"Bat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by its voicelessness—revolted the aesthetic sensibilities of Helwyse. Besides, what was the meaning of it? Had it actually been Davy Jones with whom he had striven on the midnight sea? and had his adversary, instead of drowning, spread his bat-wings for home, and left his supposititious murderer to disquiet himself in vain? Verily, a ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... out! You le' me alone!' gasped Ted, struggling and writhing with all his power; but the flailing went on, bat—bat—bat—with blows that might have disturbed an elephant. Ted's feelings became too strong for words; he started to howl, and the night re-echoed with the cries of the outraged bushranger. The rest of the gang stood mute, staring at this shocking scene, amazed and deeply offended. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... came zigzagging through the air and all but blundered into Turkey Proudfoot. Missing him by the breadth of a wing, Benjamin Bat hung head downward from a near-by limb and stared at the sleeping form. "Hello!" he squeaked. "Here's a newcomer in these woods. I should think he'd cling to that limb upside down. He'd find it a much safer way than sitting on top of the limb." Benjamin Bat was on the point of rousing Turkey ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... receive at school, I feel to be unkind; But when I get my ball and bat, I drive them from ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... you didn't let me finish. Why if you owned these bears and had 'em climbing an injun ladder right up to their perch in the animal act, had 'em dancing, turning somersaults, you would ask a half grand for them and never bat an eye. They would be worth it, and you know it. But rather than go through the work of getting them ready, Mr. Welborn is willing to take an even hundred for the two. Better still, he'll let you make a note for the hundred ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... with the sergeants' mess," Mac said. "But generally I camp with 'Bat' Perkins when I drop in here. Bat's an ex-stock-hand like ourselves, and we'll be as welcome as payday. And he'll know if Lyn Rowan has ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Toffy and Ross were still enjoying their afternoon siesta. There was not a bit of shade anywhere, and the heat seemed to burn through the roof until the very floor was hot to walk upon. His thoughts went back to Purvis in his tweed clothes and the bowler bat with the pugaree on it, and he wondered how he fared in the scorching heat. Probably the anaemic little man hardly knew what it was to be too hot. He used to ride over the camp when even the peons did not show their heads out of doors, and his hands were always cold and ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... Noyes could have asked the question with the sun and the blue sky shut away from him. It only proved again what Monte had always maintained—that excesses of any kind, whether of rum or ambition or—or love—drove men stark mad. Blind as a bat from overwork, Noyes still asked ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... according to the ballad, Scotland's king once "sat in his tower drinking blood-red wine"; Kerkcaldy, where the witches used to sink "tall ships and honest mariners in the North Sea"; and "Wemyss with its bat-haunted caves, where the Chevalier Johnstone on his flight from Colloden passed ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... handsome Mamelukes, the like of the least of whom is not found with any of the Kings; and others of you be transmewed to muleteers, and the rest to menials." So seven hundred of them changed themselves into bat-mules and other hundred took the shape of slaves. Then Abu al-Sa'adat called upon his Marids, who presented themselves between his hands and he commanded some of them to assume the aspect of horses saddled with saddles of gold crusted with jewels. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Commendatore escorted her and her duenna, the Baroness Casaterrena, down through the purple Italian night, musical with the rivalries of a hundred nightingales, to the sea-wall, where, at his private landing-stage, in the bat-haunted glare of two tall electric lamps, her launch was waiting. But as he offered Susanna his hand, to help her aboard, she stepped quickly to one side, and said, with a charming indicative inclination of ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Randolph Rover and his wife were up and were lighting a lamp. Without waiting for them, the boys slipped on some clothing and their shoes and ran downstairs. Dick took with him a pistol and each of the others a baseball bat. ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... enemies. Many, unable to evolve the acute senses and the fleet limbs necessary for the combat on the ground, shrank from the fray and acquired more negative and passive means of defense. Some, like the bat, escaped into the air. Others, such as the squirrel and the ape, took ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... was governed by ghosts, and they spared no pains to change the eagle of the human intellect into a bat of darkness. To accomplish this infamous purpose; to drive the love of truth from the human heart; to prevent the advancement of mankind; to shut out from the world every ray of intellectual light; to pollute every mind with superstition, the power of kings, the cunning and cruelty of priests, ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... Vulgate: charadrion; charadrius is the generic name for all plovers.], which is a garrulous bird, signifies the gossip. The hoopoe, which builds its nest on dung, feeds on foetid ordure, and whose song is like a groan, denotes worldly grief which works death in those who are unclean. The bat, which flies near the ground, signifies those who being gifted with worldly knowledge, seek none but earthly things. Of fowls and quadrupeds those alone were permitted which have the hind-legs longer than the forelegs, so ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... to come 'long back with me and keep company manners, do you know that, you disrepu'ble gad-abouts? You ain't never had no proper eddicatin' an' now it's a-goin' to begin for fa'r. You-all are goin' ter be larnt citified manners hot off the bat. So come 'long back to the paddock an' git your ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... seen the look in his face, notably on a memorable afternoon when Roddy went to the bat, with three men on base, two runs needed to win the championship and twenty thousand shrieking people trying ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... schoolroom window,' she said to herself, with a slight blush, as she recalled that fixed look; 'Mr. Ollier generally sat with his back to the window and took no notice—he was as blind as a bat, too—but Mr. ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... bat. 'Truth often changes, but error is eternal,' I said. 'You know when you want to prove anything, these days, you quote from the memoirs of a great man. Well, I was reading the memoirs of the late Doctor Godfrey ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... up and down the rear end of the cage. Behind him a hundred or more players in line slowly marched toward the slab of rubber which marked the batting position. Ken remembered that the celebrated coach always tried out new players at the bat first. It was his belief ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... have Apollo on a horse, Minerva on a wheel, Hercules going fishing with his basket and his creel. A Mercury on roller-skates, Diana with a hat, And Venus playing tennis with Achilles at the bat. ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... cat, but in reality a flying squirrel (Pteromys petaurista)—an animal that sleeps all day and feeds at night (though on one occasion, mentioned in a previous chapter, I saw one feeding on fruit at about seven one morning), and is in habits somewhat like the bat, though clearly of the squirrel order. Its wings, if indeed they may be called such, consist merely of a flap of skin stretching from the fore to the hind legs. When at rest this flap, as it folds into the side, is not very noticeable, and the animal presents, when on the ground, ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... still; the breeze, which had refreshed them during the day, died away, as if its office were now completed; and none of the dark sounds and sights of hideous Night yet dared to triumph over the death of Day. Unseen were the circling wings of the fell bat; unheard the screech of the waking owl; silent the drowsy hum of the shade-born beetle! What heart has not acknowledged the influence of this hour, the sweet and soothing hour of twilight! the hour of love, the hour of adoration, the hour of rest! when we think of those we love, only to regret ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... his covert flew, To show the world what a Bat could do, By soaring off on a lofty flight, In the open day, by the sun's clear light! He quite forgot that he had for wings But a pair of monstrous, plumeless things; That, more than half like a fish's fin, With a warp of bone, and a woof of skin, Were only fit in the dark to fly, In view of ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... just got here. You see we came ahead of time. Happened to meet one of your wagons over at the depot, and rode out here in it. I sort of lost my head when I struck the ranch and wanted a ride right off the bat. I had it, too!" ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... blow on the head from a base-ball bat, and the rapid projection of a base ball against his empty stomach, brought the tutor a limp and lifeless mass to the ground. Golightly shuddered. Let not my young readers blame him too rashly. It was his ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... and Epsom Salts?" I have followed this recipe (given me by a young friend, who says he has often been in Scotland) faithfully, but the result is not wholly satisfactory. I doubt whether genuine porridge should be of the consistency of a brick-bat, or taste of hair-oil.—UNDAUNTED. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... extinguished. Then I remembered with a shudder that I should have to pass through the whole vast length of the building in order to gain an exit. It was an all but hopeless task in the profound darkness to thread my way through the labyrinth of halls and corridors, of tumble-down stairs, of bat-haunted vaults, of purposeless angles and involutions; but I proceeded with something of a blind obstinacy, groping my way with arms held out before me. In this manner I had wandered on for perhaps a quarter of an hour, when my fingers came into distinct ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... are served I take a thimbleful of ice-cream and an attenuated wafer, and then solemnly declare to the maid that I have been abundantly served. In the hallowed precincts that I call my den I could absorb nine rations such as they served and never bat an eye. And yet, in making my adieus to the hostess, I thank her most effusively for a delightful evening, refreshments included, and then hurry grumbling home to get something to eat. Such are some of the manifestations of social hypocrisy. These all pass current at their face value, and ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... Burgoyne's army, or any part of it, should be exchanged, the foregoing article should be void, so far as that exchange extended; that care should be taken for the subsistence of the British troops till they should be embarked; that all officers should deliver up their carriages, bat-horses, &c, but that their baggage should be free from molestation; that the officers should not be separated from the men, and should be quartered according to their rank; that all the troops, of whatever country they might be, should be included in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... give me credit for being such a bat—such a mole. Now I must be away. We'll meet pretty soon, I expect. Just forget this afternoon as though it had never been, even though it's such a jolly sunny one. And remember me as a friend—a friend still for all my foolishness. Good-by for ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... her own head Megaera[1] takes A periwig of twisted snakes: Which in the nicest fashion curl'd, (Like toupees[2] of this upper world) With flower of sulphur powder'd well, That graceful on his shoulders fell; An adder of the sable kind In line direct hung down behind: The owl, the raven, and the bat, Clubb'd for a feather to his hat: His coat, a usurer's velvet pall, Bequeath'd to Pluto, corpse and all. But, loath his person to expose Bare, like a carcass pick'd by crows, A lawyer, o'er his hands and face Stuck artfully a parchment case. No new flux'd rake show'd ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... and dyverse colour. And be the chaungynge of tho flawmes, men of that contree knowen, whanne it schalle be derthe or gode tyme, or cold or hoot, or moyst or drye, or in alle othere maneres, how the tyme schalle be governed. And from Itaille unto the Vulcanes nys bat 25 Myle. And men seyn, that the Vulcanes ben ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... success. He tries to make them play at cricket, but they do not much like the swift bowling. There was a caricature in the Charivari of a Frenchman standing up to his wicket with an implement which the artist intended for a bat, but which was more like a pavior's rammer, in his hand. A friend was asking him whether he had a wife, children, any tie to life. "None." "Then you may begin." In a window at Lisieux there was a print of a fox-hunt, with the master of the hounds dismounting to despatch ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... not gloomy; Black bat is not sad. It is only that each has forgotten Something he used to remember: Black bat goes searching ... searching.... White owl says over and ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... "Batrikh" the roe (sperm or spawn) of the salted Faskh (fish) and the Br (mugil cephalus) a salt-water fish caught in the Nile and considered fair eating. Some write Butrgh from the old Egyptian town Burt, now a ruin between Tinnis ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... listened as a sly bat listens to the merry whistling of an innocent bird, and watches the propitious moment to spring upon her prey. It was an adagio which the king played upon his flute, and he was indeed a master in the art. Slightly trembling, as if in eternal melancholy, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... of Akbar, which he built so as to command the junction of the two streams. Passing the Lath (pillar) of Asoka, my companion led me down into the old subterranean Buddhistic temple of Patal Pouri and showed me the ancient Achaya Bat, or sacred tree-trunk, which its custodians declare to be still living, although more than two thousand years old. Presently we came to a spot under one of the citadel towers where a feeble ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... the owners ten and fifteen thousand dollars, and the Pittsburgh Nationals paid $22,500 for one star fellow as a pitcher. I hope I get to be worth that to some club," laughed Joe, "but there isn't any danger—not right off the bat," ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... as large as drakes, and their cry resembled the braying of an ass. Castanheda, Goes, and Osorio also mention the sotilicario in their accounts of the first voyage of Vasco da Gama, and compare its flipper to the wing of a bat—a not wholly inept comparison, for the under-surface of the wings of penguins is wholly devoid of feathery covering. Manuel de Mesquita Perestrello, who visited the south coast of Africa in 1575, also describes the Cape penguin. From a manuscript of his Roteiro in the ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... troops of camels and mules and other beasts of burden to carry the camp from place to place. I would, therefore, that thou bring me a tent so light that a man may carry it in the hollow of his hand, and yet so large that it may contain my court and all my host and camp and suttlers and bat-animals. An thou wouldst ask the Lady for this gift I know full well that she can give it; and hereby shalt thou save me much of trouble in providing carriage for the tentage and spare me much waste and loss of beasts and men." The Prince replied, "O my ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Arms, an old public house three quarters of a mile distant. Any breach of this law was severely punished by the boys themselves. It involved a "fives batting," that is, a "birching" carried out with a hardwood fives bat, after chapel in the presence of the house. As a breach of patriotism, it carried great disgrace with it, and was ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... and seemed to listen: He stamped upon the ground, and beat his stomach with his arms as if to guard himself from the inclemency of the season. At the least noise, if a voice was heard in the lower part of the House, if a Bat flitted past him, or the wind rattled amidst the leafless boughs, He started, and looked ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... to go through like The Spider figured. Mebby Brent knows that Arguilla's men are at the Ortez—and mebby he don't. But we don't say. We ride in and repo't that Ortez says O.K.—that his vaqueros are comin' for the cattle and that he is comin' with the cash. Brent won't bat an eye. I know him. He'll jest tell you to take the dough and ride to Sanborn and take the train for El Paso. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... no Ring Lardner, no Irvin Cobb, no Casey at the bat. Mr. Smith is an infinitely close and acute observer of sophisticated social life, tinged with a faint and agreeable refined sadness, by an aura of shyness which amounts to a spiritual virginity. He comes to us trailing clouds of glory from the heaven of pure and unfettered speculation ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... in thrashing in a field more than a league from the Tymor's home. The Bashaw used to come to visit his slave there, and beat, spurn, and revile him. One day Smith, unable to control himself under these insults, rushed upon the Tymor, and beat out his brains with a thrashing bat—"for they had no flails," he explains—put on the dead man's clothes, hid the body in the straw, filled a knapsack with corn, mounted his horse and rode away into the unknown desert, where he wandered many days ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... always having to field (which was what I did, you know, when I played with the Byrne boys at Biarritz); and I asked him if he was a good player, and he said "No," so I said I supposed he always had to field too, then; and he said, No, that sometimes they allowed him a bat, and so I said I was sure that wasn't the same game I played; and he laughed as if I had said something funny—his name is Lord George Lane—and the other one laughed too, and they both looked idiots, and so I did not say any more about that. But we talked on all the time, and ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... first desire be to show themselves good, useful, hardy, serviceable citizens or subjects, and they will do much to remove the stigma from their profession. Let them be acquainted with the feeling of a bat or racket in the hands, or a saddle between the knees; let them know the rough path over the mountains, or the diving-pool amongst the rocks, and their mentality will not be found to suffer. A winter's "roughing it" in the Theban necropolis or elsewhere ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... the bee sucks, there suck !; In a cowslip's bell I lie: There I crouch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... from Japan to the port of Hong Kong We fell in with a little junk blowing along; We met her all bright at the breaking of day, And we gave her good-morning and passed on our way. She had stretched her red sails like the wings of a bat, And light, like a gull, on the water she sat; She had two big bright eyes for to keep a look-out; On her stern there were dragons cavorting about. And Mrs. Ah Fit by the kitchen did sit Preparing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... dwarfed boy, pacing slowly back and forth, and, above all, the moon shining down upon the silent prairie. The moon was quite faint, so that only an indistinct view of objects could be seen. Occasionally Johnny clambered up the bank and took a survey of the surrounding plains; bat seeing nothing at all suspicious, he soon grew weary of this, and confined his walks to the immediate vicinity of the camp-fire, passing back and forth between the ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... any ornaments, and my husband merely put scarlet facings on the lapels of his evening coat, but Alma was clad in a gorgeous dress of old gold, with Oriental skirts which showed her limbs in front but had a long train behind, and made her look like a great vampire bat. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... and the interest became intense when Mr. Dumkins and Mr. Podder, two of the most renowned members of that most distinguished club, walked, bat in hand, to their respective wickets. Mr. Luffey, the highest ornament of Dingley Dell, was pitched to bowl against the redoubtable Dumkins, and Mr. Struggles was selected to do the same kind office for the hitherto ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... cried Billy tearfully, and now her tears did actually come. Boris stood there a moment in silence, then he softly said "Good night," and left her. Billy remained sitting on the box, clapped her hands to her face, and wept. The night-dew was dripping among the barberry bushes. Somewhere out yonder a bat was whirring through the darkness, uttering its timid and infinitely lonely cry. Billy was cold, and she was frightened too. She felt as if something were advancing in the gloom that would take her and carry her away. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... in the grass by the roadside and get my wind back. Then I slid my handkerchief easy-easy under my hat, tilted it up, and here she is! She hasn't hurt herself, for she's been quiet. She's perfect. She hasn't rubbed off a scale. She's the size of a bat. Her upper wings, and one lower wing, are black, curiously splotched with yellow, and one lower wing is all yellow. She's got the usual orange spots on the secondaries, only bigger, and blobs of gold, ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... I suppose I was bat-blind; but the suggestion, even when it was added to the mysterious entanglements that were tripping me at every step, failed to open my eyes. Truly, Abel Geddis and Abner Withers had used me ruthlessly as their criminal stop-gap, but since I had paid the penalty and still bore the criminal odium, ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... were weak and dizzy, they clambered to a gaunt opening in the gray wall. Rhoda clutched John's arm with a little scream as a bat whirred close by them. Within the opening DeWitt scratched one of his carefully hoarded matches. The tiny flare revealed a small adobe-walled room, quite bare save for broken bits of pottery on the floor. John lighted a handful ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the report of a gun, and perhaps by the rip and sting of shot in his feathers as he darts away. Once, in the wilderness, when very hungry, I caught two partridges by slipping over their heads a string noose at the end of a pole. Here one might as well try to catch a bat in the twilight as to hope to snare one of our upland partridges by any such invention, or even to get near enough to meditate ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... commanded by the Prince de Conde and the archduke,—[Leopold, brother of the Emperor Ferdinand the III.]—besieged Arras. The Court was advanced as far as Peronne.—[A little bat strong town, standing among marshes on the river Somme, in Picardy.]—The enemy, by the capture of this place, would have procured a reputation for their army of which they were in great need; ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Still, I admit, it was a job. Why, that same Seldom Helward I ironed and ran up on the fall of a main-buntline. We were rolling before a stiff breeze and sea, and he would swing six feet over each rail and bat against the mast in transit; but the dog stood it eight hours before he stopped cursing us. Then he was unconscious. When he came to in the forecastle, he was ready to begin again; but they stopped ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... It is a bit airy in the winter, he says, but simply perfect in the summer. You can sleep with your window wide open, and great tea-roses nodding in at you, and now and then a night-jar or a black-winged bat flitting between you ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... approach'd it to eat, but his nose was not proof Against the sharp thorns, so he struck with his hoof, When they pierced his bare foot, and so now he limp'd in With his fetlock bound up in a garter-snake's skin: The vampire-bat, surgeon, now offered to bleed it, In case as he thought his poor patient would need it; And added, at least it could do him no harm To try his specific, the ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... passion and rapture of song, the last evening song of the birds, was being poured out on the still dewy air all round us. One by one the songsters grew tired and ceased as a pale star grew visible here and there in the transparent sky, and complete silence fell on the garden. Only a bat flitted across it silently now and then, and the white night-moths came and played by us. I had my arm round her waist and I drew her close to me and looked down upon ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... spot he received more explicit tidings of the Peruvian empire, heard proofs recounted of its civilization, and was shown drawings of the llama, which, to the European eye, seemed a species of the Arabian camel. Bat, although he steered his caravel for these golden realms, and even pushed his discoveries some twenty leagues south of the Gulf of St. Michael, the adventure was not reserved for him. The illustrious discoverer was doomed to fall a victim to that miserable jealousy ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... week, an' rode her my own self—an' that's oc'lar demonster. I tell you, if this here mare had a week spell, you could n't hold her; an' she'd go a hundred mile between sunrise an' sunset, at the same bat. Yes, boss; it's the breed does it. I seen some good horses about the King, but swelp me Gawd I never seen a patch on this mare; an' you might n't think it to look at her jist now. Fact is, boss, she wants a week or a fortnit spell. Could ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... by a door in the side of the barn furthest from me, and it came in cautiously and silently and moved into the mass of hay opposite. There, for a moment, I lost it, but presently I caught it again higher up. It was clinging, like a great bat, to the side of the barn. Something trailed behind it, I could not make out what. . . . It crawled up the wooden wall and began to move out along one of the rafters. A numb terror settled down all over me as I watched it. The thing trailing ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... him. Hence the chariot-drawing dolphins of Spenser, softly swimming along the shore lest they should hurt themselves against the stones and gravel. Hence Shakespeare's Ariel, living under blossoms, and riding at evening on the bat; and his domestic namesake in the Rape of the Lock (the imagination of the drawing-room) saving a lady's petticoat from the coffee with his plumes, and directing atoms of snuff into a coxcomb's nose. In the Orlando Furioso (Canto xv, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... off the ball grounds was not so important as what he did on. And there was absolutely no telling what under the sun he might do then except once out of every three times at bat he could be counted on to knock the cover ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... not a bit of it,' replied the Patlander. 'The devil a bit would Pat O'Leary wish to live alone in any place, bat I was just thinking, master Henry, that if you and Miss Hamilton, bless the light of her blessed black eyes, would only consint to be married, and live upon this pretty, convanient little island, what a nate, clane, comfortable serving man you might ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... called together all the women of the neighbourhood, seeing that the proper midwife was dead, as mentioned above; and before long something shot to the ground from under her; and when the women stooped down to pick it up, the devil's imp, which had wings like a bat, flew up off the ground, whizzed and buzzed about the room, and then shot out of the window with a great noise, so that the glass clattered down into the street. When they looked after it, nothing was to be ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... BAT! Miss Pomeroy made this, upstairs here, in three days, and the silk cost nine dollars. I DID have a dress like this in my trousseau—my first silk—and I thought it was wonderful; and I think you're a darling to remember it; and I AM going to wear this ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... in my life, I shall still see Sally sitting motionless, like a painted figure, in the faint, reddish glow of the night-lamp, while above her, and above the little waxen face on her knee, the shadow, of the palm-leaf fan, waved by Aunt Euphronasia, flitted to and fro like the wing of a bat. ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... A bat being startled, probably, out of the meeting-house, by the commotion around, flew blindly about in the sunshine, and alighted on a man's sleeve. I looked at him,—a droll, winged, beast-insect, creeping up the man's arm, not over-clean, and scattering dust on the man's coat from his vampire ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... steep and very high, so high that it made him dizzy to look over the edge. Chunnaai told him to wait there, for he would send someone to bring him down safely. At last Naye{COMBINING BREVE}nayezgani saw somebody below, who proved to be Bat. ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... the other. "On my younger brother's allowance, Pendennis? I have secrets of my own, my boy;" and here Warrington's countenance fell. "I made away with that allowance five years ago: if I had made away with myself a little time before, it would have been better. I have played off my own bat, ever since. I don't want much money. When my purse is out, I go to work and fill it, and then lie idle like a serpent or an Indian, until I have digested the mass. Look, I begin to feel empty," Warrington said, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was new to him now was that they stood in the vivid light of a new interpretation. Ah! the father's cruelty, the irritable self-love, the incapacity to recognise any form of life but his own, it was of God,—not a high manifestation: the bat is lower than the bird, and yet it is of God. Bart saw now the one great opportunity of life! He saw that the whole of the universe goes to develop character, and the one chief heavenly food set within reach of the growing character for its nourishment is the opportunity ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... it to last. You wouldn't look for a girl like Vee, who'd never had any trainin' for that sort of thing, to start a new line and make a go of it right off the bat. But, so long as she wasn't investin' ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... 'the wild morass,' but never have I seen a sign of her. Yes, I can assure thee, during the years we have been coming up here, when I have arrived some days before thee, that I might mend the nest and set everything in order in it, I have for a whole night flown, as if I had been an owl or a bat, continually over the open water, but to no purpose. We have had no use either for the two swan disguises which I and the young ones dragged all the way up here from the banks of the Nile. It was hard enough work, and it took ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... said Hawker; "good night, old bat, old parchment skin, old sixty per cent. Ha, ha! If a wench brings a brat to thee, old lad, chuck it out o' window, and her after it. Thou can only get hung for it, man. They can only hang thee once, and that is better than to keep it and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... clothes are always made up in the package—apparently to prevent the form being too much seen. It is then carried aft, and, being placed across the after-hatchway, the union jack is thrown over all. Sometimes it is placed between two of the guns, under the half deck; bat generally, I think, he is laid where I have mentioned, just abaft the mainmast. I should have mentioned before, that as soon as the surgeon's ineffectual professional offices are at an end, he walks to the quarter-deck, and reports to the officer of the watch ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... cottages were of very early date—and many were empty. A deserted mill stood at one end of the village street, having something very mournful and depressing about it, with its black, motionless wings outspread against the blue sky like those of a great bat transfixed. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... brier-root pipe at the opposite or back doorway. Woe to the enlisted men who sought the presence of the colonel or adjutant through any other channel. The sergeant-major would drop on him with the force of a baseball bat. ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... afraid of her face with its lips drawn back, and its discoloured cheeks. In five minutes the groom was hastening to Cornmarket on the roan cob, and the Rector stood in his study, looking from one to another of his household gods, as though calling them to his assistance. At last he took down a bat and began oiling it. Sixteen years ago, when Husell was born, he had been overtaken by sounds that he had never to this day forgotten; they had clung to the nerves of his memory, and for no reward would he hear ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... nature that is not interesting and in some way useful. Perhaps you will say "How about a bat?" As a matter of fact a bat is one of our best friends because he will spend the whole night catching mosquitoes. But some one will say "he flies into your hair and is covered with a certain kind of disgusting vermin." Did you ever know of a bat flying into any one's hair? And as for the ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... resemblance to her brother Horace. It was Horace in petticoats, diminutive and dark. There was the same clearness, the same distinction of feature, the same supercilious forehead, the same quivering of the high-bred nose, the same drooping of the unhappy mouth. Bat the flame of Edith's small steel black eyes revealed a creature of more ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the first sport to the Nome Beach Where they showed up in action and deed That the North dog is game as they make them And besides that has plenty of speed. He came home with the bacon from Candle Like a bat out of Hell, thru the snow, And the plunger that cashed in his "out tab" Was his ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... but this is rarely the case. The revolutionist runs a risk common to all who are in a hurry—he may break the object of his attention instead of moving it. When he wants to hand you a dish he hits it with a ball-bat. Taking a reasonable amount of time is better in the ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... of bat (Myotis velifer) from southeastern California and Arizona. By Terry A. Vaughan. ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... trunks, two collars, two shirts, some mismated socks, homemade fishing tackle and a battered baseball bat. We came away surreptitiously to escape detection by the trio left behind. I knew you wouldn't welcome his presence—but he said he was coming anyway, so we thought we might as well bring him ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... (Aside.) I mustn't let it drift back now. Trust a woman for being as blind as a bat ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... angrily, invisible. Mordecai, during the journey, consulted nothing but his tablets, and was evidently plunged in some huge financial speculation; and when he dropped me at a hotel in St James's, and hurried towards his den in the depths of the city, like a bat to its cave, I felt as solitary as if I had dropped ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... little sentimentalists wither away like blanched potato-plants in a cellar; and then comes some vigorous youth from his out-door work or play, and grasps the rudder of the age, as he grasped the oar, the bat, or the plough-handle. We distrust the achievements of every saint without a body; and really have hopes of the Cambridge Divinity School, since hearing that it has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... Beth-Dagon, Beth-Shemesh, Beth-Oron, or Beth-Or-On, &c. &c. It is sometimes subjoined, as in Phar-beth, and Elisa-beth; the latter of which is the house of [368]Elisa, the same as Elusa of Idume, and Eleusa of Egypt. Beth was in different countries expressed Bat, Bad, Abad. Hence we meet at this day with Pharsabad, Astrabad, Amenabad, Moustafabad, Iahenabad in Persia, India, and other parts of the east. Balbec in Syria is supposed to be the same as Balbeth, the temple of Bal, or the Sun. There ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... came out, wearing the Jacobin habit, one of those preaching friars who had been fevering the blood of Paris. The crowd behind the men-at-arms knew him, for even in its absorption it sent up shouts of greeting. He flitted like a bat towards Gaspard and Champernoun and peered up at them. His face was lean and wolfish, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... His eyes were large, and not unkindly. His head was a good one from a phrenological point of view, but was marred by the possession of enormous ears which stood out on either side of his head like those of a bat. He wore a close-cropped beard, and he was famous for his strength, which indeed was that of ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... mich put abaght, it did'nt cure him; but when he'd had a doo, an' been two or three days at cold poltices; as he call'd em, he used to say, "Niver noa moor! If aw once get ovver this, yo'll niver catch me at that bat agean! It's towt me a lesson 'as this." An' noa daat it had, but ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... and rotting, as though disinterred; a white-powdered floor, sown with golden stripes and rumpled books, and with fragile debris which cried out when we trod on it. Across the window, which was framed in broken glass, a curtain hung by one corner and fluttered like a bat. Over the sundered fireplace, only a mirror was intact and unsullied, upright ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... unguessed-at and very evil aspect of hidden forces. Miles away, down through an opening in the hills, he could catch glimpses of a road where motor-cars sometimes passed, and yet here, so little removed from the arteries of the latest civilization, was a bat-haunted old homestead, where something unmistakably like witchcraft seemed to hold ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... were many proofs visible of the wild riot of the evening before—torn papers, emptied bottles, a shattered sign or two, an oil-lamp blown into bits by some well-directed shot, a bat lying in the middle of the road, and a dejected pony or two, still at the hitching-rack, waiting a delayed rider. But, except for these mute reminiscences of past frolic, the long street seemed utterly dead, the doors of saloons ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... "it did not touch me; and now, if I chose, I could pin you to the wall like a bat; but that would be repugnant to me, though you did waylay me to take my life, and besides, you have really amused me with your ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... hogan or lodge. It is black and has white streaks running down its sides. This was the next place they visited. Within the mountain was a house, whose door was of darkness and was guarded by Tcápani (the Bat) and an animal called Çantsò (of crepuscular or nocturnal habits). Here dwelt many young men and young women who were skunks (golÃji), and they taught the Navajo wanderer how to make and how to bury the kethà wns which are ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... have torn himself from the comfort of a morning nap to listen to a minstrel in a jacket; none but a maid awakes to songs of love. Not only was this woman a maid, but she was an old maid. When she had opened her blinds with the furtive motion of the bat, she looked in all directions, but saw nothing, and only heard, faintly, the flying footfalls of the lad. Can there be anything more dreadful than the matutinal apparition of an ugly old maid at her window? Of all the grotesque sights which amuse the eyes of ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... lonely island, there to fight for her possession and his own life. The stage-setting is magnificent; even a volcano lights the scene. But the clear, hard-blue sky is quite o'erspread by the black bat Melancholia, and the silence is indeed "dazzling." The villains are melodramatic enough in their behaviour, but, as portraits, they are artfully different from the conventional bad men of fiction. The thin chap, Mr. Jones, is truly sinister, and there is a horrid implication in his woman-hating, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Foret had been in front of the battle all through; but neither of them were wounded. It was to Foret that the colonel had given up his sword, after he had been dragged headforemost through a window, had had his head cut open with a brick-bat, and his sheath and sword-belt literally torn from his side. He had certainly not capitulated before he was obliged to do, and the people did not like him the worse ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Bat family had not openly joined either side. They were a very politic race. So when they saw the Birds getting the better of it, they were Birds for all there was in it. But when the tide of battle turned, they ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... friend Charles were playing for Balbus College against Caramel College. Caramel had an "A" team out, and Balbus, I should think, must have had about a "K" team ... anyhow, Eric and Charles were both playing. Eric, as he modestly said, doesn't bat much, and Charles doesn't bowl much. Eric said to Charles, "I bet you a fiver you won't get six wickets." Charles said to Eric, "All right; and I bet you a fiver you won't get a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... of Manassas. I gin it to my wife as a screw-veneer o' the war and she have treasured it accordin'. You are a married man yourself, Marse Alfred, and you are obleedged to know that wedlock is such a tight partnership, that it is an awfully resky thing for a man to so much as bat his eyes, or squint 'em, toward the west, when the wife of his bosom has set her'n to the east. I have always 'lowed Dyce her head, 'pecially in jokes like that one she was playing on you just now, 'cause St. John the Baptist said a man must forsake father and mother ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... garden, and over the wall of the empty pig-stye, cut out into a stubble field. He was not afraid of his mother missing him till bedtime, as it was the wont of the youths—especially of those who had comfortless homes—to wander about in parties in the evening, bat-fowling sometimes, but often in an aimless sort of way, doing little bits of mischief, and seeking diversion, which they seldom found, unless there was any solitary figure to be shouted at and startled. His father was ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forming ranks fell to playing Polo, one striking the ball with the mall, and another striking it back to him. Now there was among the troops a spy, who had been hired to slay the Caliph; so he took the ball and smiting it with the bat drove it straight at the Caliph's face, when behold, Aslan fended it off and catching it drove it back at him who smote it, so that it struck him between the shoulders and he fell to the ground. The Caliph exclaimed, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... glowing haze of gold, and the fantastic branches of the old elms, intertwined with the parasitic ivy looked grim and threatening, silhouetted against the lurid after glow. Master Busy liked neither the solitude, nor yet the silence of the woods; he had just caught sight of a bat circling over the dilapidated roof of the pavilion, and he hated bats. Though he belonged to a community which denied the angels and ignored the saints, he had a firm belief in the existence of a tangible devil, and somehow he could not dissociate his ideas of hell and of ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Nick impatiently. "How's the White Squaw o' the Moosefoots goin' to savvee a low-down bat like ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... the Empire at its best, my Americans were not mistaken. There are thousands fighting to-day who share his example. One is an ex-champion sculler of Oxford; even in those days he was blind as a bat. His subsequent performance is consistent with his record; we always knew that he had guts. At the start of the war, he tried to enlist and was turned down on the score of eyesight. He tried four times with no better result. The fifth time he presented himself he was fool-proof; he had learnt ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... her, I dare say, even if she were blind as a bat," he said; "but then he is able to support her," and reminded by this of an unanswered letter from his cousin, who was still in New Orleans, he sat down and wrote, telling him of Maude's total blindness, and then, ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... promises to do. But Rosalind suddenly takes possession of the watch, and slips away with it.—The whole party finally assembles at supper, where Eisenstein becomes very jovial, and tells how he once attended a masquerade ball with his friend Falck, who was disguised as a bat. Eisenstein, it appears, induced his friend to drink so heavily, that he fell asleep in the street, where Eisenstein left him. Falck did not wake up till morning, when he had to go home amid the jeers of a street crowd, by whom he was nicknamed ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... glimmering yellow light fell upon the white faces; it called to mind 'The Victims of Terrorism' in Luxembourg. Then all again became dark, and the black-robed emissary of the College flitted through the room like a bat, with the famous white document in ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... and Zemo Svaneti, Samtskhe-Javakheti, Shida Kartli : cities: Chiat'ura, Gori, K'ut'aisi, P'ot'i, Rust'avi, T'bilisi, Tqibuli, Tsqaltubo, Zugdidi : autonomous republics: Abkhazia or Ap'khazet'is Avtonomiuri Respublika (Sokhumi), Ajaria or Acharis Avtonomiuri Respublika (Bat'umi) note: the administrative centers of the 2 autonomous republics are shown ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... down in his own words. 'He was,' says John, 'as large as a one gallon keg, and very like it; he had horns and wings, yet he crept so slowly through the grass that if I had not been afeared, I might have touched him.' This formidable apparition we afterwards discovered to have been a bat. They have indeed no horns, but the fancy of a man who thought he saw the devil might ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... the school-house, terminating in a brook fringed with willows. The declivity gave an impetus to the runners, and as they came among the trees, their heads swiftly parted the long branches. Isaac tied a brick-bat to one of the pendant boughs, and then invited the master to run with him. He accepted the invitation, and got the start in the race. As he darted through the trees, the brick merely grazed his hair. If it had hit him, it might have cost him his life; though his mischievous ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... in gentle breezes; yet, the atmosphere being cloudy, it a not a very favourable appearance. The boats reached the rock at six a.m., and the eight artificers who landed were employed in clearing out the bat-holes for the beacon-house, and had a very prosperous tide of four hours' work, being the longest yet experienced by ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... striking element in the general tone of the display,—Franciscan, Dominican, or Penitent habits,—usually crimson or yellow, rarely sky-blue. There are no historical costumes, few eccentricities or monsters: only a few "vampire-bat" head-dresses abruptly break the effect of the peaked caps and the hoods.... Still there are some decidedly local ideas in dress which deserve notice,—the congo, the bb (or ti-manmaille), the ti ngue gouos- sirop ("little ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... "Nay, but, for the love of God, so be it," replied Calandrino, "and that speedily." "Darest thou touch her, then, with a scroll that I shall give thee?" quoth Bruno. "I dare," replied Calandrino. "Fetch me, then," quoth Bruno, "a bit of the skin of an unborn lamb, a live bat, three grains of incense, and a blessed candle; and leave the rest to me." To catch the bat taxed all Calandrino's art and craft for the whole of the evening; but having at length taken him, he brought him with the other ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the steep fell-side loomed like a monstrous, mysterious curtain hung across the night. He passed round the back into the twilight of a wide yard, cobbled and partially grass-grown, vaguely flanked by the shadowy outlines of long, low farm-buildings. All was wrapped in darkness: somewhere overhead a bat fluttered, darting its ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... a half, worst boy in Fishampton. "Smoky" was dressed in a ragged red sweater, wrecked and weather-worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the "serviceable" brand. Dust, clinging to the moisture induced by free exercise, darkened wide areas of his face. "Smoky" carried a baseball bat, and a league ball that advertised itself in the rotundity of his trousers pocket. Haywood stopped and ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Oliveto. Above stand the three Archangels, in armour, with half-drawn swords, menacing those who try to fly upward instead of toward the flames of Hell. Two, in their hurry to escape chastisement, let fall their prey; another, with great bat-wings which cut the air like scythes, swoops down again into the ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... not a good one. As a sample of the groundman's art it was sketchy and amateurish; it lacked finish. Clephane won the toss, took a hasty glance at the corrugated turf, and decided to bat first. The wicket was hardly ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various |
