"Featherless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... parent. It provides both sunshine and shadow for its young. Its nest is suspended from the prettiest bough of the most graceful tree, where it is rocked by the gentle winds; and the one we found yesterday was beautifully lined with soft things, both deep and warm, so that the little featherless birdies cannot suffer from ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... say, owing to a moorghy famine in the district, the stock is at a somewhat low ebb. Men have been scouring the country for fowls, but when we went to look at the result this morning we found about a dozen miserable chickens, almost featherless, standing dejectedly in corners, and Mrs. Royle wailed, "We can't kill these: it would be a sheer slaughter of the innocents!" It isn't easy to get beef or mutton in this part of the world, and when a sheep ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... day was the birthday in the little nest in the raspberries, and on my usual morning call I found four featherless birdlings, with beaks already yawning for food. Every morning, of course, I looked at the babies, but it was not till the eighth day of their life that I found their eyes open. Before this they opened their mouths when I jarred the nest in parting the branches, thus showing ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... repeat this trifle, it is only to point out that the system on which I was being educated deprived all things, human life among the rest, of their mystery. The 'bare-grinning skeleton of death' was to me merely a prepared specimen of that featherless ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... forgotten to lock the door; his memory and observation of afternoon teas past is stimulated by afternoon tea to come; and he is himself more like the Universal Man than on most other occasions. Featherless biped mammals that we are, what need have we in common that might conceivably provide a good and sufficient reason for the dolling up to which I am about to subject myself? Substantial food, less fleeting, ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... his lads to give with the best effect. This was something altogether new, and it proved a grand success, for Mrs. March couldn't get over her surprise, and insisted on shaking hands with every one of the featherless birds, from tall Franz and Emil to the little quadroon, who had the ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... fourth day of watching, I saw there was news; sitting was over, and though they could not be seen, it was easy to picture the featherless, wide-mouthed objects, evidently so lovely to the young parents. Close work as it had been to observe the movements of the pair, it was much harder after that, they became at once so wary. I am sure they never regarded me in any way ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... seen so awfu' bonnie a bird. A pair nested every year in the hollow top of an oak stump about fifteen feet high that stood on the side of the meadow, and we used to wonder how they got the fluffy young ones down from the nest and across the meadow to the lake when they were only helpless, featherless midgets; whether the mother carried them to the water on her back or in her mouth. I never saw the thing done or found anybody who had until this summer, when Mr. Holabird, a keen observer, told me that he once saw ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... wing, or bring her a plump bug when the poor biddy's appetite failed her. They were very happy together till Thanksgiving drew near, when a dreadful pestilence seemed to sweep through the farm-yard; for turkeys, hens, ducks, and geese fell a prey to it, and were seen by their surviving relatives featherless, pale, and stiff, borne away to some unknown place whence no fowl returned. Blot was waked one night by a great cackling and fluttering in the hen-house, and peeping down from her perch saw a great hand glide along the roost, clutch her beloved ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... good stead when it came to earning my own living in New York City. I was timid, full of fears—imaginary and real. I had been to New York many times before, but the realization that I was in the big city alone, unanchored, afloat, filled me with panic. I was like a young bird, featherless, naked, trembling, knocked out of its nest before it could fly. Every sound, every unknown shape was a monster cat waiting to devour me. I was acutely aware of dangers lurking for young girls in big cities. For two or three days I had all I could do to control ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... have both feathers and boots?" he asked her humbly, a twinkle in his grey eye. "If one hasn't boots, one may catch a cold and die of it—which is, after all, worse than going featherless." ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nest, with some bark of the best, and a clawful of clay. {6} And with these did he frame two birds lacking a name, without feathers (his game was a puzzle to all); Next around them he fluttered a-dancing, and muttered; and, lastly, he uttered a magical call: Then the figures of clay, as they featherless lay, they leaped up, who but they, and embracing they fell, And THIS was the baking of Man, and his making; but now he's forsaking his Father, Pundjel! Now these creatures of mire, they kept whining for fire, and to crown their ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang |
