"White elephant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the other men, and March said: "You ought to be in charge of a Siamese white elephant, Fulkerson. It's a disgrace to be ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mistaking or ignoring the tone of her answer. 'A real, live, white elephant; a thing which has not been seen in Alexandria for a hundred years! It was passing through with two tame tigers, as a present to the boy at Byzantium, from some hundred-wived kinglet of the Hyperborean Taprobane, or other no-man's-land ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... that Vishnu has indeed descended in the form of Krishna and retires to his abode. Krishna then sets the hill down in its former place. Following this discomfiture, Indra comes down from the sky accompanied by his white elephant and by Surabhi, the cow of plenty. He offers his submission to ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... four girls on a farm can't have a good time together—even when not aided and abetted by as many boys—there will be something wrong with them—and the boys. Can't we be called boys?—That's great news. And I may tell mother you will prove your good friendship by taking the white elephant of a piano? May we send it right away? You see, since it must be moved at once, it had best come where it is to stay. And we'll send around a tuner. Please use it all you can, just to keep ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... The White Elephant was a large gambling hall in Kansas City, situated on one of the principal thoroughfares. It was centrally located, and night after night the brilliant lights and crowded tables bore ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... is said, became envious of the prosperity of a washerman, and to ruin him, induced the king to order him to wash one of his black elephants white, that he might be "lord of the white elephant," which in the East is a ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... recollections are altogether too modern to be of much interest. Crimean heroes were veterans when they, as guests at my father's table, fought their battles o'er again. The Great Eastern steamship was quite an old white elephant of the sea when I, held up in my nurse's arms, saw Brunel's blunder pass Greenore Point. I was hardly eligible for "Etons" when our present King was married. When first taken to church I was most interested, as standing on tiptoe ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... few minutes are gone on their busy way and silence settles down once more. They neither know nor care that, near by, a mighty city spread its splendour for miles along the river bank, that the king known as Lord of the Golden Palace, The Golden Foot, Lord of the White Elephant, held his state there with balls of magnificence, obsequious women, fawning courtiers and all the riot and colour of an Eastern tyranny. How should they care? Now there are ruins—ruins, and the cobras slip in and out through the deserted holy places. They breed their writhing young in ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... turning somersaults all the way. And when he came down to the earth again he had lost all the presents except the pudding, but he had held that all the way down. So he sold it to a man for forty million hundred dollars; and then he was so rich that they made him King of Siam, and he rode on a white elephant with pink ears all the rest of ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... over Hynds House the next morning and took stock, I began to entertain very, very peculiar feelings toward Great-Aunt Sophronisba Scarlett, who, it would appear, had given me a white elephant which I could neither hire out for its keep, nor yet sell out of hand. I had to live in Hynds House, and Hynds House as it stood wasn't to be ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... boy," he said when that functionary entered, "Matt and I are going to unload that white elephant of a Lion and get her off our hands for four years at a fancy figure; but to do it we've got to charter another white elephant—the Black Butte Lumber Company's Unicorn. Here's an option Captain Peasley has just secured on her. Have ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... is he to go?" Gregory surmised. "Yes, he might look well in that big music-room at Les Solitudes, or in some vast hall where he would be more of an episode and less of a white elephant. I hardly thing he'll fit anywhere into the passage," ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Burma, 1892. The annalist says "There is a huge white elephant (or image) 100 feet high. Litigants burn incense and kneel before it, reflecting within themselves whether they are right or wrong.... When there is any disaster or plague the king also kneels in front ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... of feeling that it will be useful to you at some great crisis of your fate, and at least it will remind you of me, who have loved and tried to beautify the place. In any case it will always let, and if it becomes a white elephant, you can sell it and the furniture, which ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... world and denuded every small zoological park in Europe, while it pretty nearly bankrupted the shows to feed them. We had eighty with the Barnum circus, and finally Mr. Barnum came to me and said that he had purchased a Sacred White Elephant and told me to start giving it publicity. Of course, I didn't know anything about that particular kind of elephant, but as I always like to be perfectly accurate in my statements I made a scientific study of it. I found that, as a matter of fact, there was no such thing as ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... A white elephant, caparisoned with a fillet of gold, runs along, shaking the bouquet of ostrich feathers attached ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... what to us appear as ridiculous titles of honour on their princes. The king of Arracan assumes the following ones: "Emperor of Arracan, possessor of the white elephant, and the two ear-rings, and in virtue of this possession legitimate heir of Pegu and Brama; lord of the twelve provinces of Bengal, and the twelve kings who place their heads ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... A milk-white elephant or a camelopard is considered more than a substitute for character, incident, or wit. And if an actor presents himself in a dress of unusual splendour, the house is in ecstasies, and a roar of applause, loud as a tempest in the Garganian forest, or as the surges on the Tuscan strand, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... correctly said to have as much truth as poetry. It is a graceful summary of the curiosities which Barnum had brought before the world up to his sixtieth year. It does not include the Sacred White Elephant of Siam, the mammoth Jumbo and other wonders of nature which he was yet to reveal to astonished and delighted millions. Nor does it indicate that grand genius of aggregation by which in later years he surpassed ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... exploits were quite as wonderful as those of his later years. One night he was awakened from his slumbers by hearing the servants say that the great white elephant on which his father rode on state occasions had broken loose and was running about the royal gardens, mad with rage, pulling up the trees, tearing down buildings and killing every one that came in his way. Not a man dared stand against the fierce ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... now I should have considered you a bad penny: in place of the true metal of friendship I should have suspected you of palming off plated lead upon me. It is well for you that you are here. You are like the white elephant for whom the Shah of Persia and the Great Mogul are continually at war. The one who is so fortunate as to possess the white elephant makes it always the occasion of an added title. I will follow their example, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... all Yellow, fair or Black, To thy Charmes shall prostrate fall, As every kind of elephant does To the white Elephant Buitenacke. And thou alone shall have from me Jimminy, Gomminy, whee, whee, whee, The ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... went into the lift; that was a stroke of luck; and the lift-man and I between us carried it into my flat. It seemed a featherweight to me now. I felt a Samson in the exaltation of that hour. And I will not say what my first act was when I found myself alone with my white elephant in the middle of the room; enough that the siphon was still doing its work when the glass slipped through my ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... he kept relating anecdotes of how people are always sending him shaves about flowers. "I'd a letter the other day, my dear, to describe a white Crown Imperial—a thing that has never been!" Later he announced—"I have written to Barr and Sugden—'Gentlemen! Here's another White Elephant. A lady has ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... sum," said Owen, in an unimaginative sort of way, while in his heart he wondered what on earth he should do with this white elephant of a mediaeval castle, and its drawing room ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... nothing mattered much now, and it was best to be done with it; repacking the rest with guilty stealth ere Davies should discover their character, and strapping up the whole again. Then I sat down upon my white elephant and shivered, for the chill of autumn was in the air. It suddenly struck me that if it had been raining things might have been worse still. The notion made me look round. The little cove was still as glass; stars above and ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... dressed himself up in scarlet and purple robes with stars on. Through his Zion City Bank and Zion City Realty Company he became enormously wealthy; he finally announced himself as "Elijah the Restorer." I remember as a boy how he brought his gospel to New York, and P.T. Barnum with Tom Thumb and the white elephant never made such a sensation. The ridicule of the metropolis overwhelmed the old prophet, and he died and passed on his robes and his tabernacle and his bank to his son; straightway, according to the rule of all religions, the followers fell to quarrelling ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... the African; the latter attains a greater size, and is hunted for the sake of its tusks, which may weigh as much as 70 lbs.; the former is more intelligent, and easily capable of being domesticated; the white elephant is ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... clean, dry, covered tin pail, and hang it down my well, just like Jerushy said she always did when she had a ten-dollar bill around that worried her. And there Dad's got all the expense of rebuilding Greenacres. It's going to be a regular White Elephant, I'm afraid, because it isn't all paid for anyway, and there's the yearly interest." She hesitated before she added, slowly, "I wonder why on earth it is, Bill Ellis, that the people with the most children who need the most money always seem to be hunting for ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... said:—"Wonderful building, the new General Post Office, opened in 1829, nearly opposite. They say the Government has got something very like a white elephant in that vast pile. A great deal too big for present needs, or, indeed, for any possible extension of ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... certain tyrants of the souls desire is that the men they teach shall have false judgment. A fakir rears a child who gives much promise; he spends five or six years in driving into his head that the god Fo appeared to men as a white elephant, and he persuades the child that he will be whipped after his death for five hundred thousand years if he does not believe these metamorphoses. He adds that at the end of the world the enemy of the god Fo will come to ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... are both our names," said Gyali, holding the hat before Desiderius: "draw one of them out: open it, read it, and then put both names into the fire. The one whose name you draw will do the honors to the Cochin-China Emperor's white elephant." ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... majority of the American public. Although only $7,200,000 was paid for the whole of Russian America,[73] the general opinion in New York and other large cities of the Union was that "Seward's ice-box," as it was then derisively termed, would prove a white elephant, and that the statesman responsible for its purchase had been, plainly speaking, sold. It was only when the marvellous riches of Nome were disclosed that people began to realise what the annexation of the country really meant, although ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... accident of inheritance, he had come into the property with an immense antipathy:—a white elephant that would bring him neither profit nor honour, but which the modest competence that he had previously enjoyed did not allow him to refuse. It had altered the tenor of his existence, destroyed his youth and his ambitions, and represented for many years, more completely than anything else, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... of many learned societies, and had honors and decorations without stint, including the Order of the White Elephant, the Swedish Order of the Northern Star, and the Order of Kamehameha I. His publications are a 'Russian Anthology,' 'Matins and Vespers,' 'Batavian Anthology,' 'Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain,' 'Peter Schlemihl,' 'Servian Popular Poetry,' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... are we to do with this chap?" queried Jack. "It rather worries me. He's apt to be a white elephant ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... detective turned back toward the business section. On the way he dropped guiltily the telescope grip into a delivery wagon standing in front of a grocery. He had no use for it, and he had already come to feel it a white elephant on ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... won't come high," young Prescott answered. "If it does, we'll begin right by telling him that we have no money—-that we've nothing in fact but a birchbark white elephant on ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... International Signal Code-book at the plate where the flags of all the nations are correctly figured in gaudy rows. He ran his finger over them, and when he came to Siam he contemplated with great attention the red field and the white elephant. Nothing could be more simple; but to make sure he brought the book out on the bridge for the purpose of comparing the coloured drawing with the real thing at the flagstaff astern. When next Jukes, who was carrying on the duty that ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... over the heads of the gleaming pikes; when, with one hand seizing the sacred peishcush, or fish—which was the banner always borne before Scindiah,—he, with his good sword, cut off the trunk of the famous white elephant, which, shrieking with agony, plunged madly into the Mahratta ranks, followed by his giant brethren, tossing, like chaff before the wind, the affrighted kitmatgars. He, meanwhile, now plunging into the midst of a battalion of consomahs, now cleaving to the chine ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and went out the window. I heard him strike the ground. Then I sat silently looking at the others in the room, wondering how the sergeant was getting along, and slowly realizing that I had a white elephant on my hands. I was endeavoring to play two games at once, love and war, and the various moves were confusing. It might be possible even for my little squad to hold this advance position until reinforcements arrived, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... sculptured with mysterious devices. Stepping up to it, and finding that it opened easily, he entered an octagonal room, the walls of which were hung with the skins of spotted cats, and on the floor was spread a skin of the sacred white elephant of India. The Prince perceived that this was merely an anteroom, for to the left of him was a door, before which sat a fierce and black Afrite, with a great javelin in his hand. With his hands upon his knees, the Afrite bent down his head, and looked steadfastly at the Prince ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... overwhelm us; and what are you going to do with your white elephant, now that you ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... wonderful properties it was said to possess, that I determined to make some of the compound. We tested what we considered a very small quantity, but this produced such terrible and unexpected results that we became alarmed, the fact dawning upon us that we had a very large white elephant in our possession. At 6 A.M. I put the explosive into a sarsaparilla bottle, tied a string to it, wrapped it in a paper, and gently let it down into the sewer, corner of State and Washington Streets." The associate ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of a white elephant. There is about a couple of acres of ground well situated and half of it in the shape of a very pretty lawn and shrubbery, but unluckily, in building the house, dear old Rich thought of his own convenience and not ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... enjoy your visits so much, partly because of the way in which you always talked of Dad. She left you some jewelry that she was fond of, and that colossal old mahogany buffet that you used to rave over whenever you came up. Heaven knows what you'll do with it! It's a white elephant. If you add another story to it, you could rent it out as ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... return to Karugsar and Mazinderan, Zal went with Rustem to Sistan, a province dependent on his government, and settled him there. The white elephant, belonging to Minuchihr, was kept at Sistan. One night Rustem was awakened out of his sleep by a great noise, and cries of distress when starting up and inquiring the cause, he was told that the white elephant ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... dream-readers Augured a Prince of earthly dominance, A Chakravartin, such as rise to rule Once in each thousand years; seven gifts he has The Chakra-ratna, disc divine; the gem; The horse, the Aswa-ratna, that proud steed Which tramps the clouds; a snow-white elephant, The Hasti-ratna, born to bear his King; The crafty Minister, the General Unconquered, and the wife of peerless grace, The Istri-ratna, lovelier than the Dawn. For which gifts looking with this wondrous boy, The King gave order ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... born into the world with a delicate constitution, an unhappy disposition and the proverbial gold spoon in her mouth as far as finances were concerned. The poor professor felt that he had been left with something worse than a white elephant on his hands, for he knew absolutely nothing about girls, and Marion, with her morbid, super-sensitive temperament, was a constant puzzle to him. She had been in a convent school until recently. ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... got hold of all their chief cities except Ava, and why that was not taken is more than I can say. We might certainly have captured it, with the king, his white elephant, and all his lords and ladies together, not to speak of his treasure, which would have given us something handsome in the way of prize-money. Perhaps it was thought best not to drive him to desperation, as we had already ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... space were barracks for soldiers and gun sheds. The accommodation was as primitive as are the weapons, and that was saying a good deal. Pio Nono led us across to a big wooden house, scarcely at all ornamented, which was the everyday abode of the "Lord White Elephant." His "Palace," or state apartment, was not pointed out to us. His lordship, in so far as his literal claim to be styled a white elephant, was an impostor of the deepest dye and a very grim and ugly impostor to boot. He was a great, lean, brown, flat-sided brute, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... to visit Mrs. Jones, who lives at 28, White Elephant Buildings. Mr. Jones is a painter at work for eight months in the year, if he has good luck, but out of work always at that time of the year when housekeeping expenses are highest. For every working man's wife will tell you ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... royal itinerary, so vastly different and picturesque are the various regions crossed. But now that gasolene is handed out by the spoonful even to sanitary formations, it would be just as easy for the civilian to procure a white elephant as to dream of purchasing sufficient "gas" ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... Cambodia, we learn from Le Petit Journal, was so pleased with a white elephant sent him by the Governor-General of French Indo-China that he has raised the animal—a fine female—to the dignity of a Princess. The news soon got about, and considerable jealousy is felt at our Zoo, where there is not so much as even a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... thinking that perhaps those fellows who robbed me had taken a white elephant off ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... curse; evil &c 619; hurtfulness &c (badness) 649 [Obs.]; painfulness &c (cause of pain) 830; scourge &c (punishment) 975; damnosa hereditas [Lat.]; white elephant. sting, fang, thorn, tang, bramble, brier, nettle. poison, toxin; teratogen; leaven, virus venom; arsenic; antimony, tartar emetic; strychnine, nicotine; miasma, miasm^, mephitis^, malaria, azote^, sewer gas; pest. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... singular fact, little known. The Burmahs, who are disciples of Gaudma, equally with the inhabitants of Pegu and Syriam, whose country they have conquered, worship the White Elephant, who is considered as a god. There have been but three white elephants since the foundation of the Burmah dynasty by Alompraa. The first one is dead, and I have one of his teeth carved with figures, which was consecrated to the great Dagon Pagoda. The second now reigns—he is attended ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... than if it were a really decent idea. I'm inventing a wild man. You know how crazy the average dub is over anything strange, different,'terrible.' Barnum was right, you know. There's one born every minute. Well, I'm just getting this thing up now. It's as good as the sacred white elephant or the blood-sweating hippopotamus. And what's more, I'm going to stage it right here in little old Newark—and they'll all fall for it, and don't you think they won't," ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... Raja and his late brother both having so insecure a seat upon their thrones that they readily made concessions to the Siamese in order to purchase their support. Thus, at the present time, the flag of the White Elephant floats at the mouth of the Kelantan river on State occasions, though the administration of the country is still entirely in the hands of the Raja ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... it was Mr. Nestor who had been kidnapped by mistake or they might have insisted on his release. As it was, Lydane had Mary's father, and was afraid to let him go, though really their prisoner became a white elephant on the hands ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... provokingly low prices, his Harleian bargains. By the way, he kept them a tolerably long time. Did some one help him to find the money, or did he pay it by instalments? Seriously speaking, it was rather a white elephant. One of the most notorious private transactions in the way of sales of books en bloc was that by the Royal Society in 1873 of the printed portion of the Pirkheimer Library, presented to it by Henry Howard, Duke of Norfolk, the ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... wholly out of harmony with everything else I possessed, and so huge and massive that two men were required to lift the head-board alone. Like many of the previous treasures I had acquired, this was a white elephant; but, unlike some of them, it was worth more than I had paid for it. I was offered sixty dollars for one piece alone, but I coldly refused to sell it, though the tribute to my judgment warmed my heart. I had not the faintest idea what to do with the set, however, and at last I confided ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... would have caused the dullest eye to brighten with amusement, if not with admiration. Of course, the Stars and Stripes hung highest, with the English lion ramping on the royal standard close by; then followed a regular picture-gallery, for there was the white elephant of Siam, the splendid peacock of Burmah, the double-headed Russian eagle and black dragon of China, the winged lion of Venice, and the prancing pair on the red, white and blue flag of Holland. The keys and miter of the Papal States were a hard job, but up they went at last, with the yellow ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Many Asuras of immeasurable might, pierced with Krishna's arrows and smitten with the force of his discus, became motionless like waifs and strays stranded on the bank by the violence of the waves. Then Sakra the lord of the celestials, riding on his white elephant, rushed at those heroes, and taking up his thunderbolt which could never go in vain, hurled it with great force. And the slayer of Asuras said unto the gods, 'These two are slain.' Beholding the fierce thunderbolt about to be hurled by their chief, the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... came the "White Elephant" with which the reader is already acquainted—the line from ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... ventured to cross his father's threshold, and yet he talks as familiarly of kingdoms, governments, nations, manners, and other high sounding phrases, as if he had been secretary of state to king Minos, had ridden upon the white elephant, and studied under the Dalai Lama! He is the Great Mogul of politicians! And as for letters, science, and talents, he holds them all by patent right! He is such a monopolizer that no man else can get a morsel! If he were not a plebeian, I could most sincerely wish you ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... is announced by a white elephant, which descends from heaven and declares to the queen, Maya, that she will bring forth a divine man, who "will attune all beings to love and friendship, and will unite them in a close alliance." We read in St. Luke's Gospel: ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... roughs, the result of a zealous gathering from his political supporters; and that Testimonial, "little Testy" as I called it, was a source of care and dilemma to everybody; for care, it was immediately locked away for fear of burglars; and as to dilemma, the white elephant was too tall for the centre of a table, and too short to stand upon the floor. It seemed closely to illustrate to my mind that wise text about a man's life and his possessions. The cheerful spirit of the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... is a problem which worries those happy Americans who have nothing else to worry over. They think of an ex-President as of a sacred white elephant, who must not work, although he has probably too little money to keep him alive in proper ease and dignity. In fact, however, these gentlemen have managed, at least during the past half-century, to ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Haymarket. This position was held by an affable Hebrew, one Benjamin Lumley, an ex-solicitor, who had abandoned his parchments and bills of costs and acquired a lease of Her Majesty's. The house had long been looked upon as something of a white elephant in the theatrical jungle; but Lumley, being pushful and knowledgeable, soon built up a valuable following and set the establishment ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... "And dad seems to think that the best thing mother could do would be to take the money and get rid of the ranch. He says it will be a sort of white elephant on our hands, since there isn't very much chance of our going out there to live," she ended, with ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... families of the common people. At the spot where stood the old palace of king Suddhodana(2) there have been made images of the prince (his eldest son) and his mother;(3) and at the places where that son appeared mounted on a white elephant when he entered his mother's womb,(4) and where he turned his carriage round on seeing the sick man after he had gone out of the city by the eastern gate,(5) topes have been erected. The places (were also pointed out)(6) where (the rishi) A-e(7) inspected ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... this country, that on going to war, the king is said to carry 30,000 into the field, besides others which are left in the several garrisons. This king has great pride in the possession of a white elephant, having red eyes, which glare like a flame of fire. In this country there is a certain species of small vermin, which attaches itself to the trunks of the elephants, to suck their blood, by which many ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... murmured Harley, and tactfully changed the subject, which evidently was not altogether pleasing to our host. I concluded that he had found the east wing of the house something of a white elephant, and was accordingly ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... "I've a white elephant on my hands—one hard to manage. With a fire in my front and rear to contend with, the jealousies of the military commanders, and not receiving that cordial co-operative support from Congress that could reasonably be expected with an active and formidable ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... feel as if you had a white elephant on your hands?" she asked so unexpectedly that Theodora blushed and wondered if the girl ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... abode with them and after five days she gave birth to a male child, as he were the moon. They cut his navel cord and kohl'd his eyes then they named him Murad Shah, and he grew up in his mother's lap. After a while came King Salsal, riding on a paper white elephant, as he were a tower plastered with lime and attended by the troops of the Jinn. He entered the palace, where the hundred damsels met him and kissed ground before him, and amongst them Fakhr Taj. When the King saw her, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... to which he invariably had recourse in any crisis, came upon Roland with irresistible force. He packed a bag, and went to Paris. There, in the discomforts of life in a foreign country, he contrived for a month to forget his white elephant. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... four horses; so extreme was my haste, running as I was before the terrors of an awakened conscience. But I feared to be conspicuous. Even as it was, we attracted only too much attention, with our pair and that white elephant, the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gift should take, a perplexity arose, many being inclined towards a piece of plate. It was pointed out that a piece of plate worth eight hundred pounds would prove a cumbersome piece of furniture—a white elephant, in fact—in the small house or apartment or flat in which a critic usually lives. The truth of this could not be gainsaid. Other suggestions were forthcoming for your benefit, every one obtaining a certain amount of support, but none commanding a majority of ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... bungalow proved after all to be a white elephant. The water-supply was limited, and without plenty of water Babaji said he could not live there. His servants, who were city people, said that if he went to live in the country they would not go with him. So the bungalow ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... for his act if it is properly mounted in a pleasing picture, the vaudeville producer invests in scenery. But he has to figure closely, just as every other business man is compelled to scheme and contrive in dollars and cents, or the business asset of scenery will turn into a white elephant and eat up all ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... that we've just won the largest white elephant in history. We don't just walk off and leave it, you know. We don't want it. ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... was rung up about ten days ago by some one who made a verbal offer to lease the Red House for a period of twelve months. A foreigner, who in lieu of the usual references, was prepared to pay the annual rent in advance. As the Red House, to use an Irishism, was regarded as something of a white elephant, the agent was interested, apparently; and when on the following day the sum agreed upon arrived by post, he did not demur about delivering the keys to the prospective lessee, who desired to take certain measurements in regard to carpets ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... know where to find Morrison, he thought it likely that he might be seen at the White Elephant, a large and showy billiard room on Broadway, near Thirtieth Street. There were several gambling houses near by, and there or in that neighborhood he thought that Morrison ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... knowledge which makes it possible for furniture built on amazingly bad lines to be sold masquerading under the name of some great period. The customer soon becomes bewildered, and, unless he has a decided taste of his own, is apt to get something which will prove a white elephant on his hands. One must have some standard of comparison, and the best and simplest way is to study the great work of the past. To study its rise and climax rather than the decline; to know the laws of its perfection so that one can recognize the exaggeration which leads to degeneracy. ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... any feminine weakness or resentment about Mrs. Stiles, nor, for a stronger reason,—such is the unexpressed conclusion,—is there any feminine weakness about Mrs. Stiles's eloquent counsel. Well, gentlemen, if Mrs. Stiles is not a woman, what is she? Is she a white elephant? Is she a female suffragist? which, I have heard, is neither man nor woman." (Immense laughter in court, indignation in the cheeks of Mrs. Tarbell, a lofty and contemptuous frown on the forehead of Mrs. Pegley.) "Gentlemen, with the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... its revenues by encouraging the tourist industry. That the royal prince who is the Minister of Communications recently made a tour of the United States for the purpose of studying American railway methods suggests, however, that the Land of the White Elephant is planning to get its share of tourist ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... perfectly happy it is impossible to be happier, and I honestly don't care very much. I should like Uncle Bernard to leave me a nice message, and I shouldn't at all object to a legacy, which would provide my trousseau; but the Court itself would be a white elephant to me now. Donald adores his work, and would not give it up for any consideration, so we ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... this wagon would be a white elephant. Why had they not divided among themselves the simple contents of a hunter's camp outfit, cut loose with the horses, and burned the big vehicle, which they could ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... right. We could watch him day times and you could put him back in the box every night for safe keeping. I don't think he's an otter at all. He just fits the definition of a white elephant." ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... "Pearl of the Danube," a charming retreat in spring and autumn, when the heat does not force Fashion to the mountains, and famous for its mineral springs, hot and cold. It belongs to the King's cousin, Prince Joseph, and is a white elephant. The cost of gardening this beautiful island is colossal, and though the Prince has just drained a portion which used to be a swamp, the Danube is a standing danger. It is scarcely surprising that he cannot find a purchaser at three million florins. One of the walls of his private garden (which produces ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... were not slow to appreciate the value of the treasures that had thus fallen into their hands, yet for the moment it proved to them something of a white elephant. Montague Mansion was already crowded; moreover, its floors had never been intended to hold such heavy objects, so it became imperatively necessary to provide new quarters for the collection. This was done in ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... want your pony," he said bitterly; "I might as well have a white elephant, and I don't suppose I should enjoy myself much more at a public school than I do here. Let's have no humbug, sir. You're up and I'm down—there's no more to be said—I shall tell the Doctor nothing, but I warn you, if ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... piquancy of contrast. The Boy spent a hundred francs for a silver chamois poised upon the apex of a perilous peak of uncut amethysts, mounted on ebony, and I was witty at the expense of his purchase, likening it to the white elephant of Instantaneous Breakfasts et Cie., which I had long ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson |
