"Four-footed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the main-rigging he climbed half-way up the shrouds, so as to be able to drop from thence on to the deck-house, this being his quickest mode of reaching the roof of that structure; and from thence, as he knew, he would of course be able to see right into the long-boat as well as inspect its four-footed tenants. ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... which I hope many of us have known to be a true one, that the times of sorrow are the times when a Christian may have the most of the presence and strength of God. 'In the days of famine they shall be satisfied,' and up among the most barren cliffs, where there is not a bite for any four-footed creature, they shall find springing grass and watered pastures. Our prophet puts the same thought, under a kindred though somewhat different metaphor, in another place in this book, where he says, 'I will open rivers in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... peculiar charm of a tropical forest is increased by the mystery of its impenetrable thicket. Within that dense, matted shrubbery, and behind that phalanx of trees, the imagination of the traveler sees all manner of four-footed beasts and creeping things. Tropical vegetation is of fresher verdure, more luxuriant and succulent, and adorned with larger and more shining leaves than the vegetation of the north. The leaves ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... a stone, we made a hiding-place. Jones was extremely cautious to arrange the bunches in natural positions. "A Rocky Mountain Big Horn is the only four-footed beast," he said, "that has a better eye than a wild horse. A cougar has an eye, too; he's used to lying high up on the cliffs and looking down for his quarry so as to stalk it at night; but even a cougar has to take second to a mustang ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... happened, O four-footed friends," he asked, "that you mourn so mightily?" Then they showed him the body of the Good Hunter lying in the midst of their sad company, and the Oriole joined his ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... external reality to the sensations we feel." We need not wonder that this theory has failed to convince the unmetaphysical common-sense of people that a stone post is merely a stubborn thought, and that the bite of a dog is nothing but an acquaintance with a pugnacious, four-footed conception. When a man falls downstairs it is not easy to convince him that his thought simply tumbles along an inclined series of perceptions and comes to a conclusion that breaks his head; least of all, can you induce a man to believe that the scolding of his wife is nothing but the buzzing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... was a distinction between what MR. NICHOLS calls "the Livery Collar of SS.," and the said knightly golden Collar of SS., as marked and broad as is the difference between the Collar of the Garter and the collar of that four-footed dignitary which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... in man is similar in all cases to the universal way of walking in four-footed animals, because, just as they move their feet {48} crosswise, like a trotting horse, so man moves his four limbs crosswise, that is to say, in walking he puts forward his right foot simultaneously with his left arm, and so on ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... pursuit of some poor deer, perhaps, the far-away shriek of a panther balked of its prey, it may have been, gave them little concern. Though the darkness was intense and enemies might draw very near without being observed, the boys believed they had made peace with the Indians and the presence of four-footed ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... weighed heavily on the laurels and fir-trees, till it fell from them with a shuddering sound; it clothed the rough turnip-field with whiteness, and made the sheep look like dark blotches; the gates were all blocked up with the sloping drifts, and here and there a disregarded four-footed beast stood as if petrified "in unrecumbent sadness"; there was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the street and bent over the poor animal. Meg was "just crazy," her brothers said, about animals, and she was never afraid of any four-footed creature. Now, as she leaned over the little dog, he began to lick her hand ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... Mrs. Weldon, "that we have nothing to fear from the Indians—even from those wanderers of the woods, of whom you have spoken, Mr. Harris. But, are there not other four-footed wanderers, that the sight of a fire would help to ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... was after all not so terrible, for an exquisitely beautiful young lady sat gracefully on the four-footed intruder, and a pair of provocative eyes shone brightly under a riding hat ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... finished his work in time; for the widow having been summoned to her guests in the Lust Haus, had left Vanslyperken alone, and the lieutenant thought this a good opportunity to look after his four-footed favourite, he came out into the yard, where he found Smallbones, and he had ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... pried into the secrets of the little wild things that live there in order to turn my mind from my own musing, I found always, always, that you were in them—I cannot tell you how, but you were, Madelon. There was a meaning of you in every bird-call and flutter of wings and race of wild four-footed things across the open. Every white alder-bush in the spring raised you up anew before me to madden me with vain longing, and every red sumach in the fall. When I have sat here alone every book I have opened has had in it a meaning of ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... he began to ask after Farmer Weathersky. 'No! she never heard tell of him, but she ruled over all the four-footed beasts; perhaps some of them might know him.' So she played them all home with a pipe she had, and asked them all, but there wasn't one of them who knew ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... of snow-capt mountains to the left. The numerous rapid rivulets, flowing into the Salz, afford excellent trout-fishing; and I understood that Sir Humphry Davy, either this summer, or the last, exercised his well-known skill in this diversion here. The hills abound with divers sorts of four-footed and winged game; and, in short, (provided I could be furnished with a key of free admission into the library of St. Peter's Monastery) I hardly know where I could pass the summer and autumn months more completely to my satisfaction than at SALZBURG. What might not ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the birds and animals on this farm have been trying to decide whether the two-footed or the four-footed were the swiftest, and last week, while we were talking the matter over, foolish Mr. Fido Dog said, as he swelled ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice
... of Honorable Patches was begun without further delay. Because Phil's time was so fully occupied with his four-footed pupils, the Dean himself became the stranger's teacher, and all sorts of odd jobs about the ranch, from cleaning the pig pen to weeding the garden, were the text books. The man balked at nothing. Indeed, he seemed to find a curious, grim ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the road toward the continued low calls, and soon saw the student, not far from the path, in a clearer spot than usual, sitting against a maple sapling, with her four-footed protector at her feet. When I came in sight she beckoned eagerly but silently, and I knew she had found something; probably the nest, I thought. As quietly as might be under the circumstances (namely, a passage through dead leaves, brittle twigs, unexpected hollows, etc.), I crept ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... think it would be wise?" he asked Lady Valerie Alvarath. The Queen of three rooms and one four-footed subject had already decreed that Lady Valerie should be the Space Viking Prince's girl on the planet of Marduk. "If it got out, these People's Welfare lunatics would pick it up and twist it into evidence of some kind ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... a garden, cultivate a taste for dogs, and always keep at large one of these incorruptible guardians under your windows; you will thus gain the respect of the Minotaur, especially if you accustom your four-footed friend to take nothing substantial excepting from the hand of your porter, so that hard-hearted celibates may not ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... witnessed the chivalric shows given in the Piazza below, which was then unpaved, and admirably adapted for equestrian feats of arms. It is curious to read the poet's account of these in a city where there is now no four-footed beast larger than a dog. But in the age of chivalry even the Venetians were mounted, and rode up and down their narrow streets, and jousted in their ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... come near on foot, which is also the case with all wild animals and birds worth shooting in this country. A footman, you see, they all mistake for their hereditary enemy, the blackfellow; but, as yet, they have not come to distinguish a man on horseback from a four-footed beast. And, this seems to show that animals ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... to the door, his ape-face shining dim as he turned it a little back in the direction of my uncle, who followed with the candle. I lost the last part of the sentence in the terror which sent me bounding up the stair in my usual four-footed fashion. I leaped into my bed, shaking with cold and agony combined. But I had the satisfaction presently of hearing the thud of the horse's hoofs upon the sward, dying away in the direction whence they had come. After that I soon ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... loom, and two stools, the one four-footed and the other a buffet, were Rob's most conspicuous furniture. A shaving-strap hung on the wall. The fire was out, but the trunk of a tree, charred at one end, showed how he heated his house. He made a fire of peat, and on it placed one end of a tree trunk that might be six feet long. As ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... beasts alone he had little cause for fear; at the pace he held he could distance them, four-footed though they were. But of White Fell's wiles he had infinite apprehension, for how might she not avail herself of the savage jaws of these wolves, akin as they were to half her nature. She vouchsafed to them nor look nor sign; but Christian, on an impulse to assure himself ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... alternately; the bagpiper droned his worst; the fiddler uttered notes that made the hair of those who heard them stand on end; while the hurdygurdy man did his utmost to grind down both his companions, in which task he was ably assisted by the grinning and chattering of the honourable and four-footed gentleman on his left. Meantime stones, tiles, and rafters, pewter pint-pots, fragments of slates, rulers, and desks, were circulating through the schoolhouse in all directions, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... complaining that Tammuz and his tribe had been destroying his crops, and wished them punished. The knight had ridden over to see, and came back doubtful. He said to the cottager that it did not seem to him like the work of a spiteful neighbor. Was it not possible that some four-footed creature had ravaged the crops? The cottager did not believe that it was. He was sure it was Tammuz. Neither knew that a lean black-haired peasant, lying along close to the limb of a great beech tree, had heard every word of the conversation and also ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... leaving on that side a broad terrace guarded by a stone parapet. On another side of the great isolated boulder a narrow roadway heads up a steep incline, impracticable for carriages but passable for four-footed beasts; and this path gives access to the castle through a heavy gate opening upon a small court within. But the rock itself has been turned to account, and there are chambers within it which formerly served as prisons, opening to the right and left of a narrow staircase, hewn out of the stone, ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... nothing about him, but that she ruled over all the four-footed beasts, and some of them might know him. So she gathered them all together by blowing a whistle which she had, and questioned them, but there was not one of them which knew anything ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... swift as the wind in its course, should attack the too-numerous sheep! And who knows what mysterious, unheard-of retributions that revengeful deity Nature may not be meditating in her secret heart for the loss of her wild four-footed children slain by settlers, and the spoiling of her ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... little creatures advanced, first one and then the other, a few inches farther, and so on, until their noses almost touched the strange object. All at once the clew-like body flew out, displaying a sharp-snouted four-footed animal, whose long serpent-like tail, at the same instant, sweeping around caught one of the hares in its prehensile embrace! The little creature uttered a shrill squeak, while its companion bounded ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... Alma, "I haven't come to my time of life, through all the trials I've had, to be taking any chances of breaking my bones over any miserable, furry, four-footed animal that wouldn't catch a mouse if one run right ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... drive away the mosquitoes and sat around them, singing the songs of France. Often it happened that in the luminous darkness of the night, thick set with stars, they had to rise and restore peace among their four-footed friends, who, in the balmy softness of the air, had set to biting and kicking one another, uprooting their pickets and neighing and snorting furiously. Then there was the delicious coffee, their greatest, indeed their only, luxury, which they ground by the primitive appliances of a carbine-butt ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... pat him. Flame got up, wagged his tail, and came over slowly to the rug, uttering a low sound that was half growl, half whine. He was evidently perturbed about something, and his master was proceeding to administer comfort when his attention was suddenly drawn to the antics of his other four-footed ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... catastrophes. This is not only true of man's devices, it is true of Nature's in general. Let us take, for instance, the elevation of man's ancestors from the quadrupedal to the bipedal position. The experiment of making a series of four-footed animals walk on their hind-legs was very revolutionary and risky; it was far, far more beset by dangers than is the introduction of contraceptives; we are still suffering all sorts of serious evils in consequence of Nature's action in placing our remote ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... days we used to read of the bewildered market-woman, whose Ego was so obscured when she awoke from her slumbers that she had to leave the question of her personal identity to the instinct of her four-footed companion:— ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... water power looms into immense importance. The exhibition of its achievements to be seen in Washington today is amazing to the men whose vision of light and power was first with the tallow dip and four-footed beasts, and later with kerosene and steam. Electricity, created by our water falls, lights our cities and farm homes, draws our street cars and some railroad cars—pushes most of the machinery used ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... grasp and bounded up the bank, barking fierce and loud at every jump. This must have been what Jack was thinking of when he left Bose behind. As quickly as he could Marcy got upon his feet and shouted words of encouragement to his four-footed friend. ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... protested Balaam, with great haste and emphasis; and this sound was an added pang in the heart of the unhappy Amy, who felt that she was not only breaking her own heart by this separation, but the hearts of this four-footed pair as well. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... owed it all to your piebald coat!" exclaimed I. "Never was beauty such an advantage to a four-footed beast as ugliness ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... "they use dogs for nearly everything. Dozens of milk peddlers have teams to drag their big brass cans around. Then there are the hucksters, like we have over in New York, only these fellows peddle from carts drawn by dogs. We saw one poor, four-footed wretch roped to a treadmill, and doing the family churning; so I guess Belgium must make the dog ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... a council and resolved to make him secure against every danger. So the goddess Frigg took an oath from fire and water, iron and all metals, stones and earth, from trees, sicknesses and poisons, and from all four-footed beasts, birds, and creeping things, that they would not hurt Balder. When this was done Balder was deemed invulnerable; so the gods amused themselves by setting him in their midst, while some shot at him, others hewed at him, and others threw stones at him. But whatever they did, nothing ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... 298. Damage caused by four-footed animals shall not be borne by their owner, if he have given warning to clear the way: so, with regard to wood, earth, arrows, stones, a man's arm, or ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... the several families tenanting our roof settle themselves snugly down. The night is still and calm, and naught is heard save my nearer neighbors' scratching, scratching, scratching. This - not the scratching, but the quietness - doesn't last long, however, for it is customary to collect all the four-footed possessions of the village together every night and permit them to occupy the inter-spaces between the houses, while the humans are occupying the roofs, the horde of watch- dogs being depended upon to keep watch and ward over everything. The hovels are more underground ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... are too honest in this village to have a single mule amongst them for your worship's service. To that I can bear testimony. In these times it's only rogues or very clever men who can manage to have mules or any other four-footed beasts and the wherewithal to keep them. But what this valiant mariner wants is a guide; and here, senor, behold my brother-in-law, Bernardino, wine- seller, and alcade of this most Christian and hospitable village, who will find ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... with that deep frown which seemed to draw closer together her black eyes in a sinister fashion. No four-footed beast could stand the filth and wretchedness so many human beings were condemned to suffer from in Russia. The point of this discovery was that it proved Haldin to have been familiar with that horse-owning peasant—a reckless, ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... and a small black bear, the latter brought from Russia,[3] and presented to the Society, by the Marquess of Hertford. There is usually a crowd of visiters about this spot, and the sagacity and antics of our four-footed friends ensure them liberal supplies of cakes and fruit, handed to them on a pole. We were much interested with their tricks, especially with the vexation betrayed by one of them, at the top of the pole, when he saw his companion below seize a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... the Muses. At birth Melpomene marked him for her own. The doves of ancient story covered him over with the green leaves of the Apulian wood as, lost and overcome by weariness, he lay in peaceful slumber, and kept him safe from creeping and four-footed things, a babe secure in the favor of heaven. The sacred charm that rests upon him preserved him in the rout at Philippi, rescued him from the Sabine wolf, saved him from death by the falling tree and the waters of shipwreck. He will abide under its shadow wherever he may go,—to ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... sod in deep furrows as it whirled back to Prentiss and the remaining rifleman; not turning in the manner of four-footed beasts of Earth but rearing and spinning on its hind feet. It towered above them as it whirled, the tip of its horn fifteen feet above the ground and its hooves swinging around like ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... of two-footed and four-footed brutes during the long nights of his Robinson Crusoe solitude, old Davenport always shut up his log castle early, and retired to rest as soon as daylight departed; for it did so very early in the evening there, as the solemn pines, with their gray trunks and far-spreading ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... more Clifford Armytage, popular idol of the screen, in his great role of Buck Benson bidding the accustomed farewell to his four-footed pal that had brought him safely through countless dangers. How are we to know that in another couple of hundred feet of the reel Buck will escape the officers of the law who have him for that hold-up of the Wallahoola stage—of which he was innocent—leap from a second-story window of ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... who had been forgotten, and who had been enjoying himself with a quiet hunt all to himself among the heather. As he trotted up, he became aware of the fact that his young master's visitor was turning himself into a four-footed creature, and he leaped at him in a ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... she sometimes thought she heard a distressed sound in the hall. The buzz of tongues covered it up,—then again she heard it,—and she was sure at last that it was the voice of a dog. Never came an appeal in vain from any four-footed creature to Fleda's heart. All the rest being busy with their own affairs, she quietly got up and opened the door and looked out, and finding that she was right went softly into the hall. In one corner lay her cousin Rossitur's beautiful black pointer, which she ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... little. He would have her understand that he was not a horse leech: but there was in these four-footed beasts a certain love for him, so that Richmond, the King's favourite gelding, would stand still to be bled if he but laid his hand on the great creature's withers to calm him. These animals he loved, since he grew old and might not follow arguments ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... shot, cringing at Auld Jock's feet. The most sensitive of four-footed creatures in the world, the Skye terrier is utterly abased by a rebuke from his master. The whole garret was soon in an uproar of vile accusation and shrill denial that spread ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... days of wind and rain and sleet and cold stormy weather when all animals of the desert, whether human or four-footed, were glad to seek their holes in the ground ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... encountered rapids and cataracts, around which their fleet had to be dragged through paths cut in the primeval forest while the savages hovered around them. The forests were populous with wild beasts; chimpanzees and gorillas, monkeys, and all manner of four-footed things infested the clambering vines that festooned the trees. They were once attacked by an hippopotamus, and elephants and rhinoceroses were never far away. At a point below where the great river turns from its great northerly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... of affairs he predicted for his four-footed friend, he never once looked at it, but kept tinkering at the harness as if nothing ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... a composition. The denouement of the piece is materially assisted by means of a dog: but this part of the story is told, and not exhibited; the Chinese taste not being quite so depraved, in this instance, as to admit the performance of a four-footed ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... an especially mischievous sort—as who should say, very sour crabs indeed—saw a great opportunity. Some made a rush at the nuts and dried figs, others preferred the farinaceous delicacies at the cooked provision stalls—delicacies to which certain four-footed dogs also, who had learned to take kindly to Lenten fare, applied a discriminating nostril, and then disappeared with much rapidity under the nearest shelter; while the mules, not without some kicking and plunging among impeding baskets, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... for the luxury of sleeping under cover, and, if they like, for having their horses near them. Carts and oxen are always in the open. Sellers of grain and wood are always there with everything native travellers require. If a bedstead—a low four-footed article with rope for its bottom and mattress—be preferred to the bare ground, it can commonly be procured for three-halfpence for the night. When in the evening we were near these places we went to them, and saw the poor weary travellers setting to the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... accidental stranger with open mouth, attack him singly, charge him en masse, and nothing but a stout bludgeon, wielded by a strong arm, can save the passenger from feeling that he is in the kingdom of his four-footed masters. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... and distinctly modern, yet without the faintest trace of decadence. It is the note of implied tragedy in them that appeals to me, for were Johnstone unfortunately to die in the night there would, of course, be no bone for the faithful four-footed friend. Repeat them again, please." After a second repetition Tree went on: "You have l'art de dire to an amazing extent, Smith, and you have the priceless gift of les larmes dans la voix. I know that no pecuniary inducements ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... very complex idea the word gold stands for. But then here is nothing affirmed of gold, but that that sound stands for an idea in which malleableness is contained: and such a sort of truth and certainty as this it is, to say a centaur is four-footed. But if malleableness make not a part of the specific essence the name of gold stands for, it is plain, ALL GOLD IS MALLEABLE, is not a certain proposition. Because, let the complex idea of gold be made up of whichsoever of its other qualities you please, malleableness will not appear to depend ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... animal stories for children from three to eight years, tells of the adventures of the four-footed creatures of our American woods and fields in an amusing way, which delights small ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... strong bad eagerness kept tightly rigged The cordage of his body, till his nerves Loosed on a sudden. He yelled, "What do we here, High up among bleak winds, always afraid Of murder from the wolves? I will be man No more; the grey four-footed fellows have The good meats of the world, and the best lodging, Forest and weald." And then he wolfish howled, And hurled off towards the snarling and the baying. And now his soul wears the strength and fury ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... the head of the fork where the north-eastern and the south-western lava-streams part, is divided by a medial ledge. Here we saw the parent rock of the pumice fragments, an outcrop of yellowish brown stone, like fractured and hardened clay. The four-footed animals were sent back: one rides up but ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Edward arose betimes, and in a morning walk around the house and its vicinity came suddenly upon a small court in front of the dog-kennel, where his friend Davie was employed about his four-footed charge. One quick glance of his eye recognised Waverley, when, instantly turning his back, as if he had not observed him, he began to sing ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... which he had vastly the advantage over his four-footed brethren, was his ability to recollect the good dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat. His gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait; and to hear him talk of roast-meat was as appetizing as a pickle ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I picked up an old "crow-bait" of a horse, the only four-footed transportation possibly obtainable, and started for Fredericksburg to find my regiment. The only directions I had about disposing of this frame of a horse was to "turn the bones loose when you get through ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... rows of sharp, horny points, and these grew with the growing cold, till the first snow had found him fully equipped with snow-shoes and icecreepers. The cold weather had driven away most of the hawks and owls, and made it impossible for his four-footed enemies to approach unseen, so ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the old Torch; and had it not been for the launch and our four-footed friend there, I should not have been here to have told it. All that the sharks have left of the captain and five seamen came ashore last night. I have buried the poor fellows on the beach where they lay, as well as I could, with an oar-blade for a shovel, and the bronze ornament there," ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... Besides our four-footed companions, we took with us a two-footed one, not so much on account of the serious work in the Polar regions as for pleasant entertainment on the way. This was our canary "Fridtjof." It was one of the many presents made to the expedition, and ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... was kept for the possible appearance of an enemy, either two-footed or four-footed. But no man came to disturb them, and if any wild beasts were near they kept well out of sight. Once Lukins brought down a small wild-cat, ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... him. A movement of the bench roused him, and he fancied he saw some four-footed creature as tall as a large dog trot quietly out of the door. He was sure he felt a rush of cold wind. Gazing fixedly through the darkness, he thought he saw the eyes of the damsel encountering his, but a glow ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... turned out to be a dark round hillock. 'But where am I, then?' I repeated again aloud, standing still for the third time and looking inquiringly at my spot and tan English dog, Dianka by name, certainly the most intelligent of four-footed creatures. But the most intelligent of four-footed creatures only wagged her tail, blinked her weary eyes dejectedly, and gave me no sensible advice. I felt myself disgraced in her eyes and pushed desperately forward, as though I had ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... themselves upon the new land. And then a bird or two, caught in a storm and blown away to sea finds shelter in the cocoa-grove; and so a little new world is set up, in which (you must remember always) there are no four-footed beasts, nor snakes, nor lizards, nor frogs, nor any animals that cannot cross the sea. And on some of those islands they may live (indeed there is reason to believe they have lived), so long, that some of them have changed their forms, according to the laws of Madam ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... earnest, enthusiastic boy! He didn't know that she rated him as low as any four-footed pet! He thought she appreciated him, very highly, too highly, as a human being! And his great little heart burned and glowed with joy and gratitude! And he would no more have taken pay for doing her uncle a service than he would have picked a pocket or robbed a henroost! He ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... cordial greeting, and as I stroked his noble head, I wondered where the animal had come from; for though—we had visited Signor Cellini's studio every day, there had been no sign or mention of this stately, brown-eyed, four-footed companion. I seated myself, and the dog immediately lay down at my feet, every now and then looking up at me with an affectionate glance and a renewed wagging of his tail. Glancing round the well-known room, I noticed that the picture I admired so much was veiled ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... skinned, a fire kindled, and after they had dined upon fresh venison-steaks, the rest of the meat Ossaroo prepared for curing,—just as he had done that of the yak,—but in this case he took the precaution to hang it out of reach of all four-footed marauders. ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... cave, with this four-footed Chiron, from the time that he was an infant, only a few months old, until he had grown to the full height of a man. He became a very good harper, I suppose, and skilful in the use of weapons, and tolerably acquainted with herbs and other doctor's stuff, and, above all, an admirable horseman; ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... determination, digging his heels into the fat refractory sides, and holding his reins twisted in his little fists with savage tenacity. But a conflict of this sort is very exhausting, and to force an unreasonable four-footed creature in the way it does not want to go requires a strain of all the faculties which it is not easy to keep up, especially at the age (not all told) of nine. Geoff felt the tears coming to his eyes; he felt that he would die of shame if any one saw ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... was closed behind him immediately, and the four-footed custodian of the prisoner was now ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Luce, and in our country tongue, a GED—a goodly distinction truly for Christian men! Yet did they paint this shark of the fresh waters upon their shields, and these profane priests of a wicked idolatry, the empty boasters called heralds, who make engraven images of fishes, fowls, and four-footed beasts, that men may fall down and worship them, assigned the ged for the device and escutcheon of my fathers, and hewed it over their chimneys, and placed it above their tombs; and the men were elated in mind, and became yet more ged-like, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Tyler—popularly called Jem—was the very man to secure and increase this sort of custom. Of vast stature and extraordinary physical power, combined with a degree of animal spirits not often found in combination with such large proportions, he was at once a fit ruler over his four-footed subjects in the yard, a miscellaneous and most disorderly collection of cows, horses, pigs, and oxen, to say nothing of his own five boys, (for Jem was a widower,) each of whom, in striving to remedy, was apt to enhance the confusion, ...
— Miss Philly Firkin, The China-Woman • Mary Russell Mitford
... regard for the canine and feline tribes, that Lady Eleanor Butler possessed a favourite dog of the turnspit-breed, called "Trust;" that Miss Ponsonby had a small white poodle, named "Busy;" and that they had a joint interest in a popular cat, answering to the name of "Meggins;" all of which four-footed domestics were especial pets in their garden walks or at their ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... wagons, sick and wounded, the barefoot, and dismounted men, was driving four-footed supplies south on his way to the Tennessee River, and he was not likely to risk or relinquish any of the spoil. Buford's Kentuckians lay in wait along the Cumberland, hoping perhaps to echo, if only faintly, their earlier successes against ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... peered cautiously out, searching the forest with eager eyes. Gaining courage, he went out, making the round of the house with eyes and ears intent. There was much ado among the tree tops and a scurrying of four-footed among the underbrush, but of two-footed things he saw nothing. He fetched a pail of water for Clarissa and was in the act of entering the house when a gun cracked sharply at some distance on his left. The forest stopped to listen with him for a full moment as the echoes went ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... to our saddle horses and pack horses, we have another four-footed animal in our outfit—a large black dog of seeming little intelligence, to which we have given the name of "Booby." He is owned by "Nute," one of our colored boys, who avers that he is a very knowing dog, and will prove himself so before our journey is ended. The ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... flat, horned, toad-like creature, horrid-looking and harmless, of the color of the soil; and the curio dealer will give you two bits for it, to stuff. Men have their season on the mesa as much as plants and four-footed things, and one is not like to meet them out of their time. For example, at the time of rodeos, which is perhaps April, one meets free riding vaqueros who need no trails and can find cattle where to the layman no cattle exist. As early as February ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... would have been at being convicted of any degree of moral turpitude, vexed and ashamed, he talked no more of Newmarket or of Doncaster, left the race-ground to those who prided themselves on the excellences of their four-footed betters, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... of homes was made a specialty. As at Paris, the peoples brought their dwellings, or, more often, the dwellings came without their occupants. The four-footed and feathered live-stock were of more indubitable authenticity. The display of all the European breeds of cattle and horses—English Durhams, Alderneys and racers, Russian trotters, Holstein cows and Flemish mares, the gray oxen of Hungary and the buffaloes of the Campagna, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... never thirsty. Of what do they remind me?" And Owen thought for a while, till catching sight of their long fleecy necks, bending like the necks of birds, and ending in long flexible lips (it was the lips that gave him the clue he was seeking), he said, "The Nonconformists of the four-footed world," and he told his joke to his dragoman, without, however, being ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... beside the father lie Atta Troll's beloved girls, Pure, four-footed lilies they, Stretched ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... worked well with four-footed robbers," the old Squire remarked, with a twinkle in his eye. "Perhaps it might serve for the two-footed kind. You fetch that down, boys; I've an idea we may use ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... dragged them up into the wooded elysium beside the tumbling creek of the canyon. When the storm gathered it was at a moment when the burros stood, still unloaded, and the mules attached to the two wagons still unhitched. They, the four-footed things, knew what the thunder and the darkness meant. They knew, somehow, that the upper canyon was no place for them, and, reasoning in the four-footed way, they exercised the limbs they had, obeying the ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... appearance; that the fourth day was signalised by the apparition of the sun, the stars, the moon, and the planets; that, on the fifth day, aquatic animals originated within the waters; that, on the sixth day, the earth gave rise to our four-footed terrestrial creatures, and to all varieties of terrestrial animals except birds, which had appeared on the preceding day; and, finally, that man appeared upon the earth, and the emergence of the universe from chaos was finished. Milton tells us, without ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the evolutionary process we may trace (as in chapter iv above) the divinization or deification of four-footed animals and birds and snakes and trees and the like, from the personification of the collective emotion of the tribe towards these creatures. For people whose chief food was bear-meat, for instance, whose totem was a bear, and who believed themselves descended ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... walk. There was an old staghound named Maida, and a black greyhound called Hamlet, after one of Shakespeare's heroes. Then there was a beautiful setter with long ears and a silky coat. Her name was Finette. Sir Walter would often stop and talk to these four-footed friends and they seemed to understand what he said. In one of his best stories a dog plays a ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... year," said Harding, "I watched to see whether the direst want could bring you to humbleness, and saw you only grow in nobleness; and year by year I lay in wait for my four-footed quarry each Midsummer Eve beside the Wishing-Pool, and saw it grow in kingliness. And last year, as you know, I saw you come to the Pool beside the hart, and heard you make your high prayer for life or death. And if I had not been able to give you the life, I would have given you the death ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... deep-seated eye, be sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries in man. No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses. They see through us at a glance. And after all, what is a horse but a species of four-footed dumb man, in a leathern overall, who happens to live upon oats, and toils for his masters, half-requited or abused, like the biped hewers of wood and drawers of water? But there is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... a horse was infected by the spirit of his driver. My dear old four-footed military companions always seemed to perfectly comprehend my desires and intentions, and certainly my brother-in-law's horses entered into my own spirits on this particular afternoon. They stepped proudly, they arched their powerful necks handsomely, their ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... person, yet too "conscious" to be merely a sound of the night operating mechanically. And it was unlike the noise that the feet of any animal would make, any animal that he could think of, that is. A four-footed creature suggested itself to his mind, ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... mountain-laurel. Upon the morning of the eighth day he began his task. "There ought to be a vast number of fishes," said he, "and of different sizes, for each must feed upon the other and smaller." So he called into existence all the fishes that people the waters. Then he said to the quadrupeds and four-footed beasts, to worms and snakes, and every thing else which are not fishes, "Be, for you ought to be;" and they were. So the earth became peopled and inhabited. All were called into existence then, and in that manner, except ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... not punish the big French dog. For some days you might see him with his head hanging down as well as his tail, and a most melancholy expression in his face. At last, he disappeared. His master, who was very fond of him, made every inquiry after him. In vain—his little four-footed friend was ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... havoc occasioned by the hyaenas of South Africa, and says, that in the district of Somerset, they destroyed seventy foals in one year, belonging to the farmers; he, however, believes, that they never attack human beings by night or by day, and that they come in packs and play the part of four-footed vultures, even devouring their own kindred if they should chance to be killed; but no other beast of prey will eat them, from the offensive rankness of their flesh. The den of a spotted hyaena, that was kept in the Tower about twenty years ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... which was perched the leader of the birds. Finally they reached the top and humbly asked the captain to be allowed to join in the game. The captain looked at them a moment, and, seeing that they were four-footed, asked them why they did not go to the animals where they properly belonged. The little things explained that they had done so, but had been laughed at and rejected on account of their diminutive size. On hearing their ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... season in a few days now, and the funicular cease to run. Fires should be laid in our rooms immediately, and we should be made comfortable, but as for our animals, unfortunately there were no stables attached to the hotel, no accommodation whatever for four-footed creatures. They would have to go back to the chalet, where they and their drivers could be put up for ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... continued his shouts. By now he was beginning to feel that the advantage was swinging over to his side. He had done nothing to incur this hostility on the part of the animal, and was surely entitled to the privilege of defending himself as best he could, even to the extent of inflicting injury on his four-footed enemy. ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... a girl besides the dog, almost as draggled as her four-footed companion. A girl of eighteen, perhaps, who walked along through rain and discomfort, without so much as an umbrella to protect her. She had come out of one of the ugliest of the ugly buildings nearest the sea, and walked along in a slipshod sort of way, never turning to the right or left to ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... finished his work in time; for the widow having been summoned to her guests in the Lust Haus, had left Vanslyperken alone, and the lieutenant thought this a good opportunity to look after his four-footed favourite. He came out into the yard, where he found Smallbones, and he ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... may amount to two thirds as many as those of the United States, and thus we have in North America a total of 160,000,000 domestic quadrupeds belonging to species introduced by European colonization, besides dogs, cats, and other four-footed household pets and pests, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... just like the huge up-curving ribs of some mammoth that has had the flesh picked clean from his bones. Look! There is something moving close to it, in the shadow; what is it? It comes out a little way into the light, it is a furtive-looking little four-footed creature whose fur shines with a reddish tinge; there is another, peeping out from the sandhills, and another and another! They are all over, but so silent and light-footed are they that it is difficult to believe them to ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... up, were after flying Satan. They never caught him until they reached the hill on the outskirts of town, where was the kennel of the kind-hearted people who were giving painless death to Satan's four-footed kind, and where they saw him stop and turn from the road. There was divine providence in Satan's flight for one little dog that Christmas morning; for Uncle Carey saw the old drunkard staggering down the road without his little companion, and a moment later, both he and ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... most carefull seen to that no four-footed thing come nigh hand, for it would be a despert ill thing if such by any mishap did run just across ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... agreeable. If he ever caught any one railing at Grumbo—any colored individual, that is, in bad odor with his dogship—and cursing him for a misbegotten wolf, Big Black Burl would be all afire in the flash of a gun-flint, and ready to pulverize the false muzzle that dared dab the fair name of his four-footed chum with a slur so foul. Sometimes, though, the white hunters, also, would curse Grumbo—denouncing him as a dog too wanting in the milk of human kindness to be allowed a place in human society, unmuzzled, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... drawn from amphorae of clay, glass, or metal held in elegant woven baskets placed on four-footed pedestals made of a light, supple wood interlaced in ingenious fashion. The baskets contained seven sorts of wines: date wine, palm wine, and wine of the grape, white, red, and green wines, new wine, Phoenician and Greek ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... injure it or treat it with contempt. One, for instance, saw his god in the eel, another in the shark, another in the turtle, another in the dog, another in the owl, another in the lizard; and so on, throughout all the fish of the sea and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. In some of the shell-fish even, gods were supposed to be present. A man would eat freely of what was regarded as the incarnation of the god of another man, but the incarnation of his own particular ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of our four-footed friends, as related by the animals. These stories are entertaining and pleasing to the young and old alike. Bound in cloth ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... other circumstances that kept up the impression produced by these two singular facts I have just mentioned. There was a dark storeroom, on looking through the key-hole of which, I could dimly see a heap of chairs and tables, and other four-footed things, which seemed to me to have rushed in there, frightened, and in their fright to have huddled together and climbed up on each other's backs,—as the people did in that awful crush where so many were killed, at the execution of Holloway and Haggerty. Then the Lady's portrait, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... pleaded, and some little heart would be so near broken at any slight that my wife and I resigned ourselves to live in a menagerie, the more so as we were obliged to confess a lurking weakness towards these four-footed children ourselves. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... forced to the dreadful alternative of choosing between the birds and the quadrupeds, again, the most of us would probably decide against the birds. If the four-footed beasts should disappear from the earth, it would be a much greater disaster than the destruction of the fishes. A much larger fraction of the food supply would be lost; while many of these animals ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... purchasing-merchants, has done the business for Mr. Cross and the beef-eaters. Like the Athenian audience, the "thinking people" of England are more pleased with the mimic than the real voice of nature; and the four-footed puggys of the Brazils, like the true pig of the Grecian, are cast in the shade by their reasoning imitator! In short, not to be prosy on a subject which has awakened poetry and passion in all, hear, as the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... impetuous hounds rushed forward and overran the scent. They raved about to and fro, till at last one of the gentlemen descried the fox running down a double furrow in the middle of the field. He had got into this, and so made his way more smoothly than his four-footed pursuers could. The dogs were laid on, and away ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... combining so many excellent qualities. His was the wisdom of the serpent combined with the gentleness—I will not say of the dove, but rather of the cat, our little tiger on the hearthrug, the most beautiful of four-footed things, so lithe, so soft, of so affectionate a disposition, yet capable when suddenly roused to anger of striking with lightning rapidity and rending the offender's flesh with ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... standpoint, therefore, we view the lacteal product of these four-footed giants, we are fully warranted in ascribing to it not only extreme richness, but also great ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... had grown so great and famous, Ailbe had never forgotten his second mother, the good wolf, nor his four-footed brothers in their coats of grey fur. And sometimes when his visitors were stupid and stayed a long time, or when they asked too many questions, or when they made him presents which he did not like, Ailbe longed to be back in the forest with the ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... accountant, captain, chief engineer, and storekeeper. We remained at Burra the next day (Sunday), and on Monday morning started by train for Salisbury with our fifteen horses in horse-boxes. Eleven of these were the survivors of the expedition, and we were desirous that our faithful and hard-worked four-footed companions should have their share of the attention of our South Australian friends. At Gawler we were received by a crowd of people, and flags were flying to do us honour. The Town Clerk and a considerable number of the principal residents were ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... described on page 88 in order to hold the lid in place after it has fallen. No matter from which end the bait is approached it is no sooner touched than both ends fall and "bunny" is prisoner. Like many other of our four-footed game, the rabbit manifests a peculiar liking for salt and may be regularly attracted to a given spot by its aid. A salted cotton string is sometimes extended several yards from the trap for the purpose of leading them to ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... received another benefit I had some silver deposited in my face to straight up my sunken cheek. hence am never busted. I have been in several bad rows with both four-footed beasts and two footed beasts, but this was at least as lively a scrap as I ever got into. and all because I was careless. We lifted camp early in March sold our fur and the whole of us went down to 'Frisco to see the ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... pheasant or partridge instead of a rabbit or leveret; of which he had plenty. He felt it very provoking that he had neither a net nor a gun, for securing feathered game, when there was so much on the hill; so that he must put up with four-footed game, when he had rather have had a bird. There was no bread either, or vegetables; but he minded that less, because neither of these were at hand, and he had often lived for a long time together on animal food. During the whole time of his listless preparations for cooking his supper, he ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... when Cissy was about four years old an event occurred in her life that seemed for a time to endanger the intimacy between the little girl and her four-footed friend, and caused Moses considerable anxiety. It was a rainy morning and she could not play under the trees as usual, so she took her little chair and climbed up to the window to see if the trees were lonesome without ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... one Friday night, in Baltimore, that for the only time in my life I wished to wipe an animal out of existence. I love four-footed creatures with extravagant devotion, not merely the finely bred and beautiful ones, but the poor, the sick, the halt, the maimed, the half-breeds or the no breeds at all; and almost all animals ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... time the mule was loaded with everything deemed necessary, Pierre was ready with the donkey, and the start was made together up and down the valley. At least, that was intended; but there were objections raised by the two four-footed friends, both wanting to go together; and when at last, after a volley of angry language from Andregg, the donkey was dragged by Pierre along the track, ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn |
