"Mastiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... superiority—the glory of the victor in the Grecian games, or the modern pugilist with the champion's belt. This is the reason why men, priding themselves upon qualities in which they are equalled by any mastiff and excelled by any horse, will stand up and batter one another into a mass of blood and bruises. And if we analyze the merit of some conqueror upon a hundred battle-fields, we shall find ingredients almost as coarse. Only there was a larger impulse, and more genius to light the way; ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... looked up as the boys approached. All of them seemed to be grinning, as though amused. But while the big man really looked somewhat as a mastiff might appear to a little terrier, his two companions had a sneer on their dark, evil faces that gave Thad ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... excited by this "Freshman's rebellion" was one of utter amazement, or awful astonishment tempered with laughter, not unmingled with respect. It was the terrier flying at the lion, when the great mastiff, and bloodhound, and Danish dog had quietly slunk aside. There were in the class beside myself several youths of marked character, and collectively we had already made an impression, to which my intimacy with George Boker, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... dozen men had rushed into the room at the noise of the struggle, and strove vainly to tear the Russian from his hold. But he hung on with the tenacity of a mastiff. There was a ringing in Foyle's ear and a red blur before his eyes. With a superhuman effort he got his elbow under the Russian's chin and pressed ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... we find it recorded that "the Burying Ground in Oxford Road, belonging to the Parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, having been lately robbed of several dead bodies, a Watcher was placed there, attended by a large mastiff Dog; notwithstanding which, on Sunday night last, some Villains found means to steal out another dead Body, and carried off the very Dog." Body-snatchers so adroit and determined as to contrive ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... singular sort of league,—defensive of Mr. Falkirk, offensive towards each other. She teased him, and Gotham bore it mastiff-wise; shaking his head, and wincing, and when he could bear it no longer going off. Wych Hazel?— ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... the fierce catamount was still abroad, and at night the howling of the wolf-pack as it followed some hard-pressed doe or decrepit buck, reached the boys' ears. And at that day the timber-wolf of the Green Mountains—a long, lean, gray creature as big as a mastiff—was much ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... the form of a yellow mastiff dog, curled on a mat beneath the table. The arch of his back was towards me, and one forepaw lay over his nose in a natural posture of sleep. I leant back on the wainscoting, with my eyes tightly fixed on him, and my thoughts flying back, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... to the last degree with this new turn of his affairs; when on a sudden, a noise of somebody opening the door made them start from their seats, and scuttle in confusion about the dining-room. Our Country Friend, in particular, was ready to die with fear at the barking of a huge mastiff or two, which opened their throats just about the same time, and made the whole house echo. At last, recovering himself:—"Well," says he, "if this be your town-life, much good may you do with it: give me my poor, quiet hole again, with my ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... eye to pick out the German waiter, the French chauffeur, and the Italian vendor of ices. Lastly, when you have made yourself really good at the game, you will be scarcely more likely to confuse a small dark Welshman with a broad florid Yorkshireman than a retriever with a mastiff. ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... could see them loping in circles around the cabin, whining and snuffing the air as if they yearned for human blood. They were gaunt, fierce-looking creatures, and in the winter-time their hunger made them so bold that they would come up to the door and scratch against it. The barking of her mastiff would soon drive the cowardly beasts away but only a few rods, to the edge of the clearing where, sitting on their haunches, they frequently watched the house all night, galloping away into the woods ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... of her and was openly unfaithful in every port upon the lakes, a vigorous, lawless debauchee. His ship-building was done in a distant port, and he rarely visited his wife. He rather feared her, mastiff as he was, for here was the keener intelligence, and her moods, at times, were desperate as his. So he furnished her abundant income and was content to let it go at that. It pleased her, also, to have ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... am one of those whom every Body calls a Pocher, and sometimes go out to course with a Brace of Greyhounds, a Mastiff, and a Spaniel or two; and when I am weary with Coursing, and have killed Hares enough, go to an Ale-house to refresh my self. I beg the Favour of you (as you set up for a Reformer) to send us Word how many Dogs you will ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... from the circle of soldiers, for sedition and mutiny were rife in the camp, and even the old centurion's outbreak could not draw a protest. Maximin raised his great mastiff head and looked ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my obligation to you, sir, for the restoration of the badge of our family, I cannot but marvel that you have nowhere established your own crest, whilk is, I believe, a mastiff, anciently called a talbot; as ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... brilliant vitality of charm, had after a quarrel turned his back on her. Eben Tollman, who masked a diffident nature behind a semblance of cold reserve, was unendingly considerate and no more asked reward than a faithful mastiff might have asked it. It contented him to anticipate all her wishes and to invent small ways of easing her misery. He did not even seek to force his society and satisfied himself with such crumbs of conversation as she chose to drop his way in passing. If ever she ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... stop the diligence. Accordingly, he immediately left the apartment, and staying no longer than to gather his posse together, he did then, in the phrase of Hector, who watched his departure as a jealous mastiff eyes the retreat of a repulsed ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... poor little fellow; "don't bark, my dear." And up he went, and stroked and patted the great mastiff, who, already knowing the little fellow, put his paws on his shoulders, and licked his face with great appreciation. For Christopher was tenderly kind to animals, and he was rewarded for this now in his day of deep distress. Ponto ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... brother. Mr. Ringgan had no affinity with small cares; deep serious matters received his deep and serious consideration; but he had as dignified a disdain of trifling annoyances or concernments as any great mastiff or Newfoundlander ever had for the yelping ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... attracted attention in one quarter at least. On the floor, by the arm-chair, lay a dog, a huge tawny mastiff, with body and limbs almost as big as a lion's; and this great creature rose majestically and slowly, and marched toward the little fellow with a ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is like Hunt's dog, will neither go to church nor stay at home. One Hunt, a labouring man at a small town in Shropshire, kept a mastiff, who on being shut up on Sundays, whilst his master went to church, howled so terribly as to disturb the whole village; wherefore his master resolved to take him to church with him: but when he came to the church door, the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Western senator. He had such a quizzical entertaining look in his keen eye—he was being stiffly deferential to one of the ladies, a Mrs. Welsh, who was talking to him so brightly. It looked like a huge mastiff allowing a teeny ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... many of these and other examples, wild forms still occur which seem to be like the ancestral stock from which the domesticated forms have been produced. All the varied forms of dogs—from mastiff to toy-terrier, and from greyhound to dachshund and bulldog—find their prototypes in wild carnivora like the wolf and jackal. In Asia and Malaysia the jungle fowl still lives, while its domesticated descendants ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... feeling, strong sense, and fine genius to the composition of his papers. Dogs he loves with an enthusiasm to be found nowhere else in canine literature. He knows intimately all a cur means when he winks his eye or wags his tail, so that the whole barking race,—terrier, mastiff, spaniel, and the rest,—finds in him an affectionate and interested friend. His genial motto seems to run thus—"I cannot understand that morality which excludes animals from human sympathy, or releases man from the debt and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... of that by and by," answered Pluto. "We are just entering my dominions. Do you see that tall gateway before us? When we pass those gates, we are at home. And there lies my faithful mastiff at the threshold. Cerberus! Cerberus! Come hither, my ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Rab, the great mastiff, claims first place in our minds, dog though he is; but James and Ailie are such lovable beings that we never ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... To have the English Government smelling at your heels is no joke, thought he. Any moment the mastiff may grip, and then, if you happen to be an ex-convict and deserter from their Colonial Police, and supposing you have one or two other little things against you ... the most honest of speculators being occasionally ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... gait, notwithstanding that his legs are finely proportioned, as if the night prowler were cautious not to be heard by the sleeping house, nor to awaken—so noiseless his stealthy advances—the unchained mastiff ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... hemlock, only it is longer. This sprig gives you some idea of its general form. It is always planted about churches and graveyards; a kind of dismal emblem of immortality. This sepulchral old tree and the bass and treble dogs were the only occupants of the court. One of these, a great surly mastiff, barked out of his kennel on one side, and the other, a little wiry terrier, out of his on the opposite side, and both strained on their chains, as if they would enjoy making even more decided ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... wolf twitting the mastiff with his chain, the soldier was no sooner outside the door of the Dragon court before he began to express his wonder how a lad of mettle could put up with a flat cap, a blue gown, and the being at the beck and call of a greasy burgher, when a bold, handsome young knave like him might have the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... had roused the inmates of the chalet, and both the men jumped up from their seats, while a large and fierce mastiff also shook himself from sleep, and gave ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the late autumn Annie was sitting watching Hyde playing with his dog, a big mastiff of noble birth and character. The creature sat erect with his head leaning against Hyde, and Hyde's arm was thrown around his neck as he talked to him of their adventures on the Broad that day. Annie's small face, though delicate and fragile looking was full ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... there; and whenever she heard a large word she said it over to herself many times, and so was able to keep it until there was a dogmatic gathering in the neighborhood, then she would get it off, and surprise and distress them all, from pocket-pup to mastiff, which rewarded her for all her trouble. If there was a stranger he was nearly sure to be suspicious, and when he got his breath again he would ask her what it meant. And she always told him. He was never expecting this but thought he would catch her; so when she told him, he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... came the sharp, staccato yelp of a hound at field. Yes; the dogs were out, and already they were at work, ranging in great semicircles, alert with the joy of the chase. There was Blazer, with his tawny muzzle, and behind him Fangs, the great, black bitch, half mastiff and half bloodhound, the saliva dripping from her jaws as she ran. Constans drew a deep breath as he watched them. Already they were nearing the pavilion; in a few seconds at the farthest they would be giving tongue ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... spoil taken from conquered countries. The dog is frequent on the later sculptures; and has been found modelled in clay, and also represented in relief on a clay tablet. [PLATE XXXII., Fig. 3.] [PLATE XXXIII., Fig. 1.] Their character is that of a large mastiff or hound, and there is abundant evidence that they were employed ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... a famous day for all these butcherly sports, or rather barbarous cruelties. The bulls did exceedingly well, but the Irish wolf-dog exceeded, which was a tall greyhound, a stately creature indeed, who beat a cruel mastiff. One of the bulls tossed a dog full into a lady's lap, as she sat in one of the boxes at a considerable height from the arena. Two poor dogs were killed, and so all ended with the ape on horseback, ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... as bronzed as their savage comrades, completed the group. One, a desperate-looking outlaw, Jonathan did not know. The blond-bearded giant in the center was Legget. Steel-blue, inhuman eyes, with the expression of a free but hunted animal; a set, mastiff-like jaw, brutal and coarse, individualized him. The last ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... disturbed by apprehension, not to say fear, as, pronouncing the usual salutation of, 'I wish thee a good morrow, friend,' he indicated, by turning his palfrey close to one side of the path, a wish to glide past us with as little trouble as possible—just as a traveller would choose to pass a mastiff of whose peaceable intentions he is ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... moccasins of raw-hide; his belt sustaining his long, straight, flat sword or machete, like an iron bar sharpened at one end; and he wore by the same belt three cotton leashes for his three dogs, sometimes held also by chains. The dogs were a fierce breed, crossed between hound and mastiff, never unmuzzled but for attack, and accompanied by smaller dogs called finders. It is no wonder, when these wild and powerful creatures were landed at Montego Bay, that terror ran through the town, doors were everywhere closed, and windows crowded; not ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... comes at last. One of the Landfield men gets hold of the ball, and runs down hard along the touch-line. Forrester is the quarter-back that side, and gallant as the Fourth Form boy is, his big opponent runs over him as a mastiff runs over ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... it only a month ago. I threw a pinch of it into a basin of milk and gave it to a powerful mastiff. He drank the milk and in ten seconds ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... argue. Tom gathered up his legs and strode across to him almost before he had finished speaking. For the time being he had apparently forgotten the cradle and its occupant. He seized the little man by the back of his collar and lifted him bodily out of his chair and shook him as a huge mastiff might have shaken a rat, agitating the little legs in the large trousers with a force which gave them, for a few seconds, the ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bolts and creaking hinges, mingling occasionally with the dull monotony of the retiring ocean. Sometimes, too, he could hear the hoarse growl of the keeper, or the shriller strain of his helpmate, almost always in the tone of discontent, anger, or insolence. At other times the large mastiff, chained in the court-yard, answered with furious bark the insults of the idle loiterers who made a ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... who spends a good deal of time with us, having no parents of her own, suggested an Old English sheep dog, explaining that it would be company for my wife when I was away from home. I coldly recommended a mastiff. ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... for mincing obscenity, but would talk freely, whatever came uppermost." She never had any children, and was not taxed with debauchery: "No man can say or affirm that ever she had a sweetheart or any such fond thing to dally with her;" a mastiff was the only living thing she cared for. Her life was not altogether honest, but not so much from any organic tendency to crime, it seems, as because her abnormal nature and restlessness made her an outcast. She was ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... judging that it would be very difficult to catch him, sent a large Mastiff after him, one that had won first prize in all the dog races. Pinocchio ran fast and the Dog ran faster. At so much noise, the people hung out of the windows or gathered in the street, anxious to see the end of ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... development of the brain, in several of the domesticated varieties occasioning alterations even in the form of the head, some of them having long, slender muzzles with a flat forehead, others having short muzzles with a forehead convex, etc., insomuch that the apparent difference between a mastiff and a water-spaniel and between a greyhound and a pugdog are even more striking than between almost any of the wild species ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... pocket-glass every few minutes—and very fair complexion, with little positive expression of character in his features. His nose was pointed; his chin, projected and covered with innumerable little pimples, gave an irregular and mastiff-shaped mouth a peculiar expression. He wore a very highly-polished and high-heeled pair of boots, and a broad-brimmed, silk-smooth hat. He seemed very anxious to display the beauty of two diamond rings that glittered upon his delicate little fingers, made more conspicuous by the wristbands ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... equipage to Pisa in the autumn of 1821, consisted, inter caetera, of nine horses, a monkey, a bull-dog, and a mastiff, two cats, three pea-fowls, and ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... him an old commissionaire who had been attached to the outdoor service of the hotel for many years—a grey-haired man, wiry as a terrier and strong as a mastiff. Entering the bedroom with Jules, whose hands were bound, he told the commissionaire ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... well barked at, that's the reason," said Bernardo, smiling. "His own generals opened their throats pretty well, and at last our Signoria sent the mastiff of the city, Fra Girolamo. The Cristianissimo was frightened at that thunder, and has given the order to move. I'm afraid there'll be small agreement among us when he's gone, but, at any rate, all parties are agreed in being glad not to have Florence stifled with ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... an incident which had occurred during their early days together. She had been very much alarmed by the appearance of a huge mastiff who was permitted the run of the house, and her uncle, noticing her shrinking avoidance of the rather formidable looking beast, had composedly bidden her take him to the stables and chain him up. For an instant the child had hesitated. Then, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... bellowing like a mastiff, set up the cry that if William accepted that democratic crown out of the Frankfort gutter, Prussia would become involved in civil war. And it was a fact! The old-line Prussian military aristocracy wanted no "democratic gold, from the gutter, melted down with their old aristocratic gold ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... monkey, a Dutch mastiff, a mackaw,[176] Two parrots, with a Persian cat and kittens, He chose from several animals he saw— A terrier, too, which once had been a Briton's, Who dying on the coast of Ithaca, The peasants gave the poor dumb thing a pittance: These to secure in this strong blowing ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... with his congratulations, and Mrs. Snow came up, and the three Misses Snow, and the Balfours, and the neighbors; and there were kisses and hand-shakings, and good wishes. Jim beamed around upon the fluttering and chattering groups like a great, good-natured mastiff upon a playful collection of silken spaniels and smart terriers. It was the proudest moment of his life. Even when standing on the cupola of his hotel, surveying his achievements, and counting his possessions, he had never felt the thrill which moved him then. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... on his word, To turn the swarth, the quiv'ring load to rear, Or ply the busy rake, the land to clear. Summer's light garb itself now cumb'rous grown, Each his thin doublet in the shade throws down; Where oft the mastiff sculks with half-shut eye, And rouses at the stranger passing by; Whilst unrestrain'd the social converse flows, And every breast Love's powerful impulse knows, And rival wits with more than rustic grace Confess the presence of a ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... "they're nash things, them lop-eared rabbits; they'd happen ha' died, if they'd been fed. Things out o' natur niver thrive: God A'mighty doesn't like 'em. He made the rabbits' ears to lie back, an' it's nothin' but contrairiness to make 'em hing down like a mastiff dog's. Master Tom 'ull know better nor buy such things another time. Don't you fret, Miss. Will you come along home wi' me, and see my wife? ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... indifference that of the village near to which they happen to be encamped. In the upper provinces of Hindostan, the little encampments of these people are frequently very regular and neat, being there formed of the Sirkee entirely. Each apartment, though not much larger than a mastiff's kennel, has its own particular enclosure, or court-yard; generally erected in such a manner, as to become a species of circumvallation to the whole ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... 'you would have me like a prize mastiff, showing my teeth to the whole countryside. What matter if the man can throw ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the gunner, stepping forward; and they caught sight of the animal, a huge mastiff, bounding towards them. Dick held his drawn cutlass ready in his hand, and as the creature sprang up to seize him by the throat, with one sweep of his weapon he laid it dead at his feet, with its head almost severed from ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... portrait; he does not wear good clothes, but a coarse green coat with stockings to match. The Idiot of Coria is also dressed in green, though his garments are a little richer, but Don Antonio seems to have been a person of some importance. He is pictured in the Prado standing beside a beautiful mastiff almost as big as himself, and he wears a ruddy brown dress worked with gold. He carries a large plumed hat in his hand. Sebastian de Morra, who sits facing the audience, has one of the most wonderful heads ever set on canvas by the artist. This dwarf ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... tall admiral, Sir Hurricane Humbug, I think you call him, driving the poor lieutenants about like so many sheep before a dog; there was one always at his heels, like a running footman; and there was another that appeared to me to be chained, like a mastiff, to the door of the admiral's office, except when the admiral and family walked out, and then he brought up the rear with the governess. No, Frank, I shall not surrender at discretion, with all my charms, to any thing less than a captain, with ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... particular animal, say a Newfoundland dog, and is not weakened by the knowledge that this dog came from similar parents, would it be at all weakened, if, in tracing his genealogy, it were ascertained that he was a remote descendant of the mastiff or some other breed, or that both these and other breeds came (as is suspected) from some wolf? If not, how is the argument for design in the structure of our particular dog affected by the supposition that his wolfish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... And it writhed and turn'd away. The jackdaws caw'd at the body dead, Expos'd on the churchyard stones, They wagg'd their tails in scorn of her flesh, And turn'd up their bills at her bones. The convent mastiff trotting along, Sniff'd hard at the mortal leaven, Then bristled his hair at her brimstone smell, And howl'd out his fears to heaven. Then the jackdaw screech'd his joy, That he spurn'd the royal feast, And keen'd all night to the grievous owl, And the howling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... the very doors before even a dog gave warning. Then several curs raised a shrill alarm, and a great mastiff, chained to his kennel in the yard of the largest house, snapped his chain and sprang upon the raiders. The dog bore an Indian to the ground, and then fell dead, with a tomahawk buried in his skull. At the same moment the ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... he whistled drawlingly and in a moment the gigantic mastiff dashed among the camels. Seeing the children he leaped towards them. From joy he overturned Nell who extended her hands to him; he reared himself on Stas; afterwards whining and barking he ran round both a few times, again overturned Nell, again ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... long-lived animal. Individuals have been known of the age of fifty years. The cubs when first born are not much larger than the puppies of a mastiff. The people of Kamtschatka hunt this species with great assiduity, and obtain from it many of the comforts and necessaries of life. The skins are used for their beds and coverlets, for their caps, gloves, and boots. They manufacture from it harness for their dogs. From the intestines ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... at him as a big mastiff looks at a snarling cur with a look more of pity than contempt. Then he said slowly, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... ceremony. The act was generally condemned and public feeling ran so high against the offender that people would permit dead dogs to lie on their property until the fragrance was deafening rather than employ him; and the municipal authorities suffered one bloated old mastiff to utter itself from a public square in so clamorous an exhalation that passing strangers supposed themselves to be in the vicinity of a saw-mill. My father was indeed unpopular. During these dark days the family's sole dependence was on my ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... choreman was making pretense of some work upon a corral fence. But it was only pretense. His real occupation was espionage. His red-rimmed eyes never for a moment lost sight of his master's woman when she showed herself in the open. A curious-looking dog of immense proportions, half mastiff, half Newfoundland, squatted on its haunches at his side, alternating his green-eyed attention between a watchful regard for the hand that fed and thrashed it and the woman at the doorway. There was not much to choose between the faces of ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Gilbert cost me twenty Jacobuses, that's true; but then his hackney is worth something, and his Black Moor is worth twice as much were he sound, and I know how to handle him. Take a fat sucking mastiff whelp, flay and bowel him, stuff the body full of black and grey snails, roast a reasonable time, and baste with oil of spikenard, saffron, cinnamon, and honey, anoint with the dripping, working ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... do I too, and how you used to sit on my knee; and do you remember Jason, the big mastiff, and how you used to ride upon ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... elders! Him Whelm ye beneath, while I return for more. That land hath store of such. All men are there, Except Bonturo, barterers: of 'no' For lucre there an 'aye' is quickly made." Him dashing down, o'er the rough rock he turn'd, Nor ever after thief a mastiff loos'd Sped with like eager haste. That other sank And forthwith writing to the surface rose. But those dark demons, shrouded by the bridge, Cried "Here the hallow'd visage saves not: here Is other swimming than in Serchio's wave. Wherefore if thou desire we rend thee not, Take heed thou mount ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... large, strong, and fierce-looking dog, very ugly, being of a breed between mastiff and bulldog, who at this moment entered through the glass door, and posting directly to the rug, snuffed the fresh flowers scattered there. He seemed to scorn them as food; but probably thinking their velvety petals might be convenient as litter, he was turning round preparatory to depositing ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... shoulders, though instances have occurred where he has reached 42 inches. The young are of a pale yellowish tint, irregularly brindled with light brown. The boar of Germany is a large and formidable animal, and the hunting of him, with a small species of mastiff, is still a national sport. From living almost exclusively on acorns and nuts, his flesh is held in great esteem, and in Westphalia his legs are made into hams by a process which, it is said, enhances the flavour and quality of the meat in a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... word at him like an angry mastiff. "'Psychic!' What business has she to be a 'psychic'? She is too lovely to be anything but a wife and mother—a happy hausfrau. And you would make her infamous? My friend, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... of the country. He leaned upon his other elbow with a hollow groan; and the Chief of Farms was so afraid to speak that he trembled horribly in spite of his thick shoulders and his big red eyeballs. His face, which was as snub-nosed as a mastiff's, was surmounted by a net woven of threads of bark. He wore a waist-belt of hairy leopard's skin, wherein ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... season. The crumpled linen hat she wore was designed for comfort and not for elegance. Her gown of brown holland was simplicity itself. She sat carelessly with her arm round the neck of an immense mastiff who had followed ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Karl's big mastiff and Fischer de Heischland's pair of wolf-hounds, with tails low, hair straight and smooth, heads advanced and ears erect, came into ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... single arch of the South bridge is a huge mastiff, sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in his pockets; he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull, and has the Shakespearian dewlaps shaking ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... jennets, my lady's three palfreys, and the great dapple-gray roussin, had all their needs supplied, had taken his dogs for an evening breather. Sixty or seventy of them, large and small, smooth and shaggy—deer-hound, boar-hound, blood-hound, wolf-hound, mastiff, alaun, talbot, lurcher, terrier, spaniel—snapping, yelling and whining, with score of lolling tongues and waving tails, came surging down the narrow lane which leads from the Twynham kennels to the bank of Avon. Two russet-clad varlets, with loud halloo ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... scrubbiest cur in all the pack Can set the mastiff on your back. I own, his madness is a jest, If that were all. But he's possest Incarnate with a thousand imps, To work whose ends his madness pimps; Who o'er each string and wire preside, Fill every pipe, each motion guide; Directing every ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... a boy, my grandfather frequently told a story concerning a dog which he knew, as an example of true fidelity. This animal was a mastiff that belonged to a friend, Mr. Prideaux, to whom it was a constant companion. Whenever Mr. Prideaux went out for a walk, Turk was sure to be near his heels. Street dogs would bark and snarl at the giant as his massive ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... tennis-court, or a club at the tavern; I never counted among my honours these opuscula of mine, but merely as harmless amusements. It is my partridge, as with St. John the Evangelist; my cat, as with Pope St. Gregory; my little dog, as with St. Dominick; my lamb, as with St. Francis; my great black mastiff, as with Cornelius Agrippa; and my tame hare, as with Justus Lipsius." I have since discovered in Niceron that this Catherinot could never get a printer, and was rather compelled to study economy in his two hundred quartos ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... last Kerkuon grew angry, and caught Theseus round the neck, and shook him as a mastiff shakes a rat; but he could not shake ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... treated that she never ran from any one, except from strange dogs. She knew they would be likely to hurt her. If they came upon her suddenly, she faced them, and she was a pretty good fighter when she was put to it. I once saw her having a brush with a big mastiff that lived a few blocks from us, and giving him good fright; which just served ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... the swift ure by Volga's rolling flood Chased through the plains the mastiff curs toforn, Flies to the succor of some neighbor wood, And often turns again his dreadful horn Against the dogs imbrued in sweat and blood, That bite not, till the beast to flight return; Or as the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... answered, they all thought that they heard as if a dog came barking upon them; a dog, and a great one too, and this made the women and children afraid: nor durst they, for a while, to knock any more, for fear the mastiff should fly upon them. Now, therefore, they were greatly tumbled up and down in their minds, and knew not what to do: knock they durst not, for fear of the dog; go back they durst not, for fear the Keeper of that gate should espy them as they so went, and should be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... very courteous and even kind to me, which was fortunate, as the young men had little idea of showing even ordinary civilities. That night I made the acquaintance of his dog "Ring," said to be the best hunting dog in Colorado, with the body and legs of a collie, but a head approaching that of a mastiff, a noble face with a wistful human expression, and the most truthful eyes I ever saw in an animal. His master loves him if he loves anything, but in his savage moods ill-treats him. "Ring's" devotion never swerves, and his truthful eyes are rarely taken ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... know. Henry used to own the mother of it, and she was one quarter mastiff and the rest assorted varieties. This one he's givin' me ain't a whole dog, you see; just a half-grown pup. The varioloid all over again—hey? Ho, ho! I didn't really take him for sartin, you understand; just on trial. If we ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wild and shaggy in appearance, being clothed in the skins of beasts, with sandals of untanned cowhide. On his head was a garland of oak leaves; and from his neck hung a horn. He was armed with a hunting-spear and wood-knife, and attended by a large Lancashire mastiff. Advancing to the front of the stage, the foremost personage ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... who was almost skin and bone, so well did the Dogs of the neighbourhood keep guard over their masters' property, met, one moonshiny night, a sleek Mastiff, who was, moreover, as strong as he was fat. The Wolf would gladly have supped off him, but saw that there would first be a great fight, for which, in his condition, he was not prepared; so, bidding the Dog good-evening very humbly, he praised his ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... came night careering And vanish'd was the sun, The stars were seen appearing All heaven's arch upon. Then far was heard the yelling, When you thereto gave heed, Of those that watch'd the dwelling, Four hounds of mastiff breed. ...
— Ellen of Villenskov - and Other Ballads • Anonymous
... foremost Italian masters. Certainly in all his work there is a dignity, power, and charm, especially in that well- known Maids of Honor, where a little Spanish princess is depicted holding her court, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, her dwarfs and her mastiff, while the artist himself stands at his easel. The last feat of Velasquez was to superintend the elaborate decorations in honor of the marriage of the Spanish Infanta with King Louis XIV of France. Murillo, the youngest of all these great painters, did most of his work ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... cautioned that a mad dog, frothing at the mouth, has passed this way, going west. Officers have gone in pursuit of the animal, but passers-by may encounter the dog before the officers do. The dog is a huge English mastiff, without collar. Turn ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... During the wretched days he was obliged to remain at home, he had not even the diversion letters and newspapers might have afforded, since no post came in. His sole amusement consisted in stirring the fire, and playing with Lion, his mastiff, or with his little menagerie. So much did he suffer from it all, that his kind heart bestowed pity even ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... and barred the way—not like a fierce mastiff, but like an angel, entreating me to stay with that mingled look of innocence, fear, and hope, of which girls know the effect so well. I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Hyena villosa, or "hairy hyena," is better, as the long, straight hair falling down his sides gives him a peculiar aspect, and at once distinguishes him from any of the others. He is equally as large and fierce as any, being of the size of a Saint Bernard mastiff, but it is difficult to imagine how any one could mistake him for either a striped or spotted hyena. His colour is dark brown, or nearly black above, and dirty grey beneath. In fact, in general colour and the arrangement of his hair, he is not ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... passing through a meadow, a large mastiff ran at him, and he stabbed the dog with a bayonet. The master of the dog asked him why he had not rather struck the dog with the butt-end of his weapon? "So I should," said the soldier, "if he had run at me ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... monks read to his brethren at their meals. The pulpit is much overgrown with ivy. We should have made further researches among these remains, though they seem now to be in private grounds; but a large mastiff came nut of his kennel, and, approaching us to the length of his iron chain, began barking very fiercely. Nor had we time to see half that we would gladly have seen and studied here and elsewhere about Shrewsbury. It would have been very interesting to have ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in Germany that never fails to charm and fascinate me is the German dog. In England one grows tired of the old breeds, one knows them all so well: the mastiff, the plum-pudding dog, the terrier (black, white or rough-haired, as the case may be, but always quarrelsome), the collie, the bulldog; never anything new. Now in Germany you get variety. You come across dogs the like ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... Cameron dragged him about as a mastiff might a terrier, striving to free himself from those gripping arms. Even as Jerry spoke, through the dim light the figure of an Indian could be seen passing and repassing the ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... they have the utmost freedom of action, including freedom to do wrong, without any fear of Imperial interference. Of this licence the white inhabitants of the Union are making the fullest use. Like a mastiff long held in the leash they are urging the application of all the former stringent measures enacted against the blacks, and the authorities, in obedience to their electoral supporters, are enforcing these measures with the utmost rigour against the blacks because ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... house, and therefore parted with a moiety of all my store; and pray, mother, ought I not to have given her the other half-crown, for what she got would be of little use to her? However, I soon arrived at the mansion of my affectionate friend, guarded by the vigilance of a huge mastiff, who flew at me, and would have torn me to pieces but for the assistance of a woman, whose countenance was not less grim than that of the dog; yet she with great humanity relieved me from the jaws of this Cerberus, and was prevailed on to carry up ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... report, that the first Squire of Moultrassie, the brewer of Chesterfield, who had brought the estate, and then died of melancholy for lack of something to do (and, as was said, not without suspicions of suicide), was supposed to walk in this sequestered avenue, accompanied by a large headless mastiff, which, when he was alive, was a particular favourite of the ex-brewer. To have expected any protection from her escort, in the condition to which superstitious fear had reduced him, would have been truly a hopeless trust; and Lady Peveril, who was not apprehensive of any danger, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... light Making stars of his eyes. In swiftness and poise, A proud child of the deer, A white fawn he was, Yet a fawn without fear. No youth thought him vain, Or made mock of his hair, Or laughed when his ways Were most curiously fair. A mastiff at fight, He could strike to the earth The envious one Who would challenge his worth. However we bowed To the schoolmaster mild, Our spirits went out To the fawn-footed child. His beckoning led Our troop ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... good mastiff," said Flammock. "Some rude sagacity, and a stout hand instead of a sharp case of teeth, are all that I can claim to be added to them—I will do my best.—Fare thee well, Roschen! Thou art going among strangers—forget not the qualities ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... companion mimicked, with a good deal of humour, the flattering, conciliating tone of the tenant's address, and the hypocritical melancholy of the Laird's reply. His grandfather, he said, had, while he spoke, his eye fixed on the rental-book, as if it were a mastiff-dog that he was afraid would spring ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... vanity, and that I must pray for his soul when he was dead as he was sure it would need such help, also that I ought to put the gold piece out to interest. This I did by buying with it a certain fierce mastiff dog I coveted that had been brought on a ship from Norway, which dog bit some great man in our town, who hauled my mother before the bailiff about it and caused the poor beast to be killed, to ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... plant had ever dared to talk to him like that. He would glare down at Fanny for a moment, like a mastiff on a terrier. Fanny, seeing his face rage-red, would flash him a cheerful and impudent smile. The anger, fading slowly, gave way to another look, so that admiration and resentment ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... able to anticipate most of their attacks and they had resulted in little harm to himself. They had left him unperturbed, unharmed—like the attacks of an excitable poodle upon a giant, contemptuous mastiff. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the weakest one best; and, therefore, little Kitty was never without a friend and protector. Ever since a certain day in the summer, when she had fallen into the stream, and had been carried home insensible by Bouncer, Kitty had loved the huge mastiff dearly, and nightly added to her simple prayer, "Please, God, ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... rudely cut short, for with a yell of pain he darted off across the arena, closely followed by a huge mastiff, whose tail he had been unfortunate enough to ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... leaped to his feet, shaking himself as a great mastiff might whose coat had been ruffled ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of defence was gone from him, and the only thing left to him to deal with was his own life, had become quiet and silent and passionless, as was his habit. He would have fought like a mastiff for his home, but this they had forbidden him to do, and he was passive and without hope. He closed his door, and sat down with his hand in that of Reine Allix and his arm around his wife. "There is nothing to do but wait" he said sadly. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... stunted shadow. Six and one-half feet Rea stood, with yard-wide shoulders, a hulk of bone and brawn. His ponderous, shaggy head rested on a bull neck. His broad face, with its low forehead, its close-shut mastiff under jaw, its big, opaque eyes, pale and cruel as those of a jaguar, marked him a man of terrible ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... swing the telescope like that. He saw for a moment the outline of a head black against the starlight, with sharply-pointed upstanding ears and a crest between them. It seemed to him to be as big as a mastiff's. Then he began to bawl out as loudly as ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... when they came before the castle, they beheld a vast flock of sheep, which was boundless, and without an end. And upon the top of a mound there was a herdsman, keeping the sheep. And a rug made of skins was upon him; and by his side was a shaggy mastiff, larger than a steed nine winters old. Never had he lost even a lamb from his flock, much less a large sheep. He let no occasion ever pass without doing some hurt and harm. All the dead trees and bushes in the plain he burnt with his breath down to ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... shirt, for he had been one of the witnesses, and he was firmly planted on his bowed legs, his long arms hanging down by his sides; his little red eyes were fixed on Zorzi's face, his ugly jaw was set like a mastiff's, and his extraordinary face seemed cut in two by a monstrous smile ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... the deep-mouthed baying of the blood-hound, or the mastiff, to the sniff and snarl of the rat-terrier, their music was not agreeable to the fugitives, who had, however, to contend with this difficulty, and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... red—you might have mistaken him for a panther—a cougar. His long black muzzle and broad hanging ears gave him quite a different aspect, however, and declared him to be a hound. He was one—a bloodhound, with the cross of a mastiff—a powerful animal. It was the dog 'Marengo.'" ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... depend on mere beauty for her power. She had a markedly sadistic vein in her composition; and, when annoyed, was not above laying about her right and left with a dog-whip that she always carried. An impudent lackey would be flogged into submission, or set upon by a fierce mastiff that she kept at her heels. High office, too, meant nothing to her. She boxed the ears of Baron Pechman; and, because he chanced to upset her, she encouraged her four-coated companion to tear the best trousers of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... darkness Napoleon missed his tackle, and the full shock came on Dickson. He aimed at what he thought was the enemy's throat, found only an arm, and was shaken off as a mastiff might shake off a toy terrier. He made another clutch, fell, and in falling caught his opponent's leg so that he brought him down. The man was immensely agile, for he was up in a second and something hot and bright blew into Dickson's face. The pistol bullet had ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... her place. He fortified every door and window with such bars of iron that his house might have resisted the forcible attack of a whole army. Night and day growled before his inhospitable door a furious Dutch mastiff, whose natural ferocity was so increased by continual hunger, for his master fed him most sparingly, that no stranger could have entered the ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... of my approach, and instantly turned their attention on me. I wildly shouted. "Ave Maria," then, revolver in hand, stood awaiting the onset; but when they were near enough for me to see that the pack was composed of eight or ten huge yellow mastiff-like brutes, my courage failed, and I fled to the corral, where, with an agility surpassing that of a wild cat, so great was my terror, I climbed up a post and placed myself beyond their reach. With the dogs furiously barking under me, I renewed my shouts of "Ave Maria"—the proper ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... and read Mitford again, and played with my mastiff—gave him his supper. Made another reading to the epigram, but the turn the same. To-night at the theatre, there being a prince on his throne in the last scene of the comedy,—the audience laughed, and asked him for a Constitution. This shows the state ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... inclined to prefer them to the other puppies who fawned on him because of his success—those people of whom D'Aubigne writes, who "when a mastiff plunges his nose into a butter-pot, come and lick his whiskers by way ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... gentleman though he is, by giving him a title which as completely characterized him in those days, as did his moody ways, his quaint attire and the persistence with which he kept at his side his great mastiff, Rudge. I had long since heard of the old gentleman as one of the most interesting residents of the precinct. I had even seen him more than once on the avenue, but I had never before been brought ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... the facts to myself. Only a Puppy! and I thought it was a mastiff! [Good name, by the way, for a novel—Only a Puppy.] If I'd shaken that door again, then they could ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... no sort of animal, nor any track of beast, but once, and that seemed to be the tread of a beast as big as a mastiff dog. Here are a few small land-birds, but none bigger than a black-bird ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... And at length we hit upon the following scheme of retribution. This it is which we propose as applicable to Greece. Well acquainted with the indomitable spirit of the bull-dog, and the fidelity of the mastiff, we determined to obtain two such companions; to re-traverse our old ground; to make a point of visiting every house where we had been grossly insulted by dogs; and to commit our cause to the management of these ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... friendship. He makes me happy beyond flattery by permitting me to think that I add something to his life. You cannot fail to like him. He is a thorough Englishman, self-relying and self-contained; a well-bred gentleman without a jot of effeminacy. Plucky as a mastiff, high-blooded as a racer, enterprising but reflective, cool, keen, and as composed as daring. Few men talk less; few by manner and conduct suggest more. One fault you will pardon, a tendency to overrate the ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... were, and felt the points of his own claws. The little devices of Mr. Chaffanbrass did not deceive him. He knew what he had to expect; but his pluck was good, as is the pluck of a terrier when a mastiff prepares to attack him. Let Mr. Chaffanbrass do his worst; that would all be over in an hour or so. But when Mr. Chaffanbrass had done his worst, Orley Farm ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... the morning sun found Peter still at his desk. But this time his head was not bowed upon his blotter, as if he were beaten or dead. His whole figure was stiff with purpose, and his jaw was as rigid as a mastiff's. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... said in English or German, let alone Irish. 'Goot,' says MUNSTER to me, dropping into his German accent, which, on occasion, comes quite natural to him—the cratur! 'I'll give the loaf to the dog;' and he whistles up the mastiff, own brother to BISMARCK's. 'Eh, MICKY, ye gossoon, isn't the proverb, "Loaf me, loaf my dog"?' Ah! then was cheers for ould Ireland, and a mighty big dhrink entirely we had ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... greeting was screamed at an amazing pitch, and repeated before I had time to drop the window, and say 'thank you.' 'I'd a let you out myself—there's a good dog, you would na' bite Cousin' (the parenthesis was to a huge mastiff, who thrust himself beside her, by this time quite pacified)—'only I daren't go down the steps, for the ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... thought Cecil, as a bull terrier, three or four Gordon setters, an Alpine mastiff, and two wiry Skyes dashed at their chains, giving tongue in frantic delight at the sound of his step, while the hounds echoed the welcome from their more distant kennels, and he went slowly across the great stone yard, with the end of a huge cheroot glimmering through the gloom. "So he need ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... remarked it is impossible to recognise the greater number with any certainty. Youatt, however, gives a drawing of a beautiful sculpture of two greyhound puppies from the Villa of Antoninus. On an Assyrian monument, about 640 B.C., an enormous mastiff[8] is figured; and according to Sir H. Rawlinson (as I was informed at the British Museum), similar dogs are still imported into this same country. I have looked through the magnificent works of Lepsius and Rosellini, and on the monuments from the fourth to the twelfth dynasties (i.e. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... that he should have bowels for the poor, so he can secure for his family the odd trick. Or should some show of respect, for what is termed with ignorant ostentation an Englishman's birth-right, be expedient to bubble the gruff mastiff that he has to lead by the nose, he can make an empty show, very safely, by giving his single voice, and suffering his light squadron to file off to the other side. And when a question of humanity is agitated, he may dip a sop in the milk of human kindness, to silence Cerberus, and ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... came in sight of land, my dog repeatedly placed his fore feet upon the rail and sniffed the wind blowing from the coast. His inhalations were long and earnest, like those of a tobacco smoking Comanche. In her previous voyage the Wright carried a mastiff answering to the name of Rover. The colonel said that whenever they approached land, though long before it was in sight, Rover would put his paws on the bulwarks and direct his nose toward the shore. His demonstrations were invariably accurate, and showed ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... taken from its artificiality. Neither is there any cone nor cart-horses about. Why, even a tall chanticleer makes a home look homely. I do like to see a tall proud chanticleer strutting in the yard and barely giving way as I advance, almost ready to do battle with a stranger like a mastiff. So I prefer the simple old home ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... with a moiety of all my store; and pray, mother, ought I not to have given her the other half crown, for what she got would be of little use to her? However, I soon arrived at the mansion of my affectionate friend, guarded by the vigilance of a huge mastiff, who flew at me and would have torn me to pieces but for the assistance of a woman, whose countenance was not less grim than that of the dog; yet she with great humanity relieved me from the jaws of this Cerberus, and was prevailed on to carry up my name ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... friends of the closet naturalist, which help him to whole pages of speculation—have enabled him to separate the beaver from the musquash, although the whole history and habits of these creatures prove them to be congeners, as much as a mastiff is the congener of a greyhound—indeed, far more. So like are they in a general sense, that the Indians call ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... him much popularity in that country, and caused him to find great favor in their High Mightinesses, the lords and states general, and also of the honorable West India Company. He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was supposed in those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant neighborhood of his tobacco pipe. * * * As chief mate and favorite companion, the commander chose Master Robert Juet, of Limehouse, in England. By some his name has ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... would come voluntarily to its master, and take fruit or vegetables out of his hand, rubbing against him as does an affectionate cat. The same animal, however, showed considerable courage. On one occasion it was attacked by a ferocious mastiff. One morning the dog was seen making a dash at some object in the corner of the fence. This proved to be the tame porcupine, which had escaped from its cage. The dog seemed regardless of all its threats, and probably supposing it to be an animal not more formidable than a cat, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... men, looking much like a boating party at Oxford would have looked in the days I remembered, and not more troubled with their work: their outer raiment lay on the road-side in an orderly pile under the guardianship of a six-year-old boy, who had his arm thrown over the neck of a big mastiff, who was as happily lazy as if the summer-day had been made for him alone. As I eyed the pile of clothes, I could see the gleam of gold and silk embroidery on it, and judged that some of these workmen had tastes akin to those ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... analogy. 'We see (said he) in metals that there are different species; and so likewise in animals, though one species may not differ very widely from another, as in the species of dogs,—the cur, the spaniel, the mastiff. The Bramins are ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... except by digging. There were various trees, and among these the tree producing dragon's-blood. We saw no fruit-trees, nor so much as the track of any animal, except one footstep of a beast, which seemed the size of a large mastiff. There were a few land-birds, but none bigger than a black-bird, and scarcely any sea-fowl; neither did the sea afford any fish, except tortoises and manatees,[201] both of which are in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... lass, and try That potent skill in palmistry. Which sixpences can wheedle; Mine is a friendly cottage—here No snarling mastiff need you fear, No ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... itself. We are concerned only with the diversities of instinct and of other mental qualities within the same class." (p. 255) He shows that even in a state of nature the instincts of animals of the same species do in some degree vary, and that they are transmitted by inheritance. A mastiff has imparted courage to a greyhound, and a greyhound has transmitted to a shepherd-dog a disposition to hunt hares. Among sporting dogs, the young of the pointer or retriever have been known to point or to retrieve without instruction. "If," he says, "it can be shown ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... the manner of Montaigne in Italy, who compared Verona to Poitiers, and Padua to Bordeaux, and who, when he was in Florence, paid much less attention to Michelangelo than to "a very strangely shaped sheep, and an animal the size of a large mastiff, shaped like a cat and striped with black and white, which they ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... of ugliness; now sharing the commons of Master Keep the shoemaker's pigs; now succeeding to the reversion of the well-gnawed bone of Master Brown the shopkeeper's fierce house-dog; now filching the skim-milk of Dame Wheeler's cat:—spit at by the cat; worried by the mastiff; chased by the pigs; screamed at by the dame; stormed at by the shoemaker; flogged by the shopkeeper; teased by all the children, and scouted by all the animals of the parish;—but yet living through his griefs, and bearing them patiently, 'for sufferance ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... flanges of his nostrils were thickly hair-lined with those little red-and-blue veins that are to be found in the texture of good American paper currency and in the faces of elderly men who have lived much out-of-doors during their lives. His jowls were heavy and pendulous like a mastiff's. His frontal bone came down low and straight so that under the flat arch of the brow his small, very bright agate-blue eyes looked out as from beneath half-closed shutters. His hair was clipped close to his scalp and the shape of his skull showed, rounded ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... a great, handsome, fawn-colored mastiff, sleek of coat and well fed, but muddied now along his flanks, evidently having waded through the mire of the wet meadow beside the tracks. He had come under, or through, a barbed wire fence, too, for there was a long scratch ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... every canine tone from the howl of the wolf-dog to the petulant bark of the terrier. The master received their boisterous salutations with a variety of imitations from his own throat, when the dogs, probably from shame of being outdone, ceased their out- cry. One stately, powerful mastiff, who wore round his neck a brass collar, with M. T. engraved in large letters on the rim, alone was silent. He walked majestically, amid the confusion, to the side of the Judge, where, receiving a kind pat or two, he turned to Elizabeth, who even ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... papers had gone. I snatched my sabre from the table and rushed out in search of him. But the scoundrel had guessed what I would do, and had made his preparations for me. It was in the corner of the yard that I found him, a blunderbuss in his hands and a mastiff held upon a leash by his son. The two stable-hands, with pitchforks, stood upon either side, and the wife held a great lantern behind him, so as to guide ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the tour of Galloway in 1769, as Fannie was wandering in the neighbourhood of Moffat, on her way to Edinburgh, where, I am informed, she was likewise well known, Old Charlie, her favourite ram, chanced to break into a kale-yard, which the proprietor observing, let loose a mastiff, that hunted the poor sheep to death. This was a sad misfortune; it seemed to renew all the pangs which she formerly felt on the death of her lover. She would not part from the side of her old friend for several days, and it was with much difficulty ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... tempest, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies away, we replace the broken mass, we check the leak, we extinguish the fire; but what is to be done with this enormous bronze beast? How can it be subdued? You can reason with a mastiff, take a bull by surprise, fascinate a snake, frighten a tiger, mollify a lion; but there is no resource with the monster known as a loosened gun. You cannot kill it,—it is already dead; and yet it lives. It breathes a sinister life bestowed ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... never see him again," sobbed Mrs. Bright, as she took Isobel by the hand and sauntered slowly home, accompanied by Fred and Buzzby, the latter of whom seemed to regard himself in the light of a shaggy Newfoundland or mastiff, who had been left to protect the family. "We are always hearing of whale-ships being lost, and, somehow or other, we never hear of the crews being saved, as one reads of when ships are wrecked in the usual way ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Jack or Wesley came about, the heartless young jilt, made as if she didn't know him; quite ignored him, and cared no more for his simple adoration than she did for the frisky gambols of Pizarro, the mastiff. But she was so adorable; her Southern accent was so bewitching; she put so much softness in those amusing idioms "I reckon" and "Seems like," "You others," and the countless little tricks of the Southern vernacular, that Dick passed sleepless hours and delicious ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... a fancy for bulldogs; he had bred bulldogs; and one day he had sacrificed even that great delight at the call of his business; and now no one could guess that he knew the difference between a setter and a mastiff! ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... could never go. Like the lamb, he could not go to school; so while Dinnie was away, Satan began to make friends. He would bark, "Howdy-do?" to every dog that passed his gate. Many stopped to rub noses with him through the fence— even Hugo the mastiff, and nearly all, indeed, except one strange- looking dog that appeared every morning at precisely nine o'clock and took his stand on the corner. There he would lie patiently until a funeral came along, and then Satan would see him take his place at the ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... about three years later Ferdinando returned to Crome accompanied by a very large mastiff dog. He had bought it from an old man at Windsor who had found the beast too expensive to feed. It was a savage, unreliable animal; hardly had it entered the house when it attacked one of Sir Hercules's favourite pugs, seizing the creature in its jaws ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... for her rudeness, Eugenia ere long sought the stranger, and tried to be very agreeable; but there was no affinity between them, and to Mr. Hastings, who was watching them, they seemed much like a fierce mastiff, and a spiteful cat, impatient ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... the glades of the forest and approached the unsuspecting fort. All the men were at work in the fields excepting one, who was left sick at home. There was also chained up in the fort, a powerful and faithful mastiff, of whom the Indians stood in great dread. Three of the savages, concealing, as far as they could, their weapons, approached the fort, under the pretence of bartering some beaver skins. They met Hossett, ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... the lobby of the Haymarket Stores one day, and all round about me were dogs, waiting for the return of their owners, who were shopping inside. There were a mastiff, and one or two collies, and a St. Bernard, a few retrievers and Newfoundlands, a boar-hound, a French poodle, with plenty of hair round its head, but mangy about the middle; a bull-dog, a few Lowther Arcade sort of animals, about the size of rats, and ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... Bronte looked, moved, sat and spoke, we still return to 'Shirley.' A host of corroborating memories start up in turning the pages. Who but Emily was always accompanied by a "rather large, strong, and fierce-looking dog, very ugly, being of a breed between a mastiff and a bulldog?" it is familiar to us as Una's lion; we do not need to be told, Currer Bell, that she always sat on the hearthrug of nights, with her hand on his head, reading a book; we remember well how necessary it was to secure him as an ally in winning her affection. Has not a dear friend ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... to have lost both virtues. The Americans at least have acted like men,(172) gone to the"bottom at once, and set the whole upon the whole. Our conduct has been that of pert children: we have thrown a pebble at a mastiff, and are surprised that it was not frightened. Now we must kill the guardian of the house which will be plundered the moment little master has nothing but the old nurse to defend it. But I have done with reflections; you will be ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole |
