"Tails" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... setting moon. Shadows were sharp and black. The man smoked steadily, and the hungry horses did what I never saw horses do before; they stood and nibbled at each other's tails. I was used to sleeping in the open, under the jewelled dome that seems so much vaster and grander in these wide spaces of the earth. I lay listening to the horses, and to the myriad small strange voices of the veldt, to which I cannot even now put a name, while Raffles watched. "One head is ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... walked sideways, nut-cracker-jawed, shell-hided: bony they were, flat-backed, with glistening shoulders and bandy legs and stretching arms and eyes that looked behind them. They had also eight legs and two feelers—persistent creatures who are called crabs. These nipped off the tails and paws and feet of the Mice with their jaws, while spears only beat on them. Of these the Mice were all afraid and no longer stood up to them, but turned and fled. Already the sun was set, and so came the end of the ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... is, that I like to be my own master. A mistress at my coat-tails would be more troublesome than a wife; she would be an obstacle to the numerous pleasant adventures I encounter at every town. For example, if I had a mistress I should not be able to take the charming Irene to the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and is the 'happiest of men;' and I have met the aforesaid H., who is also the 'happiest of men;' so, it is worth while being here, if only to witness the superlative felicity of these foxes, who have cut off their tails, and would persuade the rest to part with their brushes to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... them up with an egg slice, so turn them over and set them to drain. Make your sauce of a little gravy and butter, an anchovy and a little boiled parsley shred; put it into the bason, set it in the middle of the dish, lie the herrings round with their tails towards the bason, and lie the milts and roans between every herring. Garnish with crisp parsley and lemon; so serve ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon
... Koran, than to sing the Black Sanctus. Better to serve Mahound than Bungy's dog. I never Turned my Tippet, as some fine gentlemen who have never seen Constantinople have done. I never changed my Principles, although I was a Bashaw with three tails. Better to have three tails than to be a Rat with only one. And, let me tell you, it is a mighty fine thing to be a Bashaw, and to have as many purses full of Sequins and Aspers as there ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... ordinary courtesies of life, and he fastens them to the base of an iron pillar. Deserted immediately by their deliverer, the pointers made overtures to two elderly ladies, standing bewildered in the crush, to be repulsed with umbrellas, and then sit down upon their tails in despair. Their forlorn condition, left friendless amid this babel, gets upon their nerves, and after a slight rehearsal, just to make certain of the tune, they lift up their voices in melodious concert, to the ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... under the chin; (e) the buttons, conchas or side ornaments of shells, silver, horn or wooden discs, even small mirrors and circles of beadwork were used, and sometimes the conchas were left out altogether; they may have the owner's totem on them, usually a bunch of ermine tails hung from each side of the bonnet just below the concha. A bunch of horsehair will answer as well; (hh) the holes in the leather for holding the lace of the feather; 24 feathers are needed for the ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... defeat for register in 1874, Kelly deprived Morrissey of his district leadership because he stirred up disaffection among the working men and sowed seeds of disloyalty. In their contest the Morrissey and Kelly factions were known as "Swallow-tails" and "Short-hairs," Morrissey, to rebuke Wickham's custom of requiring cards of callers in advance of admission to his office, having called upon the Mayor during business hours in evening dress, with white ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... for mankind and for herself. She was lonely, love-famished, inept, dissatisfied, and abysmally ashamed of her general ineffectiveness. Then one of Washington's infamous hot weeks supervened. In the daytime the heat stung like a cat-o'-nine-tails. The nights were suffocation. She "slept," gasping as a fish flounders on dry land. After the long strain of fighting for peace, toiling for rest, the mornings would find Marie Louise as wrecked as if she had come in from a prolonged spree. Then followed a day of drudgery ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... of many windows, few of which were intended to open, a house of dark passages, like these in the convent, and flights of shallow steps, and curious turns and twistings here and there. There were living birds that sunned their spreading tails and stalked in slow stateliness on the turf terraces, as well as those peacocks clipped out of yew. The house lay in a Buckinghamshire valley, shut round and sheltered by hills and coppices, where there was an abundance of game. Angela had seen the low, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... remote part of the house, and began in a low voice to give his testimony as to the truth that was in him. All eyes were turned toward him, when suddenly a friend leaned over the back of the seat, seized his coat-tails and jerked him down in a most emphatic manner. The poor man buried his face in his hands, and maintained a profound silence. I learned afterwards that he was a bore, and the friend in the rear thought it wise to nip him in the bud. This scene ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... hung from tree branches by their tails, along with the furry monkeys," suggested Moro, who often thought of the odd ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... slices of truffle. When put them into a well-buttered saute-pan with half a cup of stock and a glass of Madeira or Marsala, cover with buttered paper, and put them into a moderate oven for twenty minutes. Arrange the fillets in a circle on croutons of bread, garnish the centre with crayfish tails and with truffles cut into dice, a quarter of a pint of Velute sauce (No. 2), and half a teaspoonful of anchovy butter. Glaze the ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... eaten holes in most conspicuous places, and in others rats had, literally, made their nests. The shirts were whitened shams, as they lay, no more than so many "dickeys," in a row, for when unfolded it was found that they had lost their tails, long since the prey of cockroaches or bedding for the young of mice; collars, when severed from their fray, were sadly diminished in height, and the overhauling of the boot department revealed the fact that there was nothing that would bear ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... warned me would end in trouble. As no thought came to me I looked at Bes and saw that he was rolling his eyes towards the six doomed hunters who were being led away, also in pretence of driving off a fly, pointing to them with one of the lion tails. Then I remembered that a decree once uttered by the King of the East could not be altered, and saw a ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... nebul. * The strange surroundings of the sun, only seen in particular circumstances, but evidently playing a constant part in the daily phenomena of the solar system. * The mystery of the Zodiacal Light and the Gegenschein. * The extraordinary transformations undergone by comets and their tails. * The prodigies of meteorites and masses of stone and metal fallen from the sky. * The cataclysms that have wrecked the moon. * The problem of life and intelligence on the planet Mars. * The problematical origin and fate of the asteroids. * ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... itself in the kindling eyes and faces luminous with pleasure. All his long wilderness experience had never afforded Job anything to compare with that which this day had brought him. He was like a boy in his abandon of delight, and I am sure that if the caribou had worn tails we should have seen Job running over the hills holding ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... a large collection of elephants' heads, tails, and feet—the spoils of a recent shooting expedition. These trophies seemed to give one a better idea of the immense size of the elephant than the sight of the animal itself. It was most interesting to be able to handle and to examine closely their great ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... not your theme to win the gaping rout, Nor aim at Pinkey's leer with "S'death, I'm out!" An arch dull rogue, who lets the business cool, To show how nicely he can play the fool, Who with buffoonery his dulness clokes, Deserves a cat-o'-nine-tails for his jokes. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... appendage, aptly called the 'psychographic tail' by Vischer; and moustaches are double, and therefore equal to two psychographic appendages! Truly I know not of which to think first—a happy gentleman wagging his moustache or a happy dog wagging two tails. And yet here am I, shaving away the daily effort of this double psychographic appendage to become visible! One might almost think that my depressor alae nasi was a ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... Two ox-tails, two slices of ham, one ounce of butter, two carrots, two turnips, three onions, one leek, one head of celery, one bunch of savory herbs, pepper, a tablespoonful of salt, two tablespoonfuls of catsup, one-half glass of port wine, ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... so curiously collected in the night. Puss had left her kits asleep, and gone down to get her own breakfast, and there, in the middle of the ruffled apron, as if in a dainty cradle, lay the two Maltese darlings, with white bibs and boots on, and white tips to the tiny tails curled round their little noses ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... madness in this. Whilst he is there I'm nothing—but without him, if I were with her again—I was always beaten easily by anybody but in this at least I can be strong. I don't hate him but I know that he will always be first as long as we're together. And we seem to be tied now like dogs by their tails, tied by our ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... his son, thrusting out his coat-tails with his hands towards the fire, and swaying slightly to and fro on his heels and toes, "so you've had your consultation, you ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... old and rich and corpulent he also set up a great gingerbread-colored carriage, drawn by a pair of black Flanders mares with tails that swept the ground; and to commemorate the origin of his greatness he had for his crest a full-blown cabbage painted on the panels, with the pithy motto, ALLES KOPF, that is to say, ALL HEAD, meaning thereby that he had risen by sheer ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... they poured clarified butter into the mouth of Agni uttering the names of the snakes. And the snakes thereupon began to fall into the blazing fire, benumbed and piteously calling upon one another. And swollen and breathing hard, and twining each other with their heads and tails, they came in large numbers and fell into the fire. The white, the black, the blue, the old and the young—all fell alike into the fire, uttering various cries. Those measuring a krosa, and those measuring a yojana, and those of the measure of a gokarna, fell ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of the bed-chamber. Perhaps the fatal scene will take place in that charming room with the blue monochromes, where beautiful ideal birds are painted on the ceilings and the shutters, where Chinese monsters laugh with open jaws on the mantle-shelf, and dragons, green and gold, twist their tails in curious convolutions around rich vases, and Japanese fantasy embroiders its designs of many colors; where sofas and reclining-chairs and consoles and what-nots invite to that contemplative idleness ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... day. A man could never lie down comfortably with it on, and if from sheer exhaustion he fell asleep he awoke with his back aching tortures. The meat and cabbage was varied twice by steamed fish served in its scales, tails, fins, heads, and entrails complete. All that they got which was really eatable was a small bun served in the morning, and ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... more important papers. In this sheet, 10 inches by 7-3/4 inches in size, drawn by H. G. Hine, there were printed sixteen wafers, in green ink, in the midst of a witty design, in brown, that bore the devices of a snake in the grass, a cat-o'-nine-tails, a kettle steaming the fastening of a letter, and other suggestive personalities. These were supposed to be cut up and used as wafers on envelopes, and that they were so used is probable, in view of their extreme rarity at ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... around their horns, and around and around their bodies the long ropes were wound, their master standing by with his goad. That we wound also, and covered his hat with roses. The huge oxen swayed aside, looking ashamed of themselves. And when their tails were ornamented with a bunch at the tip, they switched these pathetically. Still even an ox loves festivity, whether he owns to it or not. We made a procession, child behind child, each bearing on his head all ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... heat to bear! Those lambs he had watched in a field that afternoon, their sudden little leaps and rushes, their funny quivering wriggling tails, their tiny nuzzling black snouts—what little miracles of careless joy among the meadow flowers! Lambs, and flowers, and sunlight! Famine, lust, and the great grey guns! A maze, a wilderness; and but for faith, what issue, what path for man to take which did ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... anxious to own one, but his uncle resisted his entreaties, declaring that monkeys—with, or without tails—would be a drug in the market long before they ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... now: The peach-bloom of her gauzy crepe, The plaited tails of hair, The ribbons floating from the summer hat, The grieving face, dropp'd head absorbed with care. O, dainty little form! I see it move, receding slow along the path, By hovering butterflies besieged; I see it reach The breezy ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Annabelle) To a Thesaurus The Ancient Lays Erring in Company The Limit Chorus for Mixed Voices The Translated Way "And Yet It Is a Gentle Art." Occasionally Jim and Bill When Nobody Listens Office Mottoes Metaphysics Heads and Tails An Election Night Pantoum I Can Not Pay That Premium Three Authors To Quotation Melodrama A Poor Excuse, but Our Own Monotonous Variety The Amateur Botanist A Word for It The Poem Speaks Bedbooks A New York Child's Garden of Verses Downward, ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... tail: a closely allied variety still exists in Northern Africa; for Mr. E. Vernon Harcourt[10] states that the Arab boar-hound is "an eccentric hieroglyphic animal, such as Cheops once hunted with, somewhat resembling the rough Scotch deer-hound; their tails are curled tight round on their backs, {18} and their ears stick out at right angles." With this most ancient ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... knowledge, he rode back, wet as he was, to learn something. "My cow," answered the man, "always twists her tail in a certain way just before a rain, your Worship, and she so twisted it just before I saw you."[30] Although twisting cow-tails do not figure in his "Principia," it is very probable that such a lesson was not without its remote effects on a mind like Newton's. A spider taught a lesson to one of Scotland's kings; so that one man may learn ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... shall never get across. I know I shan't. I'm so afraid of water, and I know there are cat-tails and pussy willows and all sorts of things like that around here. Oh! what shall I do? I want to get across to see my grandmother, but how ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... the field in sharper and sharper curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white borzoi dashed in followed by a black one, and everything was in confusion; the borzois formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying their bodies and with tails turned away from the center of the group. Two huntsmen galloped up to the dogs; one in a red cap, the other, a stranger, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... cattle, jump into the air and kick his heels together in some paroxysm of indignation against them,—an act, however, which was received always with heavy bovine indifference, the dogged scorn of swaying, repudiating heads, or the dull contempt of lazily flicking tails. ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... under it. What can you call it but tawniness?—the earth sunburnt once more at harvest time. Sunburnt and brown—for it deepens into brown. Brown partridges, and pheasants, at a distance brown, their long necks stretched in front and long tails behind gleaming in the stubble. Brown thrushes just venturing to sing again. Brown clover hayricks; the bloom on the third crop yonder, which was recently a bright colour, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... his cushions in the cockpit that evening looking up at a calm, star-speckled sky. On either side of him mountain ranges lifted like quiescent saurians, heads resting on the summit of the Coast Range, tails sweeping away in a fifty-mile curve to a lesser elevation and the open waters of the Gulf. The watery floor of Toba Inlet lay hushed between, silvered by a moon-path, shimmering under the same pale rays that struck bluish-white ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... crouching forms that wait to kill? Ah, look! See there! and there! and there again! Great yellow, glassy eyes, close to the ground! Look! Now the clouds are lighter I can see The long slow lashing of the sinewy tails, And the set quiver of strong jaws that wait—! Go there? Not I! Who dares to go who sees So perfectly the lions ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... plaza before it the guests of the house were mounted on a caponera of palominas,—horses peculiar to the country; beautiful creatures, golden-bronze, and burnished, with luxuriant manes and tails which waved and shone like the sparkling silver of a water-fall. A number were riderless, awaiting the pleasure of the bridal party. One alone was white as a Californian fog. He lifted his head and pranced as if aware of his proud ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of the crowd the heads of jockeys began to be visible. A fool cried out: "The favourite wins." Another: "Allenby has it." Then one had a glimpse of three horses close—well, fairly close—on each other's tails, and none of them the grey Tetratema. I noticed that on one of them crouched a jockey in exquisite grass-green. He passed like a fine phrase out of a poem of which one does not know the rest. But I did not really know who had won till the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... the table and takes some money out of his pocket] Half a ruble in silver—that's what Lazar gave me to-day. And the other day, when I fell from the steeple, Agrafena Kondratyevna gave me ten kopeks; I won twenty-five kopeks at heads and tails; and day before yesterday the boss forgot and left one whole ruble on the counter. Gee, here's money for you! [He counts to himself. The voice of FOMINISHNA is heard behind the scene: "Tishka, oh, Tishka! How long have I got ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... feet; while others united the hind-quarters of a horse with the body of a man, resembling in shape the hippo-centaurs. Bulls likewise were bred there with the heads of men, and dogs with four told bodies, terminated in their extremities with the tails of fishes; horses also with the heads of dogs; men too and other animals, with the heads and bodies of horses and the tails of fishes. In short, there were creatures in which were combined the limbs of every ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... the native women when engaged in washing," he said, "and almost invariably strike them, in the first place, into the river with a blow of their tails. Once in the water they are carried off, drowned, and eaten at leisure. Sometimes, indeed, a woman may escape with the loss of a foot or arm, but this is ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... sea-diver, who might then behold such sights as thou?— The hoary monster's palaces!—Methinks what joy 'twere now To go plumb-plunging down, amid the assembly of the whales, And feel the churned sea round me boil beneath their scourging tails! Then deep in tangle-woods to fight the fierce sea-unicorn, And send him foiled and bellowing back, for all his ivory horn; To leave the subtle sworder-fish of bony blade forlorn; And for the ghastly-grinning shark, to laugh his jaws to scorn: To leap down on the kraken's back, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... of nowhere, wearing nothing on their dark bodies but calf-length kilts of tails, black tails with fluffy white tips, which swayed uniformly in time to their pacing feet. Their heads and shoulders were masked by beautifully cured and semi-mounted animal heads displaying half-open jaws with double pairs of curved fangs. The black-and-white ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... rotted, and from then arose several species of harmful snakes, that bring disaster to human beings; and even the worms that devoured his flesh were turned into snakes. The magicians made use of these snakes for three different types of enchantment, for the heads, the bodies, and the tails, had each a different effect. One of the questions that the Queen of Sheba put to Solomon was how to withstand these three different kinds of enchantment, and the wise king knew even this secret, which he then imparted ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... spoke the thundering became louder, and then, looking across the grassy plain, all saw a large troop of wild horses, with flying manes and tails, headed ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... beauty of the oxen, wished to purloin that booty, but because, if he had driven them forward into the cave, their footsteps would have guided the search of their owner thither, he therefore drew the most beautiful of them, one by one, by the tails, backwards into a cave. Hercules, awaking at day-break, when he had surveyed his herd, and observed that some of them were missing, goes directly to the nearest cave, to see if by chance their footsteps would lead him thither. But when he observed that they were all turned from it, and directed ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... yesterday's party had provided some large envelopes with long red tails of tissue paper to drop into towns, and we wrote messages and enclosed them in some of these, putting sand in one end, and launched them. We watched them as they shot hither and yon in their swift flight toward ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... things, to the absurd supposition that the Americans could not make their own cloth, because American sheep had little wool, and that little of poor quality: "Dear sir, do not let us suffer ourselves to be amused with such groundless objections. The very tails of the American sheep are so laden with wool that each has a little car or wagon on four little wheels to support and keep it from trailing on the ground. Would they caulk their ships, would they even litter their horses, with wool, if it were not both plenty and cheap? And what signifies ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... nose, and a huge straw hat. The other wore a fur cap and a gentleman's swallow-tail coat, with the tails caught up because ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... tadpoles shed their voices along with their tails," he grumbled, with an ear to the frogs in the marsh. "They ain't quite so bad when they get big enough to trill, but that everlasting yipping makes me lonesome. I'm a good mind to toss up this tenpenny ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... fiction, and Dickens himself confessed that he was almost heart-broken when she died. Her path was crossed by Quilp, a cunning and malicious dwarf of hideous appearance, who consumed hard-boiled eggs, shells and all, for his breakfast; ate his prawns with their heads and their tails on, drank scalding hot tea, and performed so many horrifying acts that one almost doubted that he was human; and by Christopher Nubbles, a shock-headed, shambling, awkward, devoted lad, the only element of cheerfulness that ever came into her life. In this book ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... roses, lookin' out of the turret winders, and scatterin' scented waters on the crowd; and there was a banquet, sir, served up at noon that day at Jocelyn's Rock, with six peacocks brought to table with their tails spread; and a pie, served in a gold dish, with live doves in it, every feather of 'em steeped in the rarest perfume, which they was intended to sprinkle over the company as they flew about here and there. But—would you believe in such a radical spirit pervadin' the animal ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... (Ancient Monuments, p. 252.) The suggestion thus thrown out means, if it means anything, that the sculpture exhibiting a flat tail is the only one referable to the manatee of Florida and southward, the M. Americanus, while those with round tails are to be identified with the so-called "Round-tailed Lamantin," the M. Senegalensis, which lives in the rivers of Senegambia and along the coast of Western Africa. It is to be regretted that the above authors did not ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... his companions of their lawful spoil, and sailed away with every keg of old Jamaica, leaving him not a drop to drown his sorrow. Villains they were, and of that wicked brotherhood who are said to tie lanterns to horses' tails, to mislead the mariner along the dangerous shores ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mounted his conductor's platform and glanced paternally down at Theodore, who stood at the left, violin and bow in hand, bowing. The audience seemed to warm to his boyishness. They applauded again, and he bowed in a little series of jerky bobs that waggled his coat-tails. Heels close together, knees close together. A German bow. And then a polite series of bobs addressed to Stock and his orchestra. Stock's long, slim hands poised in air. His fingertips seemed to draw from the men before him the first poignant strains ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... his speed, and breathless, clad in a long coat whose tails almost swept the ground, grasping a fiddle in one hand and a paper in the other, Tom ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... from Malacca, and the trogon too. See how beautifully its wings are pencilled, and how the bright cinnamon of its back feathers contrasts with the bright crimson of its breast. We have plenty of trogons out in the West; some of them most gorgeous fellows, with tails a yard long, and of the most ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... the way, seemed very much inclined to interfere for the preservation of public peace; whilst a couple of puppies, touched off in the extreme of the then prevailing fashion at Caneville, turned up their noses and their tails in a way which seemed to render it perfectly marvellous how they kept upon their legs. All this was sufficiently irritating, even to the most good-natured of beings, and Bruin found it especially hard to bear; he was assisted, however, in his prudential resolution to abstain ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... Suffice it to say, that all of the peculiar modes of torture that were resorted to in the West India islands, are resorted to, I believe, even more frequently, in the United States of America. Starvation, the bloody whip, the chain, the gag, the thumb-screw, cat-hauling, the cat-o'-nine-tails, the dungeon, the blood-hound, are all in requisition to keep the slave in his condition as a slave in the United States. If any one has a doubt upon this point, I would ask him to read the chapter on slavery in Dickens's Notes on America. If any man has ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... without feet adapted for climbing live in trees; so also do monkeys with and without flexible tails, squirrels, sloths, pumas, &c. Mole-crickets dig with a well-pronounced spade upon their fore-feet, while the burying-beetle does the same thing though it has no special apparatus whatever. The mole conveys its winter provender in pockets, an inch wide, long ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... Scripture, but he beat his children—both girls and boys—so severely that outsiders were at times compelled to interfere. For years these unfortunate children carried the scars left on their backs by the thongs of cat-o'-nine-tails when he punished them for some slight misdemeanor. They were all terrified at him, all obeyed him like soldiers, but none escaped his severity. The two elder ones, a boy and a girl, had married before they left England. The next girl married in Ohio, and the boys drifted away, glad ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... terms, "Yes," "No," "Nay," "Black," "White," "Grey," and the little culprits in the den or prison who have failed in the examination. The tug-of-war now begins, either class being pitted against the other. No rope is used; arms are entwined round waists, skirts pulled, or coat-tails taken ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... which implieth the greater perversion) seemed to lack the breath of the uplands which the pulpit breathes, and too often degenerate into society favourites, whose flapping tails of black may be seen as these curates ring at fashionable doors, where "five-o'clocks" within await the kid-gloved ministers of men who are supposed to be the stewards of eternal life. I had once overheard an enamelled queen of fashion declare, with much emotion, that their curate was indispensable ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... on—passed a little farmhouse close to the water's edge; passed some lazy cattle standing in a field flicking off flies with their tails; passed a patient fisherman, who had not caught a thing that day, and scarcely expected to, but still fished on. The sun sparkled down on the water; the weary man and horse plodded along the bank; far away, a sweet bird sang; ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... must turn upon its axis, And all mankind turn with it, heads or tails, And live and die, make love and pay our taxes, And as the veering wind shifts, shift our sails; The king commands us, and the doctor quacks us, The priest instructs, and so our life exhales, A little breath, love, wine, ambition, fame, Fighting, devotion, dust,—perhaps ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... sitting, and they did not dare to stir for fear of being discovered. The buffaloes walked into the pool, and after drinking their fill, stood for some time with the water running out of their mouths, idly lashing their sides with their short tails, enjoying the bright warmth of the early sunshine; then, with much splashing and the gurgling of soft mud, they left the pool and clambered up the bluff with unwieldy agility. As soon as they turned, my brother and cousin ran for their ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... of close communion neither boy mentioned to the other the name of the little girl in the red shawl and the paint-brush pig-tails whose fitful fancy had brought on all his trouble. In some mysterious way each managed to shower her with picture cards, to compass her about with oranges, to embower her desk with flowers; but it was all done in stealth, and she who was the object of this devotion rewarded it openly ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... then, William,' observed Mr Ponsonby, stopping, and turning to his nephew, after a rapid walk up and down the room with his hands behind him under his coat, so as to allow the tails to drop their perpendicular about three inches clear of his body, 'I may say, without contradiction, be the finest property in the country—five thousand ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in the northwestern horizon was a faint speck of white. Everywhere else the blue of the sky and ocean was unrelieved. The "mares' tails" of clouds had disappeared and the sea was a ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... The coin fell tails, and we did not go to Quito, much to the disappointment of our guests. Le Mire forgot all about it ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... spot just off the road two sidewinders were coiled on a rock, beady eyes watching the jeep's passage. The snakes were the color of mottled sand, the "horns" on their diamond-shaped heads clearly identifiable. Their tails were a blur, and he knew they were rattling a warning, but the distinctive buzz couldn't be heard above the jeep's ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... employ in attempts to annoy, and I'm not what you'd call an agreeable boy! I shoe the cats with walnut-shells; Tin cans to curs I tie; Ring furious knells at front-door bells— Then round the corner fly! 'Neath donkeys' tails I fasten furze, Or timid horsemen scare; If chance occurs, I stock with burrs My ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... enough in their place,—rank and wealth. Everybody struggles to rise into some superior class. The spirit of caste is found as keenly at work among the humblest as among the highest ranks. At Birmingham, there was a club of workmen with tails to their coats, and another without tails: the one looked down upon the other. Cobbett, so felicitous in his nicknames, called his political opponent, Mr. Sadler, "a linendraper." But the linendraper also has plenty of people beneath him. The linendraper looks down on the huckster, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... as its tail is fully grown, he begins about an inch from the extremity of the two longest feathers in it and cuts away the web on both sides of the shaft, making a gap about an inch long. Both male and female wear their tails in this manner, which gives them a remarkable appearance among ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... changed and divided our interest. It was alleged by Clay, the assistant editor, that entering the restaurant one evening he saw the back and tails of a coat that seemed familiar to him half-filling a doorway leading to the restaurant kitchen. It was unmistakably the figure of one of our Club members,—the young lawyer,—Jack Manners. But what was he doing there? While the Editor was still gazing after him, he suddenly disappeared, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... clothes, and put on your hateful, uncomfortable thick ones, and strut about in them. I am altogether too old to take up the new fashions, and altogether too well satisfied with my own suit to learn how to wear your cloth coats with swallow-tails, and your leather hose and top-boots. Defend me from crowding my old limbs ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... hundred on either hand, covered with cloth of gold and with houdahs of yellow silk roofed with the glory of peacocks. Behind the mighty brutes soldiery blotted out the landscape, and the air between them and the sky was a tawny cloud of flaunting yak-tails; nor had one use for ears, so was he deafened by beat of drums and blowing of brazen horns twice a tall man's height. I sat on a throne of silver and gold, all my ministers present. My brother entered, he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... in the creation of monsters, representative of the Powers of Darkness or of different kinds of evil, The stones exhibit the king in conflict with a vast variety of monsters, some nearly resembling the Persepolitan, while others have strange shapes unseen elsewhere. Winged lions, with two tails and with the horns of a ram or an antelope, sphinxes and griffins of half a dozen different kinds, and various other nondescript creatures, appear upon the Persian gems and cylinders, furnishing abundant evidence of the quaint and prolific ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... was not noticeable while I made a study of the Lady Birds. My first discovery was that they had no tail. One poised near enough to make sure of that, and I hurried to my father with the startling news. He said it was nothing remarkable; birds frequently lost their tails. He explained how a bird in close quarters has power to relax its muscles, and let its tail go in order to save its body, when under the paw of a cat, or ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... presently their eyes, becoming accustomed to the light, fell upon Woola and me, and with bristling manes and deep-throated roars they advanced, lashing their tawny sides with their powerful tails. ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and of cycadaceous plants which have long passed away in the world below, we entered a region where the stream widened out and formed a considerable bog. High reeds of a peculiar type grew thickly before us, which were pronounced to be equisetacea, or mare's-tails, with tree-ferns scattered amongst them, all of them swaying in a brisk wind. Suddenly Lord John, who was walking first, halted with ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... water was the little fish swimming about, while an army of beavers began to pile up earth and stones in a high bank to keep the river back. How they worked, digging and heaping with teeth and claws, and beating the earth hard with their queer tails like shovels! Rosy and the men watched them work, glad to be safe, while the storm cleared up; and by the time the dam was made, all danger was over. Rosy looked into the faces of the rough men, hoping her father was there, and was just going to ask ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... roaring on the strand, Xanthe thought she could hear these creatures guiding their course with their scaly tails and blowing into shells, and many a glimmering foam-crest on a deep-blue wave was no transparent bubble-no, the girl distinctly saw that it was the white neck, the gleaming arm, or the snowy foot of one of Nereus's daughters. She believed that she clearly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... assembled in the verandah, for the ceremony was not to be performed till eight, and it was not more than halfpast seven. There was the promise of a very awkward half hour, so I was glad of a diversion caused by my appearing in a blue coat with gilt buttons, and pockets in the tails,—a coat I had not brought out for twenty years, but as good as new, I give you my honour. Jim was very funny about that coat, and I encouraged him by defending it, and so we got through ten minutes, and kept Sam amused. Then one of the grooms, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... other than monkeys are capable of moving about. Our great American agriculturist, too, who has ploughed so deeply in the Tribune office, is going to look like a Chinese; and she, who has given us our Caudle lectures now for many years past, will exhibit ANNA DICKINSON as a convert to two tails. Next, he who serves up for us our religion every once a week in the form of sanctimonious speeches on the subject of political economy, will let his congregation go behind Plymouth Pulpit for the purpose of getting their queues for the next ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... undisturbed view of that congregation of solid plaided men, strapping wives and daughters, oppressed children, and uneasy sheep-dogs. It was strange how Archie missed the look of race; except the dogs, with their refined foxy faces and inimitably curling tails, there was no one present with the least claim to gentility. The Cauldstaneslap party was scarcely an exception; Dandie perhaps, as he amused himself making verses through the interminable burden of the service, stood out a little by the glow in his eye and a certain superior animation ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in order, their shields on the left arm; in the right hand the lance, curved club, bow, sling, or ax, according as they were armed; the heads of these soldiers were covered with helmets, adorned with two horsehair tails, their bodies girded with a cuirass belt of crocodile-skin. Their impassible look, the perfect regularity of their movements, their reddish copper complexions, deepened by a recent expedition to the burning ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... fantastically ornamented with the horns of goats or antelopes. The sorcerers were an important element. These rascals, who are the curse of the country, were, as usual, in a curious masquerade with fictitious beards manufactured with a number of bushy cows' tails. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... its entirety lay there in full view, drowsing in the torrid heat of mid-September. Not a human being was in sight. Only a brindled dog slept in a small patch of shade beside the store; and fastened to the hotel hitching-rack, two burros, motionless save for twitching tails and ears, were almost hidden beneath stupendous ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... metamorphosis of his costume. Taking the diamond pin from his lace jabot he hid it under his vest, which he buttoned to the necktie. Then removing the light silk long-skirted dress-coat, he turned it completely on the other side and, by taking out some pins which held them, let the tails fall back. The dress-coat was now changed into an overcoat, a blue cloth overcoat, whose color harmonized very ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... would have had no one of his company—the one pride of his life—to greet him upon his return, with the possible exception of Private McCoy, who had been in the service since George Washington was a "lance jack," and who swore that all the damned "shave-tails" in the Army ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... for the country if these views of President Harrison, so clearly stated by Daniel Webster in this circular, could have been honestly carried out; but the horde of hungry politicians that had congregated at Washington, with racoon- tails in their hats and packages of recommendations in their pockets, clamored for the wholesale action of the political guillotine, that they might fill the vacancies thereby created. Whigs and Federalists, National Republicans ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... whole, was not unfriendly. The two white cats, to be sure, fluffed their tails a little, drew back from the circle, and went off to curl up in the sun and sleep off their aversion to a stranger. James Edward, too, his curiosity satisfied, haughtily withdrew. But Stumpy, as acknowledged dean of the Family, wagged his tail, hung out his pink tongue as far as it would go, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... with jaunty step and absorbed inquiring gaze in the shallow pools. Hermit crabs of several species and sizes were scuttling about searching for convenient shells in which to deposit their naturally homeless and tender tails. Overhead there was a sort of sea-rookery, the trees being tenanted by numerous gannets, frigate birds, and terns—the first gazing with a stupid yet angry air; the last—one beautiful little snow-white species in particular—hovering only a few feet above the sketchers' heads, ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... hopped as fast as they could, but on account of the baskets of groceries which they had they couldn't hop as fast as usual. The alligator saw this, and after them he crawled, and several times he nearly had them by their tails. Oh, no, excuse me, if you please, frogs don't have tails. ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... tail which reaches to the lower portions of the thighs; this tail is formed of finely-cut strips of leather, and the costume has doubtless been the foundation for the report I had received from the Arabs, "that a tribe in Central Africa had tails like horses." The women carry their children very conveniently in a skin slung from their shoulders across the back, and secured by a thong round the waist; in this the young savage sits delightfully. The huts throughout all tribes are circular, with entrances ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... marriage. The elevation of his patron to the highest dignity of the empire, of course opened to Kara-Mustapha the road to fortune and preferment—from his first post of deputy to the meer-akhor, or master of the horse, he was promoted to the rank of pasha of two tails—and after holding the governments successively of Silistria and Diarbekr was nominated capitan-pasha in 1662 by his brother-in-law Ahmed; but exchanged that appointment in the following year for the office of kaimakam, in which capacity he was left in charge of the capital on the departure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... hand, his eyes dancing. It was the thin tall figure of an oldish man in a long frock-coat, which opened in front over a gaily flowered silk waistcoat. On the bald crown of his head he wore a black skull cap, below which certain grotesque and scanty tails of fair hair, carefully brushed, fell to his shoulders. His face was long and sharply pointed, and the surface of it bronzed and wrinkled by long exposure, out of all likeness to human skin. The eyes were weirdly prominent and blue; the gestures had the deliberate extravagance ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her last, in the queer hat with green ribbons. I told the doctor this, guardedly, the next morning, and he said it was the morphia, and that I was lucky not to have seen a row of devils with green tails. ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... bull-elephants in the prime of life, from twenty-five to thirty-five years old, with great heads, short, thick legs bowed out with masses of muscle, and bodies with straight backs sloping to the long, well-feathered tails. Most of them were tuskers—and the sight of one magnificent bull near Dermot made the sportsman's trigger-finger itch, so splendid were its tusks—shapely, spreading outward and upward in a graceful sweep, and each nearly six feet in length along ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... it, neck or nothing! She is within sixty yards of us, and she keeps advancing. We turned the horses' tails to her. I knelt on one side, and, taking a steady aim at her breast, let fly. The ball cracked loudly on her tawny hide, and crippled her in the shoulder, upon which she charged with an appalling roar, and in the twinkling of an eye she was in the midst of us. At this moment Stofolus's ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the body of the comet, but yields to it in the case of gases, because electrical force varies with the surface, while gravitation varies only with the mass. From study of atomic weights and estimates of the velocity of thrust of cometary tails, Bredichin concluded that the chief components of the various kinds of tails are hydrogen, hydrocarbons, and the vapor of iron; and spectroscopic analysis goes ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... coat-tails, strode out of the room and down a passage, whence they emerged into another room also set about with ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... of their career, he says, they adopted the costume of all the Ural races, and notably of the Avari. The hair of the head was shorn off with the exception of a tuft. Their war-standards were horses' tails; before a battle there was a muster, at which arms and horses were inspected, and if any defects were discovered, the warrior who was guilty was at once put to death. The day and hour of combat were fixed by soothsayers, propitious signs were sought, and war-ditties chanted. It was ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... bees on the kidney-bean flowers, piercing the base of each corolla to reach the honey; or, at a disused pump-trough containing stagnant water, watching the larvae of the gnats as they came wriggling to the surface, putting out their tails to breathe, and then descending. Most children are instinctively naturalists, and were they encouraged would readily pass from careless observations to careful and deliberate ones. My father was wise in such matters; and I was not simply allowed but ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... white flowers, growing in long lines, as if they had been planted, wafted a very sweet fragrance across our breakfast table of white coral sand. While we were eating, two or three little lizards with tails curiously twirled round and round, like a St. Catherine wheel, made themselves friendly, and ate pieces of bread from our ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... their Masters fawn and leap, And wag their Tails apace, So tho' a Flatterer wants a Tail, His Tongue supplies ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... can afford to let drift away much of his only source of gold) to keep a note-book handy for the sieving and skimming of this running stream. Samuel Butler has good advice on this topic. Of ideas, he says, you must throw salt on their tails or they fly away and you never see their bright plumage again. Poems, stories, epigrams, all the happiest freaks of the mind, flit by on wings and at haphazard instants. They must be caught in air. In this respect one thinks American writers ought ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... though descended, Our manners are mended, Though still we can grin and backbite; We cut up each other, Be he friend or brother, And tails are the fashion—at night. This origination Is all speculation— We gamble in various shapes; So Mr. Darwin May speculate in Our ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... corners—'turning close to the ground, like a cat when scratchingly she wheels about after a mouse,' as my old favourite, Sir Philip Sidney, says. Notwithstanding her speed, however, when I reached the mouth of the lane, there was Mr Coningham half across the first field, with his coat-tails flying out behind him. I would not allow myself to be left in such a discourteous fashion, and gave chase. Before he had measured the other half of the field, I was ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... of countries there are crises where, for a breath, destinies lie in the laps of the gods and are jumbled, heads or tails. Thus are marked distinctive cycles like the seven ages of a man, and though, perhaps, they are too subtle to be perceived at the time, yet, having swung past the shadowy milestones, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... moreover my sister, bestowing her without my consent? They could have offered no greater insult to me than this," said he. And thereupon he rushed under the horses and cut off their lips at the teeth, and their ears close to their heads, and their tails close to their backs, and wherever he could clutch their eyelids, he cut them to the very bone, and he disfigured the horses ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... male occupant of the automobile that spoke, and in vain did his fair companion clutch at the tails of the linen duster that he wore; he was in the full tide of ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... Bear and the Wax Doll found themselves in a strange place. All about were shining tools, pots of glue, pieces of wood, strips of cloth, glass eyes, wooden arms and legs, odd ears, noses, tails and heads. ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope
... yes, I have been back there recently, and found everything changed. In fact, the West is a symbol of mutation. The marshlands have been filled in; streets extend across the places where I used to go for cat-tails; they have no more batrachian concerts there now. The only reminder of that earlier characteristic of the place is a huge green frog worked out in a marble mosaic on the floor of the new court house. That is the seal of my ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... rougher looking set of men I never saw in my life. All nations were there. Even a number of Chinamen, who couldn't understand ten words of English, and knew not what they shouted for, were in the crowd, wooden shoes, pig-tails and all. Manillamen, with long black hair, white teeth, and dark skins, and murderous looking knives by their sides, were present, and jabbered in the Mestisa tongue, which no one understood but themselves. Then there were ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... had guessed what advice the old man would give his enemy, and so, while his friends were greedily eating the ripest melons in the sunniest corner of the garden, he stole behind them and tied their tails together. He had only just finished when his ears caught the sound of breaking branches; and he cried: 'Quick! quick! here comes the master of the garden!' And the jackals sprang up and ran away in all directions, leaving their tails behind ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... around the corner of the house and there saw a strange sight. Mr. Treadwell was running about the yard. After him ran Splash, and the dog was holding tightly to Mr. Treadwell's coat, shaking the tails as if trying to ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... innocent word "zounds" was written with the same culpatory dashes and hyphens as the "damns that have had their day;" and "pigs," we suppose, were exenterated in like manner: suggested only by their heads and tails,—the first letter and the last. We happen to be no swearers ourselves, so that we are speaking a good word for no custom of our own; though, we confess, that when we come to an oath as a trait of character, in biography or in fiction, we are no ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... each side, tails wagging, eyes gleaming, they stood with fore-feet upon the couch and bent to sniff Him who was so dear to them. So they stood for just one uncomprehending moment; then dropped, to the ground, shivering, as Touaa gave a little whine. Then ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... saw two large birds about the ship, which were all black, except the neck and the beak, which were white; they had long wings, and long feathers in their tails, yet we observed that they flew heavily, and therefore imagined that they were of a species which did not usually fly far from the shore. I had flattered myself, that, before we had run six degrees to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Sand-Fly Pass. The breeze grew less and less, and in two hours had died away entirely. From the northeast a black, threatening cloud was moving slowly toward them, while the sails flapped idly as the Etta rolled to a heavy ground swell. The cloud came nearer and grew blacker, while swirling little tails dropped from it, almost touching the water, and then suddenly returned to the ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... the Santa Fe, jest now. Next comes cookin'. I been cook in everything from a hotel to a gradin'-camp. I cooked for high-collars and swalley-tails, and low-brows and jeans—till it come time to go. Incondescent to that I been poet select ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... end. The spot is close to the rendezvous, and most of the parties have arrived, or are not far off. There is an interchange of gossip over the doings of the day among the various groups; and, by-and-by, a count up of the number of pigs killed. Ears and tails are produced as vouchers, and about three hundred and fifty pigs, big and little, are thus accounted for, while half a dozen pair of tusks, of more than ordinary size, denote the killing of as many large boars. The tusks from the last slain monster become ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... long from their knees downward. They have great tufts of hair hanging down on their foreheads, and it seemeth they have beards because of the great store of hair hanging down at their chins and throats. The males have very long tails, and a great knob or flock at the end, so that in some respects they resemble the lion, and in some other the camel. They push with their horns, they run, they overtake and kill an horse when they are in their rage and anger. Finally it is a foul and fierce beast of countenance and form of body. ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... women I ever meets, black, white, brown, red, or yellow, this Pinky is the loveliest, and has 'em all hull down. She's wearin' a palm leaf petticoat and a string o' shark's teeth around her neck with an empty sardine box for a pendant. She has flowers in her hair, which is braided in pig-tails, different from the other girls. Her eyes—McGuffey, them eyes! Like a pair of fireflies floatin' in sorghum. And as she stands there working her toes in th' sand, she never takes her eyes off them fine ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... remembered seeing Mr. Bundercombe look more cheerful than when, at his urgent summons, I left Eve in the drawing-room and made my way into the study. He was standing on the hearthrug, with the tails of his morning coat drooping over his arms and an expression on his face that I can only describe as cherubic. Seated on chairs, a yard or so away from him, were two visitors of whom at first glance I formed a most unfavorable ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Colonel Powell on the extreme left—[Slapping his coat-tails out of JENNY'S hands, without looking around.]—and hold Custer on the second line, at Old Forge Road. That is all at present. [Turns to JENNY.] Good-bye, my darling! [Kisses her.] Remember your orders! You little pet! [Chuckling, ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... screech of wheels of solid wood revolving reluctantly on rough-hewn axles guiltless of grease. And as the tonga swiftly lessened the distance, his gaze, penetrating the thinning folds, discerned the contours of a cotton-wain drawn by twin stunted bullocks, patient noses to the ground, tails a-switch. Beside his cattle the driver plodded, goad in hand, a naked sword upon his hip. Within his reach, between the rude bales of the loaded cart, the butt of a brass-bound musket protruded significantly.... All men went armed in that wild ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... it be spoken, Fat Capons shak't their tails at's in defiance? And turkey tombs such honorable monuments, Shall piggs, Sir, that the Parsons self would ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... way for over a week, and everybody was getting tired of it; not only on our ship, for one day we caught a 'Torreador' openly admiring our collection of sharks' tails which we had nailed to the jib-boom. When he found himself observed he blushed and went about some business, before we had a chance to ask him aboard to see the sharks' backbones—fashioned into fearsome walking-sticks. ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... think temperately now of the atrocities of the mutineers in India, It does riot now quicken your pulse to think of them. You have not now the burning desire you once felt, to take a Sepoy by the throat and cut him to pieces with a cat-of-nine-tails. The common consent of mankind has decided that you have now attained the right view. I ask, is it certain that in all cases the second thought is the best;—is the right thought, as well as the calmest ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... between the French and the Russians. The Emperor had brandy given them, which they drank like water, and presented their glasses anew with a coolness which was very amusing. Their horses were small, with cropped manes and long tails, such as unfortunately can be seen ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... where his 'ome is," ses Sam, very severe; "but he might run away, and then the pore thing might be starved or else ill-treated. I 'ave 'eard o' boys tying tin cans to their tails." ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... would be difficult to give a full account of the curtains, which rolled up (as fine as a) shrimp's moustache; of the carpets of other skins spread on the floor; of the tripods exhaling the fragrant aroma of the brain of the musk deer; of the screens in a row resembling fans made of pheasant tails. Indeed, the gold-like doors and the windows like jade were suggestive of the abode of spirits; while the halls made of cinnamon wood and the palace of magnolia timber, of the very homes ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... cards, Mermaidens' tails, cool swards, Dawn dews and starlit seas, White marbles, whiter words - To live, ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... the benefit of his small sisters, who stood in a row under the spout, all dripping wet. Tommy was wetter still, having impartially pumped on himself first of all. Frocks, aprons, jacket, all were soaked, shoes and stockings were drenched, the long pig tails of the girls streamed large drops, as if they had ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... on watching a parcel of white ducks leaving a little pond, all walking a-row and quacking, and wriggling their fat tails. How absurd a thing to suddenly close my throat so that I could not find my voice to answer Boyd; for ever before me grew the almost forgotten vision of Guy Park, and of our white waterfowl on the river behind the house, where I had seen them so often from my chamber window ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... forty-eight eyes through the back and the front door of the dining-room, while Henry and I and the boss pope signed the contract. The second boss (an old man) wore a kilt (as usual) and a Balmoral bonnet with a little tartan edging and the tails pulled off. I told him that hat belong to my country - Sekotia; and he said, yes, that was the place that he belonged to right enough. And then all the Papists laughed till the woods rang; he was slashing away with ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric sympathy of love; and by that form was THE ONLY VACANT PLACE on the girls' side of the schoolhouse. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the stick and called to the beasts. They came, snarling and slinking, their tails between their legs. Bukawai led them to the passage and drove them into it. Then he dragged a rude lattice into place before the opening after he, himself, had left the chamber. "This will keep them from you," he said. "If I do not get the ten fat ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... aware of the growing dislike, and when at last one of the Inuit took revenge, they feared that others might do the same and in similar secret fashion; so they decided to leave the country. In order to deceive their neighbors, they cut off the tails of their long coats and tied their hair in bunches that stuck out behind to look like a strange people ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... wring to my coat tails, I made my way to the after cabin. The captain, with night-cap on head, had just ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... at every grimace and at every bow smiled a little smile and bowed a little bow. Mr. Thorne, however, was kept standing at the foot of the couch, for the new dean sat in the seat of honour near the table. Mr. Arabin the while was standing with his back to the fire, his coat-tails under his arms, gazing at her with all his eyes—not quite in vain, for every now and again a glance came up at him, bright as a meteor out ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... admitted Bess with suspicious promptness. "Walter is jolly good fun, especially when he has his Bargain Rush with him. But lately the rest of us girls—even Grace—have to hang on to his coat-tails to keep him from going off alone with you. He doesn't seem to know there's any one else around. Oh, you don't need to look so surprised, Miss Innocence," she added, as Nan regarded her with wide-open eyes. "You know it just as well as the rest ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... express my gratitude to my benefactor for the great liberality with which I was treated, when Mr. Jaggers stopped me. "I am not paid, Pip," said he, coolly, "to carry your words to any one;" and then gathered up his coat-tails, as he had gathered up the subject, and stood frowning at his boots as if he suspected them ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... tie our tails together, and then I can't!' The jackal, you see, was determined not to be done ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... by which inventors have been encouraged in their expectations are false, the rudders of ships and the tails of birds are no exceptions. They will never be able to guide balloons as sailors do ships, by a rudder, because ships do not float suspended in the water as balloons float in the air; nor do birds float through the air in any sense. They are not ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley
... poor Mr. Bullfrog was persuaded to forego his pleasant little cottage under the cat-tails, where his green spectacles and honest round back had excited, even in the minds of the boys, sentiments of respect and compassion. He came up into the garden, and established himself under a burdock, and ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 20th. I've been home a month. I've got tails to my dresses and silk linings, and my hair done up like the people in advertisements, and parasols with frills, and a pearl necklace to wear at nights with real evening dresses. I wear white veils, too, and such ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... gardens beneath the windows of the Queen, the peacocks, those maharajas of the birds, were spreading the bronze and emerald of their tails. The sun shone on them as on heaps of jewels, so that they dazzled the eyes. They stood about the feet of the ancient Brahmin sage, he who had tutored the Queen in her childhood and given her wisdom ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... frizzled, and others lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs, and the fore parts of their legs and feet; but the rest of their bodies was bare, so that I might see their skins, which were of a brown buff colour. They had no tails, nor any hair at all on their buttocks, except about the anus, which, I presume, nature had placed there to defend them as they sat on the ground, for this posture they used, as well as lying down, and often stood on their hind feet. They climbed high trees as ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... utmost which our modern poetical imagination has been able to invent, is a row of gas-lamps. It has, indeed, farther suggested itself to our minds as appropriate to gas-lamps set beside a river, that the gas should come out of fishes' tails; but we have not ingenuity enough to cast so much as a smelt or a sprat for ourselves; so we borrow the shape of a Neapolitan marble, which has been the refuse of the plate and candlestick shops in every capital in Europe ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... with ease; and they were therefore cautioned not to go too near. It was a fine sight to see eight or ten of these noble-looking animals lying down in various attitudes, quite indifferent apparently to the people outside—basking in the sun, and slowly moving their tufted tails to and fro. William examined them at a respectful distance from the bars; and so did Tommy, who had his mouth open with astonishment, in which there was at first not a little fear mixed, but he soon got bolder. The gentleman who had accompanied them, ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... going to show her the boys, and how we dress them up just like dragons," cried Polly, "and while they are prancing around and slashing their tails at rehearsal, I'm going to keep saying, 'That's nothing but Jasper and Ben and Clare, you know, Phronsie,' till I get her accustomed to them. You won't be frightened, will you, pet, at those dear, sweet old dragons?" she ended, ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... hands and feet. He declared that these gentlemen were great noblemen, who were traveling to the capital that they might speak with the government, and that it would cost the head of every man who presumed to pull a hair out of one of their horses' tails. This speech provoked several animated replies, during which some clenched their fists, and some took off their caps. Upon that the driver began a still more powerful oration, setting before the patriots a prospective quartering if they even ventured to look askance at the heads of the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... species of mirage." The mirage is one of the most beautiful scenes I ever beheld and can only be seen on the plains or in deserts in its complete beauty. It has to be seen to be appreciated. It makes a buffalo look like it had two tails. Everything ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... cattery; the row of pussies at the back, each on a velvet stand, some white, some tabby, some long-furred, some short-furred, all sitting with their forepaws doubled demurely under their chests, wagging their tails comically, and blinking with feline indifference at the footlights; a cage in a corner in which I descried the ferocious wild tomcat; and, busily putting the last touches to the guy ropes, the pupil and assistant Quast, neatly attired in a close fitting bottle-green uniform with brass ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... din, And roused the prisoned brutes within. The old horse thrust his long head out, And grave with wonder gazed about; The cock his lusty greeting said, And forth his speckled harem led; The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, And mild reproach of hunger looked; The horned patriarch of the sheep, Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, Shook his sage head with gesture mute, And emphasized ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... mice, three blind mice, See how they run! They all run after the farmer's wife, And she cut off their tails with a carving knife, Did you ever see such a thing in your life As ...
— Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes • Beatrix Potter |
