"Scarecrow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gold?" she asked. The maiden told her all, how and when. The next day the stepmother sent her own daughter to the same mountain. The stepmother's daughter purposely let her distaff fall and it rolled into the hole. She went in to get it, but the old Dew mother turned her into a scarecrow and sent ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... drumming in his head.... His stomach's leading him on! [Laughs] Your houour's a happy man. Lie down and go to sleep! What's the use of standing like a scarecrow in the middle of the inn! ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... do?" Gringoire asked himself with some uneasiness. A sound of bells, which he heard at that moment, put an end to his anxiety; it was a stuffed manikin, which the vagabonds were suspending by the neck from the rope, a sort of scarecrow dressed in red, and so hung with mule-bells and larger bells, that one might have tricked out thirty Castilian mules with them. These thousand tiny bells quivered for some time with the vibration of the rope, then gradually died away, and finally became silent when the manikin had ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... soon got a place for himself. He was employed by his guardian, Farmer Rodel, in the capacity of scarecrow, an occupation which required him to swing a rattle in the farmer's orchard all day long, for the purpose of frightening the sparrows away from the early cherries and vegetable-beds. At first this duty appealed to him as sport, but he soon grew ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... have picked up by the wayside, after some jolly tar, on his return from a long voyage, had there been performing his toilet, and, by getting rid of certain encumbrances, enabled to pursue his inland journey with less resemblance than before to a walking scarecrow. Winter is a withered old beldam, too poor to keep a cat, hurkling on her hunkers over a feeble fire of sticks, extinguished fast as it is beeted, with a fizz in the melted snow which all around that unhoused wretchedness is indurated with frost; while a ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... scarecrow, clad now in trist and fashionable attire, may be welcome to those who never saw him in his modest kurtka of 1814. These and those will be surprised in the botanizing, circumnavigating—the once well-appointed Royal Prussian officer, ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... every reason why Ulster should be a distinct unit in the federal system. The Archbishop dealt more fully with the Ulster question. Admitting that he had formerly believed "that this attitude of Ulster was something of a scarecrow made up out of old and outworn prejudices," he had now to acknowledge that the men of Ulster were "of all men the least likely to be 'drugged with the wine of words,' and were men who of all other men mean and do what they say." Behind all ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... effect of his trousers and coat were unspeakably comical. The wearer had a face as grave as an undertaker's and the air of a serious-minded college professor; but he had the nondescript look of a scarecrow composed of whatever available garments could be obtained from the cast-off wardrobe of summer ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... she made gestures in all directions, first to one side, then to the other, just such floppy gestures as Ole Man Scarecrow would have made. That is, sometimes they looked like that, and sometimes her arms looked like the arms of a windmill. And her frizzy pigtails swished around with her arms—just like the sails of a windmill that had suddenly gone mad. The people started to titter, and Jehosophat ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... square-shouldered, well-built fellow, I had shrunk to little more than a skeleton, so that although the clothes fitted me well enough as to their lateral dimensions, in other respects they made me look pretty much of a scarecrow, and I could not avoid seeing the ghost of a smile flickering in Don Luis's eyes when, upon my first appearance in public, so to speak, he presented me in due form to his wife, Dona Inez. But there was no smile on that sweet lady's lips, nor in her eyes as they fell upon me ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... She doesn't grudge Vovo 500 roubles for his dogs, but 100 is too much for a dress. I can't act dressed like a scarecrow. (Pointing to ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... queer fellow, Syomushka! Other people will laugh and tell a story and sing a song, but you—there is no making you out. You sit like a scarecrow in the garden and roll your eyes at the fire. You can't say anything properly . . . when you speak you seem frightened. I dare say you are fifty, but you have less sense than a child. Aren't you sorry that you are ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... cried Lawless; "the old scarecrow ran in here like a lamp-lighter, as soon he saw me bowling after him, and has left the key in the lock; so I shall take the liberty of exploring a little; I've a strong though undeveloped taste for architectural antiquities. Twopence more, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... something extraordinary had happened. Nicholas hardly dared to look out of the window; but he did so, and the very first object that met his eyes was the wretched Smike; so bedabbled with mud and rain, so haggard and worn, and wild, that, but for his garments being such as no scarecrow was ever seen to wear, he might have been doubtful, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... I had to carry a heavy travelling rug and Dora a handbag of which she said that it contained the accumulated rubbish of 10 years. Aunt Alma's appearance was enough to give one fits, a tweed dress kilted up so high that one saw her brown stockings as she walked, and a hat like a scarecrow's. When I think how awfully well dressed Mother always was, and how nice she always looked; of course Mother was at least 20 years younger than Aunt Alma, but even if Mother had lived to be 80 she would never have looked like that. Thank goodness, on the way from ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten than when I saw him last. I have heard ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... enclosed on the sides by hedges. At the back, espaliers. Vegetables and flowers of all kinds. Cold frames. Among the fruit trees, an upright pole, rigged in an old frock-coat, pair of trousers, and opera hat, fills the function of scarecrow. ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... minute he, and his comic, scarecrow pal who originated from the dark side of trouble, on Earth and out here, too, were fading against ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... about. Miss Mullett wore a wide-brimmed straw hat to keep the sun from her pink cheeks and a pair of Wade's discarded gloves to save her hands. The gloves were very, very much too large for her, and, when not actually engaged in using her trowel, Miss Mullett stood with arms held out in scarecrow style so as not to contaminate her gown with garden mold, and presented a strange and unusual appearance. Every afternoon, as regular as clockwork, the Doctor came down the street and through the gate to lavish advice, commendation, and appropriate ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... till I thought I could do it without laughing. But in this I failed; and the whole audience, Methodist preachers and all, got into such a laugh that I lost half my speech. But the books were put out of sight, and thus ended the scarecrow business. ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... to the old maids, Dawn. You'll grow into a scarecrow that would frighten any man away if you hang on ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... scarecrow lookin' critter old aunty was, warn't she? She was all in rags and tatters, and though she lived 'longside of the lake the best part of her emigrant life, had never used water since she was christened. Her eyes were so sunk in her head, they looked like two burnt holes in a blanket. Her hair was ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... and at the very right moment! What's this? Bring a light and throw it on him. Heavens! What a scarecrow! Where's your master, lad; and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... entered that shabby little Montmartre restaurant, Janiaud chanced to be seated, at a table in a corner, sipping his favourite stimulant. He was deplorably dirty and suggested a scarecrow, and the English editor looked nervous when I offered an introduction. Still, Janiaud was Janiaud. The offer was accepted, and Janiaud discoursed in his native tongue. At midnight the Editor ordered supper. Being ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... walked back to the town with his guest, leaving him at the corner of the Calle Grande. As he was returning homeward one "Beelzebub" Blythe, with the air of a courtier and the outward aspect of a scarecrow, pounced upon him hopefully from the ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... the howl of a wolf for the shepherds, who bolted at once towards the bush: it was the yell of bull-dogs for the fossikers who floundered among the deep holes, and thus dodged the hounds: it was a scarecrow for the miners, who now scrambled down to the deep, and left a licensed mate or two at the windlass. By this time, a regiment of troopers, in full gallop, had besieged the whole Eureka, and the traps under their protection ventured ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... war dance, and congratulated B. and turned to get the meaning of a queer little gurgling gasp behind us. There was Fundi! That long-legged scarecrow, not content with running to get us and then back again, had trailed us the whole distance of our mad chase over broken ground at terrific speed in order to be in at the death. And he was just about all in at the death. He could barely gasp his breath, his eyes stuck ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... the heath came a jolly knave, Like a scarecrow, all in rags: It made me crow to see his old duds All abroad in the wind, like flags;— So up he came to the timber's foot And ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... king of men, the Kaiser Karl. Yes, this pitiable being was the descendant of the great emperor, and for that sufficient reason, although he was an impotent and shivering idiot, although he could not sleep without a friar in his bed to keep the devils away, for thirty-five years this scarecrow ruled over Spain, and dying made a will whose accomplishment bathed the Peninsula in blood. It must be confessed this institution of monarchy is a luxury that must be ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... be more eloquent than me, so I shall leave it for him to discuss that chapter with you. But, to return to your own immediate concerns. Pray, are you then positively prohibited from falling in love? Did Mrs. Douglas only dress up a scarecrow to frighten you, or had she the candour to show you Love himself ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Fink, "why they have had the madness to attack the strongest side of our fortress! It can only be that your peaceful visage has had the effect of the Gorgon's head upon them. Henceforth you will be described as a scarecrow in ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... pony; he was reduced to a weight little exceeding 400 lbs. on his sledge and caved in altogether on the second part of the march. The load was reduced to 200 lbs., and finally Forde pulled this in, leading the pony. The poor thing is a miserable scarecrow and never ought to have been brought—it is the same pony that did so badly in the ship. To-day it is very fine and bright. We are giving a good deal of extra food to the animals, and my hope is that they will soon pick up again—but they cannot stand more blizzards in ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... if he were feeding upon summer. He was happy until he caught sight of his own reflection in the pool, and then he could not bear to stay any longer in this wood, because unlike the squirrel and the woodpecker and the jay he was an ugly intruder here, a scarecrow in ill-fitting clothes, round the ribbon of whose hat like a chain ran the yellow zigzag of Haverton House. He became afraid of the wood, perceiving nothing round him now except an assemblage of menacing trunks, a slow gathering of angry and forbidding branches. The silence of the day ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... be only hoarse, since now (Heaven and my soul bear record of my vow) I my desires screw from thee and direct Them and my thoughts to that sublime respect And conscience unto priesthood. 'Tis not need (The scarecrow unto mankind) that doth breed Wiser conclusions in me, since I know I've more to bear my charge than way to go; Or had I not, I'd stop the spreading itch Of craving more: so in conceit be rich; But 'tis the God of nature who intends And shapes my ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... and yellow, with a long hooked nose and twinkling eyes. His head was cased in a woollen nightcap, over which he wore a flapped hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing clouds of tobacco-smoke." This scarecrow turned out to be an Italian marquis; and no doubt the singularity of his smoking apparatus was of a piece with the singularity ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... art a magpie, Zaidee, always croaking. It will get us into trouble, thy talking. I have but to set my foot outside the house and thy tongue wags like the clothing of a scarecrow." ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... familiar durst have mated Thomas Coventry?—whose person was a quadrate, his step massy and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, his gait peremptory and path-keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving column, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow-beater of equals and superiors, who made a solitude of children wherever he came, for they fled his insufferable presence, as they would have shunned an Elisha bear. His growl was as thunder in their ears, whether he spake to them ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... "A scarecrow, a mere fancy, a figment of some fanatic's brain;" and Ellis Whitford rejected the idea in a voice ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... from her. I fired pointblank, I fired again (the Colt's did not fail); they swept by, hooting, jostling; they thudded on; and rising I screeched and waved, as bizarre, no doubt, as any animated scarecrow. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... weather-beaten scarecrow flapping in the wind, you have some notion of his outward guise. No tramp you ever laid eyes on could have offered so ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... retorted the other, again turning his face quickly toward his companion. "Am I not distinguished enough in appearance? Do I look like the mob? True, I am a scrawny, humpbacked crooked-faced, scarecrow of a man—but what matters that, if I do not look like the mob? What is called fame is as scrawny and humpbacked and crooked-faced as my body—but what matters that? Famous or infamous—to not look like the mob ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... it!—Saturday, February 1st. Well, I know that chest too! I met your wine merchant on the Place du Louvre, and he wasn't precisely enjoying himself: one of his creditors wanted to seize the chest, the wine, the whole kettle of fish! A little man, isn't he?—a scarecrow?" ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... associates: if he holds communion when a boy with Murtagh, the scarecrow of an Irish academy, he associates in after life with Francis Ardry, a rich and talented young Irish gentleman about town. If he accepts an invitation from Mr. Petulengro to his tent, he has no objection to go home with a rich genius to dinner; who then will ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... The trees beyond the fence cut off the sunrise so that I walked in the cool broad shadows. On my left stretched the cornfield of my planting, the young corn well up, very attractive and hopeful, my really frightful scarecrow standing guard on the knoll, a wisp of straw sticking up through a hole in his hat and his crooked thumbs turned ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... scoffs and scorns and contumelious taunts. In open market-place produced they me, To be a public spectacle to all: Here, said they, is the terror of the French, The scarecrow that affrights our children so. Then broke I from the officers that led me, And with my nails digg'd stones out of the ground To hurl at the beholders of my shame; My grisly countenance made others fly; None durst come near for fear of sudden death. ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... much account of it, but Parker the baker 'as 'is doubts of them; so I 'eard the Grinsons' maid tell Ford when I was in 'is shop this very day. And I'm sure you've only to look at 'Orace's coat and 'at to see they must be in debt: the poor boy looks a reg'lar scarecrow. It all comes, my dear, of Reginald's going off and leaving them. Oh, 'ow I pity them that 'as a ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... be what she calls sensible, and only to command and play the distinguished general who merely looks on while others do the fighting. But it would not do—you must admit, Gneisenau, it would not do; I could not stand still like a scarecrow, while my old adjutant, Katzeler, was charging with the hussars; I had to go with them, if it cost my life. You will do me the favor, however, not ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... contained in one small bag," laughed Nasmyth; "the rest's scattered about the hillsides of British Columbia. I was a picturesque scarecrow when I reached ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... flock of geese, so slowly that I soon caught him up; and such a man or such geese I had never seen. To begin with, his rags were worse than a scarecrow's. In one hand he carried a long staff; the other held a small book close under his nose, and his lean shoulders bent over as he read in it. It was clear, from the man's undecided gait, that all his eyes were for this book. Only he would look up when one of his ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shocking to hear how short her breath was; and Mrs. Phipps had no patience with Mrs. Lowme, living, as she did, on tea and broth, and looking as yellow as any crow-flower, and yet letting Pilgrim bleed and blister her and give her lowering medicine till her clothes hung on her like a scarecrow's. On the whole, perhaps, Mr. Pilgrim's reputation was at the higher pitch, and when any lady under Mr. Pratt's care was doing ill, she was half disposed to think that a little more active treatment' might ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... little doubt that such an accusation of narrowness is itself almost grotesquely narrow. To take an example from comparatively current events: we all know that it was not uncommon for a man to be considered a scarecrow of bigotry and obscurantism because he distrusted the Japanese, or lamented the rise of the Japanese, on the ground that the Japanese were Pagans. Nobody would think that there was anything antiquated or fanatical about distrusting a ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... men slouching about the stand. Suddenly a hand darted from between two of them who stood nearest, the sovereign was snatched, a screamed oath from the girl rent the thick air, and a forlorn enough scarecrow of a ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... gone she went into the other side of the house and told Eunice. "There she has gone and made herself look like a perfect scarecrow," she said. "I wonder if there is any insanity in her ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Record of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, Tiktok, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger; Besides Other Good People too Numerous ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... you should know which leg you stand upon. We are nothing but a merchantman, and I don't suppose you are bound by the ship's articles to fight unless you see fit, but whether we fight or not, our fate is the same; if we are such d—d fools as to let that garlic-eating scarecrow make a prize of us without firing a gun, we shall be sent to the mines for life; but if we will only stand by each other, I'll be bail that we give him something that he can't eat. Now if you are all agreeable to that, say so, and give three cheers for the honor ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... the golden blossoms of the pines. Although it was early in February, we saw the negroes at work in the fields, 'listing' the ground—a process of breaking up the soil with hoes—while here and there a solitary palmetto stood, like a scarecrow, as if to warn away all invaders. We soon reached 'Camp Saxton,' which we found pleasantly situated near a large and magnificent grove of live oaks, just at the bend of the river, where a fine ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to a score of people, and looking as big as bull's beef, who should step out from the pavement under us but Uncle Billy Bosistow! He was a ragged old scarecrow, turned a bit grey and lean with iniquitous living, but not more than half-drunk; and he stepped into the middle of the roadway and cut a low reverence to his worship, flinging out his leg like a dancing-master. And says he, in a high ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... it seems unreal, that an incident so insignificant should scatter us and send us into flight like sparrows at whom a scarecrow has been shaken! But is this the first time that students have gone to prison for the sake of liberty? Where are those who have died, those who have been ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape, till custom make it Their perch, ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Leigh, I would certainly change my uniform; for, you will excuse my saying so, you look more like a scarecrow ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... man who begged for a pennyworth of muddy ale was first of all a brilliant soldier, then a brilliant lawyer, then a brilliant historian. His doctor's degree—he was Doctor of Laws—was gained by fair hard work. Think of that, and then look at my picture of the sodden, filthy scarecrow! Yes; that man began my education, and had I only gone straight on I should not be loafing about The Chequers. You ask how he could have anything to do with my education? Well, long ago I was a little bookworm, living in a lonely country house, and I had the run of some ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... to hold out longer, should take advantage of the negligence of our fleet to escape at once from siege and capture. It is not pestilence —by the God that lives! it is not either plague or impending danger that makes us, like birds in harvest-time, terrified by a scarecrow, abstain from the ready prey—it is base superstition—And thus the aim of the valiant is made the shuttlecock of fools; the worthy ambition of the high-souled, the plaything of these tamed hares! But yet Stamboul shall be ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... such gathering that a ghost appeared—a lank, saffron ghost, ragged as a scarecrow—wearing a foolish smile and the cape of a cavalryman's overcoat with no coat beneath it. The apparition was a youth of about twenty, with a downy beard all over his face, and countenance well mellowed with coal-soot, as though he had ridden several days on top ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... evening, but whilst this dialogue was still going on an acquaintance made his arrival known by a knock at the door. It was a lank and hungry individual, grimy of face and hands, his clothing such as in the country would serve well for a scarecrow. Who could have recognised in him the once spruce and spirited Mr. Jack Bartley, distinguished by his chimney-pot hat at the Crystal Palace on Bob's wedding-day? At the close of that same day, as you remember, he and Bob engaged in terrific combat, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... tell! You've completely taken me in! I expected a scarecrow. What for did you frighten me with that letter I got last week? It might have been ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... pleaded Gurney, "you scarecrow creatures don't know how horrid sore the process o' comin' down is. An' one gets so cold, too. It's just like taking ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... squadron commander, "I have in the second company a mustachioed scarecrow, Sergeant-Major Dobrzynski, who calls himself Sprinkler, but whom the Masovians call the Lithuanian bear. If you bid me, General, we ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... the triumph was checked as his glance fell upon a gibbet near him to the right, on the round point of hill which is a landmark to the wide vale of Belvoir. Pressed as he was for time, Dick immediately struck out of the road, and approached the spot where it stood. Two scarecrow objects, covered with rags and rusty links of chains, depended from the tree. A night crow screaming around the carcases added to the hideous effect of the scene. Nothing but the living highwayman and his skeleton brethren was visible upon the solitary spot. Around him was the lonesome ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, country squires and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie. ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... how have ye the conscience to send hame such a piece o' wark as that coat to ony decent man? Do ye dare to imagine that I am a Jerusalem spider, that I could be crammed, neck and heels, into such a thing as that? Fye, shame—it would not button on yourself, man, scarecrow-looking mortal though ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... sprawled aft, and at a nearer sight of him some of the men broke out into nervous titters. There was some excuse, for surely such a scarecrow had never before been the sport of wind and wave. A thing of shreds he was, elaborately ragged, a face overrun with a scrub of beard, and preternaturally drawn, surmounted by a stiff-dried, dirty, cloth semi-turban, with a wide, forbidding ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... want to have such a thing in his home no one can say. Some naturalists believe that he uses it as a scarecrow to frighten his enemies away. But I do not think he could give a reason if he ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... a speculative eye as he worked, and thought he had never looked quite so unattractive as he did with an eight-days' growth of beard, his shirt stained with paint and petrol. His hands were grimy and nobody would have recognised in this scarecrow the elegant habitue of those fashionable resorts which smart ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... anticipated. For the central riddle we are prepared; we have all seen at a glance that there was something wrong about the last earl. We have come here to find out whether he really lived here, whether he really died here, whether that red-haired scarecrow who did his burying had anything to do with his dying. But suppose the worst in all this, the most lurid or melodramatic solution you like. Suppose the servant really killed the master, or suppose the master isn't ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... a new paragraph. Long, lean and hollow cheeked, the term "gangling" fits him better than any other. Mr. Luther Barr's black suit hung on him as baggily as the garments of a cornfield scarecrow and Mr. Luther Barr's sharp features were not improved by a small growth of gray hair; of the kind known as a "goatee" that sprouted from his lower rip. For the rest of the boys noticed that Mr. Barr was gifted with a singularly gimlet-like pair of steely blue ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... horror, far more killing than a stony fall. The women stand about frowsy and unkempt, with wild Irish eyes, all wearing the shawl as a hood, many in picturesque tatters, like the cast-off rags of a scarecrow, rags and flesh alike unwashed and of evil odour. The children look healthy and strong, though some of them are almost in puris naturalibus. Their faces are washed once a week; one of them said so, but the statement lacks confirmation, and is opposed to the evidence of the senses. Scenes ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Mayor's table; and yet, I fancy, we lose some very agreeable titillations of the heart in consequence of our proud prerogative of caring no more about our President than for a man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in a cornfield. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... verander, an' blarneys an' wheedles and whines and argues like a hundred Jews an' ole Irishwomen put tergether, an' accuses me o' takin' his blarsted country from him, an' makes me an' the missus laugh; an' we gives him a bottl'er rum an' a bag of grub ter get rid of him an' his rotten ole scarecrow tribe—It all tells up. I was allers soft on the blacks, an', beside, a ole gin nursed me an' me mother when I was born, an' saved me blessed life—not that that mounts to much. But it all tells up, an' I got me licence ter pay. An' some bloody skunk goes an' informs on me for supplyin' the ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... goin' to have you shot for impersonatin' an officer in that scarecrow riggin'," he taunted. "You should have kept your old ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... scarecrow, taking things as coolly as though he had always been used to having white men row him about a harbour," laughed Cabot, "and yet I don't suppose he was ever in a ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... Thayor. "This man was half the size of Skinner, and a regular scarecrow. Looked as if he hadn't had anything to eat for weeks—but he could handle a gun all right. That's what worried me; I was afraid he would use it on me until the old ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... Jenkins; but if you or any one else were to ask for Isaac Jenkins, there's not a soul in these parts as'd know as such a man ever lived. No; they call me 'Old Crow.' Maybe 'cos I look summat like a scarecrow. But I cannot rightly tell. It's my name, howsever, and you ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... because the last words had a sound of eloquent conclusion—and Mr. Ricardo nodded and took breath. He was like a scarecrow image that had been stuck up by a freakish joker in a London street. The respectability that still clung to him made him the more ludicrous. His clothes were the ruined cast-offs of a middle-class tradesman, and over them ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... came to a triumphant end, and the illustrious book heroes and heroines wended their midnight way toward their various houses and boarding places. The Wayne Hall girls marched across the campus, Emma Dean parading ahead with outspread arms, her rags flapping about her, giving her the appearance of a scarecrow which had just ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... disappointed, for when we reached the craft, shortly after six bells in the forenoon, the sea was no longer breaking over her, or even round her, the breakers now being confined to the outer fringe of the reef. But imagine, if you can, my astonishment at seeing a man—a wretched, ragged, scarecrow of a fellow he looked to be—on the poop, who, as we drew near, began to wave and signal to us with frantic energy. He appeared to be desperately afraid that we had not seen him, or that, having seen him, we should still not trouble to take him off, for he was waving a large, dark cloth when ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... invasion of England was no "scarecrow," as Wilford imagined, but a scheme already thoroughly matured. If Holland and Zeeland should meantime fall into the hands of Philip, it was no exaggeration on that soldier's part to observe that the "freehold of England would be worth ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... longer wanted. A sudden dense guffaw was heard from the senior captain—a big-headed man, with little round eyes and monstrously fat cheeks which never moved. The old major, tall and fantastically ragged like a scarecrow, walked round the body of the late Senor Hirsch, muttering to himself with ineffable complacency that like this there was no need to guard against any future treacheries of that scoundrel. The others stared, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... gazing up at him, a pygmy flashed with sun. A weathercock or scarecrow or both things in one? As bright as a jewelled ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... does that Arkansas ass know about it? Fame's nothing—the market price of your marble scarecrow is the thing to look at. It took you six months to chisel it, and you can't sell it for a hundred dollars. No, sir! Show me fifty thousand dollars and you can have my daughter —otherwise she marries young Simper. You have just six months to raise the money ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... one down near that scarecrow in the field," said Tom, pointing to a ragged figure in the middle of a patch ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... magistrate, member of the council, merchant, and elder of the church (the four capacities constituting but one man), who stood at the head of society in the neighboring metropolis. The token was neither more nor less than a single word, which Mother Rigby whispered to the scarecrow, and which the scarecrow was to whisper ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Tom said, gruffly. "I'll see you to the stage. There it stands yonder—and a jolly old scarecrow of a carriage ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... one," said the latter to du Bruel, calling his attention to Gigonnet, "who would do in a vaudeville. I wonder if he could be bought. Such an old scarecrow is just the thing for a sign over the Two Baboons. And what a coat! I did think there was nobody but Poiret who could show the like after that after ten years' public exposure to ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... heart and intelligence, which made the presence of him an illumination and inspiration wherever he went? It is too bad. Let a man be honestly forgotten when his life ends; but let him not be misremembered in this way. To be hung up as an ecclesiastical scarecrow, as a target for heterodox and orthodox to practice archery upon, is no fate that can be due to the memory of Sterling. It was not as a ghastly phantasm, choked in Thirty-nine-article controversies, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... take down the shutters, call Mr Blurt down-stairs if wanted—which he never was; and tell customers, when he was out, to call again—which he never did, as customers never darkened the door. Jiggs, however, formed a sufficient scarecrow to street boys ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... statesmanship—engineered by men who, though nominal Christians or Catholics, discarded God in affairs of state, and attempted to rule without God in the world, except to use Him (pardon the expression) as a sort of scarecrow for the 'lower orders'—resulted in gradually drying up those intermediary institutions which had served at once to develop a manly civic life and to protect private liberty, and in reabsorbing and concentrating all power in the central government. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... call it here. Every night at tea they bring in what would cost a lira in Florence. I'll drink a whole cup of it!—I'll eat pounds of butter—and lots, lots of pudding—that's what makes English people fat. I'll be fat too. You'll see!" And she threw a threatening nod at the scarecrow reflected in ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... singest thy wicked songs in broad daylight, he must expect to be heard. A little more and thou, too, wilt go to feed the lions and offer entertainment to the thousands who are weary of other amusements and seek something new. Turn pale, scarecrow, and tremble. Thy day will come, the day when those and others—shall suffer. Ha! ha! it strikes home, doesn't it? Thou fearest, eh? ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... boy's a regular scarecrow!" cried the Doctor. "I will not pay for good things for him to go cliff-climbing and wading and burrowing in caves.—Here: what are ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat admonishing as a black scarecrow on the ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... "What an old scarecrow!" he exclaimed, laughing. "Whatever could your aunt have been thinking of to send it! We will despatch it to be chopped up for firewood, and buy ...
— Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories • J. G. Kernahan and C. Kernahan
... to unnerve you, lady," coolly observed her conductor, "and I wonder not, for it is a sorry sight for a tender female, and a Christian withal. Yonder scarecrow was, a short time since, a Christian knight, and is there placed as a warning to his fellow-countrymen how they dare provoke the angry lion in his dominions. In each Moor will the Christian encounter a lion;—nay, something ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... and the company began to turn away, and to mutter among themselves, in order to cover their confusion. "It's the Baron!" "No?" "Yes." "Disgraceful!" "Disgusting!" "Shocking!" "A scarecrow!" ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... return. Some few days after I was called to the guard room to identify a man of my company, whom I found to be Watson; but such a sight I never looked upon. It appears he wandered into the country and saw in the middle of a field a scarecrow. The clothes were all in rags, but that did not matter to Watson. He exchanged with the scarecrow, and placing his uniform in its stead, dressed himself in the tattered suit and continued his journey, only to be arrested and brought back to ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... not at intervals, but quite always, how certain man, our American man,—how he holds himself cool and unquestioned master above all pains and bloody mutilation.... This, then, what frightened us all so long! Why, it is put to flight with ignominy—a mere stuffed scarecrow of the fields. Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... evening I shot the head off a scarecrow he had put up in the cherry tree when I was hiding around a corner to keep out of his sight. All the Springvale boys learned how to ride and shoot and to do both at once, although we never had any shooting to ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... collar of his overcoat. "Yes, call me that. Do: I like to hear it. You frighten me a little, but I expect I frighten you more. I'm always a scarecrow after I sing a long part like that—so high, too." She absently pulled out the handkerchief that protruded from his breast pocket and began to wipe the black paint off her eyebrows and lashes. "I can't take you in much to-night, but I must see you ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... of "hideous verse," Marvell invited the scarecrow to dinner, and waits while he dresses. As they turn to leave, for the room is so small that the man who comes in last must be the first to go out, they meet a friend of the poet on the stairs, who makes a third at dinner. After dinner Flecknoe produces ten quires of paper, from which the friend proceeds ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... remember you had the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman to help you conquer those enemies," suggested the Wizard. "Just now, my dear, there is not a ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... is made the chief speaker in this burlesque, seems to think that the light of the nineteenth century is to be put out as soon as he tinkles his little cow-bell curfew. Whenever slavery is touched, he sets up his scarecrow of dissolving the Union. This may do for the North, but I should conjecture that something more than a pumpkin-lantern is required to scare manifest and irretrievable Destiny out of her path. Mr. Calhoun cannot let go the apron-string of the ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... however, was not too preoccupied to observe the hole; he walked around it instead of over or through it and had the presence of mind to pause, and after a few minutes' kneading and compressing lumps of the damp snow into a species of scarecrow, erected the clumsy squat figure of a misshapen man by the side of the yawning gap and passed on. The sun was radiantly bright by now and the ice beginning to melt off from twigs and wires; the red carpet-bag flamed forth ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... grandfather was a notable lawyer, and who knows but that a scrap of his mantle may not have descended upon me! Now to answer your question right away—you will admit that pretty often your aunt is dressed like a last year's scarecrow; that she is drowsy, stupefied, and generally inaccessible. At another time she is real smart and vivacious, and puts other women in the shade. Then suddenly she disappears, shuts herself up along with Lily ayah, and not a soul may approach her—no, not even you. Undoubtedly Lily provides ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... scarecrow is probably a talisman. In the Saharah, according to Richardson, the skull of an ass averts ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... grass resembled patches of fur on a mangy skin. The birds, which seemed to revel in the excitements of war, soared and swept over the devastated tableland. Northward from our feet stretched this plateau of scarecrow trees, till it began to incline in a gentle rise, and finally met the sky in the summit of Achi Baba. That was the whole landscape—a plateau overlooked by ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... shall get the hearthrug," cried Susan explosively. "That's mine whatever the rest mid be. Them clothes was only fit to put on a scarecrow, an' I cut 'em up, and picked out the best bits, and split up a wold sack and sewed on every mortial rag myself; and I made a border out of a wold red ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... plenty of Northern people to whom "Amalgamation"—the word used to describe the apprehended union of the races—was a veritable scarecrow. A young gentleman in a neighborhood near where I lived when a boy was in all respects eligible for matrimony. He became devoted to the daughter of an old farmer who had been a Kentuckian, and asked him ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... great ocean-world. Swim who can, and whoso is too clumsy let him sink. The right is with him that prevails. Family honor? A valuable capital for him that knows how to profit by it.—Conscience? An excellent scarecrow with which to frighten sparrows from cherry-trees.—Filial love? Where is the obligation? Did my father beget me because he loved me? Did he think of me at all? Is there anything holy in his gratification of carnal ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... present entanglement, and to retrace my steps to the open ground below; in my exhausted condition, as it was already long past midnight, I was making up my mind to roost with the owls on the fork of a tree; and was even anticipating the possibility of becoming a permanent scarecrow there, when my very bones would be concealed in the thicket from the anxious ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... dozen are down in a heap, and there is momentary cessation, then up and pressing on again. Here a fiery spirit grows pugnacious, but is restrained by his class-mates; there another has his shirt torn off him, and presents the picturesque appearance of an amateur scarecrow. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... francs and fame. Or, being a French-Flemish youth, I might have been drawn in a hand-cart by my compeers, to tilt for municipal rewards at the water-quintain; which, unless I sent my lance clean through the ring, emptied a full bucket over me; to fend off which, the competitors wore grotesque old scarecrow hats. Or, being French-Flemish man or woman, boy or girl, I might have circled all night on my hobby- horse in a stately cavalcade of hobby-horses four abreast, interspersed with triumphal cars, going round and round and round and round, we the goodly company singing a ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... eccentric and splenetic, but himself philosophical and by no means ridiculous. Even in the severe period of national struggle which preceded the Revolutionary war, and for some time after the beginning of that war itself, the scarecrow-comic Anglais was slow to make his appearance. Pigault-Lebrun himself, as was noted in the last volume, indulges in him little if at ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... been compelled to resort to open force; but for a long while they governed by fraud alone. First they, by the artful and able agents which they have constantly kept in pay, frightened the people with the pretended dangers of a return of the old king's family. The people were amused with this scarecrow, while the chains were silently forging to bind them with. But the great fraud, the cheat of all cheats, was what they call the national debt. And now, Jack, pray attend to me; for I am going to explain the chief cause of all the disgraces and ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury |
