, Maida must have wanted to be in front, but she is so horribly unselfish that she glories in sacrificing herself, so she gave up as meekly as if she had been a lady's-maid, or a dormouse, and naturally I felt a little brute; but I usually do feel a brute with Maida; she's so much better than any one I ever saw that I can't help imposing on her, and neither can Mamma. It's a waste of good material being so awfully pretty as Maida, if you're never going to ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the colour, shape, size, and manner of nesting, I make no doubt but that the species is nondescript. They are much smaller, and more slender, than the mus domesticus medius of Ray, and have more of the squirrel or dormouse colour; their belly is white, a straight line along their sides divides the shades of their back and belly. They never enter into houses; are carried into ricks and barns with the sheaves, abound in harvest; and build their nests amidst the straws of the corn above the ground, and sometimes ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... said Gascoyne, soothingly, "the little imp is as lazy as a dormouse and as mischievous as a monkey. I'll warrant the hiding was his due, and that more of the like would ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... pyjamas and the soft bed and the blazing fire in his room—he stripped back the light-excluding curtains forgetful of Defence of the Realm Acts, and opened all the windows wide, to the horror of Peddle in the morning—slept like an unperturbed dormouse. When Peddle woke him, he lay drowsily while the old butler filled his bath and fiddled about with drawers. At last aroused, he ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... but what that matter now since you and I alive? Plenty more where they come from. Not dead though, think only sleep, no like cold, like dormouse. But never mind cannibal pig. They serve our turn, if they live, live; if they die, die and God have mercy on souls, if cannibal have soul. Ah! here we are," and from beneath six inches of water he dragged up the tin box containing Little Bonsa, from which he extracted the fetish, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... of Jamie curled up in the sofa corner, as sound asleep as a dormouse, suggested the propriety of going home, and ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... very fierce; and although they have no teeth, their jaws are so strong that they can bite a walking-stick in half. Land-tortoises are quite harmless; they only attack the insects they feed upon. They go to sleep, like the dormouse, in the winter, but they do not make a burrow; they cover themselves with earth by scraping it up and throwing it over their bodies. In doing this they would find their heads and tails very much in the way if it were not that they are able to draw ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... boisterously. "Here, come out, you lazy old rascal; we're just going on a bit of a trip. Where are you? Oh, I say, you do like playing dormouse." ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... fly: Hum, quoth the bee: Buzz and hum they cry And so do we. In his ear, in his nose, Thus do you see? [They tickle them.] He ate the dormouse Else it was he. ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... hadn't been a charcoal-burner, kissed Barty on both cheeks, and gave him a huge bag full of some kind of forest berry that is good to eat; also a young cuckoo (which Barty restored to liberty an hour later); also a dormouse and a large green lizard; also, in a little pasteboard box, a gigantic pale green caterpillar four inches long and thicker than your thumb, with a row of shiny blue stars in relief all along each side of its back—the most beautiful thing of the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... his shadow that he may figure out how much longer he may sleep. But that I take to be a mere literary furnishing, like the chuck part of the animal's name, brought from England with the pioneers and adapted to use in this country. Probably it is said in England of the dormouse, which also sleeps winters, as does the woodchuck, though I believe lightly compared with our animal. The woodchuck is far too sound a sleeper to wake up on a February ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... dusty road strewed acorns on the lea; And one took root and sprouted up, and grew into a tree. Love sought its shade, at evening time, to breath its early vows; And age was pleased, in heats of noon, to bask beneath its boughs; The dormouse loved its dangling twigs, the birds sweet music bore; It stood a glory in ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... who had only time to hold out her apron, and catch a little Girl, whom they carried to its cradle. The Mother arranged her papers, went to bed; and the whole of that (TOUT CELA) is sleeping like a dormouse, at the hour I write to you." My guardian angels, "poor I sha'n't have so easy a delivery of my CATILINA" (my ROME SAVED, for the confusion of old Crebillon and the cabals)! ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle



Words linked to "Dormouse" :   Gliridae, loir, rodent, hazel mouse



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