"Weathercock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it would have been necessary to invent him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire. Kutuzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers, calling him a court weathercock and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... putting the best leg foremost. The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors and small windows on every floor, the date of its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front, and on the top of the roof was perched a fierce little weathercock, to let the family into the important secret which way the wind blew. These, like the weathercocks on the tops of our steeples, pointed so many different ways that every man could have a wind to his mind; the most stanch and loyal ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... upon the Hudson, which he called Sunnyside, and where he resided till his death. The farm had on it a small Dutch cottage, built about a century before, and inhabited by the Van Tassels. This was enlarged, still preserving the quaint Dutch characteristics; it acquired a tower and a whimsical weathercock, the delight of the owner, and became one of the most snug and picturesque residences on the river. A slip of Melrose ivy was planted, and soon overrun the house; and there were shaded nooks and wooded ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... said he, a touch of irony in his accent, himself looking a droll figure, hunched round his books and turning like a weathercock jerkily to keep the umbrella between him and the wind that strained its whalebone ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... knocking down one spruce-fir, beating off the head of another, and stripping the two corner chestnuts of several branches in its fall. This is not all. One large elm out of the two on the left-hand side as you enter what I call the elm walk, was likewise blown down; the maple bearing the weathercock was broke in two, and what I regret more than all the rest is, that all the three elms which grew in Hall's meadow, and gave such ornament to it, are gone; two were blown down, and the other so much injured that it cannot stand. I am happy to add, ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... a narrow, winding passage which led to an old court, surrounded by rubble walls, with little moss-covered galleries under the roof and a weathercock upon the peak, as in the Tanner's Lane in Strasbourg. To the right was the brewery, and in a corner a great wheel, turned by an enormous dog, which pumped the beer to every ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... king, worn out with prayers and tears, perceived that it was easier to melt a leaden weathercock on its steeple than a spoiled child in pursuit of his whim, he heaved a deep sigh and determined to let Carlino go; and giving him counsels to which he scarcely listened, several bags filled with guineas, which were ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... or under the influence of the strange fascination that he exercised on every one who knew him, invited him to write a series of articles on artistic subjects, and under a series of fanciful pseudonym he began to contribute to the literature of his day. Janus Weathercock, Egomet Bonmot, and Van Vinkvooms, were some of the grotesque masks under which he choose to hide his seriousness or to reveal his levity. A mask tells us more than a face. These disguises intensified his ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... I can't understand her, for she acts like a weathercock, and I never know how I 'm going to find her. I hate to have her mope so, but, upon my life, I don't know what to do," said Tom; but as he uttered the words, something was suggested by the sight before him. Chairs were few, and Polly had taken half of Will's when ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... however, probably soon know; and when I do, I will send off this, but not before, lest the weathercock should veer ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... Fleay, not having seen the complete play, proceeds to say that the extracts I gave "are quite consistent with the supposition that it is one of Field's lost works," I must take leave to dissent. Field is the author of two comedies, "A Woman is a Weathercock" and "Amends for Ladies," and he assisted Massinger in the "Fatal Dowry." His comedies are well-constructed, bright, and airy. There is no slovenliness in the workmanship, and success is attained by honest, straightforward endeavour. It ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... impressions. "In my country," he says, "we pass within twenty-four hours from cold to hot, from calm to storm, and this changeability of climate extends to the persons. Thus, from earliest infancy, they are wont to shift with every wind. The head of a Langrois stands on his shoulders like a weathercock on the top of a church-steeple; it is never steady at one point, and, if it comes round again to that which it had left, it is not to stop there. As for me, I am of my country; only residence of the capital and constant application ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... senseless things, in a happy childhood. How was my heart grieved when the old-fashioned meeting-house was converted into the modern temple! Time and decay had rendered the tall spire unsafe, yet its fall by force and premeditated purpose seemed a sacrilege. I felt affronted for the huge weathercock, reclining sulkily against a fence, no more to point his beak to the east with obstinate preference. I mourned over the broad, old-fashioned dial, on which young eyes could discern the time a mile off. The old sexton lived to see this change, and at the end of half ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... your levity is incorrigible. France is beaten, discredited among nations, naked to her enemies. She lies here, between England and Prussia, as in a vise. God summons you, a Frenchman, to reign in Noumaria, and in addition affords you a chance to marry that weathercock of Badenburg's daughter. Ah, He never spoke more clearly, Louis. And you would reply with a shallow jest! Why, Badenburg and Noumaria just bridge that awkward space between France and Austria. Your accession would confirm the Empress,—Gaston de Puysange has it in her own hand, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... "I have long ceased to be surprised at anything. Poor Le Brusquet was in disgrace for a whole day for suggesting a new device for the Duke—a weathercock on a steeple." And he laughed as he added: "The Duke came back almost a week ago, with five hundred gentlemen in his train—amongst others the late rebel De Ganache, for whom ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... obstinately from the west, and which at once prevented the Prince's armament from sailing and brought fresh Irish regiments from Dublin to Chester, were bitterly cursed and reviled by the common people. The weather, it was said, was Popish. Crowds stood in Cheapside gazing intently at the weathercock on the graceful steeple of Bow Church, and praying ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... amenable to his own belief. The primary question respecting men is this,—How far are they affected by the original axiomatic truths? Truths are like the winds. Near the earth's surface winds blow in variable directions, and the weathercock becomes the type of fickleness. So there is a class of little truths, dependent upon ever-variable relations, with which it is the function of cunning, shrewdness, tact, to deal, and numbers of men seldom or never lift their heads above this weathercock region. Yet the upper air, alike of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... her fears of John Jay's dying. Although the promise made to George on the haymow was faithfully kept, he could no more avoid getting into mischief than a weathercock can keep from turning ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the fairies play, The best game of all, Is sliding down steeples— You know they're very tall. You fly to the weathercock And when you hear it crow You fold your wings and clutch your things, And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... when halted, just dropped in the streets and slept, so that passers-by were forced to step over them, but in spite of starvation and weariness the old indomitable spirit would assert itself. One of the poor fellows, while the column was passing by Christ Church, looked up at the weathercock and remarked to a comrade that it was the first and only instance of Wheeler's boys seeing a chicken which ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... he saw the weathercock and one turret of a church tower peering over the edge of a small steep hill, close at hand, and turning toward it he went briskly on, under the lee of a short fir plantation, all the grass being pure and fresh with hoar-frost, which melted ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... "Ha, ha," crowed the Weathercock on the Big Red Barn. "Jack Frost is here, for I can see the silver frost upon the grass in the Sunny Meadow," and then that gilded rooster turned his head to the North and blew on his gilt ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... was welcomed into the city by "one Peter, a Dutchman," who placed himself on the weathercock of St. Paul's, holding "a streamer in his hand five yards long;" occasionally kneeling down on the said weathercock, "to the great marvell of the people," and balancing himself sometimes on one foot ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... a salient object in the heavens surpassing the stony eminences which surrounded it, rose the tall spire of the twin Houses of Parliament. Upon its top swung a gilded weathercock; while about a portion of its base stood a maze of scaffolding, the facade of the building having during the last few months been under repair. There seemed, however, for the moment, to be no workmen ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... disregard as fatuous the supposition that in his boyhood he wrote the Macbeth music attributed, perhaps wrongly, to Locke.) It was not for some time that he gained the supremacy at the theatre which he now held in the Church. That very trustworthy weathercock John Dryden, Poet Laureate, continued to flatter others for many long days to come. In this same year he composed the first of a long series of odes of welcome, congratulation or condolence for royal or great personages, and about this ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... stand there and look me in the face and tell me that you are false as that! You can confess to me that you will change like a weathercock;—be his one day, and then mine, and his again the next! You can own that you give yourself about first to one man, and then to another, just as may suit you at the moment! I would not have believed ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... At this moment the "Baby" was pushed into my hand by Hadji Ali just in time to take the shoulder of the last of the herd, who had already charged headlong after his comrades, and was disappearing in the jungle. Bang! went the "Baby;" round I spun like a weathercock, with the blood pouring from my nose, as the recoil had driven the sharp top of the hammer deep into the bridge. My "Baby" not only screamed, but kicked viciously. However, I knew that the elephant must be bagged, as the half-pound shell had been aimed directly ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... be sure, was monstrously hot and stuffy. Not a breath of wind ruffled the waters of the dock, around the head of which we trudged to a recently erected church on the opposite shore. I remember observing, on our way, the dazzling brilliance of its weathercock. ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that tears cannot wash! Master Marlowe hath too deep a reading i' the books of nature to nail his heart upon a gilded weathercock. He is only desperate after the fashion of a pearl diver. When he hath enough he will desist—breathe freely, polish the shells, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... fowl, like the more domestic weathercock, may often be seen wheeling through the air on the approach of a storm, and exhibits unmistakable signs of exultation when it is going to thunder. It is not a bird of song, but is unsurpassed as a screamer. To the common Kite, a plebeian member of the genus, has been ascribed an attribute ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... Weapon batalilo. Wear (use as clothes) porti. Wear away (decay by use) eluzi. Wear away (to decline) konsumigxi. Weariness enuo, laceco. Wearisome enua, enuiga. Weary, to enui. Weary laca, enua. Weather vetero. Weather, to kontrauxstari. Weathercock ventoflago. Weave teksi, plekti. Weaver teksisto, plektisto. Web (tissue) teksajxo. Wed (cf. marry) edzigxi. Wedding (cf. marry) edzigxo. Wedge kojno. Wedlock edzeco. Wednesday merkredo. Weed malbonherbo. Weed sarki. Weeding hook sarkilo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the time that the advanced guard of William of Orange reached Honiton, and when the advanced guard of King James's English army was at Salisbury. It was at this critical period that Lord Wharton, who has been described as "a political weathercock, a bad spendthrift, and a poet of some pretensions," joined the Prince of Orange in the Revolution, and published this famous song. He seems to have been a dissolute man, and ended badly, although he was a visitor at the "Dolphin" ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... The weathercock on the ancient stronghold at Cleve is a swan, and in olden times the dynasty that ruled over the lovely country round Cleve had also a swan in their crest. A legend, tragic and beautiful, preserved to posterity forever in Richard Wagner's ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... lay with the forest back of it, and the sea in front of it; had red walls and a turreted roof; great sycamores about the grounds, and big, thick gooseberry-bushes in the orchard. On the top of the weathercock sat the starling, and sang so loud that every note was heard by the wife, who sat on an egg in the heart of a pear tree. "We have four pretty little eggs," sang the starling. "We have four pretty little round eggs. We have the whole nest filled with ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... eagerly). If thou liest, rascal, I'll hang thee up alive in irons at the weathercock of the Lorenzo tower, where the wind shall whirl thee nine times round with every ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... kingdom, my legs slanting into the infinities of the North and South. It sounds unexciting when written, but there I was, astride my house, up among the vents and exhausts of my former cloistered life, my head outspinning the weathercock. My Matterhorn had been climbed, "the pikes of darkness named and stormed." Next winter when I sit below snug by the fire and hear the wind funneling down the chimney, will not my peace be deeper because I have known the heights ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... will ever have affecting me. For, whatever course I take in public affairs in this country, I conceal nothing, I take it publicly, openly, and deliberately. If I err, I am satisfied to abide the consequences; and, whenever it may suit the weathercock judgment of Lord Mayo, and his vacillating law advisers, to characterise my acts or my opinion as illegal, seditious, heretical, idolatrous, or treasonable, I must, like every other subject, be content to take my chance of their being able to find a jury sufficiently facile or ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... toward the rocks. The dominie chanted the song of Saint Nicolaus, and the goblin, unable to endure either its spiritual potency or the worthy parson's singing, shot upward like a ball and rode off on the gale, carrying with him the nightcap of the parson's wife, which he hung on the weathercock of Esopus ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... up and down his garden next day thinking of the contingency. The sense that the paths he was pacing, the cabbage-plots, the apple-trees, his dwelling, cider-cellar, wring-house, stables, and weathercock, were all slipping away over his head and beneath his feet, as if they were painted on a magic-lantern slide, was curious. In spite of John South's late indisposition he had not anticipated danger. To inquire concerning his health had been to show less sympathy ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... it will be different with you some day; your circumstances, you think, or your occupation, or your companionship will have changed, and so you fondly imagine that you yourself will be sure to change, as if your soul were just a weathercock that answers to every changing breeze. So perhaps you hope that some habit of self-indulgence or idleness will drop off, or some evil temper be eradicated; and whilst all this vague and mischievous dreaming goes on you yield very likely to some besetting sin, making no ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... and much surprised at what he had seen and heard, and especially at the unusual demeanour of the King. In general, no task was so easy as to discover Richard's immediate course of sentiment and feeling, though it might, in some cases, be difficult to calculate its duration; for no weathercock obeyed the changing wind more readily than the King his gusts of passion. But on the present occasion his manner seemed unusually constrained and mysterious; nor was it easy to guess whether displeasure or kindness predominated in his conduct ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... good pattern of the real old-fashioned New England meeting-house. It was a large barn with windows, fronted by a square tower crowned with a kind of wooden bell inverted and raised on legs, out of which rose a slender spire with the sharp-billed weathercock at its summit. Inside, tall, square pews with flapping seats, and a gallery running round three sides of the building. On the fourth side the pulpit, with a huge, dusty sounding-board hanging over it. ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the young man answered; "I will forth and pay my duty. The rusty-weathercock, my lord, is often too late for ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... now seemed so cool and fresh that the boys forgot their fatigue, and kept on chatting and planning for future excursions till they reached the gates of the Grange, just as the sun ceased to gild the weathercock at the top of the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... been to look at the weathercock in the stable-yard," he said; "Sir Reginald Eversleigh is quite right. The wind has shifted to the sou'-west; it is raining fast, and we may ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... countrymen, an improper share of pride and spirit. Fired by the lady's coldness, he poured forth a volley of reproaches; and ended by wishing, as he said, a good morning, for ever and ever, to one who could change her opinion, point blank, like the weathercock. "I am, miss, your most obedient; and I expect you'll never think no more of poor Brian O'Neill and the ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... mouth is like a piece of inert flesh, and where the small eyes glisten with concentrated cunning, and remind us of the watchful, angry eyes of a gorilla, at the same time, into ridicule. I knew that he was selfish, without any affection, unreliable, full of whims, turning like a weathercock with every wind that blows, and caring for nothing in the world except gambling and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... a hawthorn-bush, Watched on the fairies flaxen-tressed The fires of the morning flush. Till, as a mist, their beauty died, Their singing shrill and fainter grew; And daylight tremulous and wide Flooded the moorland through and through; Till Urdon's copper weathercock Was reared in golden flame afar, And dim from moonlit dreams awoke The towers ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... building—a stone quadrangle, heavily topped off by a dark slate roof, and a dejected-looking weathercock that rebelled against the wind and ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... him from applying the latter with effect to the heads of slumberers during divine service. By way of retaliation the youths, when opportunity occurred, would tie the cord of the "tinkler" to the weathercock, and the parish on a stormy night would be startled by the sound of ghostly, fitful ting-tangs. To Sunday blows the clerk, who was afflicted with rheumatism, added weekday anathemas as he climbed the steep ascent to the bell-chamber and the yet steeper ladder that gave access to the leads of the ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... laughed in pure pleasure of heart. "Come along, man—or you'll be makin' me Prime Minister before we get to the Ship. . . Yes, yon's the church—Established. You can tell by the four spikes an' the weathercock; like-wise by the tombstones. But they bury folks up the hill nowadays." He paused—"That reminds me"—he ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Anthony, full of solicitude and musing on the fate of his billet, was spreading himself out, like a newly-feathered peacock, in the trim garden behind his dwelling. A richly-embroidered Genoa silk waistcoat and amber-coloured velvet coat glittered in the declining sun, like the church weathercock perched just above him at a short ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... believe the poetical description of Wolstan, we shall be inclined to believe the church was enlarged, for it appears to have been a very complex building with a lofty central tower, having a spire and weathercock, in accordance with the Bull of Pope Urban, and a crypt, both the work of St Elphege. This church, which, like its successor until the Reformation, was served by monks, stood till the year 1093, when it was destroyed as useless, for the new Norman church of ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... a jolly girl, or two, or three— The more the merrier for my weathercock whim; And one shall be like Juno, large of limb And large of heart; and Venus one shall be, Golden, with eyes like the capricious sea; And my third sweetheart, Dian, shall be slim With a boy's slimness, flanks and bosom trim, The green, sharp apple of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... they had. From which number if you, Sir, have kept yourself clear, the less blood of the damned will fall upon your head: I know you not by face, much less your personal practice; yet I have heard as if blood might pursue you, for your unstable weathercock spirit, which doubtless could not but stumble the weak, and give advantage to the adversary to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... from the locality then called "Welsh End," on account of the number of Welsh people living on that side of the town; though why the "Taffies" were honoured with a distinct little market house of their own is not made clear. This building was taken down in 1803, the 3-dial clock, weathercock, &c., being advertised for ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... the house is completely in the old style; with stone shafted casements, a great bow-window of heavy stone work, and a portal with armorial bearings over it, carved in stone. At each corner of the building is an octagon tower, surmounted by a gilt ball and weathercock. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... sailor ... had his wits about him, when his daughter shook him out of a deep sleep with the news that the French had landed. Rubbing his eyes, he told her to go and look at the weathercock. She came back, saying the wind was from the north. "I thought so," said he, "and so it was yesterday. The French can't land with this wind." And so the ancient mariner turned round and went to ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... opinions,—but to such opinions as you and I must have five years hence. I was not to look to the flash of the day. I knew that you chose me, in my place, along with others, to be a pillar of the state, and not a weathercock on the top of the edifice, exalted for my levity and versatility, and of no use but to indicate the shiftings of every fashionable gale. Would to God the value of my sentiments on Ireland and on America had been at this day ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... strange that beside them the writhing figures in Dore's illustrations of the Inferno would have straightened into tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden—its constancy shown by its weathercock ways, its innocence by the coating of gold that it has acquired, its devotion to style by its single, graceful flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of ever drawing the long bow, its metropolitanism by ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... from the path, choosing them with some care. The first pebble hit the weathercock, which rose above the right gable of the house, plumb in the middle; the second missed its tail by a couple of inches; the third hit its tail, and the weathercock spun round as if a vigorous gale were devoting itself ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... constitutional reform, in which they were checked by the Upper House in 1879. Sir Henry's object, like Mr. Berry's, was to strengthen the hands of the Assembly, but unfortunately for his scheme he had a very different class of electors at his back. As happened over the Land Act, his weathercock failed to point in the right direction. When the Council rejected his Bill, he indulged in threats and fulminations which would have done credit to a Berryite of the Berryites. But the country utterly refused to back him up. It would not be roused into indignation ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... in the steeple! There the foul blast roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver! High up in the steeple, where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by the changing weather, crackle ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... a few trees, with some extensive stabling and cart-sheds on the left, and on the right hand the entrance to the cellars. Facing us is an unpretending-looking edifice, where the firm has its counting-houses, with a little corner tower surmounted by a characteristic weathercock consisting of a figure of Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a bottle in one hand and a goblet in the other. The old Remish Commanderie of the Knights Templars existed until ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... second on account of his irregular habits of mind. "My whole course of life has been desultory, and I am unfitted for any periodically recurring task, or any stipulated labor of body or mind. I have no command of my talents such as they are, and have to watch the varyings of my mind as I would a weathercock. Practice and training may bring me more into rule; but at present I am as useless for regular service as one of my own country ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... the animals, of exactly the same size, done in cross stitch, in such bright grass-green worsted that it quite set your teeth on edge to look at it. Besides these, there was a little round stove, with a long stove pipe, that came out on top of the caravan, and ended with a flourishing weathercock, representing a fat old woman in a high gale, with her umbrella turned inside out; which moved when the smoke came puffing up harder than usual, and had no connection whatever with any ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... canter is a sight that would spoil the finest landscape in the world, so a lady who desires to ride well should not be satisfied if she can merely stick on, like the lady in Fig. 101, but should try to ride correctly. Her head will perhaps at first be jerked to and fro like a "vexed weathercock," but practice will enable her to overcome the tendency to fix the muscles of her neck and to allow her head to follow the motion of her body. She should take care that her elbows do not flap up and down like the pinions of an awkward nestling learning to fly, but should keep them ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... ever." Saying this, he silently stole out of the room, as if intent upon some extraordinary resolution. His father observed his motions, and smiling, said to Mr Barlow, "What can this portend? This boy is changeable as a weathercock; every blast whirls him round and round upon his centre, nor will he ever fix, I fear, in any direction." "At least," replied Mr Barlow, "you have the greatest reason to rejoice in his present impressions, which are ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... you turn'd pure? a changing weathercock! [Aside. I say its reason Henry should be king, Thou prince, I duke, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... kind. But once, on regaining the open, some one noticed that a weathercock had been struck off one ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... sensitiveness of the apparatus, especially when the rod has to traverse several stories. Mr. Emile Richard, inspector of the Versailles waterworks, has just devised an ingenious system which, while considerably reducing the weight of the movable part, allows the weathercock to preserve all its sensitiveness. This apparatus consists of two principal parts—one fixed and the other movable. The stationary part is designated in the accompanying figure by the letters A and B and by cross-hatchings. This forms the rod or support. An iron tube, T, with clamps, P, at its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... towards the building. At this point of view it presented a large bay window that by a flight of four steps led into the garden. On one side rose a square, narrow turret, surmounted by a gilt dome and quaint weathercock, below the architrave of which was a sun-dial, set in the stonework; and another dial stood in the garden, with the common and ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... think—as I did think then—that the wisdom of its action and the wisdom of its abstinence from action were very good. And now again the fields in Ireland are green, and the markets are busy, and money is chucked to and fro like a weathercock which the players do not wish to have abiding with them; and the tardy speculator going over to look for a bit of land comes back muttering angrily that fancy prices are demanded. "They'll run you up to thirty-three years' ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... quilt, an' ther wor th' statty, but it didn't stand on its feet, for it wor raised on a powl, an' turned raand like a weathercock. Worn't ther a shaat when they saw it! Didn't they swing ther hats ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... burlesques by describing Harvey under a yew-tree at Trinity-hall, composing verses on the weathercock ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... are not content until they—the citizens—are all prominent, and their buildings are all the largest that cumber the earth. It is a great comfort to those who gamble away their substance in the Board of Trade to reflect that the weathercock that surmounts its tower is the biggest ever seen by human eye. There is not one of them that will not tell you, with a satisfied smile, that the slowest of their fire-engines can go from one end of the city to the other in five seconds. There is not one of ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... improper choice of facts, and if I should be found at length most to resemble Maister Fabyan of old, who writing the life of Henry V. lays heaviest stress on a new weathercock set-up on St. Paul's steeple during that eventful reign, my book must share the fate of his, and be like that forgotten: reminding before its death perhaps a friend or two of a poor man (Macbean) living in later times, that Doctor Johnson used to tell us of; who being advised to take subscriptions ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... begin so poorly as to try to interest you in two very humble beings who have been dead for many years, and whose lives were like a steeple without a bell in it, the intention of which you cannot understand till your eye reaches the weathercock upon the top, and then you wonder at so great an erection for so small an object. The one bore the name of William Halket, a young man, who, eight or nine years before he became of much interest either to himself or any other body, was what in our day is called an Arab of the City—a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... pitiless in the neighborhood of that bleak hill-top upon which the Castle Inn reared its rickety walls. The cruel blasts raved wildly round that frail erection. They disported themselves with the shattered pigeon-house, the broken weathercock, the loose tiles, and unshapely chimneys; they rattled at the window-panes, and whistled in the crevices; they mocked the feeble building from foundation to roof, and battered, and banged, and tormented it in their fierce ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Lord George had been concerned in the robbery, and possibly Lady Eustace herself. Men had been sent down from London, of course at considerable expense, and Portray Castle had been searched, with the consent of its owner, from the weathercock to the foundation-stone,—much to the consternation of Miss Macnulty, and to the delight of Andy Gowran. No trace of the diamonds was found, and Lizzie had so far fraternised with the police. But when Mr. Bunfit called upon her, perhaps ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... asked the Major a little nervously if he knew anything further. The Major knew nothing except Street rumors. Jack was uneasy, for the Major was a sort of weathercock, and before he left the club he ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... flew into a great passion on receiving the letter, saying that Monsieur Porthos was a weathercock, and that she was sure it was for some woman he ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dissection of motive. It may be empty of action and filled with philosophy. It may be humorously perverse in its license of digression,—as it was in Sterne's hands, for example. It may be all things to all men: it is a very chameleon-weathercock. And it is too varied, too negligent, too lax, to spur its writer to his utmost effort, to that stern wrestle with technic which is a ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... most laughable, and at the same time the most beautifully instructive, lesson ever taught by the whole annals of journalism! The Press turned round like a weathercock with the wind, and exhausted every epithet of abuse they could find in the dictionaries. 'Nourhalma' was a 'poor, ill-conceived work,'—'an outrage to intellectual perception,'—'a good idea, spoilt ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... acts, we can explain changes and inconsistencies in the great organs set up to operate on public sentiment. Such a paper as the London "Times," having nothing higher than avaricious commerce and national pride to consult, in a conspicuous centre of affairs has thus become the great weathercock of the world, splendidly gilded, lifted very high in the air, but, like some other stupid chanticleers, crowing at false signals of the dawn, and well called the "Times," as in its columns nothing eternal was ever evinced. Everywhere exist these agents of custom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... before the gale, shorn of all the impressiveness of their wonted solemn gait, holding, perchance, their shovel-hat firmly on with both hands; and finally, there is neither pathos nor glory in having your head broken by a chimney-pot, or volant weathercock. No, the wide sea is an emblem of all that is deceitful and false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind is only one shade more respectable—nay, perchance the worse of the two; for the waters, in the self-justifying, neighbour-condemning spirit, apparently inherent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... thrills. Therefore, as the people passed her by, she felt suddenly out of tune with them, especially with Zeb, who, at least, might have understood her better. Some angry tears gathered in her eyes at the callous indifference of her father, who just now was revolving in the porch like a weathercock, and shouting orders east, west, north, and south for axes, hammers, ladders, cart-ropes, in case the ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stirring cordial to the way-weary men limping down the savannah. The sight of the sea was not more cheering to the Greeks than the sight of the great gilt weathercock, shifting on the spire, to these haggard ruffians with the blood not yet dry upon their beards. They flung their hats into the air, and danced and shouted. All their trumpets shouted a levity, their drums beat, and their colours were displayed. They camped there, with ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... Abbey, now a Cathedral, amidst much curious pageantry, and for the first time a Bible was presented to the sovereign.... Mary's procession to the Abbey is signalised by the exploits of a Dutchman, who sat astride on the weathercock of St. Paul's five hundred feet in the air, as the Queen passed. The two Archbishops and the Bishop of London were all in the Tower, so Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, put the crown on Mary's head. On Jan. 14th, 1559, London was wild with joy, as Elizabeth ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... answered the tinker; "who has so good a right to know that as yourself? Throth, you've little to do, I'm thinkin', when you ax that idle question. Oh, you're nate lads! And would nothin' sarve you but brakin' the weathercock?" ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... a weathercock it was my sister-in-law. Without even pretending to consult me, she made Colville, the chauffeur, turn the car round. (He was her chauffeur, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... and disguises pleasure and pain have an absolute empire over conduct. The will is nothing more than the last and strongest desire; or it is like a piece of iron surrounded by magnets and necessarily drawn by the most powerful; or (as has been ingeniously imagined) like a weathercock, conscious of its own motion, but not conscious of the winds that are moving it. The law of compulsory causation applies to the world of mind as truly as to the world of matter. Heredity and Circumstance make us what we are. Our actions are the ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... or not serve, I shan't ask license of you, sir, nor the weathercock your companion. I direct my discourse to the lady, sir. 'Tis like my aunt may have told you, madam? Yes, I have settled my concerns, I may say now, and am minded to see foreign parts. If an how that the peace holds, whereby, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... should canter, his fair rider's head will be jerked to and fro as "a vexed weathercock;" her drapery will be blown about, instead of falling gracefully around her; and her elbows rise and fall, or, as it were, flap up and down like the pinions of an awkward nestling endeavouring to fly. To avoid such disagreeable similes ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... salt marsh. One of the cemetery-paths runs along the brink of the hill; and here, on a wooden bench under a clump of red cedars, Putnam would sit for hours enjoying the listless mood of convalescence. Where the will remains passive, the mind, like an idle weathercock, turns to every puff of suggestion, and the senses, born new from sickness, have the freshness and delicacy of a child's. It soothed his eye to follow lazily the undulations of the creek, lying like the folds of a blue silk ribbon on the flat ground of the marsh below. He watched the ebbing tide ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... was one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... the weathercock," he said, "and telegraphed to the clerk of the weather-office not to let the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remember the dances, The dearest were those we sat out, How I frowned when detecting your glances On others, which caused you to pout? You are changeful and coy and capricious, A weathercock easily blown; But when shall I hear the delicious One word that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... are like a balance, apt to propend each way, and to be weighed down with every wench's looks, his heart a weathercock, his affection tinder, or naphtha itself, which every fair object, sweet smile, or mistress's favour sets on fire. Guianerius tract 15. cap. 14. refers all this [4770]to "the hot temperature of the testicles," Ferandus a Frenchman in his ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... him that, in these sultry dog-days, there would be little chance of sport when the sun was well up. So he let himself gently out of the hall door—paused a moment on the steps to fill his chest with the fresh morning air, as he glanced at the weathercock over the stables—and then set to work to put his tackle together on the lawn, humming a tune to himself as he selected an insinuating red hackle and alder fly from his well-worn book, and tied them on to his cast. Then he slung his creel ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Bully Tom, in a tone of polite assent; "and there's a weathercock on the church-steeple but I never heard of either of 'em coming down to help a body, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... muttered Bill, using his clasp-knife for a tooth-pick. "It's as tough as a rifle sling. Yer must have got hold of the bloomin' weathercock." ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... friend advanced; and Captain Jemmy was forced to regard the weathercock on the roof for a minute or so to make sure of the quarter in ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... promises, who know how to shake hands in such a manner as to win hearts, how to say "My dear friend" in a certain tactful way to people he knows the least, to change his mind without suspecting it, to be carried away by each new idea, to be sincere in their weathercock convictions, to let themselves be deceived as they deceive others, to forget the next morning what he affirmed ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... felt inclined to play the part of the young enthusiast in "Excelsior," as I looked up at the weathercock which surmounts the spire. But the man who oils the weathercock-spindle has to get up to it in some way, and that way is by ladders which reach to within thirty feet of the top, where there is a small door, through which he emerges, to crawl up the remaining distance ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... course close along the east side of Staten Island; and as we shot by the quarantine establishment, with its hospital and many offices, the sun rose, without one attendant cloud, over the forest heights of Brooklyn, burnishing, as with gold, every window and weathercock opposed ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... from perpendicular rain or dew. Other bell-flowers, as the hemerocallis and amaryllis, have their bells nodding only, as it were, or hanging obliquely toward the horizon; which, as their stems are slender, turn like a weathercock from the wind; and thus very effectually preserve their inclosed stamens and anthers from the rain and cold. Many of these flowers, both before and after their season of fecundation, erect their heads perpendicular ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... weathercock you are! It's impossible. I'm dining with the Grand Duke on Monday. You must make up your mind to stay, ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... an able instrument, and yet he proved faithless to all; for, though we have not circumstantial proof of this as to the last, his growing discontent with Louis Philippe shows clearly, that the political weathercock was again veering. Even when we make allowance for the very peculiar circumstances by which he was surrounded from his entry into life until his exit from it, it is impossible to doubt that this versatility was a consequence of a particular mental organization, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... the door. Behind the house a wide yard with nettles, wormwood, and burdocks in the corners, outbuildings with doors that stick, doves and rooks on the thatched roofs, a little storehouse with a rusty weathercock, two or three birch-trees with rooks' nests in their bare top branches, and beyond—the road with cushions of soft dust in the ruts and a field and the long hurdles of the hemp patches, and the grey little huts of the village, and the cackle of geese in the far-away rich meadows.... Is all this familiar ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple! My master sues to her; and she hath taught her suitor, He being her pupil, to become her tutor. O excellent device! Was there ever heard a better, That my master, being scribe, to himself ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Didn't the weathercock look handsome, with his gilt feathers shining brightly in the rays of the morning sun as he turned to and fro with every little change ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... as I can. Money doesn't always make people happy or agreeable, I find." And Van looked at Aunt Kipp in a way that would have made her hair stand erect if she had possessed any. She stared at him a moment, then, obeying one of the odd whims that made an irascible weathercock ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... the streets below, crying his name and acclaiming him their champion, served to lighten the gloom that Wilding's words cast like a cloud over his volatile heart. Alas, poor Monmouth! He was ever a weathercock, and even as Wilding's words seemed to strike the courage out of him, so did Grey's short ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... had been defeated at the last election, and the State had been only with difficulty carried for the national candidates of the party. The lesson was plain: the people of Illinois did not approve the Kansas policy of Senator Douglas. Hence the weathercock obeyed ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Tom, in a tone of polite assent; "and there's a weathercock on the church steeple; but I never heard of either of 'em coming down to help a body, ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... Count of Bologna arrived with Griselda's son and daughter. All the people ran out to see the fine sight. She was younger and even fairer than Griselda, and the fickle people, ever changeable, as a weathercock, were full of praises for the ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... fades the fire on the hearth, its embers Scattering wide at a stronger gust. Above, the old weathercock groans, but remembers Creaking, to ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... with so little ceremony, that it is in a most naked condition. In a niche at the very summit they have crowded a statue of Charles the Second, with a special pair of shoe-strings, big enough for a weathercock. As I went to Lord Strafford's I passed through Sheffield, which is one of the foulest towns in England in the most charming situation; there are two-and-twenty thousand inhabitants making knives and scissors: they ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... How'd you ever get on without us, d'you think? Like fish out of water! And yet we're reckoned as outcasts and all that. Devil take all your society women, I say. There's one I see pass by every day, a judge's wife, haughty and stuck up as a weathercock on a church spire. Think she'd look at one of us? But her husband, ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... enormously magnified, and shipped to Labrador. There, too, and in similar colors, is the long chapel, on the centre of whose roof there is a belfry, which looks like two thirds of immense red egg, drawn up at the top into a spindle, and this surmounted by a weathercock,—as if some giant had attempted to blow the egg from beneath, and had only blown out of it this small bird with a stick to stand on! Ah, yes! and there is the pig-sty,—not in keeping with the rest, by any means! It must be that they keep a pig only now and then, and for a short time, and house ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... shudder; the wind had turned an old rusty weathercock, and the creaking sounded like a cry from the house, at the very moment when I was finishing a gloomy drama to account for this monumental embodiment of woe. I returned to my inn, lost in gloomy thoughts. When I had supped, the hostess came into my room with an air of mystery, and ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... of the town is in front of you; Forrest's shop is next door as you stand in the gateway of the old inn, and after a glance at the sky and at the weathercock on the top of the market house you look in there. A local fisherman was coming out, and in reply to the inevitable question as to the state of the river, he said, "Weel, she's awa' again." Pithy and characteristic, and full of information was this. It was a verdict—You may fish, but shall ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... shifting his horizon, he could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of vision. "I envied every bird," he goes on, "that sat singing on the topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weathercock on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and to rise from the earth in a balloon was a bliss which I would almost have given my life to enjoy." His desire to ascend soon took the practical form of wishing to climb ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... Barry would give up Gerda and go out to Rome and fetch Nan back. But, to do that, Barry would have to fall out of love with Gerda and into love again with Nan; and even Barry, Neville imagined, was not such a weathercock as that. And Barry would really be happier with Gerda. With all their differences, they were both earnest citizens, both keen on social progress. Nan was a cynical flibberty-gibbet; it might not have ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... nimbleness in nature, you women have, to be first inconstant; but if you had not made the more haste, the wind was veering too upon my weathercock: The best on't is, Florimel is worth ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... my old grammatical exercises," answered her brother; "and I must trust her, were she as changeable as a weathercock.—And yet—if she should jilt me!—What will you do—what will you say, Clara, if I am unable, contrary to my hope, trust, and expectation, to repay you this money ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... clay in my pouch: and I'm half-dead for a puff. What's taken you? What's set you agee with me? You used to like me; and you always seemed A menseful body: and I lippened to you. But you're just a wheepie-leekie weathercock Like the lave of women, when a man's mislucket, Moidart and mismeaved and beside himself. I fancied I'd be in clover at Krindlesyke, With you and all: but, sink me, if I haven't Just stuck my silly head into a bee-bike! What's turned you vicious? I only want to smoke ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... tense interest held us all spellbound. We could see nothing but some stray glimpses of an ivy-clad wall. A weathercock, that had once been gilded, stood out black against the evening sky. The Grey Lady in the rustling silk, through whom you could see the rain drops splash on the gravel stones, was by no means on view. No ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... you see remember me And keep me in your mind, And be not like a weathercock That turns at ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... the giants of those days. He had heard of one Wiltshire of the Feathers Inn at Kingston, who was a great thrower. He would stand in the churchyard and throw a stone over the weathercock; "he would also throw a stone over the Thames (by the bridge) and struck the pales on the town side, which (I think) was not so difficult as the other throw. He was then of middle stature, and about thirty years ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... away, is observed the weathercock of a chapel-spire, plainly indicating the location of the European quarter. Taking a branch road leading in that direction, I discover a party of English and native gentlemen playing a game of lawn-tennis. Arriving on the scene just as the game is breaking ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... a pig under an oak-tree. And as for Lorenzo—dead and gone before his time—he was a man who had an eye for curious iron-work; and if anybody says he wanted to make himself a tyrant, I say, 'Sia; I'll not deny which way the wind blows when every man can see the weathercock.' But that only means that Lorenzo was a crested hawk, and there are plenty of hawks without crests whose claws and beaks are as good for tearing. Though if there was any chance of a real reform, so that Marzocco [the stone Lion, emblem ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... whether thou'd ever dreamt of it, though I think that's loike eneaf, mind,' retorted John; 'but thou didst it. "Ye're a feeckle, changeable weathercock, lass," says I. "Not feeckle, John," says she. "Yes," says I, "feeckle, dom'd feeckle. Dinnot tell me thou bean't, efther yon chap at schoolmeasther's," says I. "Him!" says she, quite screeching. "Ah! him!" says ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... wide, verdant level of the plain, arose many a white mansion, each marked by a cluster of trees, close at hand. Some of these plantation houses looked bluish and cool in the mountain shadows; others were like bright specks in the sunshine, each surmounted by a star, if its gilded weathercock chanced to turn in the breeze. To the north, also, this plain, still backed by mountains, extended till it joined the ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Royal for many years, and is now the home of the United Service Museum. For the magnificent ceiling painted by Rubens we are indebted to Charles I., who also designed to have the walls painted by Vandyck, a still more costly operation, which was never carried out. The weathercock on the north end was put up by order of James II., so that he might see whether the wind was for or against the dreaded Dutch fleet. The building has one association never to be forgotten. On that ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... should bend her heart and lips from her heaven down to his earth. The next he could not conceive any man should be such a witless ass as to stake his happiness on the steadiness of so manifest a weathercock as a woman's favour. It was all very strange talk; it opened to me, just as when a fog lifts and rolls down again, a momentary vision of a world of colours in which I had no share; and to tell the truth it left me with a suspicion which has recurred again ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... But this one was excusable, and I may have slandered him; for ague had shaken the life almost out of him so often that shaking was become natural, and little else could be expected of him; and, furthermore, a pale face or unsteady joints are not always weathercock to a fainting spirit. In some constitutions these may come from other emotions than fear; and it often happens that your most lamentable shaker will stand you longer at the breach than the man of iron nerve, with a white liver. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... orders, it would have taken him at the least a fortnight to have noted what is here set down; but it happened that the gentleman, being struck with the old house, or with the plump pigeons which were skimming and curtseying about it, or with the tall maypole, on the top of which a weathercock, which had been out of order for fifteen years, performed a perpetual walk to the music of its own creaking, sat for some little time looking round in silence. Hence John, standing with his hand upon the horse's bridle, and his great eyes on the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... gables, each of which was surmounted by an iron weathercock, intersected the roof of this building, and the high and narrow stoop was built of the red free-stone of the country. The material of the edifice itself was, as usual, the small, hard brick of Holland, painted a ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... did not await the conclusion of this explanation; before her father had finished speaking, she led her lover to the window, pointed to the weathercock, and said: "Look, Geronimo, the wind ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... trees glowworms sparkling on the grass, and, in the masses of verdure lit up mysteriously by the moon, I traced strange shapes of fantastic monsters. There was, above all, a little pointed roof surmounted by a weathercock, buried in the trees at about fifty paces from my window, which greatly interested me. I could not in the obscurity make out either door or windows belonging to this singular tower. Was it an old pigeon-house, a tomb, a deserted summer-house? I could not tell, ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... shorn of his beams' — 'What! the Caledonian luminary, that lately blazed so bright in our hemisphere! methinks, at present, it glimmers through a fog; like Saturn without his ring, bleak, and dim, and distant — Ha, there's the other great phenomenon, the grand pensionary, that weathercock of patriotism that veers about in every point of the political compass, and still feels the wind of popularity in his tail. He too, like a portentous comet, has risen again above the court-horizon; but how long he will continue to ascend, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... knows that conscience is d——nab-y overlooked in Africa, and will not judge the nigger hardly for any little blunder he may make in the account of his religion. But the fellow is a thorough seaman, and should know a top-gallant-sail from a weathercock. Now, look you, S'ip, for the credit of your friends, if you've no great pride on your ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... from my own stores impart unto thee what will avail to tame thee, shewing the utter hopelessness of standing on that golden weathercock which supporteth but one at ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... their triumphs are a contradiction of their theories. To take a very familiar example, Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction shifted like a weathercock. In the Advertisement to the Lyrical Ballads (1798) he asserted: "The following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... faintly spoken, walked slowly over toward the line. His talk with Graham had in a measure stilled the spirit of rancor that had possessed him earlier in the day. Graham, at least, was stanch and steadfast, not a weathercock like Cutler. Graham had given him soothing medicine and advised his strolling a while in the open air—he had slept so much of the stifling afternoon—and now, hearing the sound of women's voices on the dark veranda nearest him, he veered to ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... court-yard. One side of this space was occupied by the square front of the Province House, three stories high, and surmounted by a cupola, on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible, with his bow bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the weathercock on the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this attitude for seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon Drowne, a cunning carver of wood, first stationed him on his long sentinel's watch ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... in the summer time I thrust back the curtain, to watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple, which stands opposite my chamber-window. First, the weathercock begins to flash; then, a fainter lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower, and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold, as it points to the gilded figure of the hour. Now, the loftiest window gleams, and now the lower. The carved framework ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
