"Tail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one evening we shot a vulture that was assisting a moribund ox to die. True we did not mean to kill him, for we owe many debts of gratitude to vultures; but, to my surprise, my native boy seemed greatly pleased. Lifting the big black tail he showed me the white soft feathers beneath, and by many signs appeared to indicate that these feathers were of great value. Then I looked again, and it was a marabou stork. My boy, who had been with marabou and egret poachers in the swamps ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... was discovered by James W. Marshall in the tail-race of General Sutter's mill, El Dorado county, and almost overnight San Francisco was transformed from a hamlet into a pulsing city, overcome with the rush of newcomers, the population in two years growing almost to ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... making her contribution to the Allied offensive during these months. Brussilov's onslaught in June had trod on the tail on* the Austrian invasion from the Trentino, and it was patriotic pride which led an Italian journal to describe Cadorna's recovery as the quickest and greatest reaction of the war. Italy's allies at least were not surprised when during ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... railway hotel had offered for the use of the party; the baby was yielding to the inevitable and gradually condescending to notice the efforts of Mr. Foster to scrape acquaintance; the kitten, with dainty step, and ears and tail erect, was making a leisurely inspection of the premises, sniffing about the few benches and chairs with which the bare room was burdened, and reconnoitring the door leading to the hall-way with ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... fortune decreed it, just then Sirhid dropped in, and stopped him importunity for the time by saying that if we had possessed cloths his men must have known it, for they had been travelling with us. No sooner, however, did Virembo turn tail than the Sirhid gave us a broad hint that he usually received a trifle from the Arabs before he made an attempt at arranging the hongo with Suwarora. Any trifle would do but ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... an escapade, lay quietly in the middle of the lawn, in the warm spring sunshine, and saw the humans trudge wearily past outside, in dust or mud, he would silently and self-complacently wag his tail. ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... sitting there in the cat's rocking-chair, with his face as gray as his socks, and all the rest of him—blue jeans. And my pink school report, I remember, had slipped down under the stove, and the tortoise-shell cat was lashing it with her tail; but Daniel's report, gray as his face, was still clutched up in Pa's horny old hand. For just a second we eyed each other sort of dumb-like, and then for the first time, I tell you, I seen ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... a quarter of a mile distant, lies in a wild and stony district. Within the very interesting church are some quaint bench ends, one of which depicts a mermaid, complete with comb, mirror, and fishy tail, but the carving is of a very primitive order. On Zennor Beacon is the famous Zennor Quoit or Cromlech, the largest in Cornwall, and one of the finest in the country. Between Zennor and St. Ives a wild tract of country forms the parish of Towednack with an ancient church within which is a true chancel ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... way of the obligations of days gone by, your sole pleasure will be in the indulgence of haughtiness, extravagance, licentiousness and dissolute habits! You will be inordinate in your conjugal affections, and look down upon the beautiful charms of the child of a marquis, as if they were cat-tail rush or willow; trampling upon the honourable daughter of a ducal mansion, as if she were one of the common herd. Pitiful to say, the fragrant spirit and beauteous ghost will in a year softly ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... bridge of lianes was thrown from one bank to the other, and during the 27th little Jack, to his intense admiration, saw a band of monkeys cross one of these vegetable passes, holding each other's tail, lest the bridge should ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... hand and pointed it at him, but this only made the enraged creature more furious than before. The other child adopted a different plan; for by giving the dog a piece of his bread and butter, he was allowed to pass, the subdued animal wagging his tail in quietude. If you happen to have a quarrelsome neighbour, conquer him by civility and kindness; try the bread and butter system, and keep your stick out of sight. That is an excellent Christian admonition, "A soft answer turneth away wrath, but ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... what was to me a singular curiosity— a tooth; I felt certain that it was a tooth; but it was twice as long as any rat, counting from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail! I could not help wondering in my mind to what huge animal it could ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eyes, small head, and nostril wide, High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong, Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide: Look, what a horse should have he did not lack, Save a proud rider on ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... with broad shoulders, and a long, fair beard, which hung like a cloth on to his chest. His whole, solemn person suggested the idea of a military peacock, a peacock who was carrying his tail spread out on to his breast. He had cold, gentle, blue eyes, and the scar from a sword-cut, which he had received in the war with Austria; he was said to be an honorable man, as well as a ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... two steps the waddlers took, one was a hopeless slip, and the spectacle presented by the unhappy birds in their effort to get along at a good round pace was ludicrous beyond resistance. They sprawled and fell, they staggered up again with indignant wagging of head and tail, they rushed forward only to slip more desperately; now one leg failed them, now the other, now both at once. And all the time they kept up a cackle of annoyance; they looked about them with foolish eyes of amazement and indignation; they wondered, doubtless, what the world was coming ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... authority such messages. He smiled graciously, after the manner of his kind, and hid his spleen. He meant no harm, of course: if harm there were, he was glad to be disobeyed, and he would make all quiet and right. Of course in reality he took care to twist the Lion's tail with both hands, and the next thing was a public edict, that all the goods of the bishop were to be taken care of by the king's collectors. The good man heard and remarked, "Did I not tell you truly of these ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... purifying sieve," by analogy with the drink of the plant soma passing through the sieve the poet may be supposed to imagine the moon passing through the sieve-like clouds; and even when this sieve is expressly called the 'sheep's-tail sieve' and 'wool-sieve,' this may still be, metaphorically, the cloud-sieve (as, without the analogy, one speaks to-day of woolly clouds ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... which he had taken out of his stake, and after purchasing an adjoining claim for another $100,000 (all taken from his original claim), it is said (though I cannot vouch for this statement) that the fortunate cock-tail mixer eventually sold his property to a New York Syndicate for L400,000. Of course at this time fairy tales were pretty freely circulated; how, for instance, one man with very long whiskers had been working hard in his drift all through the winter and, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... in pastimes and games. By the side of Don Pedro, rode Garcilaso de la Vega, who was proud to bear the brazen shield which he had inherited from his father, and upon which was displayed the bleeding head of a Moor, hanging on a black charger's tail, and round which were the words—"Ave Maria"—a device which the Garcilasos wore in commemoration of the famous single combat which one of their house had sustained against the fierce Moor Audala, who, with impious insolence, had interwoven ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... tropics as the best of all universities. "But above all in educational importance I rank the advantage of seeing human nature in its primitive surroundings, far from the squalid and chilly influences of the tail-end of the Glacial epoch." ... "We must forget all this formal modern life; we must break away from this cramped, cold, northern world; we must find ourselves face to face at last, in Pacific isles or African forests, with the underlying truths of ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... stopped, and straightened himself to his height. His tail, which had been lashing and switching, became quiet as he seemed to listen. The girls passed on, hand in hand, never looking behind ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... come, Charlie; you were always a good fellow, and I really want a hand here confoundedly. I think it will all do very nicely; but, of course, there's a lot of things to be arranged—settlements, you know—and I can't make head or tail of their lingo, and a fellow don't like to sign and seal hand over head—you would not advise that, you know; and Chelford is a very good fellow, of course, and all that—but he's taking care of Dorcas, you see; and I might ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... But with the tenth return of rosy morn He question'd him, and for the tokens ask'd He from his son-in-law, from Proetus, bore. The tokens' fatal import understood, He bade him first the dread Chimaera slay; A monster, sent from Heav'n, not human born, With head of lion, and a serpent's tail, And body of a goat; and from her mouth There issued flames of fiercely-burning fire: Yet her, confiding in the Gods, he slew. Next, with the valiant Solymi he fought, The fiercest fight that e'er he undertook. Thirdly, the women-warriors he o'erthrew, The Amazons; from whom returning home, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... of the sky, and quick as thought swooped down upon a halibut which had ventured to take a peep at the rising sun. The huge fish struggled for a moment at the water's edge, then, with a powerful stroke of its tail, which sent the spray hissing through the air, dived below the surface. The bird of prey gave a loud scream, flapped fiercely with its broad wings, and for several minutes a thickening cloud of applauding ducks and seagulls and showers of spray hid the combat from the observer's ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... idea that she had offered to take him under her care until he knew his way about the forests. He sat up now so that he might see her better, for in the daylight she looked stranger still. Her body, nearly three feet long, was covered with glossy hair; her tail was paddle-shaped and smooth, while her strong white tusks would have given her quite a fierce expression but for her twinkling eyes. These were very bright and most inquisitive, as if she found him quite as ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... of the case. It was the same as regards theft. If anyone missed his horse, he had but to look for it among the 'Irish corps,' or some other Uitlander corps, and unless he knew his beast well he would fail to recognise it, as both mane and tail would have been cut short by the thief. I do not wish to pretend that we were always free from blame. It has happened that the Uitlander got a very poor horse in exchange for his thoroughbred because a Boer had tied the token of recognition ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... dwelt. And a certain woman of quality spied me as I was journeying along the road, and she shut her door in my face, for she was afraid because of the Seven Scorpions that were with me. Then they took counsel concerning her, and they shot out their poison on the tail of Tefen. As for me, a peasant woman called Taha opened her door, and I went into the house of this humble woman. Then the scorpion Tefen crawled in under the door of the woman Usert [who had shut it in my face], and stung her son, and a fire broke out in it; there was no water ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... three rooms, all communicating, a sitting-room in the middle with bedrooms right and left. The bedroom on the right was large and it contained a huge bed with a covered top and tail-boards. That on the left was small, and it had a plain brass and iron bedstead, which had evidently been meant for a lady's maid. I had no maid yet. It was intended that I should engage a French one ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... representing many "states" of a single plate which might otherwise have had but one state, thus depriving one modern print collector of the privilege of discovering in his proof three hairs more or less in a donkey's tail than his rival finds in another proof, which makes the former's more valuable by several ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... long pole up to the climber, and he tried to punch the animal down. This attack in the rear was evidently a surprise; it produced an impression different from that of the shaking. The porcupine struck the pole with his tail, put up the shield of quills upon his back, and assumed his best attitude of defense. Still the pole persisted in its persecution, regardless of the quills; evidently the animal was astonished: he had never had an experience like this before; he had now met a foe ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... excitement. Boulou, like Hester, had no happy medium in his character. He was what Mrs. Gresley called "very Frenchy," and he now showed his Frenchyness by a foolish exhibition of himself in coursing round and round the room with his silly foreign tail crooked the wrong way. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... rags soaked in oil, was still blazing in his right hand. Taking a firmer grip with his legs and a good hold just above the tail with his teeth, he applied the torch to the bear's rump. This application and the hair-raising yells of Mills, who was plunging along madly in the wake, caused an astonishing burst of speed, and ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... rings is adapted to be built in the tail of the shield. Where no shield was used, after the excavation was completed and all loose rock was removed, timbers were fixed across the tunnel from which semicircular ribs were hung, below which lagging was placed. The space between this and the rough rock surface ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... nervous old maid! Gird yourself for the battle outside somewhere, and keep your heart young. Give up your whole being to create music everywhere, in the light places and in the dark places, and your life will make melody. I'm a witness to the perfect joy and satisfaction of a single life—with a tail of human tag-rag hanging on. It is rare! It is as exhilarating as an aeroplane or a dirigible or whatever they are that are always trying to get up and are always coming down!... Mine has been such a joyous service," she wrote again. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... an end to life. The struggle never ceases; some muscle is always toiling, some nerve straining. Sleep, which resembles a return to the peace of non-existence, is, like waking, an effort, here of the leg, of the curled tail; there of the claw, of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... were talking of him, and that they were saying, "Here he is—we have been waiting for him." A beautiful Angora cat, white as snow, with delicate nose and silky hair, came, arching her back and waving her bushy tail, from out a grove, and advanced towards him. She examined him curiously an instant, rubbed herself against the bench, and then sat coquettishly at the feet of the intruder. He caressed her, saying: "You are as white and graceful as your mistress; you are an intelligent ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... your dreams, on the contrary, are very pretty ones. I saw the tail of the last as I came in; your ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... were fixed straight ahead. A squirrel whisked his tail alluringly from the bushes at the left, and a robin twittered from a tree branch on the right. But the boy neither saw nor heard—and when before had Keith Burton failed to respond to a furred or feathered challenge ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... think he's dignified enough to be called George Washington!" asked Cricket, doubtfully, watching the Nameless jump around after his tail. She had had him for two days now, and he had quite recovered from his tinny imprisonment. He proved to be a most well-bred and entertaining little cat, for he came when he was called and went when he was bid, in orthodox fashion, and made ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... ever reflected on the utter inability of that pug to realize the marvellous intelligence and power that are whirling him along as he barks and wags his tail and enjoys ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... allowed to help you with a lesson. You were unable to make head or tail of a problem in fractions; I don't think figures were your strong point! Miss Edgewood began to show you; an interruption came along. I happened to be at her elbow—I had a sort of reputation for figures—she called on me to help you out. I remember that at the summons my heart turned ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... crawled upon one that must have been asleep. He did not see it till it shot up in his face from its rocky nook. He made a clutch as startled as was the rise of the ptarmigan, and there remained in his hand three tail-feathers. As he watched its flight he hated it, as though it had done him some terrible wrong. Then he returned and ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... Nana wagged her tail, ran to the medicine, and began lapping it. Then she gave Mr. Darling such a look, not an angry look: she showed him the great red tear that makes us so sorry for noble dogs, ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... mount for a moment upon the rail, and there shrilly publish to the world his satisfaction with himself and what he had to eat. It happened, for my sins, that none of these admirable birds had anything beyond the merest rudiment of a tail. Tails, it seemed, were out of season just then. But they had their necks for all that; and by their necks alone they do as much surpass all the other birds of our grey climate as they fall in quality of ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... give up their native dress and adopt the European costume, more particularly the billycock hat, there is one part of their belongings that they do not part with even in the last extremity—and that is their tail. They may hide it away in their billycock or in the collar of their coat; but, depend upon it, the tail is there. My friend, the doctor of the 'Yorkshire,' being a hunter after natural curiosities, had, amongst other things, a great ambition to possess himself of a Chinaman's tail. One ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... me in possession of his horse and its accoutrements, gave me strict injunctions to take the greatest care of it, and informed me that I could not be provided with another unless I brought back its tail and the mark peculiar to the royal horses, which is burnt on its flank. My stipend was fixed at thirty tomauns per annum, with food for myself and horse. I found myself in dress and arms, except a small hatchet, which indicated my ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... He was "published" with his cousin Anna Green on December 7, 1758, and married to her four weeks later, January 3, 1759. An old piece of embroidered tapestry herein shown gives a good portrayal of a Boston wedding-party at that date; the costumes, coach, and cut of the horses' mane and tail are very curious and interesting to note. Mrs. Winslow's mother was Anna Pierce (sister of Sarah), and her father was Joseph Green, the fourth generation from Percival Green, whose descendants have been enumerated ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... Lord Henry strolled across the room and began to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large grey-plumaged bird, with pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a bamboo perch. As his pointed fingers touched it, it dropped the white scurf of crinkled lids over black glass-like eyes, and began to sway ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... of the kettle is in the form of a serpent's tail, and the spout is the serpent's open mouth. The lid is a nautilus shell on which stands an eagle with raised wings. On one side of the ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... drummed with one finger on the table edge. The cat looked through the smoke at the three men, and it seemed to them that he grew every moment larger and more ferocious. Presently his owner took him from his perch, and seating him on his knee fell to stroking his fur, from head to tail, with his long slim fingers. It was as if he were drawing inspiration for some deadly mischief from ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... tenant is subjected, just as the speeches of the Agitators (vide the astounding lies, as well as the appalling nonsense talked, when Lady Sandhurst and Mr. Stansfeld were made citizens of Dublin, and it was asserted that the Government turned tail and fled before these "delegates") teem with analogous assertions wherein not so much as one grain of truth is to be found. Let it be again repeated in answer to all these falsehoods:—No tenant can be evicted except ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... children's dinner—supper and bed occurring from five to six—meat figured on the card, and Kit-Ki's purring increased to an ecstatic and wheezy squeal, and her rigid tail, as she stood up on Drina's lap, was constantly ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... boat-hook, but the snake was just out of his reach. The men backed the boat a little, and the guide just touched the tail of the reptile. This woke him, and without waiting to bid adieu to the party, he scurried up the log, and disappeared in the trees on the bank of the stream. Miss Margie was greatly relieved when he was gone. The oarsmen gave way ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... by a yawning of the imagination, might be regarded as affectionate, but this was only from a sense of religious duty. At such times I was prone to distrust him even more than at others. He believed in a personal devil with horns, a tail, and, I suspect, red tights; and up to the age of ten I shared implicitly in this belief. The day began and ended with family prayers of a particularly ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... of explanation, Parley or interrogation? For the Master sees, alas! That unhappy Figure near him, Limping o'er the dewy grass, 745 Where the road it fringes, sweet, Soft and cool to way-worn feet; And, O indignity! an Ass, By his noble Mastiffs side, Tethered to the waggon's tail: 750 And the ship, in all her pride, Following after in full sail! Not to speak of babe and mother; Who, contented with each other, And snug as birds in leafy arbour, 755 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... remember, J.G.K. Gourdin. The two Gourdins, Robert and John Gaillard Keith, were dashing young fellows as I recollect them, belonging to Charleston, South Carolina. The "Southerners" were the reigning College elegans of that time, the merveilleux, the mirliflores, of their day. Their swallow-tail coats tapered to an arrow-point angle, and the prints of their little delicate calfskin boots in the snow were objects of great admiration to the village boys of the period. I cannot help wondering what brought ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in front of the frightened pony lay coiled a gigantic rattlesnake, its ugly head and tail raised and its rattles singing ominously. Two more steps and the pony would have been ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... straight to the rock where Samur had disappeared; then slowing down his pace, he tiptoed as if he expected to find a fox hidden there. Yes, there was Samur. There he lay in front of a hole, whimpering and wagging his tail. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... four miles long and a farm the size of an English county. There is, for instance, a steam-plough which takes twelve fourteen-inch furrows at once! What would an English yokel, meandering along at the tail of his two slow horses, say to that? His little job would be done before it was time for breakfast! Hullo! there is another field, all in stooks already—look across the boundless plain to the horizon. There is nothing to be seen ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... from the centre outwards or by the thread being passed through a piece of purl and then returning to the back through the hole in the centre of the spangle. Fig. 139 illustrates another way of using these spangles to form a long tail shape. Here again they are attached with the help of pieces of purl. In the same figure are given some illustrations of the use of the fancy threads; to learn more about them the student should ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... These animals and their leaders deserve a whole chapter of description for themselves. Fancy a brass-bound peaked pack-saddle rising a foot above the animal's back, with a crupper-strap slanting down to clasp the tail. The oft-bandied slur, that in Japan everything goes by contraries, has a varnish of truth on it when we notice that the most gorgeous piece of Japanese saddlery is the crupper, which, even on a pack-horse, is painted crimson and gilded gloriously. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... under-lip; figures without these marks are not identical with M, thus for example in Tro. 23, 24, 25, 21*. Tro. 34*a shows what is apparently a variant of M with the face of an old man, the scorpion's tail and the vertebrae of the death-god, a figure which in its turn bears on its breast the plainly recognizable head of M. God M is also represented elsewhere many times with the scorpion's tail, thus for ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... Of two kinds which frequent the mountains, one which is peculiar to Ceylon was discovered by Mr. Edgar L. Layard, who has done me the honour to call it the Sciurus Tennentii. Its dimensions are large, measuring upwards of two feet from head to tail. It is distinguished from the S. macrurus by the predominant black colour of the upper surface of the body, with the exception of a rusty spot at the base of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... as temper is concerned, did give some promise of it. It had pleased more than one critic to treat his Lordship's first work in no very courtier-like manner; and especially the Lion of the north had let him feel the lashing of his angry tail. Not of a temperament to bear calmly even a "look that threatened him with insult," his Lordship seized the tomahawk of satire, mounted the fiery wings of his muse, and, like Bonaparte, spared neither rank, nor sex, nor age, but converted ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... assistance to your Querist "ROBERT SNOW," in his endeavour to trace illustrations from Gresset's "Vert Vert," to know that the mark of RAUX, who is said to have painted these subjects, was composed of ten small ciphers; seven of which were placed in a circle: the other three formed a tail, o o o o thus, o o something like the Roman capital Q. This artist, o o o o between the years 1750 and 1800, was employed in the decoration of the Sevres porcelain: his usual subjects were bouquets ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... cat's-tail, mare's-tail; cumulus, stratus, nimbus; cirro-cumulus, cirro-stratus, cumulo-stratus; storm scud, wane cloud; tarnish, blemish; eclipse, obscurity. Associated Words: nephology, meteorology, nubiferous, nephelodometer, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... place appointed for them, there to pass the night in mutterings and magic. But those who were gathered together shivered with fear when they heard their words, for they knew well that many a man would be switched with the gnu's tail before the sun sank once more. And I, too, trembled, for my heart was full of fear. Ah! my father, those were evil days to live in when Chaka ruled, and death met us at every turn! Then no man might call his life his own, or that of his wife ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... MacGrawler," said the malicious Augustus; "whatever be his faults as a critic, you see that he is well grounded, and he gets at once to the bottom of a subject. Mac, suppose your next work be entitled a Tail of Woe!" ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the pith of the ceremony: the novitiates sit down to the feast of ai-lolo, theirs the place of honor, at the head of the table, next the kuahiu. The ho'o-pa'a, acting as carver, selects the typical parts—snout, ear-tips, tail, feet, portions of the vital organs, especially the brain (lolo). This last it is which gives name to the ceremony. He sets an equal portion before each novitiate. Each one must eat all that is set before him. It is a mystical rite, a sacrament; as he eats he consciously partakes of the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... to the astronomic eye, appears at a nebulous distance in the heavens, but soon soars with unheard-of and accelerating rapidity towards the central point of our system, scattering dismay among the nations of the earth, till, in a moment, when least expected, with its portentous tail it overspreads the half of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... a most incomprehensible and startling grin. Abruptly things became very unpleasant, as they will do at times in dreams. Chang-hi gibbered and threatened him. He saw in his dream heaps and heaps of gold, and Chang-hi intervening and struggling to hold him back from it. He took Chang-hi by the pig-tail—how big the yellow brute was, and how he struggled and grinned! He kept growing bigger, too. Then the bright heaps of gold turned to a roaring furnace, and a vast devil, surprisingly like Chang-hi, but with a huge black tail, began to feed him with coals. They burnt his mouth ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... language of fowls, ducks, cats, and dogs, is as easily understood by a young child as his own native tongue. But it must be at the age when grandfather's stick becomes a neighing horse, with head, legs, and tail. Some children retain these ideas later than others, and they are considered backwards and childish for their age. People say so; ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... us apart I was two doors and a half below unconsciousness, while the lawnmower had recovered its second wind and was wagging its tail with excitement. ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... never picked up a bet. Somehow or other courts is usually right next to jails, and you got to watch out you don't get in the wrong place. You can't win nothing in either one. I thought I'd tell you the story, so if you ever meet up with this shave-tail preacher and he wants a headache pill you can slip him some ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... donkey with its hair shaved off; but, in fact, he is not very like either; he is more like a tapir than anything else—that is, he is a creature sui generis. Perhaps, if you were to shave a large donkey, cut off most part of his ears and tail, shorten his limbs—and, if possible, make them stouter and clumsier—lengthen his upper jaw so that it should protrude over the under one into a prolonged curving snout, and then give him a coat of blackish-brown paint, you would get something not ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... pendulum, or in the motion of the boy's ball,—or the law of the tides and the seasons appearing in the beating of the pulse, or in inspiring and expiring the breath. The near and the remote are head and tail of the same law, and good writing unites them, giving wholeness and continuity. The language of the actual and the practical applied to the ideal brings it at once within everybody's reach, tames it, and familiarizes it to the mind. If the writers on metaphysics would ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... while longer, his angry gaze continuing to search the darkness, before he drew back into the room. "It's quite likely you saw him," he muttered. "No doubt he saw you, too, and heard you—and has slunk off with his tail between his legs!" He half made to pull down the sash, then contemptuously refrained. "I'd like to get my hands on him!" His fingers ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... water under, Down the blue the glories pale Of each lovely form of wonder, Tapered to a shimmering tail. ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... Thora!" exclaimed her father, angered at this interruption. "Can you not pay attention, and let pussy mind her own tail? I say, if you were your mother, how would you like your daughter ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... the sod bank, went under to their black noses, came up, shook the water from their ears, and struck out, following the tail of the horse. They all swam deep, the water running across the middle of their backs, their long tails, the tips of their shoulders, and their quaint inky faces ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... scalloped tail feathers, is perhaps the most singular and beautiful of that elegant race of bird, known by the name of ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... of the farther wall was a couch in the form of a lion. The upper end of it imitated a lion's head, and the foot, its curling tail; a finely dressed lion's skin was spread over the bell, and a headrest of ebony, decorated with pious texts, stood on a high foot-step, ready for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the thick jungle under the live-oaks. A small animal, possibly a 'coon, scurried through the undergrowth. In an adjacent tree a Florida bluejay gave forth a discordant scream. A fox-squirrel barked saucily, and with a flirt of his bushy tail scrambled around to the other side of ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... vanished round the corner of the wood. As we moved off I felt a wet muzzle against my hand, and, stooping, perceived a dog that looked like a cross between an Airedale and a Belgian sheep-dog. "Hullo, little fellow!" I said, patting him. He wagged his tail and followed me. ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... tearing about the country, they say, on half-holidays, and Saturdays and Sundays. And one evening, careering round a sharp corner, somewhere just outside the town, in the dark, he ran full tilt into a cart that carried no tail-light, and—broke his neck! They picked ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... type of person previously unknown in District Number Four. Everything about him spoke of wealth and authority. The old dog returned to the doorstep, and after a careful look at the invader approached him, with a funny doggish grin and a desperate wag of the tail, to beg for recognition. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... them, and a white miasmatic vapour hung over trees and lakes, burying the clearings in its wreaths, and lifting only at mid-day, to close again upon the woods at night. They talked of alligators, jaguars, the giant ant-eater, and the mysterious bird known to them as the 'ipetata', which in its tail carries a burning fire. In the recesses of the thickets demons lurked, and wild Caaguas, who with a blowpipe and a poisoned arrow slew you and your horse, themselves unseen. Pools covered with Victoria regia; masses of red and yellow flowers upon the trees, ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... snakelike sheath that Gita Morini wore in "Little Eyolf"? There it dangles, limp, invertebrate, yet how eloquent! No other woman in the world could have worn that gown, with its unbroken line from throat to hem, its smooth, high, black satin collar, its writhing tail that went slip-slip-slipping after her. In it she had looked like a sleek and wicked python that had fasted for a long, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... over us, and Heliogabalising, with our pretty sisters to cook for them, and be chucked under chin perhaps afterwards? There is nothing England hates so much, according to my sense of it, as that fellows taken from plough-tail, cart-tail, pot-houses and parish-stocks, should be hoisted and foisted upon us (after a few months' drilling, and their lying shaped into truckling) as defenders of the public weal, and heroes ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... so ancient that plenty of us remember the stone fireplace in the log-cabin, with its dusters for the hearth of buffalo tail and wild-turkey wing, with iron pot hung by a chain from the chimney hook, with pewter or wooden plates from which to eat with horn-handled knives and iron spoons. But yet are we so modern that we have fine new houses with bay windows, ornamental cupolas, and ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... be a poor tinker," said I; "but I may never have undergone what you have. You remember, perhaps, the fable of the fox who had lost his tail?" ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... streets at a slow pace, and the passers were few. Once or twice they encountered hushed couples, sometimes laughing groups. Always Sally glanced stealthily, and summed up those whom they saw; and had a tail glance for Toby. He appeared to ignore everything, and slouched along at her side, as he must have done when alone, with his head lowered. She could not make him out. In some ways he was so self-confident, in others so much as though he had never looked at ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... truth, my great-grandmother was a Manxwoman; but we are ashamed to talk much about her, because it sounds as if she'd had no tail." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... notaries public, magistrates, bailiffs, and young ecclesiastics—the latter with spotless neck-cloths and close-shaven chins—there were three countenances which particularly pleased me: the first being that of an ancient earl, who wore a pig-tail, and the back of whose coat was white with powder; the second, that of a yeoman ninety years old and worth 90,000 pounds, who, dressed in an entire suit of whitish corduroy, sometimes slowly trotted up the court on a tall heavy steed, which ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... for all except one man. Dodge rode at the tail end of the line, on a fiend of a horse that had proven disastrous to more ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... 22; Exo 32:26-28). Paul also must go from place to place to preach, though he knew beforehand he was to be afflicted there (Acts 20:23). God may sometimes say to thee, as he said to his servant Moses, 'Take the serpent by the tail'; or, as the Lord Jesus said to Peter, Walk upon the sea (Exo 4:3,4). These are hard things, but have not been rejected when God hath called to do them. O how willingly would our flesh and blood escape the cross of Christ! The comforts of the gospel, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... when once you had found it, was quite plain and easy walking; and when I stepped out on the black sands, who should I see but Master Case himself! I cocked my gun and held it handy, and we marched up and passed without a word, each keeping the tail of his eye on the other; and no sooner had we passed than we each wheeled round like fellows drilling, and stood face to face. We had each taken the same notion in his head, you see, that the other fellow might give him the load of his gun in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... come, and will not come, I dare say; for he spoke like a doubter at the moment; and as this Tuesday wears on, I am not likely to have any visitors on it after all, and may as well, if the rain quite ceases, go and spend my solitude on the park a little. Flush wags his tail at that proposition when I speak it loud out. And I am to write to you before Friday, and so, am writing, you see ... which I should not, should not have done if I had not been told; because it is not my turn to write, ... ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... I must yield! Against stupidity the very gods. Themselves contend in vain. Exalted reason, Resplendent daughter of the head divine, Wise foundress of the system of the world, Guide of the stars, who art thou then if thou, Bound to the tail of folly's uncurbed steed, Must, vainly shrieking with the drunken crowd, Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss. Accursed, who striveth after noble ends, And with deliberate wisdom forms his plans! To the fool-king ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the books, a cat-head, a cat's-head, and a cat's head, are three very different things; yet what Webster writes, cat-tail, Johnson, cats-tail, Walker and others, cats-tail, means but the same thing, though not a cat's tail. Johnson's "kingspear, Jews-ear, lady-mantle, and lady-bedstraw," are no more proper, than Webster's "bear's-wort, lion's foot, lady's mantle, and lady's bed-straw." All ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... soon. He had been baking pies for the sheepmen's supper and these he had placed on the tail board of the wagon, which he had removed and laid upon a frame made of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... The criminal cried, as he dropped him down, In a state of wild alarm— With a frightful, frantic, fearful frown, I bared my big right arm. I seized him by his little pig-tail, And on his knees fell he, As he squirmed and struggled, And gurgled and guggled, I drew my snickersnee! Oh, never shall I Forget the cry, Or the shriek that shrieked he, As I gnashed my teeth, When from its sheath ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... She had no brother or sister, but she had two very dear friends: one was a doll with a broken nose and only half an arm; the other was a white terrier with a brown patch on his back, a short stump of a tail, ...
— The Bountiful Lady - or, How Mary was changed from a very Miserable Little Girl - to a very Happy One • Thomas Cobb
... that so scornfully that he angered Hallblithe beyond measure: then he arose in the boat and stood on his feet swaying from side to side as he laughed. He was passing big, long- armed and big-headed, and long hair came from under his helm like the tail of a red horse; his eyes were grey and gleaming, and ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... I was rather cross about the bag, wasn't I? but I had just got hold of the tail of a rather difficult sentence and it gave a wriggle and vanished when you spoke. However, please don't look so dreadfully sorry. I made a successful grab at it a few minutes afterwards. Now shall we tell each other our names. ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... News. PICKING ONE "OFF THE TAIL" The German Albatross airplane going down in flames was in pursuit of the light British "Quick" machine seen on the left, when suddenly a British Nieuport (at the right) dived through the clouds. The Albatross nose-dived, the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... threatening what he would do to Tom the "next time he caught him out." To which Tom responded with jeers, and started off in high feather, and as soon as his back was turned the new boy snatched up a stone, threw it and hit him between the shoulders and then turned tail and ran like an antelope. Tom chased the traitor home, and thus found out where he lived. He then held a position at the gate for some time, daring the enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made faces at him through the window and declined. At last the enemy's mother appeared, and called ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... be taught by her mistress how to carve, in order to save time and trouble. Soup for a country dinner should be clear bouillon, with macaroni and cheese, creme d'asperge, or Julienne, which has in it all the vegetables of the season. Heavy mock-turtle, bean soup, or ox-tail are not in order for a country dinner. If the lady of the house have a talent for cookery, she should have her soups made the day before, all the grease removed when the stock is cold, and ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... eagle is three feet long, and seven feet in extent; the bill is of a rich yellow; cere the same, slightly tinged with green; mouth flesh-coloured; tip of the tongue, bluish black; the head, chief part of the neck, vent, tail coverts, and tail, are white in the perfect, or old birds of both sexes, in those under three years of age these parts are of a gray brown; the rest of the plumage is deep, dark brown, each feather tipt with pale brown, lightest on the shoulder of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... of flight. Just as when, out on the Bar with her cousin, Tom Verity, now nearly a month ago, overcome by a foreboding of far-reaching danger she had—to the subsequent bitter wounding of her self-respect and pride—shown the white feather, ignominiously turned tail and run away, was she ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... intellect is at once infected, so that the man ceases to see God whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual allurement of an object, and not see the sensual hurt; he sees the mermaid's head, but not the dragon's tail; and thinks he can cut off that which he would have, from that which he would not have. "How secret art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens in silence, O thou only great God, sprinkling with an unwearied Providence certain penal ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... at all," said Daragh, pushing her back into her seat. "The lights will be on again in two flips of a dead lamb's tail!" ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... as being in for something, some impetuous adventure, some enterprise of enormous uncertainty. It may have been because she looked so well-cared-for and expensive. I do not understand these matters, but her furs, and her tailor-made suit of dark cloth, and the little black velvet hat with the fur tail in it were not the sort of clothes I had hitherto seen worn by typists seeking for employment. So that I doubted whether financial necessity could have driven her to my door. Or else I had a premonition. She herself had none. She was ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... runaway. There were one or two places in which he had before been found, and these they had settled first to visit. They were gullies, or dry creeks, bordered thickly by trees, beneath the shade of which he could stand during the heat of the day, and, while whisking off the flies with his long tail, meditate at his leisure. Three of these places were visited, but Old Bolter was not there. The water-holes in their neighbourhood were dry, which would account for the absence of the knowing ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... physical features, not unlike that over which DeWet occasionally rode at the rate of one hundred miles from sunset to day-dawn. Garibaldi, although a sailor born, did not ride a horse with face toward the horse's tail, as sailormen are said to do in one of Kipling's merry tales. However, he might have done so, for he was a most daring rider, and in South America filled in the time with many excursions ashore, where he chose his companions from the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... He trains with a crowd I'd hate to trust farther than I could throw a bull by the tail. Some of 'em would sell their ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... seminocturnal, in its movements, and, moreover, it is viewed with extreme dread by the natives, who regard it as equally poisonous with the most venomous serpents. It is obviously, however, a terrestrial animal, as it has not a swimming tail flattened from side to side, nor the climbing feet that so characteristically mark arboreal lizards. Sumichrast further states that the animal has a strong nauseous smell, and that when irritated it secretes a large quantity of gluey saliva. In order to test its supposed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... make out here, the enemy have Milroy surrounded at Winchester, and Tyler at Martinsburg If they could hold out a few days, could you help them? If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere. Could you ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... meilleures nouvelles. Je ne puis entrer dans aucun dtail; mais sois tranquille, et aime bien qui t'aime uniquement.(261) God ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... housewife in all the three Ridings. But, somehow, she managed to keep her tongue quiet from telling him, as she would have done any woman, and any other man, to mind his own business, or she would pin a dish-clout to his tail. She even checked Sylvia when the latter proposed, as much for fun as for anything else, that his ignorant directions should be followed, and the consequences brought before his eyes ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... he became postmaster he started the Boomerang. The first office of the paper was over a livery stable, and Nye put up a sign instructing callers to "twist the tail of the gray mule and take ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... speed, and as she came along at full steam, she was soon visible to the naked eye. Towards eleven o'clock, the wash from her bow as she tore through the waves was perfectly distinct, and behind her the long furrow of foam gradually growing wider and fainter like the tail of a comet. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... but a memory; the bittern booms more rarely in our eastern marshes; and now they tell me Brigadiers are extinct. Handsomest and liveliest of our indigenous fauna, the bright beady eye, the flirt of the trench coat-tail through the undergrowth, the glint of red betwixt the boughs, the sudden piercing pipe—how well I knew them, how often I have lain hidden in thickets and behind hedgerows to study them more closely. How inquisitive the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... all. Two dancing-halls there are, and the music is supplied by masters on the hardingfele, and wonderful music it is, to be sure. There are iron strings to it, and it utters no empty phrases, but music with a sting in its tail. It acts differently upon different people: some find it rich in national sweetness; some of us are rather constrained to grit our teeth and howl in melancholy wise. Never was stinging music delivered with ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... don't," the little worldling admitted. "They do to women; they're so material, you see. They are angels—O yes, of course!—but they're uncommonly sharp angels where money and good living are concerned. Just watch them—watch the tail of their eye—when a cheque is being written or an eprouvette being brought to table. And after all, you know, minced chicken is a good deal nicer than dry bread. Of course we can easily be sentimental and above this sort of thing, when ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida |
