"Four-footed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... added bitterly: "Really, that sounds like the utterance of a feeble-hearted damsel! But let me beg you to come closer and be calm. These pitiable gashes on the poor creature's shoulder—I care more about her than you do, take my word for it—were inflicted by a four-footed assassin, whose weapons were given by nature. Yes, that is what happened. Rough old Beki keeps watch at the door of the tablinum. What brought the poor child here I know not, but he caught scent of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... try to find the owner of the kitten, at the same time advising our hero either to tell Mrs. Walters the truth, or bring the little animal to his house, as his wife, he said, "had quite a fancy for four-footed pets." ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... shallow lakes, mill-ponds, and sheltered creeks. The Indian hunters find their haunts by tracking their steps in the snow; for an Indian or Canadian hunter knows the track made by any bird or beast, from the deep broad print of the bear, to the tiny one of the little shrewmouse, which is the smallest four-footed beast in this or ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... sowl of Newton, that invented fluxions!" replied Mat, "but I'll take revenge for the disgrace you put upon my profession, by stringing up a schoolmaster among you, and I'll hang you all! It's death to steal a four-footed animal; but what do you desarve for stealin' a Christian baste, a two-legged schoolmaster without feathers, eighteen miles, and he not ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... "I dunno's I be. What's the use o' shootin' down four-footed creatur's? T'other ones'll ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... his tail in the most friendly manner all the while, I at once responded to his cordial greeting, and as I stroked his noble head, I wondered where the animal had come from; for though—we had visited Signor Cellini's studio every day, there had been no sign or mention of this stately, brown-eyed, four-footed companion. I seated myself, and the dog immediately lay down at my feet, every now and then looking up at me with an affectionate glance and a renewed wagging of his tail. Glancing round the well-known room, I noticed that the picture ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... spent most of his existence on the same street corner, waiting for a job, which invariably had to come to him. His outfit consisted of an express wagon strung together with telegraph wire, and a nondescript four-footed creature that once bore the similitude of a horse. Whenever Field had an odd job to be done about his household he would go out of his way to let "old 'Possum Jim" earn the quarter—partly to do an act of kindness to ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... back still in the evolutionary process we may trace (as in chapter iv above) the divinization or deification of four-footed animals and birds and snakes and trees and the like, from the personification of the collective emotion of the tribe towards these creatures. For people whose chief food was bear-meat, for instance, whose totem was a bear, and who believed ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... of the tree,' and 'the hawk is above the top of the tree,' we mean one and the same thing.—The 'light,' therefore, is nothing else but the most glorious and luminous highest Person. Him who in the former passage is called four-footed, we know to have an extraordinarily beautiful shape and colour—(cp., e.g., 'I know that great Person of sunlike colour beyond the darkness' (Svet. Up. III, 9))—, and as hence his brilliancy also must be extraordinary, he is, in the text under ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... the cloud of dust and the squadrons gleaming in brass. They, where the goal of their way lies nearest, bear through the brushwood in armed array. Forming in column, they advance noisily, and the horse hoof shakes the crumbling plain with four-footed trampling. There is a high grove by the cold river of Caere, widely revered in ancestral awe; sheltering hills shut it in all about and girdle the woodland with their dark firs. Rumour is that the old Pelasgians, who once long ago held the Latin borders, consecrated ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... even more exact lines. Spenser says "that some of the Irish doe use to make the wolf their gossip;"[392] and Camden adds that they term them "Chari Christi, praying for them and wishing them well, and having contracted this intimacy, professed to have no fear from their four-footed allies." Fynes Moryson expressly mentions the popular dislike to killing wolves, and they were not extirpated until the eighteenth century.[393] Aubrey adds that "in Ireland they value the fang-tooth of an wolfe, which they set in silver ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... the black cloth legs were received with evident marks of favour. Nor were they able to settle the point easily, for whenever we happened to look round the encampment during the afternoon, from the raised door-way of a kraal where we happened to be couched, we noticed the eyes of one or other of the four-footed guardians fixed intently on us. There were about twenty vans and tents in all; and each paid one shilling a week to the ground landlord. That money, with whatever else was required for food, was obtained by hawking at this season of the year, and trade was very bad. Winter must be ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... up the first night at a tambo, or road-side inn, a bamboo hut of two stories, thatched with plantain leaves. As the lower part was occupied by four-footed animals, we had to climb into the upper story by means of a couple of stout bamboos with notches cut in them. We here hung up our hammocks, and screened off a part for Ellen and Maria. Next day we began to ascend the mountains by the most rugged of ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... dwelt in the cave, with this four-footed Chiron, from the time that he was an infant, only a few months old, until he had grown to the full height of a man. He became a very good harper, I suppose, and skilful in the use of weapons, and tolerably acquainted with herbs and other doctor's ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... picked up an old "crow-bait" of a horse, the only four-footed transportation possibly obtainable, and started for Fredericksburg to find my regiment. The only directions I had about disposing of this frame of a horse was to "turn the bones loose when you get through with him." He could go ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... with a tin catch such as is described on page 88 in order to hold the lid in place after it has fallen. No matter from which end the bait is approached it is no sooner touched than both ends fall and "bunny" is prisoner. Like many other of our four-footed game, the rabbit manifests a peculiar liking for salt and may be regularly attracted to a given spot by its aid. A salted cotton string is sometimes extended several yards from the trap for the purpose of leading them to it, but this seems a needless ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... he did not mean to be caught, and, as "evil communications corrupt good manners," the donkey took the same whim into his great rough ash-grey head, and galloped after the pony as hard as he could. It was of no use to say, "come then," or "coop—coop—coop," for both of the four-footed beasts seemed to have an idea that they were to race and tear round the field just as long as they liked, and that they could go far better without saddle, bridle, or ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... road toward the continued low calls, and soon saw the student, not far from the path, in a clearer spot than usual, sitting against a maple sapling, with her four-footed protector at her feet. When I came in sight she beckoned eagerly but silently, and I knew she had found something; probably the nest, I thought. As quietly as might be under the circumstances (namely, a passage through dead leaves, brittle twigs, unexpected hollows, etc.), I crept to her side, planted ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... expecting Joseph to arrive at any instant with the car. Then he would follow us, and as we planned to stop at Pavia and he did not, he would be in Milan before us. We had suffered so many delays at the hands, or rather the hoofs of our four-footed brethren, that we had no time to waste in compliments with irrelevant Princes, so we quickly sped on again as well as the uneven road would allow, leaving behind the big fortified town which Mr. Barrymore said had been built by the Lombard League ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sagebrush round a stone, we made a hiding-place. Jones was extremely cautious to arrange the bunches in natural positions. "A Rocky Mountain Big Horn is the only four-footed beast," he said, "that has a better eye than a wild horse. A cougar has an eye, too; he's used to lying high up on the cliffs and looking down for his quarry so as to stalk it at night; but even a cougar has to take second to a mustang when it ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... soliloquized the sufferer, as he picked out the quills from his hand and wrist in rather gingerly fashion, and stanched the blood that followed. 'Masther Robert, avourneen, is he a four-footed baste or a fowl? for he has some of the signs of both on him. Wisha, good luck to the poor ould counthry, where all our animals is dacent and respectable, since St. Patrick gev the huntin' to ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... down in the old Torch; and had it not been for the launch and our four-footed friend there, I should not have been here to have told it. All that the sharks have left of the captain and five seamen came ashore last night. I have buried the poor fellows on the beach where they lay, as well as I could, with an oar-blade for a shovel, and the bronze ornament there," ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... For some days you might see him with his head hanging down as well as his tail, and a most melancholy expression in his face. At last, he disappeared. His master, who was very fond of him, made every inquiry after him. In vain—his little four-footed friend was nowhere ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... the knot the huge Aeaean lance And fell upon the farmers; wherefore they Left hoe and plough, and crouched in heights remote, Companioned with the grey-winged fogs; but he Made waste their fields and throve upon their toil— As throve the boar, the fierce four-footed curse Which Artemis did raise in Calydon To make stern mouths wax white with foreign fear, All in the wild beginning of ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... four-footed Squeaker," said Mr. Pumblechook. "If you had been born such, would you have been ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... which I answer, It is a very complex idea the word gold stands for. But then here is nothing affirmed of gold, but that that sound stands for an idea in which malleableness is contained: and such a sort of truth and certainty as this it is, to say a centaur is four-footed. But if malleableness make not a part of the specific essence the name of gold stands for, it is plain, ALL GOLD IS MALLEABLE, is not a certain proposition. Because, let the complex idea of gold be made up of whichsoever of its other qualities you please, malleableness will ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... very trifling sum for the luxury of sleeping under cover, and, if they like, for having their horses near them. Carts and oxen are always in the open. Sellers of grain and wood are always there with everything native travellers require. If a bedstead—a low four-footed article with rope for its bottom and mattress—be preferred to the bare ground, it can commonly be procured for three-halfpence for the night. When in the evening we were near these places we went to them, and saw the poor ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... children are to be torn from my arms, and disposed of to the highest bidder, like sheep in the market. And who am I but a man? What right have I to be free, that another man cannot prove himself to possess by nature? Who or what are my wife and children, that they should not be herded with four-footed beasts, as well as others thus sacredly related? If I am white, and another is black, ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... coating, not with their tails, but with their forefeet, where it soon freezes into so solid a mass that it protects the inmates from the attacks of both the severest winter weather and the most savage of four-footed enemies. So strong indeed does the roof then become that even a moose could stand upon it without it giving way. While some writers doubt that beavers plaster the outside of their house with mud, I wish to add that I have not only examined their houses before and after the plastering ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... the battles of these four-footed warriors Homer should return from beyond the shores of Acheron.[11] Ah! could he but do so, and bring with him too the rival of old Epicurus,[12] what would the latter say as to the examples I have narrated? He would say only what I have already said, namely, ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... nature, there are special attractions in the botany of the neighbourhood; scarcely less in its ornithology. The wild, four-footed creatures also are in unusual variety; and within easy reach the antiquarian will find objects of very ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... worshipped fire and water, and the other elements, things without soul or sense; and men, possest of soul and reason, were not ashamed to worship the like of these. Others assigned worship to beasts, creeping and four-footed things, proving themselves more beastly than the things that they worshipped. Others made them images of vile and worthless men, and named them gods, some of whom they called males, and some females, and ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... over the artist's shoulder. The preliminaries of this intimacy have never transpired, nor is it a settled fact if Jinny made the first advances. The result was only known to the men of Sawyer's Bar by a vision which remained fresh in their memories long after the gentle lady and her four-footed friend had passed beyond their voices. As two of the tunnel-men were returning from work one evening, they chanced to look up the little trail, kept sacred from secular intrusion, that led from the cemetery to the settlement. In the dim twilight, against ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... once more Clifford Armytage, popular idol of the screen, in his great role of Buck Benson bidding the accustomed farewell to his four-footed pal that had brought him safely through countless dangers. How are we to know that in another couple of hundred feet of the reel Buck will escape the officers of the law who have him for that hold-up of the Wallahoola stage—of ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... good many weeks the birds and animals on this farm have been trying to decide whether the two-footed or the four-footed were the swiftest, and last week, while we were talking the matter over, foolish Mr. Fido Dog said, as he swelled his chest ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice
... have been added iron rails. There are here two Arctic bears, and a small black bear, the latter brought from Russia,[3] and presented to the Society, by the Marquess of Hertford. There is usually a crowd of visiters about this spot, and the sagacity and antics of our four-footed friends ensure them liberal supplies of cakes and fruit, handed to them on a pole. We were much interested with their tricks, especially with the vexation betrayed by one of them, at the top of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... days of wind and rain and sleet and cold stormy weather when all animals of the desert, whether human or four-footed, were glad to seek their holes in ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... protested Balaam, with great haste and emphasis; and this sound was an added pang in the heart of the unhappy Amy, who felt that she was not only breaking her own heart by this separation, but the hearts of this four-footed ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... of the lake. Here they swam about, twitching their tails, and dividing their time between watching the now distant intruder and keeping a sharp look-out for the great pike, which at times sought a change of diet from constant fish, and swallowed moor-hen or duckling, or even, preferring four-footed meat to fowl, seized ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... clothes, and you must be quick in getting into them, for we dine sharp at Crompton.—Watson, go to my man, and bid him fetch a red coat for this gentleman.—You'll hear the gong, Mr. Yorke, five minutes before dinner is served." And with a careless nod to his guest, and a whistle to his four-footed companion, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... hunting men increase in numbers; foxes are preserved; farmers do not rebel; owners of coverts, even when they are not hunting men themselves, acknowledge the fact, and do not dare to maintain their pheasants at the expense of the much better-loved four-footed animal. Hounds are bred, and horses are trained specially to the work. A master of fox hounds is a necessity of the period. Allowing so much, we cannot but allow also that Lord Chiltern must have been made to fill the situation. He understood hunting, and, perhaps, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the population of the Peninsula. I am referring here to the four-footed variety, though, of course, others were in evidence at times. The Neddies were docile little beasts, and did a great deal of transport work. When we moved out in August, orders were issued that all equipment was to be carried. I pointed out ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... by the learned doctors of the nullification school, that color operates as a forfeiture of the rights of human nature: that a dark skin turns a man into a chattel; that crispy hair transforms a human being into a four-footed beast. The master-priest informs you that slavery is consecrated and sanctified by the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament: that Ham was the father of Canaan, and all his posterity were doomed, by his own father, to be ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... sometimes covered with Runic inscriptions; and this inscribed serpent, later, is twined round or heaped at the foot of the peculiar Scandinavian-shaped cross, the type of conversion. The serpent was sometimes altered into the partial semblance of a four-footed animal, the body and tail being lengthened and twined, and sometimes split, to give a new turn to the pattern. (Fig. 3.) All these zoomorphic patterns, as well as the human figures seen in the Book of Kells, the missal at Lambeth, and the Lindisfarne Book (which is, however, more ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Of four-footed beasts, amphibious creatures, birds, or insects, we had seen nothing. Count Berchtold caught a chameleon, which unfortunately effected its escape from its prison a few days afterwards. At night we frequently heard the howling of jackals, but never experienced any annoyance from them. We ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... marched past, and before the antique and recordless barbarians fished and hunted here and wondered who he might be, and were probably afraid of him; and before primeval man himself, just emerged from his four-footed estate, stepped out upon this plain, first sample of his race, a thousand centuries ago, and cast a glad eye up there, judging he had found a brother human being and consequently something to kill; and before the big saurians wallowed here, still some ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... He had had a protecting rock at his back, but in the valley there was no shelter from the storm that had leveled the stoutest trees. Even the four-footed inhabitants of the wilds could hardly have escaped. As he stumbled among the wreckage, Harding thought about the man whose footsteps they had seen near the Indian village. Unless he had found some secure retreat he must ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... lie Atta Troll's beloved girls, Pure, four-footed lilies they, Stretched in dreams ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... was made a specialty. As at Paris, the peoples brought their dwellings, or, more often, the dwellings came without their occupants. The four-footed and feathered live-stock were of more indubitable authenticity. The display of all the European breeds of cattle and horses—English Durhams, Alderneys and racers, Russian trotters, Holstein cows and Flemish mares, the gray oxen of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... "here be we six mile from home, and night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to our name. I say, we'll have a mossel and a drop o' summat to strengthen our nerves afore we vamp all the way back again? My throat's as dry as a kex. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Angelo, that monarch of the Bay of Naples, whose lofty crest gleams with snowy streaks until the spring be well advanced. The lazy or the feeble can make use of one of the poor oppressed donkeys, but it is better to engage its ragged master, who without his four-footed drudge to whack and kick is a harmless enough being, to act as guide over the steep ill-defined pathway that leads ever upwards. As we slowly ascend through the sub-tropical region of fig and vine, of olive and carouba, we question our guide, who in spite ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... of fishes," said he, "and of different sizes, for each must feed upon the other and smaller." So he called into existence all the fishes that people the waters. Then he said to the quadrupeds and four-footed beasts, to worms and snakes, and every thing else which are not fishes, "Be, for you ought to be;" and they were. So the earth became peopled and inhabited. All were called into existence then, and in that manner, except the Chepewyans, and they had their origin ages after, from the loins of ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... went, scrambling over rock-skirting precipices and crumbling ledges. A dense fog settled around us, making each step hazardous, but with an instinct as true and apparently identical with that of our four-footed brothers, my guide kept the same rapid pace for hours, and then, all of a sudden, came ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... pleaded. "You'll make me cry in a minute, and I hates to cry." So I obeyed her and sitting up, saw that Diogenes, like the four-footed philosopher he was, had come to a halt and was serenely cropping the grass by the roadside. And so we presently drove on again, but though Diana frowned no more, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... rudiments of hind limbs are present just where corresponding structures are placed in the seal. These vestiges cannot be reasonably accounted for, unless they are the degenerate hinder limbs of a remote four-footed ancestor. Furthermore the unborn whale possesses a complete coat of hair, which is afterwards replaced by blubber; but hair is a thatchlike coat to shed rain, as the way the hairs lie on a terrestrial mammal indicates. We are therefore forced ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... we were right thirsty; and to drink lagoon water would be to drink cholera or fever. But there was plenty of pure water in the coco-trees, and we soon had our fill. A Negro walked—not climbed—up a stem like a four-footed animal, his legs and arms straight, his feet pressed flat against it, his hands clinging round it—a feat impossible, as far as I have seen, to an European—tossed us down plenty of green nuts; ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... and habitual pose of mind of the singer, whose views of earthly matters were as different from the views of ordinary working mortals as those of a bird, as he flits and perches and sings, must be from those of the four-footed ox who plods. The "sobriam ebrietatem spiritus" was with him first constitutional, as a child of sunny skies, and then cultivated by every employment and duty of the religious and artistic career to which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the little dog with the large currant bun. We were charmed indeed when he sat up for it in the most approved trained-animal posture, with short fore-legs crossed on his plump hairy breast. How often had we longed for the joyous companionship of our old four-footed friends, the comfort of a soft warm tongue on one's cheek, the sensitive muzzle pressed into one's palm, the look of loving confidence in the ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... hundred and thirty-six, of which some were breeding mothers. Not content with providing Fario's store-house with these boarders, the Knights made holes in the roof of the old church and put in a dozen pigeons, taken from as many different farms. These four-footed and feathered creatures held high revels,—all the more securely because the watchman was enticed away by a fellow who kept him drunk from morning till night, so that he took no ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... brothers, this dog that you see, and myself. In early life we were not tied by those bonds of affection that should exist in family circles. In fact, on one occasion, I had to put my brother in prison. He had not at that period assumed the four-footed condition in which you now behold him. He walked about on two legs, like the rest of us, ate and drank, made love, and made merry. After he had been in prison some time, successful interposition was made on his behalf by ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... living there in rude cabins made of branches, pasturing immense herds of milch cows, sheep, oxen, and horses. They went from one prairie to another, always finding a well-spread table for their four-footed guests. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... a famous race-horse, and, disconcerted more than he would have been at being convicted of any degree of moral turpitude, vexed and ashamed, he talked no more of Newmarket or of Doncaster, left the race-ground to those who prided themselves on the excellences of their four-footed betters, and ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... sir. I will bite off this unmilitary tongue o' mine and feed it to your horse. Then, sir, if you but ask him, he will tell you very plainly that none of his four-footed comrades in the barn have carried a single vidette on their backs even as far as Poundridge ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... is also the case with all wild animals and birds worth shooting in this country. A footman, you see, they all mistake for their hereditary enemy, the blackfellow; but, as yet, they have not come to distinguish a man on horseback from a four-footed beast. And, this seems to show that animals ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... to-day, old fellow, and throw dust in that tinhorn's face," he murmured to his four-footed friend, gentling it with little pats of love and admiration. "Adios, Chiquito. I know you won't throw off on yore old pal. So long, ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... storekeeper had gladly parted with one-third of the comestible stock which was slowly petrifying on shelf and rafter; a little burro, grazing on the dump, had been transformed into a pack-animal; and after standing treat three times around, Charles-Norton, leading by a rope his fuzzy four-footed companion, to a great flapping of amicable sombreros had taken the trail winding toward the ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... watch-dog tore himself loose from his master's detaining grasp and bounded up the bank, barking fierce and loud at every jump. This must have been what Jack was thinking of when he left Bose behind. As quickly as he could Marcy got upon his feet and shouted words of encouragement to his four-footed friend. ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... him, the two friends went down the narrow stairs, and through the alley into the street which led toward the City Hall. Fido looked inquiringly into his master's face to see what could be the reason that he walked so quietly along this morning, instead of, as heretofore, racing and chasing his four-footed little comrade from block to block. But Ned was swallowing several lumps in his throat, and had no heart for ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... anything about it. You've beheld with your own eyes the marvelous, world-wide porcine wonder of the four-footed kingdom eating with preternatural sagacity his matutinal meal, ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... of the Parthenon; from Brazil and Switzerland, Turkey and Japan, Siam and India beyond the Ganges. On that sent by China we read: "In devising plans, Washington was more decided than Ching Shing or Woo Kwang; in winning a country he was braver than Tsau Tsau or Ling Pi. Wielding his four-footed falchion, he extended the frontiers and refused to accept the Royal Dignity. The sentiments of the Three Dynasties have reappeared in him. Can any man of ancient or modern times fail to pronounce Washington peerless?" These comparisons so strange to our ears ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... that kept up the impression produced by these two singular facts I have just mentioned. There was a dark storeroom, on looking through the key-hole of which, I could dimly see a heap of chairs and tables, and other four-footed things, which seemed to me to have rushed in there, frightened, and in their fright to have huddled together and climbed up on each other's backs,—as the people did in that awful crush where so many were killed, at the execution of Holloway and Haggerty. Then the Lady's portrait, up-stairs, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Anglo-Saxon is rich in tributes to the dog, as becomes a race which beyond any other has understood and developed its four-footed companions. Canine heroes whose intelligence and faithfulness our prose writers have celebrated start to the memory in scores—Bill Sykes's white shadow, which refused to be separated from its master even by death; Rab, savagely devoted; the immortal Bob, "son ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... Malays was followed by the construction of a large bathing-place for the men, which being carefully stockaded round with stout bamboos, allowed the free flow of the river-water, without the addition of any four-footed creatures, in the shape of crocodiles, which were far too common to be pleasant, especially where lower down the river the salt water mingled with the fresh. In fact, it was dangerous there for a hand to be dragged in the water beside a boat, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... of his attributes being the reckoner of time. [188] Of the former divinity, Rawlinson relates an instructive myth. "According to one legend Thoth once wrote a wonderful book, full of wisdom and science, containing in it everything relating to the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, and the four-footed beasts of the mountains. The man who knew a single page of the work could charm the heaven, the earth, the great abyss, the mountains and the seas. This marvellous composition he inclosed in a box of gold, which he placed within a box of ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... impulse, on discovering the absence of his four-footed companion, was to return to the cottage; but the risk in so doing was extreme, and as he felt certain his guide would take care of the dog, and that he should get it at some future day, he resolved to pursue his journey. Meantime the night ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... was noticeable that of all the splendid thoroughbreds within the paddock one was by far the finest. That was a dappled gray, perfect in every, point, and looking as if he were king of that four-footed company. ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... around me, licked my hand, and I took her great tawny head into my arms, and gave her a kiss. Since then I have never had a lion for a pet, and may never have one again. I must confess I am sorry for it; for I still retain my love for lions (four-footed ones, I mean), to ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... owed it all to your piebald coat!" exclaimed I. "Never was beauty such an advantage to a four-footed beast as ugliness has been ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... for children from three to eight years, tells of the adventures of the four-footed creatures of our American woods and fields in an amusing way, which delights small two-footed ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... or two later, as the organisation of his mule-train was now complete, and transports were already arriving to embark their four-footed freight, he returned to Gibraltar, meaning to go on ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... hide our approach. He went down on his hands and knees, and thus crept towards the knoll, skirting it partly, because a little way round it was steeper. I followed his example, and found I was his match at crawling in four-footed fashion. When we reached the steep side, we ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... A great English poet, whose writings you will read when you get older, said you should look through Nature up to Nature's God. What did he mean? I think he had us birds in his mind, for it is through a study of our habits, more perhaps than that of the voiceless trees or the dumb four-footed creatures that roam the fields, that your hearts are opened to see and admire real beauty. We birds are the true teachers of faith, hope, and charity,—faith, because we trust one another; hope, because, even when ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... fingers twirl "The flax, and martial contests leave to men. "The spear which Caeneus hurl'd, deep in his side "Bare as he cours'd, expos'd the blow to meet, "Pierc'd him when boasting thus, just where the man "Join'd the four-footed form. With smart he rag'd, "And to the Phyllian warrior's face his spear "Presented. Back the spear rebounded: so "Bound the hard hailstones from the roof; so leap "The paltry pebbles on the hollow ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... of course, that a more satisfactory test of this general nature could be devised; such, for example, as having the subject name all the words he can of a given class (four-footed animals, things to eat, articles of household furniture, trees, birds, etc.). The main objection to this form of the test is that the performance would in all probability be more influenced by environment and ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... ... swearing ... whistles blowing signals ... the chugging respiration of the labouring donkey-engine ... and then the attempted stampede of each trembling, fear-crazy animal as soon as he rose four-footed, on deck, after his ride ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... scientific expert upon the flora (especially the trees), the birds and the four-footed fauna of the whole region, and his readiness and willingness to communicate his knowledge to his guests is a great advantage to the studious ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... order to turn my mind from my own musing, I found always, always, that you were in them—I cannot tell you how, but you were, Madelon. There was a meaning of you in every bird-call and flutter of wings and race of wild four-footed things across the open. Every white alder-bush in the spring raised you up anew before me to madden me with vain longing, and every red sumach in the fall. When I have sat here alone every book I have opened has had in it a meaning ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... been gone through on this particular Sunday without anything remarkable happening. It was at the end of the psalm which preceded the sermon that Sanders Elshioner, who sat near the door, lowered his head until it was no higher than the pews, and in that attitude, looking almost like a four-footed animal, slipped out of the church. In their eagerness to be at the sermon many of the congregation did not notice him, and those who did put the matter by in their minds for future investigation. Sam'l, however, could not take it so coolly. From his seat in the gallery he saw Sanders disappear, ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... this time he had somehow contrived to get himself completely shaved up to the shoulders. The result is startling. Fogerty looks extremely aristocratic but a trifle foppish. However, he seems to consider himself the only real four-footed dog in camp. This is a trifle boring from a dog who has never hesitated to steal from the galley anything that wasn't a permanent fixture. I can't help but feel sorry for him though when I see that far-away look in his eyes. Sad days I fear are in store for him. Ah, ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... like lightning; and in exactly seven minutes the heavy beast was drawn, washed out with snow, roped, and hung to a tree well out of reach of any four-footed forest marauders that might prowl that way ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... Cissy was about four years old an event occurred in her life that seemed for a time to endanger the intimacy between the little girl and her four-footed friend, and caused Moses considerable anxiety. It was a rainy morning and she could not play under the trees as usual, so she took her little chair and climbed up to the window to see if the trees were lonesome ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... often quoted by Mediaeval writers, credited them with inconstancy, and Melito compares them in turn to Christ, to the Devil, and to the Jewish nation. It may be added that Richard of Saint Victor, disregarding these views, sees in winged fowl a symbol of the life of the soul, as in the four-footed beast he sees the life of the body—"And that gets us no ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... of a Giraffe, the glands of a goat, the coat of a Deer, the horns of an ox and Deer combined, the eyes of a Gazelle, the build of an Antelope, and—the speed of the wind. It is the swiftest four-footed creature native to the plains, and so far as known there is nothing but a blooded race horse that can outrun ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... score, gave the monkey's ear a pinch, upon which the animal snapped at his thumb, and bit it so seriously that the man was obliged to apply to the doctor. When this was reported to me by the surgeon, I began to think my four-footed friend was either getting rather too much licence, or that too many liberties were taken with him, so I gave orders that in future he should be let alone. Nevertheless, Jacko contrived to bite two more ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... being a better situation. There the animal was skinned, a fire kindled, and after they had dined upon fresh venison-steaks, the rest of the meat Ossaroo prepared for curing,—just as he had done that of the yak,—but in this case he took the precaution to hang it out of reach of all four-footed marauders. ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... of beastes, and by their fraud, they overthrow men. For when as they see a man, they lay open their breastes, and by the beauty thereof entice them to come neare to conference, and so having them within their compasse, they devoure and kill them." So much for four-footed beasts.[78] ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... goodwill; but the path was so steep and the way so long, that when about half way up the mountain they were fain to follow the example of their four-footed companion, and rest themselves. They sat down on the ground. They had warmed themselves with walking, but the weather was as chill and disagreeable and gusty as ever; every now and then the wind came sweeping by, catching up the dried ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... of affairs he predicted for his four-footed friend, he never once looked at it, but kept tinkering at the harness as if nothing particular were ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... lay down almost directly underneath me and some fifty yards off. That evening on my return to camp we watched the band make its way right down to the river bed, going over places where it did not seem possible a four-footed creature could pass. They halted to graze here and there, and down the worst places they went very fast with great bounds. It was ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... broad, raised two or three inches above the level of the ground, and paved with some kind of hard concrete. Each ditch was crossed by a bridge of planks, in the middle of which was a stake or short pole, round which we passed with ease, but which would obviously baffle a four-footed animal of any size. The crops were of great variety, and wonderfully free from weeds. Most of them showed fruit of one kind or another, sometimes gourd-like globes on the top of upright stalks, sometimes clusters of a sort of nut on vines creeping ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... was kept in its place by a string at each side, fastened through a hole. He used no staff to help him along, though his body was nearly bent double, so that his face was constantly turned to the earth, like that of a four-footed creature. He was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the boys arise from around the fire, visit the horse line, see that their horses are securely tied, rub off from the fetlocks and legs such specks of mud as may have escaped the cleaning in the early evening, and if possible, smuggle their faithful four-footed friends a few ears of corn, or ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... France, the reservations of space for the human and dumb occupants of the same car were something as follows: Four horses occupied the forward half of the car. Four more horses occupied the rear half of the car. Four men occupied the remaining space. The eight four-footed animals are packed in lengthwise with their heads towards the central space between the two side doors. The central space is reserved for the four ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... gilding and crowning the tree tops in wreathed glory, was gradually paling behind the heavy belt of forest that enclosed the Sioux camp; the animals, both plumed and four-footed, that filled the woods, were seeking their accustomed rest; the squaws were busily engaged in preparing for their expected husbands their evening meal, just as a long line of grim and painted warriors issued from the shelter of the trees. A loud cry from the ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... himself up against the garden-wall in the autumn. He seems to have been more of a philosopher than even Mr. White himself, caring for nothing but to get under a cabbage-leaf when it rained, or the sun was too hot, and to bury himself alive before frost,—a four-footed Diogenes, who carried his tub ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... the trees and hoarse guttural exclamations issued from these faces as they watched Stubbs struggle with the cats. While the Germans would not go to Stubbs' assistance, nevertheless they would not shoot him down as he struggled with his four-footed enemies. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... opportunity of bridging the seemingly impassable gulf between Etrurian Religion and the comparatively clear and comprehensible systems of the Pelasgo- Phoenician peoples. That Kad or Kab can refer either (as in Quatuor) to a four-footed animal (quadruped, "quad") or to a four- wheeled vehicle (esseda, Celtic cab) I cannot for a moment believe, though I understand that this theory has the support of Schrader, Penka, and Baunder. {10} Any information which your learning can procure, and your kind courtesy can supply, will be warmly ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... lifted a rock on the side of a mountain, allowing the animal he wished to come forth, they imitated him some days afterwards, and the result was that the deer escaped from the cave, and "then followed droves of raccoons, rabbits, and all the other four-footed animals. Last came great flocks of turkeys, pigeons, and partridges." From their childish glee and tricksiness the animals appear to have suffered somewhat, for we are told (506. 100): "In those days all the deer had their tails hanging ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... under his look, so he moved quickly away to the door and peered cautiously out, searching the forest with eager eyes. Gaining courage, he went out, making the round of the house with eyes and ears intent. There was much ado among the tree tops and a scurrying of four-footed among the underbrush, but of two-footed things he saw nothing. He fetched a pail of water for Clarissa and was in the act of entering the house when a gun cracked sharply at some distance on his left. The forest stopped to listen with him for a full moment as the ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... "Game is so abundant, especially at the capital, that every year during the three winter months you see at different places, intended for despatch thither, besides great piles of every sort of wildfowl, rows of four-footed game of a gunshot or two in length: the animals being all frozen and standing on their feet. Among other species you see three sundry kinds of bears ... and great abundance of other animals, as stags ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... be good friends," he said, and he spoke so low that only the dogs heard his voice. "It's a big price, but we'll charge it to the Smithsonian, lads. I'm going to need a couple of four-footed friends of your ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... perhaps, the far-away shriek of a panther balked of its prey, it may have been, gave them little concern. Though the darkness was intense and enemies might draw very near without being observed, the boys believed they had made peace with the Indians and the presence of four-footed enemies did not ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... the party strayed off into the woods in search of game. Squirrels were the only four-footed creatures found, and enough of these were shot to make a good-sized "pot-pie;" and it may be here remarked, that no sort of flesh is better for this purpose than that of ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... growl then at their own discretion, fly at the accidental stranger with open mouth, attack him singly, charge him en masse, and nothing but a stout bludgeon, wielded by a strong arm, can save the passenger from feeling that he is in the kingdom of his four-footed masters. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... shrouds, so as to be able to drop from thence on to the deck-house, this being his quickest mode of reaching the roof of that structure; and from thence, as he knew, he would of course be able to see right into the long-boat as well as inspect its four-footed tenants. ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... by stopping clocks—with nature day Is, beyond all dispute. In two days, by obeying instead of opposing natural sun time, we had swung half round the clock, only now and then imitating the habits of our four-footed brothers that steal abroad in the ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... from a heavily-laden basket which he carried on his back, walked through the passage and out of the farther door, attended by the pig, who lovingly rubbed his snout against him. The stranger knelt down at one of the shattered windows of the chapel, his four-footed companion standing patiently by him, until the orison was over and the worshipers trooped out of the little chapel. Then the knowing pig trotted off to his own quarters, whilst one voice exclaimed, "You are back ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... their wicked hands, and anxious to reclaim him from the degradation of becoming a Boys' Dog, I was about to conclude the bargain, when I saw a look of intelligence pass between the dog and his two masters. I promptly stopped all negotiation, and drove the youthful swindlers and their four-footed accomplice from my presence. The whole thing was perfectly plain. The dog was an old, experienced, and hardened Boys' Dog, and I was perfectly satisfied that he would run away and rejoin his old companions at the first ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... Andrews. Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates. Dodge. Room for one more. Mary T. Higginson. King Arthur for boys. Lanier. Doings of the Bodley family. Scudder. Mother-play and Nursery-rhymes. Children's Robinson Crusoe. The four-footed lovers. Mammy Tittleback and her family. H.H. The Little ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... drawn from amphorae of clay, glass, or metal held in elegant woven baskets placed on four-footed pedestals made of a light, supple wood interlaced in ingenious fashion. The baskets contained seven sorts of wines: date wine, palm wine, and wine of the grape, white, red, and green wines, new wine, Phoenician and Greek wines, and white Mareotis wine ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... to forebode his death. Thereupon the gods held a council and resolved to make him secure against every danger. So the goddess Frigg took an oath from fire and water, iron and all metals, stones and earth, from trees, sicknesses and poisons, and from all four-footed beasts, birds, and creeping things, that they would not hurt Balder. When this was done Balder was deemed invulnerable; so the gods amused themselves by setting him in their midst, while some shot at him, others hewed at him, and others threw stones at him. But whatever they did, nothing could ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... was less likely to give us trouble if we had its master to control it. My arguments carried the day, and the biped accompanied us as well as his four-footed companion. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... deer; the towering elk; the fleet stag; the surly bear; the crafty fox; the ravenous wolf; the devouring panther; the insidious wildcat; the haughty buffalo, besides innumerable other creatures, winged, four-footed, or creeping." ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... play of a badger, whose only playmate was an exceptionally clever dog, who from his earliest youth had been taught to live with different kinds of animals. "Together they went through a series of gymnastic exercises on pleasant afternoons, and their four-footed friends came from far and near to witness the performance. The essentials of the game were that the badger, roaring and shaking his head like a wild boar, should charge upon the dog, as it stood about fifteen paces off, and strike him in the side with its ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... of walking in man is similar in all cases to the universal way of walking in four-footed animals, because, just as they move their feet {48} crosswise, like a trotting horse, so man moves his four limbs crosswise, that is to say, in walking he puts forward his right foot simultaneously with his left arm, and ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... the four-footed creatures with a certain curiosity—if not awe, and there had been more than a little scattering of prayer meal when the mules were hobbled. The braying of one of them had caused terror in the hearts ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... haven't come to my time of life, through all the trials I've had, to be taking any chances of breaking my bones over any miserable, furry, four-footed animal that wouldn't catch a mouse if one run right ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was singularly appropriate, for assuredly Felice was the happiest of all four-footed creatures. Her nature was gentle; she was obedient, long-suffering, kind. She had known what it was to toil and to bear burdens; sometimes she had suffered from hunger and from thirst; and before she came into the possession of Jacques she had been beaten, for Pierre, her former owner, was a hard ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... up of the ground by the passage of heavy ordnance, it would be a difficult matter indeed to select any particular line of march and call it a road. Travellers ordinarily engage mules for the journey; we sailors scorn any such four-footed assistance, though the next time we voyage this way it will be as well to remember that ankle boots are preferable to "pursers' crabs." As we advance, the sun's rays are beginning to get unpleasantly ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... sacred in the district of Papremis, but for the other Egyptians he is not sacred; and this is the appearance which he presents: he is four-footed, cloven-hoofed like an ox, 66 flat-nosed, with a mane like a horse and showing teeth like tusks, with a tail and voice like a horse, and in size as large as the largest ox; and his hide is so exceedingly thick that when it has been ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... girl must learn to be her own captain, her own commanding officer. She should give herself orders to take daily exercise. If any of us needs a lesson in keeping well and beautiful, we can get that lesson from our little friends the birds. Every creature, wild and tame, winged and four-footed, takes the most scrupulous care of its physical condition. They clean, stretch, brush, polish, until every feather or hair, until every muscle and sinew is ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... coaster of the midland seas, What marvels did those curious eyes behold! Winged snakes, and carven labyrinths of old; The emerald column raised to Heracles; King Perseus' shrine upon the Chemmian leas; Four-footed fishes, decked with gems and gold: But thou didst leave some secrets yet untold, And veiled the dread ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... conspicuous among the numerous group, thankfully mumping her share of the illegal traffic. We may add that the pastrycook is by no means disposed to institute a legal process against the delinquent, as the children of the gentleman to whom we allude are honest enough to acknowledge their four-footed playmate's failings to papa, who willingly compensates any damage the pastrycook may sustain from the petty depredations of the would-be ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... a large room, where great leather-bound volumes filled the oak shelves to the ceiling. The care-taker turned, and, with echoing footsteps, slowly departed, followed by his faithful four-footed retainer. It is true the latter paused, swung half-around and regarded the land-owner with the look of a sulky and rebellious tenant, but, summoned by a stern "Oloffe!" from his master, the dog reluctantly pattered ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... to speak of the last class in that great group—the Mammalia, so called because they feed their young, not as birds do, with insects or grain, but with milk. They are chiefly "four-footed beasts of the earth," and are covered with hair or fur. In this class extremes meet; we find the great elephant and the playful little squirrel, the kingly lion and the timid mouse which is said to have set him free when snared ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... compound adjective is one that consists of two or more words joined together, either by the hyphen or solidly: as, Nut-brown, laughter-loving, four-footed; threefold, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... are too honest in this village to have a single mule amongst them for your worship's service. To that I can bear testimony. In these times it's only rogues or very clever men who can manage to have mules or any other four-footed beasts and the wherewithal to keep them. But what this valiant mariner wants is a guide; and here, senor, behold my brother-in-law, Bernardino, wine- seller, and alcade of this most Christian and hospitable village, who ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... woods. A rustle could be heard now and then as of some tiny four-footed creature moving the stiff grass; or a twig cracked. The frogs in the creek were tuning their bass-viols. A tree-toad rattled on some unseen trunk, and the whole woods heaved its great lungs in the steady breathing which it never ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the Bob Lincolns met many enemies, and these enemies wrought sad havoc in their ranks. When they were flying in the air, the hawks and the eagles would swoop upon them and kill them. If they sat upon the ground, the weazels and the minks, the wildcats and other four-footed prowlers, would pounce upon them and devour them. Even the Red Men, with their feathered arrows, would shoot them. So many of them were killed that they began to fear that soon none of their family would be ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... insulted us!' Then the old King said: 'Be easy, he shall be punished,' and he at once flew with the Queen to the bear's cave, and called in: 'Old Growler, why have you insulted my children? You shall suffer for it—we will punish you by a bloody war.' Thus war was announced to the Bear, and all four-footed animals were summoned to take part in it, oxen, asses, cows, deer, and every other animal the earth contained. And the willow-wren summoned everything which flew in the air, not only birds, large and small, but midges, and hornets, bees and flies ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... out into the street and bent over the poor animal. Meg was "just crazy," her brothers said, about animals, and she was never afraid of any four-footed creature. Now, as she leaned over the little dog, he began to lick her hand with ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... carefully made arrangements would be able to reach Keitung, or the spot near it, where the transaction was to take place, by constant changes of horses where riding was possible, and by a strong body of dooly-bearers wherever the path should prove too steep for four-footed beasts of burden. I, on the other hand, must leave the road at Julinder, a place I had never visited, and must trust to my own unaided wits and a plentiful supply of rupees to carry me over at least two hundred miles of ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... awful form. Suddenly, a little goat jumped in three bounds to the bench, and smelt at Stephanie, who waked at the sound. She sprang to her feet, but so lightly that the movement did not frighten the freakish animal; then she caught sight of Philippe, and darted away, followed by her four-footed friend, to a hedge of elders; there she uttered the same little cry like a frightened bird, which the two men had heard near the other gate. Then she climbed an acacia, and nestling into its tufted top, she watched the stranger with ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... some things about this dog question. I find that there have been some queer decisions handed down by the courts, showin' that the law does recognize the fact that a dog is different from other four-footed critters. For instance, it has been held that a dog has a right to protect not only his life but his dignity; that where a man worries a dog beyond what would be reasonable to expect any self-respectin' critter to stand, that ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... as we know it, as man is unlike the chimpanzee. Springing, I hazard, from the stegocephalia, the ancestor of the frogs, these batrachians followed a different line of evolution and acquired the upright position just as man did his from the four-footed folk. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... surgeon, laughing. "So my four-footed friend has gotten you into hot water again, Nancy? I might have known it. Here's ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... eating, it appears, must go on all through creation. We eat ducks, turkeys, and chickens, though we don't swallow them whole, feathers and all. Our four-footed friends, less civilized, take things with more directness and simplicity, and chew each other up without ceremony, or swallow each other alive. Of these unceremonious habits we had ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... One, for instance, saw his god in the eel, another in the shark, another in the turtle, another in the dog, another in the owl, another in the lizard; and so on, throughout all the fish of the sea and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. In some of the shell-fish even, gods were supposed to be present. A man would eat freely of what was regarded as the incarnation of the god of another man, but the incarnation of his own particular ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... evidence of another! I grieve for one thing, truly—that I was ever instrumental in forwarding the King's views. Robin said a true word in jest the other day, that men as well as puppies were born blind, only it takes a much longer period to open our eyes, than those of our four-footed friends." ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... is ever cut throughout the year. I do not think they have any winter in this part, for at Christmas were found many birds-nests, some containing the young birds, and others containing eggs. No four-footed animal has ever been seen in this or any of the other islands, except some dogs of various colors, as in our own country, but in shape like large house-dogs;[296-2] and also some little animals, in color and fur like a rabbit, and the size of a young rabbit, with long tails, and feet like ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... have been more awake. The noise was slight; only a small fragment of rock had fallen and the echoes of its journey were lost almost at once; it was the beginning of the sound that he was thinking of—the noise had not started right. He thought of the four-footed prowlers of the night and as a cause eliminated them one after another. He thought of his horse below—it was not where such a sound could start. But always slow to imagine a mystery when a reason could be assigned, Laramie, lying prone, was brought back every time to his first instinctive ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman |
