"Tail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jars to the youth, "we are caught, and may as well yield gracefully. You don't know this big fellow as well as I do. He's obstinacy itself. You can make the most obstinate donkey go on by pulling its tail hard enough, but when Jeannin gets a notion into his pate, not all the legions of hell can get it out again. Besides that, he's a skilful fencer, so there's nothing for it ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "Bob! Bob-tail! Bob-cat!" chanted Curly, in gratuitous insult of which only bantam shamelessness is capable. "Stop, will I? Who'll make me? You? You ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... the neighborhood, prowling around. He poked his head in at "Ephraham's" door ajar, and took in the whole situation at a glance. Cye merely remarked to himself: "I loves 'possum myself." And he slipped in on his tip-toes and picked up the 'possum and ate him from tip to tail, and piled the bones down by sleeping "Ephraham;" he ate the sweet potatoes and piled the hulls down by the bones; then he reached into the oven and got his hand full of 'possum grease and rubbed it on "Ephraham's" lips and ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... he said, rather paradoxically, I thought. "I'm afraid I should be talking about my ancestors, and asking some one to be good enough to tread on the tail of my coat." ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... united; we might elaborate upon their perfect happiness; state in detail the satisfaction of Don Gonzales, and show how happy was the gentle, thoughtful, kind-hearted and brave Ruez; and we might even say that the hound seemed to realize that General Bezan was now "one of the family," wagging his tail with increased unction, and fawning upon him with more evident affection. But when we say that all were happy, and that the great aim of Lorenzo Bezan's heart was accomplished, the reader will find ample space and time to fill up the open space ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... another way that he would have failed to acquire the same moral superiority over the Ministers by pacific and moderate behaviour, that he has acquired by hostile motions and taunting language. But his tail was in a state of furious agitation, and so angry and dejected at the Duke's forbearance, that he felt himself compelled to give them the gratification of a triumph of some sort. To the majority of his followers the Canadian insurrection was a very pleasing occurrence, and they would ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... thought Ramona; but, crouching on the ground, she quickly opened her net, and as Capitan came towards her, gave him a piece of meat, fondling and caressing him. While he ate it, wagging his tail, and making great demonstrations of joy, she picked up her load again, and still fondling him, said, "Come on, Capitan!" It was her last chance. If he barked again, somebody would be waked; if he went by her side quietly, she might escape. A cold sweat of terror burst on her forehead ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and finding the dog sitting there motionless, with his face turned toward the door by which they had carried Letty out, peevish with disappointment and dread, drove him from the kitchen, and from the court, into the street where that same day he was seen wildly running with a pan at his tail, and the next was found lying dead in a bit of waste ground among stones and shards. God ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... of soft, bright sandy hair. The coming of the keeper with the dish of food and the unfastening of the door of the cage bring life to the ball of hair in the corner; a part of it is unrolled and the long, black-tipped tail with two lines of hair is laid out on the ground, and then on each side of it a leg is run out which is nearly as long as the tail and is provided with blunt, smooth, hoof-life nails; and, finally, the head and body are distinguishable and the animal stretches out comfortably ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... happens to have a tail to wag, and others haven't," said I. "I consider myself as good as Tibe, any day, though handicapped in some ways. I'll soon show you that I'm not ungrateful, when you've let me know exactly what cause I have for gratitude. Have you murdered ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... in nature? Can you conceive of anything the different parts of which have been suggested to you by nature? You can conceive of an animal with the hoofs of a bison, with the pouch of a kangaroo, with the head of a buffalo, with the tail of a lion, with the scales of a fish, with the wings of a bird, and yet every part of this impossible monster has been suggested to you by nature. You say time, therefore you can think eternity. You say pain, therefore you ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... defensive line of the Somme, and send a garrison to Tournai. It was one of that town's privileges to have no garrison; and the inhabitants were unwilling to admit one, saying that Tournai never had turned and never would turn tail; and, if the English came, they would find some one to talk to them." "Howbeit," says Fleuranges, "not a single captain was there, nor, likewise, the said lord duke, but understood well how it was with people ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the song prepared by Barnaby for the occasion, and sung by him thereupon to a captivating banjo accompaniment, may be so distinguished. A stanza, the final one of that masterpiece, has been preserved. It may serve as an informal ending, a charcoal tail-piece, to our light but truthful ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... well, as did most of the children of the community. The wind in their faces was bitter cold, making conversation difficult. Whether or not Kent was grateful for this, one could not say. He watched Lydia out of the tail of his eye and as the wind whipped the old red into her cheeks, he began to whistle. They had been going perhaps fifteen minutes when the little girl ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... cooked with her own hand, and with the greatest care, sixty-four dishes, and made a seat for him of sandal-wood, and arranged the food in plates of gold and cups of silver. The princess stood behind with the peacock-tail fan in her hand. The king, after twelve years' absence, came into the house, and the princess waved the fan, lighting up all the room with her beauty. The king looked in his daughter's face, and ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... The interesting process of constructing the hot-bed has been observed several times in Europe. It is as follows: When the time arrives for the making of the nest the enclosure is supplied with sticks, leaves and detritus of various kinds. The male then, with his tail to the centre of the enclosure, commences with his powerful feet to throw up a mound of the materials furnished. To do this he walks around in a series of concentric circles. When the mound is about four feet high ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... that in a peculiar way. When he sleeps he lies on one side, rolls himself up so that his snout lies on his breast, places all his feet together, and covers himself with that bushy tail. As the hair of the tail resembles hay, or the surrounding dried grass, it is likely to be ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... tiptop place," said the Oregonian, looking about him. "We haven't got anything equal to it in Portland, but we may have sometime. The Western people are progressive. We don't want to be at the tail end of the procession. Mr. Rand, you ought to come out and see something of the West, particularly of the Pacific coast. You may not feel an interest ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... persistently the wrong way that the kitten shivered and stood up, arched its back very high, yawned, turned round three times, and lay down again, Alas! "tibby pussy" was not allowed to have any continuous slumber. Nan dragged the Persian by its tail into her lap, and when it resisted this indignity, and with two or three light bounds disappeared out of the room, she stretched out her little hands and began to ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... his right hand leaning on his cane, his left arm resting on the shoulder of his servant. Behind him walked with a grave step the old cat, an heirloom from Haydn's lamented wife, and hence highly prized and honored by the aged maestro. Purring softly, now raising its beautiful long tail, now rolling it up, the cat followed close in the footsteps of its master, through the hall and across the yard to the ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Rannage paused, and slowly lifted a glass of water to his lips, after which he produced a large silk handkerchief and deliberately wiped his mouth. When the handkerchief had been carefully stowed away in the tail of his long coat, he once ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... Sandy was raley gettin' akinda lichtwecht, d'ye ken, for I cud nether mak' heid nor tail o' his confused blethers. ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... eaten, and each one has made the rounds of all the other pans to be sure nothing is left, they retire to their respective nests of spruce bough and curl themselves up with many turnings round and much rearranging of the litter. Feet and nose are neatly tucked in, the tail is adjusted carefully over all, the hair on the body stands straight up, and the dogs have gone to bed and do not ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... the square table she walked, where Bel had set down her bird-cage, with the newspaper pinned over it. Aunt Blin pulled the paper off with one hand, holding Bartholomew fast under the other arm. His big head stuck out before, and his big tail behind; both eager, restless, wondering, in port ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of its substance being a green jelly-like substance, whence the name. The Old-wife is about two feet long and nine inches high in the back, having a small mouth, a large eye, and a large broad fin beginning at the hinder part of the head, and reaching to the tail. It has also a large broad fin on each side near the gills, and a pretty large one under the belly. The body is deep blue, and the fins a very light blue, tipt with yellow. The head has many spots, and the body ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... finished like a clove hitch, but as will be seen from the three diagrams (Figs. 25, 26, 27) illustrating its construction, there is an intermediate round turn between the first and last hitches. It is principally used for securing the tail of a handy billy or snatch block to a larger rope, or when hanging off a rope ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum
... gay old blossom," said the other. "When he has chased you round his room, and has blown sparks at you, and has snorted and howled, and cracked his tail, and snapped his jaws like a pair of anvils, your energies will be toned up higher than ever before ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... the first mouse, subcutaneously at the root of the tail, with an amount of cultivation equivalent to 1 per ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... hairs all over his fat body stood up straight, and his long stiff whiskers—and he had whiskers on both his head and his tail—fairly bristled. He grumbled out that he didn't see why he couldn't live in peace in the grass; that all he wanted was to be let alone. Then he said he knew how he could get away from the society of worms and crickets and ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... was he that he shortly set about devising another "petrified man" which would defy the world. It was of clay baked in a furnace, contained human bones, and was provided with "a tail and legs of the ape type"; and this he caused to be buried and discovered in Colorado. This time he claimed to have the aid of one of his former foes—the great Barnum; and all went well until his old enemy, Professor Marsh ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... is a fact! dat was one down, and [my goot im himmel](41) how he did roar and bellow, unt lash his tail, unt snort and sneeze, unt sniff! Well, de bull puts right after me, unt I puts right away fun de bull: well, de bull comes up mit me just as I was climbing de fence, unt he catch me mit his horns fun de [seat](42) of my breeches, unt sent me flying more as ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... skirting of the tent, when he would spring up and pace to and fro at his picket, and give a low throaty bark of welcome if anyone approached him. A few minutes later, when the leading man came to uproot his picket, he would watch every movement, and a slow wagging of the tail quite obviously showed his approval: then, as the word came to start, he would push affectionately against the leader, as much as to say, 'Now come along!' and brace his powerful chest to the harness. At the evening halt after ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... some purpose in going away like that. The idea came to me at the sanatorium, when I was about 'all in'. They'd managed to keep the drugs and the drink from me, and one day I seemed to wake up and realize I hadn't ever really lived. Just been a tail-ender who had 'gone the pace'. Hadn't even had a beginning. Was it too late to start over again? Probably." His voice came in crisp accents. "But it was a last chance—a feeble one—a straw to the drowning," he laughed. "That sounds absurd to you but ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... about the ground being raised afterwards, and I suppose the water run off then. I did not pay much attention to his talk, for he was so choke-full of larning, and had got such a lot of hard names on the tip of his tongue, that there were no making head or tail of what he ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... front of the frightened pony lay coiled a gigantic rattlesnake, its ugly head and tail raised and its rattles singing ominously. Two more steps and the pony would ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... make a man wish he had a bushy tail," he said, after an exasperated dash at a little cloud of insects. "Peugh! what a number of nuisances there are ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... the coast was favourable, and the sixth day out, we were in the longitude of the tail of the Grand Bank. I was delighted with my ship, which turned out to be even more than I had dared to hope for. She behaved well under all circumstances, sailing even better than she worked. The first ten days of our passage were prosperous, and we were mid-ocean by the 10th of ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... lemur (Avahis laniger) nearly allied to the indri (q.v.), and the smallest representative of the subfamily Indrisinae, characterized by its woolly coat, and measuring about 28 in. in length, of which rather more than half is accounted for by the tail. Unlike the other members of the group, the avahi is nocturnal, and does not associate in small troops, but is met with either alone or in pairs. Very slow in its movements, it rarely descends to the ground, but, when it does, walks upright like the other ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... when we look at our trials as unmixed evils. They "are blessings in disguise." The dripping clouds which hide the sun, enrich the earth. The difficulties with which we have to contend, increase our strength. The tail of the kite, which seems to pull it down, helps it to rise. And the afflictions, which seem to press us to the ground, help ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... general benefit of the settlers in that vicinity; that he had incurred considerable expense, and wanted a "preemption" to the quarter-section of land on which the mill was located, embracing the tail-race in which this particular gold had been found. Mason instructed me to prepare a letter, in answer, for his signature. I wrote off a letter, reciting that California was yet a Mexican province, simply held by us as a conquest; that no laws of the United ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... tears when "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" was offered as a paraphrase of "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?" He listened with amused interest to the teachers who deduced our descent from "a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits." But he thought it deplorable that a leading physicist should never have heard of Bishop Wilson of Sodor and Man, and that a leading journalist should confound him with ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... strange girl. Bobby, whom Chet had said was "just as friendly with strangers as a pup with a waggy tail," immediately ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... was hearing the scream of the Meredith peacocks as they drew their gorgeous plumage across the silent summer lawns; at home they had nothing better than fussing guineas. She had never come nearer to one of those proud birds than handling a set of tail feathers which Mrs. Meredith had presented to her mother for a family fly brush. Pansy had good reason to remember because she had often been required to stand beside the table and, one little bare foot set alternately on the other little bare foot, wield the brush over the dishes till ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... a dog which cost him seventy minas, and was very large and handsome. His tail, which was his principal ornament, he caused to be cut off, and an acquaintance exclaiming at him for it, and telling him that all Athens was sorry for the dog, and cried out against him for this action, he laughed and said, "Just what I wanted has happened, then, I wished the Athenians to talk ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... seen my duty and I done it noble,' as the essay runs. I made that vacancy to get ahead of a rattlesnake that got me there, a venomous big one with nine police calls on its tail, and that's no snake story, either. I cut the flesh out to get rid of the poison. I was n't in a college laboratory and I had to work fast and use what tools I had with me. I killed the gentleman that did the mischief, though," Vic added carelessly, deftly slipping down his sleeve ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... a pity you were born curious, Venning, otherwise you would have made an excellent companion for a studious man. 'Why do I wish to understand Arabic?' Why do you stand on one leg watching a tadpole shed its tail." ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... distinct aspects or phases—(1) the full summer sunshine and bloom of scarlet and gold for Queen's birthdays and high ceremonials; (2) the dark frock-coats and belts in which to canter behind his Lord in; (3) the evening tail-coat, turned down with light blue and adorned with the Imperial arms on gold buttons; (4) and, finally, the quiet ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... point of getting into the spare-room bed when he asked himself that question. As he pulled back the clothes he heard a dry little sound. It was Robin's cough. He stole to the door and opened it. As he did so he saw the tail of Rosamund's dressing-gown disappearing over the threshold of the nursery. The nursery door shut softly behind her, and Dion got into bed feeling heartily ashamed of his suspicion. How low it was ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... just for that," she said, turning to her husband, who was still lounging in the doorway, "I'm going to put you out. And Bruce, too. I have enough to do without having a husband who makes fun of me and a dog who sticks his tail into everything under my feet all the time. Hurry on," and she pushed her protesting, laughing husband and the reluctant dog out through the open door and into ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... paved place, in which there were a score of armed men. Presently the lord of the castle came forward. This lord was much larger than Sir Ivaine, and the lion, on seeing him, began to lash its tail. But Sir Ivaine ordered it to be still, and ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... on that last night, and the weakened cable parted, and the Island Queen gone on the rocks, drowning Peter in the cabin with his gold? Then how had Crusoe got away, Crusoe, who feared the waves so, and would bark at them and then turn tail and run? ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... intervals, here and there among the shrouded fields, lay cottages half hidden by a white network of trees. Groups of yellow sheep stood clustered together under hedge-rows, motionless in the low mist, and making no sound. A lonely colt, with tail erect, ran beside us on the other side of the hedge as far as his field would allow him, his heavy hoofs falling noiseless in the snow. The ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... deck the wings were overhead and I saw the long body and flat tail. To me, for I'd never seen an aeroplane close before, it was a wonderful sight. I put the glasses up and watched it slide away in the dark, dropping until it seemed to skim the water. 'So that's an aeroplane!' I said to myself. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... mouse lies Bill with his face Low down in the dark sweet gold, While this monster turns round in the leaf-fringed space! Then—taking a good firm hold, As the skipper descending the cabin-stair, Tail-first with a vast slow tread, Solemnly, softly, cometh this Bear Straight down o'er the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... picture of one of these holiday cavaliers—a notary seventy years old. He rides out on horseback to Peretola, where the tournament was cheap, on a jade hired from a dyer. A thistle is stuck by some wag under the tail of the steed, who takes fright, runs away, and carries the helmeted rider, bruised and shaken, back into the city. The inevitable conclusion of the story is a severe curtain-lecture from the wife, who is not a little enraged at these break-neck ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... nocturnal, or seminocturnal, in its movements, and, moreover, it is viewed with extreme dread by the natives, who regard it as equally poisonous with the most venomous serpents. It is obviously, however, a terrestrial animal, as it has not a swimming tail flattened from side to side, nor the climbing feet that so characteristically mark arboreal lizards. Sumichrast further states that the animal has a strong nauseous smell, and that when irritated it secretes a large quantity of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... Sir Arthur, and advise him to stay at home, and so keep the rhino for the roast meat! He would not a take his cue, a dunder pate! A doesn't a know so much as his a, b, c! A hasn't so much as a single glimm of the omnum gathrum in his noddl! And pretends to hektur and doktur me! Shave a cow's tail and a goat's chin, an you ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... it had left the range, and was coming across the fields towards him, jumping the fences, dodging under the trees, and racing across the plain with its white mane and tail tossing as it came. It seemed to be making ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... Calf (the son of old White Calf, the great chief who dropped dead in the White House during President Cleveland's administration), Medicine Owl and Curly Bear and Big Spring and Bird Plume and Wolf Plume and Bird Rattler and Bill Shute and Stabs-by-Mistake and Eagle Child and Many Tail-Feathers—and many more. ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... trout's flanks through the green water. She brought him nearer. Swimming parallel with the boat, he was plainly visible from his wide-opened mouth—the hook and fly protruding from his lower jaw—to the red, quivering flanges of the tail. His sides were faintly speckled, his belly white as chalk. He was almost ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... struggles that it required all our efforts (and it is needless to say they were willing enough) to bring it to the surface. At length, after exertions that almost exhausted us, the water became agitated by the violent flappings of the tail and fins; and looking down I saw the huge carcass of the shark writhing convulsively amid waves that were stained ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... for all his mercies)," said goodman Nettles. "And you look browner, as though you'd caught some of their color from being with them, but hearty as my tapster, Zachariah Sider, who can begin with the head of an ox, and never stop till he wipes his mouth with the tuft on the end of the tail, washing it down, moreover, with a quantity of ale that ails me—ahem!—(here Nettles put his finger on the side of his nose, and grinned as if he had really said a capital thing,) to see wasted on his lean ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... a single round body (Entz '84, Buetschli '88) or in two parts (Kent '81), or in many parts scattered about the body (Gruber). In the Woods Hole forms the tail is distinctly pointed and turned back sharply, forming an angle at the extremity. The cilia on this angular part are distinctly longer than the rest. The function of this posterior part is apparently ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... represented there; most of my colleagues were -ists of one sort or another; and I, the man without a rag of a belief to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic.' It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... you have done, this time. The top and tail o't is this—that I am sniffing about here, and waiting for poor Boldwood's farm, with a thought of getting ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... waited his opportunity, and then darting in cleverly avoided the reptile's teeth, and caught it by the tail, dragging the creature out nearly straight as he called to his ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... I maintained that half the political reputations of the present day were based on escapades. "Whom do you mean?"—he said—"Randolph Churchill?—But Randolph's escapades were always just what the man in the street understood. As for your escapade, the man in the street can't make head or tail of it. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that of most sedentary persons, into a stout barrel, always buttoned into a green coat with square tails, which no man could remember to have ever seen new. His hair, well brushed and powdered, was tied in a rat's tail that lay between the collar of his coat and that of his waistcoat, which was white, with a pattern of flowers. With his round head, his face the color of a vine-leaf, his blue eyes, a trumpet nose, a thick-lipped mouth, and a double-chin, ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... must eternal be Dear Sir! it cannot fail; For 'tis incomprehensible, And without head or tail." ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... somethin' air—the same as keeps other young fellurs awake—thinkin' o' thar sweethearts. Once't in the arms o' Morpheous, ye'll forgit all about your gurl. Foller my deevice; put some o' this physic inside yur skin, an' you'll be asleep in the shakin' o' a goat's tail." ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... safe to believe others—it is perfectly safe to disbelieve him. He claims that every man will get the better of you if possible—let him alone! Selfishness, he says, is the universal rule—leave nothing to depend on his generosity or honor; trust him just as far as you can sling an elephant by the tail. A bad world, he sneers, full of deceit and nastiness—it is his own foul breath that he smells; only a thoroughly corrupt heart could suggest such vile thoughts. He sees only what suits him, as a turkey-buzzard spies only carrion, though ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Grammar" can, certainly, never be called an imposition, as another Latin Grammar frequently is. We remember having had the whole of it to learn at school, besides being— no matter what— for pinning a cracker to the master's coat-tail. The above hint is worthy the attention of boys; nor will the following, probably, be thrown away upon school-masters, particularly such as reside in the north of England. "Laugh and grow fat," is an ancient and a true maxim. Now, will not the "Comic Latin Grammar," ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... F——, leaped joyfully upon me. I went upstairs and it pursued me with its caresses. I kept my patience, but when I reached my room I gave it a kick, and it ran howling under my bed, but after a couple of minutes came back, wagging its tail, and looking at me as if asking my pardon. Oh, the dog! ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... there shot one of the birds. It belonged to the Gyr-Falcon family (Polyboriniae), and was one of the species peculiar to South America (Polyborus chimango, Vieil). The whole of the upper part of the body is brown, but single feathers here and there have a whitish-brown edge. On the tail are several indistinct oblique stripes. The under-part of the body is whitish-brown, and is also marked with transverse stripes feebly defined. The bird I shot measured from the point of the beak to the end of the tail 1 foot 6-1/2 inches. Though these Gyr-Falcons ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... follering Sunday, and didn't git back till seven o'clock to dinner, and his fust words to me was,—"Mr. ROBERT, you didn't in the least xagerate the bewty of the scene as you sent me for to see—it was as strange and as lovely as a Faery Tail! I wasn't at all surprised to see what Swells there was among 'em, and what werry particklar attentions they paid to 'em, cos I reklek how My Lord RANGDULF CHURCHILL slected that particklar spot, on henny particklar fine Sunday, to seek that werry ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... the East Goodwin buoy, being that in which we struck the dangerous bottom. And yet another, just north of the south-east buoy, leads right across the tail of the monster, and so into the deep water of ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... he shouted, as he waved his sun helmet. But the men were cheering, and they had now collected round Dicky Dobbs, two leading his horse, others hanging on to the saddle, and actually holding by the horse's tail, as they marched him round in a kind of procession, ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... their hearts to beguile, As toward them he stealthily stole; He balanced each scale, and waggled his tail, Then gobbled those children up whole— Up whole— Then gobbled those children ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... midshipman, and nine seamen; in all three-and-twenty persons, besides the seven that we buried at Batavia.[165] On Friday the 15th of March, about ten o'clock in the morning, we anchored off the Cape of Good Hope, in seven fathom, with an oozy bottom. The west point of the bay, called the Lion's Tail, bore W.N.W., and the castle S.W., distant about a mile and a half. I immediately waited upon the governor, who told me that I should have every thing the country afforded. My first care was to provide a proper place ashore for the sick, which were not a few; and a house was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... common water- snake, is perfectly harmless, and a welcome guest in West Indian houses, because he clears them of rats. He is some six or eight feet long, black, with more or less bright yellow about the tail and under the stomach. He not only faces the Fer-de-lance, who is often as big as he, but kills and eats him. It was but last year, I think, that the population of Carenage turned out to see a fight in a tree between a Cribo and a Fer-de-lance, of about equal ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... were fixed straight ahead. A squirrel whisked his tail alluringly from the bushes at the left, and a robin twittered from a tree branch on the right. But the boy neither saw nor heard—and when before had Keith Burton failed to respond to a furred or feathered challenge ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... feet two, and as thin as a bean-pole. The thickly wadded skirts swept the ground, or clung heavily about the lower limbs. The garment combined every disadvantage of a Roman toga and a fashionable swallow-tail. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... courage oozed away, When the turkey-cock said "Gobble;" They both turned tail, and scampered off, As fast ...
— Naughty Puppies • Anonymous
... who despises them while he lives by them. Years ago Mr. Disraeli called Sir Robert Peel's Ministry—the last Conservative Ministry that had real power—"an organised hypocrisy," so much did the ideas of its "head" differ from the sensations of its "tail". Probably he now comprehends—if he did not always—that the air of Downing Street brings certain ideas to those who live there, and that the hard, compact prejudices of opposition are soon melted and mitigated ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... going to lam him one after school let out. he cought a big bumbelbea whitch had flew in to the window and took sum wax and hitched a long white thread to the bumbelbea and let him go and he flew all over the chirch with that long white thread hanging down like a kite tail. everybody laffed and the girls screemed and ducked there heads down and the minister tride a long while to ketch the bumblelbea and finely he cought it by the thred and it clim up the thred and stang him and he sed drat ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... adventure given by various officers who were eye-witnesses. One stated in reply to my question as to the length of the animal, 'Well, sir, I should not like to exaggerate, but I should say it was forty-five feet long from snout to tail!' Another witness declared it to be at least twenty feet; but by rigid cross-examination I came to the conclusion that it did ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... violence to the earth. Before he could recover himself, the lasso of Don Rafael— equally skilled in the use of this singular weapon—was coiled around him; and his body, after being dragged for some distance at the tail of the officer's horse, lay lifeless and mutilated along the ground. Such was the end of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... "People make me sick. They think they're so wonderful. The world has been going on now for thousands of years, hasn't it? And the only thing in animal-language that PEOPLE have learned to understand is that when a dog wags his tail he means 'I'm glad!'—It's funny, isn't it? You are the very first man to talk like us. Oh, sometimes people annoy me dreadfully—such airs they put on—talking about 'the dumb animals.' DUMB!—Huh! Why I knew a macaw once who could say 'Good morning!' in ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... tessellated pavement bestrewn with wine, bones, and fragments of the barbarous revelry. There were untamed Franks, their sun-burnt hair tied up in a knot at the top of their heads, and falling down like a horse's tail, their faces close shaven, except two moustaches, and dressed in tight leather garments, with swords at their wide belts. Some slept, some feasted, some greased their long locks, some shouted out their favorite war songs ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on and called to them: "Ride?" He was not laughing now, he was not jibing. He seemed to be constrained to ask them to ride, they were hurrying so. Raven threw a curse at him, but Tenney broke into a limping run and jumped into the tail of the wagon and sat there, his legs dangling. And he called so piercingly to Martin to drive along, to "Hurry, for God's sake, hurry!" that Martin did whip up, and the wagon whirled away, and Raven hurried ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... donkey without a tail is cut out of brown paper and fixed on a screen or on a sheet hung across the room. The tail is cut out separately and a hat-pin is put through that end of it which comes nearest the body. Each ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... times, With periods, points, and tropes, he slurs his crimes. He lards with flourishes his long harangue: 'Tis fine, say'st thou. What! to be prais'd, and hang? Effeminate Roman! shall such stuff prevail, To tickle thee, and make thee wag thy tail? Say, should a shipwreck'd sailor sing his woe, Wouldst thou be mov'd to pity, and bestow An alms? What's more prepost'rous than to see A merry beggar? wit in ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... animal not often at home, but it was dreadful to think of what might happen at any moment should pussy walk in when her visitor was with her. Then, one day, pussy did walk in when the rat was present, purring loudly, her tail held stiffly up, showing that she was in her usual sweet temper. On catching sight of the rat, she appeared to know intuitively that it was there as a privileged guest, while the rat on its part seemed to know, also by intuition, that it had nothing to fear. At all events these two quickly became ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... varied the scene by each laying a kitten in their mother's lap; and Begum, jumping after her progeny, brushed Lady Merrifield's face with her bushy tail, interrupting the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of ox-tail, oh, dear me! A stroke first, and he fell forward with his face in his soup-plate and got his nose and mouth quite covered with the soup. He was drowned. All on dry land and in his bedroom. Too terrible. What dangers we ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... There is great freedom and beauty in these statues, as also in the lions which support them, recalling the early French and German manner. In addition, one finds the usual Lombard grotesques—two sea-monsters, biting each other; harpy-birds; a dragon with a twisted tail; little men grinning and squatting in adaptation to coigns and angles of the windows. The toothed and chevron patterns of the north are quaintly blent with rude acanthus scrolls and classical egg-mouldings. Over the western porch is a Gothic rose window. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the entrance of my gipsy-like hut, anxiously watching the weather, and absorbed in admiration of the moonrise, from which my thoughts were soon diverted by its fading light as it entered a dense mass of mare's-tail cirrus. It was very cold, and the stillness was oppressive. I had been urged not to attempt such an ascent in January, my provisions were scanty, firewood only to be obtained from some distance, the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the Republican River, the troops went into camp on Black Tail Deer Fork. Scarcely were the tents pitched when a band of Indians were seen sweeping toward them at full speed, singing, yelling, and waving lances. The camp was alive in an instant, but the Pawnees, instead of preparing ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... have a bill-of-fare and tooth picks, and billiards, and everything. Well I guess I will go over to the house and stand in the back door and listen to the mocking bird. If you see me come flying out of the alley with my coat tail full of boots you can bet they have discovered the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... I do not love Roman inscriptions in lieu of our own language, though, if any where, proper in an university; neither can I approve writing what the Romans themselves would not understand. What does it avail to give a Latin tail to a Guildhall? Though the word used by moderns, would mayor convey to Cicero the idea of a mayor? Architectus, I believe, is the right word; but I doubt whether veteris jam perantiquae is classic for a dilapidated building—but do not depend on ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Troy. And while he was strong, men used him in the chase, hunting wild goats and roe-deer and hares. But now he lay on a dunghill, and vermin swarmed upon him. Well he knew his master, and, although he could not come near to him, he wagged his tail and drooped ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... got up, crossed the room, opened the two folding panels, and examined himself attentively, pursing up his lips and frowning. He could see John Verney full face, three-quarter face, and half-face. And he could see the back of his head, where an obstinate lock of hair stuck out like a drake's tail. John was so occupied in taking stock of his personal disadvantages that a ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... black, wide-antlered bull, an ungainly brown cow, and a long-legged, long-eared calf." 228 "Pulled the butt under her chest." 248 "He 'belled' harshly several times across the dark wastes." 254 "In a flash was up again on his haunches." 268 "He curled down his abbreviated tail, and ran." 280 "In his fright the kid dropped his toadstool and stared back at ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the Miamis, Wabashaw and Wanatan of the Sioux, Black Hawk of the Foxes, Osceola of the Seminoles. During the last half of the century there arose another set of Indian leaders, the last of their type—such men as Ouray of the Utes, Geronimo of the Apaches, Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and Sitting Bull of the Sioux, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces, and Dull Knife of the Northern Cheyennes. Men like these are an ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... rose, like the giant of Cologne, the high spire of St. Martin's, with its two towers; and, almost in front, the somber apsed cathedral, with its many sharp-pointed spires, resembling a monstrous hedgehog, the crane forming the tail, and near the base two lights, which appeared like two eyes sparkling with fire. Nothing disturbed the stillness of the night but the rustling of the waters at my feet, the heavy tramp of a horse's hoofs upon the bridge, and the sound of a blacksmith's hammer. A long stream of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various |
