"Elephant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many-columned courtyards of the palace was a chained, mad elephant whose duty was to kneel on the Rajah's captive enemies. In another courtyard was a big, square tank with a weedy, slippery stone ramp at one end; in the tank were alligators; down the ramp other of the Rajah's enemies, tight-bound, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... quietness would be of no use, so I sprang up upon my legs, and being bred upon the roads, and able to fight a little, I squared as he came running in upon me, and had a round or two with him. Lord bless you, young man, it was like a fly fighting with an elephant—one of those big beasts the show-folks carry about. I had not a chance with the fellow, he knocked me here, he knocked me there, knocked me into the hedge, and knocked me out again. I was at my last shifts, and my poor wife saw it. Now my poor wife, though ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of any of its great and famous rivals, the street parade of this circus was a meagre and disappointing thing. Why, there was only one elephant, a dwarfish and debilitated-looking creature, worn mangy and slick on its various angles, like the cover of an old-fashioned haircloth trunk; and obviously most of the closed cages were weather-beaten stake wagons in disguise. Nevertheless, there was a sizable turnout ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... understanding that were so characteristic in her. "Lord A'mighty!" he ejaculated under his breath, "Lord A'mighty! to hector and abuse a child like that one! 'T ain't ABUSE exactly, I know, or 't wouldn't be to some o' your elephant-hided young ones; but to that little tender will-o'-the-wisp a hard word 's like a lash. Mirandy Sawyer would be a heap better woman if she had a little gravestun to remember, same's ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... draws at hand. Oor watter is no fit for ki drinking; an' there's fient a thing but watter in the weet dock. My heart bleeds when I go roond the shore an' see all the ships sailin' oot o' the herbir, an' no' a livin' sowl comin' in. Gentlemen, that herbir's growin' a gijantic white elephant." ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... readers of our light and hurrying age and those who obeyed "Eliza and our James," than the fact that the book we have before us at this moment, a folio of some eleven hundred pages, adorned, like a fighting elephant, with all the weightiest panoply of learning, was one of the most popular works of its time. It went through six editions, this vast antiquarian itinerary, before the natural demand of the vulgar released it from its Latin austerity; and the title-page we have quoted is that of the earliest ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... at 6 A.M. Everybody eaten up by mosquitoes. At 9 A.M. the steamer smashed her starboard paddle: the whole day occupied in repairing. Saw a bull elephant in the marshes at a distance. Horrible treeless swamps swarming ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... of a prophet, but when the time comes, I think you will find that those who believe that they are conquering England now will be here in Bolton faced by a foe against which their finest artillery will be as useless as an air-gun against an elephant. ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... a long civil war and recurrent drought in the hinterlands have resulted in increased migration of the population to urban and coastal areas with adverse environmental consequences; desertification; pollution of surface and coastal waters; elephant poaching ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... "An elephant sat on a bamboo tree And he was as happy as he could be. 'To travel,' said he, 'is awfully punk Unless you remember ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... on the Queen's return from the Duchess's, she desired her 'valet de chambre' to bring her billiard cue into her closet, and ordered me to open the box that contained it. I took out the cue, broken in two. It was of ivory, and formed of one single elephant's tooth; the butt was of gold and very tastefully wrought. "There," said she, "that is the way M. de Vaudreuil has treated a thing I valued highly. I had laid it upon the couch while I was talking to the Duchess in the salon; ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... the others' shortcomings. To some extent they are prevented from getting together by narrow devotion to a single cult, aided sometimes by a pecuniary interest in the sale of their own apparatus and books or in the training of teachers according to one set of rubrics. The real elephant is neither a fan, a rope, a tree nor a log, as the blind men in the fable contended, each thinking the part he had touched to be the whole. This inability of leaders to combine causes uncertainty and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... ways oftimes, in continued wet weather, become impassable, to the great injury of business: but remedy there is none, save patience; for any animal under the size of an elephant would be lost in the mud, ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... Cocoanuts How Germany Is Capturing Oriental Trade Rangoon the City of Gorgeous Colors Burma's Buddhist Temples Rangoon's Beasts of Burden Where the Elephants Do the Work Some First-hand Jungle Stories My Lord the Elephant ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... the lady with the baby suddenly went to the rescue. Planting the naked cherub on the door-step, this energetic matron charged in among the rampant animals, and by some magic touch untangled the teams, quieted the most fractious, a big grey brute, prancing like a mad elephant; then returned to her baby, who was placidly eating dirt, and with a polite 'Voila, messieurs!' she whipped little Jean into his shirt, while the ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... are still extant, held by the great libraries, and learned institutions. The Lenox Library in New York owns three sets. The Astor Library owns one set. I have examined this work there; there are four volumes in a set; they are elephant folio size—more than three feet long, and two or more feet wide. They are the heaviest books I ever handled. It takes two men to carry one volume to the large racks which hold them for the purpose of examination. The birds, of which there are a thousand and fifty-five ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... will satisfy a traveler's curiosity. I have heard in far countries of your many remarkable qualities, and especially how you have the power to change yourself into any sort of beast you choose-a lion, for instance, or an elephant." ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... care; he ran after her with grunts and laughter, catching hold of her here and seizing her there, whilst his cheeks, which were as hard and coarse as an elephant's hide, came in for blows from the servant, without showing that he felt them. The furniture was knocked about, the ground shook, the plates rang on the dresser, and still he did not give in, but he grew more and more false and fawning. The rogue knew that, irascible and fiendish as the ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... hear a harsh grating sound; if a pin be laid upon it, we hear a blow like a blacksmith's hammer; and, more astonishing than all, if a fly walk across it we hear it tramping like a charger, and even its peculiar cry, which has been likened, with some allowance for imagination, to the snorting of an elephant. Moreover it should not be forgotten that the wires connecting up the telephone may be lengthened to any desired extent, so that, in the words of Professor Hughes, 'the beating of a pulse, the tick of a watch, the tramp of a fly can then be heard at least a hundred miles from the source ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... she was courting danger; and in fact, the cutter was sighted by a French cruiser, which gave chase. But Miss Pasley declined to run away. She "popped at the Frenchman with the cutter's two brass guns." It was like blowing peas at an elephant; and she would undoubtedly have been captured, had not an English frigate seen the danger and put out ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... slow process, involving in every case a careful search of the five elephant folios containing the records of the bygone issues of scrip in ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... nothing further for us to see," answered the stork-mamma. "Beyond this delightful region there are immense forests, where the branches of the trees entwine round each other, while prickly, creeping plants cover the paths, and only an elephant could force a passage for himself with his great feet. The snakes are too large, and the lizards too lively for us to catch. Then there is the desert; if you went there, your eyes would soon be full of sand with the lightest breeze, and if it should blow great guns, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Speed—glorious Speed—it's more than just a moment's exhilaration—it's Life for you and me! This great new truth the makers of the Zeeco Car have considered as much as price and style. It's fleet as the antelope, smooth as the glide of a swallow, yet powerful as the charge of a bull-elephant. Class breathes in every line. Listen, brother! You'll never know what the high art of hiking is till you ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... he stands on the poop—one foot on the rail, and one hand on a shroud—his head thrown back, and his trumpet like an elephant's trunk thrown up in the air. Is he going to shoot dead with sounds, those fellows on ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... tales of science in our infancy, which played with the supposition that large animals could jump in the proportion of small ones. If an elephant were as strong as a grasshopper, he could (I suppose) spring clean out of the Zoological Gardens and alight trumpeting upon Primrose Hill. If a whale could leap from the sea like a trout, perhaps men might look up and see one soaring above ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... life they can't. Ye ain't no chicken!" exclaimed his hard-faced friend. "Say, let's liquor up once more before we go to see the elephant." ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... star—Oh, say, now," he broke off, "haven't you had enough fun out of me? I tell you, it was touch and go. He nearly broke my arm—would have done it, if I hadn't gone limp to him; and your cousin Conny Jopp, little Conny Jopp, was as near Kingdom Come as a man wants at his age. I saw an elephant go must once in India, and it was as like O'Ryan as putty is to dough. It isn't all over, either, for O'Ryan will forget and forgive, and Jopp won't. He's your cousin, but he's a sulker. If he has to sit up nights to do it, he'll try to get back on O'Ryan. He'll sit ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... soars on the other side, arming martyrs with independence; but in all, in their degrees, it is a bosom thought: - Not in man alone, for we trace it in dogs and cats whom we know fairly well, and doubtless some similar point of honour sways the elephant, the oyster, and the louse, of whom we know so little: - But in man, at least, it sways with so complete an empire that merely selfish things come second, even with the selfish: that appetites are starved, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sons would have been ready to fear, and, at last, to worship the dumb beasts; God's covenant says, "No; these beasts are not your equals—they are your slaves—you may freely kill them for your food; the fear of you shall be upon them. The huge elephant and the swift horse shall become your obedient servants; the lion and the tiger shall tremble and flee before you. Only claim your rights as men; believe that the invisible God who made the earth is your strength and your protector, and ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... ELEPHANT-FISH. The Chimaera callorynchus, named from the proboscis-like process on its nose. Though inferior to many other fish, it is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... overbearing, but it interferes with trade for me to be sitting here in my office at the front of the stable talking business with somebody, and all of a sudden the front half of the largest East Indian elephant in the world shoves three or four thousand pounds of herself in at that side door and begins waving her trunk around in the air, meanwhile uttering fretful, complaining sounds. I've lost two or three customers that way,' he says. 'They get right ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... organic life in the long periods of natural evolution. The development from the infusors to the monkeys was such a steady increase in the manifoldness of functions. The butterfly is as well adjusted to its life conditions and as well off as the fish, and the fish as well off as the elephant, and in the evolution of economic civilization as in that of the kingdom of animals the advance does not involve an increase of joy. Pain results from a lack of adjustment, but not from a scarcity of functions. Hence if we strive for progress alone, we are moved not by ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... (under the penalty of conventional ostracism against his slayers,) because he is the only animal with whose intellect man may measure himself upon equal terms without an overwhelming sense of the odds in his favour. The lion, the elephant, the ibex, the chamois, and the red deer are beasts of chase falling before man, but the fox alone can cope with him in point of intellect and sagacity, and put him to all his shifts. It is this ingredient in fox-hunting—viz: the consciousness of having to do with a foe worthy of him, which ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... one of the legs of the bird, that was as big as the trunk of a tree; I tied myself strongly to it with the cloth that went round my turban, in hopes that when the roc[Footnote: Mark Paul in his Travels, and Father Martini in his History of China, speak each of this bird, and say it will take up an elephant and a rhinoceros.] flew away next morning, she would carry me with her out of this desert island. After having passed the night in this condition, the bird actually flew away next morning as soon as it was day, and carried me so high that ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... farther and taken 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 seventy-pounds-worth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the river itself might be divided very roughly into three: the headwater country down to its junction with the Tsavo the palm-elephant-grass stretch, and the gorge and hill district just before it ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... you had been born in Seriphus, and never had been from out of that island, where you had frequently been in the habit of seeing little hares and foxes, you would not, therefore, believe that there are such beasts as lions and panthers; and if any one should describe an elephant to you, you would think that he designed to ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... castle yard at Longtover may still be seen the bones of an elephant which was found dying in ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... the carbonic acid which it has made. The human being, being the weaker, dies first: but the charcoal dies also. When it has exhausted all the oxygen of the room, it cools, goes out, and is found in the morning half-consumed beside its victim. If you put a giant or an elephant, I should conceive, into that room, instead of a human being, the case would be reversed for a time: the elephant would put out the burning charcoal by the carbonic acid from his mighty lungs; and then, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... likely always to cast out the good. The noisy orator who gets up and addresses a London crowd at midnight, yelling "Down with everything!" can hardly know what he means to destroy. We have come a long way since the man of the swamps hunted the hairy elephant and burrowed in caves; that very structure in which the anarchists have taken to meeting represents sixty thousand years of slow progression from savagery towards seemliness and refinement and wisdom; and therefore, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Ingersoll's, 50; et al. (39.) "In this example, to-day and yesterday are nouns in the possessive case."—Kirkham's Gram., p. 88. (40.) "An Indian in Britain would be much surprised to stumble upon an elephant feeding at large in the open fields."—Kames, El. of Crit., Vol. i, p. 219. (41.) "If we were to contrive a new language, we might make any articulate sound the sign of any idea: there would be no impropriety in calling oxen men, or rational beings by the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... our destination, a certain camp. We stayed the night there. We tried to get some sleep on the floor in a large elephant dug-out, but found it utterly impossible: the sound of the guns all round was too terrific. This bombardment is as yet only in its early stages. I was only a few hundred yards away from where I was last night on that night ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... added the following interesting objects: the Dey of Algiers' watch; the Elephant of Denmark; the decorations, etc., of foreign orders; crowns and diadems of sapphire; rubies; pearls that afford curious specimens of French art at the beginning of our century; one of the Mazarins bequeathed by the celebrated Cardinal; and lots of colored stones destined ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... kilograms of ivory, which are annually exported to European markets, and principally to the English! The western coast of Africa alone produces one hundred and forty tons of this precious substance. The average weight is twenty-eight pounds for a pair of elephant's tusks, which, in 1874, were valued as high as fifteen hundred francs; but there are some that weigh one hundred and seventy-five pounds, and at the Kazounde market, admirers would have found some admirable ones. They were of an opaque ivory, translucid, soft under the tool, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... the sea, nothing so patient. On its broad back it bears, like a good-natured elephant, the tiny mannikins which tread the earth; and in its vast cool depths it has place for all mortal woes. It is not true that the sea is faithless, for it has never promised anything; without claim, without ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... made him sit down. "I have been assured," said the cat, "that you have the gift of being able to change yourself into all sorts of creatures you have a mind to. You can, for example, transform yourself into a lion, or elephant, and the like." ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Celia's father or her little boy as the whim took her, the wolf which devoured Red Riding Hood's grandmother, or the hapless old lady herself, attacked ruthlessly by Celia as wolf. Crawling on all fours he played elephant, or with the handle of a basket between his teeth, he submitted to be patted on the head and addressed as Towser. Persis looked on with a wonder that never lost its poignancy. That the self-centered Joel should succumb to the innocent spell of childhood ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... my blood run cold. Gabriel's trump! the big bull elephant Squeals "Rain!" to the parched herd. The monkeys scold, And jabber that it's rain-water they want. (It makes me sick to see a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... his youngest son left the house and set off on a journey. As he travelled he came to a city, the king of which had just died without leaving any children or relatives. His subjects did not know how to choose a successor. At last they gave a garland of flowers to a she-elephant and turned it loose. The elephant walked straight to the prince's son and put the garland round his neck. The townspeople were very angry. They snatched away the garland and drove away the prince's son. They again gave the garland to the elephant, but the elephant again put ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... one," all occur in a section of "Lavengro" equal to hardly more than a sixth of the whole. And further, when Borrow was writing "Wild Wales," or when he met the sickly young man at the "Castle Inn" of Caernarvon, he thought of himself as always having had "the health of an elephant." I should be inclined to conclude at least that when he was forty great mental suffering was still fresh in his mind, something worse than the heavy melancholy which returned now and then when ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... and after hiding ourselves in one of the retired angles of the house, so that no one could know who was guilty of disturbing the peace by such dire noises, the performance commenced. I was by turns a bear, a lion, a zebra, an elephant, dogs of various kinds, and a cat. As I personated the latter-named animals, Toddie echoed ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... had left our vessel, and her name, evidently suspicious, which was not surprising, for our appearance was certainly against us. Our head-gear was unique: the general wore a straw hat that napped over his head like the ears of an elephant; Colonel Wilson, an old cavalry cap that had lost its visor; another, a turban made of some number 4 duck canvas; and all were in our shirt-sleeves, the colors of which were as varied as Joseph's coat. I told him we had left her to the northward ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... the anniversary of the Wednesday before, Celia gave me a present of a door-knocker. The knocker was in the shape of an elephant's head (not life-size); and by bumping the animal's trunk against his chin you could produce ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... which has a profound significance. The liturgy of the Siamese connected with it consists of fifty measured lines of eight syllables each, and contains the names of a hundred and eight distinct symbolical objects,—such as the lion, the elephant, the sun and moon in their cars drawn by oxen, the horse, the serpents, the spiral building, the tree, the six spheres, the five lakes, and the altar—all of which are represented on the foot. This list of symbolical allusions is recited by the priests, and forms ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Seven Dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of "C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities," was inscribed. The contents of its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys (one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a flyblown ostrich egg or so, some fishing-tackle, and an extraordinarily dirty, empty ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... the victory of the Lion, and his overpowering might, said: "O unfortunate! thy place is now in the possession of a Lion such that from terror of him the wild birds will not fly over that wilderness, and from fear of him the elephant will not approach. We have not strength to fight with him and thou too art not able to enter with him the arena of strife. Our opinion demands that thou shouldst betake thyself to his court, and with ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... read your Bibles, and obey your Bibles. For in them, I tell you openly, you will find rules to guide you in every chance and change of this mortal life. Truly said the good man that there were in the Bible "shallows where a lamb may drink, and deeps wherein an elephant may swim." ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... matter in hand, his election. For a while the audience and the animals were quiet, the former listening, the latter eyeing the speaker with grave intensity. The first burst of applause electrified the menagerie; the elephant threw his trunk into the air and echoed back the noise, while the tigers and bears significantly growled. On went Prentiss, and as each peculiar animal vented his rage or approbation, he most ingeniously wrought in its habits, as a facsimile of some man or passion. In the ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... toads coincide with what is known of their succession in past ages. The characteristics of extinct genera of mammals exhibit everywhere indications that their living representatives in early life resemble them more than they do their own parents. A minute comparison of a young elephant with any mastodon will show this most fully, not only in the peculiarities of their teeth, but even in the proportion of their limbs, their toes, etc. It may therefore be considered as a general fact that ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... rivals. The donkey's small size is against it. Most people are cruel toward dumb beasts, and only when animals have power to defend themselves, does caution make man kinder. He hesitates to hurt an elephant, and even respects, to some extent, the rear extremities of a mule; but the donkey corresponds to the small boy in a crowd of brutal playmates. It is difficult to see how these useful animals could be replaced in certain countries of the world. Purchased cheaply, reared inexpensively, living ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... was, "Rien n'est change, mes amis; il n'y a qu'un Francais de plus." When the Giraffe arrived in the Jardin des Plantes, the Parisians had a caricature, in which the ass, and the hog, and the monkey were presenting an address to the stranger, while the elephant and the lion stalked angrily away. Of course, the portraits were recognisable—and the animal was responding graciously, "Rien n'est change, mes amis: il n'y a qu'un bete ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... the squire looked despondent, the latter particularly so, for he had saddled upon the town what might prove to be a white elephant before the ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... shone in fresh green foliage, mostly surrounding the burial-place of a sultan or a famous Mohammedan saint. Towards the south-east there stretched away the great encampments of the cavalry and artillery in which were included many elephant batteries. ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... prosecution credited him rested on no tangible evidence whatever. He was also credited with superhuman ingenuity and diabolical cunning of which he had shown no previous symptom. Hypothesis was piled on hypothesis, as in the old Oriental legend, where the world rested on the elephant and the elephant on the tortoise. It might be worth while, however, to point out that it was at least quite likely that the death of Mr. Constant had not taken place before seven, and as the prisoner left Euston Station at 7:15 a. m. for Liverpool, he could certainly not have got there from Bow ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... in December, 1863; "but will set about it soon, though with terrible reluctance, such as I never felt before. I am most grateful to you," he went on, "for protecting me from that visitation of the elephant and his cub. If you happen to see Mr.——, of L——, a young man who was here last summer, pray tell him anything that your conscience will let you, to induce him to spare me another visit, which I know he intended. I really am not well, and cannot be disturbed by strangers, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... scar. "I knows all 'bout that, but I don't like these goin's on, ez ef I wuz a nachel-bawn fool, en had ter bleve all folks sez. I've been taken in too often. When I wuz with the Johnnies they'd say ter me, 'Yankee Blank, see that ar critter? That's a elephant.' When I'd call it a elephant, they'd larf an' larf till I flattened out one feller's nose. I dunno nothin' 'bout elephants; but the critter they pinted at wuz a cow. Then one day they set me ter scrubbin' a nigger to mek 'im white, en all sech doin's, till the head-doctor stopped the hull ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... a syphon: Make up a tube of copper or other metal, and bend it in the form of an Ankus'a or elephant hook, fill it with water and stop up both ends. And then putting one end into a reservoir of water let the other end remain suspended outside. Now uncork both ends. The water of the reservoir will be wholly ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... laid out a purse with twenty-five dollars in it, a pen-knife, a lead-pencil, a small note-book, and a little ivory elephant which Aileen had given him once, "for luck," and which he treasured solely because she gave it to him. Kendall looked at the latter curiously. "Now you can go on," he said to the "trusty," referring to the undressing and bathing process which was ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... humorous story, dealing with English society, growing out of certain experiences of the author while a member of our Embassy in London. The elephant's experiences, also, are ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... supported by a rich voice, a charming personality, a ready and sympathetic use of human literature, and a freedom from excessive piety, gave him an immeasurable advantage over all the teachers of the day. Beside most of them, he was as a butterfly to an elephant. A most industrious study of the few works of Aristotle and of the Roman classics that were available, a retentive memory, an ease in manipulating his knowledge, a clear, penetrating mind, with a corresponding clearness of expression, a ready and productive fancy, a great knowledge ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... pencil caricatured Blaine in Harper's Weekly as a magnetic candidate too heavy for the party elephant to carry; Puck portrayed him as the "tattooed man" covered all over with "Little Rock," "Mulligan Letters" and the like. Life described ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... elements besides fire, air, earth and water? There are four, only four, those nursing fathers of various beings! What a pity! Why are they not forty, four hundred, four thousand! How poor everything is, how mean and wretched! grudgingly given, dryly invented, clumsily made! Ah! the elephant and the hippopotamus, what grace! ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... said his grandfather still more quietly. "Let us hope it is not yet too late. Sadi says, 'The fountain-head of a spring can be blocked with a stick; but in full flood, it cannot be crossed, even on an elephant.'" ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... We all stopped to examine that monstrous spoor. If it were indeed a bird—and what animal could leave such a mark?—its foot was so much larger than an ostrich's that its height upon the same scale must be enormous. Lord John looked eagerly round him and slipped two cartridges into his elephant-gun. ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The dwarf elephant, thirty-five inches high, was brought into the arena in an ordinary trunk. It complacently ate some sugar ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... these fellows were lucky fellows to have anything to do. Still I did not envy them; and I felt it a distinct relief to pass from their shops into the cool, dim crypt which was filled with tusks of ivory, in all sizes from those of the largest father elephant to those of the babes of the herd; these were milk-tusks, I suppose. They get dearer as the elephants get scarcer; and that must have been why I paid as much for a penknife in the glittering showroom as it would have cost me in New York, with the passage money ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... closely depressed to the surface. Its legs were short and thick, and its feet of great size. The head was unlike that of any other animal I had ever seen. It was very long, and the upper lip or snout was lengthened into a kind of proboscis, which looked as if it might grow up into the trunk of an elephant. We were to leeward of the animal, but it quickly discovered us, and began to move off, when Faithful and True rushed forward, barking vehemently. Houlston fired, but the shot bounded off the tapir's thick shield-like hide, and away it went dashing ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 all his previous performances—masterly as they were. Not till the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... "But an elephant has more sense than to sneeze as I do. I knew I'd take cold. Anne, they're after us. It's old Mrs. Van Truder's work. What are they ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... of an osprey, the memory of an elephant and a mind that unfolded from him in three movements like the puzzle of the carpenter's rule. He rolled to the front like a brunette polar bear, and ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... In view of this situation the king dispatched Sir Robert Holmes upon a second expedition to Africa in 1663 with orders to protect the company's rights. As a further means of encouragement Charles II ordered all gold imported from Africa by the Royal Company to be coined with an elephant on one side, as a mark of distinction from the coins then prevalent in England.[35] These coins were called "Guineas"; they served to increase the reputation and prestige of the company. Moreover, the king with many of his courtiers made important additions to their stock in the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... mulberry gore; And the laughing hyena—but laughing no more; And the snake, not with magical orbs to devise Strange death, but with woman's attraction of eyes; The tall ugly ape, that still bore a dim shine Through his hairy eclipse of a manhood divine; And the elephant stately, with more than its reason, How thoughtful in sadness! but this is no season To reckon them up from the lag-bellied toad To the mammoth, whose sobs shook his ponderous load. There were woes of all shapes, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... forms man. But the Occult Doctrine is far more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal invisible lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree which shelters him from the sun. Each particle—whether you call it ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... sun peeped above the distant horizon on the morning of January 25th that we first caught a glimpse of the shores of Elephant Island, lying just off the coast of Ceylon, and at ten o'clock the shores of the island of Ceylon itself were full in sight. As we drew nearer the narrow-bodied proas, the boats of the natives, paddled by dark-skinned ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... of that whereof the philosopher bestoweth but a wordish description, which doth neither strike, pierce, nor possess the sight of the soul, so much as that other doth. For as, in outward things, to a man that had never seen an elephant, or a rhinoceros, who should tell him most exquisitely all their shape, colour, bigness, and particular marks? or of a gorgeous palace, an architect, who, declaring the full beauties, might well make the hearer able to repeat, as it were, by ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... 1796, in one of his earliest memoirs,[86] Geoffroy was guided by the idea that Nature has formed all living things upon one plan. Organs which seem anomalous are merely modifications of the normal; the trunk of an elephant is formed by the excessively prolonged nostrils, the horn of a rhinoceros is simply a mass of adhering hairs. In general, however varied their form, all organs are simply variations of a common scheme; Nature employs no new organs. Organs which are rudimentary, such ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... mind, and concluded that the walking was good, after all!" exclaimed Herb, as he lent a hand toward raising the young elephant. ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... tree-trunks as well as single leaves, are found thus embedded in rock-layers, where in ages past the animal or plant died and found a grave. They exist by thousands in many parts of the world, varying in size from the huge skeleton of the elephant to the tiny ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... home consumption, but is an article of commerce, being sent to the Sandwich Islands. They are also supplied to the Russian settlements according to contract. The coast swarms with amphibious animals of the seal kind, known by the vulgar names of Sea Lion, Sea Elephant and Sea Cow—but above all with the common seal. The traffic to be derived from these in skins, oil, &c. could not but ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... wives that he would love them equally and would never show a preference for either. And the lord of the earth in the company of his two dearly loved wives, both of whom suited him well, passed his days in joy like a mighty elephant in the company of two cow- elephants, or like the ocean in his personified form between Ganga and Yamuna (also in their personified forms). The monarch's youth however, passed away in the enjoyment of his possessions, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... paper-knife cost?" said he, still smiling. It was a large, elaborate, and perhaps, I may say, unwieldy affair, with a great elephant ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... the marks remain to the present day. He then killed several of the guests, among whom was his step-son, created from the sweat of his mother's forehead. Vinayaguien (that was the youth's name) lost his head, and had it replaced with that of an elephant. In the disfigured state into which he was turned, his father dispatched him in search of a wife as beautiful as his mother,—a task that proved endless, because there could not be found a woman equal in ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... officers. So he fished out an old uniform coat of his and made me put it on; and, sure enough, the bright buttons and shoulder-straps carried me through,—only I was dreadfully embarrassed." (Ned never was disturbed at anything.—if an elephant had walked into the cabin, he would have offered him a seat and cigar.) "by the sentries all presenting arms to my coat, which sat upon me as a shirt is supposed to on a bean-pole. I overheard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... many objects from the Royal, Museum, notably a large collection of ancient weapons, drums, cymbals, temple gongs, howdahs, some wonderful examples of mother-of-pearl work, hammered silver of antique designs, old lacquer, enormous elephant tusks, ancient theatrical costumes and properties, and portraits of Their Majesties the King and the Queen and His Royal Highness ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... that I give this Warning to all I know, I shall bring them for the Future before your Spectatorial Authority. On Sunday last, one, who shall be nameless, reproving several of his Congregation for standing at Prayers, was pleased to say, One would think, like the Elephant, you had no Knees. Now I my self saw an Elephant in Bartholomew-Fair kneel down to take on his Back ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Alcala Street. He fought a duel, but with swords, instead of lying on the ground, pistol in hand, as he had formerly pictured to himself, and he came out of the affair with a scratch on his arm, something in the nature of a pin prick in the epidermis of an elephant. He was no longer "the Majorcan with the ounces." The hoard of round gold pieces treasured by his mother had vanished. He now flung bank bills prodigally upon the gaming tables, and when bad luck assailed him he wrote to his administrator, a lawyer, the scion of a family of old time mossons, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... grimace. "Where is your native shrewdness? And I never admired her skating anyway. It's about on a par with Mrs. Damer's dancing. In the name of charity, don't ask that woman to come and help us dance again. I'm not equal to her. It's yoking an elephant to a zebra." ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... him with what you might call actual brutality, what! I mean to say, my whole idea is rather to keep out of the old lad's way and curl up in a ball if I can't dodge him. I'd just as soon be hard on a stampeding elephant! I wouldn't for the world say anything derogatory, as it were, to your jolly old pater, but there is no getting away from the fact that he's by way of being one of our leading man-eating fishes. It would be idle to deny that he considers that ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... time begin to prefer a new and stronger representative—all these things alike combined to fire the drunk and maddened savage with the energy of despair. He fell upon his enemy like a tiger upon an elephant. He fought with his tomahawk and his feet and his whole lithe body; he foamed at the mouth with impotent rage; he spent his force on the air in the ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... when swallowed by men, cause discomfort and colic; but the bear, on the contrary, whatever sickness he may have, becomes stronger by devouring them. The viper is benumbed if one twig of the oak 58 touches it, as is also the bat by a leaf of the plane-tree. The elephant flees before the ram, and the lion before the cock, and seals from the rattling of beans that are being pounded, and the tiger from the sound of the drum. Many other examples could be given, but that we may not seem to dwell longer than ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line: In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew? How instinct varies in the grovelling swine, Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine! 'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier, Forever separate, yet forever near! Remembrance and reflection how allied; What thin partitions sense from thought divide: And middle natures, how they long to join, Yet never pass th' insuperable line! ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... summit the little elephant's-head have been found (Elephantella attolens(Gray) Heller). Rydberg in his Flora of Montana showed that these were not properly the true pendicularis, as they had hitherto been regarded, hence the new name. The corolla strikingly ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... spoils many a Part with his own Stuff,' the Spectator has in another paper given honourable fame to his skill as a comedian. Here there is but the whimsical suggestion of a favourite showman and low comedian mounted on an elephant to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... his hand. Badshah stopped and sank on his knees, while his master cast off the broken shackles and swung himself astride of his neck. Then the elephant rose again and of his own volition rolled swiftly forward into the jungle which closed around them and hid animal and man ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... Spain, and Chile, with a still higher birth-rate, has a higher death-rate than Russia. So it is that among human peoples we find the same laws prevailing as among animals, and the higher nations of the world differ from those which are less highly evolved precisely as the elephant differs from the herring, though within a narrower range, that is to say, by producing fewer offspring and taking ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... or '68, John Robinson's circus was showing in New Orleans, and they had with them a man by the name of William Carroll, whom they advertised as "The man with the thick skull, or the great butter." He could out-butt anything in the show, except the elephant. One night after the show, Al. and Gill Robinson were up town, and their man Carroll was with them. We all met in a saloon and began drinking wine. While we were enjoying ourselves, something was said about butting, when Gill spoke up and said Carroll could kill any man in the world ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... unwieldy beasts, rolled heavily over the firmament plain. Whenever the crescent of the young moon, rising from an horizon sable as the sad Tamala's hue,[FN39] glanced upon the wayfarers, it was no brighter than the fine tip of an elephant's tusk protruding from the muddy wave. A heavy storm was impending; big drops fell in showers from the forest trees as they groaned under the blast, and beneath the gloomy avenue the clayey ground gleamed ghastly white. As the Raja and his son advanced, a faint ray of light, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... done, The evil, haply, in some former life, Long, long ago, who may alas! annul, Or who the good works not done, supplement! The sins of previous lives must bear their fruit. The ivory throne, the umbrella of gold, The best steed, and the royal elephant Rich caparisoned, must be his by right Who has deserved them by his virtuous acts In times long past. Oh think on this, my son, And be content. For glorious actions done Not in this life, but in some previous ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... triumph from the East. In the cathedral square the pageant was presented, amid an intolerable noise of every kind of pipe-music, with Denys in the chief part, upon a gaily-painted chariot, in soft silken raiment, and, for [64] headdress, a strange elephant-scalp with ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... in the Mandingo countries, the most common are the hyaena, the panther, and the elephant. Considering the use that is made of the latter in the East Indies, it may be thought extraordinary that the natives of Africa have not, in any part of this immense continent, acquired the skill of taming ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... seen like spectres, then their whole shapes were exhibited, and finally they melted slowly away again, whilst old Shadbolt's cow, grazing along the grassy margin of the street, loomed up through the vapor almost as large as an elephant. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... is intended as an advice to a person who has become possessed of an article, and does not know what to do with it, like the old lady who won the principal prize in the lottery, said prize consisting of a live elephant! A "killogie" is, says Jamieson, "a vacuity before the fireplace in a ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... moment. If I were nature-faking a book on Africa I could run a picture of it as an elephant's playground, but that's all." He stopped and gazed at the house long enough to memorize the windows that commanded a view of the garden. "No use going back there, now," he decided. "Chuck full of a man named Norvallis. Suppose we drop down to the tannery. Not ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... several days in these rooms; but a week would not suffice to do justice to the grand Museum, every description of bird and beast that has been known to exist in our days may be found here stuffed, and preserved in glass cases with the nicest care; it appears strange to see an enormous elephant and a tall ostrich within a glass case. Here also are to be found every species of fungus, chrysalis, sea-weed, eggs, and nests. But the shells, minerals, and fossils, form so extraordinary and numerous a collection that they are the subject of admiration of every beholder; the polish of the ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... with a nose like a young elephant's, rode up to the drug-store, and asked, in Indian lingo, for some tobacco. The druggist cut off a large slice of "black navy," and, stepping out on the sidewalk, handed it to the happy old fellow, who, returning his thanks by sundry nods and grunts, ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1875 • Various
... Yorkshire and stay with him, and in this way I at one time and another heard many of the incidents of his past life, and most curious some of them were. No man can pass all those years following the rough existence of an elephant-hunter without meeting with many strange adventures, and in one way and another old Quatermain has certainly seen his share. Well, the story that I am going to tell you in the following pages is one of the later of these adventures, though I forget the exact year in which it happened, ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... been told," replied the Abbe Jeufroy, "that the jawbone of an elephant was at one ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... The darling home of Fortune's Queen. With noblest sort of drink and meat, The fairest rice and golden wheat, And fragrant with the chaplet's scent With holy oil and incense blent. With many an elephant and steed, And wains for draught and cars for speed. With envoys sent by distant kings, And merchants with their precious things With banners o'er her roofs that play, And weapons that a hundred slay;(68) All warlike engines framed by man, And every class of artisan. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... commanding the Dardanelles, provided that British forces were not landed in that important strait[160]. So matters rested, both sides regarding each other with the sullenness of impotent wrath. As Bismarck said, a war would have been a fight between an elephant and a whale. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Company," with $300,000 capital, and with three electrical inventors, Edison, Gray, and Dolbear, on its staff. With all the bulk of its great wealth and prestige, it swept down upon Bell and his little bodyguard. It trampled upon Bell's patent with as little concern as an elephant can have when he tramples upon an ant's nest. To the complete bewilderment of Bell, it coolly announced that it had "the only original telephone," and that it was ready to supply "superior telephones with all the latest improvements made by the original inventors—Dolbear, ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... whip, reins, and pitchfork; hands which his postilions never attempted to trifle with. The enormous stomach of this giant rested on thighs which were as large as the body of an ordinary adult, and feet like those of an elephant. Anger was a rare thing with him, but it was terrible, apoplectic, when it did burst forth. Though violent and quite incapable of reflection, the man had never done anything that justified the sinister suggestions of his bodily presence. To ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... to Pope Leo X an elephant, a panther, with other animals and products of their new territories in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... anxiety. While planning the expedition, it had seemed so important to get the men a foothold in Florida that I was willing to risk everything for it. But this important post once in our possession, it began to show some analogies to the proverbial elephant in the lottery. To hold it permanently with nine hundred men was not, perhaps, impossible, with the aid of a gunboat (I had left many of my own regiment sick and on duty in Beaufort, and Colonel Montgomery had as yet less ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... I think, for one night; let's have the eatables removed, and we will have a pipe, and hear what Jem has got to say; and you have told us nothing about birds, either, you old elephant; what do you mean by it? That's right, Tim, now bring in my cigars, and Mr. Forester's cheroots, and cold iced water, and boiling-hot water, and sugar, out of my box, and lemons. The shrub is here, and the Scotch whiskey; will you have another bottle ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... and had made friends with a Spanish girl who played the mandolin. In Switzerland he had killed chamois. In England he had galloped in a red coat over hedges and killed two hundred pheasants for a bet. In Turkey he had got into a harem; in India he had hunted on an elephant, and now in Russia he wished to taste all the specially ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... and elephant shooting in Portuguese territory in Southern Angola; and hearing from my boys that ivory was plentiful in German territory, farther south, I had crossed the Kunene River into Amboland; and here, sure enough, I found elephants and ivory galore. So good, indeed, was both sport and trade in ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... come down to us from very diverse races of men; they have been deposited in the soil at widely different epochs since the time when the mammoth lived in western Europe, a sort of gigantic elephant with woolly hide and curved tusks. This long lapse of time may be divided ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... Gauls were moved to laughter. "He shall soon see," said they, "whether it was in his interest or our own that we offered him peace." And, indeed, in the first engagement, neither the famous Macedonian phalanx, nor the elephant he rode, could save King Ptolemy; the phalanx was broken, the elephant riddled with javelins, the king himself taken, killed, and his head marched about the field of battle on ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Loerancs; and some men clepe them odenthos; and they have a black head and three long horns trenchant in the front, sharp as a sword, and the body is slender; and he is a full felonious beast, and he chaseth and slayeth the elephant. There be also many other beasts, full wicked and cruel, that be not mickle more than a bear, and they have the head like a boar, and they have six feet, and on every foot two large claws, trenchant; and the body is like a bear, and the tail as ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... the king of Siam with an account of Holland, after which his majesty was very inquisitive, amongst other things told him, that water in his country would sometimes get so hard, that men walked upon it; and that it would bear an elephant with the utmost ease. To which the king replied, "Hitherto I have believed the strange things you have told me, because I looked upon you as a sober, fair man; but now I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... down to his Christmas dinner, he must have wished, with Macbeth, 'May good digestion wait on appetite,' as he contemplated the fare awaiting discussion, and to which a boar's head grinned a welcome. Snails from France, oysters torn from trees, gazelle cutlets, stewed iguana, smoked elephant, fried locusts, manati-breasts, hippopotamus steaks, boiled alligator, roasted crocodile eggs, monkeys on toast, land crabs and Africa soles, carp, and mullet—detestable in themselves, but triumphant proof of the skill of the cook—furnished forth the festival-table, in company with potatoes, plantains, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... very rainy, and the drill was gone through in a dense white mist, which caused every horse to loom large as an elephant, and every rider to look a Gog or Magog. The young ladies, so fond of a change of costume at this time in Priorton, could do no shopping; the walk in the meadows at sunset with the lounging yeomen had to be given up. The ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... devil dancing in them, and a little moist just now from the effects of the toddy, and the man dying of love! He measured five feet thirteen inches in his stockings, with legs that might have belonged to an elephant, and fists calculated to frighten ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... kind to the bustard! that genial bird, And humor its wishes and ways; And when the poor elephant suffers from bile, Then tenderly lace ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... General commanding. The Boers, however, indulge at times in pleasantries that show no bitterness of feeling, but rather a desire to be playfully satirical in a way which is suggestive of the intellectual nimbleness of a humorous elephant. Their inquiries after Sir Redvers Buller have already been mentioned. As to the ostentatious friendliness of our enemies for British soldiers, with whom a temporary truce brings them in contact, some amusing stories are told. One day a field ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... you ever see an elephant's skin?" asked the master of an infant school in a fast neighborhood.—"I have!" shouted a six-year-old at the foot of the class. "Where?" inquired old spectacles, amused by his earnestness. "On the elephant!" ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... length arrived and Erik equipped a fleet to meet the promised bride. There were twelve men-of-war, which were got ready for fighting if necessary, James Bagge, a famous seaman of those days, being admiral of the Elephant, with command of the fleet. The assigned purpose of the expedition was to bring the bride over from Luebeck, but it is said that Admiral Bagge had secret orders to seek and attack the Danish fleet, and thus punish King Frederick for ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... in a short time stopped three—two drakes and a duck. The drakes are exceedingly pretty, especially about the head and neck. The head is of a pale olive-green hue, a fashionable color in silks a few years ago, and known by the extraordinary name of "Elephant's Breath." This gradually merges into a very pale, warm gray, the line of demarcation between it and the very dark brown, which constitutes the general color of the body, being very abrupt. The bill is of a vermilion red, and surmounted by a bright orange-colored crest, with a black border as positively ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... dam proves a very white elephant on their hands. The site is not well chosen, or the stream difficult, and the restrained water pours round the ends of their dam, cutting them away. They build the dam longer at once; but again the water pours round on its work of destruction. So they keep on building, ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... hand, trembling and incredulous. Could it be he who had slain the mightiest buffalo that ever trod the earth? The bull seemed to his distended eyes and flushed brain to weigh ten tons at least, and to dwarf the biggest elephant. He raised his hand to his forehead and then sat down beside his ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler |
