"Elephantine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the morning and to come within an ace of making a three hundred foot dive in the afternoon is just about enough excitement to make any one lose weight. I bet I lost five pounds in that minute and a half when Bob had me by the coat, and I was wondering whether he could hold on to my elephantine form; whether the rock would not give way, and whether I could get back to safety. I sweat ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... kill. When Rama saw no arms might slay The fiend who like a mountain lay, The glorious hero, swift to save In danger, thus his counsel gave: "O Prince of men, his charmed life No arms may take in battle strife: Now dig we in this grove a pit His elephantine bulk to fit, And let the hollowed earth enfold The monster ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... sex is, of whether it alters this or that, and why, anymore than there is any imaginative grip of the humor and heart of the populace in the popular education. There is nothing but plodding, elaborate, elephantine imitation. And just as in the case of elementary teaching, the cases are of a cold and reckless inappropriateness. Even a savage could see that bodily things, at least, which are good for a man are very likely to be bad for a woman. Yet there is no boy's game, however brutal, which ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... looked about him with some unusual attention. There was no carpet. A set of oddly coloured chairs and settees which would have pleased Ann, a square mahogany table set on elephantine legs, completed the furnishings of a whitewashed room, where the flies, driven indoors by cool weather, buzzed on window glasses dull with dust. The back room had only a writing-table, a small case of theological books, and two or three much used volumes of American ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... my advice to you in that case is, make love to some young lady, directly you reach England; and marry her in a month, before you have begun to assume elephantine proportions. Once hooked, you know, she cannot sue for divorce, on the ground that you have taken her in; and she will have to put up with you, whatever ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... poem a thoroughly incongruous figure, and greatly injure the general design. The poem appeared in this form in 1743, with a ponderous prefatory discourse by Ricardus Aristarchus, contributed by the faithful Warburton, and illustrating his ponderous vein of elephantine pleasantry. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... write tragedies, they were unimpassioned, dull, and tame. He lacked altogether the fire, high-wrought nobility of sentiment, and sense of form essential for tragic art. On the other hand, Alfieri composed some comedies before his death which were devoid of humour, grace, and lightness. A strange elephantine eccentricity is their utmost claim to comic character. Indeed, the temper of Alfieri, ever in extremes, led him even to exaggerate the qualities of tragedy. He carried its severity to a pitch of dulness and monotony. His chiaroscuro was too strong; virtue ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... suddenly into panic. Lifting its giant head high into the air, as if thus to escape its fiery assailants, it turned and scuttled back the way it had come, while the old men swarmed after it, belaboring and jabbing its elephantine rump ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... it is tender—but not for everybody,' I added warningly. Really, it was going to be very awkward if he, in his elephantine way, had conceived an infatuation for me. My conscience was perfectly clear—I had not encouraged him in any way, but nevertheless I did not wish to see him suffer from unrequited affection. It would be so awkward in many ways. William, even in his sane moods, has a dreadful habit of knocking ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... far in front of his trunk. His tail was much longer than in the Indian elephants, and was tipped with a bunch of long, straight, black hair. Altogether he was an unwholesome, disagreeable-looking brute, who munched his grass morosely and had no elephantine geniality. He was but a youngster—the great, old, really white elephant which Yule describes had died some time back, after an incumbency dating from 1806. The "White Elephant" was never ridden now, but ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... the dining-room was Madame. Madame, who was an elderly dame of elephantine girth, had resided in the hotel for half a dozen years, during which period her sole exercise had been taken in slowly descending from her chamber in the upper regions for her meals, and then, leisurely assimilation completed, in yet more slowly ascending. Madame's allotted seat ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... poplin that she knew now was different from any other dress she had seen at school. And Jerry could not get that shiny pump out of her mind! Her own feet, in their sturdy black, square-toed shoes, commenced to assume such elephantine proportions that, when the signal came for the debaters to go forward, she could ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... crush. Even the bookmakers seemed to be awed by it. They stood on their stands beside blackboards full of horses' names and mystical figures, but they did not yell at you hoarsely, bullyingly, as bookmakers ought to do. If, having looked at the elephantine portrait advertisement of one of them, you wished to bet with him, he would consent in a listless way, and say wearily to his clerk: "Nine-nine-one, seventy shillings to a dollar Polumetis," as he handed you a ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... would say; no illustrious steeple, no imposing tower; the water-edge of the town looking bedraggled, like the flounce of a vulgar rich woman's dress that trails on the sidewalk. The New Ironsides lies at one of the wharves, elephantine in bulk and color, her sides narrowing as they rise, like the walls of ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... an enterprise in hand; Held a war-council, sent his provost-marshal, And gave the animals a call impartial— Each, in his way, to serve his high command. The Elephant should carry on his back The tools of war, the mighty public pack, And fight in elephantine way and form; The Bear should hold himself prepared to storm; The Fox all secret stratagems should fix; The Monkey should amuse the foe by tricks. "Dismiss," said one, "the blockhead Asses, And ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... The Prussian estimate of Russian, of French, and even of English psychology was very erroneous. The Prussian way of getting France not to join is about as subtle as spitting in a man's face, and the elephantine gambols of the German diplomats in London during the fatal week preceding the war were a positive aid to the catastrophe that was about to take place. They blundered as hard and as heavily as it was possible to blunder; going to the wrong people; despising the subtly powerful; paying ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... that fell on the "Devil" was on a memorable spring evening in 1751. Dr. Johnson (aged forty-two), then busy all day with his six amanuenses in a garret in Gough Square compiling his Dictionary, at night enjoyed his elephantine mirth at a club in Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row. One night at the club, Johnson proposed to celebrate the appearance of Mrs. Lennox's first novel, "The Life of Harriet Stuart," by a supper at the "Devil ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... cataracts of the Nile, with the stipulation, that they should ever respect and guard the frontier of the empire. The treaty long subsisted; and till the establishment of Christianity introduced stricter notions of religious worship, it was annually ratified by a solemn sacrifice in the Isle of Elephantine, in which the Romans, as well as the barbarians, adored the same visible or invisible ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... said Mr. Hamblin, laying down a boot upon which he was stitching an outer-sole, and rising to make a ponderous, elephantine excursion across the quaking shop to the earthen water-pitcher, from which he took ...
— The New Minister's Great Opportunity - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... unhappy Lad took upon himself the task of turning little Wolf from a pest into something approaching a decent canine citizen. It was no sinecure, this educating of the hot-tempered and undisciplined youngster. But Lad brought to it an elephantine patience and an uncannily wise brain. And, by the time Lady was brought back, cured, the puppy had begun to show the results of his sire's ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... fly," said Miss de Lisle. "I am pretty wet, and there's lunch to think about." She looked at them in friendly fashion. "Thank you all very much," she said—and was gone, with a kind of elephantine swiftness. ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... penance was not required; before many minutes had elapsed the slow, measured, elephantine tread of the perambulating night-policeman woke the sullen echoes of Dawson Place, and if there were any evil-doers lurking thereabouts, caused them to melt away into the dim shadows. Taking her letters, a candle, and ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... to give the tone to literature, nor were their efforts in more execrable taste than the emanations from the pedants of Louvain. The "Rhetoricians" are not responsible for all the bad taste of their generation. The gravest historians of the Netherlands often relieved their elephantine labors by the most asinine gambols, and it was not to be expected that these bustling weavers and cutlers should excel their literary superiors in taste ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... into a brightly lighted drawing-room into which he followed Arthur Papillon, like a frail sloop towed in by an imposing three-master, and behold the timid Amedee presented in due form to the mistress of the house! She was a lady of elephantine proportions, in her sixtieth year, and wore a white camellia stuck in her rosewood-colored hair. Her face and arms were plastered with enough flour to make a plate of fritters; but for all that, she had a grand air and superb ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the company of lepers. Indeed, I wish that they would never enter my shop, as they occasionally do to beg. Nothing is more infectious, as I have heard, than leprosy: there is one very virulent species, however, which is particularly dreaded here, the elephantine: those who die of it should, according to law, be burnt, and their ashes scattered to the winds: for if the body of such a leper be interred in the field of the dead, the disorder is forthwith communicated to all the corses ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... stood in his moccasins, yet seemed not tall, so broad he was and ponderously thick. He had an elephantine leg, with a foot like a black-oak wedge; a chimpanzean arm, with a fist like a black-oak maul; eyes as large and placid as those of an ox; teeth as large and even as those of a horse; skin that was not skin, but ebony; a nose that was not a nose, but gristle; hair that was not hair, but wool; ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... a howling shame!" exploded Beef, his elephantine frame swathed in blankets to conceal a lack of vestiture, "Last night, until midnight, that graceless wretch roosted on 'Lookout There' and because the glorious moonlight made him sentimental and slushy, he twanged his banjo and warbled such mushy stuff as 'My Love is young and fair. ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... that Herodotus himself declared that he could not believe that story; but the priest regarded me not. And he said that Herodotus had never caught a crocodile with cold pig, nor did he ever visit Assyria, nor Babylon, nor Elephantine; but, saying that he had been in these lands, said that which was not true. He also declared that Herodotus, when he travelled, knew none of the Fat Ones of the Egyptians, but only those of the baser sort. And he called Herodotus a thief and a beguiler, and "the same with ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... among the bushes. He came out of his hiding place and followed stealthily, or as stealthily as the fact that he had not even taken a correspondence course in creeping allowed. And profiting by earlier mistakes, he did succeed in making far less noise than before. In place of his former somewhat elephantine method of progression he adopted a species of shuffle which had excellent results, for it enabled him to brush twigs away instead of stepping flatfootedly on them. The new method was slow, but ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... so early that I shall not have it in my power to bid farewell to any one. Unless, indeed," with a glance at Beauclerk, meant, perhaps, to be coquettish, but so elephantine in its proportions as to be almost anything in the world but that, "some of my friends may wish to ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... fabricated set forth that in the eighteenth year of Zosiri's reign he had sent to Madir, lord of Elephantine, a message couched in these terms: "I am overcome with sorrow for the throne, and for those who reside in the palace, and my heart is afflicted and suffers greatly because the Nile has not risen in my time, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... by the Italian Government to the importation of a herd of elephants, which were essential to the realistic depiction of the passage of the Alps by the Carthaginian army; but it is hoped that by the use of skis the transit may be effected without undue casualties among the elephantine fraternity. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... though I could have suggested another title to the ownership of dogs—a very common one, too, and good enough till the proper person comes interfering. Boys' dogs are generally held under this tenure. My companion, seeing me at fault, remarked with elephantine waggishness, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... emit his mewing little laugh, and heard him say, with the elephantine archness affected by certain dry and ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... Anon an elephantine trumpeting of laughter seemed to set the air a-quivering. Ramiro was lying back in his chair a prey to such a passion of mirth that it swelled the veins of his throat and brow until I thought that they ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... crevice of the curtain where, only a little while before, the urchin of elephantine appetite had peeped, the butcher beheld the inner door, not closed, as the child had seen it, but ajar, and almost wide open. However it might have happened, it was the fact. Through the passage-way there was a dark vista into the lighter but still obscure interior ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Fifth and Sixth dynasties were reigning, exploring expeditions were sent into the lands of the Upper Nile. The two dynasties had sprung from the island of Elephantine, opposite Assuan; it was, therefore, perhaps natural that they should take an interest in the country to the south. One expedition made its way into the land of Punt, to the north of Abyssinia, and brought back a Danga ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... his clumsy, elephantine way, showing that, despite Merkle's recent insinuations, he still trusted her. "This is the only woman who ever cared for me, John," he explained, after some hesitation, "and we're going to stick together. We have ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Tesla. In the back of his brain the city tumbled—an elephantine grimace, a wilderness of angles, a swarm of gestures that beat at his thought. But before his eyes there were no longer the precise patterns of another day. He was no longer outside. He had been sucked into something, the something that he had been used to refer to ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... any others. She has modelled the wave-slicing clipper which outsails all your argosies and armadas. She has revolutionized naval warfare once by the steamboat. She has revolutionized it a second time by planting towers of iron on the elephantine backs of the waves. She has invented the sewing-machine to save the dainty fingers of your virtuous grisettes from uncongenial toil, so that Fifine and Fretillon may have more leisure for self-development. She has taught you a whole new system of labor in her machinery for making watches and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... look at such a collection as he has formed, and bethink you that these elephantine bones did veritably carry their owners about, and these great grinders crunch, in the dark woods of which the forest-bed is now the only trace, it is impossible not to feel that they are as good evidence of the lapse of time as the annual ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... on them with joy, as cats pounce and purr on catnip. The whole country studied Brown's letters with the rapture of eavesdropping. Such letters! Such oozing molasses of sentiment! Such elephantine coquetry! Joel weighed two hundred and eighteen pounds and called himself ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... cure; The voice of conscience warns me off it; I'll leave the following of the spoor To those who follow it for profit; I feel they would not thank me for Turning the jungle to a shambles, Who speculate in lions or Have elephantine gambles. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... gradual modification of the forms which peopled it in the preceding age—if that has been the case, it is intelligible enough; because we may expect that the creature that results from the modification of an elephantine mammal shall be something like an elephant, and the creature which is produced by the modification of an armadillo-like mammal shall be like an armadillo. Upon that supposition, I say, the facts are intelligible; upon any other, that I am aware of, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of Carlyle's; with historical chapters, such as those in "Blackwood" on the Caesars, worthy of Gibbon; with searching criticisms, such as one on the knocking in Macbeth, and two series on Landor and Schlosser; with the elephantine humor of his lectures on "Murder, considered as one of the fine arts;" and with the deep theological insight of his papers on Christianity, considered as a means of social progress, and on the Essenes. In fact, De Quincey's knowledge of theology is equal to that ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... flushed beneath his look of speechless indignation and reproach. If she had only supported him! If she had only realised what a beauty she was in contrast with the other women! As superior as he knew himself to be to that little Cobbens, or to the bland and elephantine husband of Mrs. Parr. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... with my usual desire to teach the searcher after knowledge even of little things—though a mammoth is scarcely a "little thing"—briefly gave him some insight of the subject, running over the differences between the mastodontine and the elephantine mammoth; and then remarked to him, incidentally, that an American mastodon giganteus, found not far from where we stood, over in Missouri, a third of a century before, was now in our British Museum, where I had seen it. Of course ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... amazement he was in when he realized the fact that Major Buckley of the —th was actually towering aloft under the chandelier, and looking round for some one to address! With what elephantine politeness and respect did he show the Major into a private parlour, sweeping off at one round nearly a dozen pint-pots that covered the table, and then, shutting the door, stand bowing and smiling ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... do then, for they were fair inside. "Boiler-plate" was finishing some elephantine pleasantry to Natica, when he saw what I saw. A foolish grin rippled across his wide face. "Hullo!" he said to the Hartopp, who looked properly peevish, and then waspish, as she let her glance travel to Natica, who stood perfectly poised and, I fancied, a trifle expectant. Drayton eyed ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the lands of Perthshire. Notwithstanding all the brilliant successes of Bakewell, long-legged, raw-boned cattle were admired by the majority of British farmers at the opening of this century, and elephantine monsters of this description were dragged about England in vans for exhibition. It was only in 1798 that the "Smithfield Club" was inaugurated for the show of fat cattle, by the Duke of Bedford, Lord Somerville, Arthur Young, and others; and it was about ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... being carried out the lad caught sight of a young girl who had just arrived in a great state of excitement. She was dressed in dazzling finery, and carrying something in a basket. The boy sprang on to the dock wall, and created much merriment with his elephantine caresses. They shouted to him from the vessel to jump aboard or he would lose his passage. He made a running spring for the main rigging as she was being towed from her berth. A wild cheer went up from the crowd when they saw the smart thing that had been done, and that he was safe. ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... Harriet inquired the whereabouts of Mr. Google, and learning that he was in an anteroom, started in search of him. She found herself in the supper room, hurrying across which, she pulled open a door on the other side with such a vigorous effort of elephantine strength, as to precipitate a waiter, who had just caught hold of the handle, headlong into the room. The unfortunate servitor, who was dressed in white cravat and black coat, landed under the supper table, where he lay motionless. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... pathetic, it is none the less uncritical to rank this Spaniard as a brainless technician. Everything is relative, and the scale on which Fortuny worked was as true a medium for the exhibition of his genius as a museum panorama. Let us not be misled by the worship of the elephantine. It is characteristic of his temperament that the big battle piece he was commissioned by the Barcelona Academy to paint was never finished. Not every one who goes to Rome does as the Romans do. Dowered by nature with extraordinary acuity of vision, with a romantic, passionate nature ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... recovered her spirits and was her old self, and a very charming self it was, so charming, indeed, that even James forgot his learning and the responsibilities of his noble profession and talked, like an ordinary Christian. Indeed, he even went so far as to pay her an elephantine compliment; but as it was three sentences long, and divided into points, it shall ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... therefore from the pen of John Davies, who helped Loveday to finish his enormous translation of Cleopatra in 1665. In 1677 there came out another version of Pharamond, by John Phillips, and this is common enough. Some day, perhaps, these elephantine old romances may come into fashion again, and we may obtain a precise list of them. At present no corner of our literary history is more ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... carelessness of American readers, and knowing full well how easily they are duped—how easily they are cozened out of their senses and led into false beliefs with mere plausibilities and sophisms—this imperial and far-reaching Wall Street, this elephantine fox of the world, takes possession of American journalism—owns it, controls it. It seizes and subsidizes the metropolitan press. It purchases newspapers and magazines by the score. It establishes bureaus; it buys every purchasable ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... only in the last decade of the Nineteenth century the Frenchman De Morgan has made marvellous discoveries in the Elamite lands. What a noble passion those Frenchmen have for discovery! For Egypt did not Napoleon provide the most elephantine books of monuments and records that printing-presses have yet issued? And from that time to this have not Frenchmen held the primacy in excavations until, even while England holds and rules Egypt, she leaves, by special convention, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... for the metropolis turned into the main road from a side one. Immediately Israel limps most deplorably, and begs the driver to give a poor cripple a lift. So up he climbs; but after a time, finding the gait of the elephantine draught-horses intolerably slow, Israel craves permission to dismount, when, throwing away his crutch, he takes nimbly to his legs, much to the surprise of his ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... among South American forests—a vast sleepy mass, my elephantine limbs and yard-long talons contrasting strangely with the little meek rabbit's head, furnished with a poor dozen of clumsy grinders, and a very small kernel of brains, whose highest consciousness was the enjoyment of ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... has entered into the popular mind as no other American book ever has, and it may be said to have created a social realm which, with all its whimsical conceit, has almost historical solidity. The Knickerbocker pantheon is almost as real as that of Olympus. The introductory chapters are of that elephantine facetiousness which pleased our great-grandfathers, but which is exceedingly tedious to modern taste; and the humor of the book occasionally has a breadth that is indelicate to our apprehension, though it perhaps did not shock our great-grandmothers. But, notwithstanding these blemishes, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... humor, a friend once remarked to me, that it always reminded him of an elephant attempting to dance. Now, without any doubt, an elephant could dance after an elephantine fashion; but surely you would never catch him going through the movements of a jig or a Virginia "breakdown." He never lets you forget that he is an elephant. So with De Quincey. Levity is an element farthest removed from his humor; in fact, whenever he allows himself to indulge in humor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Plato, visiting Egypt, had heard Jeremiah and learnt from him his lofty monotheism. Doubt was thrown in the last century upon the continuance of the Diaspora in Egypt between the time of Jeremiah and Alexander, but the recent discovery of a Jewish temple at Elephantine and of Aramaic papyri at Assouan dated in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. has proved that these doubts were not well founded, and that there was a ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... mouths full of the rich herbage, kicking up their heels and biting at one another, in a perfect state of horse-play. It was almost laughable to see them, with such heavy packs on their backs, attempting such elephantine gambols; so I kept them going, to steady them a bit. The creek here I called Winter* Water. At five miles farther we passed a very high mountain in the range, which appeared the highest I had seen; I named it Mount Davenport. We next passed through a small ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... I write to make a request of the most moderate nature. Every year I have cost you an enormous - nay, elephantine - sum of money for drugs and physician's fees, and the most expensive time of the twelve months ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the broken toy he had been playing with. Peter's elephantine tread was so great that it had almost overstepped its victim. At all events Aymer gave no outward sign that he felt it except in his deepened colour and a faint ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... such a cry for naturalism in other arts—we have Millet instead of Claude; we have Zola instead of Georges Sand; we have Dumas fils instead of Corneille; we have Mercie instead of Canova; but in music we have precisely the reverse, and we have the elephantine creations, the elaborate and pompous combinations of Baireuth, and the Tone school, instead of the old sweet strains of melody that went straight and clear to the ear and the heart of man. Sometimes my enemies write in their journals that I sing as if I were a ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the night time with the stars and the moon. He was running like a youthful god, she thought, for her mind had not yet been weaned from certain vanities, and she could not see that a gigantic policeman was in his wake, tracking him with elephantine bounds, and now and again snatching a gasp from hurry to blow furious warnings on ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... of armies. Forage there was absolutely none, while even the pasture-land gave small return. The men had done well, however, and were stiffening nicely into field soldiers, while my Teutonic second in command had sufficiently recovered from his wounds to sit his saddle with some elephantine grace. He early proved himself a good soldier, and I learned he had seen considerable ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Monckton Milnes among its contributors. Thinking they had a market, an enterprising publisher rushed out a volume, The Lectures of Lola Montez. When a copy reached the editor, it was reviewed in characteristically elephantine ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... to stop now," said the other, in his elephantine simplicity, "but we must stop for a moment, because it is a sign—perhaps it is a miracle. We must see what is at the end of the road of sand; it may be a bridge built ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... room, upholstered and carpeted in green, with green-shaded electroliers above two billiard tables that stood ghastly and bier-like beneath their blanketing covers of white cotton. Against the walls stood massive, elephantine club chairs of green fumed oak, and it was into one of these that MacNutt had dropped the inert and unresponding Durkin. At the far end of the room the stealthy observer could make out what was assuredly the entrance ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don't they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don't fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Mr. Sagittarius from the room, driving Mr. Ferdinand, in a condition of elephantine horror, before him, and abandoning Madame to an acquaintance with the classics that she had certainly never achieved in the society ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... nowadays from the abominable "stores"; but I must not leave my artist, and shall let the saddler growl to himself for the present. The polished writer goes on to speak of the ruddy farmer who strolls round in elephantine fashion and hooks out sample-bags from his plethoric and prosperous pockets; the dealers drive a brisk trade, the small shopkeepers are encouraged by their neighbours from the country, and everything ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... RELATIVE,—I write to make a request of the most moderate nature. Every year I have cost you an enormous—nay, elephantine—sum of money for drugs and physician's fees, and the most expensive time of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ready for a run or a neat drop-kick from half-back. There was Ranger and Phipps of the Fifth, backing one another up like another Nisus and Euryalus. There was young Forrester, merry and plucky, saving his goal more than once by a prompt touch-down. There, even, was the elephantine Jeffreys, snorting and pounding in the thick of the fray, feeling his feet under him, and doing his clumsy best to fight the battle ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... its clumsiness is lost in the collective uncouthness which becomes of a tremendous grandeur. The procession bears onward whole populations lifted high in the air, and swaying and lurching with the elephantine gait of things which can no more capsize than they can keep an even pace. Of all the sights of London streets, this procession of the omnibuses is the most impressive, and the common herd of Londoners of both sexes which it bears aloft seems to suffer a change into something almost as ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... industriously. He thought he was displaying proper firmness, but his hand trembled, his heart beat like a plunger, and he was the victim of an ignoble bashfulness. Chris approached with some timidity; but Maori bounded up to the young man, making elephantine overtures of friendliness, which were resented by Harry's cattle-dog Cop, who walked round and round the mastiff in narrowing circles, bristling like a cat and snarling hoarsely. Maori treated the challenge with a lordly indulgence. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... of which he was very fond, and sugar-cane. He was a great wonder to the elephant, who could never understand why his pockets were full of all sorts of uneatable things. He loved to go through them, slowly considering each in his elephantine way. The bright metal handle of Alec's pocket-knife pleased Maharaj, and it was always the first thing he abstracted from the pocket and the last he returned, but the bits of string and the ball of wax he worried over. The key of the pigeon-house, ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... principle whatever; and as to Fatima's tortoise, it never budged from the beginning of the conflict to the end. Once, indeed, by strewing dandelion heads in the direction of the enemy's ground she induced him to advance, and at the cry of 'Forward, MacPeters!' he put forth a lazy leg, and with elephantine dignity led the attack, on the way to his favourite food. But (in spite of the fable) his slow pace was against him, and in the ensuing melee he was ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... declared that he is drawn from a real Professor of my acquaintance, who is anything but a fool, I should imagine not. But in that case I am all the more mystified by the incredibly weak fight which he makes in the play in answer to the elephantine sophistries of Undershaft. It is really a disgraceful case, and almost the only case in Shaw of there being no fair fight between the two sides. For instance, the Professor mentions pity. Mr. Undershaft says with melodramatic scorn, "Pity! ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... despite their lean, drawn faces, they have grown very stout. Their walk is a waddle, and they bulge with seaming corpulency. This is due to the amount of clothing they have on. I noticed Larry, to- day, had on two vests, two coats, and an overcoat, with his oilskin outside of that. They are elephantine in their gait for, in addition to everything else, they have wrapped their feet, outside their ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Poor Tom's elephantine delight over anything like a simile was always emphatic, no matter whether he saw the exact point or not, and I'm afraid that brilliant folk would have thought him perilously like a fool. Happily his companions were ladies and gentlemen ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... cold November morning by a direful conglomeration of sounds;—strange, discordant shrieks, ominous groans, a clanking, as of iron chains and fetters, a slow, heavy, elephantine tread gradually growing on the ear, and a deep, continuous rumbling as of earthquakes in the bowels of the earth. Mrs. Salsify Mumbles, nervous and delicate as she was, clung fast to the neck of her liege lord when he attempted to throw open the sash of his window, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... lost the teapot; and when they found it, they couldn't make out what had become of the lid, which, turning up at last and being fixed on to the teapot, couldn't be got off again for the pouring in of more water. Fleas of elephantine dimensions were gambolling boldly in the dirty beds; and the mosquitoes!—But let me here draw a curtain (as I would have done if there had been any). We had scarcely any sleep, and rose up with hands and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation, which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... state. When not admiring Mr. Burton in Shakespeare we admired him as Paul Pry, as Mr. Toodles and as Aminadab Sleek in The Serious Family, and we must have admired him very much—his huge fat person, his huge fat face and his vast slightly pendulous cheek, surmounted by a sort of elephantine wink, to which I impute a remarkable baseness, being still perfectly present ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... waddling uncertainly up the walk, with a certain elephantine effort at jauntiness, he nearly collided with the foreign lady who had crossed his path to reach the further limits of the terrace. Not having a cautioning horn attached to his anatomy to warn heedless trespassers from his way, the large person was forced to give ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... is a connoisseur of chinaware. The elephantine Lepeintre junior runs into debt and lives the life ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... also, by a machine drawn by one of the powerful dray-horses of this country. Whenever an unusually large and fine horse of this breed is produced in the country, he is sent to the London market, and remarkable animals they are, of a height and stature almost elephantine, large-limbed, slow-paced, shaggy-footed, sweeping the ground with their fetlocks, each huge foot armed with a shoe weighing from five to six pounds. One of these strong creatures is harnessed to a ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... denied.[339] The field hand of the plantation of the far South doubtless retained many of his most primitive savage traits. Olmsted, an unprejudiced observer, describes him as on the average a very poor and a very bad creature, "clumsy, awkward, gross and elephantine in movement ... sly, sensual and shameless in expression and demeanor." "He seems to be but an imperfect man, incapable of taking care of himself in a civilized manner, and his presence in large numbers must be considered a dangerous ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... stupor, a half dream, during which I saw visions of astounding character. Monsters of the deep were side by side with the mighty elephantine shepherd. Gigantic fish and animals ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... elephantine playfulness, stretched out his arms to ravish a kiss; but as it required no great agility to elude him, his fair enslaver had vanished before he closed them again; upon which the apathetic youth ate a pound or ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... of the old Kaffir woman a few minutes later diverted her thoughts. She found Mary Ann an interesting study, being the first of her kind that she had viewed at close quarters. She was very stout and ungainly. She moved with elephantine clumsiness, but her desire to please was so evident that Sylvia could not regard her as wholly without charm. Her dog-like amiability outweighed her hideousness. She found it somewhat difficult to understand Mary Ann's ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... and not by throwing the water on from a leathern bag, as I saw it in Damascus. The Cataract Hotel is a large place for tourists, with a capacity of three hundred and fifty people. The Savoy Hotel is beautifully located on Elephantine Island, in front of the town. To the south of the town lie the ancient granite quarries of Syene, which furnished the Egyptian workmen building material so long ago, and still lack a great deal of being ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... usual deliberate, elephantine way. Kate made no sign till he was seated, then she asked what ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... Clarence sometimes felt himself borne down by the protecting weight of this paternal hand; in the midnight silence of the dormitory he fancied he was often conscious of the soft browsing tread and snuffly muffled breathing of his elephantine-footed mentor. ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... indeed, he did the Queen and all near to her. But Buonespoir, the pirate, was to him reality and the actual, and he called him Bono Publico. At first Lempriere, ever jealous of his importance, was inclined to treat him with elephantine condescension; but he could not long hold out against the boon archness of the jester, and he collapsed suddenly into as close a friendship as that between himself ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not merely the Nile valley and the Delta, but the entire tract interposed between the Libyan Desert on the one side and the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea on the other, is a country of nearly the size of Italy. It measures 520 miles from Elephantine to the Mediterranean, and has an average width of 150 or 160 miles. It must thus contain an area of about 80,000 square miles. Of this space, however, at least three fourths is valueless, consisting of bare rocky mountain or dry sandy plain. It is only along the course of the narrow valley ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... come from! Having called a celestial, it is not, however, proper to send him away in vain. Thy intention, O blessed one, it is to have from Surya a son furnished with a coat of mail and ear-rings, and who in point of prowess would be beyond compare in this world! Do thou, therefore, O damsel of elephantine gait, surrender thy person to me! Thou shall then have, O lady, a son after thy wish! O gentle girl, O thou of sweet smiles, I will go back after having known thee! If thou do not gratify me to-day by obeying my word, I shall in anger curse thee, thy father and that Brahmana also. For thy fault, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... could go into a strange Hotel and sit down at the Breakfast Table and say: "Please pass the Syrup" in a Tone that had all the majestic Significance of an Official Utterance. He would sit there in silent Meditation. Those who sized up that elephantine Form and noted the Gravity of his Countenance and the fluted Wrinkles on his high Brow, imagined that he was pondering on the Immortality of the Soul. As a matter of fact, Jim was wondering whether he would take Ham or ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... is chastising the infant Isaac for taking a second lump of sugar in his tea. Spam! Bam! Yes, and she is rubbing in her objections with the flat of her hand. That blubbering and moaning, accompanying an elephantine tread, is fat Mrs. Casey, second floor, home drunk from an afternoon out, in fear of the vengeance of Mr. Casey; to propitiate whom she is burning a pan of bacon, as the choking fumes and outrageous sizzling testify. I hear a feeble whining, interrupted ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... of my life, Your ample waist Just fits the gown I fancy for my wife, And suits my taste; Yet there you stand, flat-footed, square and deep, An unresponsive, elephantine heap, Coquetting with the stars while ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... flocked to the shells to bring them alongside the floats where, nerve-force coming to the rescue of physical exhaustion, the big fellows managed to scramble to the floats and fairly hug each other as they did an elephantine dance in feet from which some stockings were sagging, and some gone altogether. But who cared whether legs were ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... ditto, criticised the actors and spectators, and disturbed all his neighbours, without any one venturing to call him to order; so powerful, in certain cases, is the influence of an insolent look, a ferocious mustache, and an elephantine build. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... the fore-foot and three in the hind, but there the reduction stops, for the increasing body-weight made necessary the development of broad and heavy feet. The final members of the series comprise only large, almost elephantine animals, with immensely developed and very various nasal horns, huge and massive heads, and altogether a grotesque appearance. The growth of the brain did not at all keep pace with the increase of the head and body, and the ludicrously ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... almost certainly blanch at the use to which her name has latterly been put; the kindest thing that has been said about it is that there is probably a good small language screaming to get out from inside its vast, {elephantine} bulk. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... 1709; died 1784. Critic, moralist, lexicographer, and, above all, the hero of Boswell's Life of Johnson. The ponderous philosopher did not disdain, occasionally, to give play to his elephantine wit. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... a Baron by Napoleon I, and was a Senator under Napoleon III. "With his vast bulk, his bovine face, his elephantine movements, he boasted a delightful rascality; he sold himself majestically, and committed the greatest infamies in the name of duty and ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... runs through the ravine (charged with nitrate of soda) are some igneous rocks. The bones were drifted to this spot and deposited (many of them in a broken state) in horizontal layers along with recent shells. We have, then, this remarkable fact, that this high valley was tenanted by elephantine quadrupeds, all of which passed away before the arrival of the human species, and yet while the land, and probably the sea also, were peopled with their present molluscan inhabitants. This confirms the statement of Mr. Lyell, that the longevity of mammalian species is much inferior ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton |
