"Bird of paradise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flow of turquoises, rubies, emeralds, opals, and diamonds. As usual, the oldest women were the most decorated, and the ugliest the most conspicuous. If there was a beautiful lily, or a sweet rose, you had to search for it, concealed in some corner behind a mother with a turban, or an aunt with a bird of paradise. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... certainly a "tasty" article, and the pride with which Mr. Kantwise glanced back at it was quite delightful. The top of the table was blue, with a red bird of paradise in the middle; and the edges of the table, to the breadth of a couple of inches, were yellow. The pillar also was yellow, as were the three legs. "It's the real Louey catorse," said Mr. Kantwise, stooping down to go on with table number two, which was, as he described it, a "chess," having the ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... crow? yes, of course," said Oliver impatiently. "That's the cry of the great bird of Paradise. Come along quietly, we must have some specimens ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... or those of birds of paradise, have never been produced. This, however, is a question which may be settled by experiment. Let a pigeon be bred with a bill like a toucan's, and with the two middle tail-feathers lengthened like those of the king bird of paradise, or even let individuals be produced which exhibit any marked tendency of the kind, and indefinite variability shall be ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... offer you a better variety for your breakfast. It is only the supper over again," he explained, after she had returned, and had perched like a fluffy bird of paradise on the log. Her cheeks were very pink from the cold water, and her eyes were very beautiful from the dregs of dreams, and her hair very glittering from the kissing of the early sun. And, wonderful to say, she forgot ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... and clear. Mrs. Malvina Weight, sweeping her front chamber, with an anxious eye on the house opposite, saw the door open and Mrs. Tree come out, followed by a tall young man. The old lady wore the huge black velvet bonnet, surmounted by a bird of paradise, which she had brought from Paris forty years before, and an India shawl which had pointed a moral to the pious of Elmerton for more than that length of time. "Adorning her perishing back with what would put food in the mouth of twenty ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... Newmarket. Her beautifully disguised search for admiration extended far and wide, and she found what she wanted sometimes in unexpected places, in sombre Oxford libraries, in time-worn deaneries, in East-End settlements, through which she flashed now and then like a bird of Paradise, darting across the murk of a strange black country on its way to golden regions, as well as in Mayfair, in the Shires, in foreign capitals, and ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... exceedingly heavy loads up these steep hills. Yesterday one woman had two large kits of taro, and a child of about two years on the top of all. Ruatoka shot eight blue pigeons and one bird of paradise to-day: the latter must be eaten with the best of all sauces—hunger. The natives pick up heads, legs, and entrails, turn them on the ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... in a private room; this ward is so full already, and there'll be more coming right along. A boy who wears velvet and feathers must belong to some rich family, who'll gladly pay for every attention. Poor, little, bedraggled bird of paradise!" ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... said he, "is a dish of bird of paradise eggs, served with the fat of a sucking deer, and a brawn of pickled salmon spawn. I ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... all varieties of bird-life known in these latitudes, from the bird of paradise down to the tiny scarlet-beaked love-birds. There were always parrots and parrakeets screaming in the ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... his own element; but on shore he goes about in his holiday spectacles, and sees a bird of paradise in every cock-sparrow.' ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart on a certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird of paradise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, had been wont to stir in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had often petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine it more closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... or Virginia nightingale, orioles of several species, and doves of two distinct kinds. There were also several Carolina paroquets; and Frank had succeeded in capturing a bird of a very rare kind, which, I believe, is known to the Indians as the 'wakon.' It was the American bird of paradise; and, like those of the Eastern world, had several long feathers growing from its tail, and stretching away gracefully behind it. In the cage were also finches of different varieties, and beautiful bright plumage. Among others were the green bird, ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... ornamental writing and engrossing. With a dozen curved and flowing strokes of an ordinary writing pen he could draw upon a calling card a conventionalized outline-picture of some kind of dove or bird of paradise, all curves and curlicues, flying very gracefully and carrying in its beak a half-open scroll upon which could be inscribed such sentiments as "From a Friend" or "With Fond Regards," or ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... winners selected by the racing prophet in the morning paper. Having breakfasted late, he finds he has only about an hour to waste before catching a train for the races, and he resolves to pay a call at the "Bird of Paradise," where a friend of his who has an unusual gift for picking up information is usually to be found about noon. He learns from the landlord that his friend has been in and gone away, but the landlord tells him that he ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... assured me that the bird stuck them out this way itself, when fluttering its wings, and that they had remained so without his touching them. I now saw that I had got a great prize, no less than a completely new form of the Bird of Paradise, differing most remarkably from every other known bird. The general plumage is very sober, being a pure ashy olive, with a purplish tinge on the back; the crown of the head is beautifully glossed with pale metallic violet, and the feathers of the front extend as much over the beak as ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... it gathered closely about her, so that it fell in soft folds, revealing and at the same time concealing her figure. He was anxious to read her face, but the lower part was snuggled into the fur of the deep collar and the upper part was shadowed by a broad-brimmed tulle hat, from which two bird of paradise plumes spread back like wings on the helmet of a viking. For the rest, she had white kid gloves, which reached up to her elbows. Outside the glove of the left hand she wore a bracelet; every time she stirred the stones ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Lola, gleaming like a bird of paradise in her gay habiliments, leaning forward from the further steps of Baston's store where she had slipped up unnoticed, cupped her white hands to her scarlet mouth, and sent out ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... December, in 15 deg., we observed the first bird of paradise—the most beautiful of equatorial sea-birds. On the 22nd we saw more of them, and on this day we passed the Tropic of Capricorn. Thus these observations agree with what is so elegantly said by Buffon on the limits of the climates in which ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... wanderer over the sea. It is never seen on land; and naturalists have yet to discover where it reposes, and where it hatches its young; unless we adopt the idea of the poets, that it builds its nest upon the turbulent bosom of the deep. It is a sort of nautical sister of the fabled bird of Paradise, which was footless, and never alighted out of the air. Hundreds of miles from shore, in sunshine and in tempest, you may see the Stormy Petrel. Among the unsolvable riddles which nature propounds to mankind, we may reckon the question, Who is Mother Carey, and ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... ready for her evening's escort at eight. There wasn't a hat in a grill room from one end of the Crooked Cow-path to the other that was more wildly barbaric than Hattie's, even in these sane and simple days when the bird of paradise has become the national bird. The buyer of suits for a thriving department store in a hustling little Middle-Western town isn't to be neglected. Whenever a show came to River Falls Hattie would look bored, pass a weary hand over her glossy coiffure and say: "Oh, yes. Clever ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... moved, when, from behind the tree, was heard the shrill, brief, sonorous note, which the bird of paradise titters when it takes its flight—a cry which resembles that of the pheasant. This note was soon repeated, but more faintly, as though the brilliant bird were already at a distance. Djalma, thinking he had discovered the cause of the noise which ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... must lift and carry this ponderous paraphernalia with him. And the terrible Bonelli's eagle is soaring above. But all is risked proudly for the sake of the morning hour in the glade where the ladies assemble. And the peacock is only one of many. Not to mention the lyre bird, the Argus pheasant, the bird of paradise, and other splendid examples, there are common dicky-birds which point the moral and adorn the ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... last egret is shot and the last bird of paradise is snared to adorn a lady's dress, then—then I would not like to be a woman for all that earth could hold.—Herbert ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... Barenne's, hats, bonnets, caps, and turbans, of every variety, are arranged with the utmost perfection, the materials being of the most superior description consistent with the season of the year, adorned with marabouts, bird of paradise feathers, aigrettes, flowers from the celebrated Constantin, all selected from those houses which have the most renown for the respective articles in which they deal, but which are introduced with so much taste and judgment, that besides her ingenuity, having obtained ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... instance, as his likening the Rev. Mr. Partridge to the bird of that name, who, because he "had no defence neither of beak nor claw," took "a flight over the ocean" to escape his ecclesiastical hunters, and finally "took wing to become a bird of paradise, along with the winged seraphim ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... beautiful plumage fluttered among the branches, and I had the good fortune to bring down a gorgeous bird of paradise with my rifle. Mac, like the ancient mariner, insisted on carrying this bird round his neck rather than leave it for the tigers and bisons, though he repented of his resolution before he had gone far. Of the wild animals encountered on ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... happy, and she wondered why she was so happy; and while asking herself these questions she noticed her dress. Mademoiselle Helbrun's plump figure was set off to full advantage in a black and white check silk dress, and she wore a wonderful arched hat with flowing plumes of the bird of paradise. She was a prima-donna every inch of her, standing on the steps of her hotel, whereas the operatic stage could hardly be distinguished at all in Evelyn's dress. With the black crepon skirt she wore a heliotrope blouse, and she stood, one foot showing beyond the skirt, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... large scene was lighted in the court, representing their Majesties; on each side of which were six obelisks, painted with emblems, and illuminated; mottoes beneath in Latin and English: 1. For the Prince of Wales, a ship, Multorum spes. 2. For the Princess Dowager, a bird of paradise, and two little ones, Meos ad sidera tollo. People smiled. 3. Duke of York, a temple, Virtuti et honori. 4. Princess Augusta, a bird of paradise, Non habet parem—unluckily this was translated, I have no peer. People laughed ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... marched in front of the others, who followed him with some degree of order. From the crown of his head to his waist he was plastered with a red pigment, his frizzled-out hair being ornamented with the plumes of the bird of Paradise. His dress, composed of tapa cloth, shells, and feathers, was more elaborate than any I had seen in the islands. In his hand he carried a spear tipped with white quartz. His followers were decked in similar fashion. Raising his right arm in token of friendship, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... upper hoist-side corner; the upper triangle is red with a soaring yellow bird of paradise centered; the lower triangle is black with five white five-pointed stars of the Southern ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to Clarinda would have been unwritten, and the thrush would have been untaught in "the style of the Bird of Paradise." ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... of elaborate dresses at luncheons has gone entirely out of fashion; and yet one does once in a while see an occasional lady—rarely a New Yorker—who outshines a bird of paradise and a jeweler's window; but New York women of distinction wear rather simple clothes—simple meaning untrimmed, not inexpensive. Very conspicuous clothes are chosen either by the new rich, to assure themselves of ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... delicacy and brilliancy of colour, and swiftness of motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggy covering, and dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the Arabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolf and bear, the antelope with the elk, the bird of paradise with the osprey: and then, submissively acknowledging the great laws by which the earth and all that it bears are ruled throughout their being. Let us not condemn, but rejoice in the expression by man of his own rest in the statutes of the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... half of the globe, leaving the other half by necessity under shade and darkness, or whether fancy, flying up to the imagination of what is highest and best, becomes over-short, and spent, and weary, and suddenly falls, like a dead bird of paradise, to the ground; or whether, after all these metaphysical conjectures, I have not entirely missed the true reason; the proposition, however, which has stood me in so much circumstance is altogether true, that as the most ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... see the Hog-fish, the Dog-fish, the Dolphin, the Cony- fish, the Parrot-fish, the Shark, the Poison-fish, Sword-fish, and not only other incredible fish, but you may there see the Salamander, several sorts of Barnacles, of Solan-Geese, the Bird of Paradise, such sorts of Snakes, and such Birds'-nests, and of so various forms, and so wonderfully made, as may beget wonder and amusement in any beholder; and so many hundred of other rarities in that collection, as will make the other wonders I spake of, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... though the fillagree box had been shown off and admired. But what do children in general know about the value of things and how much they cost? Ah, much more just in their judgments than we elders are apt to be, a bird of Paradise such as adorned the top of Julia's cabinet, or a peacock's tail, such as she had in a drawer, is to their unprejudiced eyes more desirable than the gold ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... The cinnamalker which makes its nest with sticks of cinnamon, the rhintacus that Parysatis used in the manufacture of his poisons, the manucodiatas which is the bird of paradise, and the semenda, which has a threefold beak, have been mistaken for the phoenix; but ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... as the river Tungabhadra, "the vicinity of the fortress of Adoni." Ala-ud-din died at the age of sixty-seven on Sunday, February 2, A.D. 1358,[39] and was succeeded by Muhammad Shah. The Raya of Vijayanagar had presented Ala-ud-din with a ruby of inestimable price, and this, set in a bird of paradise composed of precious stones, the Sultan placed in the canopy over his throne; but some say that this was done by Muhammad, and that the ruby was placed ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... agitation, is either sound or refreshing. Lovel's was disturbed by a thousand baseless and confused visions. He was a birdhe was a fishor he flew like the one, and swam like the other,qualities which would have been very essential to his safety a few hours before. Then Miss Wardour was a syren, or a bird of Paradise; her father a triton, or a sea-gull; and Oldbuck alternately a porpoise and a cormorant. These agreeable imaginations were varied by all the usual vagaries of a feverish dream;the air refused to bear the visionary, the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... adequate explanation of the specific colour-tints of the humming-birds, or the pheasants, or the Papilionidae among butterflies. If, as Mr. Wallace argues, the immense tufts of golden plumage in the bird of paradise owe their origin to the fact that they are attached just above the point where the arteries and nerves for the supply of the pectoral muscles leave the interior of the body—and the physiological rationale is not altogether obvious,—are there no other ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... and many of them are beautiful, but the Scissor-tailed species of Texas is especially attractive. They are also known as the Swallow-tailed Flycatcher, and more frequently as the "Texan Bird of Paradise." It is a common summer resident throughout the greater portion of that state and the Indian Territory, and its breeding range extends northward into Southern Kansas. Occasionally it is found in southwestern Missouri, western Arkansas, and Illinois. It is accidental in the New ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Portuguese and Spanish known the map of New Guinea as we know it nowadays they would, no doubt, have described it as a Guinea fowl, Bird of Paradise or some such creature, as delineated above, in the same way as they described Java and other ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... still taught him things. It was the spinning wheel that first taught him to make verses, and to sing, and to think whether all was right inside him; or at least it had helped him in all these things. Hence it was no wonder he should know a spinning wheel when he heard it sing—even although as the bird of paradise to other birds was the song of that wheel to the song of ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... Chief Justice of the United States, was there, as ever the most simply attired personage in the Union. His beautiful wife, however, beaming and gracious, but no less rigid than "Lady Washington," in her social statutes, looked like a bird of paradise beside a graven image, so gorgeous was her raiment. Baron Steuben was in the regalia of war and a breastplate of orders. Kitty Livingston, now Mrs. Matthew Ridley, had also received a fine new gown of Mrs. Church's selection, for the two women still were friends, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... learned the value of her opinion; on the other hand, she had a more thorough conviction of his talents now that he gained a good income, and instead of the threatened cage in Bride Street provided one all flowers and gilding, fit for the bird of paradise that she resembled. In brief, Lydgate was what is called a successful man. But he died prematurely of diphtheria, and Rosamond afterwards married an elderly and wealthy physician, who took kindly to her four children. She made a very pretty show with her daughters, driving out in her carriage, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... suddener storms in her mobile nature, that she was unable to give that feeling utterance. The waves of her soul dashed the more wildly against their shores, inasmuch as those shores were precipitous, and yielded no outlet to the swelling waters. It was that his soul might hover like a bird of Paradise over the lovely changes of her countenance, changes more lovely and frequent than those of an English May, that Ericson persuaded Robert to ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... and strained, colors a fine straw color. It makes a delicate or deep shade according to the strength of the tea. The dry outside skins of onions, steeped in scalding water and strained, color a yellow very much like 'bird of paradise' color. Peach leaves, or bark scraped from the barberry bush, colors a common bright yellow. In all these cases, a little piece of alum does no harm, and may help to fix the color. Ribbons, gauze handkerchiefs, &c. are colored ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... or, The Regions of the Bird of Paradise. A Tale for Boys. With One Hundred and Eleven Illustrations. Crown 8vo, ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... a man who possessed the most beautiful and noble Bird of Paradise—a bird of rare plumage and wonderful qualities—should suddenly see more beauty in an ordinary Cockatoo, whose only attraction was its yellow feathers—a Cockatoo that screamed monotonously as it swung backward and forward on its perch, and would ...
— The Damsel and the Sage - A Woman's Whimsies • Elinor Glyn
... grace her arrival at the court of Tunis. The princess was arrayed in bridal robes, woven in the most costly looms of the orient; her diadem sparkled with diamonds, and was decorated with the rarest plumes of the bird of paradise; and even the silken trappings of her palfrey, which swept the ground, were covered with pearls and precious stones. As this brilliant cavalcade crossed the bridge of the Tagus, all Toledo poured forth to behold it; and nothing was heard throughout ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... green with blue wavy stripes and spots (FISTULARIS SERRATUS) has the shape of a gar-fish, and to counterbalance a long tubular snout, a slender filament resembling the bare feather shaft of some bird of paradise extending ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... extraordinary a variety of forms, so unique and fantastic in disposal, are without parallel in the animal world. Some species are adorned with long, drooping tufts of plumes light as air, as the Red Bird of Paradise, and others bear strange-shaped, movable shields; part of the family wear ruffs, and others display fans on shoulders or breast; a few sport extravagant length of tail, and one or two show bright-hued ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Flower Market, at Lotta's Fountain, drinking in the glory of violets and daffodils, under the winter sun. Now and then they lunched uptown at some inexpensive restaurant that was still quiet and refined. The big hotels were far too costly but there were several pretty lunchrooms, "The Bird of Paradise," "The London Tearoom," and, most popular of all, "The ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... will; and while he indulged in magnificent reveries of fame and glory and heroic action, of which career, indeed, his approaching departure was to be the commencement, the association of ideas led his recollection to those beings from whom he was about to depart. His fancy dropped like a bird of paradise in full wing, tumbling exhausted in the sky: he thought of his innocent and happy boyhood, of his father's thoughtful benevolence, his sweet mother's gentle assiduities, and Glastonbury's devotion; and he demanded aloud, in ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... young saint in some old picture, she thought. She often wondered how her wild, sparkling sister Kate dared to be so familiar with him. She had ventured the thought once when she watched Kate dressing to go out with some young people and preening herself like a bird of Paradise before the glass. It all came over her, the vanity and frivolousness of the life that Kate loved, and she spoke out ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... sun set exactly behind the purple island of Imbros, and as it disappeared sent out long flame-coloured streamers into the sky. The effect was that of a bird of Paradise bringing ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... unwonted alacrity to his movements, waddling grotesquely like a hastening waterfowl. Between him and the secretary they dressed my Lord the Seneschal, and decked him out till he was fit to compare with a bird of paradise for gorgeousness of colouring if not for harmony of hues ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... shot enough in that walk to have kept us busy making skins for days, but we kept to the determination my uncle had made, not to shoot any more that day, except once, when the curious hoarse cry of some bird of paradise, answered by others at a distance, tempted ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... take part in the building of these abodes of love, which are used for the courting parades. But an even more delightful example of the rare sexual delicacy in courtship is recorded by M.O. Beccari of a bird of Paradise of New Guinea, the ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... intrigues, bosom friend of her Majesty: to the angering of Patriotism. Beautiful Unfortunate, why did she ever return from England? Her small silver-voice, what can it profit in that piping of the black World-tornado? Which will whirl her, poor fragile Bird of Paradise, against grim rocks. Lamballe and de Stael intrigue visibly, apart or together: but who shall reckon how many others, and in what infinite ways, invisibly! Is there not what one may call an 'Austrian Committee,' sitting invisible in the Tuileries; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... been deluded into believing herself a bird of paradise ... and has been content with her feathers, it doesn't precisely help to discover that—" her voice grew self-contemptuous—"that after all she has only lived the life of a Strassburg goose and has been fed to ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... dishonesty under a fair pretext) he seems to preserve mud in crystal. Like a man of a kind nature, he is the first good to himself, in the next file to his French tailor, that gives him all his perfection; for indeed, like an estridge, or bird of paradise, his feathers are more worth than his body. If ever he do good deed (which is very seldom) his own mouth is the chronicle of it, lest it should die forgotten. His whole body goes all upon screws, and his face is the vice that moves them. If his patron be given to music, he opens ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... The wood-people often saw her sitting in the evening where the sunlight fell along the pool, waving slowly its azure and amethyst, sparkling and flashing in crystal and gold, melting as if a phantom Bird of Paradise were fading away; her dark head was bowed in melancholy and all the great beauty flamed and died away unheeded. After a time she rose up and moved about, she spoke more frequently to the people who had not dared to question her, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... see how the constant minute variations, which are sufficient for Natural Selection to work with, could be sexually selected. We seem to require a series of bold and abrupt variations. How can we imagine that an inch in the tail of a peacock, or a quarter of an inch in that of the bird of paradise, would be noticed and preferred by ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... before him, a glorious bird of paradise. The wanton display of a maddening curve of slender ankle, through the slash of the clinging gown imparted just the needed allurement to stamp her as a Vestal of the temple of Madness. The cunning simplicity of the draping over her shoulders—luminous ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... instant Vanno's eyes were fixed upon the glittering figure, and the bowed face shadowed by an eccentric hat, without recognizing it. But it was only for an instant. Then, with a shock of surprise which was almost horror, he realized that this lovely, low-necked bird of Paradise creature was the same gentle girl ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... would have it, because it pleased him to have it—like his father before him. A poor sparrow on a tree-top, if you tell him he must not have it, he will hunt it down the world till it is his, as though it was a bird of paradise. And when he's seen it fall at last, he'll remember but the fun of the chase; and the bird may get to its tree-top again—if it can—if it can—if it can, my lord! That is what his father was, the last Earl, and that is what he is who left my door but now. He came to snatch old Soolsby's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Chichikov's ear like the notes of a bird of paradise. From time to time he gulped, and his softened eyes expressed the pleasure which ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... therefore allow ourselves the expansive language of the South. What right had any human being to fling about superlative adjectives, seeing what a big place the world is, and how little we know? Purple adjectives would have been as much out of place in our conversation as a bird of paradise among ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... strong-minded women and hen-pecked husbands. The principle will gain more strength from the character of the arguments of its opponents than from any number of Bloomer conventions. The modern idea of the fashionable belle, floating like a bird of paradise through the soiree; the impersonation of motion and grace in the ball-room, indulging alternately in syncope and rapture over the marvelous adventures and despair of the hero of a mushroom romance, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... relieved against the green of the wayside bank, with a bunch of blooming azaleas starring its verdure behind her bright head. He was not artist enough to appreciate the picture at its value; he simply had the sudden resentful feeling of one who has asked for a hen and been offered a bird of paradise. She was tall and lithe and strong; her thick, fair hair, without being actually curly, seemed to be so vehemently alive that it rippled a bit in its length, as a swift-flowing brook does over a stone. It rose up around her brow in a ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... treated her with respect, from fear of the old woman. Their woolly hair was frizzled or plaited, sometimes powdered white with chunam. A few palmetto leaves round the waist and descending to the knee, was their only attire; rings through the nose and ears, and feathers of birds, particularly the bird of paradise, were their ornaments: but their language was wholly unintelligble. Amine felt grateful for life; she sat under the shade of the trees, and watched the swift peroquas as they skimmed the blue sea which was expanded before her; but ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... they were frequently adjacent to a cluster of low mud hovels. From the branches of the trees flitted birds of such fantastic shapes and plumage as to cause exclamations of surprise. Occasional specimens of the bird of paradise were seen, with its long and graceful tail-feathers glistening in the sun, presenting an array of bright colors never seen in confinement. The tall flamingos, in their bridal plumage, just touched with scarlet on either wing, like soldiers' ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... invite; And mad'st a promise that mine appetite Should meet and tire on such lautitious meat, The like not Heliogabalus did eat: And richer wine would'st give to me, thy guest, Than Roman Sylla pour'd out at his feast. I came, 'tis true, and looked for fowl of price, The bastard ph[oe]nix, bird of paradise, And for no less than aromatic wine Of maiden's-blush, commix'd with jessamine. Clean was the hearth, the mantel larded jet; Which wanting Lar, and smoke, hung weeping wet; At last, i' th' noon of winter, did appear A ragg'd-soust-neat's-foot ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... some assert, if even any astronomer had travelled as far south as the equator, we should certainly have had pictured in the old star charts some constellations in that region of the heavens wherein modern astronomers have placed the Octant, the Bird of Paradise, the Sword-fish, the Flying-fish, Toucan, the Net, and other ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... good, for it is a charming illusion of the public that, comparatively speaking, any one can write prose. It is an earthly accomplishment, it is as walking is to flying—is it not stigmatised 'pedestrian'? Now, your true Bird of Paradise, which is the poet, must, metaphorically speaking, have no legs—as Adrian Harley said was the case with the women in Richard Feverel's poems. He must never be seen to walk in prose, for his part is, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... her way. The Bonnie Lassie always does. So the bare studio was from time to time irradiated with Bobbie Holland's youthful loveliness and laughter. For there was much laughter between those two. Shrewdly foreseeing that this bird of paradise would return to the bare cage only if it were made amusing for her, Julien exerted himself to the utmost to keep her mind at play, and, as I can vouch who helped train him, there are few men of his age who can be ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and back, and shoulders were covered with the richest yellow, while the throat was of a deep metallic-green. The end of the side plumes had white points. I had little difficulty in recognising the bird of paradise, and I remembered Mr Hooker speaking of one which he called the red bird of paradise. This, I had little doubt, was the bird before us. Away he flew, however, followed by a smaller bird of a sombre brown plumage, which I could scarcely have supposed was his mate, had ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... very sick, to talk so wildly," said Mary, striving to soothe her excitement; "why, you would seem like a bird of paradise in a robin's nest here at the Old Homestead—yes, yes you are sick, Isabel, your hands are burning, your lips mutter these things strangely; what has come ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... I, my dear," she confessed, "although I cannot walk. Without admiration there is"—she snapped her fingers—"nothing. And who would notice a linnet when a bird of paradise was about, however sweet her voice? ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... Malays call them, in claret and white, with blue and orange beaks; parrots without number, and finches, swallows, and starlings of lovely metallic hues; but the greatest prizes were the birds of paradise, of which several kinds were secured, from the grandly-plumaged great bird of paradise to the tiny king. Whenever one of these was shot in some great grove at daybreak, Jack hesitated to have it skinned for fear of injuring the lovely feathers, over which adornments Nature seemed to have done her best. Now it was one of the first-named, a largish bird, with its feathers ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... nobles, splendidly robed, who also bore gold vases, lotos-shaped, in which nestled the bird of paradise called Nok Kurraweek, the sweetness of whose song is supposed to entrance even beasts ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Balcony," or "The Humming of the Honey-bee," (far superior in MY judgment, and in that of SOME GOOD JUDGES likewise, to that humbug Clarence Bulbul's ballads,)—to hear her, I say, sing these, was to be in a sort of small Elysium. Dear, dear little Fanny Dixon! she was like a little chirping bird of Paradise. It was a shame that storms should ever ruffle such ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... yourself. You may at least learn to know by sight and by sound some of our own songsters. It is often said that English birds have sober plumage; and so they have, compared with the parrots and the humming-birds that "flit about like living fires, scarce larger than a bee," and the wonderful bird of paradise, which the natives of New Guinea call "God's bird," because it shines with silver and gold—but still we have some very ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... upon the blood of its mother whose beak is tipped with red, or that of the barnacle goose, of which the name suggests the mollusc,[1] the barnacle, and which was said to proceed from the mollusc or that of the bird of paradise, the feet of which were cut off by the Malay traders who sold the skins, and which were commonly reported never to have had feet, but to float ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... without interruption. At the fourth act, however, the storm burst, as Frederick Lemaitre, who evidently felt qualms about the success of his part, had determined to make it comic, and appeared in the strange costume of a Mexican general, with a hat trimmed with white feathers, surmounted by a bird of paradise. Worse still, when he took off this hat he showed a wig in the form of a pyramid, a coiffure which was the special prerogative of Louis Philippe! The play was doomed. The Duke of Orleans, who was in one of the boxes, left the theatre hurriedly; and it was difficult to finish the performance, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... not like confinement although enclosed in the safe symmetry of a gilded cage, it was not because he preferred the license of disorder, the confusion of irregularity. It was rather that he might soar like the lark into the deep blue of the unclouded heavens. Like the Bird of Paradise, which it was once thought never slept but while resting upon extended wing, rocked only by the breath of unlimited space at the sublime height at which it reposed; he obstinately refused to descend to bury himself in the misty gloom of the forests, or to surround himself ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... an Easter hat or an Easter coat or an Easter pair of pants. I saw him at the Opera lately and his wife had on a seal skin sacque, and plain X. himself had on no gloves. Why should X. be compelled to carry through life a bird of paradise, while he appears in the sombre and often shiny costume of the more humble crow? And now that I have asked that audacious question, let me ask another: Why is it that as soon as the frost of age touches a man he commences to tone down his dress, and as soon ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... and there an ox-eyed daisy glowed from out its somber company as a firefly shines through the dusk of twilight. In the midst of all this sat Nannie in her pretty suit trimmed in scarlet, looking like a bird of paradise amid a flock of sparrows and other soberly clad creatures. Indeed, she reminded one of a bird, with her head cocked on one side and her air—not bold, ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... things she was always doing, with an intention in her own mind to make up for some lack or other which certainly her lover had not felt. When she alighted in the busy street people stared as though they had seen a white bird of Paradise; and coming into Mary Gray's room with a basket of roses in her hand she ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... would you ever have thought it? The lovely and brilliant Bird of Paradise, I'm told, is "own first cousin" to the—Crows. And the Crows are not one bit ashamed to own the relationship! Very condescending of ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggy covering, and dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the Arabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolf and bear, the antelope with the elk, the bird of Paradise with the osprey; and then, submissively acknowledging the great laws by which the earth and all that it bears are ruled throughout their being, let us not condemn, but rejoice in the expression by man of his own rest in the statues of the lands that gave him birth. ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... that the females prefer the most beautiful and perfect-plumaged males, and that thus, slight accidental variations of form and colour have been accumulated, till they have produced the wonderful train of the Peacock and the gorgeous plumage of the Bird of Paradise. Both these causes have no doubt acted partially in insects, so many species possessing horns and powerful jaws in the male sex only, and still more frequently the males alone rejoicing in rich colours or sparkling lustre. But there is here another cause ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... earth: and my reason whispered me, this is so, until the resurrection; the seen material form is the last idea which each one hath given to the world, but the glorified body of each shall be as diverse from this, yet being the same, as the gorgeous tulip from its brown bulb, the bird of paradise from his spotted egg, or the spreading beech from the hard nut that had imprisoned it.—Then Imagination stood with me as an equal friend, and spake to me soothingly, saying, 'Knowest thou any of these?'—and I answered, 'Millions ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and conventional hen who has brought a strange, intrepid duckling into the world; but her situation was still more wonderful, for she could only compare her sensations to those of some quiet brown Dorking who has brooded an ordinary egg and hatched a bird of paradise. Such an idea had crossed her mind more than once during the past fortnight, and it flashed to and fro this mellow October morning when Rebecca came into the room with her arms full of goldenrod and ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... about him, Raking in a Heap of Dung." "And," replied the Cock, "in Heaven Once I was; but by my Evil Lust am fallen down to raking With my wretched Hens about me On the Dunghill. Otherwise I were even now in Eden With the Bird of Paradise." ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... gosh!' in a tone of such despair that we turned round to see if it was the shellac man in person. It was little Bean, the pitcher of the Corners team, all dressed up in his baseball togs, scarlet breeches and blue shirt, quite the bird of paradise, and reading a yellow telegram, and his face black as thunder. He was an impressionist study, wasn't he, Fergy? We asked what was up, or rather down, for elevation had no part in him. It appeared that a ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... breast-shields in the males of birds with accessory plumes may be partly due to selection, because they must serve as a protection in their mutual combats, just as does the lion's or the horse's mane. The enormously lengthened plumes of the bird of paradise and of the peacock can, however, have no such use, but must be rather injurious than beneficial in the bird's ordinary life. The fact that they have been developed to so great an extent in a few species is an indication of such perfect adaptation to ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... booming business in these birds with the Chinese, have various methods for catching them that we couldn't use. Sometimes they set snares on the tops of the tall trees that the bird of paradise prefers to inhabit. At other times they capture it with a tenacious glue that paralyzes its movements. They will even go so far as to poison the springs where these fowl habitually drink. But in our case, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... its other great towns. I forgot to tell you that elephants of the most handsome and valuable kind run here in herds, as the wild boars do in the forests of Europe; while the brilliant peacock and bird of paradise occupy the places ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... happen! Here's Ben Gaynor playing he's a bird of paradise. Or emulating Beau Brummel. Which is it, Ben? ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... bedizened—"Fop-Indian!" "Jack-Monkey!" would have been the first thoughts to pop into her judicious little head, and Sprigg might have chased her till he had worn his red moccasins slip-shod, and no more have caught her had he, indeed, been a monkey, chasing a dove or a bird of paradise. That he was spared such a humiliation was because he had become by strange chance an object of Manitou interest, and was not allowed to carry out the ridiculous programme he had proposed to himself. What a pity it is that many of us grown-up ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... entered, mean and low and small, Was changed into a sumptuous banquet-hall, With fanfares by aerial trumpets blown; The rustic chair she sat on was a throne; He ate celestial food, and a divine Flavor was given to his country wine, And the poor falcon, fragrant with his spice, A peacock was, or bird of paradise! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... there kinder fate bereave: For mortal lips unmeet eternal vows! And Eden's flowers for Adam's mournful brows! We seek to make the moment's angel guest The household dweller at a human hearth; We chase the bird of Paradise, whose nest Was never found amid the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... amorphotoi]). The next innovator of moment was Johann Bayer, a German astronomer, who published a Uranometria in 1603, in which twelve constellations, all in the southern hemisphere, were added to Ptolemy's forty-eight, viz. Apis (or Musca) (Bee), Avis Indica (Bird of Paradise), Chameleon, Dorado (Sword-fish), Grus (Crane), Hydrus (Water-snake), Indus (Indian), Pavo (Peacock), Phoenix, Piscis volans (Flying fish), Toucan, Triangulum australe. According to W. Lynn (Observatory, 1886, p. 255), Bayer adapted this part ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... the fan, and you will be complete," cried Mrs. Montague, as she brought an exquisite affair composed of white ostrich tips, with a bird of Paradise nestling in its center, and handed ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... inquisitorial air, after the girls had decided that the slides on the bows of Lilly's dress were too small, and that her 'Bird of Paradise' was lovely enough to fly away with them all, 'Fanny, are you the 'bright, particular ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... When the fireworks ceased, a large scene was lighted in the court, representing their majesties; on each side of which were six obelisks, painted with emblems, and illuminated; mottoes beneath in Latin and English: 1. For the Prince of Wales, a ship, Mullorum spes. 2. For the Princess Dowager, a bird of paradise, and two little ones, meos ad sidera tollo. People smiled. 3. Duke of York, a temple, Virtuti et honori. 4. Princess Augusta, a bird of paradise, Non habet paren—unluckily this was translated, I have no peer. People laughed out, considering where this was exhibited. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the centre of the porch and stood sunning herself in a stray shaft of light, like a very bird of paradise. The "tempestuous petticoat," sky-blue and laced with silver, swelled proudly outwards, the gleaming satin bodice slipped low over the snowy shoulders and the heaving bosom, and the sleeves, trimmed with magnificent lace and looped with pearls, showed the rounded arms to perfection. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... Then He that built two Citties in one day; Ever brim full, and sometimes running o're To feede poore languid Witts that waite at doore, Who creep and creep, yet ne're above-ground stood, (For Creatures have most Feet which have least Blood) But thou art still that Bird of Paradise Which hath no feet and ever nobly flies: Rich, lusty Sence, such as the Poet ought, For Poems if not Excellent, are Naught; Low wit in Scenes? in state a Peasant goes; If meane and flat, let it foot Yeoman Prose, That such may spell as are not Readers grown, To whom He that ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... wandered by. Blessed pair, whose happy home was throughout all the earth! I looked at my shoulders, and thought them broad enough to sustain those pictured towns and mountains; mine, too, was an elastic foot, as tireless as the wing of the bird of paradise; mine was then an untroubled heart, that would have gone ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you have heard—but come, Sir, you don't eat— That Nose of yours requires both wine and meat— Fall to, and welcome, without more ado— You see your fare—what shall I help you to? This dish the tongues of nightingales contains; This, eyes of peacocks; and that, linnets' brains; That next you is a Bird of Paradise— We fairies in our food are somewhat nice.— And pray, Sir, while your hunger is supplied, Do lean your Nose a little on one side; The shadow, which it casts upon the meat, Darkens my plate, I see not what ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of moles here. One might also say that we are a set of mules. How can moles or mules either be expected to understand the point of view of a Bird of Paradise when she— ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... words he darted toward the tree, and Twinkle and Chubbins followed. In a few seconds they alighted upon the branch and found themselves face to face with the first Bird of Paradise they had ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... things ever grow "stale and rung-upon," however much the chilly hand of a pedantic psychology seeks to brush the bloom away from the wings of the bird of paradise? ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... characteristics which make the human female carry the burden of ornament. She alone, of all human creatures, has adopted the essentially masculine attribute of special sex-decoration; she does not fight for her mate as yet, but she blooms forth as the peacock and bird of paradise, in poignant reversal of nature's laws, even wearing masculine feathers to further her ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... going away; and several of the gallants of Whitehall, of which there were many staying to see the Chancellor's return, did talk to her in her bird cage; amongst others Blancfort (the Marquis de Blanquefort), telling her she was the bird of Paradise."] ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... tribe; while its tail is divided into two lobes or blades, one of which is small and insignificant, and the other larger than the body of the animal, curling up at the end like the tail- feather of a bird of paradise. ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... bird of Paradise," said I, as we sat alone in the apartment I had fitted up as the banqueting-room, and on which, though small in its proportions, I had lavished all the love of luxury and of show which made one of my most prevailing ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of truly tropical luxuriance. Cane stalks grow fifty and sixty feet high, the grass is fifteen feet deep, beautiful bamboo trees, whose foliage is as fine as feathers, and palms which have plumage like a peacock and a bird of paradise, lift their proud and haughty heads above an impenetrable growth which, the guides tell us, is the home of tigers, rhinoceroses, panthers, bears, wild hogs, buffaloes, deer and all sorts of beasts, and snakes as big around as a barrel. Fern ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... detect the slightest movement of a fly on the earth. But the birds objected to him on account of his predatory habits, and then each in turn stated his own case as a claimant for the kingship—the ostrich could run the fastest, the bird of paradise and the peacock could look the prettiest, the parrot could talk the best, the canary could sing the sweetest, and every one of them, for some reason or other, was in his own opinion superior to his fellows. After several days of fruitless ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... to say nothing; but I don't think it's so nice—do you, Mrs. Lissman?—the first month what her mourning for her mother is up a yellow bird of paradise as big as a fan she has to ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... the Albanian scorned it as one would turn from a lark to a bird of Paradise. He turned the glittering object over lovingly, thought, felt in his pockets, drew out a green and red knitted purse, ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... and the fields of sugar-cane that stretch for miles like a billowy sea, make a railway journey by day a constant source of delight. You ride in a perennial garden, and it is perfectly natural that the bird of paradise should have its habitat here. Like Ceylon, Java is sure to be the resort of innumerable tourists, for here are wonders beyond any to be found ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... guests: the leading man of the "Bird of Paradise" company, playing this week at the Dodsworth Theater, and the mayor of Zenith, the Hon. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the accessories of dress, ribbons, laces, feathers, and other small ornaments. In one of the old translations of Moliere petite oie is rendered by "muff," and Perdrigeon (see next note), I suppose, with a faint idea of perdrix, a partridge, by "bird of paradise feathers!!"] ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... knows. I always expect her to sheer off to Damascus or San Francisco; she's a bird of paradise. God knows what she's got to do with Beldover. It ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... overlooking the garden. While the commonplaces of conversation were interchanged, he could not but notice the floral appearance of the room. The ample white lace curtains were surmounted by festoons of artificial roses, caught up by a bird of paradise. On the ceiling was an exquisitely painted garland, from the centre of which hung a tasteful basket of natural flowers, with delicate vine-tresses drooping over its edge. The walls were papered with bright arabesques of flowers, interspersed with birds and butterflies. In one corner a statuette ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... remember your sad pale face, your humility and forgetfulness of self. The Achaemenidae, and even the Magi, will beg him to take a queen from his own family; and where in all Persia is there a woman who can boast of better birth than you? Who else can wear the royal purple but my bright bird of Paradise, my beautiful rose Phaedime? With such a prize in prospect we must no more fear a little humiliation than a man who is learning to ride fears a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in a red velvet waistcoat, and a frill, into which his wife had stuck her best brooch. In spite of Mrs. Bungay's kindness, perhaps in consequence of it, Mrs. Shandon felt great terror and timidity in approaching her: indeed, she was more awful than ever in her red satin and bird of paradise, and it was not until she had asked in her great voice about the dear little gurl, that the latter was somewhat encouraged, and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exclaimed Dr. Jones. "Silver Cloud is like a bird of paradise with its tail feathers all plucked. We must replace that pole and flag as soon as we return ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... stuffy Congressman from Massachusetts—vulgar ungrammatcal shovel-maker—greasy knave of spades. I don't like this sort of thing. She doesn't appear to be much distressed about me—she hasn't looked this way once. All right, my bird of Paradise, if it suits you, go on. But I think I know your sex. I'll go to smiling around a little, too, and see what effect that will ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... dressed for the drive, and looked rather like a handsome bird of Paradise in her bright green ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... like my bird of paradise first. You can put a big book here for it to stand on, where it will ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... other beasts roam in its tangled, twilight depths, but in this fierce heat they must be all asleep in their lairs. The Argus-pheasant too, one of the loveliest birds of a region whose islands are the home of the Bird of Paradise, haunts the shade, and the shade alone. In the jungle too, is the beautiful bantam fowl, the possible progenitor of all that useful race. The cobra, the python (?), the boa-constrictor, the viper, and at least fourteen other ophidians, are winding their loathsome and lissom ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop) |
