"Elephantine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answer. He looked at Haddo curiously. He asked himself whether he believed seriously these preposterous things, or whether he was amusing himself in an elephantine way at their expense. His mariner was earnest, but there was an odd expression about the mouth, a hard twinkle of the eyes, which seemed to belie it. Susie was vastly entertained. It diverted her enormously to hear occult matters discussed ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... arts—we have Millet instead of Claude; we have Zola instead of Georges Sand; we have Dumas fils instead of Corneille; we have Mercie instead of Canova; but in music we have precisely the reverse, and we have the elephantine creations, the elaborate and pompous combinations of Baireuth, and the Tone school, instead of the old sweet strains of melody that went straight and clear to the ear and the heart of man. Sometimes my enemies write ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... six he stood in his moccasins, yet seemed not tall, so broad he was and ponderously thick. He had an elephantine leg, with a foot like a black-oak wedge; a chimpanzean arm, with a fist like a black-oak maul; eyes as large and placid as those of an ox; teeth as large and even as those of a horse; skin that was not skin, but ebony; a nose that was not ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... South American forests—a vast sleepy mass, my elephantine limbs and yard-long talons contrasting strangely with the little meek rabbit's head, furnished with a poor dozen of clumsy grinders, and a very small kernel of brains, whose highest consciousness was the enjoyment ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... as he fled before the elephantine charge of Professor Boomly—once again around my desk, then out into the hall, where I heard the door of his office slam, and Boomly, gasping, panting, breathing vengeance outside, and vowing to leave Quint quite ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... de Oliva, the Knight of the Sun, &c., or hearing such tales of [5090]lovers, descriptions of their persons, lascivious discourses, such as Astyanassa, Helen's waiting-woman, by the report of Suidas, writ of old, de variis concubitus modis, and after her Philenis and Elephantine; or those light tracts of [5091]Aristides Milesius (mentioned by Plutarch) and found by the Persians in Crassus' army amongst the spoils, Aretine's dialogues, with ditties, love songs, &c., must needs set them on fire, with such like pictures, as those of Aretine, or wanton objects ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... First French Empire distinguished the gilded chairs and tables in the drawing-room. There were statues by Chantrey and Canova in the spacious lofty hall; portraits by Lawrence and Romney in the dining-room; a historical picture by Copley over the elephantine mahogany sideboard; a Greek sarcophagus ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... known to himself, he preferred to stick by the Maggie. In his dull way it is probable that he was fascinated by the agile intelligence of Mr. Gibney, the vitriolic tongue of Captain Scraggs, and the elephantine wit and grizzly bear courage of Mr. McGuffey. At any rate, he delighted in hearing ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... harness, and everything else nowadays from the abominable "stores"; but I must not leave my artist, and shall let the saddler growl to himself for the present. The polished writer goes on to speak of the ruddy farmer who strolls round in elephantine fashion and hooks out sample-bags from his plethoric and prosperous pockets; the dealers drive a brisk trade, the small shopkeepers are encouraged by their neighbours from the country, and everything is extremely idyllic and pure and pretty and representative of England at ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... with a sigh of relief. He was more at his ease sitting than standing. For the first time in his life he was ashamed of his size. Angela's delicate limbs and hands made his, by contrast, appear elephantine. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... dull, ponderous panting sounded in the street without, and let all the neighbors know that "The Threshing Machine" (as Clover had christened his elephantine toy) was ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... This is false, not to any of the particular schools of architecture about which professors can read in libraries, but to the inmost instinctive idea of architecture itself. A Norman capital can be heavy because the Norman column is thick, and the whole thing expresses an elephantine massiveness and repose. And a Gothic column can be slender, because its strength is energy; and is expressed in its line, which shoots upwards like the life of a tree, like the jet of a fountain or even like the rush of a rocket. But a slender thing beneath, obviously ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... have suggested another title to the ownership of dogs—a very common one, too, and good enough till the proper person comes interfering. Boys' dogs are generally held under this tenure. My companion, seeing me at fault, remarked with elephantine waggishness, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... hitting the public between wind and water: Mr. Cooper therefore poured in a whole broadside of printed notices, which were put into every hand, and a huge playbill, which glared at the corner of every street in letters of elephantine size, informing the public that the distinguished performer already mentioned, had kindly consented to act a principal part in the entertainment of the evening. No sooner was this announced than the whole ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... cooped up long." "I guess he's gone to get a drink at the bar," suggested the practical Miss Bredd. "How did you like my Fricka—oh, here's Mr. Dennett—Caspar, Caspar come over here, here!" The big girl stood up in elephantine eagerness, and a jaunty, handsome young man, with a shaven face and an important chin, slowly made his way through the press of people to the Fridolin table. It was Caspar Dennett, the conductor. After a formal presentation to the tall, thin ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... the real grand, miscellaneous, popular, and populous morning concert! Now for elephantine dimensions and leviathan bills of fare. It is nominally, perhaps, or really, perhaps, the annual benefit concert of some well-known performer, or it is the speculation of a great musical publishing house, in the name of one of their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... Karl now brought forth, approaching the seal with the obvious intention of despatching it summarily; when another evidence of its elephantine character was displayed, well ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... understood that the Germans were coming. He had not seen them; but when the gun fell silent he heard whining sounds in the air, as if from a litter of elephantine puppies. Sometimes the twigs of trees fell on him, the dirt in front of him flew up into his face; and always, of course, everywhere about him was that roar of bursting shells which he had come to accept as a natural part of life. And suddenly ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... He made some elephantine attempts at smartening his appearance. He gave his fiery mustache a heavenward twist; he dragged into sight a pair of black-edged cuffs, deepened the crease in his middle by tightening his belt another hole, and set off, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... the night time with the stars and the moon. He was running like a youthful god, she thought, for her mind had not yet been weaned from certain vanities, and she could not see that a gigantic policeman was in his wake, tracking him with elephantine bounds, and now and again snatching a gasp from hurry to blow furious warnings ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Empress of my life, Your ample waist Just fits the gown I fancy for my wife, And suits my taste; Yet there you stand, flat-footed, square and deep, An unresponsive, elephantine heap, Coquetting with the stars while ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... whacking, whopping, walloping, thumping, thundering, hulking; overgrown; puffy &c (swollen) 194. huge, immense, enormous, mighty; vast, vasty; amplitudinous, stupendous; monster, monstrous, humongous, monumental; elephantine, jumbo, mammoth; gigantic, gigantean, giant, giant like, titanic; prodigious, colossal, Cyclopean, Brobdingnagian, Bunyanesque, Herculean, Gargantuan; infinite &c 105. large as life; plump as a dumpling, plump as a partridge; fat as a pig, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... power of her Celtic lungs, plucked off her downtrodden shoes, slapped their soles together smartly, and, with a gesture of royal prodigality, tossed them right and left into the air, performed a caper of surprising agility on elephantine, blue-yarn-stocking-covered feet, and was carried away by a roaring surge ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the Prophet hurried Mr. Sagittarius from the room, driving Mr. Ferdinand, in a condition of elephantine horror, before him, and abandoning Madame to an acquaintance with the classics that she had certainly never achieved in the society of the ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... brown poplin that she knew now was different from any other dress she had seen at school. And Jerry could not get that shiny pump out of her mind! Her own feet, in their sturdy black, square-toed shoes, commenced to assume such elephantine proportions that, when the signal came for the debaters to go forward, she could scarcely ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... state. When not admiring Mr. Burton in Shakespeare we admired him as Paul Pry, as Mr. Toodles and as Aminadab Sleek in The Serious Family, and we must have admired him very much—his huge fat person, his huge fat face and his vast slightly pendulous cheek, surmounted by a sort of elephantine wink, to which I impute a remarkable baseness, being still perfectly present ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... was nearly forty years old, he made his first literary hit with Sartor Resartus which called out a storm of caustic criticism. The Germanic style, the elephantine humor, the strange conceits and the sledge-hammer blows at all which the smug English public regarded with reverence—all these features aroused irritation. Four years later came The French Revolution, which established Carlyle's fame as one of the ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... month's Six Selling Best The Bookman scored with elephantine Jest, Have sold a half a Million in a Year, Yet no one ever heard of them, ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... left the house and directed his steps toward the far end of the garden, where a small gate led directly into the street at the end of which he dwelt. There! Again Frau Kahle and uncouth, elephantine Lieutenant Pommer! The May bowl, he thought, has been too strong for his addled brain. And he stepped silently aside on the velvety sward, under the clump of lilacs. The nightingale, from the centre ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... head playfully at all this show and splendour. His good humour was of the elephantine order, and belied the drawn anxiety of his eyes. Luxurious and peaceful as the scene was, there seemed to Chris to be a touch of electricity in the air, the suggestion of something about to happen. Littimer glanced at her admiringly. She was dressed in white satin, ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... class also belong the land-monsters of bygone days, whose skeletons you may see in museums: such as the Mammoth, or hairy elephant, found in the British Isles, and also over half the globe; the Mastodon, another elephantine extinct monster, whose remains are found in America; the Woolly Rhinoceros, with two large horns on his face, dug out of the frozen soil of Siberia; the Great Irish Deer, whose antlers measured 9 feet from tip to tip; and Giant Sloths of South America, ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... and nearer, nearer, slowly yet hurriedly, now stopping to cough and gasp, now taking a few steps by elephantine assault. I should have enjoyed the situation if it had not been for poor Faustina in the cave; as it was I was filled with nameless fears. But I could not resist giving that grampus Corbucci one bad moment on account. A crazy hand-rail ran up one wall, so I carefully ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... applied to a boil on his father's neck, he collected a quantity of soft moss and dried yerba buena leaves, and with the aid of his check apron and of one of his torn suspenders tightly wound round the whole mass, achieved a bandage of such elephantine proportions that he could scarcely move with it. In fact, like most imaginative children, he became slightly terrified at his own alarming precautions. Nevertheless, although a word or an outcry from him would have at that moment brought the distant group to his assistance, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... of Tesla. In the back of his brain the city tumbled—an elephantine grimace, a wilderness of angles, a swarm of gestures that beat at his thought. But before his eyes there were no longer the precise patterns of another day. He was no longer outside. He had been sucked into something, the something that he had been used to refer to ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... all," with Robert Browning, Charles Kingsley and Monckton Milnes among its contributors. Thinking they had a market, an enterprising publisher rushed out a volume, The Lectures of Lola Montez. When a copy reached the editor, it was reviewed in characteristically elephantine ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... such a collection as he has formed, and bethink you that these elephantine bones did veritably carry their owners about, and these great grinders crunch, in the dark woods of which the forest-bed is now the only trace, it is impossible not to feel that they are as good evidence of the lapse of time as the annual rings of ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the morning and to come within an ace of making a three hundred foot dive in the afternoon is just about enough excitement to make any one lose weight. I bet I lost five pounds in that minute and a half when Bob had me by the coat, and I was wondering whether he could hold on to my elephantine form; whether the rock would not give way, and whether I could get back to safety. I sweat ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... retired to straighten his tie, and grabbing his coat from Bickley, who handed it to him with a malicious smile, forced his perspiring arms into it in a peculiarly awkward and elephantine fashion. ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... there are any such beings nowadays as the great Eliphalet, with his large features and conversational basso profundo, seemed to me. His very name had something elephantine about it, and it seemed to me that the house shook from cellar to garret at his footfall. Some have pretended that he had Olympian aspirations, and wanted to sit in the seat of Jove and bear the academic thunderbolt and the aegis inscribed Christo et Ecclesiae. It is a common weakness enough ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... celestial, it is not, however, proper to send him away in vain. Thy intention, O blessed one, it is to have from Surya a son furnished with a coat of mail and ear-rings, and who in point of prowess would be beyond compare in this world! Do thou, therefore, O damsel of elephantine gait, surrender thy person to me! Thou shall then have, O lady, a son after thy wish! O gentle girl, O thou of sweet smiles, I will go back after having known thee! If thou do not gratify me to-day ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... him emit his mewing little laugh, and heard him say, with the elephantine archness affected by ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... now, the place of the elephantine black horse and the little tram cars and the man was taken by the masts of ships lying beyond. They rose straight and tall, their cordage like spider webs, in a succession of regular spaces until they were lost behind the mill. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... tradition (which I trust more than anything else) declared that he is drawn from a real Professor of my acquaintance, who is anything but a fool, I should imagine not. But in that case I am all the more mystified by the incredibly weak fight which he makes in the play in answer to the elephantine sophistries of Undershaft. It is really a disgraceful case, and almost the only case in Shaw of there being no fair fight between the two sides. For instance, the Professor mentions pity. Mr. Undershaft says with melodramatic scorn, "Pity! the scavenger of the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... long stand up to a British bombardment; and it was an accepted dogma that lyddite was the article utilised to knock them down. We had read and heard (and magnified) much of what lyddite could do; our ideas of its decimating powers were elephantine—and white at that. Sometimes we pitied the Boers; but were not cognisant, of course, in such weak moments, of the disinfecting qualities of bottled vinegar; we did not then know that a portable cruet formed part and parcel of each burgher's kit. It did not need a protest ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... of soda) are some igneous rocks. The bones were drifted to this spot and deposited (many of them in a broken state) in horizontal layers along with recent shells. We have, then, this remarkable fact, that this high valley was tenanted by elephantine quadrupeds, all of which passed away before the arrival of the human species, and yet while the land, and probably the sea also, were peopled with their present molluscan inhabitants. This confirms the statement of Mr. Lyell, that the longevity of mammalian species is much inferior to that of the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... yesterday, with A. W. Lamb, who was not married when I saw him last. He married a young lady whom I knew. And now I have been talking with their grown-up sons and daughters. Lieutenant Hickman, the spruce young handsomely-uniformed volunteer of 1846, called on me—a grisly elephantine patriarch of 65 now, his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wrath, forsook the cow, and made an elephantine rush at the offender, who vanished in the crowd, and thus betrayed the constable to ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... camus, as a Frenchman would say; no illustrious steeple, no imposing tower; the water-edge of the town looking bedraggled, like the flounce of a vulgar rich woman's dress that trails on the sidewalk. The New Ironsides lies at one of the wharves, elephantine in bulk and color, her sides narrowing as they rise, like the walls of ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the bar and puffing thoughtfully at a cigar of elephantine proportions, suddenly took his cigar from his lips, held it poised, examined it with the eye of a connoisseur—of cattle—and remarked slowly: "Now, why didn't I think of it? Wonder you fellas didn't think of it. They need a cook bad! Been without a cook ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... the Nineteenth century the Frenchman De Morgan has made marvellous discoveries in the Elamite lands. What a noble passion those Frenchmen have for discovery! For Egypt did not Napoleon provide the most elephantine books of monuments and records that printing-presses have yet issued? And from that time to this have not Frenchmen held the primacy in excavations until, even while England holds and rules Egypt, she leaves, by special convention, the care of its monuments and their exploration ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... the unhappy Lad took upon himself the task of turning little Wolf from a pest into something approaching a decent canine citizen. It was no sinecure, this educating of the hot-tempered and undisciplined youngster. But Lad brought to it an elephantine patience and an uncannily wise brain. And, by the time Lady was brought back, cured, the puppy had begun to show the results of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... Clerk Crosby came, and Mr. Magoun, as lean, brusque and mosquito-like as his partner is elephantine; and after a few words with them I was called into the Judge's private room, where a great lump rose in my throat when I tried, and miserably failed, to thank him ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... same crevice of the curtain where, only a little while before, the urchin of elephantine appetite had peeped, the butcher beheld the inner door, not closed, as the child had seen it, but ajar, and almost wide open. However it might have happened, it was the fact. Through the passage-way there was a dark ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thing at all; no root query of what sex is, of whether it alters this or that, and why, anymore than there is any imaginative grip of the humor and heart of the populace in the popular education. There is nothing but plodding, elaborate, elephantine imitation. And just as in the case of elementary teaching, the cases are of a cold and reckless inappropriateness. Even a savage could see that bodily things, at least, which are good for a man are very likely to be bad for a woman. Yet there is no boy's ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... this shown that the distance along the sea amounts to three thousand six hundred furlongs, and I will now declare what the distance is inland from the sea to Thebes, namely six thousand one hundred and twenty furlongs: and again the distance from Thebes to the city called Elephantine is one thousand eight ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... the sewing-machine, and was very efficient help; and even Tulee, though far from skilful with her needle, contrived to make dozens of hospital slippers, which it was the pride of her heart to deliver to the ladies of the Commission. Chloe added her quota of socks, often elephantine in shape, and sometimes oddly decorated with red tops and toes; but with a blessing for "the boys in blue" running through all the threads. There is no need to say how eagerly they watched for letters, and what a relief it was to recognize the writing of beloved hands, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... not pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat women, but massive with solid beef and streaky tallow; so that (though struggling manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks, her advance is elephantine. When she sits down, it is on a great round space of her Maker's footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality, to such a degree that you probably ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... looked about him with some unusual attention. There was no carpet. A set of oddly coloured chairs and settees which would have pleased Ann, a square mahogany table set on elephantine legs, completed the furnishings of a whitewashed room, where the flies, driven indoors by cool weather, buzzed on window glasses dull with dust. The back room had only a writing-table, a small case of theological books, and two or three much used volumes of American history. Penhallow ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... toward unsealing her lips, he pretended indifference. Still the same stubborn silence was maintained. This soon began to amuse the king, and of late he had been trying to be on friendly terms again with his sister through a series of elephantine antics and bear-like pleasantries, which were the most dismal failures—that is, in the way of bringing about a reconciliation. They were more successful from a comical point of view. So Henry was really glad for something that would loosen the tongue ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... Two long yellow canines shone wetly; the nose, which had nostrils set in the sides, gaped open; blue sparks shot out from it; at the same time the feathered tufts on the ends of the elephantine ears stiffened ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... perhaps, Big Liza the cook, to enquire for "comp'ny's" health with elephantine coquetries; then Lige, erstwhile stable-boy and butler, now promoted to the proud role of valet, requesting orders for the day, and lingering with an appreciative ear for ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... men whom she would see, and upon her death in 1789, he was the only male friend to whom her husband turned for consolation. Miss Fox seems to have been the only woman who inspired Bentham with a sentiment approaching to passion. He wrote occasional letters to the ladies in the tone of elephantine pleasantry natural to one who was all his life both a philosopher and a child.[235] He made an offer of marriage to Miss Fox in 1805, when he was nearer sixty than fifty, and when they had not met for sixteen years. The immediate occasion ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... suppose I must help you," said Miss Eudora with elephantine sprightliness. "Now, children, in the first place you must always read beautiful books; then, always look at beautiful things; and lastly, always think ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... somewhat elephantine jump, he alighted beside her and threw himself on the warm sand with a deep sigh ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... 'Yes, William, it is tender—but not for everybody,' I added warningly. Really, it was going to be very awkward if he, in his elephantine way, had conceived an infatuation for me. My conscience was perfectly clear—I had not encouraged him in any way, but nevertheless I did not wish to see him suffer from unrequited affection. It would be so awkward in many ways. William, even in his sane moods, has a dreadful habit ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... performance, as the moon shone athwart the great tent, and the brass band was hushed, Sally Stubbs stood against a background of canvas, bathed in the sheen from on high. Quiet reigned in the tents of the elephantine woman and the calf with six legs. The lung-tester had folded up his machine and departed. The sound of "ice-cold lemonade" had died in the general stillness. Mlle. La Sauteuse leaned over lovingly to the new keeper, and asked ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... squirrel-hunters most innocent, but the Blight had heard much talk of moonshine stills and mountain feuds and the men who run them and I took the risk of denying her nothing. Up and up we went, those two mules swaying from side to side with a motion little short of elephantine and, by and by, ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... unknown region of darkness and tempest came the great heaving ground-swell, the tidal wave and the hurricane. Even Spanish pilots never used the perilous southern route. Treasure went overland across the Isthmus. Every year an elephantine treasure-ship sailed from Panama westward through the South Sea; and there was a rich trade between the American mines and the Orient and the Spanish peninsula, by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Doughty's imagination ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... undertook extensive travels, of which he speaks in his work. There was scarcely a town in Greece or on the coasts of Asia Minor with which he was not acquainted; he had explored Thrace and the coasts of the Black Sea; in Egypt he had penetrated as far south as Elephantine; and in Asia he had visited the cities of Babylon, Ecbatana, and Susa. The latter part of his life was spent at Thurii, a colony founded by the Athenians in Italy in B.C. 443. According to a well-known story in Lucian, ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... Layson with an awkward lightness. "Barbara told me what passed between you two young folks afore you come up to the mountings," he explained. And then, with further elephantine airyness: "I say, jest excuse me—reckon I'm in the way." He made a move ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... towards the end of that six months that the event took place which was to restore Sir Oliver to liberty. In the meanwhile those limbs of his which had ever been vigorous beyond the common wont had acquired an elephantine strength. It was ever thus at the oar. Either you died under the strain, or your thews and sinews grew to be equal to their relentless task. Sir Oliver in those six months was become a man of steel and iron, impervious to fatigue, superhuman ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the wet grass, was on his hands and knees, searching. He accomplished a complete circuit of the body, his round-shouldered, stooping figure making grotesque, elephantine shadows under the light of the torch as he moved about slowly, not trusting his eyes, but feeling with his hands every inch of the smallest, ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... the number of digits had been reduced to four in the fore-foot and three in the hind, but there the reduction stops, for the increasing body-weight made necessary the development of broad and heavy feet. The final members of the series comprise only large, almost elephantine animals, with immensely developed and very various nasal horns, huge and massive heads, and altogether a grotesque appearance. The growth of the brain did not at all keep pace with the increase of the head and body, and the ludicrously small ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the company of lepers. Indeed, I wish that they would never enter my shop, as they occasionally do to beg. Nothing is more infectious, as I have heard, than leprosy: there is one very virulent species, however, which is particularly dreaded here, the elephantine: those who die of it should, according to law, be burnt, and their ashes scattered to the winds: for if the body of such a leper be interred in the field of the dead, the disorder is forthwith communicated to ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... early as the ninth century B. C. in the inscription of Ben Hadad (Pognon, Inscr. semit., 1907, pp. 165 ff.; cf. Dussaud, Rev. archeol., 1908, I, p. 235). In Aramaic papyri preserved at Berlin, the Jews of Elephantine call Jehovah "the god of heaven" in an address to a Persian governor, and the same name was used in the alleged edicts of Cyrus and his successors, which were inserted in the book of Esdras (i. 1; vi. 9, etc.)—If there were the slightest doubt as to the ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... therefore from the pen of John Davies, who helped Loveday to finish his enormous translation of Cleopatra in 1665. In 1677 there came out another version of Pharamond, by John Phillips, and this is common enough. Some day, perhaps, these elephantine old romances may come into fashion again, and we may obtain a precise list of them. At present no corner of our literary history is more ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... fair Neophytes— Who thirst for such instruction as we give, Attend, while I unfold a parable. The elephant is mightier than Man, Yet Man subdues him. Why? The elephant Is elephantine everywhere but here (tapping her forehead), And Man, whose brain is to the elephant's As Woman's brain to Man's - (that's rule of three),— Conquers the foolish giant of the woods, As Woman, in her turn, shall ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... as I must try to call him when Raffles is not varnishing my tale, looked a very big man at his enormous desk, but by no means so elephantine as at the tiny table in the Savoy Restaurant a month earlier. His privations had not only reduced his bulk to the naked eye, but made him look ten years younger. He wore the habiliments of a gentleman; even as he ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... certainly not responsible. First came Gazan; his hat was tilted awry by the bumps of his skull, and the vegetable green of the coat threw into relief the earthy colour and scaly texture of his elephantine visage. At his side was the grim tall Laniboire with purple apoplectic veins and a crooked mouth. His uniform was covered by an overcoat whose insufficient length left visible the end of his sword and the tails of the frock, and gave him an appearance certainly much less dignified than that of the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... do their worst, unguarded, Morris and Teacher set out to prepare Mrs. Mowgelewsky's mind for the adoption of Izzie. They found it very difficult. Mrs. Mowgelewsky, restored of vision, was so hospitable, so festive in her elephantine manner, so loquacious and so self-congratulatory, that it was difficult to insert even the tiniest conversational wedge into the ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... famine was believed to have been caused by the king's neglect to worship properly the god Khnemu, who was supposed to control the springs of the Nile, which were asserted by the sages to be situated between two great rocks on the Island of Elephantine. The Legend sets forth that the Viceroy of Nubia, in the reign of Tcheser, was a nobleman called Meter, who was also the overseer of all the temple properties in the South. His residence was in Abu, or Elephantine, and in the eighteenth year of his reign ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... that it was to take place on the following day, which I had quite forgotten. So that Mrs O'Flinn did me a good turn at last, as I should have neglected my promise, if she had not made her appearance, sailing along like an elephantine Cleopatra. ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... taste, the witness answered that it was the attempt of a writer of serious mind to be humorous. It might be almost called a stereotype of that form of the element of humour. It was a failure but still passed with the public.—The Judge: A kind of elephantine humour?—The Witness: Quite so. I did not like it, but one would have ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... Google, and learning that he was in an anteroom, started in search of him. She found herself in the supper room, hurrying across which, she pulled open a door on the other side with such a vigorous effort of elephantine strength, as to precipitate a waiter, who had just caught hold of the handle, headlong into the room. The unfortunate servitor, who was dressed in white cravat and black coat, landed under the supper table, where he lay motionless. Ann Harriet made her ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... reproach. If she had only supported him! If she had only realised what a beauty she was in contrast with the other women! As superior as he knew himself to be to that little Cobbens, or to the bland and elephantine husband of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... light that fell on the "Devil" was on a memorable spring evening in 1751. Dr. Johnson (aged forty-two), then busy all day with his six amanuenses in a garret in Gough Square compiling his Dictionary, at night enjoyed his elephantine mirth at a club in Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row. One night at the club, Johnson proposed to celebrate the appearance of Mrs. Lennox's first novel, "The Life of Harriet Stuart," by a supper at the "Devil Tavern." Mrs. Lennox was a lady for whom Johnson—ranking her afterwards above ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... not understand English, but she shook her fist in Mr. Merrick's face and danced around in an elephantine fashion and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... early that I shall not have it in my power to bid farewell to any one. Unless, indeed," with a glance at Beauclerk, meant, perhaps, to be coquettish, but so elephantine in its proportions as to be almost anything in the world but that, "some of my friends may wish to ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... self-grip, as she crossed the parlor and passed the door to Sarah's bedroom, through the thin wood of which came elephantine moanings and low slubberings, she steeled herself to keep the color in her cheeks and the brightness in her eyes. And so well did she succeed that Billy never dreamed that the radiant, live young thing, tripping lightly down the steps to him, had ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... elephantine playfulness, stretched out his arms to ravish a kiss; but as it required no great agility to elude him, his fair enslaver had vanished before he closed them again; upon which the apathetic youth ate a pound or so of steak with a sentimental ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... his usual deliberate, elephantine way. Kate made no sign till he was seated, then she asked what ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... modification? But if the population of the world, in any age, is the result of the gradual modification of the forms which peopled it in the preceding age,—if that has been the case, it is intelligible enough; because we may expect that the creature that results from the modification of an elephantine mammal shall be something like an elephant, and the creature which is produced by the modification of an armadillo-like mammal shall be like an armadillo. Upon that supposition, I say, the facts are intelligible; upon any other, that I am aware of, ...
— A Critical Examination Of The Position Of Mr. Darwin's Work, "On The Origin Of Species," In Relation To The Complete Theory Of The Causes Of The Phenomena Of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... crush—an enormous, sweltering, and appallingly silent crush. Even the bookmakers seemed to be awed by it. They stood on their stands beside blackboards full of horses' names and mystical figures, but they did not yell at you hoarsely, bullyingly, as bookmakers ought to do. If, having looked at the elephantine portrait advertisement of one of them, you wished to bet with him, he would consent in a listless way, and say wearily to his clerk: "Nine-nine-one, seventy shillings to a dollar Polumetis," as he handed you a ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... student. In the cloistered galleries of the court-yard Clarence sometimes felt himself borne down by the protecting weight of this paternal hand; in the midnight silence of the dormitory he fancied he was often conscious of the soft browsing tread and snuffly muffled breathing of his elephantine-footed mentor. ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... passed, out of love for thyself. Does not Tenu believe that it belongs to thee like thy dogs. Behold this flight that I have made: I did not have it in my heart; it was like the leading of a dream, as a man of Adehi (Delta) sees himself in Abu (Elephantine), as a man of the plain of Egypt who sees himself in the deserts. There was no fear, there was no hastening after me, I did not listen to an evil plot, my name was not heard in the mouth of the magistrate; but my limbs went, my feet wandered, my heart drew me; my god commanded this flight, ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... found him "good for service," for the door opened into a brightly lighted drawing-room into which he followed Arthur Papillon, like a frail sloop towed in by an imposing three-master, and behold the timid Amedee presented in due form to the mistress of the house! She was a lady of elephantine proportions, in her sixtieth year, and wore a white camellia stuck in her rosewood-colored hair. Her face and arms were plastered with enough flour to make a plate of fritters; but for all that, she had a grand air and superb eyes, whose commanding glance was softened ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... with the air peculiar to military Germans, of men who are going to be amused. They said nothing—did not smile—but strode straight forward, three abreast, swinging their kibokos with a sort of elephantine sporty air. They were men of all heights and thicknesses, but each alike impressed me with the Prussian military mold that leaves a man no imagination of his own, and no virtue, but only an animal respect for whatever can make to suffer, or appease ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... he is viewed from the unsympathetic light of the present he seems merely a clever vagabond. Yet Dr. Johnson, who could be so stern towards some of his contemporaries, condescended to love the aforesaid vagabond, in a ponderous, elephantine way, and deified him by writing the life of the ingrate, or an apology therefor. Savage had, once upon a time, led the youthful Johnson more than a few feet away from the path of rectitude, but the philosopher forgave, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... De Quincey's humor, a friend once remarked to me, that it always reminded him of an elephant attempting to dance. Now, without any doubt, an elephant could dance after an elephantine fashion; but surely you would never catch him going through the movements of a jig or a Virginia "breakdown." He never lets you forget that he is an elephant. So with De Quincey. Levity is an element farthest removed from his humor; in fact, whenever he allows himself to indulge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... were chiefly opportunities for the display of brilliant enamelled and gilt armour, at the very acme of cumbrous magnificence; and of equally gorgeous embroidery spread out over the vast expanse provided by elephantine Flemish horses. Even if the weapons had not been purposely blunted, and if the champions had really desired to slay one another, they would have found the task very difficult, as in effect they ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... capable of the most delicate sympathies—one may say simply fineness of nature. This is, of course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness; in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy. Elephantine strength may drive its way through a forest, and feel no touch of the boughs, but the white skin of Homer's Atrides would have felt a bent rose leaf, yet subdue its feelings in glow of battle, and behave itself like iron. I do not ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... would have felt quite all right about it, because that relation has a name in good standing. To me, that seems—sickening!" He took a rapid turn about the room and then as Thea remained standing, he rolled one of the elephantine chairs up ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation, which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... her spirits and was her old self, and a very charming self it was, so charming, indeed, that even James forgot his learning and the responsibilities of his noble profession and talked, like an ordinary Christian. Indeed, he even went so far as to pay her an elephantine compliment; but as it was three sentences long, and divided into points, it shall not be ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... were possessed by them, and it will be easy for readers who have once listened to Greeks in hot debate to fancy how on this occasion they were heard afar. Yet Sergius went his way unobservant of the remarks drawn by the elephantine ears of his outlandish hood, his tall form, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... and Sixth dynasties were reigning, exploring expeditions were sent into the lands of the Upper Nile. The two dynasties had sprung from the island of Elephantine, opposite Assuan; it was, therefore, perhaps natural that they should take an interest in the country to the south. One expedition made its way into the land of Punt, to the north of Abyssinia, and brought back a Danga dwarf, whose tribal name still ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... away from me, as if he expected me to snatch it from him and run, but he was still trying in an elephantine way to treat the ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the name not merely the Nile valley and the Delta, but the entire tract interposed between the Libyan Desert on the one side and the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea on the other, is a country of nearly the size of Italy. It measures 520 miles from Elephantine to the Mediterranean, and has an average width of 150 or 160 miles. It must thus contain an area of about 80,000 square miles. Of this space, however, at least three fourths is valueless, consisting of bare rocky mountain ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... of the quick, ardent temper of my beloved companion bade me relinquish the thought of confidin' in him. No, I dassent, for I knew that his weight wuz but small by the steelyards, and Mr. Pomper's size wuz elephantine, with probably muscles accordin'. No, I felt I must rely on myself. But the feelin's I felt nobody can tell. Thinks I, "It has come onto me jest what I have always read and scorfed at"; for I had always thought and said that no self-respectin' female need be ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... reflectively confided to my wine-glass, "while doubtless amiably intended, are, to his well-wishers, painful. I daresay, though, he doesn't know it. We must, then, smile indulgently upon the elephantine gambols of what he is pleased to describe as ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... of the most vague and general kind, the figure simulating the elephant no more closely than any one of a score or more mounds in Wisconsin, except in one important particular, viz, the head has a prolongation or snout-like appendage, which is its chief, in fact its only real, elephantine character. If this appendage is too long for the snout of any other known animal, it is certainly too short for the trunk of a mastodon. Still, so far as this one character goes, it is doubtless true that it is more suggestive of the mastodon than of any ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... sculpture to design some wonderful dresses for us. We three unbent as Mrs Siddons, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr Johnson might have unbent, to devise a turn for the Coliseum variety theatre. Not that we would set down the art of the variety theatre as something to be condescended to, or our own art as elephantine. We should rather crave indulgence as three novices fresh from the awful legitimacy of ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw
... bell, some candlesticks, a pack of cards, a loaf of bread, a pair of boots, a bunch of cigars, and some clay pipes (the only things, by the way, rendered utterly hors de combat in the assault). But one piece of furniture retained its attitude, and that was the elephantine bedstead, which nothing short of an earthquake could move. Almost at the same moment several acquaintances rushed in, begging me not to be alarmed, as the danger ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... elephantine bipeds come any nearer to me!" I exclaimed, and rushing to the boulder, which was certainly four feet in diameter, I toppled it over the brink, and expected to see it carry everything down before it. It rolled ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... it always amuses me much. So Terence was a nigger. There is no trace of the negro 'boy' in his Davus. My nigger has grown huge, and has developed a voice of thunder. He is of the elephantine rather than the tiger species, a very mild young savage. I shall be sorry when Palgrave takes him. I am tempted to buy Yussuf's nice little Dinka girl to replace him, only a girl is such an impossibility where there is no regular hareem. In the boat Achmet is enough under Omar; but in this large ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... accepted an invitation that had been sent to him two days before. But this was not all. Mrs. Bazalgette, with something between a laugh and a crow, handed Lucy a letter from Mr. Fountain, in which that diplomatic gentleman availed himself of her kind invitation, and with elephantine playfulness proposed, as he could not stay a month with her, to be permitted to bring a friend with him for a fortnight. This friend had unfortunately missed her through absence from his country-house at the period of her visit to Font Abbey, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... of frame—not pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat women, but massive, with solid beef and streaky tallow; so that (though struggling manfully against the ideal) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks her advance is elephantine. When she sits down it is on a great round space of her Maker's footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality, to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... went on. It was a remarkable sight—a long procession of "Tommies," burghers, carts, and the naval gun, 18 feet long, an elephantine one when compared ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... soon found myself sitting beside the bleached anatomy of some stranded leviathan, and gazing at the mountains of Squillace that glowed in the soft lights of sunset. The shore was deserted save for myself and a portly dogana-official who was playing with his little son—trying to amuse him by elephantine gambols on the sand, regardless of his uniform and manly dignity. Notwithstanding his rotundity, he was an active and resourceful parent, and enjoyed himself vastly; the boy pretending, as polite children sometimes do, to enter into the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... is wrong. But foolish bees, Who will contend for points like these, Should not suppose good taste in roses Depends on elephantine noses. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... which we call mannerism? To speak of authors well known to all readers—Does not The Rambler taste of Johnson; The Decline and Fall, of Gibbon; The Middle Ages, of Hallam; The History of England, of Macaulay; and The Invasion of the Crimea, of Kinglake? Do we not know the elephantine tread of The Saturday, and the precise toe of The Spectator? I have sometimes thought that Swift has been nearest to the mark of any,—writing English and not writing Swift. But I doubt whether an accurate observer would not trace even here the "mark of the beast." Thackeray, too, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... low-caste man is never quite sure of his wife unless he is convinced that she is entirely devoid of amorous susceptibility. Thus he grows uneasy whenever she shows any sign of responding in kind to his own elephantine emotions, and is apt to be suspicious of even so trivial a thing as a hearty response to a connubial kiss. If he could manage to rid himself of such suspicions, there would be less public gabble about anesthetic wives, and fewer books written by quacks with sure cures ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... voice, Farquhar staggered out of his tent, so changed from my spruce mate who started from Bagamoyo, that I hardly knew him at first. His legs were ponderous, elephantine, since his leg-illness was of elephantiasis, or dropsy. His face was of a deathly pallor, for he had not been out of his tent ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... died 1784. Critic, moralist, lexicographer, and, above all, the hero of Boswell's Life of Johnson. The ponderous philosopher did not disdain, occasionally, to give play to his elephantine wit. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... of Inspector Letstrayed wouldn't look very well in print," I began; "but it's easy enough to see what happened. The old dope fell asleep, so, of course, as soon as Budd heard those elephantine snores, he sneaked out from his hiding-place under the hay and tied him up with the ropes while he slept, took his revolver away from him, shot it off twice out of pure bravado, and then beat it for parts unknown. If he's as good a runner yet as he was this noon, he must be over in the next county ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... not used to such delicate elephantine compliments. It is just like a man, Miss Benson, to try to kill two birds with one stone —get rid of a rival by sacrificing a useless friend. All the same, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... injure the general design. The poem appeared in this form in 1743, with a ponderous prefatory discourse by Ricardus Aristarchus, contributed by the faithful Warburton, and illustrating his ponderous vein of elephantine pleasantry. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... elephantine trumpeting of laughter seemed to set the air a-quivering. Ramiro was lying back in his chair a prey to such a passion of mirth that it swelled the veins of his throat and brow until I thought that they must burst—and, from my soul, I hoped they would. Adown his rugged cheeks two tears ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... towards Droulde had undergone a change. He had become suave and unctuous, a kind of elephantine irony pervading his laborious attempts at conciliation. He and the Public Prosecutor would be severely blamed for this day's work, if the popular Deputy, relying upon the support of the people of Paris, chose ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... major, as they all stood breathlessly waiting for the outburst of the furious monster, which Mark painted mentally as something between a lion and a bear, but elephantine in size. ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... on even terms with their successors. The roguish eye of J——ll, ever ready to be delivered of a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. But what insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas Coventry?—whose person was a quadrate, his step massy and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, his gait peremptory and path-keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving column, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow-beater of equals and superiors, who made a solitude of children wherever ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... be as happy as most wives I come across. It's my own big, splendid life, and I'm going to make it splendid, or know the reason why!" Hannah struck a dramatic gesture, danced a few fancy steps in an elephantine manner, and stumped towards, the door. "So be it, then! We accept with pleasure, and I'll leave you to ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... into panic. Lifting its giant head high into the air, as if thus to escape its fiery assailants, it turned and scuttled back the way it had come, while the old men swarmed after it, belaboring and jabbing its elephantine rump with their ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... by English critics. His rather elaborate jocular introductions, under the name of Jedediah Cleishbotham, are clearly laborious at times. And even his own letters to his daughter-in-law, which Mr. Lockhart seems to regard as models of tender playfulness and pleasantry, seem to me decidedly elephantine. Not unfrequently, too, his stereotyped jokes weary. Dalgetty bores you almost as much as he would do in real life,—which is a great fault in art. Bradwardine becomes a nuisance, and as for Sir Piercie Shafton, he is beyond endurance. Like some other Scotchmen of genius, Scott twanged away ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... you in that case is, make love to some young lady, directly you reach England; and marry her in a month, before you have begun to assume elephantine proportions. Once hooked, you know, she cannot sue for divorce, on the ground that you have taken her in; and she will have to put up with you, ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... I'd a' give fi' dollars—say, I'd a' made it ten dollars—say!" And he laughed again a laugh that seemed to set all the celluloid in the plush covered, satin lined toilet cases on the new counter a-flutter. He walked down the store with elephantine tread, as he laughed, and then the door opened and Dr. Nesbit came in. Five months had put a perceptible bow into his shoulders, and an occasional cast of uncertainty into his ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... which he wore. At that time, in his forty-eighth year, his hair was still as black as an Indian's, and it lay in considerable masses about the spacious dome of his forehead. His form had neither the slenderness of his youth nor the elephantine magnitude of his later years; it was fully, but finely, developed, imposing and stately, yet not wanting in alertness and grace. No costume could have been better suited to it than his blue coat and glittering gilt buttons, his ample yellow waistcoat, his black trousers, and snowy cravat. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... principle whatever; and as to Fatima's tortoise, it never budged from the beginning of the conflict to the end. Once, indeed, by strewing dandelion heads in the direction of the enemy's ground she induced him to advance, and at the cry of 'Forward, MacPeters!' he put forth a lazy leg, and with elephantine dignity led the attack, on the way to his favourite food. But (in spite of the fable) his slow pace was against him, and in the ensuing melee he was left ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... broke the habits of a life and the traditions of his rank, he practised the remedy with benefit. His corpulence is now portable; you would call him lusty rather than fat; but his gait is still dull, stumbling, and elephantine. He neither stops nor hastens, but goes about his business with an implacable deliberation. We could never see him and not be struck with his extraordinary natural means for the theatre: a beaked profile like Dante's in the mask, a mane of long black hair, the eye brilliant, imperious, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a tear, Thought I myself must weep, until I caught A grey, smug smile of satisfaction smirch His pallid features at his misery. And laugh did I, to see the little snares He had set for pests to vex him: his great feet Prisoned in greater boots; so narrow a stool To seat such elephantine parts as his; Ay, and the book he read, a Hebrew Bible; And, to incite a gross and backward wit, An old, crabbed, wormed, Greek dictionary; and A foxy Ovid bound ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... as good fortune would have it, an empty baggage-wagon bound for the metropolis turned into the main road from a side one. Immediately Israel limps most deplorably, and begs the driver to give a poor cripple a lift. So up he climbs; but after a time, finding the gait of the elephantine draught-horses intolerably slow, Israel craves permission to dismount, when, throwing away his crutch, he takes nimbly to his legs, much to the surprise of his honest ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... them with joy, as cats pounce and purr on catnip. The whole country studied Brown's letters with the rapture of eavesdropping. Such letters! Such oozing molasses of sentiment! Such elephantine coquetry! Joel weighed two hundred and eighteen pounds and called himself Little ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... foliage, the snow swept through the valley as it did on the high mountains. The Ice-Maiden sat in her proud castle and arrayed herself in her winter costume; the ice walls stood in glazed frost; where the mountain streams waved their watery veil in summer, were now seen thick elephantine icicles, shining garlands of ice, formed of fantastic ice crystals, encircled the fir-trees, which were powdered ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... misunderstanding of childhood, chose to presume upon his paternal functions. Approaching the high chair in which Johnnyboy was dyspeptically reflecting, with a ponderous wink at the other guests, and a fat thumb and forefinger on Johnnyboy's table, he leaned over him, and with slow, elephantine ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... treat one of her friends. On Anna's absent Thursdays he always offered to take dinner downtown. He brought her pound boxes of candy tied with sly loops and bands of gay satin ribbon which she carefully rolled and tucked away in a drawer. He praised her cooking, and teased her with elephantine playfulness, and told her that she looked like a chicken in that hat. Oh, yes, indeed! Mrs. Mandle was a spoiled ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... sales and small profits, no doubt; besides it will attract other customers. A good advertisement too, for here am I, for one, who would have gone past the new bakery a hundred times, never once glancing that way, never dreaming of those elephantine sugar cakes, were it not for you! Are you sure the bakery didn't bribe you girls to sound ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... better fly," said Miss de Lisle. "I am pretty wet, and there's lunch to think about." She looked at them in friendly fashion. "Thank you all very much," she said—and was gone, with a kind of elephantine swiftness. ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... his charmer in his clumsy, elephantine way, showing that, despite Merkle's recent insinuations, he still trusted her. "This is the only woman who ever cared for me, John," he explained, after some hesitation, "and we're going to stick ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... hand; Held a war-council, sent his provost-marshal, And gave the animals a call impartial— Each, in his way, to serve his high command. The Elephant should carry on his back The tools of war, the mighty public pack, And fight in elephantine way and form; The Bear should hold himself prepared to storm; The Fox all secret stratagems should fix; The Monkey should amuse the foe by tricks. "Dismiss," said one, "the blockhead Asses, And Hares, too cowardly and ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... slightly, and stopped. Past him, rolling along the side of the highway he was on, came a parade of thirty-ton tanks. They rumbled and roared their slow, elephantine way down the highway and, after what seemed about three days, disappeared from sight. Malone wondered what the tanks were for, and then dismissed it from his mind. It certainly wasn't very pleasant to think about, no matter how necessary ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... waddling uncertainly up the walk, with a certain elephantine effort at jauntiness, he nearly collided with the foreign lady who had crossed his path to reach the further limits of the terrace. Not having a cautioning horn attached to his anatomy to warn heedless trespassers from his way, the large person was forced to give ground, but had some difficulty ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... Poor Tom's elephantine delight over anything like a simile was always emphatic, no matter whether he saw the exact point or not, and I'm afraid that brilliant folk would have thought him perilously like a fool. Happily his companions were ladies and gentlemen ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... presence in the dining-room was Madame. Madame, who was an elderly dame of elephantine girth, had resided in the hotel for half a dozen years, during which period her sole exercise had been taken in slowly descending from her chamber in the upper regions for her meals, and then, leisurely assimilation completed, in yet more slowly ascending. Madame's allotted seat ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... appreciation of fine humor from a normal child, that is, from an elemental mind. It seems as if the rough-and-tumble element were almost a necessary stage through which children must pass, and which is a normal and healthy stage; but up to now we have quite unnecessarily extended the period of elephantine fun, and, though we cannot control the manner in which children are catered to along this line in their homes, we can restrict the folly of appealing too strongly or too long to this elemental faculty in our schools. Of course, the temptation is ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... approaches; so I'll own up. I've been keeping something up my sleeve, just for the joy of watching you floundering 'midst deep waters. Of course, you chose the right channel. I knew you would, but it's a treat to see your elephantine struggles. For all that, it's a sheer impossibility that you should guess who put a sprag in the wheel of Hilton's chariot. Give you three tries, for ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy |
