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Homing   Listen
adjective
Homing  adj.  Home-returning; used specifically of carrier pigeons.
Homing pigeon, any pigeon trained to return home from a distance. Also called carrier pigeon. Most are bred from the domestic pigeon Columba livia. Homing pigeons are used for sending back messages or for flying races. By carrying the birds away and releasing them at gradually increasing distances from home, they may be trained to return with more or less certainty and promptness from distances up to four or five hundred miles. The birds typically do not stop on their way home, and may average as much as 60 miles per hour on their return trip. If the distance is increased much beyond 400 miles, the birds are unable to cover it without stopping for a prolonged rest, and their return becomes doubtful. The record for returnig from a distance is close to 1,200 miles. Homing pigeons are not bred for fancy points or special colors, but for strength, speed, endurance, and intelligence or homing instinct. Although used since ancient times, homing pigeons have been largely displaced for practical purposes by radio and electronic communications, but they are still used in some special situations at the end of the 20th century. They were used in military operations as recently as in World War II.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Homing" Quotes from Famous Books



... the stern of the launch. In it, lazily wielding the polished paddle, sat young Mrs. Haltren, bareheaded, barearmed, singing as sweetly as the little cardinal, who paused in sheer surprise at the loveliness of song and singer. Like a homing pigeon the canoe circled to take its bearings once, then glided ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... born within a stone's throw of the Paris fortifications, as her manager would have liked you to believe, but in an indefinite street in Cockneydom, so like its mates that, in the words of Folly herself, she had to have the homing instinct of a pigeon to find it at all. Folly's original name had been—but why give it away? She was one of those women who are above and beyond a name—of a class, or, rather, of a type that a relatively merciful world produces sparingly. She was ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... he said at last. "He sends and receives messages from the roof of his house in Thirty-seventh Street by homing pigeons!" ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle

... one. Perhaps no seashore in the world has been painted so much as Scheveningen. Mesdag, Maris, Alfred Stevens, to name only a few of the artists, have found here themes for many paintings, and the scene is a wonderful one when the homing fleet of "Boms," as the fishing-boats are called, appears in the offing to be welcomed by the fisherwomen. There are other smaller watering-places on the coast, but Scheveningen ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... his time away. For then as now the common-minded rich Grudged ease to those whose toil brought them in means For every waste of life. At length I spoke, Insulting both my inarticulate soul And her with acted anger: "Lazy wretch, Is it for eyes like yours to watch the sea As though you waited for a homing ship? My father might with reason spend his hours Scanning the far horizon; for his Swan Whose outward lading was full half a vintage Is now months overdue." She turned on me Her languor knit and, through its homespun wrap, Her muscular frame gave hints of rebel will, While ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... of shadows impended vaguely over all the illuminated world, and now and again a flicker of wings through the upper atmosphere betokened the flight of homing birds. Crann gazed about him absently while he permitted the statement he had made to sink deep into the jealous, shrinking heart of the young mountaineer, and he repeated it ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... lets drop blue doves which ground the mind Like clover; then, with drawing to the skies, His pleasure is to watch the flocks arise. Here, there, they mount; they show no cloud, no wind, Can hinder homing; and the angels find No transport, like the sight, for, to their eyes, 'Tis more souls for the joy, which glorifies The Father, traced to ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... swells that cut into the murky sky. His eyes studied every rod of soil as he retraced his way up that great wind-swept slope, noting every change in vegetation or settlement. Five years before he had crept like a lizard; now he was rushing straight on like the homing eagle who sees his home crag gleam in the ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... back by railway and walked the train most of the way. He dropped from the cars at the water tank and struck across country, and again he ran. But this time it was no headlong flight. Straight as a homing bird went Dannie with all speed, toward the foot of ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... heard when homing) That her roving spouse was dead; Why she had danced in the gloaming We ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy

... prize they are going to award; if they are favourable to us, we will load them with benefits far greater than those Paris[308] received. Firstly, the owls of Laurium,[309] which every judge desires above all things, shall never be wanting to you; you shall see them homing with you, building their nests in your money-bags and laying coins. Besides, you shall be housed like the gods, for we shall erect gables[310] over your dwellings; if you hold some public post and want to do ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... than six," replied the Bishop, as they stepped on board Lord Downton's beautiful craft, the "Homing Pigeon." ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... pieces, trampled to pulp; they had heard the thunder of the vanishing herd, and they had listened to the awful silence that followed, lying on their faces, clinging to the breast of their old, cold, cruel Mother Earth. With day, like homing pigeons, they had returned to ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... speed up our recovery missile," Tom explained. "Looks like a slim hope, though, from the way that third blip is homing on target. This other control has just caused every instrument on this ship, and all the others in the task force, to make permanent records on magnetic tape ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... drift and toss Swift your homing transports churn; Soon for you the Southron Cross High above your bows shall burn; Soon beyond the rolling Bight Gleam ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various

... loss of time," Those who remained behind, sacrificing allegiance to their old flag for the sake of allegiance to the soil, were indeed far happier than the irreconcilables who had elected to return to the motherland, bereft of all but their movable property. And among these homing Frenchmen were some whose reception caused them a very reasonable anxiety. Vaudreuil, Bigot, Pean, Cadet, Varin, Penisseault, and several others who had held offices in Canada, were cast into the Bastille, charged with the corruptions which had sapped the life-blood of New France. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... of property. Thus law, custom, public sentiment, climate, soil, and production, all combine to give bird-life a development in England that it attains in no other country. In no other land is it so multitudinous and musical; in none is there such ample and varied provision for housing and homing it. Every field is a great bird's- nest. The thick, green hedge that surrounds it, and the hedge-trees arising at one or two rods' interval, afford nesting and refuge for myriads of these meadow singers. The groves and thickets are full of them and their music; so full, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... hath possessed knoweth no more of roaming; All roads and the flowing of waves and the speediest flight he knows, But wherever his feet are set, his soul is forever homing, And going, he comes, and coming he ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... the mike again. "Missiles homing on target," I said. "Strike in thirty-five seconds. You'll be interested to know we're employing chemical warheads. So far there is no sign of offense or defense from the enemy." I figured the news would shock a few mutineers. David wasn't ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer

... ourselves. There's Tom Chesney to begin with; George Cooper here, who ought to make a pretty fair scout even if he is always finding fault; Carl Oskamp, also present, if we can only tear him away from his hobby of raising homing pigeons long enough to study up what scouts have to know; yourself, Josh Kingsley; and a fellow by the name of Felix Robbins, which happens ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster

... in the country, necessitating the upkeep of a horse for the sake of his pastoral work, but that was only an advantage. Also to be sure, the Methodists in Mount Mark were in a minority, and an inferiority,—Mount Mark being a Presbyterian stronghold due to the homing there of the trim and orderly little college. But what of that? The salary was six hundred and fifty dollars and the parsonage was adorable! The parsonage family could see nothing at all wrong with the world that day, and ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston

... band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his station. He even assisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf bags of the gentlemen from the car to the coffee-room where, with the intuition of the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found their way. As Carl Schultz followed, carrying the dust-coats, a road map fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor. Carl Schultz picked it up, and was about to replace ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... from Guaymas. He had very little money. The straightening up of affairs showed him to possess only about four hundred dollars to the good, but he started gallantly, shirking in his mind the meeting, but overpowered by the homing instinct, the instinct which leads ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... Found Treasure Partners A Girl to Come Home To Rainbow Cottage The Red Signal White Orchids Silver Wings The Tryst The Strange Proposal Through These Fires The Street of the City All Through the Night The Gold Shoe Astra Homing Blue Ruin Job's Niece Challengers The Man of the Desert Coming Through the Rye More Than Conqueror Daphne Deane A New Name The Enchanted Barn The Patch of Blue Girl from Montana The Ransom Rose Galbraith The Witness Sound of the Trumpet Sunrise ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... incompetent diplomats. But if there was any season when the long crowded room was more attractive than at any other, it was in these autumn evenings when firelight and twilight mingled, and the natural 'homing' instinct of the Northerner, accustomed through long ages to spend long winters mostly indoors, stirred ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... grass crushed at a touch, and it was child's work to pick out the moccasin track across the meadow. When the steps reached the beach they were harder to follow. I lost them for a while, though there were scattered pebbles that would have led me straight as a homing pigeon, had I been cool enough in mind to have my eyes and wits as sharp as usual. As it was, I doubled, and squandered time, until the sun began to loom red near the horizon. And all the time I was saying to myself, "It is not true. It is ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... chastened pilots took off from the level field, with a half dozen curious French peasants for an audience, and laid a straight course for Le Bourget. No more acrobatics and no more hedge hopping. To an observer below they would have resembled two homing pigeons flying rather close together and maintaining their positions with a singleness of ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... ancient trees, The sunlit lichens burning on the byre, The lark descending, and the homing bees, Proclaim the ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through the air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees, homing, upstream, silently moving, a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the distance, and grows and veers and swings, Like any homing swallow with nightfall in her wings. The wind's white sources glimmer with shining gusts of rain; And in the Ardise country the spring comes back again. It is the brooding April, haunted and sad and dear, When vanished things return ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman

... She had declined all other invitations, saying that Mr. Davies was to hasten thither the moment the graduating exercises were over, and now to think of the triumph and malicious delight of the other girls was intolerable. Her lover should fly to her like homing-pigeon the instant he was released from prison. It was tantamount to treason that he should purpose anything else. Almira fretted herself into a fever. She wrote one long letter to the recreant Parson, and her sister Beaytrice, as they called her, followed it up with another ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... kind of man who lends himself to being robbed; the real wonder was that it had not been done already. But, mingled with her contempt for his helplessness, Miss Gregory felt a certain softening. His homing instinct, as blind as that of a domestic animal, his rejoicing in his return, his childish plan for taking his mother by surprise, even his loyalty to the tramcars and all the busy littleness of Clapham Junction—these touched something in her akin to the goodness of motherhood. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... while he was roaring on, his machine seemingly feeling like a homing pigeon. He felt a fierce love for that noble hunter. He felt he could almost talk to it and tell it how proud he was of having been able to put it through its paces. Never had there been such a machine ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll

... castle in the valley lies, Elaine, hast thou forgotten? Where swift the homing swallow flies And in the sunset daylight dies— But hush! Where is Elaine? ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... intoxication, they knew the ground by instinct and from long association. They gained on him. Across the way a window-sash went up with a bang, and a woman screamed. Through the only other entrance to the mews a belated cab was homing; its driver, getting wind of the unusual, pulled up, blocking the way, and added ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... had come to it through the tortuous cuts and passes was a marvel of homing instinct—the heart that homed to its object. It had seemed to her all along this strange, tense journey, that she had had no will of her own, that she had held her breath and shut her eyes, as it were, and gone forward in obedience to some strange thing within that said, "turn here," "go ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... me yet. With less strain on the attention, however, there was more upon the mind. No longer forced to exert some muscle twice or thrice a minute, I had time to feel very faint, and yet time to think. My soul flew homing to its proper prison. I was no longer any unit at unequal strife with the elements; instincts common to my kind were no longer my only stimulus. I was my poor self again; it was my own little life, and no other, that I wanted to go on living; and yet I felt vaguely there was some special thing I ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... had entered the little building. The key, it was presumed, had been lost; the lock certainly looked rusty. The roof, too, soon fell into disrepair, and no doubt within, the place soon became the prey of damp and mildew, the nest of homing birds, or the lair of timid beasts. Very soon the proud copy of an archaic temple took on that miserable and forlorn look peculiar ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... humbled Triumph-Arch Was doomed to see you tread your fathers' tracks— Paris, your goal, now lies a six days' march Behind your homing backs. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various

... The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance. It seems at times as if they possessed some extra sense—the home sense—which operates unerringly. I saw this ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... a line the quintette swept along, heading straight as homing pigeons for the Harrowbrook Country Club, where a big delegation of enthusiasts awaited to watch the contestants alight, drink the prescribed cup of coffee, take on gasolene and ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... backwater when the main stream was spuming and ramping with the great bore of a general election. I have been able to hear the swallows twitter at sunrise in serene unconsciousness of the crisis, to watch the rooks homing at twilight, as though the course of Nature were still the same, and to see the moonlight rippling over the sombre water at midnight in unaffected tranquillity. Myself was scarcely better informed of the tidal flood: stray echoes of speech, odd fragments of newspaper floated down ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... Harding, and finished my evening meal, when a knock came to the door, and there entered Mrs Travers. Furious! She had returned from her day in the country; had seen her husband that afternoon; had heard from his lips what I had dared to think and to say! If she had been defending a homing dove, she could not have been more outraged, more aflame. She wished me to understand, once and for all, that for the future no communication, no acquaintance of any kind was possible between us. She would pass me by in the ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... shot in at the casino door like a homing rabbit, and walked on in silence, which lasted till Ruth, suddenly becoming aware that her companion's eyes were fixed on her face, turned her head, to meet a gaze of complete, not to say loving, admiration. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... corner. "Sears-Roebuck are very tactless," she declared. "Everything they have to offer reminds one of home. What do you think of home, Ban? Home, as an abstract proposition. Home as the what-d'you-call-'em of the nation; the palladium—no, the bulwark? Home as viewed by the homing pigeon? Home, Sweet Home, as sung by—Would you answer, Ban, if I stopped gibbering and gave you ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... of one or more well-known varieties—pouters, fantails, homing pigeons, etc. Read stories of the training and flights of homing pigeons, from ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... captain's hangar, my lord," said he to Father, pointing to a shed near which we had halted; and his arm hadn't time to drop before the man-made bird, which had been circling round, planed down and glided in at the wide-open door like a homing ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the portrait of Goethe. I learn from that column that Tischbein became director of the Neapolitan Academy, at a salary of 600 ducats, and resided in Naples until the Revolution of '99, when he returned in haste to Germany. Suppose he passed through Rome on his way. A homing fugitive would not pause to burden himself with a vast unfinished canvas. We may be sure the canvas remained in that Roman studio—an object of mild interest to successive occupants. Is it there still? ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... got those things working." Alan smiled slightly. "Guess that means I owe Pete a bourbon-and-soda for sure. Anybody who can build a robot that hunts by homing in on animals' mind impulses ..." He stepped forward just as a roar of blue flame dissolved the branches of a tree, barely ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik

... twice too good for any one of them. Didn't her dress fit neat, Maria? Well, I hope she won't get let in by their fine ways. For my part, I'm not going to take any notice of the Bertrams. The way they behaved was past enduring. Not at homing when I called, and then leaving their cards on the day when I was at the bazaar. Highty-tighty, says I, who's Mrs. Bertram that she should look down on us in this fashion? Isn't the widow of a good honest butter merchant who paid his way, and left a comfortable fortune behind ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... shot at in the street, or stabbed in the back as you are homing through the dusk are, to be sure, not everybody's amusements, and in an ordinary way they were not those of Mr. Manvers. But he found that his life gained a zest by being threatened with deprivation, and so long as that zest lasted he was willing to oblige Don Luis. The weather was ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett

... a detaining hand. Her own hands dropped straight at her sides, and the rusty shawl hung free. A second time she turned, the Boy thought to him again; but as he glanced up, wondering, he saw that the fixed yet serene look went past him like a homing-dove. A neglected, slighted feeling came over him. She wasn't thinking of him the least in the world, nor even of the milk he was at such pains to carry for her. What was she staring at? He turned his head over his right shoulder. Nothing. No one. As he came slowly on, he kept glancing ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... he had not returned. Bob Jennings had never lost more than two quarters in his life, but he was not seen at the workshop all this day. His sister stayed in the house, and in the evening, at his regular homing-time, he appeared, haggard and dusty, and began his preparations for washing the children. When he was made to understand that they had been already attended to, he looked doubtful and troubled for a ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

... economics: (1) gregariousness; (2) parental bent, motherly behavior, kindliness; (3) curiosity, manipulation, workmanship; (4) acquisition, collecting, ownership; (5) fear and flight; (6) mental activity, thought; (7) the housing or settling instinct; (8) migration, homing; (9) hunting ("Historic revivals of hunting urge make an interesting recital of religious inquisitions, witch-burnings, college hazings, persecution of suffragettes, of the I.W.W., of the Japanese, or of pacifists. All this goes on often ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... animals appear to possess it in varying degree; they are all more or less able to find their way home. Yet, study it how we may, we are at fault when we try to account for it. In many cases, the homing instinct is apparently governed by sight; but many scientific observers entertain the idea that the sense of smell, in the majority of instances, will be found to lie at the root of the ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry

... Limmason, of course.' The light died out in his eyes, and the man collapsed, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A flight from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it does not seem to lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how, like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again. Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the candlestick, sought the picture of the ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... sundown, I see a pair of wild pigeons homing toward the crest of Apo. "Limocons," the Bogobos call them—"leem-o-sahns": the word falls limpid from their lips, unaccented. They say the limocon never was heard to sing in the lowlands, and tell a strange legend that it ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... of his homing pigeons!" he exclaimed; "perhaps the one that he expected to bring him news from up-river way, about the girl in ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... sky toward the southwest had been frequently swept by expectant eyes, but supper was served and eaten, and the purple shadows of night began softly to drape the glaring desert and still there came no sign of the homing aeroplane. ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... an accredited fallacy. Mr. Romanes, if he is not stopped in time, will get the theory connecting heredity and memory into just such another muddle as Mr. Darwin has got Evolution, for surely the writer who can talk about "heredity being able to work up the faculty of homing into the instinct of migration," {242a} or of "the principle of (natural) selection combining with that of lapsing intelligence to the formation of a joint result," {242b} is little likely to depart from the usual methods of scientific procedure with advantage either to himself or any one else. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... an awe of what he saw, most peaceful, so that I almost feared to look on him. The horns went again, soft and mellow in the distance from across the evening meadows. The kine heard them, and thought them the homing call, and so lifted their lazy heads and waded homeward ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler

... it is not so bad, If you are feeling a little down, or sad, To walk along Fifth Avenue to the Park, When the day thinks perhaps of getting dark, And meet that mighty flood of vehicles Laden with all the different kinds of swells, Homing to dinner, in their carriages— Victorias, landaus, chariots, coupes— There's nothing like it to lift up the heart And make you realize yourself a part, Sure, of the greatest show ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... which he could communicate with all her creatures. He knew where the rabbits burrowed, where the partridges nested, and where the wild bees stored their honey. He could foretell storms by a thousand signs, possessed the homing instinct of the pigeons, knew where the first violets were to be found, and where the last golden-rod would bloom. The squirrels crept down the trunks of trees to nibble the crumbs which he scattered for ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... he gripped the handlebars of his scooter. He was only vaguely aware of the passing scenery. He knew he should switch on the homing beacon and ride in on automatic, but it seemed like too much of an effort to flick his finger. As the tension rose, the capillaries of his eyes swelled, and things began to white out for him. The rush of landscape became blurred streaks of light and ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon

... of animals, the homing instinct of birds and insects, the building instincts, the migrating instinct, etc., could have been developed though forces working by natural selection or any other law, is a question which has called forth much discussion. ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... limousine was speeding down the Avenue from some homing theater party. Shirley hailed it with an authoritive yell which caused the chauffeur to put on a ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... didn't. When the Skyrocket finally circled about Lost Island and settled down over the narrow landing field as easily as a homing pigeon, to come to a stop with hardly a jar, it was bringing news to Mr. Fulton that was bound to soften ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart

... and watched the homing and departing bees around the hives in the deep, red-clovered grass near ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... engaged to report football, not to play it with the paper. But he couldn't help it. He had got, he said, the ensanguined habit. Still, I was not to imagine that he bungled things. He jolly well knew his way about. In his wildest flights there was a homing impulse; he was preparing a place for himself all the time (that it happened to be my place didn't seem to afflict him in the least). Like St. Paul, he knew how to abound and he knew how to abstain. His abstinence, in fact, gave the measure of his abundance. He held himself in for five ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... of my own. First I tried amateur photography, but this soon grew monotonous and I gave it up. Next I got a cornet, but I soon found that it required more wind than I could conveniently spare. I then tried homing pigeons, but before I had scarcely given the little aerial messengers a fair test I had thought of a dozen other things that seemed preferable. Everything proved alike tiresome and tedious. However, I found that in chasing diversions ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs

... blazing outside, though the walls of the buildings on the opposite side of the street were a cool gray, picked out with pools of black shadow. A newsboy's strident voice was heard here and there calling an extra, mingled with the sound of homing feet and ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... perch, they would refuse to return until the sun was removed; and when it chanced to be the one on the porch and was switched off, they were unable to return because their endowment of optic nerve was small and their homing instinct, so strong in bees and eagles, smaller. There was created, accordingly, an impasse, but Mr. Sprig, who knew his hens, circumvented it. He lit a bedside candle which merely ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... that the best way to forget the present was in the revival of memories. Or I may have been driven by a mere homing instinct. Anyhow, it was in the direction of my old College that I went. Midnight was tolling as I floated in through the shut grim gate at which I had so often stood knocking ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... over them. Yes, one and all were comfortably established under the new roof—with the exception of poor Palmerston the cat. Palmerston had declined to recognise the change, and with the immoderate homing-instinct of his kind had returned night after night to his old haunts. For some time Mahony's regular evening walk was back to the store—a road he would otherwise not have taken; for it was odious to him to see Polly's neat little appointments going to rack and ruin, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... tears ran down my face. I leaned my cheek against the bars and set free my thoughts, which flew, as swift as homing pigeons, to my dear love ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... would commence gliding in a vast sweeping circle with scarcely a movement of their wings, every feather under perfect control, until at length they disappeared into the endless blue. We still have a lot to learn, but talk of the "homing instinct," if only a few aeroplanes had been handy I know which would have made the quickest non-stop flight ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... Mickey's manners were a trifle too casual; at times they irritated Douglas, and if he took the boy into his life as he hoped to, he would come into constant contact with Leslie and her friends, who were cultured people of homing instincts. Mickey's manners must be polished, and the way to do it was not to drop to his level, but to improve Mickey. And again, the day before, he had told Mickey to sit down and wait until an order was given him. To invite him to "get in the game" now, was good alliteration; it pleased the ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... heard of this wonderful instinct of direction, the homing instinct of the pigeon, which some Indians, Africans, Australian black boys and a few white men still possess; I say still possess because it is evident that it was once our common heritage, a sort of sixth sense which has been lost by disuse. That Big Pete possessed this sixth sense ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... north and astern of them. Either the patrol had found them gone from the island, freed by blasting from the floe, and followed on the trail full speed, or the wireless from some Japanese station on the Tchukchis coast had told of their homing flight. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... sacrilegiously of restaurants, even though you are going to marry a genius," said I. "There is one in Paris to which Adrian will take you straight—like a homing bird." ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... Point being at the time ten miles upon their starboard quarter, they were passed by something between a flying goat and a monstrous bat, which was heading at a prodigious pace south and west. If its homing instinct led it upon the right line, there can be no doubt that somewhere out in the wastes of the Atlantic the last ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... pleased every one. Homing to his nest in the Borgo, he caught his little Bellaroba in his arms with a rapture none the less because it had been earned at a stretch. It was long before he could find time and breath to lead her into the garden and have the story out. Olimpia, coming down to look for them in the dusk, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... between these frail walls; twice a day, with the return of the ebb, the mighty surplusage of water must struggle to escape. The hour in which the Farallone came there was the hour of flood. The sea turned (as with the instinct of the homing pigeon) for the vast receptacle, swept eddying through the gates, was transmuted, as it did so, into a wonder of watery and silken hues, and brimmed into the inland sea beyond. The schooner looked up close-hauled, and was caught and carried away by the influx like a toy. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... enveloping its trees and its shrubs, its arbors and trellises; twice the procession of flowers, led by the crocuses in their petticoats of purple and yellow, had tripped from underground; twice the homing birds had built in the myrtles and among the snowy pear and cherry blossoms and filled all the place with music. Twice, too, in this garden, the pageant of spring and summer and sunset-hued autumn had passed, the birds had flown away again and winter ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... he went. Because of the tremendous trees he could not see the sun; yet with the instinct of the woodsman, an instinct as infallible as that of a homing pigeon, he was not puzzled as to direction. Within two hours his long, tireless stride brought him out into a clearing in the valley where his own logging-camp stood. He went directly to the log-landing, where in a listless and half-hearted manner the loading crew ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... younger than she, but she could trust him not to advertise his advantage. He really was a dear! She hated herself for being jealous of him sometimes. There were things he could do, there were thoughts that came to him as easily as homing birds, which were with her only a pretence: but she pretended eagerly, sincerely, even with prayer. She really yearned to be at heart all that she tried to make Somerled and other people believe her to be. And if she tried hard to be genuine ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... gained southern Oregon before he was caught and returned. Always, as soon as he received his liberty, he fled away, and always he fled north. He was possessed of an obsession that drove him north. The homing instinct, Irvine called it, after he had expended the selling price of a sonnet in getting the ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... unless the world spin on too quick, we shall pass some hours in watching." "Ay," said he in a muse, "but it seems to me the moon-army keeps infamous bad watch. I see not one sentinel. Those wings travel sure as a homing bird; and to be driven back upon their centre would be defeat for the—lunatics. Give me but a handful of such cavalry, I would capture the Southern Cross. Magnificent! magnificent! I remember, when I was in it—" For, while he was yet ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... itself about her too, make love beget love. There was quickening in him again that desire to pursue, to conquer, to possess. The ego in him whispered that once for a moment Sophie had rested like a homing bird in his arms, and would, again. But he was not to be betrayed by headlong impulse. The time was not yet. Instinct warned him that in some fashion, vague, unrevealed, he had still to prove himself ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... India her golden treasure yields; A young boy dreaming in his father's fields, Who plucks a lily from the bending wheat And stands with veiled gaze and searching eyes Pale with some great emprise, Beyond the homing waters of his isle, Beyond Majorca's skies;— And dreams ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field

... drifting off in the absence of weight. He held a rifle casually, but at alert, across his knees. Its needle-like bullets were not intended to kill. They were tiny rockets that could flame during the last second of a long flight, homing in on a target by means of a self-contained and marvelously miniaturized radar guidance system. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... visible parabola, like the trajectory of a projectile, and fell at Evreux in safety and beyond the range of the enemy's fire, though not far from their lines. This was on the 23rd of September. Two days afterwards the first practical trial was made with homing pigeons, with the idea of using them in connection with balloons for the establishment of an officially sanctioned post. MM. Maugin and Grandchamp conducted this voyage in the "Ville de Florence," and descended near Vernouillet, not far beyond Le Foret de St. Germain, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... mistress," answered Zinti. "Who am I that I should question your wisdom?" and, turning his horse's head, he rode forward across the gloomy veldt as certainly as a homing rock-dove wings ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... back up the gravel path together without further speech, yet with thoughts more closely linked than either guessed; thoughts that flew instinctively as homing doves to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... in India. She has laid her spell on certain families; and they have followed one another through the generations, as homing birds follow in line across the sunset sky. And their name becomes a legend that passes from father to son; because India does not forget. There is perhaps nothing quite like it in the tale of any other ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... homing pigeons, Vanamee's thoughts turned irresistibly. Near to that tower, just beyond, in the little hollow, hidden now from his sight, was the Seed ranch where Angele Varian had lived. Straining his eyes, peering across the intervening levels, Vanamee fancied ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... do, Hugh!" declared the other, with his customary stanch faith in his chum. "You have it fixed so that your homing pigeons can always get feed from a trough that allows only a scant ration to come down at a time, your 'lazy boy's self-feeder,' I've heard you call it. And as for those fine Belgian hares that would take first prize at any rabbit show, they live on the fat of the land. Right now you're cultivating ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... her; it was too dark to distinguish anything but the white disk of a face and the black mass she made in her cloak, yet there was that about her, some rigid aspect of attention, which frightened the girl. She turned her head for a moment to see Prosper homing, and when she looked again into the trees there was certainly no woman. She thought she must have fancied it all, and dismissed the thought ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... a book," he said, "and that was told to me, And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in Muscovy." The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him clear the path, And Peter twirled the jangling ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... week John Keith followed up the shores of the Saskatchewan. It was a hundred and forty miles from the Hudson's Bay Company's post of Cumberland House to Prince Albert as the crow would fly, but Keith did not travel a homing line. Only now and then did he take advantage of a portage trail. Clinging to the river, his journey was lengthened by some sixty miles. Now that the hour for which Conniston had prepared him was so close at hand, ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... An observant traveller, homing to England by the Ostend-Dover packet in the April of some five years ago, relished the vagaries of a curious couple who arrived by a later train, and proved to be both of his acquaintance. He had happened to be early abroad, and saw them come ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... folk say and they say That the homing hill-shepherd, benighted, has heard A song in the reeds, 'twixt the dawn and the day, That was never the song of a breeze or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various

... Currency Lass had thus ended in a stroke of fortune almost beyond hope. She had brought two thousand pounds' worth of trade, straight as a homing pigeon, to the place where it was most required. And Captain Wicks (or, rather, Captain Kirkup) showed himself the man to make the best of his advantage. For hard upon two days he walked a verandah with Topelius, for hard upon two days his partners watched from the neighbouring public ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... of the village town-clock striking twelve came all too soon, but homing was no task with a turkey at the end. Muggs, still wrapped in mysterious silence, knew the very spot where Christmas odors began to permeate the frosty air and redoubled the speed in his drumming arm, but when after a vigorous ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple

... stillness like a pall, And melancholy silence rules the scene, Save where the bugler sounds his homing call, And thirsty ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)

... eyes These dim battalions move along; Out of the distance memory cries Of days when life and hope were strong, When love was prompt and wit was gay; Even then, at evening, as to-day, I watched, while twilight hovered dim Over Potomac's curving rim, This selfsame flight of homing crows Blotting the sunset's fading rose, Above ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... they gather round me, and I tell them of my roaming In the Country of the Crepuscule beside the Frozen Sea, Where the musk-ox runs unchallenged, and the cariboo goes homing; And they sit like little children, just as quiet as can be: Men of every crime and colour, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service

... sights. Sometimes I, who was a chief and the son of a chief, toiled for men—men rough of speech and hard as iron, who wrung gold from the sweat and sorrow of their fellow men. Yet no word did I get of my quest till I came back to the sea like a homing seal ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... M C A has a strong homing instinct, aiming to provide "a home away from home." In the dugouts behind the trenches, in the deserts of Egypt, or in the jungles of Africa, it has been forced to make a home in every kind of shelter. It was significant that its first three ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... OF A HOMING PIGEON, I believe present-day requirements have been met, and that the book will prove of real value as a supplementary reader ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard

... the air-speed indicator rolled up to just under four hundred miles per hour. There was no more boost and he longed for the dual supercharger. The FW's dropped in behind, unable to head him off, but the Me's came on like falcons trapping a homing pigeon. Stan felt a good deal like a pigeon. He was unarmed and he was carrying a vital message that had to get through. He dived down close to ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery

... was a timely spur to Soames, with his rooted distaste for the washing of dirty linen in public. And when he set forth by Underground to Victoria Station he received a fresh impetus towards the renewal of his married life from the account in his evening paper of a fashionable divorce suit. The homing instinct of all true Forsytes in anxiety and trouble, the corporate tendency which kept them strong and solid, made him choose to dine at Park Lane. He neither could nor would breath a word to his people ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... swinging to sleep, Winging to sleep, Singing to sleep, Your wonder-black eyes that so wide open keep, Shielding their sleep, Unyielding to sleep, The heron is homing, the plover is still, The night-owl calls from his haunt on the hill, Afar the fox barks, afar the stars peep,— Little brown baby of mine, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... relation to each other, yet appear to go together,—that is, you have a long beak wherever you have long feet. There are differences also in the periods of the acquirement of the perfect plumage,—the size and shape of the eggs,—the nature of flight, and the powers of flight,—so-called "homing" birds having enormous flying powers; [1] while, on the other hand, the little Tumbler is so called because of its extraordinary faculty of turning head over heels in the air, instead of pursuing ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley

... tell you. I had a hard life in England and, on the whole, was glad to get away. Perhaps it's a homing instinct, like the pigeon's, and perhaps it's sentiment. We came out because nobody wanted us and have made ourselves pretty comfortable. America's our model and we have no use for English patronage, but every now and then the pull comes and we long to go back, though we wouldn't like to stop ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... scarlet gleaming street; The town was mad, a man was like a boy. A thousand flags were flaming where the sky and city meet; A thousand bells were thundering the joy. There was music, mirth and sunshine; but some eyes shone with regret: And while we stun with cheers our homing braves, O God, in Thy great mercy, let us nevermore forget The graves they left ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service

... assist them. However accurately some people are directed, they appear to have the greatest difficulty in finding their way, while others, more fortunate, remember prominent features on the route, and pick out their course as accurately as does a homing pigeon. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... we may say that man is a religious animal. The impulse that causes him to worship, to trust, to pray, is as much a part of his constitution as is the homing instinct of the pigeon. This natural instinct is, however, reinforced by the operation of his reason. Feeling is deeper than thought; we are moved by many impulses before we frame any theories. But the normal human being sooner or later begins to try to explain things; his reason begins to ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... Thou, God of all long desirous roaming, Our hearts are sick of fruitless homing, And crying after lost desire. Hearten us onward! as with fire Consuming dreams of other bliss. The best Thou givest, giving this Sufficient thing—to travel still Over the plain, beyond the hill, Unhesitating through the shade, Amid the silence unafraid, Till, at some hidden ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger

... outward self which was now driven by circumstances to resume command—the command which for "three minutes" by his reckoning he had relinquished. Both of us, no doubt, had been much longer there had we not been interrupted. A woodman, homing from his work, came heavily up the path, and like a guilty detected rogue I turned to run and took my incorruptible with me. Not until I had passed the man did I think to look back. The partner of my secret was not then to be seen. Out of sight out ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... hoping she might sight some homing fishing-boat which she could hail, but no welcome red or brown sail broke the monotonous grey waste of water, and in hopes of warming herself a little she began to walk briskly up and down the little beach still keeping a sharp look-out at ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... is! which, like carriers let fly— Doff darkness, homing nature knows the rest— To its own fine function, wild and self-instressed, Falls light as ten years long taught ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... the homing instinct," he observed; then, abruptly, "Wait a moment; I'm going to call them back." He paused, as usual, before his favourite confidant, the window. "The larger consciousness, the Universal Togetherness," he muttered. "I really believe he must have touched it ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... drops the thing he holds like redhot iron And runs—runs till he falls down like a beast Pole-axt, and grunts for breath; then up and on, No matter does he know the road or not: The strain I put on his mind will keep him going Right as a homing-pigeon. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... taken boat beneath the Keg of Butter Battery, and were sailing for Saaron with a light breeze on their quarter. Evening and Sabbath calm held the sky from its pale yellow verges up to the zenith across which a few stray gulls were homing. From Garland Town, from St. Ann's, from Brefar ahead of them, came wafted the sound of bells, far and faint, ringing to church, and the murmuring water in the boat's wake seemed to take up Vashti's laugh and echo it reproachfully, as ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... yes. In a wire-enclosed cote attached to the house just outside this window. Homing pigeons, Mr. Headland. George bought them for me. We had an even half dozen each. We used to send messages to each other that way. He would bring his over to me, and take mine away with him at night when he went home, so we could correspond at any moment without waiting for ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... doors were all the pleasant sights and sounds of the peaceful evening coming on after the labors of the busy day. The birds were calling to each other in the woods before nesting for the night; the homing rooks flew round and round their trees, cawing loudly; the village dogs barked their welcome to their masters as they came off the fields and the day's work; and the setting sun dyed the autumn leaves a brighter gold, a deeper ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... was more deeply impressed by the little story than she cared to have her companion suspect. Her world was a world of the commonplace conventions, with New York as its starting point and homing place; and she thought she knew something of humankind. But it came to her suddenly that the men she knew best were not at all like ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... sold first of all to Prester John for many millions of dollars; but it cannot be sold at all, unless sold at a loss. If you sell it for as much as you paid for it, back it comes to you again like a homing pigeon. It follows that the price has kept falling in these centuries, and the bottle is now remarkably cheap. I bought it myself from one of my great neighbours on this hill, and the price I paid was only ninety dollars. I could sell it for as high as eighty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson

... on cloud, Came that silent flock of his: Thronging whiteness, in a crowd, After homing twos and threes; With the longing memories Of all ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

... Sunset Ranch walked slowly up into the main building of the Grand Central Terminal with the crowd. There was chattering all about her—young voices, old voices, laughter, squeals of delight and surprise—all the hubbub of a homing crowd meeting ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe

... the parasite of the Halictus are of quite another kind. The homing Bee has her honey in her crop and her pollen on her leg-brushes: the first is inaccessible to the thief; the second is powdery and would give no resting-place to the egg. Besides, there is not enough of it yet: ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... hungering for any chance sight of him which his outgoings or incomings might give. The chances were better with the outgoings than with the incomings, for these were apt to be so hurried, in the final result of his constitutional delays, as to have the rapidity of the homing pigeon's flight, and to afford hardly a glimpse to the quickest eye. It cannot harm him, or any one now, to own that Harte was nearly always late for those luncheons and dinners which he was always going out to, and it needed the anxieties and energies of both families to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... of woman, however, who goes as straight to the man she loves as a homing pigeon to ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... glimmering. I did not know, and he had forgotten. But the next morning it awoke in him again. Perhaps it was the homing instinct in him asserting itself that made the idea persist. At any rate it was there, and clearer than before. He led me down to the water, where a log had grounded in an eddy. I thought he was ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... Arthur H. Frazier, of the American embassy, would be telling an English officer that a captain of his regiment who was supposed to have been killed at Courtrai had, like a homing pigeon, found his way to the hospital at Neuilly and wanted to be reported "safe" at Lloyds. At another table a French lieutenant would describe a raid made by the son of an American banker in Paris who is in command of an armed automobile. "He swept his gun only once—so," the Frenchman ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... said the second swallow. "First, we feel it stirring within us, a sweet unrest; then back come the recollections one by one, like homing pigeons. They flutter through our dreams at night, they fly with us in our wheelings and circlings by day. We hunger to inquire of each other, to compare notes and assure ourselves that it was all really ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... becomes a very flight. The narrow ways between the islands, calm an hour before, are like swift rivers. Through the cleft gaps in the breakwater of boulders the sea goes back from its adventurous wanderings to the ocean outside; but not as in other places, where a deep felt homing impulse draws tired water to the voluminous mother bosom of the Atlantic. Here, even on the calmest days, steep wavelets curl and break over each other, like fugitives driven to desperate flight by some maddening fear, prepared, so great is the terror behind ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... Here you are, belonging to a nation with the strongest patriotism! the most inveterate homing instinct in the world! and you pretend you'd rather go anywhere than back to Ireland. You don't suppose I believe you, do you? ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw

... inconvenience Cornelia in the slightest; because I can't see that my coming has made even the remotest perceptible difference in her daily routine. Anyway—" he finished more lightly, "when you come right down to 'mating', or 'homing', or 'belonging', or whatever you choose to call it, it seems to be written in the stars that plans or no plans, preferences or no preferences, initiatives or no initiatives, we belong to those—and to those only, hang it all!—who happen ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... the pave of her streets and mingled with her crowds and her lighted nights, is changed by her subtle enchantment into a child of the city. He is never free thereafter. The metropolis may send him forth like a carrier-pigeon, and he may think he is well rid of his mistress, but the homing instinct inevitably draws him back. "All other pleasures," as Emerson said of love, "are not worth its pains." Myra thought that she hated New York—the great nervous sea of life, whose noise and stress and tragedy had shattered her health. She had longed for the peace ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... were the answer of Jesus If we should ask Him to tell Of the last great goal of the homing soul Where each of us hopes to dwell? Oh, I think it is this He would tell: 'The soul is the builder—then wake it; The mind is the kingdom—then take it; And thought upon thought let Eden be wrought, For heaven will be what ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... of Jesus If we should ask Him to tell Of the last great goal of the homing soul, Where each of us hopes to dwell. Oh, I think it is this He would tell: 'The soul is the builder—then wake it; The mind is the kingdom—then take it; And thought upon thought let Eden be wrought, For heaven will ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... way off. When we got within less than a mile, two of the dogs were loosed. They were wild with excitement, for they also had seen the black dots and knew what they meant; and as soon as the traces were unfastened they were off—straight as the flight of a homing bee. ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... of minarets with glittering tiles of bronzy green, and the groups of old Arab houses crowded in among the crudities of a new, Western civilization. Down by the wharf for which the boat aimed like a homing bird, were huddled a few of these houses, ancient dwellings turned into commercial offices where shipping business was transacted. They looked forlorn, yet beautiful, like haggard slavewomen who remembered days of greatness in a ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... kept Percy in the house on the pretext of giving him a cup of tea, until I should hear the rumble of the wagon and know that Olga was swinging home with her team. It so happened, when I heard the first faint far thunder of that homing wagon, that Percy was sitting in my easy chair, with a cup of my thinnest china in one hand and a copy of Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean in the other. We had been speaking of climate, and he wanted to look up the passage where Pater said, "one always dies of ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... 'Tis necessary now, alack! Soon as old Sol has sought his bed, That those who next the window sit, Though they'd prefer to watch the gloaming, Should draw the blind, nor leave a slit, Keeping it down until they're homing, Else on the metals will be thrown A glowing trail as from a comet, And Huns to whom a train is shown ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various

... homing pigeon, and following a blind and unreasoned instinct, McTeague had returned to the Big Dipper mine. Within a week's time it seemed to him as though he had never been away. He picked up his life again exactly where he ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... then streamed out behind in hot gas like a comet of flame. Then the thunders died; the shining shape turned once slowly in air to show her blunt nose and cylindrical body before she settled softly as a homing bird to the embrace of great waiting arms of steel. And, inside the building, a ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin



Words linked to "Homing" :   homing pigeon, orienting



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