"Donkey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prefix 'mother' in Australia mostly means 'old hag', and is applied in that sense. In early boyhood we understood, from old diggers, that Mother Middleton—in common with most other 'old hands'—had been sent out for 'knocking a donkey off a hen-roost.' We had never seen a donkey. She drank like a fish and swore like a trooper when the spirit moved her; she went on periodical sprees, and swore on most occasions. There was a fearsome yarn, which impressed us greatly as boys, ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... Arabs, all the little Armenians, all the little Jews, drew turtles in their copy-books, turtles of every size and every description, the big ones walking behind the little ones, the tail of each in the mouth of another, making an interminable line. And in the street the donkey drivers, the water-carriers, the fishmongers, the venders of broiled meats, of baked breads, of beans, of cream, all cried: "Mister Turtle, Mister Turtle! Try our wares. Buy something for your poor stubborn beast ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... arrived in a very deteriorated condition, but recompensed for it by the extraordinary sights we had witnessed. There was no train in those days, and the whole road between London and Epsom was choked with vehicles of all kinds, from four-in-hands to donkey-carts and wheelbarrows. My friends and I mingled freely in the crowds, and saw all the "humours" of the occasion. The thimble-riggers were out in great force, with their light, movable tables, the cups or thimbles, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... barren. The sides of the hills were covered with tall weeds, yellow from the blazing sun. Sometimes they met a mountaineer, either on foot or mounted on a little horse, or astride a donkey about as big as a dog. They all carried a loaded rifle slung across their backs, old rusty weapons, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... she said angrily, 'just like Captain Kerrington's pony only Otis is a donkey at the last Gymkhana. Planted his forefeet and refused to go on another step. Polly, my man's going to disappoint me. What ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... when Oberon came along he found his beautiful queen lavishing kisses and endearments on a clown with a donkey's head. ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... nibble. Crevel is a knowing hand, good-natured but hard-headed, who will always say Yes, and then go his own way. He is vain and passionate; but his cash is cold. You can never get anything out of such fellows beyond a thousand to three thousand francs a month; they jib at any serious outlay, as a donkey does at a ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... foolishness at my place. A party up-street fired from the windows. Couldn't see very well in the dark, but wounded two or three lions. What happened, eh? Why the whole pack of lions laid siege to the house! They broke into the stable and killed three horses, a donkey, and all the cows and sheep. There weren't any shutters on the house windows—nothing but glass. It wasn't long before a young lion broke a window, and in no time there were three full-grown ones into the house after him. They injured one man so severely that he ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... up. "Bay rum?" He stepped out of the way to let an ancient woman on a donkey go by. "What's the ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... wondered uncomfortably; the consciousness that everything was strange weighed terribly upon me; I could understand that it was all foreign and strange. I recollect I awoke from this state for the first time at Basle, one evening; the bray of a donkey aroused me, a donkey in the town market. I saw the donkey and was extremely pleased with it, and from that moment my head seemed ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Then she rose and went up to add under her breath, "He is going off to sleep at last, thank Heaven! He is as cross as a red donkey!—What can you expect, he is ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... answered Mervyn laughing. "Why, just look at this fellow," he cried as his donkey came to a sudden stand-still in the middle of the road. "What can we do to make him go on? Here, boy, please make him move a little," he shouted to the donkey-boy, who was loitering ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... A donkey one day was quietly munching thistles when he heard the screaming whistle of a locomotive. Pricking up his ears, he started into a gallop and raced across lots with his tail ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... went together for a walk in the jungle, and there found a washerman's Donkey that had strayed away from its owner, and a great big kettle (such as washermen boil clothes in), which the Donkey ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... wreckage, or lumber float. There is a small hole in the bow, just above the water line, and several of the seams have been opened. Captain Barforth is having the hole closed up and has started up the donkey pump to keep the water low in the hold. He says he thinks we can make one of the nearby ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... comes a loud-tongued salesman, who out-brays Lablache, but confines his singing to "Che vuole, che vuole!" and oranges and lemons are his commodity. From an itinerant green-grocer, who passes with his panniered donkey, suddenly bursts forth, "Cimaroli, cimaroli!" The last cry we hear is that of "Tutti vivi, tutti vivi!" from the asparagaro, who is bringing frogs and wild asparagus into Rome. Now we are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... and the avenues leading to it, are thronged with carts of all sorts, sizes, and descriptions, from the heavy lumbering waggon, with its four stout horses, to the jingling costermonger's cart, with its consumptive donkey. The pavement is already strewed with decayed cabbage-leaves, broken hay-bands, and all the indescribable litter of a vegetable market; men are shouting, carts backing, horses neighing, boys fighting, basket-women talking, piemen ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the animals were kept in the park were some ponies and donkeys. Children could ride on their backs, or sit in a little cart, and have a pony or donkey pull them. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... Dame, which made some delay; and as Mrs. Datchett bent lower on the right side of her chair, William began upon the left a "hum," which, with a close imitation of the crowing of a cock, the grunting of a pig, and the braying of a donkey, formed his chief ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... rapidly written in this study on the inspiring terrace of Casa Tasso, Vesuvius in sight. Daily excursions were made. When four-of-the-clock threw the rock shadows far over the water, they went a-boating. On land they made "donkey" and "non-donkey" jaunts. Capo di Monti, overlooking the town landing-place, was also a favorite resting-place, and gave some bright pictures of native life. By an amusing practice of giving their king—a fine old mendicant with a lame leg—and his daily-growing train a grano a day at the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... taper as big as himself. 'Mind what you promise!' said an acquaintance that stood near him, poking him with his elbow; 'you couldn't pay for it, if you sold all your things at auction.' 'Hold your tongue, you donkey!' said the fellow,—but softly, so that Saint Christopher should not hear him,—'do you think I'm in earnest? If I once get my foot on dry ground, catch me giving him so much as a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... conversational sort of music, should ever attempt any other. There never was an animal less fit to be a singer. Someone—was it Cowper?—-has said that there are no really ugly voices in nature, and that he could imagine that there was something to be said even for the donkey's bray. I should have thought that the beautiful voices in nature were few, and that most of them could be defended only on the ground of some pleasant association. Humanity, at least, has been unanimous in its condemnation of the cat as part of ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... in this manner. He who would know the beauties of the hills must become acquainted with them personally and on foot. Anyone can enjoy the lazy luxury of the cozy precincts of an upholstered, porter-served car. He may travel horseback or donkey-back, if he cares to visit only where such sure-footed animals can go. However, when I want to see the stately things among the unchiseled palaces and temples where Nature pays homage in the courts of the Divine Architect, I dismiss all modes of conveyance, and with well-nailed ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... from one of the cabins on the Irish side of the road, where people, pigs, poultry, with an occasional cow, goat, or donkey herded together indiscriminately. The windows were about a foot square, and were not made to open. Sometimes they had glass in them, but were oftener stopped up with rags. Before the doors were heaps of manure and pools of stagnant water. There was no regular footway, but a mere ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... watching for them on the portico. The poor mother had waited there nearly an hour, trembling lest an accident had befallen one or the other of her sons. The moment Edouard espied her he put his pony to a gallop, shouting from the gate: "Mother, mother! We killed a boar as big as a donkey. I shot him in the head; you'll see the hole my ball, made; Roland stuck his hunting knife into the boar's belly up to the hilt, and Sir John fired at him twice. Quick, quick! Send the men for the carcass. Don't be frightened when you ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... and again 64 and 35. Like the present-day almanacs of his race, his age is shifty and uncertain. Hamed's ride occurred "a long time ago"—that hazy, half-obliterated mark on life's calendar. Pious Mohammedan that he is, he undertook a pilgrimage to Medina. To that holy orgy he rode on a donkey. So miraculous was the chief event of the journey that it is due to Hamed that his own ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... see, young master. I want to know why they couldn't let you have a donkey or a mule, instead of hanging you on ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... burdens was wondrous, So much that you'd swear he rejoiced in a load, One day had to jog under panniers so ponderous, That—down the poor Donkey fell smack ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... on the sands for an hour; and lest the poor donkey should be urged by its driver to a greater speed than her tender heart thought right, she took the reins, and drove herself. When joined by her friend, she was charging the boy-master of the donkey to treat the poor animal well. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... with a snorting laugh; 'what is firtue? Let me dell you this: Your Miss Glautia Pelmond is a volubtuous ice-woman; ant that is the most tangerous of all the taughters of the horse-leedge. Ant zo, my younk donkey, goot-night ant goot-bye. I am Cheorge Dargo, ant I nefer forgive ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... rock, and pierced with portholes at regular intervals, so that the gun-muzzles, which peer through them, can command town, bay, and neutral ground. Faith, whose reverence for this old citadel grew every minute, felt that the clatter of the donkey's heels, the gay calling back and forth, and the cries of the children ought, in these dim tunnels, to be hushed into awed silence. But no one else seemed so impressed, though the men made measurements and discussed ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... was not open, but smoke was coming up thick and fast all around it. A half-dozen men were around a donkey-engine that stood a little forward of the hatch, and others were pulling at hose. The captain was rushing here and there, giving orders. I did not hear anything he said. No one said anything to us. Rectus asked one ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... Villiam struggles in the net! By the power and intent Of the charm his strength is spent! By the virtue in each rag Blessed by the Inspired Hag He will be a willing victim Limp as if a donkey kicked him! By this awful incantation We decree ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... building, and close by is the stall for the donkeys that turned them, and also the kneading-room, oven, and store-room. Small bakeries may have had only hand-mills, like the one with which we saw the peasant in the Moretum grinding his corn; but the donkey was from quite early times associated with the business, as we know from the fact that at the festival of Vesta, the patron deity of all bakers, they were decorated with wreaths ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... made of one stuff undoubtedly, vegetable and animal, man and woman, dog and donkey, and the secret of the difference between us, and of the passing along of the difference from generation to generation with but slight variations, may be, so to speak, in the way the molecules and atoms of our bodies take hold of hands and perform ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... Cardinal's fool was a privileged person, and no one laid a hand on him, though his blood being up, he would, spite of his gay attire, have enjoyed a fight on equal terms. His quadruped donkey was brought up to him amid general applause, but when he looked round for Ambrose, the boy ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... pumps, each worked by a separate engine for circulating water through the condenser, and these are so arranged that they can be connected to the bilges in the event of an accident to the ship. In the engine room there is fitted an auxiliary feed donkey of the duplex type and ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... was through rows of tall wooden or brick structures, along streets traveled by everything from the latest European cars to plodding donkey carts. The people were dressed in a variety of costumes, from suits and dresses that would have been suitable in New York, to traditional Arab dress with flowing robes and the cloth headdress that is held in place by a band or roll of fabric around the ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... the grass had indifferently muffled it over, like graves in an old cemetery. In the centre of this waste stood, the picture of dejection, an Indian-bred cayuse, miserable burlesque of the equine species, no bigger than a donkey, and incredibly hairy and misshapen. His back was galled; and one leg, which he painfully favoured, puffed to treble its size at the hock. Even the great cottonwood trees springing beyond the hut, with their shattered branches, and blotched ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Arachne The First Snowdrop The Porcelain Stove The Three Golden Apples Moufflou Androclus and the Lion Clytie The Old Man and his The Legend of the Trailing Donkey Arbutus The Leak in the Dike Latona and the Frogs King Tawny Mane Dick Whittington and his The Little Lame Prince Cat Appleseed John Dora, the Little Girl of the Narcissus Lighthouse Why the Sea is Salt Proserpine The Little Hero of Haarlem ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... of Kay leaping on the tennis court, the clear, analysing minds of Nan and Rodney and herself musing in the sun, the feverish heart of her mother, loving, hating, feeding restlessly on itself by the seaside, the age-calmed soul of her grandmother, who was eighty-four and drove out in a donkey ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... bells and carefully charted directions, but he was no Columbus for the discovery of a magical island, a Cuba, of spices and delectable palms. Peyton had looked with a stolid indifference at the dangerously fascinating, the incomprehensible, smile of Cytherea. Yes, if the young donkey could be forced past this tempting patch of grazing, if he could only be driven a short distance farther down the highway of ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Some one claimed, at the club, the other day, that you were the biggest donkey in existence, and I denied it. I was wrong, old man, I was wrong, ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... of anthropoids as such, I never went to Mr. Darwin's school, Old Tyndall's ether, that he liked so much Leaves me, I fear, comparatively cool. I cannot say my heart with hope is full Because a donkey, by continual kicks, Turns slowly into something like a mule— I was not ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... yesterday to Montmorency. Madame Craufurd, the Comtesse de Gand, the Baronne d'Ellingen, Comte F. de Belmont, and our own circle, formed the party. It was gratifying to witness how much dear Madame Craufurd enjoyed the excursion; she even rode on a donkey through the woods, and the youngest person of the party did not enter into the amusement with more spirit and gaiety. Montmorency is a charming place, but not so the road to it, which, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... may! the thing is a triumph. That fellow Ladywell is here, I believe—yes, it is he, busily talking to the man on his right. If I were a woman I would rather go donkey-driving than stick myself up there, for gaping fops to quiz and say what they like about! But she had no choice, poor thing; for it was that or nothing ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... (shuddering).—"Die! no! I removed her from school, set her to take care of the poultry, forbade all French exercises, made her take English exercises instead, and ride on a donkey. She's quite another thing now, cheeks as red as an apple, and as firm as ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which last was excellent fun, when there was a wall at hand behind which to hide. As for chimney-sweeping, and being hungry, and being beaten, he took all that for the way of the world, like the rain and snow and thunder, and stood manfully with his back to it till it was over, as his old donkey did to a hail-storm; and then shook his ears and was as jolly as ever; and thought of the fine times coming, when he would be a man, and a master sweep, and sit in the public-house with a quart of beer and a long pipe, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... Cortona seemed a quite interminable business. It poured a deluge. Our horses were tired, and one lean donkey, who, after much trouble, was produced from a farmhouse and yoked in front of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... what his blows were like, having been the involuntary recipient of some of them. Some, do I say? I had received more than a dilatory donkey on ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... is the games, which are suitable to the children's age. Little ones play romping games, like "Cat and Mouse," "London Bridge," etc.; those a little older enjoy a peanut hunt or a peanut race, or supplying the donkey with a caudal appendage. Many novel games are possible. Or the children may be asked to a doll's party, or an animal party. To the one they bring their favorite doll; to the other their ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... only think of Donny: that is like Donkey! You haven't any long ears, have you, pony? If you had, I'd call you Little Pitcher, for 'little pitchers have great ears.' That makes me think of Mr. Allen, auntie. How big his ears are, you know? Is it because his ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... sometimes a variety of donkey meat were boiled in the muddy Tigris water without salt or seasoning. The majority became used to horseflesh and their main complaint was that the horse gravy ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... they were glad; most of all when their nurse took them into the country, where they could run on the grass and pick flowers. There they used often to see poor little hovels of houses, with gardens, and a donkey and chickens in the yard, and children playing; and they used to say they wished their father and mother were poor, and lived in a house like that, and kept a donkey. And then the nurse would tell them they were silly children; that it ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... and has been often overcome; nevertheless, it always more or less exists, and many instances are on record in which it has caused inconvenience. One of these I can supply, which occurred when I was in Portugal. I started on a donkey to make a drawing of the great aqueduct which supplies Lisbon with its delicious water, and just as I had chosen my position, and established myself, my husband rode up on a beautiful and valuable horse, belonging to a friend. ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... mills. Imagine two huge blocks of stone representing two cones, of which the upper one is overset upon the other, giving every mill the appearance of an hour-glass. The lower stone remained motionless, and the other revolved by means of an apparatus kept in motion by a man or a donkey. The grain was crushed between the two stones in the old patriarchal style. The poor ass condemned to do this work must have been a very patient animal; but what shall we say of the slaves often called in to fill his place? For those poor wretches it was ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... in contemplating the aspect from his bedroom window, Mr. Pickwick was attracted by a game cock in the stable yard, who, "deprived of every spark of his accustomed animation, balanced himself dismally on one leg in a corner." Then Mr. Pickwick discovered "a donkey, moping with drooping head under the narrow roof of an outhouse, who appeared from his meditative and miserable countenance to be contemplating suicide." In the breakfast-room there was very little conversation; even Mr. Bob Sawyer "felt the influence of the ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... and with a weird toot-tootling of his horn guided the car on at quite a respectable ambling-donkey pace. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... to the tail of a donkey to keep him from braying," was the answer. "It is known in this country that a donkey cannot utter a note unless he can lift his tail. Then, as now, gootles were made by a single concern having a great capital invested and an immense plant, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... I was ridin Lazy, my donkey, a few miles from de boss' place at Fairview, when along came a dozen or more patrollers. Dey questioned me and decided I was a runaway slave and dey wuz gwine to give me a coat of tar and feathers when de boss rode up and ordered my release. He told dem dreaded white patrollers dat I was a freeman ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... out of the proportions of life and made astonishing, by violent assaults upon the reader calculated to arouse him like pistol-shots, since a more moderate appeal would escape his attention. Just as a donkey with a hard mouth can only be guided by violent jerks upon the reins, so a dull sensibility can only be awakened by the harshest literary appeal. Style in such cases must adapt itself to the subject. Redundant words are heaped up where one would suffice for the ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... and sit down on the firmest tuft he could find and wait for morning, when perhaps the rainstorm might cease and enable him to see where he was, he heard, and at no very great distance, the sudden bray of a donkey. He turned at once in the direction of the sound, with renewed hopes, giving a loud shout as he did so. Again and again he raised his voice, and presently heard an answering shout. He called again, and in reply heard some shouts in Irish, ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... fare, while our men apparently throve. There were plenty of wild red peppers, and the men seemed to enjoy a mixture of porridge and legumes a la sauce piquante. They were astonished at my falling away on this food, but they yielded to my argument when I suggested that a "lion would starve where a donkey grew fat." I must confess that this state of existence did not improve my temper, which, I fear, became nearly as bitter as the porridge. My people had a windfall of luck, as Saat's ox, that had lingered for a long time, lay down to die, and stretching himself ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... unless by making a will in his favour and dying then and there? Should not each look after his own happiness, and will not the world be best carried on if everyone minds his own business and leaves other people to mind theirs? Life is not a donkey race in which everyone is to ride his neighbour's donkey and the last is to win, and the psalmist long since formulated a common experience when he declared that no man may deliver his brother nor make agreement unto God for him, for it cost ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... de Luxor. He greeted several friends of humble origin: the black barber who called himself "Mr. White"; Ahri Achmed, the Folly of Luxor, who danced and gibbered at Mrs. Armine and cried out a welcome in many languages; Hassan, the one-eyed pipe-player; and Hamza, the praying donkey-boy, who in winter stole all the millionaires from his protesting comrades and in summer sat with the dervishes in the deep ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... to stand up to Edward personally, so I had to console the sufferer by allowing him to grease the wheels of the donkey-cart—a luscious treat that had been specially reserved for me, a week past, by the gardener's boy, for putting in a good word on his behalf with the new kitchen-maid. Harold was soon all smiles and grease; and I was not, on the whole, dissatisfied with ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... thriven on the fat soil and open air of the country, developing physically but never mentally, growing into a lovely animal—white, with rosy blood and firm skin. She was not unlike a high-bred donkey endowed with the power of laughter. Although she dabbled about from morning till night, her delicate hands and feet, the supple outlines of her hips, the bourgeois refinement of her maiden form remained ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... on! We've seen the like of you before! There's a lot like you tramping the high road! As to being a donkey, you wait till I've given you a clout on the ear and you'll howl worse than the wind. Donkey yourself! ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... trickling, laughing, from the bow of Tony! Italy you could see; and little, half-naked children, playing in the sleepy street! You could hear the tinkle of donkey bells, and the cooing of pigeons; you could see Tony's home as he was seeing it, and hear his sisters singing. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... heaps of rubbish, staring down at the broad, desolate streets where the vigorous grass pushes its way up through the loose stones of the unrolled metalling. Amidst heavy low walls which were to have been the ground stories of palaces, a few ragged children play in the sun, a lean donkey crops the thistles, or if near to a few occupied dwellings, a wine seller makes a booth of straw and chestnut boughs and dispenses a poisonous, sour drink to those who will buy. But that is only in the warm months. The winter winds blow the wretched ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... down the hill at a pace that almost justified the Vicar's objection to him. He gave a desperate shy in the hollow at sight of a shaggy donkey, with a swollen appearance about the head, suggestive, to the equine mind, of hobgoblins. Convulsed at this appalling spectre. Titmouse stood on end for a second or two, and then tore violently off, swinging his ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... rode, defiling over the sand before the unconquerable thing they perhaps thought that they had conquered. At last the footsteps died away. There was a silence. Then, coming down from the Great Pyramid, surely I heard the light patter of a donkey's feet. They went to the Sphinx and ceased. The silence was profound. And I remembered the legend that Mary, Joseph, and the Holy Child once halted here on their long journey, and that Mary laid the tired Christ between the paws ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... hundred specimens. The animals are finely housed, and their habits consulted in the arrangements of their homes. We had the pleasure to see the young elephant, only six months old, which had just been received. It was about the size of a donkey. A hippopotamus had recently been added to the collection, and we were sadly vexed not to see it. It was shut up at six o'clock, just as we reached its house. George had his luck, and obtained a glimpse of the retiring quadruped. We have been greatly amused with the sight ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... wheels of his chariots were of solid silver. In the country he drove six horses. In town only the King did this. Coke despised George III, chiefly on account of his American policy, and to avoid the reproach of rivaling the King's estate, he took joy in driving past the palace in London with a donkey as his sixth animal and in flicking his whip at the King. When he was offered a peerage by the King he denounced with fiery wrath the minister through whom it was offered as attempting to bribe him. Coke declared that if one of the King's ministers held up a hat in the House ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... hog, and, like a hog, charged in every direction when it was roused. Its sentries walked with a footfall that could be heard for a quarter of a mile, would fire at anything that moved—even a driven donkey—and when they had once fired, could be scientifically 'rushed' and laid out a horror and an offence against the morning sun. Then there were camp-followers who straggled and could be cut up without fear. Their shrieks would disturb the white boys, and the loss of their ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... the most novel and interesting sights which attracts the traveller's attention when he first arrives in Egypt is the syce running before the horses as they go through the narrow, closely packed streets. How the crowd scatters, and the donkey-boys hustle their meek property out of the way as one of those runners comes bounding along, shouting, in the strange Arabic tongue, "Clear the way!" The sun shines upon his velvet vest, glittering with its spangled trimmings, the breeze fills the large floating sleeves till they wave backward ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... me a cheering line for four weeks just because, in a period of abnormal stress I once let you go for three. I had really begun to be worried for fear you'd tumbled into the Potomac. My chicks would miss you dreadfully; they love their uncle Gordon. Please remember that you promised to send them a donkey. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... tuk for granted; as the donkey said ven his dam called him a hass"—whispered, rather ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... which was water and chalk and the milk of a sickly cow, who gave the best she had, poor thing! but could scarcely make it rich or wholesome, spending her life in some close city-nook and pasturing on strange food. I have seen, once or twice, a donkey coming into one of these streets with panniers full of vegetables, and departing with a return cargo of what looked like rubbish and street-sweepings. No other commerce seemed to exist, except, possibly, a girl might offer you a pair of stockings or a worked collar, or a man whisper something ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... fellows! they are all gone now—the "wonderful little Gypsy";—but upon the whole the poetry, the sorcery, the devilry, if you please to call it so, are vastly on the side of the women. How blank and inanimate is the countenance of the Gypsy man, even when trying to pass off a foundered donkey as a flying dromedary, in comparison with that of the female Romany, peering over the wall of a par-yard ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... neck and back, then there will be no objection, provided it be not in a crowded thoroughfare, to his riding occasionally in a perambulator; but when he is older still, and can sit either a donkey or a pony, such exercise will be far more beneficial, and will afford him much ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... once more and hired himself to a cattle-keeper, who gave him a donkey for his trouble. Although Jack was very strong, he found some difficulty in hoisting the donkey on his shoulders, but at last he accomplished it and began walking slowly home with his prize. Now it happened that in the course of his journey there lived ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of Cawnpore moved in its many streets; the shout of a donkey-driver, the shrill of a bugle from the barracks broke sharply through the muffled sounds of the city. The June wind, heavy with the waters of the Ganges which flows past Cawnpore, made the night ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... from the verandah, mounted the pack-horse, sitting far back behind the pack like an Arab on a donkey, and once more headed the procession from the store to the Rest—a procession which grew in size as it passed down the township road, and collected the units of the male ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... and seeing an open cart—full of dead bodies—stopping before the door of a house, from which one more dead body was added to the funeral pile. That was the year of the great cholera epidemic. And again, I remember hearing bells early, very early, in the morning. We knew what that was. It was the donkey-man coming round to sell the donkeys' milk at the front door, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... I'll tell you what! I'll borrow the donkey from the farm, then they can ride in turns and won't get tired. Mrs. Donnithorne is very good-natured about lending it. Constable, you run and ask her, while we go to fetch Romola. Do you care to ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... But t' donkey reace were star o' t' pleace, For awd an' young observers; 'Twad meade a nun fra t' convent run An' ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... castle awaiting his possession. He did not dare to enter it, however. But he had communicated his secret to his wife, who decided to circumvent the Evil One by the exercise of her woman's wit. Mounting her donkey, she rode into the castle, bidding all her men follow her. Satan waited on the alert. But the Countess amid great laughter pinned a kerchief upon the ass's head, covered it with a cap, and, leading it to the window, made it thrust ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Louis Stevenson in the idea of travelling in France with a donkey. He, too, explored some mountainous districts in the centre or south of France with a donkey to carry his luggage, and the two companions slept out at nights, as Mr. Stevenson did afterwards. At last Pettitt ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... theurgy. Henceforth King Sun was his guardian deity, and Greece his Holy Land, and the philosopher's mantle dearer to him than the diadem of empire. For ten more years of painful dissimulation Julian 'walked with the gods' in secret, before the young lion of heathenism could openly throw off the 'donkey's skin' of Christianity. ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... Stories; Fate of the Children of Lir, in Grierson, Children's Book of Celtie Stories; Halcyone, in Brown, Curious Book of Birds; St. Francis's Sermon to the Birds, Longfellow (poem), in Story-Telling Poems; Saint Kentigern and the Robin, in Brown, Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts; The Donkey and the Mocking-Bird, Rosas (poem), in Story-Telling Poems; The Early Girl, in Brown, Curious Book of Birds; The Nightingale, in Andersen, Wonder Stories; The Parrot, Campbell (poem), in Story-Telling Poems, The Phoenix, in Brown, Curious Book of Birds; The Robin, Whittier (poem); ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... what had evidently been weighing on her mind for weeks past, the fat servant-girl stopped wiping her hands on her apron (without help of which praiseworthy act she could no more have talked, than a donkey with a heavy stone tied to his tail can bray), and turning herself about, waddled toward the door. Bressant hesitated a moment, passed his hand rapidly down over his face and beard, and then, catching open the door just as the fat servant-girl was ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... but Charlie Green's pet donkey makes a better noise than this bird. There, I am glad he ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... the gate. We sell them as we go along. When they're sold we buy more. We had a donkey-cart, but ... we had to sell it. We only take now what Georgie ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... probably, are more familiar with the art of packing than the Mexicans. They understand the habits, disposition, and powers of the mule perfectly, and will get more work out of him than any other men I have ever seen. The mule and the donkey are to them as the camel to the Arab—their porters over deserts and mountains where no other means of transportation can be used to advantage. The Spanish Mexicans are, however, cruel masters, having no mercy upon their beasts, and it is no uncommon thing for ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... was not in the group that surrounded the ominous tree. But as they turned to disperse, attention was drawn to the singular appearance of a motionless donkey-cart halted at the side of the road. As they approached, they at once recognized the venerable Jenny and the two-wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee's Partner,—used by him in carrying dirt from his claim; and a few paces distant, the owner of the equipage himself, sitting ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... shaving of a man's face or cutting off a lock of a woman's hair, together with a feast to the caste. In the last case it is said that the man is not readmitted until he has put the woman away. If a man touches a dead dog, cat, pony or donkey, he has to be shaved and give a feast to the caste. And if a dog or cat dies in his house, or a litter of puppies or kittens is born, the house is considered to be defiled; all the earthen pots must be thrown away, the whole house washed and cleaned and a caste feast given. The most solemn ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... should stain his face brown, and they should run away together; but Tom rejected the scheme with contempt, observing that gypsies were thieves, and hardly got anything to eat and had nothing to drive but a donkey. To-day however, Maggie thought her misery had reached a pitch at which gypsydom was her refuge, and she rose from her seat on the roots of the tree with the sense that this was a great crisis in her life; she would run straight away till she came to Dunlow Common, where ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Description of a Bivouac. Action near Redinha. Destruction of Condacia and Action near it. Burning of the Village of Illama, and Misery of its Inhabitants. Action at Foz D'Aronce. Confidential Servants with Donkey-Assistants. ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... this done he was in a great rage, and exclaimed, "You donkey! that is the way to disfigure my face. Was it not enough to cut it once, but you must now take away the best part of my fine beard? I dare not show myself again now to my own people. I wish you had run the soles off your boots before you had come here!" So saying he took up a bag of pearls, which ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... the inscription witnessed simultaneously the rescue of an almost submerged donkey by ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... dark, she warmed up some herb-broth for her supper, and when she had finished it, and had fastened up the dog and the donkey, knowing that her husband would not return till the morning, she put out the glimmering oil-lamp, and was just going to bed, when a sound struck her ear. For two miles round the cabin not another human-being lived, and it was the rarest ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... real good bank-balance do not have to wear fashionable clothes. Don John was a plain, blunt man who liked books and pictures. He wanted to see the painter, not a courtier: and when he heard of the style in which the artist was coming, he just put a boy on a donkey and sent word out that he was not at home. And further, to show the proud painter his place, he sent along a small purse of silver to pay the artist for the trouble to which he had been. The rebuke was so delicate that it was altogether lost ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... to the interest and comprehension of his small correspondent, and he derived a quite incredible amount of satisfaction from the childish scrawls which came to him in reply. They were wholly babyish documents, about the donkey, the nurse, the toys, and games of the small boy's daily life. Usually they were written in his own printed letters. Sometimes they were dictated to his mother, who faithfully reported every weighty word that fell from ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... Berlin, and act as a sort of super in his branch offices. Great Scott! Does he think a man is going to waste five years of his life in Europe at a time when twenty-four hours here at home might make a man! He's a donkey if he thinks that, and I'd have given him credit ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... when Jenny had gone away with the doll and the donkey, you hunched up the blanket and the stiff white counterpane to hide the curtain and you played with the knob in the green painted iron railing of the cot. It stuck out close to your face, winking and grinning at you in a friendly way. You poked it till it left off and turned grey and went back ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... play the fool with them. . . . Dividends may be bigger, and he'll have to stump up. . . . A good many of the bosses will have to alter their ways, incidentally. No man is going to sweat himself in order that someone else up the road can keep a second motor car, when the man himself hasn't even a donkey cart. You wouldn't yourself—nor would I. Up to a point it's got to be share and share alike. Over the water the men didn't object to the C.O. having a bedroom to himself; but what would they have ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... the foot closely resembles that of a donkey's shoe, and measured from an inch and a half, in some instances, to two and a half ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... remarked Mrs. Gresley, as she and Hester led the Vicarage donkey and cart up the drive, heavily laden with the work of many months, "that the Pratts have behaved exceedingly badly. Here they are, the richest people by far in the parish, and they would not even take a stall, they would not even furnish half of one, and they said they ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... look at the pictures. Almanack issued by a rope-maker in Manchester; photo of an Irish terrier, legs wide part, tail at an angle of forty-five to the rest of him; photo of Scotch terrier, short legs, fat body, ears like a donkey's; photo of the officers of s.s. Timbuctoo, in full uniform, my friend among them, taken on the upper deck, bulldog in the foreground. By this time the Second Officer has exhumed an oblong wooden case ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... he to the Queen, "that, as you are to be my mother-in-law, you should see the little house in which your Bellissima will live with me. With these thistles and nettles she can feed a donkey which she can ride whenever she likes; under this humble roof no weather can hurt her; she will drink the water of this brook and eat frogs—which grow very fat about here; and then she will have me always with her, handsome, agreeable, and gay as you see me now. For ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... Doctor's eldest son, who, one would have imagined, might have learned better manners. Last, not least (for we need not re-introduce Messrs. Ricketts or Bullinger, or go out of our way to present Simon, the donkey of the Form, to the reader), is Master Anthony Pembury, the boy now mounting up onto a chair with the aid of two friends. Anthony is lame, and one of the most dreaded boys in Saint Dominic's. His father is editor of the Great Britain, and the son seems to have inherited his ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... that he was still an object of wonder and terror to them." (Whitney's "Oriental and Linguistic Studies," p. 26.) They possessed nearly all the domestic animals we now have—the ox and the cow, the horse, the dog, the sheep, the goat, the hog, the donkey, and the goose. They divided the year into twelve months. They were farmers; they used the plough; their name as a race (Aryan) was derived from it; they were, par excellence, ploughmen; they raised various kinds of grain, including flax, barley, hemp, and wheat; ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... surprise was easily explained. Friar Ange, after his fight with the cutler, had at first disappeared for a lapse of six months, and now two whole years had passed without his giving any sign of life. On a certain day in spring he went off with a donkey laden with relics, and, worse still, he had taken with him Catherine dressed as a nun. Nobody knew what had become of them, but there was a rumour at the Little Bacchus that the little friar and the little sister had had some sort of difference with the authorities between ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... beyond a joke: but then all this seemed only a fit ending to the perfectly absurd arrangement into which I had been induced to enter. "Goodness gracious!" I exclaimed, sitting bolt upright on my straw bed, "am I a rational being or an inebriated donkey, or what, to have consented to such a proposal? It is clear that I was not quite in my right mind when I made the agreement, and I am therefore not morally bound to observe it. What! be a field laborer, a hewer ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... very warm to the place, and certainly it didn't look very warm to me. 'What's to come next?' I said to Harry. 'Well,' he said, 'we must make inquiries.' That was all easy enough to say, but who were we to make inquiries of? The only living thing about was an old donkey who had strayed on to the heath, and was trying to get a mouthful of something off a bare patch or two; and as we came up he stared at us as though he thought that we were bigger donkeys than he was for coming to such a place at such a time. It wasn't much use looking about, for there was ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... man, only your idea of one. You will go on enjoying your mighty theories and dreams till suddenly the juice of that 'little western flower' drips on your eyelids, and then I shall have the pleasure of seeing you caress 'the fair large ears' of some donkey, and hang rapturously upon its bray, till you perhaps discover that he has pretended, on your account solely, to like roses, when he has a natural proclivity to thistles; and then, pitiable child! you will discover what you have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... Mr. Soames did not, after this monosyllable, pass along. He stood patiently there, rather like a dumb animal, rather like a donkey looking over a gate. A sad figure, his. It occurred to me that "hungry" was perhaps the mot juste for him; but—hungry for what? He looked as if he had little appetite for anything. I was sorry for him; and Rothenstein, though he had not ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... the talk of Patsy Doolan's mother would be giving him is any use I'll see he's satisfied. That old woman would talk the hind leg off a donkey about fairies or anything else if you were to give her a pint of porter, and I'll do that. I'll give it to her regular, so I will. I'd do more than that for you, doctor, for you're a man I like, let alone that you're going out ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... followed his example, Miss Naylor attaining the distinction of a pair of donkey's ears, which she wore, after another glass of wine, with an air of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
