"Elephant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fingers, but you can see that it is a deformity and not nature. It tells a sad story of neglect, of labor, perhaps of heartlessness, cruelty, suffering. But this man's hand was born so. You would not think of pitying him any more than you would pity an elephant for being an elephant instead of an antelope. A woman's hair is silky and soft, and, if not always smooth, susceptible of smoothness. A man's hair is shag. If he tries to make it anything else, he does not mend the matter. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... colossal size, and arches of Titanic strength and power, adorned the portals, the pass-ways, the temples of this metropolis of ocean, guarded as were these last by the effigies of griffin and dragon, and winged elephant and lion, and stately mastodon and monstrous ichthyosaurus, all white ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... erosion; deforestation; desertification; wildlife populations (such as elephant, hippopotamus, and lion) threatened because of poaching and habitat destruction natural hazards: recurring droughts international agreements: party to - Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... still in office, the populace of Rome became excited by prodigies. There was a wolf seen in the city, and a pig that save for its feet resembled an elephant was brought forth. In Africa, too, Petreius and Labienus who had observed that Caesar had gone out to villages after grain, by means of the Nomads drove his cavalry, that had not yet thoroughly recovered strength from its sea-voyage, in upon the infantry; and while as a result ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... Mrs. Stn.'s 80th birthday, 845; urged to be chmn. com. arrange., Mrs. Blake insists, A. shows greater honor to have Wom. Council undertake it, 846; Mrs. Sewall and Mrs. Avery obj., she shows suff. elephant must not frighten outsiders, writes hundreds of lets. to assist Mrs. Dickinson, criticises Mrs. Stn.'s speech on church, 847; pays trib. to pioneers, reads lets. and teleg., N. Y. Sun compli., Tilton's testimonial, 848; recep. by Mrs. Henry Villard, Mrs. Stn.'s ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... took most luggage into the Ark, and which two took the least? The elephant, who took his trunk, while the fox and the cock had only a brush and ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... elephant has suddenly sat down on your chest, and that the volcano has exploded and thrown you down to the bottom of the sea - the elephant still sleeping peacefully on your bosom. You wake up and grasp the idea that something terrible really has happened. Your ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... proposition I assented, and after hiding ourselves in one of the retired angles of the house, so that no one could know who was guilty of disturbing the peace by such dire noises, the performance commenced. I was by turns a bear, a lion, a zebra, an elephant, dogs of various kinds, and a cat. As I personated the latter-named animals, Toddie ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... said the Great Sloth, and it came out and leaned on the pillar of its door and looked at her with sleepy interest. It was enormous, as big as a young elephant, and it walked on its hind legs like a gorilla. It was very ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... air pollution and resulting acid rain in the mineral extraction and refining region; chemical runoff into watersheds; poaching seriously threatens rhinoceros, elephant, antelope, and large cat populations; deforestation; soil erosion; desertification; lack of adequate water treatment presents ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Kosi, near Varaha Chhatra, is found a singular black ferruginous earth, of which the elephant is said to eat greedily, when indisposed; and the natives use it, rubbed with a little water, to supply the place ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... the manner in which it is collected. Process of washing it. Its value in Africa. Of ivory. Surprise of the Negroes at the eagerness of the Europeans for this commodity. Scattered teeth frequently picked up in the woods. Mode of hunting the elephant. Some reflections on the unimproved state ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... represented are—in the northern chamber, Durga; in the western, Ganesa; and in both the southern and eastern, Guru. Now, according to the Brahmanic pantheon, Durga (the Goddess) was the mother, and Guru the father, of Ganesa, the elephant-headed God of Wisdom. The connection between Siva and the Rama epic is this. The Ramayana is the history of the incarnation of Vishnu as Rama, and contains an account of the war waged by Rama with ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... splendid tigers, David says; and an elephant, and a hippopotamus; and ever so many other creatures besides. All of them ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... force, and again gained a victory. It was won, however, at the expense of his brother Eleazer. Seeing one of the elephants armed with royal armor, he supposed that it carried the king himself; and heroically forcing his way through the ranks of the enemy, he slipped under the elephant, and gave the beast a mortal wound, so that it fell to the ground, crushing to death the courageous Maccabaeus,—for the brothers of Judas, worthy compatriots and fellow-soldiers with him, were also called by his special name; and although the family name was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... the archetypal man, they have the archetypal animal, "the grandfather of all beavers;" to them, who do not know the elephant, this is the symbol of wisdom, as the rattlesnake and bear ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... General Witherington, and goes to India, where he assumes the character of Sadoc, a black slave in the service of Mde. Montreville. He delivers Menie Gray by treachery to Tippoo Saib, and Hyder Ali gives him up to be crushed to death by an elephant.—Sir W. Scott, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... "But an elephant has more sense than to sneeze as I do. I knew I'd take cold. Anne, they're after us. It's old Mrs. Van Truder's work. What are they ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... VII. PACHYDERMATA.—The Elephant.—The elephant, and the wild boar, the Singhalese "waloora,"[1] are the only representatives of the pachydermatous order. The latter, which differs somewhat from the wild boar of India, is found in droves in all parts of the island where vegetation and water ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the hardly less general belief in metempsychosis, show that primitive culture has not arrived at the distinction attained by modern philosophy between the immortal man and the soulless brute. Still more direct evidence is furnished by sundry savage customs. The Kafir who has killed an elephant will cry that he did n't mean to do it, and, lest the elephant's soul should still seek vengeance, he will cut off and bury the trunk, so that the mighty beast may go crippled to the spirit-land. In like manner, the Samoyeds, after shooting a bear, will gather about the body offering excuses and ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... being different from the seeing person within the eye spoken of in the first chapter, (but treats of the same topic) as appears from the introductory clause, 'I shall explain him further to you.' Moreover[187], a person who is conscious of having seen an elephant in a dream and of no longer seeing it when awake discards in the waking state the object which he had seen (in his sleep), but recognises himself when awake to be the same person who saw something in the dream.—Thus in the third section also Prajapati does indeed declare the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... o' mine," continued the engineer, pointing to the big Baldwin locomotive beside him. "Is't she a pippin, though? These little French ones look like fleas up alongside an elephant aside of her. They're forty-five like her in the same lot, bought by the French for $45,000 a throw, and turned out at the works in Philly in twenty days. They're owned by the French now, but they've got the good old 'U.S.A.' right up there ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... the baby suddenly went to the rescue. Planting the naked cherub on the door-step, this energetic matron charged in among the rampant animals, and by some magic touch untangled the teams, quieted the most fractious, a big grey brute, prancing like a mad elephant; then returned to her baby, who was placidly eating dirt, and with a polite 'Voila, messieurs!' she whipped little Jean into his shirt, while the men sat ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... of, nor seen the light, since its presentation, and was at last found in a lumber closet, in a strong box, in Indian packing. It was a compromise between an epergne and a candelabrum, growing out of the howdah of an unfortunate elephant, pinning one tiger to the ground, and with another hanging on behind, in the midst of a jungle of palm-trees and cobras; and beneath was an elaborate inscription, so laudatory of Aubrey Spencer, M. D., that nobody wondered he had never unpacked it, and that it was yellow with tarnish—the only ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... them frisking played All beasts of the earth since wild, and of all chase In wood or wilderness, forest or den. Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... HE. Moreouer that man is ryche, whiche fyndeth mercye and foryeouenes at the handes of god. What shuld he feare, that hath suche a protectour? Whether men? where as playnely theyr hole power may lesse do agaest God, then the bytyng of a gnat, || hurteth the Elephant. Whether death? truly that is a right passage for good men vnto all sufficient ioy and perfection accordyng too the iust reward of true religion and vertue. Whether hell? For as in that the holy prophete speaketh boldely vnto God. Although I shulde ...
— A Very Pleasaunt & Fruitful Diologe Called the Epicure • Desiderius Erasmus
... America every week, and try to figure out what the public gets in return for the cost thereof. The annual bill must surely run into millions; one is constantly hearing how much beef a lion downs at a meal, and how many tons of hay an elephant dispatches in a month. And to what end? To the end, principally, that a horde of superintendents and keepers may be kept in easy jobs. To the end, secondarily, that the least intelligent minority of the population may have an idiotic ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... thought to certain extent would account for anomalies. Timor has been my greatest puzzle. What do you say to the peculiar Felis there? I wish that you had visited Timor: it has been asserted that a fossil mastodon or elephant's tooth (I forget which) had been found there, which would be a grand fact. I was aware that Celebes was very peculiar; but the relation to Africa is quite new to me and marvellous, and almost passes belief. It is as anomalous as the relation of plants ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of his first and last interview with Cetywayo, Hadden got a hint of the reason. It happened thus. On the second morning after his arrival at the royal kraal, a messenger came to inform him that "the Elephant whose tread shook the earth" had signified that it was his pleasure to see him. Accordingly he was led through the thousands of huts and across the Great Place to the little enclosure where Cetywayo, ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... look like. It was a futile endeavor, because he had never yet been able to construct a mental portrait of any man wholly unknown to him. One day in Madras he had telephoned to an official for leave to shoot an elephant in a Government reservation, and a deep voice boomed back an answer. Apparently it belonged to a man whose stature warranted his appointment as controller of monsters, but when Medenham called in person for the permit he found that ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... until the following November. The lower bay was cleared of torpedoes and reconnoissances made toward Mobile; but he wrote adversely to any attempt against the city, now that it was sealed as a port to blockade runners. "It would be an elephant," he wrote, "and take an army to hold it. And besides, all the traitors and rascally speculators would flock to that city and pour into the Confederacy the wealth of New York." He confesses also his dislike to operations in very shoal water. "I am in no way diffident ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... Circus," remarked Clarence. "Only wants a couple of clowns with bladders on horseback and a performing elephant." ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... to obtain a better field of action, she moved backward a little, coming in contact with the bars of the cage, a circumstance that she overlooked. More unfortunately still, the longing of the captive to express his feelings was such that he would have welcomed the opportunity to attack an elephant. He had been striking and scratching at inanimate things and at boys out of reach for the past hour; but here at last was his opportunity. He made the ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... don't know what would have happened—they would have been smothered or had hay fever, I guess—if a big Circus Elephant hadn't come hurrying along ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... adroit,—plays to and fro beneath the cases, and acts obediently to the operator's touch. The spectacle of this little metallic intelligence is amusing. It is armed with pincers, which it uses much as the elephant does his trunk, though with infinite celerity. Every time a key is touched, these pincers seize a type from one of the tubes, turn downward, and, as it were, put it into the mouth of the stick. And so voracious is the appetite of this little creature, that in a few ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... glance, even as you did that of his rider. The beast was large, high, broad-chested, sleek of skin, wiry of limb, with no excess of fat, and no straggling hair; small ears, a glorious mane, and a great lively eye. At once docile and full of life, he trod the earth with the firm pace of an elephant, yet with the ease of an antelope; moving carelessly as in pastime, and as if he bore no sort of burden on his back. For that matter he might well do so. His rider, though well developed, was too slight to be felt by such a creature—and ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... to them the elephant suddenly wheeled round and, trumpeting loudly, tried to force his way back. A scene of wild confusion ensued. The crowd gave way before him, several soldiers were thrust off the bridge into the ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... the root. Each upper front tooth meets one in the lower jaw, so that the constant rubbing against each other keeps both the right length. Sometimes one tooth is broken and the other goes on growing till it stands out like the tusk of an elephant. Then the poor rabbit, unable to gnaw its ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... poet, Keats, has discovered for us the thoughts that passed through the brains of the victims of Circe, after their transformation. In his "Endymion" he represents one of them, a monarch in the guise of an elephant, addressing the sorceress in ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... west, near the border of the submarine plateau. The Santa Barbara Islands at that time formed a mountain range upon the edge of the continental land. This fact was established by the discovery upon one of the islands of a large number of bones of an extinct American elephant. These animals could have reached the submerged mountains only at a time when there was dry land between them and the present shore line. We should like to know how it came about that these bones were left where they are. Perhaps the land ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... an accident of inheritance, he had come into the property with an immense antipathy:—a white elephant that would bring him neither profit nor honour, but which the modest competence that he had previously enjoyed did not allow him to refuse. It had altered the tenor of his existence, destroyed his youth and his ambitions, and represented for many ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... very white elephant on their hands. The site is not well chosen, or the stream difficult, and the restrained water pours round the ends of their dam, cutting them away. They build the dam longer at once; but again the water ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... at me with the shrewishness of an elephant. I had not at that time seen an elephant. When I did see one, however, the shifting of its eyes brought back the memory of Doctor Chantry when I had him at ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... in very truth, those Polchester Christmases of nearly thirty years ago were so marvellous as now in retrospect they seem. I can give details of those splendours, facts and figures, that to the onlooker are less than nothing at all—a sugar elephant in a stocking, a box of pencils on a Christmas tree, "Hark, the Herald Angels..." at three in the morning below one's window, a lighted plum-pudding, a postman four hours late, his back bent with bursting ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... English governor sat in judgment together, his interest in the intricacies of their laws would give way to the more absorbing occupation of chasing wild boar or shooting at tigers from the top of an elephant. And so he was not only regarded as an authority on many forms of government and of law, into which no one else had ever taken the trouble to look, but his books on big game were eagerly read and his articles in the magazines were earnestly discussed, whether they told ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... cannot liue in euery particular place or region, especially with the same ioy and felicitie, as it did where it was first bred, for the certeine agreement of nature that is betweene the place and the thing bred in that place; as appeareth by the Elephant, which being translated and brought out of the second or third climat, though they may liue, yet will they neuer ingender or bring forth yong.[63] Also we see the like in many kinds of plants and herbs; for example, the Orange trees, although in Naples they bring ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... Grimm-Hunt, i. 399). The incident of the three animals, old, older, and oldest, has a remarkable resemblance to the Tettira Jataka (ed. Fausboell, No. 37, transl. Rhys Davids, i. p. 310 seq.) in which the partridge, monkey, and elephant dispute as to their relative age, and the partridge turns out to have voided the seed of the Banyan-tree under which they were sheltered, whereas the elephant only knew it when a mere bush, and the monkey had nibbled ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... newspapers occupied one corner of the room, and a set of boxing-gloves lay on top of the pile, and a pair of dumb-bells beside it. A shaded reading-lamp stood upon the table in the midst of a great litter of papers. The barrels of a huge elephant gun flashed dimly from the wall as the firelight played upon them, and two or three lighter weapons ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... head. "Syria and Palestine," he said, "are full of an army gathering to invade Egypt. It eats up the land like locusts. An elephant could march easier unseen into a house than we ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... magnificent castle in the air, of which she was mistress, with a husband somewhere in the background (she had not seen him as yet, and his figure would not therefore be very distinct); she had arrayed herself in an infinity of shawls, turbans, and diamond necklaces, and had mounted upon an elephant to the sound of the march in Bluebeard, in order to pay a visit of ceremony to the Grand Mogul. Charming Alnaschar visions! it is the happy privilege of youth to construct you, and many a fanciful young creature besides Rebecca Sharp ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Monty, "slaves came mostly from the Congo side of Lake Victoria Nyanza. Slave and elephant country were approximately the same as regards general direction, and there were two routes from the Congo—the southern by way of Ujiji on Tanganyika to Bagamoyo on what is now the German coast, and the other to the north of Victoria Nyanza ending at Mombasa. Ask him, Fred, which ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... imperial ladies. The foremost of fifteen elephants, each carrying four women, took fright in a narrow part of the so-called road and backed the rest over a precipice. Only three or four of the odalisques were killed by the fall, but not one elephant was saved. Bernier passed the scene of the accident two days after, and saw some of the animals still alive, but able only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... go so near! Hevings! there's the Afric cowses! What's the matter with the child? Why, the monkey's tore his trowses! Here's the monstrous elephant,— I'm all a tremble at the sight; See his monstrous tooth-pick, boys! Wonder if ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... bowels of the earth, the principle of order is everywhere—everything is governed by fixed laws, which cannot be disobeyed: we have order in the seasons, in the tides, in the movement of the heavenly bodies, in the instinct of animals, in the duration of life assigned to each; from the elephant who lives more than a century, to the ephemeral fly, whose whole existence is ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... long civil war and recurrent drought in the hinterlands have resulted in increased migration of the population to urban and coastal areas with adverse environmental consequences; desertification; pollution of surface and coastal waters; elephant poaching for ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... accuracy and credibility. In Meroe, or Abyssinia, he says, they hunt elephants and hamstring them, and afterwards cut the flesh out of the animal alive: he adds, that the inhabitants are so extremely fond of the flesh of the elephant, thus procured, that when Ptolemy would have paid any price to purchase these animals alive, as he wanted them for his army, the Abyssinian hunters refused his offer, declaring that not all the wealth of Egypt would tempt them to forego their favourite and delicious ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... dance at an advanced age, and Cato learnt Greek at an advanced age. Then it might proceed to say, that this Johnson, not content with dancing on the ground, might dance on the rope; and they might introduce the elephant dancing on the rope. A nobleman[264] wrote a play, called Love in a hollow Tree. He found out that it was a bad one, and therefore wished to buy up all the copies, and burn them. The Duchess of Marlborough had kept one; and when he was against her at an election, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... these regions to India, and which therefore must have tended in a southerly direction. In this current we have no difficulty in recognising that of Mozambique. On the other hand, that the rukh had an expanse of wing of thirty paces, and that it could lift an elephant in its talons, are of course utterly ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... yards are strung along the river, but are easily reached by an electric car. Several are conducted by Chinese, but the finest yard is in charge of the government. At the first Chinese yard was the largest elephant in the city, a huge animal fifty-five years old, with great tusks admirably fitted for lifting large logs. A dozen tourists were grouped about the yard in the early morning, for these elephants are only worked in the morning and evening hours, when it is cool. An East ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... big enough to surround that old ruin, an' yet you went an' let the fellers get away. An' we've been blowed up, an' locked up, an' chased in motor cars, an' gone without our eatin's, an' nothin' doin'. Up to date we're about as useless on the Isthmus as an elephant's ear on an apple pie—big enough to be in the way, but not good enough to become part ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... already remarked by writers,—though that will not prevent me from repeating it,—that, of all the four-footed friends of man, none, not even that corpulent chap, Elephant, has contributed more voluminously to the literature of anecdote than that first-rate fellow, Dog. Let me also take the liberty of recalling, in corroboration of others who have previously drawn attention to the same ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Master of Life wished to build up an elephant or mammoth, he placed four cakes of clay upon the ground, at proper distances, which were moulded into shape, and became ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... world over are a hardy, valorous race. The Arab commutes by dromedary, the Malay by raft, the Indian rajah by elephant, the African chief gets a team of his mothers-in-law to tow him to the office. But wherever you find him, the commuter is a tough and tempered soul, inured to privation and calamity. At seven-thirty in the morning he leaves his bungalow, ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... foeman's horses, ranks of elephant and car, I will win the stolen cattle rescued in the ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... most luggage into the Ark, and which two took the least?—The elephant, who took his trunk, while the fox and the cock had only a brush ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... daughter sixteen now, often mistaken for sisters, &c. &c. &c. When that was over, the younger of our entertainers brought out a cigar-box, and gave me a cigar, made of negrohead she said, which would quell an elephant in six whiffs. The box was full of cigarettes—good large ones, made of pretty strong tobacco; I always smoke them here, and used to smoke them at Genoa, and I knew them well. When I lighted my cigar, daughter lighted hers, at mine; leaned against the mantelpiece, in ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... would likewise follow non-entireness of the Self. For your opinion is that souls abide in numberless places, each soul having the same size as the body which it animates. When, therefore, the soul previously abiding in the body of an elephant or the like has to enter into a body of smaller size, e. g. that of an ant, it would follow that as the soul then occupies less space, it would not remain entire, but would become incomplete.—Let ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... dog spent hours in a ramble through the woods. They began Lass's education—which was planned to include more intricate tricks than a performing elephant and a troupe of circus dogs could hope to learn in a lifetime. They became sworn chums. Dick talked to Lass as if she were human. She amazed the enraptured boy by her cleverness and spirits. His initiation to the dog-masters' guild ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... An elephant had been operated upon for a diseased eye which gave him great pain, for which he was unprepared, and he was wrathy at the keeper and surgeon. It soon passed off, and the result of the application was so beneficial to the animal that when brought out in a few days after, to have ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... Parser, p. 136. "He had a comely young woman which travelled with him."—Hutchinson's Hist., i, 29. "A butterfly, which thought himself an accomplished traveller, happened to light upon a beehive."—Inst., p. 143. "It is an enormous elephant of stone, who disgorges from his uplifted trunk a vast but graceful shower."—Zenobia, i, 150. "He was met by a dolphin, who sometimes swam before him, and sometimes behind him."—Edward's First Lessons in ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... then, ile tell you: the strangest beast that ever I saw was an Ostridge that eate up the Iron mynes. But now you talke of birds I saw an Elephant beat a Taylor in the fenceing schoole ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... occur involuntarily, and as they can not be avoided they must be understood. Thus, it is characteristic to understand something unknown in terms of some known example, i. e., the Romans who first saw an elephant, called it "bos lucani.'' Similarly "wood-dog'' wolf; "sea-cat'' monkey, etc. These are forms of common usage, but every individual is accustomed to make such identifications whenever he meets ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts; the first and wisest of beasts, it may be; but still true beasts. [1] We shall only differ in degree, and not in kind; just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of all the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts—and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... below listened with conflicting emotions. Jill was indignant, Bessie horrified—apparently, Jim greatly amused, and Jack sublimely indifferent. "If there's anything I despise," said Jill, "it is a house that makes a human being seem like an elephant, and where I can't say my prayers or move a chair in my own room without rousing the ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... Harvey and Spenser have been preserved to us, possibly by Gabriel Harvey's self-satisfaction in regard to his own compositions. But with the pedagogue's jocoseness, and a playfulness which is like that of an elephant, it shows on both sides easy frankness, sincerity, and warmth, and not a little of the early character of the younger man. In Spenser's earliest poetry, his pastorals, Harvey appears among the imaginary rustics, as the poet's "special and most familiar ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... whip Lyon's Dutchmen and Yankees just as we are. Spirit is what counts, and the Yankees haven't got it, I was made to-day a Captain of Cavalry under Colonel Rives. I ride a great, raw-boned horse like an elephant. He jolts me until I am sore,—not quite as easy as my thoroughbred, Jefferson. Tell Jinny to care for him, and have him ready when we march ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... certain pride in ordering their cousin around. It was like performing with a lion in the presence of a lady; it was manipulating an elephant by power of the unaided voice. Slowly Bull Hunter dropped his great feet into the hole and then raised his head a little and looked wistfully to the brothers for ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... pencil caricatured Blaine in Harper's Weekly as a magnetic candidate too heavy for the party elephant to carry; Puck portrayed him as the "tattooed man" covered all over with "Little Rock," "Mulligan Letters" and the like. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... street without one's self being seen. In some houses a lantern projects between the windows. Below the windows is the house-door or shop-door. If it be a shop-door, there will be carved above it either a negro's head with the mouth wide open or the smirking face of a Turk. Sometimes the sign is an elephant, a goose, a horse's head, a bull, a serpent, a half-moon, a windmill, and sometimes an outstretched arm holding some article that is for sale in the shop. If it be a house-door—in which case it is always kept closed—it bears a brass plate on which is written ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... AS TO FORMS.—Nature does not furnish a wheel in any of its mechanical expressions. If man followed nature's form in the building of the locomotive, it would move along on four legs like an elephant. Curiously enough, one of the first road wagons had "push legs,"—an instance where the mechanic tried ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... all this triumph, an unsung hero and martyr of science who deserves his meed of praise—the tiny guinea-pig. He well deserves his niche in the temple of fame; and as other races and ages have worshiped the elephant, the snake, and the sacred cow, so this age should erect its temples to the guinea-pig. From one of the most trifling and unimportant,—kept merely as a pet and curiosity by the small boys of all ages,—he has become, after the horse, the cow, the pig, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... doubt that a succession of winters on Oulton Broad had been very detrimental to Mrs. Borrow's health, although they had no effect upon Borrow, who bathed there with equal indifference in winter as in summer, having, as he tells us in Wild Wales, 'always had the health of an elephant.' And so Borrow and his wife arrived in London in June, and took temporary lodgings at 21 Montagu Street, Portman Square. In September they went into occupation of a house in Brompton—22 Hereford Square, which is now commemorated by a County Council tablet. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... simple way of anticipating the future. "Just as," said Dr. Pellkins, in a fine passage,—"just as when we see a pig in a litter larger than the other pigs, we know that by an unalterable law of the Inscrutable it will some day be larger than an elephant,—just as we know, when we see weeds and dandelions growing more and more thickly in a garden, that they must, in spite of all our efforts, grow taller than the chimney-pots and swallow the house from sight, so we know and reverently acknowledge, that when any power in human politics has ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... miserably corrupted by rain. It has been handed down to memory, Conscript Fathers, that Caius Duilius was permitted by the republic, which he had saved by (his) incredible fortitude, to be borne by an elephant whenever he had been invited to a dinner. Therefore, did he use a most luxurious quadruped that he might by so much the more quickly arrive at a banquet: shall we, who desire to hasten not for the sake of lust and the belly, but for the sake of this learning and books, be ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... up upon my legs, and being bred upon the roads, and able to fight a little, I squared as he came running in upon me, and had a round or two with him. Lord bless you, young man, it was like a fly fighting with an elephant—one of those big beasts the show-folks carry about. I had not a chance with the fellow, he knocked me here, he knocked me there, knocked me into the hedge, and knocked me out again. I was at my last shifts, and my poor wife ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... historical era; another and a far more considerable part originated at times immediately antecedent, when the waters of the Mediterranean were already inhabited by the existing testacea, but when certain species of elephant, rhinoceros, and other quadrupeds now ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... boy, I warn you against putting any of your ill-gotten gains into that sort of speculation. They may perhaps start one from the Elephant and it'll get about as fur as the Obelisk, and there it'll stick. And they'll have to take it to pieces, and sell it for scrap iron. I ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... Indian. Asoka records in his inscriptions the institution of religious processions and Hsuan Chuang relates how King Harsha organized a festival during which an image of the Buddha was carried on an elephant while the monarch and his ally the king of Assam, dressed as Indra and Brahma respectively, waited on it like servants.[116] Such festivities were congenial to the Sinhalese, as is attested by the long series of descriptions ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... a verbal offer to lease the Red House for a period of twelve months. A foreigner, who in lieu of the usual references, was prepared to pay the annual rent in advance. As the Red House, to use an Irishism, was regarded as something of a white elephant, the agent was interested, apparently; and when on the following day the sum agreed upon arrived by post, he did not demur about delivering the keys to the prospective lessee, who desired to take certain measurements in regard to carpets ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... accordingly! What is it you admire in him, you men? If it is only the weight of his body which fills the children with terror, then we rats, small as we are, consider ourselves not one grain less than the elephant." He would have said more; but the cat, bounding out of her cage, let him see in an instant that a ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... talk very much of a kind of animal called a Tory, that was as great a monster as the Whig, and would treat us as ill for being foreigners. These two creatures, it seems, are born with a secret antipathy to one another, and engage when they meet as naturally as the elephant and the rhinoceros. But as we saw none of either of these species, we are apt to think that our guides deceived us with misrepresentations and fictions, and amused us with an account of such monsters as are ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... a present in consideration of the kind treatment which he and my young countryman had experienced. All parties seemed well pleased, especially when I offered a further sum for some provisions— cassava, plantains, antelope flesh, and dried elephant meat—which I intended for my attendants, whom I hoped to meet in ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... street parade of any of its great and famous rivals, the street parade of this circus was a meagre and disappointing thing. Why, there was only one elephant, a dwarfish and debilitated-looking creature, worn mangy and slick on its various angles, like the cover of an old-fashioned haircloth trunk; and obviously most of the closed cages were weather-beaten stake wagons in disguise. Nevertheless, there was a sizable turnout of people for the afternoon ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... heaving to and fro and blowing like a chained elephant. "I don't know what to do," she whined. "I wish Joe ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... snout, recurs frequently. Such a form discovered in the earlier days of archaeologic investigation would probably have given rise to many surmises as to the contemporaneous existence of man and the elephant in Chiriqui. In reality the original was probably some unassuming little inhabitant of the isthmian jungles. This creature is shown in profile in Fig. 65, a, and front views are given in b and c. Innumerable examples, embracing most ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... facts that militate against the theory; the elephant, for instance, is accounted one of the most intelligent ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... so—upon my word, she is more of a boy than he—your Amedee would always be looking at the pictures. My Louise hears him read every day two pages in the Moral Tales, and yesterday he amused Gerard by telling him the story of the grateful elephant. He can go to school ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... He just walks beside her to a party and talks about politics and poetry and tells funny stories. I reckon he's mighty good, but he don't know how to love a girl. Ann is afraid he'll step on her, he's so tall and awkward and wanderin'. Did you ever see an elephant talking with a cricket?" ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... protracted and heroic defence of the Danes rendering the attempt impracticable, Colonel Brock, during the hard-fought battle, remained on board the Ganges; and at its close he accompanied Captain Fremantle to the Elephant, 74, Nelson's flag ship, where he saw the hero[15] write his celebrated letter to the Crown Prince of Denmark. Savery Brock was also on board the Ganges, and while in the act of pointing one of her quarter deck guns, his cocked hat was torn from his head by a grape shot: a naval officer, who was ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... to which he invariably had recourse in any crisis, came upon Roland with irresistible force. He packed a bag, and went to Paris. There, in the discomforts of life in a foreign country, he contrived for a month to forget his white elephant. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... with which she used to amuse Thor for hours together behind the parlor stove at home, making shadow pictures against the wall with her hands. Her fingers were very supple, and she could make a duck and a cow and a sheep and a fox and a rabbit and even an elephant. Harsanyi, from his low chair, watched them, smiling. The boy was on his knees, jumping up and down with the excitement of guessing the beasts, and Tanya sat with her feet tucked under her and clapped her frail little hands. Thea's profile, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... virtue, the ass will have a better pasture-ground than many of its rivals. The donkey's small size is against it. Most people are cruel toward dumb beasts, and only when animals have power to defend themselves, does caution make man kinder. He hesitates to hurt an elephant, and even respects, to some extent, the rear extremities of a mule; but the donkey corresponds to the small boy in a crowd of brutal playmates. It is difficult to see how these useful animals could be replaced in certain countries of the world. Purchased ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... with an elephant's trunk. The creature is as much bigger than an elephant as an elephant is larger than a sheep. King Baly of India rode on ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... pedestrian stumping along at full speed, and she had laughed heartily with her husband at her odd appearance; at her short petticoats, and the resolute manner in which she swung her cane, and planted it down upon the ground. She had often wondered how such an elephant of a woman could move so rapidly upon such small feet, which looked as if she had lost her own, and borrowed a pair of some child ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... ones down."[35] If this means anything, it means that as the winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay can make heaps of sand, so similar unconscious agencies can, if you only give them time enough, make an elephant or a man; for this is what Mr. Darwin says natural selection ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... believe I had seen little other than wooden bridges before, and in England I saw not one such, but everywhere solid arches of masonry, that were refreshing and reassuring to behold. Even the lanes and byways about the farm, I noticed, crossed the little creeks with a span upon which an elephant would not hesitate to tread, or artillery trains to pass. There is no form so pleasing to look upon as the arch, or that affords so much food and suggestion to the mind. It seems to stimulate the volition, the will-power, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... people wanted to get rid of the dog. In the paper they had it that Miss Terry asserted that Fussie was a little terrier, while the hotel people regarded him as a pointer; and funny caricatures were drawn of a very big me with a very tiny dog, and a very tiny me with a dog the size of an elephant. Henry often walked straight out of an hotel where an objection was made to Fussie. If he wanted to stay, he went in for strategy. At Detroit the manager of the hotel said that dogs were against the rules. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... among those strange creations of man's brain, to some so abhorrent, to him of an interest so inexhaustible: in which iron, water, and fire are made to serve as slaves, now with a tread more powerful than an elephant's, and now with a touch more precise and dainty than a pianist's. The taste for machinery was one that I could never share with him, and he had a certain bitter pity for my weakness. Once when I had proved, for the hundredth time, the depth of this defect, he looked at me askance: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "a" or "an," before each of these expressions:—Elephant, apple, egg, union of states, uniform, uninformed person, universal custom, umpire, Unitarian church, anthem, unfortunate man, united people, American, European, Englishman, one, high hill, horse, honorable career, hypocrite, humble spirit, honest boy, hypothesis, history, historical ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... Children—If you have never heard much about the Hindoos, you will be astonished to learn how numerous are the objects of their worship. They worship many living creatures, such as the ape, the tiger, the elephant the horse, the ox, the stag, the sheep, the hog, the dog, the cat, the rat, the peacock, the eagle, the cock, the hawk, the serpent, the chameleon, the lizard, the tortoise, fishes, and even insects. Of these, some receive ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... of the riders. One of these arrows pierced the eye of Hemu, who fell back in his howdah, for the moment insensible. The fall of their leader spread consternation among the followers. The attack slackened, then ceased. The soldiers of Bairam soon converted the cessation into a rout. The elephant on which Hemu rode, without a driver—for the driver had been killed[3]—made off instinctively towards the jungle. A nobleman, a follower and distant relative of Bairam, Shah Kuli Mahram-i-Baharlu, followed the elephant, not knowing who it was who rode it. Coming up with ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... were dropped into it; but the change was still new. What could a man be more than Capitaine Lemaitre was—the soul of honor, the pink of courtesy, with the courage of the lion, and the magnanimity of the elephant; frank—the very exchequer of truth! Nay, go higher still: his paper was good in Toulouse street. To the gossips in the gaming-clubs he was the culminating proof that smuggling was one ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... the air and the creation of a scientific aerial war fleet, second to none in the world, was an achievement of which the conquering race was pardonably proud, and for which it had good reason to be duly thankful. Over the gateways was blazoned the badge of the club, an elephant, whale, and eagle, typifying the three armed forces of the State, by land and sea and air; the eagle bore in its beak a scroll with the proud legend: "The last am I, but ...
— When William Came • Saki
... pennies). There, and there, and there! Now out of the way with you! I must take my elephant by. ...
— Children's Classics in Dramatic Form - Book Two • Augusta Stevenson
... many wild beasts in India—tigers, leopards, cobras, and crocodiles. The tigers are very fierce. They sometimes come into villages at night and carry off men, women or children, and kill and eat them. There are logs. They do work of many kinds. An elephant is much stronger than a horse. He can carry a far heavier load. Sometimes all the family ride on one ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... yer life they can't. Ye ain't no chicken!" exclaimed his hard-faced friend. "Say, let's liquor up once more before we go to see the elephant." ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... with their own petard. Their "appeal to antiquity" turns out to be nothing but a round-about way of appealing to the tribunal, the jurisdiction of which they affect to deny. Having rested the world of Christian supernaturalism on the elephant of biblical infallibility, and furnished the elephant with standing ground on the tortoise of "antiquity," they, like their famous Hindoo analogue, have been content to look no further; and have thereby been spared the horror of discovering that the tortoise ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the highway, he came straight on the flank of a travelling menagerie. It was one of some size, and Clare saw at a glance that its horses were in fair condition. The front part of the little procession had already gone by, and an elephant was passing at the moment with a caravan—of feline creatures, as Clare afterwards learned, behind him. He drew it with absolute ease, but his head seemed to be dragged earthward by the weight of his trunk, as he plodded wearily along. A world of delight woke in ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... a bath every day. Dogs and many other animals like to go into the water to bathe. Some of you have seen a great elephant take a bath by showering the water over himself with his trunk. To keep the skin healthy we ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... part; but my conviction was, that Tom Wodehouse died in the West Indies. He was just the kind of man to die in the West Indies. If it's you," said the Doctor, with a growl of natural indignation, "you have the constitution of an elephant. You should have been dead ten years ago, at the very least; and it appears to me there would be some difficulty in proving identity, if anybody would take up that view of the question." As he spoke, Dr Marjoribanks walked round the new-comer, looking at him with medical criticism. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... that when her realm was to have been invaded by an army, the preparation whereof was like the travail of an elephant, the provisions infinite, the setting forth whereof was the terror and wonder of Europe; it was not seen that her cheer, her fashion, her ordinary manner was anything altered; not a cloud of that storm did appear in that countenance wherein ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... ethnologist, Mr. Westropp, informs me that he observed in Vienna a bear deliberately making with his paw a current in some water, which was close to the bars of his cage, so as to draw a piece of floating bread within his reach. These actions of the elephant and bear can hardly be attributed to instinct or inherited habit, as they would be of little use to an animal in a state of nature. Now, what is the difference between such actions, when performed by an uncultivated man, and by one ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... ponies which we were admiring a half-hour since, as they trotted by the door, took fright at a menagerie procession coming up from the depot to the Hippodrome,—and ran away. In steering clear of the elephant, who was covered from head to foot, and certainly looked frightful, the horses ran into a mass of lumber and brick at the corner of Fountain and Franklin streets, where a new store is being erected, and the carriage was upset. Unfortunately the harness was very strong, and did ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... were eaten. Mule was said to be delicious,—far superior to beef. Antelope cost eighteen francs a pound, but was not as good as stewed rabbit; elephant's trunk was eight dollars a pound, it being esteemed a delicacy. Bear, kangaroo, ostrich, yak, etc., varied the bill of fare for those who could afford to ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... necktie, I have instinctively thought of Bower, who wore such a waistcoat and such a necktie, with the glossiest of silk hats and most shapely of patent-leather boots, throughout the siege of Paris, when he was fond of dilating on the merits of boiled ostrich and stewed elephant's foot, of which expensive dainties he partook at his club, after the inmates of the Jardin ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... to the sea. This delta, which includes the districts of Bassein, Myaungmya, Thongwa, Henzada, Hanthawaddy, Tharrawaddy, Pegu and Rangoon town, consists almost entirely of a rich alluvial deposit, and the whole area, which between Cape Negrais and Elephant Point is 137 m. wide, is fertile in the highest degree. To the east lies a tract of country which, though geographically a part of the Irrawaddy basin, is cut off from it by the Yomas, and forms a separate system draining into the Sittang river. The northern portion of this tract, which on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... "Of course we are glad to see you," he added. "And please excuse me for laughing at you. But, really, I cannot help it! You do look so funny! I—I never saw an elephant ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... and mathematical science, women, on the average, are far below the standard of men. There are, of course, exceptions. But they prove nothing. It is no use to quote to me the case of some brilliant girl who stood first in physics at Cornell. That's nothing. There is an elephant in the zoo that can count up to ten, yet I refuse ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... innocent tusks stain'd with mulberry gore; And the laughing hyena—but laughing no more; And the snake, not with magical orbs to devise Strange death, but with woman's attraction of eyes; The tall ugly ape, that still bore a dim shine Through his hairy eclipse of a manhood divine; And the elephant stately, with more than its reason, How thoughtful in sadness! but this is no season To reckon them up from the lag-bellied toad To the mammoth, whose sobs shook his ponderous load. There were woes of all shapes, wretched forms, when I came, That hung down their heads with a human-like ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... he had played them made them so diligent in pursuing him that it was but a very short time before they surrounded him in a brandy-shop in Chancery Lane, seized him and brought him in a coach to the Elephant and Castle alehouse, Fleet Street, from whence they dispatched advice to Jonathan of his apprehension. It happened that that great man was gone to bed when the message arrived with this news; however it was carried up and Jonathan ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... "Haven't I four trotters with the rest? Is not my visage comely as the best? But this my brother Bruin, is a blot On thy creation fair; And sooner than be painted I'd be shot, Were I, great sire, a bear." The bear approaching, doth he make complaint? Not he;—himself he lauds without restraint. The elephant he needs must criticise; To crop his ears and stretch his tail were wise; A creature he of huge, misshapen size. The elephant, though famed as beast judicious, While on his own account he had no wishes, Pronounced dame whale too big to suit his taste; ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... battalion, and to be driven upon the van of the Romans. When the beasts, trampling upon many, soon caused disorder, Flavius, a tribune of soldiers, snatching an ensign, meets them, and wounding the first elephant with the spike at the bottom of the ensign staff, puts him to flight. The beast turned round upon the next, and drove back both him and the rest that followed. Marcellus, seeing this, pours in his horse with great force upon the elephants, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the form of a stone or other object; but when it wants to rise it calls a cloud. Its body is composed of parts of many animals. It has the eyes of a tiger and the horns of a deer and the body of a crocodile and the claws of an eagle and two trunks like the trunk of an elephant. It has a moral. We should try to be like the dragon, and find out and adopt all the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... clean, a present, most probably, in the first instance, from the author, having an inscription on the fly leaf, apparently in Bunyan's autograph, 'This for my good and dearly beloved frend mistris Backcraft.' It has a false title, bearing the imprint of 'London, Printed for Francis Smith, at the Elephant and Castle without Temple Barr, 1669.' The editor's copy, soiled and tattered, cost him twenty shillings, a striking proof of its rarity. This has the original title, with the real date, 1665, but without a printer's or publisher's name-from which it may ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... courage to read the Dolliver proof-sheet," he wrote to his publisher in December, 1863; "but will set about it soon, though with terrible reluctance, such as I never felt before. I am most grateful to you," he went on, "for protecting me from that visitation of the elephant and his cub. If you happen to see Mr.——, of L——, a young man who was here last summer, pray tell him anything that your conscience will let you, to induce him to spare me another visit, which I know ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Gammon and Spinach Mr. Stewart Orr has produced a picture-book unique of its kind. Nothing could be more droll than the situations in which he represents the frog, the pig, the mouse, the elephant, and the other well-known characters who appear in his pages. Little folk will find in these pictures a source of endless delight, and the artistic skill which they display will have a special appeal to children of ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... things, to a man that had never seen an elephant or a rhinoceros, who should tell him most exquisitely all their shapes, colour, bigness, and particular marks; or of a gorgeous palace, the architecture; with declaring the full beauties, might well make the hearer able to ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the last century, contrast happily with the enlightened liberty of this. Crowds of all ranks and conditions besiege the doors of the British Museum, especially in holiday times, yet the skeleton of the elephant is spotless, and the bottled rattlesnakes continue to pickle in peace. The Elgin marbles have suffered no abatement of their marvellous beauties; and the coat of the cameleopard is with out a blemish. The Yorkshireman has his unrestrained stare at Sesostris; the undertaker spends his holiday over ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... every man who is acquainted with old mythical cosmogonies must know—no more absurd than twenty similar guesses on record. Try to imagine the gradual genesis of such myths as the Egyptian scarabaeus and egg, or the Hindoo theory that the world stood on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, the tortoise on that infinite note of interrogation which, as some one expresses it, underlies all physical speculations, and judge: must they not have arisen in some such fashion as that which ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley |
