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Tail   Listen
verb
Tail  v. i.  
1.
(Arch.) To hold by the end; said of a timber when it rests upon a wall or other support; with in or into.
2.
(Naut.) To swing with the stern in a certain direction; said of a vessel at anchor; as, this vessel tails down stream.
Tail on. (Naut.) See Tally on, under Tally.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tail" Quotes from Famous Books



... projecting cribbing to keep out the snakes and skunks. Through it when his protectors were away he could escape the rush of pursuing coyotes, or sally forth with equal ferocity when sheep dogs were about. He peered out of his porthole for a moment, warily, then his stump tail began to twitch, he worked his hind claws into the wood, and leapt. A yelp of terror from the ramada heralded his success and Creede ran ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... different way, there is, as in the poor Mother Country, little result except of the St.-Vitus kind. In some Legislatures are anarchic Quakers, who think it unpermissible to fight with those hectoring French, and their tail of scalping Indians; and that the 'method of love' ought to be tried with them. What is to become of those poor people, if not even a ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... chose our momentary camping-place under a buttonwood-tree, from out an exuberant swamp of yellow water-lilies and the rearing sword-blades of the coming cat-tail, a swamp blackbird, on his glossy black orange-tipped wings, flung us defiance with his long, keen, full, saucy note; and as we sat down under our buttonwood and spread upon the sward our pastoral meal, the veery-thrush—sadder and stranger than any nightingale—played for us, unseen, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... off the material of a comet's tail proves that other forces besides gravitation are operative in the interplanetary space.—The Sun, C. ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren

... saw him. Miss Erith touched McKay and pointed cautiously. There, on a partly naked tree-top, was a huge, crouching mass—an enormous bird, pumping its head at every uttered cry and spreading a big fan-like tail and beating the air ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... like a race-horse. His slender, sinewy limbs seemed as fitted for running and for speed as the limbs of an antelope. His head was down, his neck arched, his tail in the air, and his long, rapid strides bore him with astonishing velocity ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... the animal can not only dislodge insects and other irritants, but even shake off the harness. This fleshy envelope covers the sides of the trunk and the lower portions of the neck and head, the parts unprotected by the mane and tail, and serves to throw the skin of these parts into puckers, or ridges, in certain irritating ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... a man," said the engineer, swinging his lantern far out into the darkness. But no sign, whether of the dead or of the living, was in sight,—nothing except a half-starved, collarless dog, who sat stupidly upon the grass, and who did not even wag his tail when the stoker spoke ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward

... the peasant school, and spoke of Mariana as the future schoolmistress; the deacon (who had been appointed supervisor of the school), a man of strong athletic build, with long waving hair, bearing a faint resemblance to the well-groomed tail of an Orlov race courser, quite forgetting his vocal powers, gave forth such a volume of sound as to confuse himself and frighten everybody else. Soon after this the clergy ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... times. The combat was of no more effect than that of the fly with the mastiff, when it dashes against his eyes and mouth, and at last comes once too often within the gape of his snapping teeth. The orc raised such a foam and tempest in the waters with the flapping of his tail, that the knight of the hippogriff hardly knew whether he was in air or sea. He began to fear that the monster would disable the creature's wings; and where would its rider be then? He therefore had recourse to a weapon which he never used but at ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... the Green Cloth, and this Greasy Cook dismissed with a sop, but of what sort I know not; however, he thinks himself happy that a dish-clout was not pinned to his tail. March(10) is passing Xmas between Lord Spencer's and the Duke of Grafton's.(11) There is no Oubourn;(12) that family has been occupied, and is now, between recovering a little of his Grace's sight, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... Comick and half Tragick, all over resembling a ridiculous Face, that at the same time laughs on one side and cries o tother. The only Defence, I think, I have ever heard made for this, as it seems to me, most unnatural Tack of the Comick Tail to the Tragick Head, is this, that the Minds of the Audience must be refreshed, and Gentlemen and Ladies not sent away to their own Homes with too dismal and melancholy Thoughts about them: For who knows the Consequence of this? ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... herself, and on which she would have taken advice—no! not from the most skilled housewife in all the three Ridings. But, somehow, she managed to keep her tongue quiet from telling him, as she would have done any woman, and any other man, to mind his own business, or she would pin a dish-clout to his tail. She even checked Sylvia when the latter proposed, as much for fun as for anything else, that his ignorant directions should be followed, and the consequences brought before his eyes ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... master is so fond of that minister that keeps the school— I thought my master a wise man, but that man makes him a fool. Saunders, said I, I would rather than a quart of ale He would come into our kitchen, and I would pin a dish-clout to his tail. And now I must go, and get Saunders to direct this letter; For I write but a sad scrawl; but my sister Marget she writes better. Well, but I must run and make the bed, before my master comes from prayers: And see now, it strikes ten, and I hear him coming up stairs; Whereof ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... oat-meal," said Ben. "You get me out the flour and stuff and I'll make the muffins. There is a royal fire and I'll get them ready in three shakes of a sheep's tail." ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard

... burns deep, his tail is arched, And streams upon the shadowy air, The daylight sleeks his jetty ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... in with a bound, switching his bushy tail about and smiling up at his friends. Then after he had received their petting, he went as he always did, directly under the portrait of Lady Betty and, raising his head, barked three ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm

... bloomed upon their cheeks were not produced by rouge, and to comprehend the lessons in the school-books which they carried was the severest trial which they knew, except, indeed, the restrained desire to get married. And our fathers will wear one tail, as did their ancestors, who curled those appendages gracefully around the limbs of the trees while they played base-ball with cocoanuts, or visited in that nimble manner in which none other than ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various

... and fiercer hound, and tried to set him on the destined prey; but to his astonishment the beast bounded forward but a few yards, then returned with its tail between its legs and ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... think it makes me look more like Lady Conyngham now than it did before, which is all that one lives for now. I believe I shall make my new gown like my robe, but the back of the latter is all in a piece with the tail, and will seven yards enable me to copy it in ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... waited till it was over, standing stolidly by the tail of the car. She could have cried then because of the sheer beauty of the cure's act, even while she wondered whether perhaps the wafer on his tongue might ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair

... creature, as if indifferent to the great possibilities before it, or caring nothing for the good name of its race, speedily degenerates. As it will use none of the good gifts of Nature, one by one she takes them away—eye and brain are the first to go; then the tail begins to grow less and less (you can see the last remnants of a tail in fig. 3), and finally there is neither head nor tail, power of sight, nor power of motion; all that remains is an irregular-looking leathery lump, which scarcely seems to be alive (fig. 4). It ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... Pitou, the yellow cat, came around with tail inflated. There were fishbones enough to gratify any cat, and Ange Pitou made short work ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... humour. He generally marched into Glyndewi after an early breakfast, and from that time until he returned to his "mutton" at five, might be seen majestically stalking up and down the extreme edge of the terrace, looking at the fishing-boats, and shaking—not his tail, for, as all stout gentlemen seem to think it their duty to do by the sea-side, he wore a round jacket. From the time that we began our new pursuits, he took to us amazingly—called us his "dear lads"—offered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... stay still very long ever, for he was a busy fellow. But once he swung on a twig for a little while. They saw that he was almost as big as a robin, with head and shoulders of black, the wings black too, and most of his tail. But the rest of his body was like the prettiest orange-coloured velvet they had ever seen. He was singing ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... under water.... Suddenly she realized that he was drowning. She let go of the thong, clutched her horse's tail, and ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... as the Captain drew near the notice-boards. Rumour stalked abroad and loudly proclaimed that the lot had fallen upon Doe. That young cricketer was walking with me at the tail of the procession, very nervous but fairly confident. As for me, my heart was fluttering, and there ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... going to cry. Hers was no mood for tears. What said the librettist? "There is beauty in the roaring of the gale, and the tiger when a-lashing of his tail." Such was the beauty of a woman in anger. And nothing to get enthusiastic ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... in killin' him? What for? How did he come into it?" Cole's boyish face wrinkled in perplexity. "I don't make head or tail of this thing. Cunningham's enemies couldn't be his enemies, ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... opened to them the realm of sculpture. The people of the East, sometimes indeed depicting their deities in human forms, did not hesitate to change them into monsters, if the addition of another leg or another arm, a dog's head or a serpent's tail, could better express the emblem they represented. They perverted their images into allegorical deformities; and receded from the beautiful in proportion as they indulged their false conceptions of the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... follows: "In this, Tirus the serpent is found, and from him the Tiriac medicine is made. He is blind, and so full of venom that there is no remedy for his bite except cutting off the bitten part. He can only be taken by striking him and making him angry; then his venom flies into his head and tail." Breydenbach calls the Dead Sea "the chimney of hell," and repeats the old story as to the miraculous solvent for its bitumen. He, too, makes the statement that the holy water of the Jordan does not mingle with the accursed water of the infernal sea, but increases ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... convalescence you couldn't imagine. I just laughed at him, having found out that that could be depended on to irritate him. To irritate him still further I cleaned the house all over again. But what vexed him most of all was that Mr. Riley took to following me about and wagging what he had of a tail at me. ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... squander thousands. For to let you know How admirably madam's train'd to mischief, How finely form'd to ruin her admirers, She came to my house yesternight with more Than half a score of women at her tail, Laden with clothes and jewels.—If she had A Prince to her gallant, he could not bear Such wild extravagance: much less ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer

... into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful eyes glanced askance at her husband's face, and her own assumed the timid, deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its drooping tail. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... of sounds a figure in the middle of the circle was dancing, a figure so queer that for a second or two the young Englishmen scarcely knew what to make of it. But presently they saw that it was a man laced-up in a jaguar skin, with teeth, claws, and tail complete, the face of the man peering out from between the gaping jaws. He was not only dancing vigorously, if indeed dancing it could be called, which consisted in leaping violently into the air and springing from side to side over a bundle, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... she says, "should be a blank album of about fifty pages, eleven inches wide by sixteen, so as to make an upright page, which will take in long tail feathers. Cartridge paper of various pale tints is best, as one can choose the ground that will best set off the colors of the feathers. Every other page may be white, and about three black sheets will be useful for swan, albatross and other ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... among them? She was a large mule, and in good condition; indeed, there was some flesh on her bones. She was a dark chestnut with a white star on the forehead, a little white on her fore feet, and white below the hocks on the hind legs; she had a soft eye, and a peculiar twist in jerking her tail." ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... their long fore-legs stretched out like antennae, and serving to balance the posterior part of the body and the filaments of the abdomen during flight. On reaching a certain height they allow themselves to descend, stretching out while doing so their long wings and tail, which then serve as a parachute. Then a rapid working of these organs suddenly changes the direction of the motion, and they begin to ascend again. Coupling takes place during these aerial dances. Soon afterward the females ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... at a nebulous distance in the heavens, but soon soars with unheard-of and accelerating rapidity towards the central point of our system, scattering dismay among the nations of the earth, till, in a moment, when least expected, with its portentous tail it overspreads the half of the firmament with ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... now well advanced north-westwardly on our voyage, and in every cloud could see a promise of the continuing trade-wind, which was shortly to end a luckless voyage. From deck to royal,—from flying-jib to ring-tail, every stitch of canvas that would draw was packed and crowded on the brig. Vessels were daily seen in numbers, but none appeared suspicious till we got far to the westward, when my glass detected a cruising schooner, jogging along under easy sail. I ordered the helmsman to keep his course; ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... animals more useful than the pig. He will eat anything, live anywhere, and almost every particle of him, from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, is capable of being converted into a saleable commodity. Your pig also is a great producer of manure, and agriculture is after all largely a matter of manure. Treat the land well and it will treat you well. With our piggery in connection with our Farm Colony there would be ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... and also another dog (for so the skin bespoke it), which, though imperfectly preserved, seemed once to have had three heads. It was Cerberus. I was considerably amused at detecting in an obscure corner the fox that became so famous by the loss of his tail. There were several stuffed cats, which, as a dear lover of that comfortable beast, attracted my affectionate regards. One was Dr. Johnson's cat Hodge; and in the same row stood the favorite cats of Mahomet, Gray, and Walter Scott, together with Puss in Boots, and a cat of very ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... is situated upon a grassy plain. The tail of the serpent rests near the shore of Loch Nell, and the mound gradually rises seventeen to twenty feet in height and is continued for three hundred feet, forming a double curve like the letter S, and wonderfully perfect in ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... the pool that darkly creeps In ripples before the gale, A star like a lily sleeps And wiggles its silver tail. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... the Indians had dismounted, the imprint of his moccasin being clearly outlined in the dust. This presented a new difficulty, and we now understood why they had not picked us off in the morning. They were entrenched and were waiting to be attacked, but seeing the main force turn tail, the hunted ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson

... eternally to upbraid him in the mouth of every slave, tankard-bearer, or waterman; not a bawd, or a boy that comes from the bake-house, but shall point at him: 'tis all dog, and scorpion; he carries poison in his teeth, and a sting in his tail. Fough! body of Jove! I'll have the slave whipt one of these days for his Satires and his Humours, by one ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... although I Gnash my teeth when I look in your French or your English papers, What is the good of that? Will swearing, I wonder, mend matters? Cursing and scolding repel the assailants? No, it is idle; No, whatever befalls, I will hide, will ignore or forget it. Let the tail shift for itself; I will bury my head. And what's the Roman Republic to me, or I to the Roman Republic? Why not fight?—In the first place, I haven't so much as a musket; In the next, if I had, I shouldn't know how I should use it; In the third, just at present ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough

... under a great tree in which was a labourer who had lost his calf. And as he was enumerating the charms of his wife, and naming all the pretty things he could see, the labourer asked him if he could not see the calf he sought, to which the Dutchman replied that he thought he could see a tail. ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... is going to turn tail, as I always thought he would,—the cursed cowardly traitor!" replied the latter, gnashing his teeth. "But let him, and that pitiful poltroon of a Redding, go where they please. We will see to matters ourselves. I don't believe it is any thing more than a mere mob, who will scatter at the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... enormous a size, that it kept the whole Roman army from coming to the river. Several soldiers had been buried in the wide caverns of its belly, and many pressed to death in the spiral volumes of its tail. Its skin was impenetrable to darts: and it was with repeated endeavours that stones, slung from the military engines, at last killed it. The serpent then exhibited a sight that was more terrible to the Roman cohorts and legions than even Carthage itself. The streams of the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... with grey, and there was a film over one of the keen beautiful eyes, which opened eagerly as he pricked his ears and lifted his head at the rattle of the door latch. Then, as two boys came out, he rose, and with a slowly waving tail, and a wistful appealing air, came and laid his head against one of the pair who had appeared in the porch. They were lads of fourteen and fifteen, clad in suits of new mourning, with the short belted doublet, puffed ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... and waiting for that little fool, who doesn't know his way about London yet!" She emphasized those words by shaking her brawny fist at her son—who instantly returned to his place of refuge behind the tail of my coat. "Have you got the money?" inquired the terrible person, shouting at her hidden offspring over my shoulder. "Or have you lost that as well as your own stupid ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... stench. Liubka was scarcely amazed and said that this was simply fireworks, that she had already seen this, and that you couldn't astonish her with that. She asked, however, permission to open the window. Then he brought a large phial, tinfoil, rosin and a cat's tail, and in this manner contrived a Leyden jar. The discharge, although ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... got him," whispered Theodore Roosevelt to his companion, and advanced on foot, with great cautiousness. At first he could see nothing, but at last made out the back and tail of the great beast, as it lay crouched among the branches. With great care he took aim and fired, and the cougar fell to the ground, ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer

... the nose of the Fokker had been within twelve inches of the Aviatik's tail-planes; and but for the fact that the German suspended his fire at the moment of diving, it would have been all ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... did eagerly peruse James, Meredith and Hardy—but to lose My Reason, trying to make Head or Tail; The more I read, ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess

... sleight of hand had been employed; or, perhaps, that the card of my choice had in some manner been smuggled away. However, once on a racecourse I saw a horse which I fancied on his merits. He looked very tall and strong, and was of a pretty colour, also he had a nice tail. He was hardly mentioned in the betting, and I got "on" at seventy to one, very reasonable odds. I backed him then, and he won, with great apparent ease, for his jockey actually seemed to be holding him in, rather than spurring him in the regrettable way which you ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various

... odour of wild musk, and the Bush was as silent as if no life remained in the intense heat. Ryder had risen, and was looking at Wallaroo standing with his nose in the shade of a gum-butt, fighting the avaricious flies with his tail. At that instant a loud report rang along the gully, and Ryder staggered a few paces, and fell with his back to one of the boulders, stunned. A bullet ricocheting from the rock had struck him in the neck. Yarra threw himself forward, face downward, at a space between the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... noon—the Sunbow's rays[129] still arch The torrent with the many hues of heaven, And roll the sheeted silver's waving column O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular, And fling its lines of foaming light along, And to and fro, like the pale courser's tail, The Giant steed, to be bestrode by Death, As told in the Apocalypse.[130] No eyes But mine now drink this sight of loveliness; I should be sole in this sweet solitude, 10 And with the Spirit of the place divide The homage of these ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... genius of the 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 ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... advice of the guide would have to be followed, and all four set about the task with the cool daring shown from the first. Since each man was to lead his animal, it was necessary to dismount in front, instead of slipping over the tail, as would have been easier. The beasts showed striking sagacity in this delicate task. The trail was so narrow that to dismount to the left, on the side of the dizzying precipice, made it impossible for a man to keep his poise, while to descend on the right, directly beside ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... with her in town while we were away, and in her note of invitation she included us, if we had returned, saying all manner of civil fine things about me; but, as far as I am concerned, it won't do, and she cannot put salt upon my tail.... ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... which any size party may play and enjoy it for hours. Cut a large figure of a donkey, minus a tail, from dark paper or cloth, and pin it upon a sheet stretched tightly across a door-way. Each player is given a piece of paper, which would fit the donkey for a tail, if applied. On each tail is written the name of the person holding it. When all is ready, the ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger

... which have very beautiful plumage. There is one kind of bird very remarkable for its astonishing smallness, not being larger than a grasshopper or large beetle, which however has several very long feathers in its tail. Along the coast there is a species of very large vulture, the wings of which, when extended, measure fifteen or sixteen palms from tip to tip. These birds often make prey of large seals, which they attack when out of the water: On these occasions, some of the birds attack the animal behind; others ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... went on, 'I beg your pardon. Jacob, you can go on decanting. It was very careless of you to forget it. Meantime, Hebe, bring that bottle to General Jupiter, there. He's got a corkscrew in the tail of his robe, or ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald

... Dragon started from his den, spitting fire on his path. He cast a look at his victim there on the spot which his blood-thirsty maw knew so well. He raised his scaly body, thus letting his sharp claws be more visible, moved his snaky tail in a circle, and showed his gaping mouth. Snorting the monster crawled along, shooting flames out of his ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... something 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 ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... are, however, two pieces of chiaroscuro implied in the treatment of the pig. It is assumed that his curly tail would be light against the background—dark against his own rump. This little piece of heraldic quartering is absolutely necessary to solidify him. He would have been a white ghost of a pig, flat on the background, but for that alternative tail, and the bits of dark ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... (Fringilla graminea,) poured out with a peculiarly pensive modulation. This species closely resembles the former, but may be distinguished from it, when on the wing, by two white lateral feathers in the tail. The chirp of the Song-Sparrow is also louder, and pitched on a lower key, than that of the present species. By careless observers, these two Finches, on account of the similarity in their general appearance and habits, are considered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... eagles seemed to cry— And the sea-kings obeyed the sky-kings' word, When on the right they soared across the sky, And one was black, one bore a white tail barred. ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... set out on a journey saw his Dog stand at the door stretching himself. He asked him sharply: "Why do you stand there gaping? Everything is ready but you, so come with me instantly." The Dog, wagging his tail, replied: "O, master! I am quite ready; it is you for whom I ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... discovery of the mountain lion, that lay close to the rocky shelf with glaring eyes and tail that swept nervously from side to side, the boys had noted that the animal was as much penned in as they were themselves. Beyond the shelf was an overhanging cliff, so that further progress in that direction was cut off completely. Had ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer

... street with his nasal cry of "Clo'!"—I have often, I said, fancied that, besides the load of exuvial coats and breeches under which he staggers, there is another weight on him—an atrior cura at his tail—and while his unshorn lips and nose together are performing that mocking, boisterous, Jack-indifferent cry of "Clo', clo'!" who knows what woeful utterances are crying from the heart within? There he is, chaffering ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... search, from premise to conclusion, from text to doctrine; that they have sought aright, and no one else, who does not agree with them; that they alone have found out the art of putting the salt upon the bird's tail, and have rescued themselves from being the slaves of circumstance and the creatures of impulse. It is undeniable, then, if the popular feeling is to be our guide, that, high and mighty as the principle of private judgment is in religious inquiries, ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... taking a short stroll just before sundown. As they were about to return they espied the largest and strangest lizard they ever saw. It was nearly two feet long, with a perfectly round body, a broad, flat head, short legs and a short, blunt tail. It was a chunky little animal, all covered with a rough skin like an alligator and dotted with square warts. It seemed very tame and followed Mary into the tent where she made a warm nest for it in the corner near her bunk. It was very ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster

... compartment, Jack manipulated the controls again. The ship moved away from the asteroid and yawed around so that the "tail" was pointed toward the anchor bolt. Protruding from a special port was a heavy-duty universal joint with special attachments. Harry reached out, grasped it with one hand, and pulled it toward him, guiding it toward the eyebolt. ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett

... no small amount of curiosity as we proceeded through the streets. Each of the ladies, as well as Maria and the Indian girl, with two or more parrots and other birds on their shoulders; Nimble sitting on mine with his tail round my neck; Arthur carrying Toby; while Tony and Houlston had a couple of monkeys apiece, which they had obtained on their voyage. Such a spectacle, however, was too common in Para ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... to cover his mouth when speaking lest insects should enter it [Footnote ref 2]. The outfit of nuns is the same except that they have additional clothes. The Digambaras have a similar outfit, but keep no clothes, use brooms of peacock's feathers or hairs of the tail of a cow (camara) [Footnote ref 3]. The monks shave the head or remove the hair by plucking it out. The latter method of getting rid of the hair is to be preferred, and is regarded sometimes as an essential ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... in 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 have been ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... "potential energies" on which he subsists, but 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

... a favourite with everybody in the village. The men would laugh at his pranks, especially when he came from the fields on the old plough horse and urged him to a gallop, sitting with his face to the tail; and they would say that he was like his father, and would never be much good except to make people laugh. But the women had a tender feeling for him, because, although motherless and very poor, he yet ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... They're the same that winked Upon the world when Alcibiades Cut off his dog's tail to induce distinction. There are dogs yet, and Alcibiades ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... Yet almost in our own day France put God out of her institutions; set up and crowned a prostitute as the goddess of reason; and trailed the Bible through the streets of Paris, tied to the tail of an ass! What followed? Spiritual destitution. And in this country we have enthroned so-called physical science, and, as Comte predicted, are about to conduct God to the frontier and bow Him out with thanks for His provisional services. With what result? As our droll philosopher, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... face of a breaker on his surf-board, but he has to get started to sliding. Board and rider must be moving shoreward at a good rate before the wave overtakes them. When you see the wave coming that you want to ride in, you turn tail to it and paddle shoreward with all your strength, using what is called the windmill stroke. This is a sort of spurt performed immediately in front of the wave. If the board is going fast enough, the wave accelerates it, and the board begins its ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... and exclaimed: "I declare, he has made a likeness of little Sally." From the Indians be got some of the pigments with which they smeared their faces, and his mother's indigo bag supplied him with blue; while from the house cat's tail he took the hair for his brushes. West was well known as a portrait-painter at fifteen. His Quaker friends at first demurred at the vanity of his calling: but in a solemn meeting the spirit happily moved them to bless him and consecrate him to art. He found rich patrons, who ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle

... at the tail end, trying at intervals to peer around a khaki-covered Punjaub rump, alternately getting my head and fingers bruised by heels I could not see and a rifle-butt that only moved in jerks when you didn't expect it to. My nose was bleeding at the end of ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... tight about the legs. You, who encouraged the hemp manufacture, may leave the halter to rogues, and prevent the odium of felo de se. Medicinal virtues are here to be had without the expense and hazard of a dispensary: You may sleep without dreaming of bottles at your tail, and a looking-glass shall not affright you; and since the glass bubble proved as brittle as its ware, and broke together with itself the hopes of its proprietors, they may make themselves whole by subscribing to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... Coulton, now wife of William Vaux, who sweeping the street before her maisters doore vpon a Saturday in the euening, Mary Smith began to pick a quarrell about the manner of sweeping, and said vnto her she was a great fat-tail'd sow, but that fatnesse should shortly be pulled downe and abated. And the next night being Sunday immediatly following, a Cat came vnto her, sate vpon her breast, with which she was grieuously tormented, and so oppressed, that she could ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts

... and Burreenjin were watching the fishing and did not heed what was said to them. Soon the alligator smelt them, and he lashed out with his tail, splashing the water so high, and lashing so furiously, that all the fishermen were drowned, even Deereeree and Burreenjin on the bank—not one escaped, And red was the bank of the creek, and red the stump whereon Deereeree and Burreenjin had ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker

... now!" exclaimed Fronklyn. "I hope you will excuse me for grumbling, Lieutenant, when I could not make head nor tail to your movement." ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic

... was not my fault If you never turned your eye's tail up As I shook upon E in alt, Or ran ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... man has had a great many intellectual descendants. It is also an unhappy fact in nature, that the ignorant multiply much faster than the intellectual. This fellow in the dug-out believed in a personal devil. His devil had a cloven hoof, a long tail, armed with a fiery dart; and his devil breathed brimstone. This devil was at least the equal of God; not quite so stout but a little shrewder. And do you know there has not been a patentable improvement made upon that devil for ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... boy they told me if I wanted to catch a bird I must put salt on its tail. I ran after the birds with the salt in my hand, but I soon convinced myself that if I could put salt on a bird's tail, I could catch it, and realized that I had ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... that all is not right," he thought to himself. "Of course he cannot know how things really stand or he would never have let Hartington take shares. It is a curious transaction altogether, and I cannot make head nor tail of it. However, that is no business of mine. I will cash the check at once and send the money to town with the rest; if Mildrake can hold on we may tide matters over for the present; if not there will be a crash. However, he promised ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... his sporting blood aboil. "Here, pup, sic 'em! sic 'em!" He indicated the game urgently. The fox terrier rolled up one eye, wagged his stub tail—but did not ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... tailors Went to catch a snail, The best man amongst them Durst not touch her tail, She put out her horns Like a little kyloe cow, Run, tailors, run! or she'll have you all ...
— The Tailor of Gloucester • Beatrix Potter

... side—perhaps taking his arm—it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy's-Kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was incessantly hopping on behind ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... he returned, and solemnly pushed a white-faced calf with a broken horn squarely among the almost fighting disputants. There was a lull in the storm of angry words. Here was the lost calf. With a bawl of dismay and many gyrations of tail, it occupied the centre of the floor. None could dispute the fact that it was the calf in question. The defendant assumed an injured, innocent air, the plaintiff looked crestfallen. Russell explained he had found the calf among his father's cows. But, knowing the ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... have threatened to fight me." Letting go the buffalo's head, Grizzly Bear went around and seized him by the tail, turning him round and round. Then he left, but as he did so, he gave him a hard blow ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown

... deemed it advisable to send one of the gods to bring them to him. When they came he threw the serpent into that deep ocean by which the earth is engirdled. But the monster has grown to such an enormous size that, holding his tail in his mouth, he encircles the whole earth. Hela he cast into Niflheim, and gave her power over nine worlds (regions), into which she distributes those who are sent to her, that is to say, all who die through sickness or old age. Here she possesses ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... conscientiously wrong-headed on the subjects of moral and physical force; but they gradually widened their ground of attack, and suggested that he was actuated by corrupt motives, not for his own advantage, but in order to obtain places for a host of needy adventurers who constituted what was termed his "tail." Finally, they denounced him as a coward, and the abettor therefore of a cowardly policy: that being afraid to place himself at the head of his armed countrymen, he affected to abhor bloodshed, and held out ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... sustenance, breathed peacefully near the tumble-down fence; the ubiquitous, long-legged, yellow dog, rendered trustful by long seclusion, aroused himself from his nap to greet the arrival with a series of heavy raps upon the rickety porch-floor with a solid but languid tail. Lennox stepped over him in reaching for the gourd hanging upon the post, and he did not consider it ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... artist, as you use the word, but I assure you real artists are the most practical people in the world. Not one of them but can make a whistle out of a pig's tail, or a queen's robe out of a sheet and a blue scarf! What do you ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... shovel snout and a stern ugly as a battle-ship's, and the Lord knows there was overhang and to spare to tail her out decent. Cut out the yellow and the red and the whole lot of gold decorations and she's as homely as ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... should be served as many of the viands mentioned in the Tales as possible. We stayed two days and it was one long feast. We had venison served in half a dozen different ways. We had antelope; we had porcupine, or hedgehog, as Pathfinder called it; and also we had beaver-tail, which he found toothsome, but which I did not. We had grouse and sage hen. They broke the ice and snared a lot of trout. In their cellar they had a barrel of trout prepared exactly like mackerel, and they were more delicious than mackerel because they were ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... the fact that she, who had been the pet of a princess, was now being ridden by an ordinary commoner. At all events, she had made up her mind to get rid of the commoner without further ceremony. Putting her fine ears back and dilating her nostrils, she suddenly gave a snort and a whisk with her tail, and up went her heels toward the eternal stars—that is, if there had been any stars visible just then. Everybody's heart stuck in his throat; for fleet-footed racers were speeding round and round, and the fellow who got thrown in the midst of all these trampling hoofs would ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... give them so military an appearance, and impress us with the idea that they have marched, are by no means a proof of this circumstance; for we were informed, that the first thing done in most instances, was to deprive the conscripts of their superabundant hair. But the long tail and the cocked hat, are worn in imitation of the higher orders of older time. It is indeed a sight of the most amusing kind to the English eye, to behold a French peasant at his work, in velvet coat and breeches, powdered hair, and a cocked hat. ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... enough, a mile and a half away, now a large black body showing above the waves, and leaving a track of dazzling white as its great tail beat the water ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... a horse's mane, or tail, denotes that you will be a good financier or farmer. Literary people will be painstaking in their work and others will look ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... executive all contributed to national calm and prosperity. When the Government solved the Indian problem and squadrons of Indian cavalry scouts in native costume were substituted for the pitiable organizations tacked on to the tail of skeletonized regiments by a former Secretary of War, the nation drew a long sigh of relief. When, after the colossal Congress of Religions, bigotry and intolerance were laid in their graves and kindness and charity began to draw warring sects together, many thought the millennium ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... served him a good turn too; for after his enemies had passed on and were busy making prisoners of the rest of the crew, he lay there unperceived for a great while, listening to the racket, but faint and stunned, so that he could make neither head nor tail of it. At length a couple of men came aft and began handling the sail; and "Hullo!" says one of them, discovering him, "here's one as ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Miss Lady," the Stray pleaded, as he ran along beside me, trying to keep up with my long steps. "I've got me a dog now to keep off turkles from me and you." And the slinking brindle bunch of ears and tail and very little else, at our heels, regarded me with the same brave entreaty. He and the Stray, indeed, presented a picture of chivalrous attention ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... an immense expanse of dark starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant comet of 1812—the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... Fa Fei, caressing his pig-tail persuasively, "how does a wise man act, and by what manner of omens is he influenced ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... and dismisses them beneath, According as he foldeth him around: For when before him comes th' ill fated soul, It all confesses; and that judge severe Of sins, considering what place in hell Suits the transgression, with his tail so oft Himself encircles, as degrees beneath He dooms it to descend. Before him stand Always a num'rous throng; and in his turn Each one to judgment passing, speaks, and hears His fate, thence downward to ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... "Crater." I saw Starling Hutto, of Company H, a boy of sixteen, on the top of the breastworks, firing his musket at the enemy a few yards off with the coolness of a veteran. As soon as I reached him I dragged him down by his coat tail and ordered him to shoot from the banquette. On the south of the "Crater" a few men under Major Shield, of the Twenty-second, and Captain R.E. White, with the Twenty-third Regiment, had a hot ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... very pretty flail— Drubs them delightfully, 'midst general laughter. But oh, poor ass, aching from head to tail, Pray, what the better is your state thereafter? BURIDAN'S Ass was surely your twin brother. There's such small difference ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various

... oftener, as it was most unkempt. Sancho replied that would be an easy matter, for he would have a barber of his own, as well as an equerry; he knew that all men of fame kept such a man, for once in Madrid he had seen a gentleman followed by a man on horseback as if he had been his tail. He inquired why the gentleman was being followed in that manner and learned it was his equerry. Don Quixote thought Sancho's idea to have a barber was an excellent one, and Sancho urged his master to make haste and find him his island, that he might roll in ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... preference?); but this poor animal from stem to stern was swamped in finery. His ears were hid in great sheaths of white linen tipped with silver and blue. His body swaddled in stiff gorgeous cloths descending to the ground, except just in front, where they left him room to mince. His tail, though dear to memory, no doubt, was lost to sight, being tucked in heaven knows how. Only his eyes shone out like goggles, through two holes pierced in the wall of haberdashery, and his little front hoofs peeped in and out ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... where most of the pews on the main floor are held by officers and their families. We entered the church fifteen minutes before the hour appointed,—four o'clock. An elderly usher in a fine suit, with swallow-tail coat and a decoration on his breast, politely gave us liberty to choose our seats, as the invitations were not numerous and the church is large. A few persons, mostly ladies, were there before us, and had already ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... 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" ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... quarter of the heavens, and which shot its rays into the north. Eight years afterwards, while the sun was in Capricorn, another comet appeared to follow in the Sagittary; the size was gradually increasing; the head was in the east, the tail in the west, and it remained visible above forty days. The nations, who gazed with astonishment, expected wars and calamities from their baleful influence; and these expectations were abundantly fulfilled. The astronomers dissembled their ignorance of the nature of these blazing stars, which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... blow-out that evening, after we had taken a thundering big French frigate, which we must have begun to engage before you lost sight of our mastheads. We should have taken her consort, too, before the sun went down, if, like a cur, she hadn't turned tail and run for it; when, as it took us some little time to repair damages, ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston

... unheard, and dashing swiftly past us, and showing us the soles of his naked feet as he ran adown the path and up the opposite side." In another place he devotes a page to a description of a dog whom he saw running round after its tail; in still another he remarks, in a paragraph by itself—"The aromatic odor of peat-smoke, in the sunny autumnal air is very pleasant." The reader says to himself that when a man turned thirty gives a place in his mind—and his inkstand—to such trifles as ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... military officers, notaries public, magistrates, bailiffs, and young ecclesiastics—the latter with spotless neck-cloths and close-shaven chins—there were three countenances which particularly pleased me: the first being that of an ancient earl, who wore a pig-tail, and the back of whose coat was white with powder; the second, that of a yeoman ninety years old and worth 90,000 pounds, who, dressed in an entire suit of whitish corduroy, sometimes slowly trotted up the court on a tall heavy steed, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... the open door Josephine had leapt out of his arms on to the floor. For a flashing second the cat stood on the carpet, her white fur all abristle, her back arched, and her tail lashing furiously in the air. Then, uttering a hoarse cry of rage and fear, she sprang towards Mrs. Crofton, and dug first her claws, and then her teeth, into the white arm that hung over the side of the couch.... Josephine's terrified victim gave a fearful cry, everyone ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

... called to breakfast—a Danish breakfast corresponds much to an early English lunch—he found Karl and Axel's tongues wagging like a dog's tail at dinner-time, they were so full of the fishing. They had caught a few roach in the river, and about once in a moon a trout, and John Hardy's completer knowledge had impressed them. Hardy bowed to Froken Helga, and would ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary

... at the campfire and stuck his nose into Jimmie's pocket, looking for sugar. Mike III., as some of the boys insisted on thinking of the little fellow, dropped off and seized the animal by the tail and began to pull. Frank ran to get the child out of his dangerous position, but Uncle Ike merely looked around to see what it was that was pulling his tail winked one eye at Frank, ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson

... away to the west to the ridge of hills that was crowned with orange and purple mists, with the white road climbing to its crest. And as he watched, he could see a small blob of white dust moving, leaving a feathery tail behind it. And he turned quickly ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... their way, the one with the pig's heart did not stay with them at all, but wherever there was a corner he ran to it, and rooted about in it with his nose as pigs do. The others wanted to hold him back by the tail of his coat, but that did no good; he tore himself loose, and ran wherever the dirt was thickest. The second also behaved very strangely; he rubbed his eyes, and said to the others, "Comrades, what is the matter? I don't see at all. Will one of you lead me, so that I do not fall." ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... a little shocked at the look of the animals drawn up; they were most miserably thin—most of them swelled in the legs—few without sore backs—and not one eye, on an average, in every three; but still they were all high steppers, and carried a great tail. 'There's your affaire,' said the old Frenchman, as a long-legged fiddle-headed beast was led out; turning out his forelegs so as to endanger the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... Any one can want that. But it's I who am to give her to you, which is more to the point, young man; for it is going to be hard enough for me to let the little wag-tail leave my nest. So you wait. You shall have her, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... finishing it was an argument I put to myself taken from the plays that are acted now-a-days, which was in this wise: if those that are now in vogue, as well those that are pure invention as those founded on history, are, all or most of them, downright nonsense and things that have neither head nor tail, and yet the public listens to them with delight, and regards and cries them up as perfection when they are so far from it; and if the authors who write them, and the players who act them, say that this is what they must be, for the public ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... evidently disturbed, but not pursued by the hound, and so absorbed in his private meditations that he failed to see me, though I stood transfixed with amazement and admiration, not ten yards distant. I took his measure at a glance,—a large male, with dark legs, and massive tail tipped with white,—a most magnificent creature; but so astonished and fascinated was I by this sudden appearance and matchless beauty, that not till I had caught the last glimpse of him, as he disappeared over ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... fantastic met had a scarlet body, brown tail and reddish-brown wings, with white maltese crosses against a bright green background. One machine looked like a pear flying through the air. It had a pear-shaped tail and was painted a ruddy brown, just like a large ripe fruit. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... and he heard his son chuckle again. He had certainly caught a tartar—possibly two. With a twisted smile he recalled the old yarn of the hunter who caught the bear by the tail. Willing to let go, ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... pounded hard, and he stared for a time like one struck dumb at the spot where she had stood by the window. Then suddenly, he turned to the door and flung it wide open, and on his lips was the reckless cry of Marie-Anne's name. But St. Pierre's wife was gone, and Nepapinas was gone, and at the tail of the big sweep sat only Joe Clamart, ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... digito monstrari el diceri hic est. That is the man who wrote the fine poem, who painted the fine picture, and so forth, till, by giving way to this, a man may give way to forms of vanity as base as the red Indian who sticks a fox's tail on, and dances about boasting of his brute cunning. I know all about that, as well as any poor son of Adam ever did. But I know, too, that to desire the esteem of as many rational men as possible; in a word, to desire an honourable, and true renown ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... fuchsias, and watch the people in the street by the hour together, especially on Sundays and market-days, when a great many came in from the mountains, women in close white caps with goffered frills, short petticoats, and long blue cloaks; and men in tail-coats and knee-breeches, with shillalahs under their arms, which they used very dexterously. They talked Irish at the top of their voices, and gesticulated a great deal, and were childishly quarrelsome. One market-day, when Beth was looking out of the sitting-room window, her mother came and ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... Michel, "it is well known that in 1861 the earth went through the tail of a comet. Now suppose there was a comet with a power of attraction greater than that of the sun, the terrestrial globe might make a curve towards the wandering star, and the earth would become its satellite, and would be dragged away to such a distance ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... care Thunderbolt began edging up, and, in a brief while, his head was abreast of the haunch of the steer, and steadily gaining. Avon now leaned over the right shoulder of his mustang, and reaching forward and downward, seized the tail of the steer, and in a flash twisted all that was sufficiently flexible around the horn of his saddle. At the same instant he called sharply to Thunderbolt, who made a vicious bound to the left, and the steer, with a short bellow of pain, ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis

... Passenger-pigeon. His eye, with its red circle, the shape of his head, and his motions on alighting and taking flight, quickly suggest the resemblance; though in grace and speed, when on the wing, he is far inferior. His tail seems disproportionately long, like that of the Red Thrush, and his flight among the trees is very still, contrasting strongly with the honest clatter of the Robin ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... his favorite mare, an Irish sorrel of powerful frame, with solid limbs, whose horizontal crupper and long tail indicated her race; she was one of those animals that are calm and lively at the same time, capable of going anywhere and of passing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... hatching. To keep up a due supply of oxygen, therefore, the father stickleback ungrudgingly devotes laborious days in poising himself delicately just above the nest, as you see in No. 3, and fanning the eggs with his fins and tail, so as to set up a constant current of water through the centre of the barrel. He sits upon the eggs just as truly as a hen does; only, he sits upon them, not for warmth, but ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... along with me? No, sir, replied the slave; the grand vizier will be here this moment. Begone immediately; save yourself. Bedreddin rose up from the sofa in haste, put his feet in his sandals, and, after covering his head with the tail of his gown, that his face might not be known, he fled, without knowing what way to go, in order ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... reasonable suspicion of being wild and mischievous anarchists. The opportunities and temptations that come to those in power would be a test of the quality of the sect more severe than trial by the cart-tail and the gibbet. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... proportionately longer tails than typical P. o. pallidus from central Veracruz; total length and length of tail of two adult males are 575, ...
— Mammals from Tamaulipas, Mexico • Rollin H. Baker

... from the scalp; and, that analogies with Europe might not be wanting, one gentleman wore a queue, zopf, or pigtail, bound at the shoulders, not by a ribbon, but by the neck of a claret bottle. Other heads are adorned with single feathers, or bunches and circles of plumes, especially the red tail-plumes of the parrot and the crimson coat of the Touraco (Corythrix), an African jay; these blood-coloured spoils are a sign of war. The Brazilian traveller will be surprised to find the coronals of feathers, the Kennitare (Acangatara) of the Tupi- ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... ruin ere man was made: "Such folly must surely fail!" And when he was done, "Do you think, my Lord, He's better without a tail?" ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... I looked at my linen; never had it been in such a mess after female embraces. I had taken no care about it, it was be-spunked in an unusual degree, and lots of thinnish stains were on the tail which made me think that one or both of us must have spent copiously. Then I recollected that Jenny's cunt seemed very wet to me when I felt it after I had spermatized her. There were no signs of blood, and taking stock of the sensations ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... "not very long" shot out from between his lips much as the tail-end of an up-chimney wind switches itself around the angle of the fireplace, I felt there was little doubt in his mind who would be left to do business after the final drag-out and clean-up. At the same time it did not dissipate a sort of come-and-go confidence I had that the old terrapin ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... of mine have been. One in particular, took medal after medal; a beautiful glossy brown bulldog, with long silky ears, and the slender splayed-out legs that are so highly prized but so seldom seen nowadays. His tail, too, had the truly Willoughby curve, from his dam, who ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... With the tail of her eye, or with half an ear, even while she was in full swing of some preposterous discussion, punctuated with laughter, with Jim Crowfoot, she could observe Lord Lindfield, could see his perplexity and his anger, could hear his attempts ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... logic finds in life no propulsion, only a momentum. It goes because it is a-going. But the revelation adds: it goes because it is and WAS a-going. You walk, as it were, round yourself in the revelation. Ordinary philosophy is like a hound hunting his own tail. The more he hunts the farther he has to go, and his nose never catches up with his heels, because it is forever ahead of them. So the present is already a foregone conclusion, and I am ever too late to understand it. But at the moment of recovery ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... species of fish none of us had ever before seen, a fish about ten to sixteen inches long, slim, with fine scales and large fins. Their heads came down with a sudden curve to the mouth, and their bodies tapered off to a very small circumference just before the tail spread out. They were good to eat, and formed a welcome addition to our larder. We were all eager for something fresh, and when we saw a couple of deer run across the bluffs just before we reached our fourth camp, our hopes of venison were roused to ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... the Southern Islands were a little slower. But as Luzon goes, so go the rest. The rest of the archipelago is but the tail to the Luzon kite. Luzon contains 4,000,000 of the 8,000,000 people out there, and Manila is to the Filipino people what Paris is to the French and to France. Luzon is about the size of Ohio, and the other six islands that really matter, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... speak uprightly, only notions. They weren't any use to science. Sometimes she'd flutter with her fins, and twitter her flukes, and sidle off like she was bashful, and then she'd come swooping around enough to make the harbour sizzle, and stick her nose in the bottom and her tail in the air, trembling with her emotions, and then she'd come up and smile at you a rod each way. I judged she meant all right, but she didn't understand her limitations. Her strong hold was the majestic. She appeared to have it fixed she wanted to be kittenish. ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... I saw his horns and his tail then," he screamed. "Come, Lolla, this is an accursed place. I told John it was wrong to try to do this; that he ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart

... fish are plaice, soles, brill, turbot, and skate. The skate love to lie buried over head and ears in the sand. The faintest outline of tail or a flapping fin betrays the spot, and you long for an umbrella-poke from some Zoological-Garden-frequenting old lady, to stir the lazy creature up; but ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... be a poor tinker," said I; "but I may never have undergone what you have. You remember, perhaps, the fable of the fox who had lost his tail?" ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... a crib made of sleepers" 77 Whitehead on a Trolley at the exact spot where the Lion jumped upon him 79 Abdullah and his two Wives 80 A party of Wa Jamousi 83 "His length from tip of nose to tip of tail was nine feet eight inches" 92 Head of the first Man-Eater 93 "The following evening I took up my position in this same tree" 100 "He measured nine feet six inches from tip of nose to tip of tail, and stood three feet ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson

... foliage and glimmering water, instead of the painted canvas in front of which it belongs. The heart of the community is right. Its heroine is Mary Pickford. It rises to realism as one man. The little dog who cannot pose, and who pants and wags his tail on the screen as he would anywhere else, elicits thunderous applause. The baby who puckers up its face and cries, oblivious of its environment, is always a favorite. But the trend of all this, these institutions cannot see. We librarians are ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... said the small boy with a chuckle, "I be Jan Proteroe, and I beant afeart only gert beast come out of hedge down along with eyes and a tail—gum!" ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... now," said he, "may I never speak agin If I'm a-tellin' yer wrong, But the length o' that sarpint from head to tail Warn't a ninch under ten ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... galloper, small-hoofed, five feet high; tail three feet and a half long; cheek pieces of the bit of twenty-three carat gold; shoes silver?' ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... for some of them know me, and I must confess that I should not like to have been seen speaking to such shabby, ill-looking fellows. I wonder what their relations in the country would have said, had they seen them in such wretched condition. Their coats were torn, one of them had lost part of his tail, and their faces looked as if they had not been washed since the last shower of rain. Fearing lest the Sparrowes should return and discover us, I asked Drinkwater to take the ferry-boat to the other side; and just as we landed we had the pleasure of seeing the great Lord Bison introduce his sister, ...
— Comical People • Unknown

... mother's deathbed. Then he did not know what had awakened him, but now he was sure that there had been a tapping on his door. And after he had sat up in bed completely awake, he heard Petsy give a little welcoming bark. Then came the noise of his small, soft tail beating against the cushion ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... Breek is one of the most lovable characters in all literature; and his penetration—a great part of which he learned, to take his own account of it, by driving cattle 'through a throng lowland country with the black soldiers at his tail'—blossoms into the most delightful reflections upon ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh

... listener); carry does not necessarily imply delivery, and often does not admit of it. A man carries an appearance, conveys an impression, the appearance remaining his own, the impression being given to another; I will transmit the letter; transport the goods. A horse carries his mane and tail, but does not convey them. Transfer may or may not imply delivery to another person; as, items may be transferred from one account to another or a word transferred to the following line. In law, real estate, which can not be moved, is conveyed by ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald



Words linked to "Tail" :   head, prat, rear end, rat-tail file, flag, fundament, piece of tail, spy, fanny, tush, chase after, track, trunk, tag, tree, bum, sprig tail, process, horizontal tail, lizard's-tail family, tail lamp, caudal appendage, outgrowth, pursue, rat's-tail cactus, dock, buns, plural, bobtail, trace, butt, brown-tail moth, reverse, high-tail, fag end, back, rear, rump, arse, dog, pinch, tailing, buttocks, can, posterior, ship, follow, derriere, give chase, gold-tail moth, white tail, tail rotor, backside, kite tail, fuselage, lizard's-tail, fee-tail, body, uropygium, tail coat, vertebrate, tail bone, bob, cat's-tail, behind, tail feather



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