"Porcupine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sea, sharp, angular mountains, with outlines that from afar suggested the fantastic castles imagined by Dore; and inland, the towns of the upper ribera floating in an emerald lake of orchard, the distant mountains taking on a violet hue from the setting sun that was creeping like a bristly porcupine of gold into the hot vapors of ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... my own little tin-pot way) I turned silently and sadly from the window, for I was n't wanted in that company. I thought of going round to the back premises in search of a men's hut; but before regaining the gate, I trod on a porcupine cactus, and forgot everything else for the time. Then, as I lay on the ground outside the gate, caressing the sole of my foot, and comforting myself with the thought that a brave man battling with the storms of fate is a sight worthy the admiration ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... of his wife's disillusionment and hesitation about the future. Many weak creatures are curiously armed for the unequal conflict of existence—some with fleetness of foot, some with a pole-cat weapon of malignance, some with porcupine quills, some with a 'possumlike instinct for "playing dead." Of these last was Fitzhugh. He knew when to be silent, when to keep out of the way, when to "sit tight" and wait. His wife had discovered that he was a fool—that he perhaps owed more to his tailor than to any other single ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... room to place them—appear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, emblazoned in their proper colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle with their splendor. One of these devices is a large image of a porcupine on an heraldic wreath, being the crest of the Lords de Lisle. But especially is the cognizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff repeated over and over, and over again and again, in a great variety of attitudes, at full-length and half-length, in paint and in oaken sculpture, in bas-relief and rounded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... with long locks of hair, which attested to his prowess, as they were composed of scalp-locks taken from the heads of his enemies slain in battle; the feet were encased in moccasins, embroidered with beads and the quills of the porcupine dyed in various colors; from his neck was suspended a collar, made of the tusks of the javali; his tomahawk hung gracefully from his waist, and a fine robe of jaguar-skins draped his back. Such a costume ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... Echidna one day, And he cried, "What a very odd nose! So exceedingly sharp. Why, it's funnier far Than your porcupine coat and your toes." Then most rudely he made all the echoes resound With "he-hees!" and "haw-haws!" ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... prefers warm blood for every meal, and is very wasteful. I have much evidence against him; his worst one-day record that I have shows five tragedies. In this time he killed a mountain sheep, a fawn, a grouse, a rabbit, and a porcupine; and as if this were not enough, he was about to kill another sheep when a dark object on snowshoes shot down the slope near by and disturbed him. The instances where he has attacked human beings are rare, but he will watch and follow one for hours with the utmost caution and curiosity. One morning ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... self-protective instinct at once converted him into a porcupine. An attempt was being made to force him into a ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Macleod and tell the Inspector all that I have told you and get him to send what men he can spare along with you. You can't get a man here. The raid starts from the Piegan Reserve. It will likely finish where the old Porcupine Trail joins the Sun Dance. At least so I judge. Ride by the ranch and get some of them there to show you the shortest trail. Both Mandy and ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... as though every one were against him. He tried to keep out of sight in the upper woods of the Piney, seeking his food by day and resting at night in the hollow log. But one evening he found it occupied by a Porcupine as big as himself and as bad as a cactus-bush. Wahb could do nothing with him. He had to give up the ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... lame of one leg, and this was accounted for by a terrible scar, inches deep, which ran down the thigh from hip to knee. No clothes he wore whatever, not even a string, but his nose, perforated in a dozen places and each perforation the setting for a carved spine of bone, bristled like a porcupine. Around his neck and hanging down on his dirty chest was a string of gold sovereigns. His ears were hung with silver half-crowns, and from the cartilage separating his nostrils depended a big English penny, tarnished ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... rill that flows, Only a stretch of cactus beds, and the wild, sweet prairie rose; Never a habitation, save where in the far south-west A solitary tepee lifts its solitary crest, Where Neykia in the doorway, crouched in the red sunshine, Broiders her buckskin mantle with the quills of the porcupine. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... passed on, and we became hungry. Many wild beasts came plunging into the water beside us, and others swam across to our side, and stood still. Although faint and weary, I managed to shoot a porcupine, and we all tasted ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... The porcupine of many spines Always eats sweetmeats when it dines, 'Tis very fond of chocolate-creams, And munches candy in its dreams. The little ones, as may be seen, On brandy-balls are very keen, And peppermints they will devour, And lemon-drops eat by ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... defalcated, are shrieking hoarse; drowned in Constitutional clamour. But the debate and arguing of a whole Nation; the bellowings through all Journals, for and against; the reverberant voice of Danton; the Hyperion-shafts of Camille; the porcupine-quills ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... to have warned him. Its wiry mat of coat stood out like quills upon the fretful porcupine. But the rollicking, galumphing Jan was just then impervious to any such ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... own tingle, because it was true, what he said: I was a pert young piece. Holding my own at home, and lots of other things in life (for sixteen years of life seem fearfully long if they're all you've got behind you), had made me pert, and I didn't love myself for it, any more than a porcupine can be really fond of his own quills. I couldn't bear, somehow, that the man with the nice eyes should be hearing me called a "pert piece," and thinking me one. Quite a smart repartee came into my head, but a heavy feeling in my heart kept me from putting it into words; and Nebuchadnezzar ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ondherstand that the Queen—God bless her!—does not reckon for a privit soldier to kape elephints an' palanquins an' sich in barricks. Afther we had dhragged ut down from Dearsley's through that cruel scrub that near broke Orth'ris's heart, we set ut in the ravine for a night; an' a thief av a porcupine an' a civet-cat av a jackal roosted in ut, as well we knew in the mornin'. I put ut to you, sorr, is an elegint palanquin, fit for the princess, the natural abidin' place av all the vermin in cantonmints? We brought ut ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... mightily pleased with the stanza, and they also improvised until, according to their versions, Long Lon bore a marked resemblance to a porcupine. Lon, being a real person, felt that Cheyenne's retaliation was just. Moreover, Lon, who never did anything hastily, let it be known casually that he had seen three riders west of the line shack some two days past, and ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... every tired muscle astrain, a fat porcupine was mounting the hill; its claws digging frantically for foothold among the slippery stones. It seemed to flow, rather than to run. And as it hurried on, it chuckled and scolded, ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... porcupine ant-eater, or Tasmanian hedgehog. It is much larger than the English hedgehog, and can not roll itself into a ball. Its back is covered with very stout spines protruding from a coat of thick gray fur, and ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Alas! I in my innocence did deem The words you uttered in the last campaign Did true portray the situation here, But now I fear they were but party gush. But, ah! "The pen is mightier than the sword." These venomed quills must be from porcupine; For deeper do they bore, as I reflect That I invited all their smarting wounds. I sought to give their idol Worcester but His proper place by "damning with faint praise;" And now they prod me as the muleteer Doth goad his ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... giant box was opened. A porcupine was dropped inside. The cover went on again. This was, at a guess, about five o'clock in the afternoon. The chunky man said drearily, "If this is supposed to be the way they'll feed us, they coulda picked something easier to ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... trousers of blue cloth worked with colored porcupine quills, and a scarlet mantle glittering ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... a small tuft on the top, which they suffer to grow, and wear in plaits over the shoulders; to this they seem much attached, as the loss of it is the usual sacrifice at the death of near relations. In full dress, the men of consideration wear a hawk's feather, or calumet feather worked with porcupine quills, and fastened to the top of the head, from which it falls back. The face and body are generally painted with a mixture of grease and coal. Over the shoulders is a loose robe or mantle of ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... its totem as its ancestor, and refrains (as a rule) from injuring or eating it." (1) The members of the Crocodile clan call themselves "brothers of the crocodile." The tribes of Bechuana-land have a very similar list of totem-names—the buffalo, the fish, the porcupine, the wild vine, etc. They too have a Crocodile clan, but they call the crocodile their FATHER! The tribes of Australia much the same again, with the differences suitable to their country; and the Red Indians of North America the same. Garcilasso, della Vega, the Spanish historian, son of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... with the aid of their slaves, opened a path across the woods to the first fall of the Rio Juagua; and on the 10th of September we made our excursion to the Cuchivano. On entering the crevice we recognised the proximity of tigers by a porcupine recently emboweled. For greater security the Indians returned to the farm, and brought back some dogs of a very small breed. We were assured that in the event of our meeting a jaguar in a narrow path he would spring on the dog rather than on a man. We did not proceed along the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... the former the likeness may not be easily traced. But the common names used by the fishermen often indicate these resemblances, —as, for instance, Sea-Vulture, Sea-Eagle, Cat-Fish, Flying-Fish, Sea-Porcupine, Sea-Cow, Sea-Horse, and the like. In the branch of Mollusks, also, the same superficial analogies are found. In the lowest class of this division of the Animal Kingdom there is a group so similar to the Polyps, that, until recently, they have been associated with them,—the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... were there shaking with ill-concealed merriment. Every pore poured forth perspiration, and my hair seemed to stand on end like quills upon the back of the fretful porcupine. I thought of the experience of the first sermon by a theological student which I had recently read in a comic paper, and I trembled lest history ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... upon his sunken flanks, and upon two bones which stick out on each side of his belly. His coat is roughened by the sweat which has repeatedly come out and dried upon him, and which, no less than the dust, has made him gummy, sticky and shaggy. The horse looks like a wrathy porcupine: you are afraid he will be foundered, and you caress him with the whip-lash in a melancholy way that he perfectly understands, for he moves his head about like an omnibus horse, tired of his ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... kind of pith in them, first, because they seem as 'twere a kind of Vegetable growing on an Animal, which growing, they say, remains a long while after the Animal is dead, and therefore should like other Vegetables have a pith; and secondly, because Horns and Feathers, and Porcupine's Quils, and Cats Bristles, and the long hairs of Horses, which come very neer the nature of a mans hair, seem all of them to have a kind of pith, and some of them to be porous, yet I think it not (in these cases, where we have such ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... indigenous in Babylonia appear to be chiefly the following:—the lion, the leopard, the hyeena, the lynx, the wild-cat, the wolf, the jackal, the wild-boar, the buffalo, the stag, the gazelle, the jerboa, the fox, the hare, the badger, and the porcupine. The Mesopotamian lion is a noble animal. Taller and larger than a Mount St. Bernard dog, he wanders over the plains their undisputed lord, unless when an European ventures to question his pre-eminence. The Arabs tremble at his approach, and willingly surrender to him ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... have means of protection that do not at once appear. In the case of the newt it is evidently an acrid or other disagreeable secretion, which would cause any animal to repent that took it in its mouth. It is even less concerned at being caught than is the skunk, or porcupine, or stink-bug. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... tease a porcupine, For reasons I'll relate, He's like a cushion full of pins That stand out stiff and straight. And if you stand too close I know He'll stick one ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... the porcupine's tail struck upward and three of the longest, sharpest quills in this queer body were firmly ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... the little ones whined piteously for their natural food and failing drink. One day she saw a large black animal of unpleasant but familiar smell. Swiftly and silently she sprang to make attack. She struck it once on the nose, but the Porcupine doubled his head under, his tail flew up, and the mother Lynx was speared in a dozen places with the little stinging javelins. She drew them all with her teeth, for she had "learned Porcupine" years ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... corpses, and there is no end of the bodies. There is no assuaging of the hurt; thy wound is grievous; all that hear the report of thee clap their hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?" And another prophet had uttered the curse: "The pelican and the porcupine shall lodge in the capitals thereof; their voice shall sound in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds; for he hath laid bare the cedar-work. This is the joyous city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, 'I am, and there is none besides ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... back to the house, up the main entrance, and into the dry, dark chamber. When all the tender bark was eaten off, the bare stick would be carried away and deposited on the dam. It was an easy life; and the beavers grew fat while all the rest of the wild kindreds, save the porcupine and the bear, were growing lean with famine. There was absolutely nothing to do but eat, sleep and take such exercise as they would by swimming hither and thither at terrific speed beneath the silver armour ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the secrets of the world seemed slumbering—gleamed upon Brock. His dress, a hunting jacket of tanned deer-skin and close-fitting leggings. Fringed mocassins of the same material, richly embroidered in silk and porcupine quills dyed in divers colours, encased his feet. The light from the open log fire flickered fitfully, half revealing the antlered heads of moose and caribou and other trophies of the chase that, hanging ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... a great castle, and at the gate thereof a dragon, terrible to see; while in the foreground came that which was meant for a gallant ship, with a great flag aloft, but which, by reason of the forest of lances with which it was crowded, looked much more like a porcupine carrying a sign-post; and, at the roots of those lances, many little round o's, whereby was signified the heads of Amyas and his schoolfellows, who were about to slay that dragon, and rescue the beautiful princess who dwelt in that enchanted tower. To behold which marvel ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... in the costume of the country: most of them wore light-blue cloth capotes, girded tightly round them', by scarlet or crimson worsted belts. Some of them had blue and others scarlet cloth leggings, ornamented more or less with stained porcupine quills, coloured silk, or variegated beads; while some might be seen clad in the leathern coats of winter—deer-skin dressed like chamois leather, fringed all round with little tails, and ornamented much in the same way as those already described. The heavy winter moccasins ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... and the one lamp, set well away from the bed, made a pallid oasis in its own vicinity. Desmond had flung aside his coat, and his thin shirt clung in patches to his damp body. His face was set in rigid lines; and the little doctor, who carried a heart of flesh under a porcupine exterior, was haunted for days by the despair in ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... throng'd with it. Each line's a volume, and who reads would swear Whole libraries were in each character. Nor arrows in a quiver stuck, nor yet Lights in the starry skies are thicker set, Nor quills upon the armed porcupine, Than wit and fancy in this ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... him more perhaps than any man of his time to the ridicule of his contemporaries"; and that "he was in his literary career, jealous, vain, irritable, pedantic, bombastical, petulant, and quarrelsome, ever on the watch for an affront, always in the attitude of a fretful porcupine." ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... came when Leclere gathered his dogs together and floated down in a bateau to Forty Mile, and on to the Porcupine, where he took a commission from the P. C. Company, and went exploring for the better part of a year. After that he poled up the Koyokuk to deserted Arctic City, and later came drifting back, from camp to camp, along the Yukon. And during the long months Batard was ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... water, and they found a nigger, hidden away in a hole in the bank, not five hundred yards from here! They found the bloody rascal by a little path he tramped down to the water, trodden hard, just like a porcupine's walk. They got him in the hole like an aardvark, with a bush over the mouth, so you couldn't see it. He'd evidently been there a long time, the floor was full of bones of fish he'd caught in the pool, and there was a bit of root like a stick half gnawed through. ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... a few hours after. We were shown the entrance to the Galerie Hacquelebac where the King met with his fatal accident as he was on his way to the tennis court with the Queen and his confessor, the Bishop of Angers. The door, which was very low at that time, was later raised and decorated with the porcupine of Louis XII. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... worse at Skagway," another man volunteered. "I came up yesterday, and they're losing a hundred head of horses a day— bogging 'em down and breaking their legs. You can walk on dead carcasses from the Porcupine ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... Indians, others as Prairie Indians and these again were divided into tribes or clans, frequently at war with each other; and these wars were cruel in the extreme, often exterminatory, neither age nor sex being spared. Their dress was skins, embroidered with beads, feathers, and porcupine quills. They painted their faces and ornamented their hair in a fantastic manner. Their weapons were the bow and arrow, spears, and hatchets. Their canoes were of birch-bark; their habitations, huts, or wigwams, either of a conical shape, ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... at that. "Don't judge, the taste of a baked porcupine by his quills," she said. "Grimes is a very rough and unpleasant man; but he gets there. He is one of the most successful directors Mr. Hammond ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... go down to the lower parts of the Lagoon city, where the people dwell, we shall see numbers of women and children seated before large baskets, out of which glass pipes protrude like the quills of a gigantic porcupine. With fingers spread wide apart, they carefully weigh and feel the contents of the baskets, till they have sorted all the pipes, according to their sizes. The different bundles are then carried back to the factory, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... needle-gun, up to a cannon cast by Krupp, capable of hurling a ball weighing two thousand pounds through eighteen inches of solid steel. I saw too, the armor from the shell of a turtle that one of our brave ancestors lashed upon his breast when he went to fight for his country, the skin of a porcupine, dried with the quills on, which this same savage pulled over his orthodox head, up to the shirts of mail that were worn in the middle ages, that laughed at the edge of the sword and defied the point of the spear; up to a monitor clad in complete steel. And I say orthodox not only ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... me to the door. On opening it I perceived the old squaw, who immediately slipped into my hand a set of beautifully-embroidered bark trays, fitting one within the other, and exhibiting the very best sample of the porcupine quill-work. While I stood wondering what this might mean, the good old creature fell upon my neck, and kissing me, exclaimed, "You remember old squaw—make her comfortable! Old squaw no forget you. Keep them for her sake," and before I could detain her she ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... fair, looking off with a slightly mournful indifference at everything and at nothing. His mustache ended in upturned points, his beard was pointed, his hair stood up in little points. He gave the impression besides of one whose nervous temper put out porcupine shafts ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Laying his hand on the window frame he saluted the rider, and it was in this glance that his eye caught sight of the sword-strap of the rapier at the rider's side. For—strangely out of place in that longitude—this was a piece of snow-white fawn-skin; embroidered in fantastic colours, woven with porcupine quills; and adorned with a clan totem, known only in the region of the ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... the woods a curious animal called a hedgehog, but which is really a porcupine. The hedgehog is found in Europe, and lives upon insects; the porcupine lives in quite a ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... gray-coated panthers. Then I thought about rattlesnakes too, because you know I can't stand for the crawlers. Next thing I opened my eyes with a jump, and saw that old owl, with every feather on his back standing up like the quills of a porcupine, and trying to jab me ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... a combination of small tubes, connected at one end to a reservoir, was the invention of another American, John Stevens, in 1804. This boiler was actually employed to generate steam for running a steamboat on the Hudson River, but like all the "porcupine" boilers, of which type it was the first, it did not have the elements ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... Well, I know you don't, but it's true. Her father and I hit it off just like that. He's a character, that old boy. Ever meet him? No? And Miss Sharp told me something about herself that explains her porcupine pose. That poor child was engaged to a chap who was killed in the ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... about the table and bent over to examine the little shoe. It was an Indian moccasin, cut after the fashion of the Abenakis, from the skin of the wild buck, fashioned large and full for the spread of the foot, covered deep with the stained quills of the porcupine, and dotted here and there with the precious beads which, to the maker, had more worth than any gold. A little flap came up for cover to the ankle, and a thong fell from its upper edge. It was the ancient foot-covering ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... pointed to the page. "'The Warriers are Verry much deckerated with Paint Porcupine quils and feathers, large leagins and mockersons, all with buffalow robes of Different Colors, the Squars wore Peticoats and a White Buffalow roabe with the black hare turned back over their necks and Sholders.' I'll say they had plenty ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... encircled in a sort of magical ring of spears, shields, lances and arrows, all of which had in their time done good service, was suspended the mysterious and sacred medicine-bag. It was highly-wrought in wampum, and profusely ornamented with beads and porcupine's quills, after the most cunning devices of Indian ingenuity. The peculiar freedom of Mahtoree's religious creed has been more than once intimated, and by a singular species of contradiction, he appeared to have lavished his attentions on this emblem of a supernatural ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... immediately along the front of the breastwork, where the ground was covered with heavy boughs, overlapping and interlaced, with sharpened points bristling into the face of the assailant like the quills of a porcupine. As these works were all of wood, no vestige of them remains. The earthworks now shown to tourists as the lines of Montcalm are of later construction; and though on the same ground, are not on the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... goose swam and screamed, and the winter wren caroled his bright song—loudest when there seemed least cause for rejoicing. The beaver cut his timber and patiently worked at his dams. The thriftless porcupine destroyed a tree for every morning meal. The gray jay, the "camp robber," followed the Indians about in hope that some forgotten piece of meat or of boiled root might fall to his share; while the buffalo, the bear, and the elk each carried on his affairs in his own ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... England, opens shop in Pall-Mall, and edits the "Porcupine," which bristles with envenomed arrows discharged against all Liberals and Democrats. Again he is prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned. His boys, well taught in all manner of farm-work, send him, from his home in the country, hampers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... few political pamphlets in the strictest sense of the term, the infinitely greater part of his work is comprised during his earlier days in the volumes of Peter Porcupine's Gazette, during his later in those of the Weekly Register. This latter, however, he himself for a time actually entitled The Weekly Political Pamphlet, while he alluded to it under that name even at other times; and his whole work was imbued even more deeply than ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... I have not seen old Donald until to-night. Almost by accident I met him out there in the timber. I delivered the telegram you sent him. After he had read it I showed him mine. He scribbled something on a bit of paper, folded it, and pinned it with a porcupine quill. I've been mighty curious, but I haven't pulled out that quill. Here ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... a girl of the same tribe on the market-place, come to dispose of her little store of bark work embroidered with porcupine-quills, and gaily ornamented moccasins. She too is picturesque enough with her dark handsome face, surmounted by a quaint cap of white feathers, and her large cloak of white fox skins, beneath which peep out her scarlet leggings, and a pair of moccasins, not smartly decorated like ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... first brought into public notice by the enormous speculations and the mad fever of 1845. The large spur of country which projects far out into the lake, having its base resting on a line drawn across from L'Anse Bay to Ontonagon, and the Porcupine Mountains for its spine, became the El Dorado of all copperdom of that day. In this year the first active operations were commenced at the Cliff Mine, just back of Eagle River harbor. Three years later, in 1848, work was undertaken at the Minnesota, some fifteen miles ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... porcupine is the person considered at the beginning of this one-sided discussion who, to escape the terrible catastrophe of confronting his own inner vacuum, will make friends with the most hideous bore. This ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... and half-decayed, lie along the ground. Their ends exhibit vast cavities where the porcupine and opossum have taken shelter ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... when the canoes first came up, the savages, seeing me on board walking the deck with as much dignity as the officer of the watch, began blowing their sumpits at me till I was stuck all over like a porcupine. Luckily none hit my face, and seeing me take the matter so unconcernedly, they ceased blowing, to discover what I was made of. I thereon pulled out the arrows, and going to the side of the vessel, with a polite bow presented them to ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... knew that the old woman would tell the pursuers if she met them; and so indeed it came about. On the third evening we reached some mealie gardens, and saw that they had been trampled down. Among the broken mealies we found the body of a very old man, as full of assegai wounds as a porcupine with quills. We wondered at this, and went on a little way. Then we saw that the kraal to which the gardens belonged was burnt down. We crept up to it, and—ah! it was a sad sight for us to see! Afterwards ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... and pliant buckskin, ornamented with long fringes. The vanity of dress, if it may be so called, followed him into regions where no eye but his own could see its beauties. His pantaloons were also made of buckskin decorated with variously-colored porcupine quills and with long fringes down the outside of the leg. Moccasins, often quite gorgeously embroidered, fitted closely to his feet. A very flexible hat or cap covered his head, generally of felt, obtained from some Indian trader. There was suspended over his left shoulder, so as ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... were leveled upon Alice. Some one kicked Jean clean across the room, and he lay there curled up in his hairy night-wrap looking like an enormous porcupine. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... sha'n't make canticles of my cantos. The poem will please, if it is lively; if it is stupid, it will fail: but I will have none of your damned cutting and slashing. If you please, you may publish anonymously; it will perhaps be better; but I will battle my way against them all, like a porcupine. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... pesky porcupine," he whispered. "Almost crawled over you. He sure would have stuck you full ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... fish, but the most remarkable is the sea-porcupine, which is about three feet long, and two and a half feet round, having large eyes, two fins on the back, and a large fin on each side, near the gills. Its body is all beset with sharp spines, or quills, like a porcupine, whence its name ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... and went to the cabin beside the lake that the two men occupied. From her box in front of the stove a lady porcupine looked up lazily and grunted. Kay raised the porcupine; in the box, of course. Susie was constitutionally indolent, but one does not handle porcupines, however smooth their ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... there was some talk about a picnic party to the top of Porcupine Mountain, was there not?" inquired Electra, ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... had become loosened and Mrs. Brown picked it up and read the scribbled words. While she was thinking just what she ought to do to Willie, Mrs. Baker came across the yard, bristling like a frightened porcupine. ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... you might try a different tack with the old lady?" he ventured presently. "Even a porcupine likes to have its head scratched, and I think sometimes she's kind of hungry for somebody to cotton up to her a bit. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... (squire), Hijosdalgo Pasamano (handrail, lace-edgings), Pasamanos Pasatiempo (pastime), Pasatiempos Picaparte (latch or latchkey), Picapartes Pisaverde (beau), Pisaverdes Portaestandarte (standard bearer), Portaestandartes Portafusil (musket-sling), Portafusiles Puercoespin (porcupine), Puercosespines Quienquiera (whoever), Quienesquiera Quitasol (parasol), Quitasoles Ricahembra (woman of gentle birth), Ricashembras Sobrecama (counterpane), Sobrecamas Sobredicho (aforesaid), Sobredichos Tapaboca (slap on the mouth), ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... the porcupine, the Chief of the animals, passed by the bear tree. Mother Bear saw him. She put her head out the bear-tree window and called to him. He came and sat under the bear-tree window, and listened to Mother Bear's story of her fears ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... prickly ball curled up at the foot of the tree, and the monkey striking at it savagely with his paws, while porcupine quills were sticking in his face and body, ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... thicker and darker, the ground more wet and swampy, and I found, as many grown people had found before me, that there was rather hard traveling in a journey after, riches. Suddenly I met in my way a large porcupine, who made himself still larger when he saw me, as a cross cat raises its back and makes tails at a dog. Fearing that he would shoot his sharp quills at me, I ran from him as fast as my tired ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Unlike his companions, whose dress was exceedingly plain, he wore his jerkin or hunting coat, of the most beautifully soft and pliant deer skin, on which were visible a variety of tasteful devices exquisitely embroidered with the stained quills of the porcupine. A shirt of dazzling whiteness was carefully drawn over his expansive chest, and in his equally white shawl-turban was placed an ostrich feather, the prized gift of the lady of the mansion. On all occasions of ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... appearance of desperate Rebels armed with murderous guns, and there is no telling what moment a rock may take such a form as to freeze his young blood, and make each particular hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine. One has to be particular about snapping caps in his neighborhood, and give to him careful warning before discharging a carbine to clean it. His first impulse, when anything occurs to jar upon his delicate nerves, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... occasions, the blooming damsels wound round their foreheads fancy-colored handkerchiefs, streaming with gay ribbons, or plumed with flowers. The matrons wore the short jacket or petticoat. The foot was left uncovered and free, but on holidays it was adorned with the light moccasin, brilliant with porcupine quills, shells, beads, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... and Loveday, after a few minor differences, dovetailed both their possessions and their dispositions so as to admit of the least possible friction. It was fortunate for Diana, for she had a side to her character that would have bristled into porcupine quills had she been placed with Hilary. Loveday's ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the west of the Rocky Mountains in the far north. In 1869 the Hudson's Bay Company's officer was expelled from Fort Yukon by the United States Government, they haying ascertained by astronomical observations that the post was not located in British territory. The officer thereupon ascended the Porcupine to a point which was supposed to be within British jurisdiction, where he established Rampart House; but in 1890 Mr. J.H. Turner of the United States Coast Survey found it to be 20 miles within the lines ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... "Well, don't make a porcupine of yourself, it isn't becoming. Settle your wig, Jo, and tell me if I shall telegraph to your mother, or do anything?" asked Laurie, who never had been reconciled to the loss of his ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Brandt.—A Porcupine skull was seen in the nest of a wood rat by John M. Legler at locality 3 on July 2. On June 20 a porcupine was seen at locality 12. No specimen ...
— Mammals of the Grand Mesa, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... of surprise and wonder. Their faces were painted in red, yellow, and black stripes. Their ears were pierced, men and women, for large ornaments of silver and bear's teeth. They wore magnificent buffalo robes, ornamented and worked with beads, horse-hair, and porcupine quills. Red Cloud wore red leggins beautifully worked and trimmed with ribbons and beads, and his shirt had as many colors as the rainbow. His robe—made to tell by characters his achievements in battle—was quite rich, and worked with seal-skins. His moccasins pronounced ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... two countries the matter was finally adjusted, leaving the miners of Rainy Hollow, as well as those of the Porcupine District and other places, in peaceful possession of their lands as they desired; but of those who had given assistance to the United States officials while inquiring into the location of Boundary marks, none had given more satisfactory and timely aid than ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... cold told me he'd just burst if he didn't have someone to confide in right soon, he got me worked up to fever pitch. Now I've had to cool down. There isn't going to be any development. Our hair won't have to stand tip on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine. In so many words, Colon, it's ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... only he'll be as fretful as a porcupine, shut up there. At least I should be. Are there lots of novels in the house? Mind you send for a batch to-morrow. Novels are the only chance a man has when he's laid up like that." Before breakfast on the following morning Madeline had sent off to the Alston circulating ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... him. But the peccary tracked him by the smell, and on coming up to him, uttered a shrill grunt. 'The snake, finding that he was overtaken, threw himself into a coil, and prepared to give battle; while his antagonist, now looking more like a great porcupine than a pig, drew back, as if to take the advantage of a run; and then halted. Both for a moment eyed each other—the peccary evidently calculating its distance—while the great snake seemed cowed and quivering with affright. Its appearance was entirely different from the bright ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... learned much regarding the geography of eastern North America, and he brought back with him to France, to present to King Henry IV, two scarlet tanagers—one of the commonest and most beautiful birds of the eastern United States—a girdle of porcupine quills made from the Canadian porcupine, and the head of a gar-pike caught ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... in a rather snappish manner, the stranger alighted. He was a shortish gentleman, with very stiff black hair cut in the porcupine or blacking-brush style, and standing stiff and straight all over his head; his aspect was pompous and threatening; his manner was peremptory; his eyes were sharp and restless; and his whole bearing bespoke a feeling of great confidence in himself, and a consciousness ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... favour, however, next evening, but for a different cause. He appeared with a great prickly porcupine held gingerly in his mouth and laid it before ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... table; but before dinner he had time to call upon the magistrates' clerk, and ask a few questions as to the proceedings at the sitting from which Mr Crawley was committed. He found a very taciturn old man, who was nearly as difficult to deal with in any rummaging process as a porcupine. But, nevertheless, at last he reached a state of conversation which was not absolutely hostile. Mr Toogood pleaded that he was the poor man's cousin,—pleaded that, as the family lawyer, he was naturally the poor man's protector at such a time as the present,—pleaded ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... brought him to anchor. In this helpless state the men set at him in earnest, and a more barbarous finale I never did witness. Every man sent his spear, assage, or arrow, into his sides, until, completely exhausted, he sank like a porcupine covered with quills. The day's sport was now ended, so I went home to breakfast, leaving instructions that the heads should be cut off and sent to the king as a trophy of what ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... animal, and apparently a very helpless one, with which the cougar occasionally quarrels, but often with ill success—this is the Canada porcupine. Whether the cougar ever succeeds in killing one of these creatures is not known, but that it attacks them is beyond question, and its own death is often the result. The quills of the Canada porcupine are slightly barbed at their ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... but when they are still hard remove them and continue to boil the sirup down. Set the apples in a shallow pan, stick the almonds, which should be blanched, into them so that they will project like porcupine quills, sprinkle them with sugar, and bake in the oven until they are soft and the almonds slightly brown. Remove from the oven, fill the center of each with currant jelly, pour the juice over them, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... had an encounter with a porcupine. One of his paws was filled with quills, and in skinning him we found that some quills had worked well up the leg and lodged by the ankle joint, ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... a porcupine its quills, the majestic woman followed the spry figure of the captain. Her first glance over the old-fashioned, homelike room elicited a ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... not merely a blockader; it is a Chemical Test. It is a good man who can show a reaction that is not chiefly composed of a drachm or two of potash and magnesia, with traces of Adam, Ananias, Nebuchadnezzar, and the fretful porcupine. ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... its burden of clamor. From off under the trees came the rolling clatter of the musketry. Each distant thicket seemed a strange porcupine with quills of flame. A cloud of dark smoke, as from smoldering ruins, went up toward the sun now bright and gay in the ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... it must have been good fishing for cunners. Like Carker this fish comes to you teeth first. His mouth is so full of them that they stick out like quills on the fretful porcupine. Nature, which gives each tools for the trade which he most loves, made him a bait-stealer ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... stir and bustle from stem to stern of the Molly. The sturdy little craft was like the bristling porcupine, ready and impatient for action, when the masts of the East Indiaman slowly rose above the horizon. The privateer gave chase at once, and rapidly neared its prey. The guns of the Molly gave the signal for surrender. The British flag went down, and Derry Duck, with a ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... be a porcupine?" exclaimed the Bo'sun's Mate with distress, forgetting that Sweden ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... vaguely into the case and murmured that 'they were all very interesting,' and again I caught his eye wandering to the great case opposite. I was in the act of reaching out a porcupine with an ankylosed knee-joint, when he plucked up courage to say frankly, 'The fact is, I am principally interested in ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... at the nets, we found that five deer and two pigs had been killed. Pat had shot a boar and a porcupine, the latter with No. 4 shot. H. accounted for a deer, and I got my buck and the boar which I had wounded in the chest; Mehrman Singh had followed him up and tracked him to the river, where he took refuge among ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... cloves, covered his chin and upper-lip; and his hair, if hair it could be called, was twisted into a hundred short plaits, that bristled out, and gave his head, when he took his hat off, the appearance of a porcupine. There was a large saber-cut across his nose and down his cheek, and he wore two immense gold earrings. His dress consisted of short cotton drawers, that did not reach within two inches of his knee, leaving his thin cucumber ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... turned their eyes a new creation seemed to bloom around. No signs of human thrift appeared to check the delicious wildness of Nature, who here reveled in all her luxuriant variety. Those hills, now bristled like the fretful porcupine, with rows of poplars (vain upstart plants! minions of wealth and fashion!), were then adorned with the vigorous natives of the soil—the lordly oak, the generous chestnut, the graceful elm—while here and there the tulip-tree reared its majestic head, the giant of the forest. ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... grace, and then, if only by a word,—thanking God for what they received. But those that used the paint managed to arrange their persons in the most abomonable and ghastly manner. With the feathers, they mix porcupine quills and knit the whole into their hair—then daub, their head with a species of white clay that is to be found in their country. They wear no clothing except what they call loin-cloth or breach-cloth, and when they, go on the war-path, just as when they went to attack Fort Pitt, they ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... singing my praises and asking me to pity them and to do them good.) The chief Kahdoonahah danced with all his might during the singing. He wore a cap, which had a mask in front, set with mother-of-pearl, and trimmed with porcupine's quills. The quills enabled him to hold a quantity of white bird's down on the top of his head, which he ejected while dancing, by jerking his head forward: thus he soon appeared as if in a shower of snow. ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... to dress him in an Indian shirt ornamented with feathers and beads and bits of porcupine quill. They put leggins on his legs and moccasins on his feet, and, seating him upon a bear-skin, gave him flint and steel to strike a light with; then a pouch, a tomahawk, some tobacco, and a long pipe. Then ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... been separated early in the voyage from the main body, under the pilotage of the veteran Diniz Diaz, had also made their way to C. Verde, had fought with the natives in some desperate skirmishes—one knight had his "shield stuck as full with arrows as the porcupine with quills," and had turned back in the face of the same discouragements as the rest; and so would have ended the whole of this great enterprise but for the dauntless energy of one captain and ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... your gum boots," said Poleon. "Dey're mos' so t'ick as de summer dey kill Johnnie Platt on de Porcupine." Both men wore gauntleted gloves of caribou-skin and head harnesses of mosquito-netting stretched over globelike frames of thin steel bands, which they slipped on over their hats after the manner of divers' helmets, for without protection of some kind the insects would have made ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... snapped Miriam. "You will make a regular porcupine of her if you keep on. I wish Mr. Bannister had given you ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... southerly side of the little lake Porcupine Hill raises its spruce-covered head a thousand feet above the water. Proceeding up the Susan, we found that the river valley was enclosed by low ridges covered with spruce and a few scattering white birch and aspen trees. For the most part the banks of the river were steep ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... got a letter last Friday from his son Gladstone, who filed on a homestead near Porcupine, Dak., two years ago. He says they have had another of those unprecedented winters there for which Dakota is so justly celebrated. He thinks this one has been even more so that any of the others. He wishes he was back ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... that back, you son of a Tory; my father has worked too hard to help his son get a start in life, for me to stand by and hear such talk! I say, take it back!" John bristled up like a porcupine. ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... young squaws take much care of their dress and horse equipments; they dash furiously past on wild steeds, astride of the high-pommelled saddles. A fancifully coloured cover, worked with beads or porcupine quills, making a flashy, striking appearance, extended from withers to rump of the horse, while the riders evinced an admirable daring, worthy of Amazons. Their dresses were made of buckskin, high at ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... "Wild West." Even American books were read—a crucial test of faddism; and American curios were displayed in all the shops. Relics from American plain and mountain—buffalo-robes, bearskins, buckskin suits embroidered with porcupine quills, Indian blankets, woven mats, bows and arrows, bead-mats, Mexican bridles and saddles—sold like the ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... struck with the superior soundness and whiteness of teeth in those countries. Though not a cleanly people in other respects, they wash their teeth often, and, by means of toothpicks, carefully remove all substances from between them after meals. A little silver porcupine, with holes all over its back to insert toothpicks, is a common ornament on the dining tables of Spain and Portugal. The general use of them creates so large a demand, that students at Coimbra sometimes support themselves by whittling toothpicks, which are sold tied in small bunches ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... of the press of Chicago, but there is only one—a weekly—and I believe it is printed in New York. The reverend gentleman who began the discussion to-night started into this subject very much like a coon, and as we listened, as he went on, we perceived he came out a porcupine. He was scientific in everything he said in favor of the press; unscientific in everything against it. He spoke to you in favor of the suppression of news, which means, I take it, the dissemination of crime. He spoke to you in favor ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... piercing like a bayonet: the first row of each battalion wore helmets and cuirasses which protected the head and chest, and when the men were drawn up for battle they presented to the enemy a triple array of iron spikes, which they could raise or lower like the spines of a porcupine. To each thousand of the soldiery were attached a hundred fusiliers: their officers, to distinguish them from the men, wore ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... long coarse black hair-like feathers. The head is ornamented with a large horny calque or helmet, and the bare skin of the neck is conspicuous with bright blue and red colours. The wings are quite absent, and are replaced by a group of horny black spines like blunt porcupine quills. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the desolate winter landscape. Gay belts of green, blue, red, or yellow enriched the waists of their thick overcoats. Their scarlet leggings were laced up with green ribbons. Their moccasins were gorgeously embroidered with dyed porcupine quills. Their caps of beaver or martin were sometimes tied down over their ears with vivid handkerchiefs of silk. The habitants were rougher and more sombre in their dress. A black homespun coat, gray leggings, gray woollen cap, heavy moccasins ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... old porcupine coming here and eating up our grub. They almost gnaw through a steel plate to get at anything greasy or salty," he explained. "We'll call this camp, and we'll stop here to-night, because I can see that if we go up to that trail ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... p'ti' bonhomme. A third finishing touch, {23} very common in earlier days, is the decoration of the outsides of both ends, which used to rise with a sharp sheer, and sometimes actually curved back. The usual decorations here were totem signs, generally made of porcupine quills, dyed in many colours, and serving the original purpose ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... at the crossing of the Stikine River, and that of 1899 at the summits of the White and Chilkoot passes, it runs much farther inland from the Klehini than the temporary line of the later modus vivendi, and leaves the entire mining district of the Porcupine River and Glacier Creek within the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... with him, he was taken up into the council house of the village, where he was dressed in a new ruffled shirt, leggins trimmed with ribbons and wrought with beads, and moccasins embroidered with porcupine quills. His face was painted afresh, and his scalp lock tied up with red feathers; he was given a pipe and tobacco pouch and seated upon a bear skin, while one of the chiefs addressed him in the presence of the assembled warriors. "My ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... death, what misery is; I will cry aloud in wailings that shall creep through the very marrow of his bones, what misery is; and, while at my picture his hairs shall stand on end like quills upon the porcupine, will I shriek into his affrighted ear, that in the hour of death the sinews of these mighty gods of earth shall shrivel and shrink, and that at the day of judgment beggars and kings shall be weighed together in the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... who then anchored in the harbour of Mahon close under the walls of the castle, sailed away with his little squadron, consisting of the Chesterfield, Princess Louisa, Portland, and Dolphin, after having left all his marines, a detachment from Gibraltar, the whole crew of the Porcupine sloop, and the greater part of the Dolphin's, as a reinforcement to the fort, under the immediate direction and command of captain Scroop of the Dolphin, who, with great gallantry, offered himself for this severe duty, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... start, needed anything MORE to settle her, here assuredly was enough. He had hold of his small grandchild as they retraced their steps, swinging the boy's hand and not bored, as he never was, by his always bristling, like a fat little porcupine, with shrill interrogation-points—so that, secretly, while they went, she had wondered again if the equilibrium mightn't have been more real, mightn't above all have demanded less strange a study, had it only been on the books that Charlotte ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... recollect the last day there was company, and Master Herbert came to the top of the stairs, and you was looking at the organ's lamp, I said, 'Dear! Master Herbert's hair's as rough as a porcupine's;' and you said directly, ma'am, if you recollect, 'I wish you would make that boy's hair fit to be seen;' those was your very words, ma'am, and I thought you ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... diagonally up and across the cranial arbor and down the front to a point over the right eye, where the ends are brought up short as if they were rooted near there. I could say I was not bald. This gave me some satisfaction, but I never boasted of it in public. There was a streak of porcupine in our family. This accounted for the trod-grass appearance of my head, even when prepared carefully for public appearance. It was at its best when it looked like a meadow of tall timothy that ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... This box he never locked, having learned that he need fear no robbery by once leaving his cloak for two days under a bush and then finding it again. "This world," he exclaimed, "is too good: it will not last." Among his pets were a porcupine trained to prick the legs of his guests under the table "so that they drew them in quickly"; a raven that spoke like a human being; an eagle, and many snakes. He also studied necromancy, the better to frighten his apprentices. He left Florence in 1528, after the Medici expulsion, and, like Leonardo, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... with it. Each line's a volume, and who reads would swear Whole libraries were in each character. Nor arrows in a quiver stuck, nor yet Lights in the starry skies are thicker set, Nor quills upon the armed porcupine, Than wit and fancy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... a bard among poets, a seer among philosophers, a prophet among essayists, an oracle among ethical teachers, so, as I have said, was he a solitary among men. He walked alone. He somewhere refers to his "porcupine impossibility of contact with men." His very thoughts are not social among themselves, they separate. Each stands alone; often they hardly have a bowing acquaintance; over and over their juxtaposition is mechanical and not vital. The redeeming feature is that they can ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... naked, but, like all savages, they have their gala dress, of which they are not a little vain. This usually consists of a gray surcoat and leggins of the dressed skin of the antelope, resembling chamois leather, and embroidered with porcupine quills brilliantly dyed. A buffalo robe is thrown over the right shoulder, and across the left is slung a quiver of arrows. They wear gay coronets of plumes, particularly those of the swan; but the feathers of the black eagle are considered the most worthy, being a sacred ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... they chiefly hunted were the gazelle, wild goat or ibex, the oryx, wild ox, stag, kebsh or wild sheep, hare and porcupine; of all of which the meat was highly esteemed among the delicacies of the table; the fox, jackal, wolf, hyaena, and leopard, and others, being chased as an amusement, for the sake of their skins, or as enemies of the farm-yard. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... took from his waist a brilliant deep-red sash, heavily embroidered with beads, porcupine quills and dyed moose hair, placing it over the Prince's left shoulder and knotting it beneath his right arm. The ceremony was ended. The Constitution that Hiawatha had founded centuries ago, a Constitution wherein fifty chiefs, no more, ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... night father went out to drive away a porcupine whose teeth and claws he heard busily at work upon a barrel hoop, but the creature rushed into the house through the open door, and ran across the trundle bed where sister Arminda and I slept. I need not tell you how dangerous it would have been had one of his ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... sticking deeply sunk into the tree above the giant's head—their scalping-knives being the only weapons retained about their persons. The giant, a savage of terrible aspect, was dressed in complete Indian costume—his robe being richly decorated with bead-work and stained porcupine quills, and where it showed a seam or border was fringed with scalp-locks, brown, flaxen, and red, as well as black—taken by his own hand from the heads of his enemies—the last agony, doubtless, as the fashions ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... acknowledged this, when the whole congregation of three to four hundred, young and old, passed and shook hands with us. Every now and then we were presented with gifts, made by the hands of the giver. Chief Henry's wife gave a beautiful bark basket ornamented with porcupine's quills. Then another head man gave us a bag made of beaten bark, saying this was made before they knew the white man. We thought that now all was over, but no. All were again seated, quietly and in order, the grace ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... strayed,—her mistress' cushioned chair,—and she rushed in a sort of frenzy for the nerve-reviver, and applied it to the trembling lady's nostrils; whereupon that delicately-constituted specimen of the genus feminine uttered a stentorian shriek and flounced about the room like an irate porcupine, greatly to the terror of Alice, who had never witnessed such a scene before. But neither the brilliant son nor jewel daughters seemed in the least alarmed, and in a few moments the mother regained ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... across the series of low divides that separate the several creeks flowing south into Siwash River; and now they were breasting the big divide, past the Bald Buttes, where the way would lead them down Porcupine Creek to the middle reaches of Milk River. Higher up Milk River, it was fairly rumored, were deposits of copper. And this was their goal—a hill of pure copper, half a mile to the right and up the first creek after Milk River issued from a deep gorge to flow across a heavily timbered stretch ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... detestable. It would have given me the greatest satisfaction to have stuck hat-pins into him, ever so many of them, as thick as the quills on a porcupine!' ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... was angry this time; angry in earnest, and Jane felt the irritable palm more than once. I, too, came in for my share of her ill temper, as most certainly would Brandon, had he allowed himself to come within reach of her tongue, which he was careful not to do. An angry porcupine would have been pleasant company compared with Mary during this time. There was no living with her in peace. Even the king fought shy of her, and the queen was almost afraid to speak. Probably so ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... difficult to dash that swarthy young man. He was as full of questions as a porcupine is full ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... his shop door, saw her sitting driving a dirty rag-and-bone cart with a green-white, mouldy pony, and flourishing her arms like some wild and hairy-decorated squaw. For the long bear-fur, wet with sleet, seemed like a chevaux de frise of long porcupine quills round her fore-arms and her neck. Yet such good, such wonderful material! James eyed it for one moment, and then fled like a rabbit to the stove in ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... moon-calf! thou ragged tatterdemalion! thou gormandizing priest! thou bane of reason and beast of the earth! thou best to be spared of all mankind!"—all of which are genuine epithets from the Quaker books of that period, and termed by Cotton Mather, who collected them, "quills of the porcupine." They surpass even Dr. Chauncy's catalogue of the unsavory epithets used by Whitefield and Tennent a century later; and it was not likely that they would be tolerated by a race whose reverence for men in authority was so comprehensive that they actually fined some one for remarking ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with it, which I shall explain to you hereafter. All I can tell you now is, that when the three were mounted and about to start, the Colonel hobbled up; and, drawing from his pocket a small leathern bag or case ornamented with stained porcupine quills, he handed it to Basil, saying as he did so: "Take good care of it, Basil—you know its use—never let it part from you—your lives may depend upon it. God be with you, my brave boys. ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... splendid things that at a distance looked every bit as well. Witness you powers what fancied importance sate perched upon my quill while I was writing. The whole learned world, I made no doubt, would rise to oppose my systems; but then I was prepared to oppose the whole learned world. Like the porcupine I sate self collected, with a quill pointed against ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... collecting fuel. Branches were cut all round the glade, and they picked up all the fallen wood under the trees. They were also able to hunt with greater success, since Pencroft now possessed some dozen arrows armed with sharp points. It was Top who had famished these points, by bringing in a porcupine, rather inferior eating, but of great value, thanks to the quills with which it bristled. These quills were fixed firmly at the ends of the arrows, the flight of which was made more certain by some cockatoos' feathers. The reporter and Herbert ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... in many injuries and operations. The phenomena of fear probably are exhibited only by animals whose natural defense is nerve-muscular. The skunk, the porcupine, the turtle, have little or no fear. Fear is born of the innumerable injuries which have been inflicted in the course of evolution. Fear, like trauma, may cause physiologic exhaustion of and morphologic changes in ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... they are wholly strangers to, it will be more suitable, perhaps, while I play the divine and make my way through such prickly quiddities, that I entreat the soul of Scotus, a thing more bristly than either porcupine or hedgehog, to leave his scorebone awhile and come into my breast, and then let him go whither he pleases, or to the dogs, I could wish also that I might change my countenance, or that I had on the square cap and the ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... right in my prophecy. When Holman approached the old maniac he ruffled up like an angry porcupine, and he screeched out his opinion concerning people who would not mind ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... mittens were of the finest fur. Their moccasins were extra large, to allow for the additional wrapping of duffel required over the warm woollen hose. They also had warm leggings of strouds, beautifully fringed and fastened with strong garters artistically worked with porcupine quills. A warm, well- lined hood or capote was attached to each overcoat. This the boys found of very great service and comfort, especially when their inexperienced sleigh dogs were unable to keep the heads of their sleds, ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... Chinese woman. She tied upon it the new bows of red ribbon which she had bought in the secret hope that they would be a part of her wedding finery. She put on her Indian gala dress of beaded buckskin with the colored porcupine quills—and then she smiled cunningly and drew a dress of red-and-blue striped calico over her head and settled the folds of it about her with little, smoothing pats, so that the two white women, Rosemary and Jean, ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... mistake. His sensitiveness gave him as many quills as a porcupine. "Find myself," he said, quoting her unfortunate words with sarcasm. "What on earth do you mean by that, my ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... their canoes, and made their cheerless bivouac in the drenched and dripping forest. Here they spent five days, living on pumpkins and Indian corn, the gift of their Pottawattamie friends, and on a Canada porcupine, brought in by La Salle's Mohegan hunter. The gale raged meanwhile with a relentless fury. They trembled when they thought of the "Griffin." When at length the tempest lulled, they re-embarked, and steered southward, along the shore of Wisconsin; but again the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... work in basket-work and in coloured beads. I got two strips of their coloured bead-work, and Sarah and I "ran up" two red velvet bags and trimmed them with these strips for tobacco bags for A. and S. I thought you would like to see the different kinds of work. The MicMacs work in stained porcupine, but I have not sent any of their work. They are only very little things, but they come from us! We have had so much to do, I have got on very badly with my botanizing, but I have sent one or two ferns for you. We were late for flowers. Tell S. the Impatiens ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden |
