"Mastiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rate, the big mastiff began to wag his tail, and though he still barked, it was by way of a welcome now. Frank fearlessly opened the gate and walked in. The guardian of the farm came up to him, sniffing, and Frank, without hesitation, rubbed his hand over ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... return for more. That land hath store of such. All men are there, Except Bonturo, barterers: of 'no' For lucre there an 'aye' is quickly made." Him dashing down, o'er the rough rock he turn'd, Nor ever after thief a mastiff loos'd Sped with like eager haste. That other sank And forthwith writing to the surface rose. But those dark demons, shrouded by the bridge, Cried "Here the hallow'd visage saves not: here Is other swimming than in Serchio's wave. Wherefore if thou desire ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... dog-fighting, bear and bull-baiting, it being a famous day for all these butcherly sports, or rather barbarous cruelties. The bulls did exceedingly well, but the Irish wolf-dog exceeded, which was a tall greyhound, a stately creature indeed, who beat a cruel mastiff. One of the bulls tossed a dog full into a lady's lap, as she sat in one of the boxes at a considerable height from the arena. Two poor dogs were killed, and so all ended with the ape on horseback, and I most heartily weary of the rude and dirty pastime, which I had not seen, I think, in ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... no more thou mastiff, get you all gone, And let my soul sleep. [Aside to Balthazar] There's gold, peace, see ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... at Hastings bended, With wreaths of bright holly and ivy bound, Were perches for falcons that shrilly screamed, While their look with the lightning of anger gleamed, As they chided the fawning of mastiff and hound, That crouched at the feet of each peasant guest, And asked, with their eyes, ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... and thus to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron, in the boat of Charon the ferryman, and to pass through the doors of horn and ivory, which were guarded by the mastiff Cerberus. At length a civil usage was joined to all these inventions, and gave ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... half-breeds are best, too. But I do wish," regretfully, "that they could all be the same sort of half-breeds—to make them more uniform as to size and style. With Kid and Spot part pointer, Irish and Rover part setter, Jack McMillan verging on the mastiff, and all the rest of them part something else, don't you think it looks the least little bit as if we had picked them up at ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... as harmless amusements. It is my partridge, as with St. John the Evangelist; my cat, as with Pope St. Gregory; my little dog, as with St. Dominick; my lamb, as with St. Francis; my great black mastiff, as with Cornelius Agrippa; and my tame hare, as with Justus Lipsius." I have since discovered in Niceron that this Catherinot could never get a printer, and was rather compelled to study economy in his two hundred quartos of four or eight pages: his paper was of inferior quality; and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... then scarcely could they reach so far. And when they came before the castle, they beheld a vast flock of sheep, which was boundless, and without an end. And upon the top of a mound there was a herdsman, keeping the sheep. And a rug made of skins was upon him; and by his side was a shaggy mastiff, larger than a steed nine winters old. Never had he lost even a lamb from his flock, much less a large sheep. He let no occasion ever pass without doing some hurt and harm. All the dead trees and bushes in the plain he burnt with his breath ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... discarded all things fashionable with her departure from London in the height of the season. The crumpled linen hat she wore was designed for comfort and not for elegance. Her gown of brown holland was simplicity itself. She sat carelessly with her arm round the neck of an immense mastiff who ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... we see a currish, Mungrel Crew, A stately Mastiff eagerly pursue. They swarm around, they yelp, they snarl, they grin, Bold in Appearance, timerous within: With such mean Foes he deigns not to engage, But lifts his Leg, and pisses ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... sharing the commons of Master Keep the shoemaker's pigs; now succeeding to the reversion of the well-gnawed bone of Master Brow the shopkeeper's fierce house-dog; now filching the skim-milk of Dame Wheeler's cat:—spit at by the cat; worried by the mastiff; chased by the pigs; screamed at by the dame; stormed at by the shoemaker; flogged by the shopkeeper; teased by all the children, and scouted by all the animals of the parish;—but yet living through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... Kerkuon grew angry, and caught Theseus round the neck, and shook him as a mastiff shakes a rat; but he could not shake ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... common all over Thibet, and is a terrible depredator among the flocks, or, as Kinloch writes: "apparently preferring the slaughter of tame animals to the harder task of circumventing wild ones." The great Bhotea mastiff is chiefly employed to guard against it. According to Hodgson the chanko has a long, sharp face, with the muzzle or nude space round the nostrils produced considerably beyond the teeth, and furnished with an unusually large lateral ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... well knew that he himself would be the first victim of its explosion. Convulsed with rage at the imagined insult, he seemed ready to dart upon the arrogant censor of his actions, but the tremendous power of his fellow-chief suddenly paralyzed his arm. It was the fierce mastiff burning to rush upon the terrible bull, yet restrained by the conscious ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... lack of company, for Wardlaw was so full of his books that he was of little use as a companion. So I resolved to acquire a dog, and bought one from a prospector, who was stony-broke and would have sold his soul for a drink. It was an enormous Boer hunting-dog, a mongrel in whose blood ran mastiff and bulldog and foxhound, and Heaven knows what beside. In colour it was a kind of brindled red, and the hair on its back grew against the lie of the rest of its coat. Some one had told me, or I may have read it, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... vegetable beauties. It is the flowery species, so remarkable for its weakness and momentary duration, that gives us the liveliest idea of beauty and elegance. Among animals, the greyhound is more beautiful than the mastiff, and the delicacy of a jennet, a barb, or an Arabian horse, is much more amiable than the strength and stability of some horses of war or carriage. I need here say little of the fair sex, where I believe the point will be easily allowed me. The beauty of women is considerably owing to their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a large, Archer-clad man, who also carried an automatic. He had the face of a playful but dangerous mastiff. He was hunkered down in a shallow pit, scanning the ground with a watch-sized device probably intended for locating objects hidden just beneath the surface, electronically. Beside him was a screen-bottomed container, no doubt meant for ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... letter and walked to the fireplace, where he took snuff copiously, while Alain eyed him like a mastiff about to spring. I broke open my letter and stooped to pick up a small ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have a beautiful dog, which one of the officers gave me the other day in exchange for a pony, and I will bring it over, and make it a present to you for your own dog. He will hunt anything, and he is very powerful—quite able to master a wolf, if you meet with one. He is half mastiff and half Scotch deerhound, and he stands as high as this," continued Captain Sinclair, holding his hand about as high as ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... their victuals regular. On the other hand, as to the presence of the dogs, that requires no explanation. Was there ever a time or place in which a dog grudged his sprightly and disinterested service, or failed to do his best when called upon? These French dogs, whom the mildest English mastiff would have looked upon, or rather would have shut his eyes at, as a lot of curs below contempt, were as full of fine ardour for their cause and country as any noble hound that ever sate like a statue ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... now, but, stretched at full length before the blazing logs, lay the Squire's chosen companion, Nip, a powerful liver-coloured pointer; and beside him in equally luxurious rest, reclined Argus, Vixen's mastiff. There was a story about Vixen and the mastiff, involving the only incident in that young lady's life the recollection ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... from his garret window in grim silence. Now and then his eye would glance over the surrounding rabble, and an indignant grin, like that of an angry mastiff, would mark his iron visage. But though a man of most undaunted mettle—though he had a heart as big as an ox, and a head that would have set adamant to scorn—yet after all he was a mere mortal. Wearied ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... so as to give the plants the appearance of being indigenous. Besides all this, the lawn's velvet was exquisitely spotted with sheep—a considerable flock of which roamed about the vale, in company with three tamed deer, and a vast number of brilliantly—plumed ducks. A very large mastiff seemed to be in vigilant attendance upon these ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... adversary, seeing them approach, called his apprentice, who worked at the other end of the ground, to his assistance, armed him with a mattock, while he himself wielded a hoe, bolted his door on the inside, and, flanked with his man and mastiff, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... mastiff, claims first place in our minds, dog though he is; but James and Ailie are such lovable beings that we never ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... by his fault Valencia would be lost, even as Toledo had been. This tribute so sorely aggrieved the people, that it became as it were a bye word in the city, Give the barley. They say there was a great mastiff, with whom they killed beef in the shambles, who, whenever he heard, 'Give the barley,'began to bark and growl: upon which a Trobador said, Thanks be to God, we have many in the town who are like ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... iron-gray hair, intensely and solemnly serious, lacking a sense of humor, he would have looked at home with his big, bony hands gripping a broadsword hilt and his lank body clothed in chain armor. He had a mastiff's devotion to its master for ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... inclined to prefer them to the other puppies who fawned on him because of his success—those people of whom D'Aubigne writes, who "when a mastiff plunges his nose into a butter-pot, come and lick his whiskers by ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... death. A trio of white men, nearly as bronzed as their savage comrades, completed the group. One, a desperate-looking outlaw, Jonathan did not know. The blond-bearded giant in the center was Legget. Steel-blue, inhuman eyes, with the expression of a free but hunted animal; a set, mastiff-like jaw, brutal and coarse, individualized him. The last man ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... the swift ure by Volga's rolling flood Chased through the plains the mastiff curs toforn, Flies to the succor of some neighbor wood, And often turns again his dreadful horn Against the dogs imbrued in sweat and blood, That bite not, till the beast to flight return; Or as the Moors at their strange tennice run, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... like Hunt's dog, will neither go to church nor stay at home. One Hunt, a labouring man at a small town in Shropshire, kept a mastiff, who on being shut up on Sundays, whilst his master went to church, howled so terribly as to disturb the whole village; wherefore his master resolved to take him to church with him: but when he came to the church door, the dog having perhaps formerly been whipped out by the sexton, refused to ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... in eager pursuit of the Belle Poule; a fox-terrier chasing a mastiff! The Belle Poule was a splendid ship, with heavy metal, and a crew more than twice as numerous as that of the tiny Arethusa. But Marshall, its captain, was a singularly gallant sailor, and not the man to count odds. The song tells the story of the fight ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... downstairs lights were out. The gate opened at last, a light shone through the front door, and the door opened a few inches on the chain. Pocket confronted a crevice of quilted dressing-gown and grey curls; but his mother's friend's mastiff was making night so hideous within, and trying so hard to get at his mother's son, that it was some time before he could exchange an intelligible word with the brute's mistress. It was not a satisfactory interchange ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... his garden, the good priest went out to inspect his horse which he had named Grenadille, and his large English mastiff called Snog; as soon as he opened the stable door Snog threw himself upon his master and bounded around him. He not only jumped upon him but barked with joy, with such evidence of affection that the negro, Monsieur, was obliged to take the dog by his collar and could with difficulty restrain ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the nonce. Just such a man, just as dangerous, and just as big-boned, we find in the person of an abbot—defending his abbey, not by any reputation for sanctity or learning, but solely by his dangerousness as the wielder of quarter-staff and cudgel. With no bull-dog or mastiff, and taken by surprise, such an abbot naturally lost the stakes for which he played. The letter is addressed to the Secretary of State:—'Please it your goodness to understand, that on Friday the 22nd of October (1535), I rode back with speed to take ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... drawlingly and in a moment the gigantic mastiff dashed among the camels. Seeing the children he leaped towards them. From joy he overturned Nell who extended her hands to him; he reared himself on Stas; afterwards whining and barking he ran round both a few times, again overturned Nell, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was supposed in those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant neighborhood of his ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... I love her so, I was afraid of her, and I hid myself. We never kept a secret from each other; She would have seen at once into my trouble, And ask'd me what I could not answer. Oh, Philip, Father heard you last night. Our savage mastiff, That all but kill'd the beggar, will be placed ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... men looked up as the boys approached. All of them seemed to be grinning, as though amused. But while the big man really looked somewhat as a mastiff might appear to a little terrier, his two companions had a sneer on their dark, evil faces that gave Thad more ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... elapsed since then, that I really feel myself as if recalling a distant dream. We, I remember, went in Lord Byron's own carriage, with post-horses; and he sent his groom with two saddle-horses, and a beautifully formed, very ferocious, bull-mastiff, called Nelson, to meet us there. Boatswain[53] went by the side of his valet Frank on the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... her power. She had a markedly sadistic vein in her composition; and, when annoyed, was not above laying about her right and left with a dog-whip that she always carried. An impudent lackey would be flogged into submission, or set upon by a fierce mastiff that she kept at her heels. High office, too, meant nothing to her. She boxed the ears of Baron Pechman; and, because he chanced to upset her, she encouraged her four-coated companion to tear the best trousers ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... One of the Landfield men gets hold of the ball, and runs down hard along the touch-line. Forrester is the quarter-back that side, and gallant as the Fourth Form boy is, his big opponent runs over him as a mastiff runs ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... six or eight weeks following the afternoon at Mrs. Wappinger's he had bestowed upon Dorothea no small measure of attention, obtaining much the same result as a mastiff might gain from his investigation of the ways of a bird of paradise. He informed himself as to her diversions and her dancing-classes, making the discovery that what other girls' mothers did for them, Dorothea was doing ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... constant state of alertness, of defense. Broken glass covers the tops of the walls, and in the courtyards Mongolian watch-dogs guard the premises, huge, fierce, long-haired creatures, like a woolly mastiff. Through the day they are chained, but at night they are unloosed. Oh, there is not only style but excitement in living in a native house in Peking! We have looked at a good many Chinese houses, but can't quite make ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... necessary then that he should have bowels for the poor, so he can secure for his family the odd trick. Or should some show of respect, for what is termed with ignorant ostentation an Englishman's birth-right, be expedient to bubble the gruff mastiff that he has to lead by the nose, he can make an empty show, very safely, by giving his single voice, and suffering his light squadron to file off to the other side. And when a question of humanity is agitated, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... artistry in stained glass in the windows. There were short and long men, lean and stout, dark and blond men, with eyes and jaws which varied from those of the tiger, lynx, and bear to those of the fox, the tolerant mastiff, and the surly bulldog. There were no weaklings ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... though wounded, came on. One bounded at Muriel. Frank threw himself in front of her, firing rapidly at it. Several bullets struck it, but the savage brute sprang at his throat. He grappled with it, striving by main strength to hold it off. Muriel rushed to his aid and putting her pistol to the mastiff's head shot it dead. Tashi ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... do right well. I do not care to know; but this I charge you, Tell Courtenay nothing. The Lord Chancellor (I count it as a kind of virtue in him, He hath not many), as a mastiff dog May love a puppy cur for no more reason Than that the twain have been tied up together, Thus Gardiner—for the two were fellow-prisoners So many years in yon accursed Tower— Hath taken to this Courtenay. Look to it, niece, He hath no fence when Gardiner questions him; ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... good mastiff," said Flammock. "Some rude sagacity, and a stout hand instead of a sharp case of teeth, are all that I can claim to be added to them—I will do my best.—Fare thee well, Roschen! Thou art going among strangers—forget not the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... towards the left, Where Perkin's quarry made the cleft; The path turned next towards the right, Because the mastiff used ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... an animal, with neck and muzzle thrust forward, its head poking into the night, its whole body poised in that attitude of intense rigidity that precedes the spring into freedom, the running leap of attack. It seemed to be about the size of a calf, leaner than a mastiff, yet more squat than a wolf, and I can swear that I saw the fur ridged sharply upon its back. Then its upper lip slowly lifted, and I saw the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... prince!—in short, his Highness's words acted upon my mind like thunder upon beer. And, moreover, I could almost have sworn that I was an old lean wolf, contemptuously observing a bald ring rubbed by the collar, from the neck of a sleek, well-fed mastiff dog; however, recovering myself, I managed to give as much information as it was in my humble power to afford; and my noble guest then taking his departure, I returned to my open window, to give vent in ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... stout-hearted fellow that he was, he loved the weakest one best; and, therefore, little Kitty was never without a friend and protector. Ever since a certain day in the summer, when she had fallen into the stream, and had been carried home insensible by Bouncer, Kitty had loved the huge mastiff dearly, and nightly added to her simple prayer, "Please, God, bless dear ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Building, was about to bring a hopeless human fragment into a grey world. Lola went to see what aid the Building could provide. In front of the door lounged the husband, a hulking porter in a Bermondsey factory. Glowering at his feet lay a vicious mongrel dog—bull-terrier, Irish-terrier, mastiff—so did Lola with her trained eye distinguish the strains. When she asked for his wife in travail the chivalrous gentleman took his pipe from his mouth, spat, and after the manner of his kind referred to the disfigurement of her face in terms impossible to ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... stepped back as a third person entered. He was wearing a rich suit of some long-departed period, and, with his furrowed face and deep-set eyes, he rather resembled an elderly mastiff, though he did not convey the same impression of profound wisdom. He gazed round the room as though he himself were as bewildered as its other occupants, who were speechless with amazement. Then his eye fell on Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson, and he hesitated no longer, but, advancing ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... turbulence of our people to any cause but the right—to any cause but your own scandalous oppression? If you tie your horse up to a gate, and beat him cruelly, is he vicious because he kicks you? If you have plagued and worried a mastiff dog for years, is he mad because he flies at you whenever he sees you? Hatred is an active, troublesome passion. Depend upon it, whole nations have always some reason for their hatred. Before you refer the turbulence of the Irish to incurable defects ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... by voice and touch; he withdrew his iron grasp with sullen and lingering reluctance, and glared like a disappointed mastiff: The cabin was now full, and Sharpe was for putting both the blacks in irons. No splitter of hairs was he. But Fullalove suggested there might be a moral distinction between things that looked ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... morning; after breakfast, I went to seek my favorite in the poultry yard; plenty of hens were there, but no Yarico. The gate was open, and, as I concluded she had sought the forbidden copse, I proceeded there, accompanied by the yard mastiff; a noble fellow, steady and sagacious as ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... He fortified every door and window with such bars of iron that his house might have resisted the forcible attack of a whole army. Night and day growled before his inhospitable door a furious Dutch mastiff, whose natural ferocity was so increased by continual hunger, for his master fed him most sparingly, that no stranger could have ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... chateau Levigne she was of great service to me when she was but sixteen. Madam Blanc, who tried to reach me in time, declares the child saved my life. It was a dog—a mad one. I was on the lawn when he broke through the hedge, snapped Alain's mastiff, Ponto, and came straight for me. I was paralyzed with terror; then, just as he leaped at me, the child swung a heavy chair over her head. Tah! She looked like a young tigress. The dog was struck helpless, his back broken. The gardener came ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... I will quote one more passage. From the subject of horses he passes to that of dogs and their occasional reversion to wildness, when the mastiff or cur, the "faithful" house-dog by day, takes to sheep-killing by night. As a rule he is exceedingly cunning, committing his depredations at a distance frown home, and after getting his fill of slaughter he sneaks home in the early hours to spend ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... of defence was gone from him, and the only thing left to him to deal with was his own life, had become quiet and silent and passionless, as was his habit. He would have fought like a mastiff for his home, but this they had forbidden him to do, and he was passive and without hope. He closed his door, and sat down with his hand in that of Reine Allix and his arm around his wife. "There is nothing to do but wait" he ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... fires burnt brightly, we paid little attention to the cries of the jaguars. They had been attracted by the smell and noise of our dog. This animal (which was of the mastiff breed) began at first to bark; and when the tiger drew nearer, to howl, hiding himself below our hammocks. how great was our grief, when in the morning, at the moment of re-embarking, the Indians informed us that the dog had disappeared! There ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... his estate as security to the Lombards and extortioners in order to raise the sum, remained, without a penny in the world, awaiting her lord in a poor lodging in the town, without a carpet to sit upon, but proud as the Queen of Sheba and brave as a mastiff who defends the property of his master. Seeing this great distress the seneschal went delicately to request this lady's daughter to be the godmother of the said Egyptian, in order that he might have the right of assisting the Lady of Azay. And, in fact, he kept a heavy chain of gold which ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... wretch is pathetic! He follows Hicks around like a huge mastiff after a terrier, or an ocean leviathan towed by a tug-boat; he seems absolutely helpless without T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., and so we have a daily Hicks' personally conducted tour of Thor to interest us. Briefly, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... into the gallery with a dustman's bell, and rang it furiously. Dogs were also brought into the boxes, to add their sweet voices to the general uproar. The animals seemed to join in it con amore, and one night a large mastiff growled and barked so loudly, as to draw down upon his exertions three cheers from ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... stooped to obey the big fellow surprised us by quietly arising; and, when cushions had been arranged in a shaded place above, he laid on them as obediently as a docile mastiff. Monsieur, very much in his element, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... growl and a bound, and straight at the foremost attacker flew Argos, Mamercus's great British mastiff, who had silently slipped on to the scene. The assailant fell with the dog's fangs in his throat. Again the gladiators recoiled, and before they could return to the charge, back into the peristylium rushed Drusus, escaped from Cappadox, with that worthy and Mago and Agias, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Fessenden's, then, he was less fortunate than the Judge's mastiff. He had no dry straw, not even a kennel to crouch in. And the fields were uninviting; and to die was not so pleasant. The veriest wretch alive feels a yearning for life, and few are so foolish as not to prefer a dry skin to a wet one. Even Fessenden's ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of the utmost good humour, and a twinkle in his eye as he thinks he is twisting me about his finger, vainly endeavours to obtain a hint regarding whatever case is perplexing him at that moment. I baffle him with the ease that an active greyhound eludes the pursuit of a heavy mastiff, then at last I say to him ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... to catch our rats; the mastiff and spaniel to guard our houses; the lapdog for ladies to play with; the poodles to laugh at; and once there was the turnspit to roast ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... had disturbed him little. He had been able to anticipate most of their attacks and they had resulted in little harm to himself. They had left him unperturbed, unharmed—like the attacks of an excitable poodle upon a giant, contemptuous mastiff. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... England," says Brand, speaking of the popular superstitions, "ghost is pronounced gheist and guest. Hence barguest or bargheist. Many streets are haunted by a guest, who assumes many strange appearances, as a mastiff dog, &c. It is a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon , ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... a sort of grim hilarity on his face. I thought he looked hardly human; however, he was human enough to tell us the way; and presently we found ourselves in the little bare parlour. Presently the door opened, and in came a superannuated mastiff, followed by an old gentleman very like Miss Bronte, who shook hands with us, and then went to call his daughter. A long interval, during which we coaxed the old dog, and looked at a picture of Miss Bronte, by Richmond, the solitary ornament of the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Godefroid discovered she had intended to keep boarders in the building, but for the last five years had not obtained a single lodger of that description. She lived herself on the ground-floor facing towards the boulevard; and looked after the whole house, by the help of a huge mastiff, a stout servant-girl, and a lad who blacked the boots, took care of the rooms, and did ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... a month ago. I threw a pinch of it into a basin of milk and gave it to a powerful mastiff. He drank the milk and in ten seconds ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... my obligation to you, sir, for the restoration of the badge of our family, I cannot but marvel that you have nowhere established your own crest, whilk is, I believe, a mastiff, anciently called a talbot; as ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of a dog, and next moment a huge mastiff dashed from out of the thicket and fastened on the throat of ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... burghers who had fairly made themselves High Mightinesses, and could treat on equal terms with anointed kings, but their commonwealth carried in its bosom the germs of democracy. They even unmuzzled, at least after dark, that dreadful mastiff, the Press, whose scent is, or ought to be, so keen for wolves in sheep's clothing and for certain other animals in lions' skins. They made fun of sacred majesty, and, what was worse, managed uncommonly well without it. In an age when periwigs ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... return again to that city, which I have furnished well with them; every man there is a barrator,[3] except Bonturo:[4] there, for money, of No they make Ay." He hurled him down, and along the hard crag he turned, and never mastiff loosed was in such ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... have, then, at least three stocks of very distinct dogs: 1, a hunting or shepherd's dog, of European origin; 2, a mastiff, typical of the large breed of dogs indigenous to Asia; and 3, a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... as she led the way in the direction best calculated to impress a stranger. Tom did not pay much attention to the grounds themselves, but she raved over the horses, and made friends with all the dogs, even old Lion, the calf-like mastiff, who was kept chained up in the stable-yard because of his violent antipathy to strangers. When he beheld this daring young woman walking up to his very side, and making affectionate overtures for his favour, he showed his teeth in an alarming scowl, but next moment he changed his ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... vulgar to go to market, of course. Even the great mastiff who acted as yard dog at the bazaar made me aware of that fact. He always greeted me politely, like a host, when he met me in the court at market hours. But nothing could induce him even to look at me when he met me outside. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the challenge at once. His deep set opaque black eyes and mastiff-like mouth looked as immovable as the carving on the basalt stool upon which he sat. The cacique thought he was impressed, ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... and read Mitford again, and played with my mastiff—gave him his supper. Made another reading to the epigram, but the turn the same. To-night at the theatre, there being a prince on his throne in the last scene of the comedy,—the audience laughed, and asked him for a Constitution. This shows the state of the public mind here, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Ponto," cried the poor little fellow; "don't bark, my dear." And up he went, and stroked and patted the great mastiff, who, already knowing the little fellow, put his paws on his shoulders, and licked his face with great appreciation. For Christopher was tenderly kind to animals, and he was rewarded for this now in his day of deep distress. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... tastes in McTeague which now could not be gratified. He had come to be very proud of his silk hat and "Prince Albert" coat, and liked to wear them on Sundays. Trina had made him sell both. He preferred "Yale mixture" in his pipe; Trina had made him come down to "Mastiff," a five-cent tobacco with which he was once contented, but now abhorred. He liked to wear clean cuffs; Trina allowed him a fresh pair on Sundays only. At first these deprivations angered McTeague. Then, all of a sudden, he slipped back into the old habits (that had been his before ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... peasant sought in vain the tall form of old Sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley, as, wrapped in his lace cloak, and with beard and whiskers duly composed, he moved slowly through the aisles, followed by the faithful mastiff, or bloodhound, which in old time had saved his master by his fidelity, and which regularly followed him to church. Bevis, indeed, fell under the proverb which avers, "He is a good dog which goes to church;" for, bating an occasional temptation to warble along ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... then set our selves to make our peace with our God, whom we have displeased by our iniquities: and let us not imagine that we can encounter the Wrath of the Devil, while there is the Wrath of God Almighty to set that Mastiff upon us. REFORMATION! REFORMATION! has been the repeated Cry of all the Judgments that have hitherto been upon us; because we have been as deaf Adders thereunto, the Adders of the Infernal Pit are now hissing about us. At length, as it was of old said, Luke 16.30. If one ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... threescore or a hundred. "I will remember you on my return,"—exclaimed I, as the carriage drove off. He gave me a most sceptical shake of the head, as he retreated into his little tenement, like a mastiff into ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... cow with tuberculosis, 'cause he knew about the herd. He knew by finding out. He worshipped the very cows she owned, you may say, and I've seen him patting and feeding up her dogs; it's to our house that big mastiff always goes every night. Mrs. Ellis, it ain't often that a woman gits love such as my son is offering, only he da'sn't offer it, and it ain't often a woman is loved by such a good man as my son. He 'ain't got any bad habits; he'll die before he wrongs anybody; and he has got the ...
— Different Girls • Various
... of that by and by," answered Pluto. "We are just entering my dominions. Do you see that tall gateway before us? When we pass those gates, we are at home. And there lies my faithful mastiff at the threshold. Cerberus! Cerberus! Come hither, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... went out of doors with it, and after having disappeared for some time would return again; upon which, after some time, they watched him, when, to their great surprise, they found that the poor charitable creature carried what he so got to an old decrepit mastiff, which lay in a nest that he had made among the brakes a little way out of the town, and was blind, so that he could not help himself; and there this creature fed him. He adds also that on Sundays or holidays, when he found they made good cheer ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... sword or machete, like an iron bar sharpened at one end; and he wore by the same belt three cotton leashes for his three dogs, sometimes held also by chains. The dogs were a fierce breed, crossed between hound and mastiff, never unmuzzled but for attack, and accompanied by smaller dogs called finders. It is no wonder, when these wild and powerful creatures were landed at Montego Bay, that terror ran through the town, doors were everywhere closed, and windows crowded; not a negro dared ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... those little red-and-blue veins that are to be found in the texture of good American paper currency and in the faces of elderly men who have lived much out-of-doors during their lives. His jowls were heavy and pendulous like a mastiff's. His frontal bone came down low and straight so that under the flat arch of the brow his small, very bright agate-blue eyes looked out as from beneath half-closed shutters. His hair was clipped close to his scalp and the shape of his skull showed, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Rats as a regular pursuit, one is surprised at the queer places in which he finds them. I recollect ferreting seven full-sized Rats from under the floor of a built dog kennel not above four yards square, where a large mastiff and a terrier dog slept every night, only a 3/4-inch board dividing them from the Rats, and the Rats having eaten holes through the boards in the kennel! I have also found at an out-house an old bitch Rat and nine young ones in an old tin trunk without a lid. I have also caught Rats and taken ...
— Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher - After 25 Years' Experience • Ike Matthews
... very well know what was going to befall him, but he did not feel unsafe with John Farden, and besides, his lank frame was in the grasp of that big hand like a mouse in the power of a mastiff. So he let himself be hauled down the ladder, into an empty stall, where, behold, there was a dark lantern (which had been at bad work in its time), a pail, a brush, a bit of soap, and a ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with infinite humor an adventure between him and a mastiff, when he was a boy. He had heard somebody say that any person throwing the skirts of his coat over his head, stooping low, holding out his arms, and creeping along backwards, might frighten the fiercest dog, and put him to flight. He accordingly made the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... and that he deserves to rank with the foremost Italian masters. Certainly in all his work there is a dignity, power, and charm, especially in that well- known Maids of Honor, where a little Spanish princess is depicted holding her court, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, her dwarfs and her mastiff, while the artist himself stands at his easel. The last feat of Velasquez was to superintend the elaborate decorations in honor of the marriage of the Spanish Infanta with King Louis XIV of France. Murillo, the youngest of all these great ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... clang against the door-cheek, the shoemaker heard a cry from the instrument. He cast everything from him and sprang after Robert. But Robert was down the wynd like a long-legged grayhound, and Elshender could only follow like a fierce mastiff. It was love and grief, though, and apprehension and remorse, not vengeance, that winged his heels. He soon ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... advanced down the room, "you set your mastiff on me, do you? Then I will show you how a gentleman treats dogs," and suddenly, a naked dagger shining in his hand, he leaped straight at the Frisian's throat. So quick and fierce was the onslaught that only one issue to it seemed possible. ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... THE SPARE-RIB. A mastiff crossing a bridge, and bearing in his mouth a piece of meat, suddenly swallowed the meat. He immediately observed that the shadow of the aforesaid meat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... with the Indians, servants only excepted upon pain of whipping, unless the master will redeem it off with the payment of an angel." "No man to sell or give any of the greater hoes to the Indians, or any English dog of quality, as a mastiff, greyhound, bloodhound, land or water spaniel." "Any man selling arms or ammunition to the Indians, to be hanged so soon as the fact is proved." All ministers shall duly "read divine service, and exercise their ministerial function according to the ecclesiastical laws and orders of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff, which From her kennel beneath the rock Maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; 10 Ever and aye, by shine and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say, ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... first sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion, that amorphous crag-like face; the dull black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only to be blown; the mastiff-mouth, accurately closed:—I have not traced as much of silent Berserkir-rage, that I remember of, in any other man. "I guess I should not like to be your nigger!"— Webster is not loquacious, but he is pertinent, conclusive; a dignified, perfectly bred man, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... dog, and is not weakened by the knowledge that this dog came from similar parents, would it be at all weakened if, in tracing his genealogy, it were ascertained that he was a remote descendant of the mastiff or some other breed, or that both these and other breeds came (as is suspected) from some wolf? If not, how is the argument for design in the structure of our particular dog affected by the supposition that his wolfish progenitor ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... baying of the blood-hound, or the mastiff, to the sniff and snarl of the rat-terrier, their music was not agreeable to the fugitives, who had, however, to contend with this ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens |
