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More "All fours" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of me, they threw themselves on all fours, their faces touching the floor. Good gracious! what can be the matter? Nothing at all, it is only the ceremonious salute to which I am as yet unaccustomed. They rise, and proceed to take off my boots (one never keeps on one's shoes in a Japanese house), ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... him a solution to his thirst problems. On all fours he crawled to the river edge. He shoved his bow under the water and nearly sank himself absorbing as much of the Columbia river as could flow into his ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... unfrequently to the height of ten or fifteen feet, covered nearly the whole surface of the country. Several times I struck bear paths, so well worn that at first I thought that they had been trodden by human feet, but sooner or later they led me into thickets through which I could only go on all fours. I found a bear trap so constructed that, when sprung, an immense log would crush bruin to the earth; marten traps, where the animal was enticed by a tempting bait into a noose, which held it fast; and salmon traps, so made by means of wing dams, with lattice work and boxes ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... of a Christian clock mender pollutes the city of Tangier with his presence. Ye know, also, that when mosques are builded, asses bear the stones and the cement, and cross the sacred threshold. Now, therefore, send the Christian dog on all fours, and barefoot, into the holy place to mend the clock, and let him ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the end of the ravine, where the stage-road crossed it, and was about to turn into the road when, on looking up the bank, I saw on the crest of the slope some dark objects. At first I thought they were ponies, for they were moving on all fours, and directly toward the road. I ran up the bank, and had not gone more than ten yards, when I heard voices, and looking around, saw within a dozen steps of me five or six Indians lying on the grass, and talking in low tones. They had noticed me, but evidently thought I was ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... card games played in the United States, with rules, regulations, technicalities, scoring, counting, etc. Besides all the older games such as Euchre, Sixty-six, Forty-five, Rounce, Pedro, Pinochle, Pitch, California Jack, Poker, Cribbage, Loo, All Fours, Catch the Ten, Casino, Hearts, Whist, etc. there are added explicit ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... it was. For perceiving how he had committed himself, he had slipped down in the pew, crawled on all fours to the door, and got ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Spaniards posted their guards for the night and went to rest, believing every thing secure; but when day appeared next morning neither the cacique nor any of his attendants were to be found. Taking advantage of the centinels falling asleep, Capasi had crept out from among them on all fours, after which his Indians carried him off to some more secure place than the former, as he was never more seen. The Spanish escort returned much ashamed of themselves to Soto, pretending that Capasi and his attendants must have been carried off through the air, as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... across the ice-white fields. The river, after a time or two, he avoided. He did not like the metaphors which the sight of it called into Brenton's conversation. Indeed, it was far better for any man to go scrabbling up an icy slope, breathless and upon all fours, than to stand in a bleak up-valley wind and meditate upon the sliding ice cakes in an iron-gray stream. Health and a feeling for the picturesque by no means always walk hand in hand; and it was health the doctor sought for Brenton, during ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... tyrant, who made her tremble—the man who sang the song with the lady's-maid and danced the chorus, who made her laugh—the pony who reared up on his hind legs when he saw the murderer, and wouldn't hear of walking on all fours again until he was taken into custody—the clown who ventured on such familiarities with the military man in boots—the lady who jumped over the nine-and-twenty ribbons and came down safe upon the horse's back—everything was delightful, splendid, and surprising! ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... that I sang she seemed more amiable and interested. She even asked me to come to see her the next day. "That is," she said, "if you can climb my hill." I told her that I was sure I could climb her hill, and would, even if I had to climb on all fours. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... stream was deep here, but some fifty yards below was a shallow, for which he made off hot-foot; and forgetting landlords, keepers, solemn prohibitions of the Doctor, and everything else, pulled up his trousers, plunged across, and in three minutes was creeping along on all fours ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... floor of the room—then darted swiftly out between the legs of Lund and Rainey, on all fours, like a great dog. Curlike, it sprawled on the floor with a white face and pop-eyes, with hands outstretched in pleading, knees drawn up in some ludicrous attempt at protection, calling shrilly, in ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... in licking the trampled body of her young one with that amazing tongue of hers. At length, apparently convinced that the little one was quite dead, she brayed again piteously, dropping forward upon all fours, and made off slowly down the trail, walking with grotesque awkwardness on the sides of her feet. For two or three hundred yards she kept on, drawing a wake of crimson behind her; and then, apparently exhausted by her wound, she turned off among the canes, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... was gone a herd of deer came trotting by. Behind them played the young fawns together. They frolicked about like kittens. They bounced on all fours like balls. Then they pitched forward, kicking their heels in the air. The Iktomi arrow watched them so happy on the ground. Looking quickly up into the sky, he said in his heart, "The magician is out of sight. ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... the invasion would be stopped with certainty. Half way to Bukowitza there burst on us a terrific thunderstorm, with torrents of rain. One bolt struck so near us that the concussion knocked my perianik down, and my horse jumped up on all fours as I never saw a horse do before, but neither was touched by the lightning, and we arrived at the first house of Bukowitza drenched and tired, having knocked the two days' march ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... flourishing or gallant yeoman. But, like monopolizers in general, he was apt to speculate a little too deeply. Eager to enjoy, he was impatient to obtain the means of enjoyment. So that, at one time, the turning up of the jack at all fours was to make his fortune; but how provoking! it happened to be the ten: at another it depended on a duck-wing cock, which (who could have foreseen so strange an accident?) disgraced the best feeder in the kingdom, by running away: and it more than once ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... fire. The road looked as if the countryside had been traversed by a hurricane. All sorts of debris filled the fields and everywhere there seemed to be a thick deposit of blackened earth. Vaguely realizing that he must report for duty, he crawled, in spite of his bursting head and aching limbs, on all fours down the road ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... all fours retrieving, and the undignified posture had the advantage of serving to conceal the wild terror of his face; a terror such as may stamp itself upon the features of a man who cannot swim and who ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... into the tunnel and whispered hoarsely the good news. Men came out on all fours over the bodies of those who could not move. Shorty dragged Dave into the open. He was a sorry sight. The shirt had been almost literally ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... down on all fours on the hearthrug. "Mercy!" he cried, feebly. "I've meant no offence. Only tell me ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... Archangias. 'She must be sixteen now. She's growing up like a brute beast. I have seen her running on all fours in a ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... circles, cutting the air with a crack and a burr that might be heard rods away. Though these sounds did not reach the men, busy with the snow-shack, they did reach listening ears—a great white bear, wandering the floes in search of some sleeping seal, stood first on all fours, then on his haunches, to listen. Then, with many a misgiving and many a pause, he made his cautious way to the edge of that particular ice-flat where the plane rested. Thence, after more misgivings, he trundled his awkward body across the flat and took a position ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... a pocket rule and made careful measurements of both prints; the result he set down in a note book. I was quite as excited now as Terry. We crawled along on all fours until we reached the open trap; there was no trace here of either spider-webs or dust. We scrambled into the loft without much difficulty, and found a large room with sloping beams overhead and two small windows, innocent ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... Natalie's slight gasp of astonishment, he turned his head; and stared at them agape, with hanging paws, like a great baby. He looked so homely and comical Natalie burst out laughing. At the sound, Bruin promptly fell to all fours; and with a great "woof!" of astonishment and indignation, bundled over ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... no explanation. He did not refer to orders or disorders. He simply adjourned the House till six that evening. And the House adjourned—some of it nearly on all fours. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... machines are governed to-day, and there is every reason to believe that they will continue to be governed, by masterful-looking resultants, masters of nothing but compromise, and that little fancy of an inner conspiracy of control within the machine and behind ostensible politics is really on all fours with the wonderful Rodin (of the Juif Errant) and as probable as anything else in the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... path in front of the big old farm, swung wide the farm gates, and propped them open. Then he went down on all fours and put his ear to the frost-bound country road and listened. "Yes," he added, "two miles away, and coming on sharp. Why not let them come? What does it matter how soon?" He strode back, however, with quick steps. Five minutes afterward he was at the door of the farm parlour ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... me to go to the Boulevard Cafe—they dance on Sunday just the same as weekdays—and then we'll do a movie afterward. I suppose Steve and his Beatrice are now revelling in the Constantine conservatory, with Steve walking on all fours to prove his devotion. Why is it some girls have everything? Look at me—no one cares if I live or die. First I had a stepmother, and then I tried living with a great-aunt, and then I went to work. Here I am still working, and a lot of thanks I get for it. I'd like to see the Gorgeous ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... goes with a great splash. In one place we must stoop very low to pass under a heavy and glutinous bridge that crosses the trench, and we only get through with difficulty. It obliges us to kneel in the mud, to flatten ourselves on the ground, and to crawl on all fours for a few paces. A little farther there are evolutions to perform as we grasp a post that the sinking of the ground has set aslope across ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... According to him, the design was that Ralegh should stop in France till the anger of Spain was lulled. After their departure a servant of Ralegh's rushed to Stukely with the news that his master was out of his wits, in his shirt, and upon all fours, gnawing at the rushes on the boards. Stukely sent Manourie to him. Manourie administered the emetic, and also an ointment compounded of aquafortis. This brought out purple pustules over the breast and arms. Strangers, and after a single visit ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... received such a blow before in his life, stopped dead short, falling back almost on to his haunches, then reared straight up and in a moment of temper tried to throw her off; indeed, she must have fallen but Ida, always cool at such moments, swept sideways, caught Adonis's bridle and brought him on all fours. Maude was instantly jerked forward on to the horse's neck in a humiliating fashion, but recovering her ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... that he was fast asleep, and if, looking through the key-hole, he had made sure Matrena was occupied in her own chamber. Rouletabille, at the threshold, glided to one side, out of the line of view from the hole, and got down on all fours. He crawled toward the door. With his head to the floor he made sure that the little ordinary pin which he had placed on guard that evening, stuck in the floor against the door, was still erect, having thus additional proof that the door had not been moved. In any other ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... ALL FOURS, a card game (known also in America as Seven Up, Old Sledge or High-Low-Jack) usually played by two players, though four may play. A full pack is used and each player receives seven counters. Four points can be scored, one each for high, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... open glade in the wood his friend the bear was lumbering on all fours, wild-eyed, with lolling tongue and panting breath. Close behind him came on foot a young man, several years older than John, dressed in a suit of green velvet, with a plumed cap. In his hand he bore a long spear, and he was charging upon the bear with a cruel light in his eyes. Suddenly ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... it has a counterpart with the American system of totem; although the exact degree to which the comparison runs on all fours is undetermined. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... darkness to lift. It did not lift that day, nor the next. Dick adventured on a voyage round the walls. He hit his shins against the stove, and this suggested to him that it would be better to crawl on all fours, one hand in front of him. Torpenhow ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... I had startled them. Their remarks were neither complimentary nor refined. The old men, in especial, got quite profane, and screamed excited billingsgate. Finally they all stopped at once, dropped on all fours, and loped away, their ridiculous long tails curved in a half arc. Then for the first time I noticed that, under cover of the insults, the women and children had silently retired. Once more I was left to the familiar ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... running upon their hands and feet, and imitating the dogs of the country. Their dress was adapted to this purpose; the wooden sword, stuck in the hinder part of the girdle which they wore round the waist, did not, when they were crawling on all fours, look much unlike the tail of a dog curled over his back. Every time they passed the place where the boys were seated, they threw up the sand and dust on them with their hands and their feet. During this ceremony the boys sat perfectly still and silent, never once moving themselves from ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... arrived first, was surprised by a lion: she fled, and was about to hide when her veil fell, and the lion seized it and tossed it about in his bloody jaws. The lion was Frederic Lemaitre, who thus made his first appearance on any stage on all fours. One night the actor who played Pyramus got into a dispute in a neighboring cafe, and could not appear on account of the exceeding warmth of the discussion, which resulted in sending him home with a broken head. The manager was in a highly excited state ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... wind to reach the Eden, a couple of miles from our starting-point, and we were on all fours part of the way. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... climb steeper than is easy. If the Skis are slipping back, you are going too steep and should turn off and traverse instead. No time is saved by too steep a climb; the man who goes easily gets to the top first, while the other clambers up almost on all fours, gets hot and exhausted and has gained nothing. If I am leading an elementary run uphill, I can soon pick out the experienced runners by the line they take and the pace at which they climb. The puffing, panting, stumbling people, who forge ahead, herring-boning or turning their ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... Park a snorting automobile leaped past them with muffler open. The horse upon which Beatrice rode was a young one. It gave instant signals of alarm, went sunfishing on its hind legs, came down to all fours, and bolted. ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... one stride; but he was still so awkward that he lost his balance and fell upon his nose. He at once picked himself up with so much dignity that nobody dared make fun of him; and, this time, he scrambled up on all fours and then, putting his legs wide apart, stood and eyed Tyltyl from top ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... dropped flat on the ground, and Carnes, on all fours, crawled forward to join him. He smothered an exclamation as he looked over the crest of the hill. Before him, sitting in a hollow in the ground, was the huge globe which ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... chuck," said the General, going down promptly upon all fours to seek for the feathered darlings Judy had ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... ingenious device for decoying them. He disguised himself as an antelope, by means of a cloak of cotton cloth (manta) painted to resemble the colouring of the animal. This covered his body, arms, and legs. On his head he placed the antlers of a stag, and by creeping on all fours he could approach the antelopes quite closely and thus successfully shoot them. The Apaches, according to the Mexicans, were experts at hunting ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... self-being of the world, uninjured and undiminished, and would laugh at the destruction of the world as an illusion. This conclusion per impossible may be balanced by the counter-conclusion, which is on all fours with it, that if that last individual were to be annihilated in and with him the whole world would be destroyed. It was in this sense that the mystic Angelas Silesius[1] declared that God could not live for a moment without him, and that if he were to be annihilated God must of ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... them let go, and handed them over to the men in red. The instrument-players sometimes stopped through exhaustion; then the cries of the mothers might be heard, and the frizzling of the fat as it fell upon the coals. The henbane-drinkers crawled on all fours around the colossus, roaring like tigers; the Yidonim vaticinated, the Devotees sang with their cloven lips; the trellis-work had been broken through, all wished for a share in the sacrifice;—and fathers, whose children had died previously, cast their effigies, their playthings, their ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... a part of some monstrous animal, probably part of a tooth. I feel like a perfect monster, with heavy legs, unwieldy head, and very large body. I go down to a shallow stream to drink. I can hardly speak, my jaws are so heavy. I feel like getting down on all fours. What a noise comes through the woods. I have an impulse to answer it. My ears are very large and leathery, and I can almost fancy they flap in my face as I move my head. There are some older ones than I. It seems so out of keeping to be ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... warm" when he stood wondering whether it was worth while to look into the flour-bin, for Mose gave an inarticulate snarl and pounced on him from behind. The weight of him sent Ford down on all fours and kept him there for a space, and even after he was up he found himself quite busy. Mose was a husky individual, with no infirmity of the arms and fists, even if he did have a stiff leg, and drunkenness frequently flares and fades in a man like a candle ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... so simple as the most earnest partisans in the controversy would wish us to believe. For the United Kingdom I am a convinced Freetrader. I admit that the old country, where half the population subsists on imported food, which must be paid for in exported goods, is not on all fours with a colony capable of producing in abundance all the necessaries of life for a population infinitely more numerous than at present exists within its borders. But while the conditions are different the fact remains that under a protective system customers ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... clothes, were assembled in an open place. All the fires in the houses had been previously extinguished. Two sturdy yokels now dug a tunnel through a mound beside an oak tree; the tunnel was just high enough to let a man creep through it on all fours. Two fires, lit by the need-fire, were now laid, one at each end of the tunnel; and the old woman with the kettle took her stand at the entrance of the tunnel, while the one with the lock posted herself ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... the devil! Chagniol fell forward on his face. Duc got up, and ran along on all fours as far as the bend in the trench, and there he began to scratch out the earth like a rabbit, and then he died. The blood was pouring down me right and left, and I thought it was time for me to go. I set off running, holding a finger to each side of my neck, because of the blood. I was thinking: ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... unique," said Wentworth; "and sometimes he tosses the biscuit in the air when they say 'Trust,' sometimes when they say 'Paid for,' but generally he drops on all fours and eats it before ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... digs a trench in the snow and lies in wait for the unsuspecting deer. When he shoots one, he immediately skins it, but takes care to leave the head attached to the skin; then ramming a pole into the head at the neck, he drapes the skin over the pole and getting down on all fours places the skin over his back and pretends to be a caribou. Thus he will approach the band, and should he tire of crawling along on his hands and knees he will even lie down to rest in sight of the deer, but he always takes care to keep down wind. In such a guise ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... 'You are raking in the money and buying your wife silk handkerchiefs, but the poor farm labourers have to creep on all fours. It's "Cut the corn, Sobieska and Maciek, and I will brag about like a gentleman!" You will see, he will soon call himself "Pan Slimaczinski."[1] He is the devil's own son, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... late to stop that gorilla-like spring, and Mut-mut, with a glitter of steel flashing in one of his outspread palms, launched himself upon them, landing, like some huge and horrible cat of dreams, on all fours in the body ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... voiced his defiance, tossed his crest on high, then plunged giddily forward, was checked amid a whirlwind of lashing hoofs, rose on his hind legs higher and higher, swinging giddily round and round, felt a stunning blow, staggered, and dropping on all fours, stove in the stable door with a fling of his hind hoofs. But the eyes of Barnabas were glowing, his lips still curved, and his grip upon the reins was more masterful. And, feeling all this, Four-legs, foaming with rage, his nostrils flaring, turned upon his foe with snapping ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... to the players. Clad in an easy-fitting dark blue "lounge suit," with narrow white cross-bar lines on it, an aged and faded orange sheep-skin hearthrug thrown gallantly across his shoulders, Farge, on all fours, with the mildest roarings imaginable, made rushes from under the dinner-table at the devoted Worthington, who withstood his fiery onslaught with lungings and brandishings of that truly classic weapon, the humble necessary umbrella. At each rush the ladies backed and tittered, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... maintain her seat, until the cow, seeing she was unable to get rid of her burden, ran for a black walnut tree, which stood near the old pump. She ran close against this tree and Ruth came shooting from the cow's back, much like a big frog jumping into a pond, landing unhurt on all fours on the soft ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... do while fishing for sturgeon. The boy-fish had been taken to the manor, where he had been properly clothed, and placed in the care of a servant whose task it was to teach the poor lad to speak, and walk upright instead of on all fours, as had been his habit. Success had so far attended the efforts to tame the wild boy that he would eat bread and keep on his clothes. He had also learned to say "Ham-ham" when he wanted something to eat; and he had been taught to turn the ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... too; the boy's callow head shone in the sunshine, and they came dallying down the little path, many faces and shoulders peering over the terrace wall at them. Once the child stumbled, loosed his hold of his father's finger and came down upon all fours. He crawled to the pathside, filled his little hands with leaves, and held them up towards his sire; and they ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... hour to play with his children before a mother's lullaby should put them to sleep. He got down on his all fours and little Jeb mounted and rode round the room to the baby's scream of joy. He lay flat on the floor with the baby on his breast and let her pull his beard and ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... waited till all was still, and when the sentry at the door was pacing up and down, and his footsteps on the stone landing would help to dull any noise he made, he would slip out of the window, drop on to his toes, and then go down on all fours, and creep along close to the wall beneath the windows, right for the piazza-like place, and along beneath the arches, making not for either of the entrance gates, but for the private garden. There he would be stopped by the wall; but there was a corner there with a set of iron spikes pointing ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... not to move away—and the animals at once began cropping the grass. For a short distance the men walked forward, and then, as they neared the brow over which Dick declared he had seen the horn, they went down on all fours, and finally, when close to ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... every one pitched into his neighbor with the most fearful cries, and hell itself seemed broke loose. The hour-glass and the Moulah of Oude had got me down and were pummelling me to death, when a short, thickset man came on all fours slap down upon them shouting out, 'Way, make way for the royal Bengal tiger!' at which they both fled like lightning, leaving me to the encounter single-handed. Fortunately, however, this was not of very long duration, for some well-disposed Christians ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... I thought that the hall also was deserted. I was wrong, and I crept upon a Kaffir on all fours. Poor devil, I could not bring myself to deal him a base blow, but I threatened him most hideously with my revolver, and left the white teeth chattering in his black head as I took the stairs three at a time. ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the selection of our enemies. Conceit is one of the greatest of the virtues, yet how few people recognise it as a thing to aim at and to strive after. In conceit many a man and woman has found salvation, yet the average person goes on all fours grovelling after modesty. You and I, Reggie, at least have found that salvation. We know ourselves as we are, and understand our own greatness. We do not hoodwink ourselves into the blind belief that ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... flat white thing, and all around him were enormous strange objects. Craning out still farther he over-balanced himself and fell thud! upon a hard, polished flat plain. He tried to scramble to his feet, but the ground under him was so slippery that he could only crawl gingerly on all fours and flounder about ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... upside down with the strap strained tight across his loins, with Bland dangling before him, felt even sillier than the Thunder Bird looked. He freed himself after the first paralyzing shock of surprise, dropped on all fours upon the upper wing covering, and crawled out between the front braces. A minute later Bland ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... did get his ambition up, and he raised the window and climbed out on the icy roof, with nothing on but his socks and a very short shirt. He went climbing along on all fours on the roof toward the chimney where the cats were. In the mean time these young ladies and gentlemen were enjoying themselves down under the eaves, and when Jim got almost to that chimney he made a pass at the cats, and his heels ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... suspected that Master Chiron was not really very different from other people, but that, being a kind-hearted and merry old fellow, he was in the habit of making believe that he was a horse, and scrambling about the schoolroom on all fours and letting the little boys ride upon his back. And so, when his scholars had grown up and grown old and were trotting their grandchildren on their knees, they told them about the sports of their school-days; and these young ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... circumstances attending Sai's presence at the castle, occurred to a woman who swept the floor of the great hall every day before dinner was laid, with a little hand-broom, called a prah-prah. She was engaged in her usual occupation, without knowing that Sai was there, and stooping almost on all fours; when with a sudden impulse of fun, the panther jumped upon her back, and stood there, wagging his tail. Naturally supposing she was going to be devoured, the poor prah-prah woman screamed so violently as to bring the other servants, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... interrupted at this point by the appearance of her grandchildren from the back of the yew hedge by which she was sitting—Tuttu on all fours, neighing like a horse, with Tutti on his back, blowing ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... you didn't say on all fours, it's all right," responded Roy in a weak attempt at a joke that focused three pairs of girlish eyes ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... minutes past three an uninteresting performance called the "bear dance" began. A man entered on all fours; his face was painted white; he wore around his loins and over his shoulders pieces of some dark pelt which may have been bear skin, but looked more like the skin of a black sheep. The fire had now burned ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... us that man, at first a hairy brute, walking on all fours, has risen on his hind-legs and shed his fur; and you complacently demonstrate how the elimination of the hairy pelt was effected. Instead of bolstering up a theory with a handful of fluff gained or lost, it would perhaps be better to settle how the original brute ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... had now dropped from its upright position at Dolly's window and was crawling on all fours back along the wide porch. It certainly was coming that way ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... way, it got so narrow that he found it difficult to secure a foot-hold. At this point the ridge became so attenuated that the youth saw at the first glance that it was impossible to proceed in an upright position; he therefore crept along on all fours, or sat astride the ridge and urged himself on ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... The DINOSAURS (terrible reptiles) are an extremely varied order which were masters of the land from the late Trias until the close of the Mesozoic era. Some were far larger than elephants, some were as small as cats; some walked on all fours, some were bipedal; some fed on the luxuriant tropical foliage, and others on the flesh of weaker reptiles. They may be classed in three divisions,—the FLESH-EATING DINOSAURS, the REPTILE-FOOTED DINOSAURS, and the BEAKED DINOSAURS,—the latter ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... visitation; much less could I conceive how my friend Thompson would be able to administer clysters, that were ordered for some, in that situation; when I saw him thrust his wig in his pocket, and strip himself to his waistcoat in a moment, then creep on all fours under the hammocks of the sick, and, forcing up his bare pate between two, keep them asunder with one shoulder, until he had done his duty. Eager to learn the service, I desired he would give me leave to perform the ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... remain upon his back long. The instant he landed he started to turn over. He saw one of the snakes draw near and make a strike at his sockless ankle. Giant let out a yell like an Indian on the warpath, and, on all fours, made a leap like a frog a distance of several feet. Then he stood upright and made another leap for the rocks. As he came close, Snap caught him by the arm ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... for two reasons,—first, to see fair play, in case that Ironhook should come to wash his ugly visage, and find you on all fours over the brook—you understand? And next, to tell you what I heard last night among ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... annoys me, to be obliged to go on all fours, when two legs are my proper walking equipment," replied the Scarecrow. "I consider it beneath my dignity. In other words, my remarkable brains can tire, through humiliation, although ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... man, giving me a shove, just as the woman flung her shawl over my head. I stepped back, for the shove was no light one; but just behind me the boy had crouched on all fours (he had evidently practised the trick), so that I went headlong over him, and had a nasty ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... I haven't got the law of him, it's because he's too much of a sneak. He wasn't anything but a handsome sort of beast to begin with; and, what with drinking and the life he's led, he's grown into a sort of thing that had better go on all fours like Nebuchadnezzar than come nigh decent people on his hind-legs. Why has he let her alone all these years?" The speech was grimly dramatic. "Why, just because, first place, I believe another woman ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... easily imagine, I had excellent opportunity of observing, during these two days, the manner in which the gorillas walked when in open ground. They move along with great rapidity and on all fours, that is, with the knuckles of their hands touching the ground. Artists, in representing the gorilla walking, generally make the arms too much bowed outwards, and the elbows too much bent; this gives the figures an appearance of heaviness ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a good chance for me to take a peep into her room, so I ventured to swing over and drop down on the window-sill beside her, on all fours. I did it very quietly, so quietly, in fact, that I do not see how she could possibly have been disturbed; yet I give you my word, Ring-tail, that woman shrieked until you could have heard her half a mile. I never was so terrified ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... a Wood Pile on the edge of an immense forest and undoubtedly miles from a dwelling. As the boat reached the bank, not even waiting for the gang plank to be shoved out, the old sinner gave me a push and at the same time applied the now familiar boot. I reached the earth on all fours. My first thought was to present him with a rock, but I curbed my temper, for I had no idea of ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... the brute still remaining quite motionless, we cautiously approached, and found it was stone dead. The perfect naturalness of the position, however, might well have deceived a more experienced sportsman. The beast was lying crouched on all fours, as if in the very act of preparing to spring. The one bullet had killed it; the wound was in the lungs, and the internal bleeding had suffocated it, but here was a wonderful instance of the tiger's tenacity of life, even when sorely wounded, for it had travelled over ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... "baboon," an ape or monkey trained to gather cocoa-nuts, a hideous beast on very long legs when on all fours, but capable of walking erect. They called him a "dog-faced baboon," but I think they were wrong. He has a short, curved tail, sable-colored fur darkening down his back, and a most repulsive, treacherous, and ferocious countenance. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... you will, to-night, and top the clouds before sunrise. And I promise you this," he went on, "when you pass from the greyness of these sordid lands into the everlasting sunshine of the East, you will not care any longer about these people who go about the world on all fours. Day by day you will know what life and love mean. You will find the cloying weight of material things pass from your brain and body, and the joy of holy and wonderful living ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... starts right in, regardless of the fact that it does not understand the machinery. This one was weak but game; and it went down only to rise again. It went in for a course of Experience; and finally, having got the hang of things, it was balancing on all fours with fair prospects of success. Its status was a little uncertain,—like a sailor just landed on a continent which seems to have been drinking,—but still it was up and ready to try a step or two if necessary. But now the dog, who had been keeping a sharp eye on every move, became ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... gentlemen held me around the waist, and raised me from the ground, while I shook my arms and legs in time to the music. The concert of these ladies awoke the sleeper, who stared wildly at me, frightened at my gestures, then sprang up and ran with all his might, followed by my brother, who crept on all fours, representing a dog, I think, which belonged to this strange person. As I was then a mere child, I have only a confused idea of all this; but the society of Madame Bonaparte seemed to be much ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... a hit; I was burning to establish a reputation as a bear and get further engagements; so I threw myself into my work with an abandon that promised great things. I capered back and forth from one end of the room to the other on all fours, Sandy applauding with enthusiasm; I walked upright and growled and snapped and snarled; I stood on my head, I flung handsprings, I danced a lubberly dance with my paws bent and my imaginary snout sniffing from side to side; I did everything a bear could do, and many ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Whatever may be said as to the need of subsidising special industries for the production of certain war material is nothing further to the fiscal purpose, whether the alleged need be real or not. The production of war material is a matter of military policy on all fours with the maintenance of Government dockyards, and does not enter into the fiscal problem properly so called. But to the special case of dyes, considered as a "key" or "pivotal" industry, I will ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... Charles, to cry. The German eolina was of itself bad enough, but these congregated noises were intolerable. Uncle John aimed a desperate blow with a large apple, which he was just about to bite, at the head of Carlo, who, in order to give his lungs fair play, was standing on all fours on the hampers. The apple missed the dog, and went some distance beyond him into the water. Mr. Carlo, attributing to Uncle John a kinder feeling than that which actually prompted the proceeding, looked upon it as a good-natured expedient to afford ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... the wood pucks cud transform him on to all fours, what a farder he'd mek to th' next litter o' pops at ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... Siam, shall respect and follow the laws and customs of the country in all points'—conceding not only interterritoriality to the fullest extent; but making it the duty of American traders to creep on all fours when in the presence of a high functionary of that kingdom, and to become orthodox Buddhists! Inadvertently, no doubt, going farther than Joel Barlow, who thought it expedient in his treaty with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... sharpened by love, at once took advantage of her opportunity. She crept on all fours towards the rock on which Alice lay, in such a manner that it came between her ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... another second she knew this to be untrue, for, stooping low, the boy appeared to go on all fours as he glided over the snow; he was stalking the wolf even as the wolf ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... we noticed that curious institution—the temazcalli, which corresponds exactly to the Russian vapour-bath. It is a sort of oven, into which the bather creeps on all fours, and lies down, and the stones at one end are heated by a fire outside. Upon these stones the bather sprinkles cold water, which fills the place with suffocating steam. When he feels himself to have been sufficiently sweated, he crawls out again, and has jars of cold ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... had an alarm of robbers. Under the mountain called Gebel Foodah, we were entangled in shoals, owing to a change in the bed of the river, and forced to stay all night; and at three in the morning, the Reis sent in the boy to say he had seen a man creeping on all fours—would I fire my pistol? As my revolver had been stolen in Janet's house, I was obliged to beg him to receive any possible troop of armed robbers very civilly, and to let them take what they pleased. However, Omar blazed ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... on they passed a large building, with lights still twinkling in the windows. Presently the tall Highlander stood up and sniffed. Then motioning Waverley to do as he did, he began to crawl on all fours toward a low and ruinous sheep-fold. With some difficulty Edward obeyed, and with so much care was the stalk conducted, that presently, looking over a stone wall, he could see an outpost of five or six soldiers lying ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... more freely. He congratulated himself. Intercourse was in act of becoming normal and easy. So far it had been quite absurdly hind-leggy—and for him, him, to be forced into being hind-leggy by a girl of barely eighteen! Now he prepared to trot gaily, comfortably, off on all fours, when she spoke, bringing him up to the perpendicular again ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the cat reared and struck a vicious blow at his tormentor with great, bared talons that might well have torn away the ape-man's face had the blow landed; but it did not land—Tarzan was even quicker than Sheeta. As the panther came to all fours again upon the little platform, Tarzan un-slung his heavy spear and prodded at the snarling face, and as Sheeta warded off the blows, the two continued their horrid duet of blood-curdling roars ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of his tub with webbed hands and swung his webbed, yellow-skinned feet free from the water which kept the sensitive membranes from drying, and at the same time supplied his body tissues with liquid. Falling upon all fours, like a great, misshapen pet, he waddled awkwardly ...
— The Indulgence of Negu Mah • Robert Andrew Arthur
... were dimmed by the rain. The children would play at hide-and-seek in the tall walnut wardrobe and underneath Mother Chantemesse's colossal bed. There were also two or three tables in the room, and they crawled under these on all fours. They found the place a very charming playground, on account of the dim light and the vegetables scattered about in the dark corners. The street itself, too, narrow and very quiet, with a broad arcade opening into ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... from so suddenly? From there, from behind the mound of earth that had been thrown up near the peat pit. She had been creeping on all fours plucking berries; a pail that was almost ft 11 hung on her arm, and in her right hand she carried the wooden measure and the large bone curry-comb with which she stripped off ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... that any people who will get down on all fours to worship the picture of their emperor and, at this period of the world's progress, ascribe to a mere human being the attributes of divinity, are certainly deficient in common sense, if not in civilization. However, for the purpose ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... parents by being unable to understand a word said to them in Mechlenberg. An English-speaking foreigner, it is true, would find himself equally nonplussed among the Yorkshire wolds, or in the purlieus of Whitechapel; but the cases are not on all fours. Throughout Germany it is not only in the country districts and among the uneducated that dialects are maintained. Every province has practically its own language, of which it is proud and retentive. An educated Bavarian will admit to you that, academically speaking, the ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... see in it only an emanation from God, not the God himself. All this argument may strike the reader as extremely nebulous, but I submit that the fault is not mine. It was not I who sought to demonstrate the reality of a figure of speech by placing it on all fours with a cathedral and a regiment. The whole contention is so baffling that reason staggers and flounders as in a quicksand. It rests upon a mixture of categories, as palpable and yet as elusive as anything in ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... quit the shelter which the thick foliage of the wood afforded him. Slowly, almost on all fours, he bore to the right and in this way reached the top of a hillock that rose to the level of the neighboring trees. The walls were taller still. Nevertheless, he perceived the roof of the castle which they ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... J[)e]ssakk[-i]d is provided with four or more tubular bones, consisting of the leg bones of large birds, each of the thickness of a finger and 4 or 5 inches in length. After the priest has fasted and chanted prayers for success, he gets down upon all fours close to the patient and with his mouth near the affected part. After using the rattle and singing most vociferously to cause the evil manid[-o] to take shelter at some particular spot, so that it may be detected and located ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... of smoke issued from the bush, followed by the report of a gun, and Carlo, who had taken advantage of George's revery to slip on ahead, gave a sharp howl, and spun round upon all fours. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... under which the men had been when she had first heard them talking. It seemed a great distance to the ground from the rock, but she took the jump bravely, not even shutting her eyes. She landed on all fours and pitched headlong, face down, in the dust, but was up instantly and ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... though the Dean left several lists of instances of Itacism, he worked out none, except the substitution of [Greek: hen] for [Greek: en] in St. Mark iv. 8, which as it is not strictly on all fours with the rest I have reserved till last. He mentioned all that I have introduced (besides a few others), on detached papers, some of them more than once, and [Greek: lousanti] and [Greek: katharizon] even more than the others. In the brief discussion of each instance which ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... the cellar were ranged a number of doors, all securely padlocked. These were evidently the private cellars of the tenants. As he threw his light on the floor, he could not repress a movement of surprise. Dropping on all fours, he began a close examination of ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... insanity was deemed most harmless, and his relations, who were rich and wellborn, had requested every indulgence to be shown to him. The watch suspected nothing, and repaired to the house. As soon as the trees hid him,—"Now," said the soldier, "stoop almost on all fours, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mother laughed a loud, wild laugh, and turned her back to the bear, who put his two strong paws on her shoulder. A heavy blow from the stout stick of the younger Italian brought him down on all fours in a state ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... marched on to Umgungundhlovu, where Retief's mouldering body was found on the hill of mimosas, and on it the deed of grant of land at Durban. Pretorius was ambushed by Zulus disguised as cattle, crawling on all fours and wearing ox hides; but he escaped with slight loss, and returned to the Tugela. "Dingaan's Day," December 16, is kept by the Boers as a festival of ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... amused themselves playing bull-fight, and among the most-applauded feats was that of Don Tancredo. One tot would get down on all fours, and another, not very heavy, would mount him and fold his arms, thrust back his chest and place a three-cornered hat of paper upon ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... inquisitiveness as they evidently did with delight. Parrots in gay plumage filled the air with shrill cries, while here and there herds of antelopes were visible, who, however, always dashed away in rapid flight, in which their strange manner of springing from all fours in the air afforded a most strange and ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... the tone of benevolent farewell, and the bear, dropping on all fours, disappeared in the brush. Robert, whose fancy had been alive and leaping, returned to the camp rather pleased with himself, despite the fact that about three hundred pounds of excellent food ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... This grill is high enough for Hagenbeck, and it used to be a favorite game with us to play animal behind it for the street's amusement. At the hour when the crowd issued from the matinee at the Hyperion Theatre, our wittiest students paced on all fours up and down behind this grill and roared for raw beef. E—— was the wag of the building and he could climb up to a high place and scratch himself like a monkey—an entertainment of more humor than elegance. Elated with success, he and a companion later chartered a street-organ—a doleful one-legged ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... Stenson declared, "this is a veritable temple of peace. I arrived here literally on all fours. Miss Abbeway has proved to me quite conclusively that as a democratic leader ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... or elongated lash of the reins. Without hesitation the pony stepped off the grade, bunched his hoofs and slid down the precipitous slope. So steep was the hill that a man would have had to climb it on all fours. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... a few miles, before we fell in with a squad of as choice game as heart could have wished, three proper tall young vagabonds! profoundly engaged at all fours, in a log tippling shop, with cards as black as their own dirty hands, and a tickler of brandy before them! and so intent were the thieves on fleecing each other, that they took no manner of notice of us, but continued their scoundrel work, eagerly stretched over the table, thwacking down their ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... but, taking a firm hold on the back of the chair, he suddenly pulled it out from under Benson. So swiftly was the thing done that Jack went down on all fours on the porch. But, thoroughly aroused, and his eyes flashing indignantly now, that boy was quickly on his feet. Dan, however, with a satisfied grin, had ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... the road with marvelous ease and grace—that is, the two larger deer. The little fellow followed awkwardly; but he had the spring in him, and was learning rapidly to gather himself for the rise, and lift his hind feet at the top of his jump, and come down with all fours together, instead of sprawling clumsily, as a ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... no means such an institution in the United States as in the continental part of Europe; in this matter the American habit is more on all fours with English usage. The cafe of Europe is, perhaps, best represented by the piazza. Of course there are numerous restaurants in all the larger cities; but elsewhere the traveller will do well to stick to the meals at his hotel. The best restaurants are often ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... wild rider came bounding out from among them, and moving now erect, now on all fours, came sideling up to Martin, flinging his arms and legs about, wagging his head, grimacing and uttering whinnying and other curious noises. Never had Martin looked upon so strange a man! He was long and lean so that you could have counted his ribs, and he was stark naked, except ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... up, and did succeed in raising himself on all fours. But for the life of him he could do no more. He sat down again and thought about eating. He remembered the bread and olives, the not unkindly red wine of the night before. Then he remembered Spiridion, dispenser of meat ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... the door so suddenly that the man on the other side, with a sudden cry, fell on all fours into the room, and raising his face stared stupidly at the steward. Mr. Wilks's hands dropped to his sides and his tongue refused its office, for in some strange fashion, quite in keeping with the lawless proceedings of the previous night, Captain Nugent had changed ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... when both of them fell on all fours and began running and jumping around the room. As they ran, their arms turned into legs, their faces lengthened into snouts and their backs became covered with ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... Still upon all fours, and feeling every inch of the way, Jerry retraced his steps over the ledge. Quietly he slid down to the lower level and took a wide circle about the little camp, finally closing in near to where the sleeping sentry sat. Deftly and silently he pulled the latter's gun from ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... sat up, from far away, but not quite so far away, his rounded ears, almost buried in fur, caught faintly—very, very faintly—a sound that brought him down on all fours, and sent him away again at a gallop with a strange new light burning in his little, wide-set eyes. It was the unmistakable sound of a horse sneezing—once. Gulo did not wait to hear if it sneezed twice. He was gone in an instant. Man, it ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... her steps toward the sheet. And as she called upon her dead, there issued from her mouth sounds scarcely human, but rather like the howling of some savage dog. As she drew near, she bent over lower and lower, she placed herself almost on all fours; till, reaching him, she threw herself with a howl ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... heart stops for a moment. I can't find the latch. I am vaguely aware of beating something with my fists, and then the door gives, sticks, gives again and I stumble through and land on all fours the other ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... conceive how my friend Thompson would be able to administer clysters, that were ordered for some, in that situation; when I saw him thrust his wig in his pocket, and strip himself to his waistcoat in a moment, then creep on all fours under the hammocks of the sick, and, forcing up his bare pate between two, keep them asunder with one shoulder, until he had done his duty. Eager to learn the service, I desired he would give me leave ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... your mention of Americanism is on all fours with the declarations found in the Bull Moose and regular Republican platforms. The characteristic of all these references to Americanism is vagueness and uncertainty as to what is really meant. I believe that the time has come when the ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... hollow, which some, from being suddenly awaked, thought they were attacked by the Indians. We were all panic struck, and could not get thoroughly awaked, being so exhausted, and overpowered with sleep. Most of us were scrambling upon all fours down to the river, and crying for Christ's sake to have mercy upon them, till those who were foremost in the scramble, in crawling into the creek, got recovered from their plight by their hands being immersed in water; yet those who were foremost in ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... especially in children, the act of urination becomes an act of gratification at the climax of sexual pleasure, the imitative symbol of detumescence. Thus Schultze-Malkowsky describes a little girl of 7 who would bribe her girl companions with little presents to play the part of horses on all fours while she would ride on their necks with naked thighs in order to obtain the pleasurable sensation of close contact. With one special friend she would ride facing backward, and leaning forward to embrace her body impulsively, and at the same time pressing the neck closely between ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... I told you: four four's sixteen, four in each line and four lines. However you count it, you will find it all fours," ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... larger portions of the crystals rolled like sand. I frequently sank to my armpits between buried blocks of loose lava, but generally only to my knees. When tired with walking I still wallowed slowly upward on all fours. The steepness of the slope—thirty-five degrees in some places—made any kind of progress fatiguing, while small avalanches were being constantly set in motion in the steepest places. But the bracing air and the sublime beauty of the snowy expanse thrilled every nerve ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... went out of the dormitory they passed into the children's day-room, where about twenty infants, from one to two years old, were at play—some sitting on mats or creeping on all fours, because they could not yet stand; some walking around chairs and holding on to support themselves; and some running here and there, in full possession of the use ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... broadest in the middle, and lower and narrower towards each end. To these are tied others horizontally, and the whole is thatched over with leaves of sugar-cane. The door-way is in the middle of one side, formed like a porch, and so low and narrow, as just to admit a man to enter upon all fours. The largest house I saw was about sixty feet long, eight or nine feet high in the middle, and three or four at each end; its breadth, at these parts, was nearly equal to its height. Some have a kind of vaulted houses built with stone, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... barbarous, brutal atmosphere, it will, of course, become brutal. The story is told of a well-born child who, being lost or abandoned as an infant, was suckled by a wolf with her own young ones, and who actually took on all the characteristics of the wolf,—walked on all fours, howled like a ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... round for the tenth time to bottle his opponent as before, when he slipped. When the ball came out he was on all fours, and the Ripton exponent, finding to his great satisfaction that he had not been tackled, whipped the ball out on the left, where ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... children would play at hide-and-seek in the tall walnut wardrobe and underneath Mother Chantemesse's colossal bed. There were also two or three tables in the room, and they crawled under these on all fours. They found the place a very charming playground, on account of the dim light and the vegetables scattered about in the dark corners. The street itself, too, narrow and very quiet, with a broad arcade opening ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... take us betwixt your finger and thumb, And quick, oh, quick! for, see! there come Tom on all fours, and Martin the man, And Margaret, picking ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... was on all fours retrieving, and the undignified posture had the advantage of serving to conceal the wild terror of his face; a terror such as may stamp itself upon the features of a man who cannot swim and who has ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... at his prison bars as though to rend them from their sockets; he did not growl in an amazingly deep bass, as per inculcated schooling; he did not bare the yellow fang nor yet unsheathe the cruel claw. With apparent difficulty, rising on his all fours from where he was crouched in the rear left-hand corner of his den, Chieftain advanced down stage with what might properly be called a rolling gait. Against the iron uprights he lurched, literally; then, as though grateful for their support, remained fixed there ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... had a foolish but very vivid dream. I dreamed that the landlady and another person, dark and not properly visible, entered my room on all fours, followed by a horde of immense cats. They attacked me as I lay in bed, and murdered me, and then dragged my body upstairs and deposited it on the floor of that cold little square room ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... that swept down from the lofty peaks above. The forest fell away behind them. The great teak and sal trees gave place to the lighter growths of bamboo, plantain, and sago-palm. A troop of small brown monkeys, feasting on ripe bananas, sprang away startled on all fours and vanished in all directions. A slim-bodied, long-tailed mongoose, stealing across the road, stopped in the middle of it to rise up on his hind legs and stare with tiny pink eyes at the approaching elephants. Then, dropping to the ground again ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... a rather turned-up nose and a round face, my father called me "pussy-cat". It needed no more than this to give a small child the desire to imitate a cat; so it was my greatest pleasure to go about on all fours, mewing. I was also in the habit of going up to the second floor of the chteau to join my father in a library, where he spent the hottest hours of the day. When he heard the "miaow" of his little cat, he came and opened ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... hardly done so when Baxter, having disassociated himself from the contents of the table he had upset, began to grope his way toward the electric-light switch, the same being situated near the foot of the main staircase. He went on all fours, as a safer method of locomotion, though slower, than the ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... are white when they are born, but they soon turn brown, as they are rubbed with bear's oil and exposed to the sun. They rub them with oil, both to render their nerves more flexible, and also to prevent the flies from stinging them, as they suffer them to roll about naked upon all fours, before they are able to walk upright. They never put them upon their legs till they are a year old, and they suffer them to suck as long as they please, unless the mother prove with child, in which case she ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... loose, but yoked them together, and had a rope fastened to them besides. Thus united they waddled on; not lovingly, for very often they grumbled and growled, and seemed to be making far from pleasant remarks to each other. They kept on all fours, it must be understood. Bears only stand on their hind legs when they have learned to dance, or are going to eat a man, or at all events are standing at bay. On reaching the end of the lake we found that a considerable ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... fours. To go on all fours. No ellipsis. The word fours is a true substantive, as proved by its existence as ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... man walking erect might be suitably distracted by the arrival of a half-seen figure on all fours. He ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Provinces to be equally ignorant except the prince, the Advocate, and the recorder. Cruwel was then informed that if Neyen expected to discuss such grave matters with the prince, he must first send in a written proposal that could go on all fours and deserve attention. A week afterwards Cruwel came back with a paper in which Neyen declared himself authorized by the archdukes to treat with the States on the basis of their liberty and independence, and to ask what they would give in return for so great a concession as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... window, drawing her handkerchief over her bosom, which had been uncovered to give the baby its breakfast,—the said baby, or its immediate predecessor, sitting at the door, turning round to creep away on all fours;—a man building a flat-bottomed boat by the roadside: he talked with B—— about the Boundary question, and swore fervently in favor of driving the British "into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... nation rejoiced, and Henry became somewhat reconciled to his unattractive spouse. The king was exceedingly fond of this child. One day the Spanish embassador, a dignified Castilian, was rather suddenly ushered into the royal presence at Fontainebleau. The monarch was on all fours on the floor, running about the room with the little dauphin on his back. Raising his eyes, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... constrained here to allude to the treatment given to Catiline by Dean Merivale in his little work on the two Roman Triumvirates. The Dean's sympathies are very near akin to those of Mr. Beesly, but he values too highly his own historical judgment to allow it to run on all fours with Mr. Beesly's sympathies. "The real designs," he says, "of the infamous Catiline and his associates must indeed always remain shrouded in mystery. * * * Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny, and on the whole it would be unreasonable to doubt, that such a conspiracy there really ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... oneself Davidson crawling away on all fours from the murdered woman—Davidson unmanned and crushed by the idea that she had died for him in a sense. But he could not have gone very far. What stopped him was the thought of the boy, Laughing Anne's child, that (Davidson remembered ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... of in the past tense, as we speak of the dead, was not pleasant to Sir Francis, walking behind Geoffrey on all fours. ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... this proposition, and he held the reins of the Kid's horse, while that cow puncher slipped from the saddle, and, on all fours, crept toward the wall of rock which rose abruptly at a turn of the trail shutting ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... weeks old, was born with hair two inches long all over the body; his features were fiendish and his eyes shone like beads beneath his shaggy brows. He had a tail 18 inches long, horns from the skull, a full set of teeth, and claw-like hands; he snapped like a dog and crawled on all fours, and refused the natural sustenance of a normal child. The mother almost became an imbecile after the birth of the monster. The country people about Bomballa considered this devil-child a punishment for a rebuff that the mother gave to a Jewish peddler ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Dean left several lists of instances of Itacism, he worked out none, except the substitution of [Greek: hen] for [Greek: en] in St. Mark iv. 8, which as it is not strictly on all fours with the rest I have reserved till last. He mentioned all that I have introduced (besides a few others), on detached papers, some of them more than once, and [Greek: lousanti] and [Greek: katharizon] even more than the others. In the brief ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... sight their eyes had ever seen, there was a soft padding of feet and a hurry-scurry behind them, and from the outside darkness beyond the flame-stalks came a crowd of little brown creatures running, jumping, scrambling, tumbling head over heels and on all fours, and some even walking on their heads. They joined hands as they came near the fires and danced ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... slowly, and without talking, across the beach. When they reached the trail they dropped on all fours and pulled themselves noiselessly along. The slightest sound, the snapping of a twig, the flutter of a bird, brought them to quiet. An ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... commenced to fly in every direction. In the middle of the hubbub a small dump of bombs was struck by a shell and started to explode behind me. The blast of the explosion caught me up and hurled me down fifteen stairs of the dug-out I had been trying to discover. I landed on all fours in a place full of darkness; a door banged behind me. I don't know how long I lay there. Something was squirming under me. A voice said plaintively, "I don't know who you are, but I wish you'd get ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... run with breathless speed, until, having gained a considerable distance away from any probable line of fire, I flung myself down upon the snow, and was somewhat startled at finding Zach very close upon my tracks, tearing along on all fours with a vague sense of danger of some kind, and looking, in his strange envelope, like an infuriated bull-moose in the act of charging a hunter. A shot struck the corner of the target just as we got away from it, slightly splintering it, so as to give the bewildered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... of conversation among the criminal classes. The language of the Stock Exchange with its Bulls, Bears, Contangos, and other short and comprehensive expressions for various kinds of stocks, is on all fours with the slang of criminals, and it is not necessary to resort to atavism in order to explain it. It arises to supply professional needs, and criminal argot springs up from ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... suddenly presented themselves in their path, and, rising upon their hind legs, contemplated them for some time with a whimsically solemn gaze. The hunters remained motionless; whereupon the bears, having apparently satisfied their curiosity, lowered themselves upon all fours, and began to withdraw. The hunters now advanced, upon which the bears turned, rose again upon their haunches, and repeated their serio-comic examination. This was repeated several times, until the hunters, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... is as follows: The J[)e]s/sakk[-i]d/ is provided with four or more tubular bones, consisting of the leg bones of large birds, each of the thickness of a finger and 4 or 5 inches in length. After the priest has fasted and chanted prayers for success, he gets down upon all fours close to the patient and with his mouth near the affected part. After using the rattle and singing most vociferously to cause the evil man/id[-o] to take shelter at some particular spot, so that it may be detected and located by him, he suddenly touches that place with the end of one ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... to blow so as to oblige the captain to shorten sail, the deuce a seaman durst have gone aloft to stow the canvas. The second mate, standing in the top, was in the act of lifting his rifle, when the monster, running on all fours out to the dizzy topgallant yard-arm, stood erect a breathless instant, poised—in human posture—a marvellous picture of the man-beast against the liquid blue, then sprang into ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... verree short leave of absence, and will presently return, sar—"; the two constables, armed with staves, bringing up the rear; and Faiz Ullah, a Mohammedan's contempt for all Hindoos and foreigners in every line of his face, explaining to the drivers that though Scott Sahib was a man to be feared on all fours, he, Faiz Ullah, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Mr. Blyth quotes as authority for this trivial name a passage from MAJOR FORBES' Eleven Years in Ceylon; and I can vouch for the graphic accuracy of the remark.—"A species of very large monkey, that passed some distance before me, when resting on all fours, looked so like a Ceylon bear, that I nearly took ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... strike a match, but found the whole box was damp and sodden. I heard a muttering of voices and a curse or two in the outer cavern, and presently the sergeant entered my sanctum on all fours: ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... speed but tripping on a bed-sheet at every other step, with his uncased rifle in one hand, his hat in the other, an empty bandolier over one shoulder and a bag slung by a strap swinging out behind him. He made a leap for the second-class compartment in front of us, and landed on all fours on the platform. We opened the door of our compartment ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... pick 'em up," exclaimed Lawless, going down on all fours; "don't send for the butler; he's such a pompous old boy; if I were to see him stooping down here, I should be pushing him over, or playing him some trick or other. I shouldn't be able to help it, he's so jolly fat. What a ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... these congregated noises were intolerable. Uncle John aimed a desperate blow with a large apple, which he was just about to bite, at the head of Carlo, who, in order to give his lungs fair play, was standing on all fours on the hampers. The apple missed the dog, and went some distance beyond him into the water. Mr. Carlo, attributing to Uncle John a kinder feeling than that which actually prompted the proceeding, looked upon it as a good-natured ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... different, for it was not still like the others, but went stopping and starting and scuttling like a crab over the grass—sometimes upright like a man and sometimes on all fours like a beast. At last it stood up and ran from tree to tree in a swaying, moving zigzag. I could see then that it was a man, but for the life of me I could not remember where I'd seen his like. Then another cloud slid over the moon and the night was ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... twenty minutes past three an uninteresting performance called the "bear dance" began. A man entered on all fours; his face was painted white; he wore around his loins and over his shoulders pieces of some dark pelt which may have been bear skin, but looked more like the skin of a black sheep. The fire had now ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... saw the mias let go the bough and begin to walk towards us on all fours. It advanced towards where a thick shrub grew, when again catching hold of a bough, it raised itself up on its hind legs. "Now I'll fire!" cried the Frau. I was afraid even then that had it been much nearer she would not have hit it, or at all events wounded it mortally, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... growls. The woman turned about in her distress; waving her hands helplessly before her, and then clapping them to her face. But now the great beast became impatient; it struck the door sharply, and snarled warningly. The woman shrank back as though she herself were about to drop on all fours and answered him. "No, no!" she cried, and considered a moment. Then the door was burst in with one tremendous blow, and Master Bruin rolled over the threshold and leaped toward them in clumsy jumps, his head ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... that we might possibly have passed over the open space without being seen, but, for fear of accidents, we covered it, as Frank had done, on all fours. The first persons I met when I rose to a vertical position were Hudson and Frank, who took me to Mr. Hopkins. The ranchman greeted me with the assurance that the arrival of my party was a godsend, and ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... with some pencils, slid to the lower edge of the table, but did not fall off. Mr. Aide looked under the table: Home's legs were inactive. Home said that he thought the table would 'ascend,' and Alphonse Karr dived under it, and walked about on all fours, examining everybody's feet—the others were standing up. The table rose 'three or four feet,' at highest, and remained in air 'from two to three minutes.' It rose so high that 'all could see Karr, and ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Simon had gone and my foot swoll up so s I couldn't walk and I wouldnt a minded its hurtin Miss Hildy but it s like there wornt no bones in it Pink says I sprante it bad and I started to go over to the Farm on all fours to tell ye but I didn't know anythin g agin and Pink made me come back. We couldnt nether on us get hold of Will but now we got him I hope he l go straite, Miss Hildy Pink wanted to write this for me but I druther write myself ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... shout. 'You are raking in the money and buying your wife silk handkerchiefs, but the poor farm labourers have to creep on all fours. It's "Cut the corn, Sobieska and Maciek, and I will brag about like a gentleman!" You will see, he will soon call himself "Pan Slimaczinski."[1] He is the devil's own son, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Ut was un keepun' wuth the way ut ate. Ot a year ut was the size o' a bairn of two. Ut was slow tull walk an' talk. Exceptun' for gurgly noises un uts throat an' for creepun' on all fours, ut dudna monage much un the walkun' an' talkun' line. But thot was tull be expected from the way ut grew. Ut all went tull growun' strong an' healthy. An' even old Tom Henan cheered up ot the might of ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... picked up a rusty jack-knife—and he knew that knife had belonged to Bas Rowlett. Given that clue and attaching to it such other things as he already knew of Bas, it was not hard for Sim to construct a theory that, to his own mind at least, stood on all fours with probability. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... was arrested and fixed with terror; for a deep sigh came from grannie's bed, followed by the voice of words. He thought at first that she had heard him, but he soon found that he was mistaken. Still, the fear of discovery held him there on all fours, like a chained animal. A dull red gleam, faint and dull, from the embers of the fire, was the sole light in the room. Everything so common to his eyes in the daylight seemed now strange and eerie in the dying coals, and at what was to the boy the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... trembling when he dropped into the saddle. With both hands he clung to the horn. Up went the bronco on its hind legs. It pitched, bucked, sun-fished. In sheer terror Bob clung like a leech. The animal left the ground and jolted down stiff-legged on all fours. The impact was terrific. He felt as though a piledriver had fallen on his head and propelled his vital organs together like a concertina. Before he could set himself the sorrel went up again with a weaving, humpbacked twist. The rider shot ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... of their voices. The great brute sat up on his haunches and faced them, growling and snarling. One vaquero sent his rope flying through the air, and the loop settled over a big, hairy fore paw. Then the bear dropped on all fours and made a jump at the pony, which got out of his reach. Another Mexican threw a lasso and caught the bear's hind foot; and as he sat up again a third noose dropped over the other fore paw. Then the poor trapped creature, growling, snarling, and rolling over and over, ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... soft hot sand. However, they picked themselves up; and, Jack, mounting, away they went towards the goal where their friends were ready to receive them. Just as they got up to it, down came the gallant marine once more, but Jack stuck to his back, and on all fours he crawled up to the winning-post. The poor doctor, with Terence, as Jack said, like a huge baboon clinging behind him, came in soon after; and the doctor declared that it was the last time, with or without a jockey, he would ever ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... village on all fours, groaning like a Dutch brig in a cross-sea, went our Albert Edward. He crawled into the dark barn and, having no smaller change, contributed a two-franc bill to the forepaw and told Sandy about his awful stiffness. His eloquence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... Cardan never divulged before Ferrari unravelled Giovanni Colla's puzzle; but it was inevitable that it must be made known to the world as a part of the greater discovery (Ferrari's) which Cardan was in no way bound to keep a secret. The case might be said to run on all fours with that where a man confides a secret to a friend under a promise of silence, which promise the friend keeps religiously, until one day he finds that the secret, and even more than the secret, is common talk of the market-place. Is the obligation of silence, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... passing away and leaving no representatives of their greatness to future ages? On land at least that is very probable. Man, diminutive man, who, if he walked on all fours, would be no bigger than a silly sheep, and who only partially disguises his native smallness by his acquired habit of walking erect on what ought to be his hind legs—man has upset the whole balanced economy of nature, and is everywhere expelling and exterminating before him the great ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... in a corner, which was his own, behind the piano. No one could disturb him there, for to reach it he had to go on all fours. It was half dark there, and the boy had just room to lie on the floor if he huddled up. The smoke of the tobacco filled his eyes and throat: dust, too; there were large flakes of it like sheepskin, but he did not mind that, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Prophet, it is known unto you that a Portuguee dog of a Christian clock mender pollutes the city of Tangier with his presence. Ye know, also, that when mosques are builded, asses bear the stones and the cement, and cross the sacred threshold. Now, therefore, send the Christian dog on all fours, and barefoot, into the holy place to mend the clock, and let him go ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wandered a little farther in search of water and was alarmed by a horseman appearing. He made for home on all fours—he ran much on all fours now—and backed into the den. In the prairie grass he was concealed, but the den was on a bare mound, and the horseman caught a glimpse of a whitish thing disappearing down the hole. Badgers were familiar ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... man breathed more freely. He congratulated himself. Intercourse was in act of becoming normal and easy. So far it had been quite absurdly hind-leggy—and for him, him, to be forced into being hind-leggy by a girl of barely eighteen! Now he prepared to trot gaily, comfortably, off on all fours, when she spoke, bringing him up to the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Church tent—it was full of rents and holes. And just beyond it was a huge pit with fresh soil heaped up in a ring around it. Loose earth and stones and sods were scattered everywhere. Then we saw something move in the darkness—it was a man on all fours, dragging himself painfully along and uttering a groan with every breath. Two bearers arrived with a stretcher. They put it down by his side and helped him on to it. Then they picked it up and disappeared in the gloom. We had ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... thy feet, and set thy foot on the necks of princes; when earthly dominion, and wealth, and the mind of man bore thy yoke? Exulting in the abasement of humanity, joying to witness the uttermost lengths to which man's folly would go, thou hast bidden thy lovers walk on all fours, and required of them their lands and wealth, nay, even their wives if they were worth aught to thee. Thou hast devoured millions of men without a cause; thou hast flung away lives like sand blown by the wind from West to East. Thou hast come down ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... Next she tore off her slippers, and sent them flying against the brown furry back now turned toward her. Not knowing what to make of such a shower of spools and needles, scissors, buttons, and wearing apparel, old Bruin dropped on all fours and ambled out of the doorway just as Lloyd caught up ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to have some fun with Mr. Tortoise. He looked around to where Mr. Tortoise was coming straddling and panting along, and he laughed and rolled over to see how solemn he looked, and how he was travelling as if he meant to get somewhere before dark. He was down on all fours so he could use all his legs at once, and anybody would think, to look at him, that he really expected to ...
— How Mr. Rabbit Lost his Tail • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in the wood his friend the bear was lumbering on all fours, wild-eyed, with lolling tongue and panting breath. Close behind him came on foot a young man, several years older than John, dressed in a suit of green velvet, with a plumed cap. In his hand he bore a long spear, and he was charging upon the bear with a cruel light in his eyes. ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... discharged. About the 10th of September, Laupepa was secretly in Apia at the American consulate with two companions. The German pickets were close set and visited by a strong patrol; and on his return, his party was observed and hailed and fired on by a sentry. They ran away on all fours in the dark, and so doing plumped upon another sentry, whom Laupepa grappled and flung in a ditch; for the Sheet of Paper, although infirm of character, is, like most Samoans, of an able body. The second sentry ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... knight, Gillemin de Fienne. Douglas chose Shrove Tuesday for his attack. Being a feast day of the church before the long lenten fast the garrison would be sure to indulge in conviviality and the watch would be less strict than usual. Douglas and his followers, supplied with scaling ladders, crept on all fours towards the walls. The night was still and they could hear the sentries' conversation. They had noticed the objects advancing, but in the darkness mistook them for the cattle of a neighbouring farmer. Silently the ladders were fixed and mounted, and with the dreaded war ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... Tennyson, and Patmore on an occasion the occurrence of which is vouched for by Mr. Julian Hawthorne. These three masters, out for a walk one chilly afternoon in late autumn, discovered a belated violet bravely putting forth from the shelter of a mossy stone. Not until these worthies had got down on all fours and done ceremonious homage to the flower did they resume their walk. Suddenly Ruskin halted and, planting his cane in the ground, exclaimed, "I don't believe, Alfred—Coventry, I don't believe that there are in all England three men besides ourselves who, after finding a violet ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... the reply. "They'll soon try, when they find there are very few of us, to crawl up the hill upon us. Then's the time you've got to note every movement! See! there comes one fellow behind that rock now. He's crawling on all fours. Thinks we can't see him. Now just hold on until he comes around that little ledge!—I'll take ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... and did succeed in raising himself on all fours. But for the life of him he could do no more. He sat down again and thought about eating. He remembered the bread and olives, the not unkindly red wine of the night before. Then he remembered Spiridion, dispenser ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... On all fours, save when he clung to his spectacles, Beetle wormed into the gorse, and presently announced between grunts of pain that he had found a very fair fox-track. This was well for Beetle, since Stalky pinched him a tergo. Down that tunnel they crawled. It was evidently a highway for ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... completely. I say fortunately, for finding the brute still remaining quite motionless, we cautiously approached, and found it was stone dead. The perfect naturalness of the position, however, might well have deceived a more experienced sportsman. The beast was lying crouched on all fours, as if in the very act of preparing to spring. The one bullet had killed it; the wound was in the lungs, and the internal bleeding had suffocated it, but here was a wonderful instance of the tiger's tenacity ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... spite of all precautions he rolled to the bottom of a grassy ditch. There he lay quiet to rest his bruises, and watch whether any alarm was raised. Luckily for him, the moon was down, and no one had observed his venture. Crawling on all fours along a hollow place, he passed the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... held me around the waist, and raised me from the ground, while I shook my arms and legs in time to the music. The concert of these ladies awoke the sleeper, who stared wildly at me, frightened at my gestures, then sprang up and ran with all his might, followed by my brother, who crept on all fours, representing a dog, I think, which belonged to this strange person. As I was then a mere child, I have only a confused idea of all this; but the society of Madame Bonaparte seemed to be much occupied ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to the children, and a little while afterwards Philpot—who had got a funny-looking mask out of one of the bon-bons—started a fine game pretending to be a dreadful wild animal which he called a Pandroculus, and crawling about on all fours, rolled his goggle eyes and growled out he must have a little boy or girl ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... me, to be obliged to go on all fours, when two legs are my proper walking equipment," replied the Scarecrow. "I consider it beneath my dignity. In other words, my remarkable brains can tire, through humiliation, although my ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... that I saw Diderot's "Father of a Family," and "The Philosophers" of Palissot, and still perfectly remember the figure of the philosopher in the latter piece going upon all fours, and biting into a raw ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... caught a glimpse of a coyote slinking into the gulches, returning from night hunting to sleep. While intently watching some moving body at a distance, we could not yet tell whether of men or animals, I heard a faint noise behind me and slowly turned my head. Behold! a grizzly bear sneaking up on all fours and almost ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... all the wonders of the Church, which grew somehow less wonderful the more implicitly you believed in them. Then, in the midst of all these delightful splendours, the kings themselves! The old grey-beard in the brown pomegranate embossed brocade going on all fours, and kissing the little child's feet; the dark young man, with peaked beard and wistful face, removing his coroneted turban; and last, but far from least, the youngest king, the beardless boy, with the complexion of a well-bred young lady, the almond eyes and golden hair, standing ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... hind legs and try to pull him round, while I watched my opportunity to jump between him and the bank. It was our only chance to save the dog, at any rate, and luckily it proved successful. As Smith laid on I jumped, and although I fell on all fours between the boar and the slippery bank, I contrived just in time to drive the knife into his heart, and the huge beast rolled over and with a few gasps died. We were both exhausted, and the poor dog, when the excitement was over, ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... but when she heard that I sang she seemed more amiable and interested. She even asked me to come to see her the next day. "That is," she said, "if you can climb my hill." I told her that I was sure I could climb her hill, and would, even if I had to climb on all fours. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... cloud, and two red-faced, perspiring troopers emerged from the jam, dragging the yet reluctant mule by main strength behind them. As they cleared the line of the column, Bungay rolled off the animal's back, and, in his eagerness, came down on all fours. ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... reached the ditch in too exhausted a condition to climb over the breastwork and had lain out among the rebels where he had been repeatedly hit by our own fire. The pain of his wounds had made him crazy, for he would not talk, but kept crawling about on all fours moaning in agony. There were a few men missing from the company of whom their comrades could give no account. Moved by the fate of the drafted man, I crossed the breastwork to search outside, if perchance I might ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... paused suddenly and scrambling to all fours turned about on his hands and knees, intently gazing at the flap against which ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... scene, Ethel lost very little time before she placed herself on the couch on all fours, and as Frank ordered his subjects, the two nieces fairly dragged their uncle by his prick, till they got him up behind Ethel, and planted the head of his fiery steed just within the lips of ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... further!" I shout into the line of sharpshooters. The battalion commander shouts it at the same time. He wouldn't let any one rob him of the honor of advancing in the foremost row of riflemen. We crawl forward on all fours. After thirty meters, halt. Still nothing to be seen. The land rises in front of us. Fifty meters further; eighty; a hundred. At last we have a clear view ahead. ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... performance. He went hell-for-leather over a piece of ground which was being watered with H.E., but by the mercy of heaven nothing hit him. He took some fearsome tosses in shell-holes, but partly erect and partly on all fours he did the fifty yards and tumbled into a Turkish trench right on ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... "Why do you forgive them all this? Before I used to be foolish myself, too, but now I compel them to walk before me on all fours, compel them to kiss my soles, and they do this with delight ... You all know, girlies, that I don't love money, but I pluck the men in whatever way I can. They, the nasty beasts, present me with the portraits of their wives, brides, mothers, daughters ... However, you've ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... to the devil! Chagniol fell forward on his face. Duc got up, and ran along on all fours as far as the bend in the trench, and there he began to scratch out the earth like a rabbit, and then he died. The blood was pouring down me right and left, and I thought it was time for me to go. I set ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... forget the tortures which we had to undergo in climbing almost on all fours to a mountain top, three thousand feet high. The carriers were out of breath; every moment I feared to see one tumble down the declivity with his burden, and I felt pained at seeing my poor dog, Pamir, panting and with his tongue hanging out, ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... that the hall also was deserted. I was wrong, and I crept upon a Kaffir on all fours. Poor devil, I could not bring myself to deal him a base blow, but I threatened him most hideously with my revolver, and left the white teeth chattering in his black head as I took the stairs three at a time. Why ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... that had no spark took huge she-animals unto them. They begat upon them dumb races. Dumb they were themselves. But their tongues untied. The tongues of their progeny remained still. Monsters they bred. A race of crooked red-hair-covered monsters going on all fours. A dumb race to keep the shame untold." (And an ancient commentary adds 'when the Third separated and fell into sin by breeding men-animals, these (the animals) became ferocious, and men and they mutually destructive. Till then, there was ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... soil, and catching at whatever branch or stem presented itself, he took the plunge. Clinging, sliding, falling, he arrived at the bottom. In a posture half sitting, half standing, and considerably jarred, he found himself face to face with Bruin. The animal had settled down on all fours, and now, with his surly, depressed head turned sullenly to one side, he looked at Penn, and growled. Penn looked at him, and said nothing. He had heard of staring wild beasts out of countenance—an experiment that could ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... royal cleaning-out, I can tell you. In the afternoon I had Olie down on all fours scrubbing the floor. When he had washed the windows I had him get a garden rake and clear away the rubbish that littered the dooryard. I draped chintz curtains over the windows, and had Olie nail two shelves in a packing-box and ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... a cat, on all fours, clawing energetically as he urged his upward progress, his comrade paying out the rope carefully. At first his speed was good, but gradually it dwindled. Now he was fifteen feet from the peg, now ten, now eight—but going, oh, so slowly! Hazard, looking ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... was no more called bare Wagtail, but Mr. Wagtail, much to the amusement of visitors, who, hearing the name gravely uttered, as it soon came to be, saw the owner of it approach on all fours, with a tireless ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... now to have given up hope of standing erect, and began to move painfully on all fours across the snow to where a log of rotten wood was lying. Having reached it, he tried to raise it, but there was not the strength in his hands. He tried to fasten his teeth upon it, to drag it back with him; but his jaws seemed paralysed. Then he ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... understand that horses and cattle could be justly counted only where property was to be the basis of representation. Yet the slaves, who were counted, were, in the eye of the law, either personal property or real estate, and were no more represented as citizens than if they also had gone upon all fours. Their enumeration, nevertheless, was carried, and it so increased the representative power of their masters that inequality of citizenship became the fundamental principle of the government. This, of course, was to form an oligarchy, not a democracy. Practically the ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... much," said Juve, as he went down on all fours and proceeded to examine the carpeting of the room between the bed and the door, a distance of some seven feet. The carpet, of very close fabric, afforded no trace, but on a white bearskin rug the detective noted in places tufts ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... had dropped flat on the ground, and Carnes, on all fours, crawled forward to join him. He smothered an exclamation as he looked over the crest of the hill. Before him, sitting in a hollow in the ground, was the huge globe which had spirited away ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... on all fours, when my eye first took in that the tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of leaves, made shapes against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and stared. It was incredible, surely, but there, opposite and ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... the base a cave which had the appearance of being continuously occupied by Indians. As I went on down I saw a very strange looking track upon the ground. There were hand and foot prints as if a human being had crawled upon all fours. As this track reached the valley where the sand had been clean swept by the wind, the tracks became more plain, and the sand had been blown into small hills not over three or four feet high. I followed the track till it led to the top of one of these ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... echo of his endless dreams, and let yourself be pulled by the beard to imitate a horse. All this is kindness, but also cleverness, and good King Henry IV did not belie his skilful policy by walking on all fours on his carpet with his ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... pictures—in which the Cans are represented crawling on all fours like dogs—sculptured on the facade of their house of worship, it would appear that their religion of the mastodon was replaced by that of the reciprocal forces of nature, imported in the country ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... adds that it has a counterpart with the American system of totem; although the exact degree to which the comparison runs on all fours is undetermined. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... and why. Taboos never yet have added a cubit to the stature of the soul of humanity. They have nearly always been the chattering children of fear and pure idiocy. They have always tried to throw the race back on to all fours, and have left the nobility of standing upright wholly out ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... mirth may be used, let the Cards also be brought in sight; which formerly, out of a Puritanical humour, ought not to have been seen in a house; nay, not so much as to have been spoken of; but now every one knows how to play artificially at Put, all Fours, Omber, Pas la Bete, Bankerout, and all other games that the expertest Gamesters can play at. And who knows whether they do not carry in their Pockets, as False-Gamesters do, Cards that are cut and marked. They learn to play the game at Bankerout ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... seemed to come from inside the fallen tree, Sandy Chipmunk was so startled that he leaped high into the air; and when he came down again upon all fours he found himself staring straight into ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Mr. Stenson declared, "this is a veritable temple of peace. I arrived here literally on all fours. Miss Abbeway has proved to me quite conclusively that as a democratic leader I have missed ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... skilfully put, with probably the only illustration which would go on all fours. But to me all this is extremely unsatisfactory: and unsatisfactory in a much farther sense than merely that it is using terms in a non-natural sense. I know, of course, that to look at Nature through blue spectacles will make Nature blue: but I cannot see that to look at Nature ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... ruin." There were conservative women, too, who used their powerful influence against them. It was in the salon of the delicate but ardent young Princesse de Robecq that Palissot was inspired to write the satirical comedy of "The Philosophers," in which Rousseau was represented as entering on all fours, browsing a lettuce, and the Encyclopedists were so mercilessly ridiculed. This spirited and heroic daughter-in-law of the Duchesse de Luxembourg, the powerful patroness of Rousseau, was hopelessly ill at the ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... drowning him out. The troll-wife turned and went on all fours and poked up the fire with ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... of great stature. They were twice as long as the footprints we made, and none of us were noted for small feet. On going a short distance into the woods we saw a vast number of huts made of dried grass, so cramped that a man of ordinary size could not creep into them on all fours, yet many of them contained families of pygmies. We afterwards tried to penetrate somewhat farther into the wood, in order to ascertain the nature and situation of the country, when, on coming to an open place, a number of tall savages, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... the gallant captain got down on all fours; Whiffle, a small light man, got on his back, and, with the aid of Bang and Fyall, managed to scramble up on my shoulders, where he stood, holding by the window sill above, with a foot on each side of my head. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... horseback must their worships fight, or not at all; and when to shame them I called myself a mountaineer, more used to climb than to ride, and vowed that I should esteem it an honour to follow such a knight as Bayard, were it on all fours, then cast they my burgher blood in my teeth. Never saw I the Kaisar so enraged; he swore that all the common sense in the empire was in the burgher blood, and that he would make me a knight of the noblest order in Europe to show how he esteemed it. And next ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... village, had that morning received a special retainer, in the shape of half a quartern of gin, for the occasion; while in the usher's chair were ensconced two urchins of about fourteen years of age, smoking tobacco, playing at all fours, and drinking purl, with their legs diffused in a picturesque attitude along the writing-desk. One of the justices tried to command silence—till the Squire's commission to the usher should be read; but no sooner had he opened his mouth than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... who had only an ax with him. Jack raised his rifle and fired, and as the bear dropped on all fours fired ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... reasons,—first, to see fair play, in case that Ironhook should come to wash his ugly visage, and find you on all fours over the brook—you understand? And next, to tell you what I heard last night ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... great—standing up like suspects awaiting identification, while her eye ranges over them. Chopin tries to edge behind Wagner, a difficult and forbidding person, and Gounod seeks eclipse of Mendelssohn, who suddenly drops and crawls on all fours between Gounod's legs; Sullivan cowers, and even Piccolomini's iron-framed nerves desert him. She extends her hand. There is a frantic rush to escape. Have you ever seen a little boy picking dormice ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... dissociate this relationship from this issue, then sexual questions become of no more importance than the morality of one's deportment at chess, or the general morality of outdoor games. Indeed, then the question of sexual relationships would be entirely on all fours with, and probably very analogous to, the question of golf. In each case it would be for the medical man and the psychologist to decide how far the thing was wholesome and permissible, and how far ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the man of God was lamenting the deplorable state of the church of Vervignole in the cloister of the cathedral, his meditations were disturbed by strange shrieks, and he saw a woman, stark naked, walking on all fours, with a peacock's feather for a tail. As she came nearer, she barked, sniffed, and licked the ground. Her fair head was covered with mud, and her whole body was a mass of filth. In this unhappy creature the holy Bishop Nicolas ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... Hagenbeck, and it used to be a favorite game with us to play animal behind it for the street's amusement. At the hour when the crowd issued from the matinee at the Hyperion Theatre, our wittiest students paced on all fours up and down behind this grill and roared for raw beef. E—— was the wag of the building and he could climb up to a high place and scratch himself like a monkey—an entertainment of more humor than elegance. Elated with success, he and a companion later chartered a street-organ—a ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... riveted Matthews' attention and brought him to a temporary halt. "Got th' gun down!" he exclaimed. On finding that Lancaster was gone, he had decided not to produce a weapon. Now, however, he quickly felt for one and dropped on all fours. "That biggest gal 'd no more mind pumpin' lead into me than nothin'," he declared, wagging his head wisely. "I could tell that by the shine in her eyes." He crawled ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... coarseness and scatter ashes for beauty, women do exist, victims rather than culprits, coarse against their nature, hard, material, grasping, the saddest sight humanity can see. Such a woman can accept coarse men. They may come courting on all fours, and she will not be shocked. But women in the natural state wish men to stand godlike erect, to tread majestically, and live delicately. Women do not often make an ado about this. They talk it over among themselves, and take men as they are. They quietly soften them down, and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... tossed his crest on high, then plunged giddily forward, was checked amid a whirlwind of lashing hoofs, rose on his hind legs higher and higher, swinging giddily round and round, felt a stunning blow, staggered, and dropping on all fours, stove in the stable door with a fling of his hind hoofs. But the eyes of Barnabas were glowing, his lips still curved, and his grip upon the reins was more masterful. And, feeling all this, Four-legs, foaming with rage, his nostrils flaring, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... brought up out of coal mines where they dragged trucks on all fours like brute beasts, by his protests little boys were saved from being forced to climb up inside chimneys risking their young lives and limbs that ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
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