"Feline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by the cloudy dust and the guard's lively horn. Gradually even these evidences of life ceased—the saunterers disappeared, the mails had passed, the dogs gave place to the later and more stealthy perambulations of their feline successors "who love the moon." At unfrequent intervals, the more important shops—the linen-drapers', the chemists', and the gin-palace—still poured out across the shadowy road their streams of light from windows yet unclosed: but with these ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... general she was severe, because severity was the only course to pursue with these chattering girls, who were full of scratches and jealousies, and who would have taken advantage of weakness with rapid unscrupulousness. So the little stout woman, feline and easily exasperated, was a good person to control the room. Her kindness might be part of her vanity, but it was not assumed. She loved her work, and she was always glad to praise good work from the girls, and to encourage ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... office of The Mass (where the bulk of the editorial work fell to me), the money was almost invariably devoted to the entertainment of Beatrice. She was in several ways not unlike a kitten, or something feline, of larger growth: the panther, for example, in Balzac's thrilling story, "A Passion ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... round of visits with her mother, that so far from being welcome she was scarcely tolerated, and she reminded one of a stray cat that comes to a dwelling and seeks to maintain existence there in a lurking, deprecatory manner. Her kindred recognized this feline trait, for they were accustomed to remark, "She's always ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... Those feline orbs of mingled gray and green, with their small, pointed pupils, were keen, vigilant, and observing beyond all eyes it had ever before or since been my lot to encounter. After meeting their penetrating glance I was not ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Sir,' he said. 'I have given some thought to the pecooliar psychology of the great German nation. As I read them they're as cunning as cats, and if you play the feline game they will outwit you every time. Yes, Sir, they are no slouches at sleuth-work. If I were to buy a pair of false whiskers and dye my hair and dress like a Baptist parson and go into Germany on ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... city of Caneville, I lately drew the materials of a Bear's Biography. From the same source I now derive my "Adventures of a Dog." My task has been less that of a composer than a translator, for a feline editoress, a Miss Minette Gattina, had already performed her part. This latter animal appears, however, to have been so learned a cat—one may say so deep a puss—that she had furnished more notes than there was original ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... of many feline goddesses, figured with the head of a lioness. In the great development of reverence for sacred animals which took place after the New Kingdom, the domestic cat was especially the animal of Bubastis, although it had ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... earth it is not a mere figure of speech. I vividly recall the feeling, for example, with which I greeted the first cat I saw on American soil. It was on the Hoboken pier, while the steerage passengers were being marched to the ferry. A large, black, well-fed feline stood in a corner, eying the crowd of new-comers. The sight of it gave me a thrill of joy. "Look! there is a cat!" I said to Gitelson. And in my heart I added, "Just like those at home!" For the moment the little animal made America real to me. At the same time it seemed unreal ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... largely dependent, as every one knows, on the number of cats; and Mr. Newman says, "Near villages and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice." Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... as "Melisande" too many times, at home with the poets, to be particularly excited, but even a man of Clarence's well-known capabilities couldn't be expected to know this. He disposed himself gracefully along the edge of the fountain. He had a feline and leisurely grace, in spite of the fact that he wasn't specially thin, had Clarence, as he ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... occasions Miss Berber suddenly appeared in the tent, dressed wonderfully in white panne, with a barbaric mottle of black and white civet-skins flung over one shoulder, and a tight-drawn cap of the fur, apparently held in place by the great claws of some feline mounted in heavy gold. She wore circles of fretted gold in her ears, and carried a tall ebony stick with a gold handle, Louis Quatorze fashion. From her huge civet muff a gold purse dangled. She looked at once more conventional ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... mass of bristling hair—to all appearances a full-blooded wolf. Leclere was lying asleep in his furs when Batard deemed the time to be ripe. He crept upon him stealthily, head low to earth and lone ear laid back, with a feline softness of tread. Batard breathed gently, very gently, and not till he was close at hand did he raise his head. He paused for a moment and looked at the bronzed bull throat, naked and knotty, and swelling to a deep steady ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... sternly tapping the note with his forefinger. "I see the cunning of insanity, the suspicion of insanity, the feline treachery of insanity in every line of this deplorable document. There is a far more alarming reason, sir, than I had supposed for Mrs. Lecount's behavior to my niece. It is clear to me that Miss Bygrave resembles some other lady who has seriously offended ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... left in the ring were the Moorish hound—a creature full of feline grace and suppleness, with silky drop-over ears and a tufted tail—an exceptionally fine cross-bred collie, the Stone bulldog, a Dandie Dinmont, and a Welsh terrier, the last extraordinarily small, ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... the breakfast table over some arrangement of the day, the rudeness of an acquaintance on the way to the city, an unfriendly act on the part of another firm, a cruel criticism needlessly reported by some meddler, a feline amenity at afternoon tea, the disobedience of one of your children, a social slight by one of your circle, a controversy too hotly conducted. The trials within this class are innumerable, and consider, not one of them is inevitable, not one of them but might have been spared ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... face. I gave him a scratch on the forehead with my finger-nails. Then we fell upon each other and rolled on the ground and hit and scratched with feline ferocity. ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... Obardi is one of the type of these elegant good-for-nothings. Ripe and pretty, with a feline charm, you can see that she is vicious to the marrow. Everybody has a good time at her house, with cards, dancing, and suppers; in fact there is everything which goes to make up the ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... father slept in the front of the house and there was a closed door between the front and the back halls on both floors. But Janice heard Olga's big, flat feet land upon the floor almost instantly. That feline wail had evidently brought the Swedish girl out of her dreams, ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... more fell than these, were lurking for the thoughtless Man of Paragraphs. The Jesuits had still their feline eyes upon him, and longed to have their talons in his flesh. They found a certain General Ried, who joined them on a quarrel of his own. This General Ried, the Austrian Agent at Ulm, had vowed inexpiable hatred ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... mud-puddle in which she has been rolling in a deadly struggle with every Tom Hyer and Bill Sayers of the cat kind that make night hideous through the village. This cat seems to be possessed with a devil every time she looks at Cheri. Her green eyes bulge out of her head, her whole feline soul rushes into them, and glares with a hot, greeny-yellow fire and fury of unquenchable desire. One evening I had put the cage on a chair, and was quietly reading in the room below, when a great slam and bang startled the house. "The bird!" shrieked a voice, mine or another's. I rushed upstairs. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the deep recesses of the forests of Maine, evidently belonging to the feline race, which, on account of its ferocity, is significantly called "Indian Devil"—in the Indian language, "the Lunk Soos;" a terror to the Indians, and the only animal in New England of which they stand in dread. You may speak of the moose, the bear, and the wolf even, and ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... nothing would persuade them to go further. Mr. Forstermann was no shikari, but he felt himself called upon to uphold the cause of science and the honour of England at this juncture. In great agitation he went for that feline, and, in short, its skin still adorns Mrs. Sander's drawing-room. Thus it happened that on a certain Thursday a small pot of C. Spicerianum was sold, as usual, for sixty guineas at Stevens's; on the Thursday following all the world ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... Not that she was astonishingly beautiful, but she was tall and just good-looking enough to allow her to consider herself a beauty. Her chief attraction was her form, which, if somewhat flat-chested, had a feline flexibility rarer and more seductive than she imagined. She was content to believe that nature had fashioned her to play the part in life which, she knew, was hers of right. Her name, even, was most appropriate—dignified. Ida should be queen-like, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... the proverb 'a cat may look at a king' and adopt the realistic view that the king's being is independent of the cat's witnessing. This assumption, which amounts to saying that it need make no essential difference to the royal object whether the feline subject cognizes him or not, that the cat may look away from him or may even be annihilated, and the king remain unchanged,—this assumption, I say, is considered by my ingenious colleague to lead ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... their faces, decided that all was well, and began placidly to wash her face and back. A leg shot up, from the middle of her back apparently, as a signal that they might talk. A moment later she composed herself into that attitude of dignified security possible only to the feline species. She made the fourth that inhabited this world within a world. Rogers, glancing up suddenly from observing her, caught—-for the merest fraction of an instant—a flash of starfire in the air. It darted across to him from the opposite end ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... had appeared to be deserted, suddenly became alive with baboons of all sizes, which came running down to the water in perfect confidence that all was well, and that their old chief high up on the rock would give them fair warning of the approach of any of their feline enemies, leopard or lion, with a taste for ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... warmth, but because the sun keeps off terrifying and antagonistic occult forces, to the influences of which the cat, above all other animals, is specially susceptible; a fact fully recognized by the Egyptians, who, to show their understanding and appreciation of this feline attachment, took care that whenever a temple was dedicated to the sun an image or symbol of the cat was placed somewhere, well in evidence, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... bloom. His mouth was as red and beguiling as a girl's, and his eyes were large, bold and black. All in all, he was a strikingly handsome fellow; but the expression of his face was sullen, and he somehow gave Eric the impression of a sinuous, feline creature basking in lazy grace, but ever ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... pretentious exaggeration was exalted enthusiasm. I alone had scrutinized her grimacings, and stripped away the thin rind that sufficed to conceal her real nature from the world; her trickery no longer deceived me; I had sounded the depths of that feline nature. I blushed for her when some donkey or other flattered and complimented her. And yet I loved her through it all! I hoped that her snows would melt with the warmth of a poet's love. If I could only have made her feel all the greatness that lies in devotion, then I should have ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... and blended; And dim and ghostlike, far away, The smoke of the burning woods ascended. Then of a sudden the mountains swam, The rivers piled their floods in a dam, The ridge above Los Gatos Creek Arched its spine in a feline fashion; The forests waltzed till they grew sick, And Nature shook in a speechless passion; And, swallowed up in the earthquake's spleen, The wonderful Spring of San Joaquin Vanished, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... on which the hair grew low, the delicately arched eyebrows and the long curving lashes of the heavy lids beneath them, the rounded cheeks, smooth as a ripe fruit, the firm, shapely chin, the snake-like poise of the head, the long bending neck, and the feline smile; all of these combined made such a dream-vision as he had never seen before, and to tell the truth, notwithstanding its beauty, for that could not be doubted, never wished to see again. Somehow he felt that if Satan should happen to have a copper-coloured wife, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... her grave, To this frenzied hunt she hies, In her hands the gory head Which with feline joy ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... ever-watchful eye. He paid tribute to his copious wife for her determined babble of generalities, well-knowing that she was bursting with suppressed excitement under the knowledge that Alice had come to try and patch up a lost cause. He chuckled at the feline manners of the little lady whom they had all known so long as Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves, her purring voice, her frequent over-emphasis of exuberant adjectives, her accidental choice of the sort of verb that had ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... of these adventuresses, elegant, mature, and still beautiful. Charming feline creatures, you feel that they are vicious to the marrow of their bones. You find them very amusing when you visit them; they give card-parties; they have dances and suppers; in short, they offer you all the pleasures of ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... two platforms, the first, with a small fountain, being reached by three steps, the second a step higher. The platform was supported by demons, "guebre" figures all round, and columns resting on the backs of feline animals. On the upper platform was spread ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... pyramid times; but her main period of popularity was that of the Shishaks who ruled from Bubastis, and in the later times images of her were very frequent as amulets. It is possible from the name that this feline goddess, whose foreign origin is acknowledged, was the female form of the god Bes, who is dressed in a lion's skin, and also came in from the east ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... But Alice was graciousness personified. All her jokes and smiles and all her conversation were lavished upon Frank. It may be that she wished to make amends for the opportunities she knew he was anxious to obtain but could not, for the most charming of women have a little of the feline instinct in their nature, and whether there is any response to a man's wooing in their hearts or not, they love to enjoy their power. Several times Frank, who intuitively felt she did not wish to be left alone with him, started to ask her to take a walk that Sunday evening, but each ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... him by the hand, he made great mistakes. His wife and he cared nothing for one another, but she was jealous to the last degree. I never saw such jealousy. It was strange that, although she almost hated him, she watched him with feline sharpness and patience, and would even have killed any woman whom she knew had won his affection. He, on the other hand, openly avowed that marriage without love was nothing, and flaunted without the least modification the most ideal theories ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... gotten almost beyond the shadow of the monument, when a dog belonging to one of the workmen pounced upon her and killed her, she, of course, not being in her best running trim, after performing such an extraordinary feat. One of the men procured the body of the dead feline, smoothed out her silky coat, and turned the remains over to a representative of the Smithsonian Institution, who mounted the skin and placed it under a glass case. The label on the case tells this wonderful story in a few words: "This cat on September 23, 1880, ...
— True Stories of Wonderful Deeds - Pictures and Stories for Little Folk • Anonymous
... these same sheep-dogs, and we wish we could say as much for "the curs of low degree," that just at the same hour begin to prowl up and down St. Giles's, and to and fro in it, seeking what they may devour, with the fear of the Alderman of Cripplegate Within before their eyes. The feline kind, however, have reason to think themselves in more danger at the first round of the watering cart, for we have often rescued an unsuspicious tortoise-shell from the felonious designs of a skin-dealer, who was about to lay violent hands on unoffending puss, while she was watching the process ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... the king of beasts, but I think he is an usurper allowed to remain on the throne by public opinion and suffrage, from the majesty of his appearance. In every other point he has no claim. He is the head of the feline or cat species, and has all the treachery, cruelty, and wanton love for blood that all this class of animals have to excess. The lion, like the tiger and the cat, will not come boldly on to his prey, but springs from his concealment. It is ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... enough to pass by on the other side. Tom had grown a little lordly and opinionated. He was sleeping in the sun on the shed-step as Mux ambled up. At sight of the coon Tom rose in more than his usual feline mightiness and cast such a look of surprise, scorn, and annihilating intent upon the interloper as ought to have struck terror to the stoutest heart. But Mux hardly seemed to understand. On he came, right into ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... he entered the village, the road, which was at once its street and the queen's highway, was empty of life save for one half—grown pig—"prospecting," a hen or two picking about, and several cats that lay in the sun. "There must be some redemption for the feline races," thought Cosmo, "when the cats have learned so much to love the sun!—But, alas! it is only his heat, not his light they love!" He looked neither on this side nor that as he walked, for he was in ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... however, till the year 1819 that he first came to live at Sutton. His earliest recollection was, as he used to tell us, playing on the terrace with the great ginger- coloured tom-cat, "King George." We always supposed this feline magnifico to have derived from some stock imported by the first Sir Henry when he was Master of the Household to George III. As my readers will see, King George's successor, in the true "mode" of his race, sits in a purely detached manner in the middle of the polished oak floor near, but in no special ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... turned an inquiring eyebrow upon me. Janet laid her hand on him. He dismissed the feline instinct to prolong our torture, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... say, her least pleasant, feature. They were gray in color,—gray with a shade of green,—and their expression struck me as being decidedly furtive. I wonder if furtive is the word, or should I have said fierce? On second thoughts, feline would have expressed it better. A crutch leaning against the wall told me what was painfully evident when she rose: that one of her legs ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... now he read in the invalid's alertness a feline readiness to pounce, Kenny returned to the tale of the harper who proved the right of Ireland to lead the world. This time the insolent whistle, louder and a shade defiant, convinced him that his listener's mood had changed. Adam was resenting his guest's insistence upon ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... ancestral character. We shall immediately see that horses occasionally exhibit a tendency to become striped over a large part of their bodies; and as we know that in the varieties of the domestic cat and in several feline species stripes readily pass into spots and cloudy marks—even the cubs of the uniformly-coloured lion being spotted with dark marks on a lighter ground—we may suspect that the dappling of the horse, which has been noticed ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... he ran deeper into the wood upon an alarm, occasionally found his neck in a noose suspended across his path. For rabbiting, the lurcher was and is the dog of all others. He is as cunning and wily in approaching his game as if he had a cross of feline nature in his character. Other dogs trust to speed; but the lurcher steals on his prey without a sound. He enters into the purpose of his master, and if any one appears in sight remains quietly in the hedge with the rabbit ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... she had felt an equal tenderness for them both, as though the deadly bark were to destroy them as it had killed Pascualo. But when prosperity came, and the memory of the tragedy grew dim with the years, sina Tona showed unmistakable fondness for Tonet, a child of feline shrewdness, who treated everybody with imperious petulance, but for his mother always had the speculative ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... their mode of procuring food or the range of country which they could inhabit. It is also evident that most changes would affect, either favourably or adversely, the powers of prolonging existence. An antelope with shorter or weaker legs must necessarily suffer more from the attacks of the feline carnivora; the passenger pigeon with less powerful wings would sooner or later be affected in its powers of procuring a regular supply of food; and in both cases the result must necessarily be a diminution of the population of the modified species. If, on the other hand, any ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... scenes between them—times when he cruelly reproached her and when her native melancholy deepened into outbursts of despair. Finally there occurred an incident which is more or less obscure in parts. The Duchesse de Bouillon, a great lady of the court—facile, feline, licentious, and eager for delights—resolved that she would win the love of Maurice de Saxe. She set herself to win it openly and without any sense of shame. Maurice himself at times, when the tears of Adrienne proved wearisome, flirted with ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... she leaned slightly forward while her eyes got hard. Indeed, there was something feline in her alert pose. Now she had, so to speak, unsheathed her claws, he was glad the advantage was heavily on his side. For all that, he did not ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... attracted by her simplicity and by the timid grace of her words and smile. She was an irresistible novelty for this world-rover who had only known coppery maidens with bestial roars of laughter, yellowish Asiatics with feline gestures, or Europeans from the great ports who, at the first words, beg for drink, and sing upon the knees of the one who is treating, wearing his cap ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... cage, and her dark hues mingling with the obscurity which surrounded her, nothing was distinctly visible but fixed and glaring eyes—yellow balls of phosphoric light, which only kindled, as it were, in the night-time; for it is the nature of all the animals of the feline species to enjoy entire clearness of vision but ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... apparently so incongruous that it is fairly laughable. It is a rough breathing, like the "huff" of an angry cat, and a serious dispute between the birds reminds one of nothing but a disagreement in the feline family. If the stranger does not take the hint, and retire at the first huff, he is chased, over and under trees and through branches, so violently that leaves rustle and twigs are thrust aside, as long as the patience or wind holds ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... feline about this combination of perfect patience with quiet persistence—a combination which the Jesuits on a larger scale have turned into the characteristic of their order. It is especially remarkable when it breaks the bonds of silence, and takes the form of what in vulgar ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... towards morning, and had taken to that internal rumbling, which in the feline species indicates mitigated indignation. The hermit had therefore come to the conclusion that the outburst was over, and went with Moses to make arrangements for setting forth on his ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... awakened out of my first sleep by a peculiar sort of tap, tap, on the floor, as if a cat with walnut shells had been moving about the room. The feline race, in all its varieties, is my detestation, so I slipped out of bed to expel the intruder; but the instant my toe touched the ground, it was seized as if by a smith's forceps. I drew it into bed, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... because its object was to admit of free intercourse with cats, to whom it was mostly talked, and by whom it was presumed to be comprehended. In this tongue the cat was naturally the chief subject of nomenclature; all feline positions were observed and named, and the language was rich in such epithets, as Arabic contains a vast number of expressions for lion. Euphonic changes were very arbitrary and various, differing for the same termination; ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... tributary; but the Missouri at Buford is entirely lost in the Yellowstone within a few hundred yards. All of the unique characteristics by which the Missouri River is known are given to it by the Yellowstone—its turbulence, its tawniness, its feline ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... firmly disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest form of experience extant in the universe. I believe rather that we stand in much the same relation to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing-rooms and libraries. They take part in scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They are merely tangent to curves of history the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... naked under her transparent dress of gauze, which fell in straight folds as far as the gold bracelets on her slender wrists, with languor in her rich voice, and something undulating and feline in the rhythmical swing of her wrist and hips. Tatia Caroly was singing one of those sweet Creole songs which call up some far distant fairy-like country, and unknown caresses, for which the lips remain ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... though still passably new, their bludgeons under their arms, and their whole appearance and manner not very dissimilar from the German collegians in the last century—notably contrasted Alwyn's prim dress, his precise walk, and the feline care with which he stepped aside from any patches of mire that might sully the soles ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... either was too indifferent to do so, or was too well aware of the impossibility of reforming his own wretched offspring; and therefore he determined to drown them all at one fell swoop, just as cat-loving old ladies dispose of a too numerous and embarrassing feline progeny. Bethinking him, however, God resolved to save alive one family to perpetuate the race: he was willing to give his creatures another chance, and then, if they persisted in going the wrong way, it would still be easy to drown the lot of them again, and that ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... selling her lover's secrets before the breath was out of his body. Peter turned in his cushioned seat to look at her. Without doubt, she was beautiful to one who understood, beautiful in a strange, colorless, feline fashion, the beauty of soft limbs, soft movements, a caressing voice, with always the promise beyond of more than the actual words. Her eyes now were closed, her face was a little weary. Did she really rest, Peter wondered? He watched the rising and ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he ever known Miss Nightingale? If Lord Panmure was a bison, Sidney Herbert, no doubt, was a stag— a comely, gallant creature springing through the forest; but the forest is a dangerous place. One has the image of those wide eyes fascinated suddenly by something feline, something strong; there is a pause; and then the tigress has her claws in the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... made her way dutifully to the Merevale's part of the House. Mrs Prater had expressed a hope that she would have some tea before catching her train. With tea it is usual to have milk, and with milk it is usual, if there is a cat in the house, to have feline society. Captain Kettle, which was the name thought suitable to this cat by his godfathers and godmothers, was on hand early. As he stood there pawing the mat impatiently, and mewing in a minor key, Mrs ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... animal men in general speak of lions, tigers and other beasts of the feline tribe as "cats," and elephants, camels, horses and their like are known in show parlance as "hay animals," because hay is their ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... observed the trifling by-play. Wine had circulated freely, and much laughing and talking were going on. The prior had unbent from his judicial severity, and even the Lord of Mortimer was smiling and bland, although there was something in his aspect that suggested the fierce feline play of a man-eating creature biding its time and toying ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of the Magazine of Art, M. H. Spielman, in an article on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1903, writes: "What the dog is to Mr. Riviere, to Madame Ronner is the cat. With what unerring truth she records delightful kittenly nature, the feline nobility of haughty indifference to human approval or discontent, the subtlety of expression, and drawing of heads and bodies, the exact quality and tone of the fur, the expressive eloquence of the tail! ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... wrong," he concluded thoughtfully, "but I have a hunch this little plastic feline is going to be more trouble than the liveliest real cat ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... to it, heart and soul; my whole being thrilled with the passionate outpourings of a spirit freed. My voice trembled in the upper bars of a feline love-song, quavered, descended, swelling again into an intimation that I brooked no rival, and ended ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... she caught sight of some envelopes lying on the round marble-topped table in the middle of the hall. She seized one of them with a wonderfully quick, almost feline, movement and tore it open, saying to us, "Excuse me, I must . . . Do go into the dining-room. Captain Blunt, show ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... room over the amount of one sen and a half is far more like a man. When he stared at me with owlish eyes at the teachers' meeting, I branded him as a spiteful guy, but as I consider the matter now, he is better than the feline voice of Red Shirt. To tell the truth, I tried to get reconciled with Porcupine, and after the meeting, spoke a word or two to him, but he shut up like a clam and kept glaring at me. So I became sore, and let it go ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... Forties were still ablaze with light and noisy foxtrots; but in the virtuous Hundreds, where Mr. Pett's house stood, respectable slumber reigned. Only the occasional drone of a passing automobile broke the silence, or the love-sick cry of some feline Romeo ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Of the lesser feline species the number and variety in Ceylon is inferior to that of India. The Palm-cat[1] lurks by day among the fronds of the coco-nut trees, and by night makes destructive forays on the fowls of the villagers; and, in order to suck ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... money, and told him not to play the fool. I said, "I want a room." He looked at me stolidly, but suddenly I discovered my portmanteau in a corner. I claimed it at once and mounted the stairs, the waiter following with his curiously feline footsteps, and murmuring at intervals, "Well, I am———!" He said it with great conviction, but he took me to the bath room nevertheless. I got a shave, changed my suit, and, as I was something of a dandy at the time, I affected certain airs as to ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... suffer less. Yet one walks toward it, barefooted, on the heated pavement, heedless of the heat. The motives which led Boleslas to choose the French novelist as the one from whom to obtain his information, demonstrated that the feline character of his physiognomy was not deceptive. He understood Dorsenne much better than Dorsenne understood him. He knew him to be nervous, on the one hand, and perspicacious on the other. If there was an intrigue ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... when the maples and beeches have faded. All its reliefs and intaglios have electrotyped themselves in the medallions that hang round the walls of your memory's chamber.—The sea remembers nothing. It is feline. It licks your feet,—its huge flanks purr very pleasantly for you; but it will crack your bones and eat you, for all that, and wipe the crimsoned foam from its jaws as if nothing had happened. The mountains give their lost children berries and water; the sea mocks their thirst and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... children gamesome. It is true; they are as noble as the lion of the desert, and as gentle and as playful as the fireside cat. Our traveller observes all this;[81] and seems to forget that from the humblest to the highest of the feline tribe, from the cat to the lion, the most wanton and tyrannical cruelty alternates with qualities more engaging or more elevated. Other barbarous tribes also have their innocent aspects—from the Scythians in the classical poets and historians down to the Lewchoo ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Ralph Dexter went home. Finding that the carriage was not in use, he set forth alone upon his feline quest, reflecting that Araminta herself was not much more than a little grey kitten. Everywhere he went, he was regarded with suspicion. People denied the possession of cats, even while cats were mewing in defiance of the assertion. Bribes ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... from the fierce glare seen in the eyes of many of our animals, especially the feline race, which seems to enlarge the eyes to enormous orbs of brilliant light. In the Martians it is simply a colourless, soft, and liquid glow which has a different effect on eyes of different colours; but it ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... Vertical zones of writhing figures ascend the sphere at the base of the Victor. Across the upper portions of the sphere, and modeled as parts of the Earth, stretch titanic zoomorphs, representing the Hemispheres, East and West. The spirit of the Eastern Hemisphere is conceived as feline and characterized as a human tiger cat. The spirit of the Western Hemisphere is conceived as taurine and characterized as a human bull. The base of the Equestrian is surrounded by a frieze of architecturalized fish and the rearing sea horses that furnish the principal upper motif for the play of ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... amid black powder, of burned stuffs and calcined earth which roams in sheets about the country, all the menagerie is let loose and gives battle. Bellowings, roarings, growlings, strange and savage; feline caterwaulings that fiercely rend your ears and search your belly, or the long-drawn piercing hoot like the siren of a ship in distress. At times, even, something like shouts cross each other in the air-currents, with curious variation of tone that make the sound human. The country is bodily lifted ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... morning visit was about to be made apparent. Bill returned to his position at the desk and lit another cigarette. The suave manner of his unwelcome guest was dangerous. He was prepared. There was something almost feline in the attitude and the expression of the young rancher as he waited for the money-lender to proceed. Perhaps Lablache understood him. Perhaps his understanding warned him to adopt his best manner. His usual method in ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... herself. She got into the habit of talking in a low voice, of moving about noiselessly, of remaining mute and motionless on a chair with expressionless, open eyes. But, when she raised an arm, when she advanced a foot, it was easy to perceive that she possessed feline suppleness, short, potent muscles, and that unmistakable energy and passion slumbered in her soporous frame. Her cousin having fallen down one day in a fainting fit, she abruptly picked him up and carried him—an effort of strength that turned her cheeks ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... the bell to ring; he was very indignant at the political condescendence of his superior officer towards the priest; and every day he was beseeching the Commander to let him do once, just once, "Ding-dong! Ding-dong!" merely for the sake of having a little fun. And he begged for it with feline gracefulness, the cajolery of a woman, the tenderness of voice of a beloved mistress craving for something, but the Commander did not yield, and to console himself, Mademoiselle Fifi exploded ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... are cleaning their rifles. The proceedings are superintended by a contemplative tabby cat, coiled up in a niche, like a feline flower ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... The blood of Mary Connynge, this survival, this half-savage woman, unregulated, unsubdued, leaped high within her bosom, fled to her face, gave color to her cheek and brightness to her eye. Her breath shortened after feline fashion. Deep was calling unto deep, ancient unto ancient, primitive unto primitive. Without the gate of London prison there was one abject prisoner. Within its gates there were two prisoners, and one of them ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... sad music fills the quiet hall, If on her back a feline rival fall! And oh, what noises shake the tranquil house If old Self-interest cheats her ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of a night march up to the Spingawi. He hoped by an attack at dawn on the Afghan detachment posted there, to turn the main position on the Kotal, and bring about its evacuation. This plan had often succeeded against Afghans. Their characteristics both in peace and war are distinctly feline. Prone to ease and enjoyment at ordinary times, yet, when stirred by lust of blood or booty, they are capable of great feats of swift fierce onset; but, like all men and animals dominated by sudden impulses, their bravery is fitful, and ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Swinton. "That a lion generally lurks and lies in wait to seize his prey is certain, but this is the general characteristic of the feline tribe, of which he may be considered as the head; and it is for this mode of hunting that nature has ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... phenomenon. The late British Consul at Trieste and famous explorer and linguist, Sir Richard Burton, could detect the presence of a cat at a considerable distance, and I have heard that Lord Roberts experiences the same paralyzing influence by the proximity of the harmless feline. If, therefore, one can register the presence of a cat, and another that of a dead body, I see no difficulty in others registering water or any other antipathetic. All we have to remember is that these things are psychic in their origin, and not ignorantly confound sensation with consciousness, ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... go?" he mused. "Don't you believe in knowing all the natures, the types, you can? Those girls are a strange study: the young one is a simple, earthly creature, as common as an oat-field and the other a sort of sylvan life: fierce, flashing, feline—" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... caused us both to run to the door. We could hear that the noise proceeded from the bathroom, and, hurrying to the door, we found A. Fish, Esq., sitting up in the water shouting for help, while Mrs. Mehetable Murchison and a whole group of her feline friends were out on the tiles, glaring ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... brightness of steel; his keen glances, subject to his will, often questioned, but never allowed themselves to be interrogated. Well made, slender, a slight and graceful figure, he had in his gait and movements a feline suppleness and stealthiness. He was slow, but easy of speech, and never animated; the tone of his voice was cold and veiled, and whatever the subject of conversation might be, he neither raised nor lowered it; no modulations; everyone of ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... it easy to wrap itself up in bedclothes, or whether, seeing that even walnut shells subject cats to such extreme discomfort, top-boots would not be even more intolerable to the most faithful of feline retainers. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... with the other; for whereas the dimly-seen figure had resembled that of a man (or, more closely, that of a woman) the eyes had looked out upon me from a point low down near the ground, like those of some crouching feline. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... you doubt it, observe the lion's. The woman was horrible, and yet full of grace. The effect was tragic. First he felt the claw, then the velvet of the paw. A feline attack, made up of advances and retreats. There was death as well as sport in this game of come and go. She idolized him, but arrogantly. The result was contagious frenzy. Fatal language, at once inexpressible, violent, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... on the mountain; there Is the lion's haunt and the tiger's lair; And for them I shall be a morsel of food, They will eat my flesh and drink my blood; But my bones will be left, to show the place Where this form was devoured by the feline race; Yes, something will then remain of me, Whilst nothing ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... and the light of the camp-fires. He always approaches stealthily, like the cat, except when wounded; but anything having the appearance of a trap will induce him to refrain from making the last fatal spring. This is a peculiarity of the whole feline species. It has been found in India that when a hunter pickets a goat on a plain as a bait, a tiger has whipped it off so quickly by a stroke of his paw that it was impossible to take aim. To obviate this difficulty a small pit is ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... has its tasks, if thou wilt look; fit to wear-out the lives of toughest men. The celebrated Kilkenny Cats, through their tumultuous congress, cleaving the ear of Night, could they be said to do nothing? Hadst thou been of them, thou hadst seen! The feline Heart laboured, as with steam up—to the bursting point; and death-doing energy nerved every muscle: they had a work there; and did it! On the morrow, two tails were found left, and peaceable annihilation; a ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... his claws, and torn the scalp over his forehead. In this frightful condition the hunter grappled with the raging beast, and struggling for life, they rolled together down a steep declivity. All this passed so rapidly, that the other boor had scarcely time to recover from the confusion in which his feline foe had left him, to seize his gun, and rush forward to aid his comrade, when he beheld them rolling together down the steep bank in mortal conflict. In a few moments he was at the bottom with them, but too late to save the life of his friend. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... Bernard, Mr. Bernard to Miss Letty, Dudley Veneer to Miss Helen Darley, and so on. The two young men looked each other straight in the eyes, both full of youthful life, but one of frank and fearless aspect, the other with a dangerous feline beauty alien to the New England half ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... general impression," was the rejoinder, "but we have never noticed any attempts at hibernation here. Bears are unusually lively during the cold months, and demand their food as regularly as do the lions and other feline animals. I don't know that any observations of value on this question have ever been made on animals in confinement. I have had some experience with outside animals, and a great many go through what is called a winter's sleep; and in warm countries there is what might be called a summer sleep. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... looked at him, she knew that in all her wide demesne no soldier could stand before him and look straight into his eyes. So deep and honest a book it was, so easily readable, that she must turn to its final pages. Love him? No. Be his wife? No. She recognized that it was the feline instinct to play which dominated her. Consequences? Therein ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... a certain diffidence or shyness. He recognised that Smoke called for strong yet respectful management. The cat's circuitous methods puzzled him, and his elaborate pretences perhaps shocked the dog's liking for direct, undisguised action. Yet, while he failed to comprehend these tortuous feline mysteries, he was never contemptuous or condescending; and he presided over the safety of his furry black friend somewhat as a father, loving, but intuitive, might superintend the vagaries of a wayward and ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... experienced eye could detect the fact that nothing had really cost money. As an opening to the career on which she had embarked the setting was unexpected, while the method of her treatment was bewildering. In the black recesses of her heart Miss Henrietta Towell might be hiding all those feline machinations which Mrs. Judson Flack had led Letty to believe a part of the great world's stock-in-trade; but it couldn't be denied that she hid them well. Letty didn't know what to make of it. "There's quite a trick to ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... overweening pride in them; this, perhaps, was because my cruel parents established a decree, rigid and unbending as the laws of the Medes and Persians, that we must never have more than one cat at a time. Although this very law may argue that predilection, at an early age, for harboring everything feline which came in my way, which has since become at once a source of ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... sipped his wine, and his dark, hungry eyes followed her as she moved about him with vaguely voluptuous, almost feline grace. The wine, the heavy perfume of the lamp, and the beauty of her played havoc among them with his senses, so that he forgot for the moment his Castilian lineage and clean Christian blood, forgot that she ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... distress. There has been no news for several months from Tartarin the lion-slayer, who set off to hunt the great feline tribe in Africa. What can have become of our heroic fellow-countryman? Those hardly dare ask who know, as we do, how hot-headed he was, and what boldness and thirst for adventures were his. Has he, like many others, been smothered in the sands, or has ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... crocodile. The rest were sleeping on the banks. The catawampuss secretly emerged from its den—horror, I am not ashamed to say, prevented me from interfering—stealthily crept across the cold floor, and, true to the instincts of all the feline tribe,[20] made straight for ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... till he reached the quarter of the city inhabited by the descendants of the feline race; and as he had never before been in that part of the town, he was at first utterly confounded by the discordant cries. Instead, too, of the order prevailing in the canine portions, the inhabitants ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... the table. His eyes were all but invisible. There was no ursine clumsiness in his movements, as he walked to and fro in the bar-room. As became a feline, he walked in silence and on his toes. He was thinking of many a shady incident in his past career, and he knew that with the greater number of his shaded spots Zephyr was more or less familiar. With which of them was Zephyr most familiar, and was there any one by means of which Zephyr could ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... again quickly and softly, but somebody was inside the room, somebody who had a light, feline step, and John felt the prickling of the hair at the back of his neck. He longed for a weapon, something better than only his two hands, but he was reassured when the intruder, speaking French, called ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... answer came after a moment's pause. "I have caprices of mood. Certain mental images made my temperature rise. Momentarily it did matter. One is like that at times. Andrews' feline face and her muscular fingers—and the child's extraordinarily exquisite flesh—gave me ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Richelieu was also fond of cats; and when we have enumerated the names of Cowper and Dr Johnson, of Thomas Gray and Isaac Newton, and, above all, of the tender-hearted and meditative Montaigne, the list is far from complete of those who have bestowed on the feline race some portion of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... one upon whom the Corporal thought fit to set her; and, above all, to rob larders, shelves, and tables, and bring the produce to the Corporal, who never failed to consider such stray waifs lawful manorial acquisitions. These little feline cultivations of talent, however delightful to the Corporal, and creditable to his powers of teaching the young idea how to shoot, had nevertheless, since the truth must be told, rendered the Corporal's cat a proverb and byeword throughout the neighbourhood. Never was cat in such bad odour: and ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and sat near the window facing the station platform. Occasionally she would look up from her work and gaze at the woods, or at the long line of rails, but everything seemed deserted and silent. Finally, unable to sit still any longer, she arose and began to pace around the table with a soft, feline step, smiling and repeating to herself: "I will get him, I will get him! At last I will find a little rest in my life, my wanderings will ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... in sovereign contempt, scattered the hounds like a pack of rats, and, with a majestic bound over bushes upwards of twelve feet high, re-entered the jungle. With a feeling of indignation at such contemptuous treatment, George Rennie re-charged his gun in haste, vowing vengeance against the whole feline race—a vow which he fully redeemed in after years. His brother John, who was injured to the extent of a scratch on the back and a severe bruise on the ribs by the rough treatment he had received, arose and slowly followed his example, and Groot Willem, growling in a tone ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... and extraordinary vitality of these feline human beings, who were known as pirates, has often occasioned astonishment in ordinary people. Their sun-tanned and hairy bodies seemed to be made of something like wire, leather, and India rubber, upon ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... Keng-tung; her journey to Rangoon took fifty days; and she is well-known in western China and our Shan States as a states-woman and woman of business. Her neat, small, well-set on head, with pretty face and slightly oblique eyes, one could not forget quickly—it was feline and feminine, and through and through as a poignarde ecossaise. Her sister, Sao Nang Tip Htila, was the only lady who rode on an elephant at the Delhi Durbar Procession. She is also known as a clever business woman; at present she ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... telling lies to herself. Very gradually and cautiously did he proceed so as not to "flush the bird." Even as I saw, an hour ago, a cat creep upon a sparrow with fascinating eyes, and a waving, snake-like motion of the tail, and a treacherous feline smile upon her face, even so, cautiously and by degrees, Humphreys felt his way with velvet paws toward his prey. He knew the opportunity, that once gone might not come again; he soon guessed that this was ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... companionship of Calvin, also, counts for a good deal. He usually attends me, unless I work too long in one place; sitting down on the turf, displaying the ermine of his breast, and watching my movements with great intelligence. He has a feline and genuine love for the beauties of Nature, and will establish himself where there is a good view, and look on it for hours. He always accompanies us when we go to gather the vegetables, seeming to be desirous ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... one or two men whom she observed at the soiree musicale; but she would never have felt moved to any kittenish display to attract their notice—to any feline or feminine wiles to express herself toward them. Their personality attracted her in an agreeable way. Her fancy selected them, and she was glad when a lull in the music gave them an opportunity to meet ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... moment, I understand his habits changed. From being a tolerably cheerful companion, he became a wretched hypochondriac; all his energies being directed to the avoiding a contact with any of the feline race. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... than kill a cat; and if emotions, well recognized as feminine, are inimical to feline life, then jealousy would soon leave the whole world catless. Barbara opened the letter, with an indulgent, ...
— Options • O. Henry
... each other, and a rupture was imminent. Under the circumstances, Mr. Cashmere, while assuring everybody of his whole-hearted support, had a private reservation of judgment to be finally settled by the directional feline saltation. ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... Macedonian could not wholly curb the rollicking spirit of Terrence. His exuberance of spirits constantly got the better of any good intentions he might have formed. Any wholesome dread he may have entertained of that famous feline of nine tails, known to sailors of that day, was overcome by his ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... features singularly sunken and attenuated, it was not easy to tell her age; she looked as near fifteen as thirty, although she was in reality only nineteen, four years younger than her husband. There was much feline slyness in the depths of her little black eyes, which suggested gimlet holes. Her low, bumpy forehead, her slightly depressed nose with delicate quivering nostrils, her thin red lips and prominent chin, parted from her cheeks by ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... no longer see the small meadow where the grazers were. But Travis knew, as well as if he watched the scene, that the coyotes were creeping in, belly flat to earth, adding a feline stealth and ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... stream. How cool it is! He looks up the dark, silent defile, hears the solitary voice of the water, sees the decayed trunks of fallen trees bridging the stream, and all he has dreamed, when a boy, of the haunts of beasts of prey—the crouching feline tribes, especially if it be near nightfall and the gloom already deepening in the woods—comes freshly to mind, and he presses on, wary and alert, and speaking to ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... only," the druggist went on, "are human beings subject to such anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ignorant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced by the Nepeta cataria, vulgarly called catmint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an example whose authenticity I can answer for. Bridaux (one of my old comrades, at present established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him. He often ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... his house there was another attraction in the shape of the concierge's cat, on whom Sir Charles would call before paying his respects upstairs. At another house a cat named Pouf was held in great honour by him, and his feelings were deeply wounded when, with feline capriciousness, it turned, on Paul Hervieu's entrance, to bestow all its blandishments on the writer. His love of cats was as well known to his French as to his English friends, Emile Ollivier writes in 1891 from La Moutte: ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... like a cat which sees a mouse running heedlessly by, ready to spring, yet waiting with that feline sense of enjoyment of mischief about to be ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... feline about a man's love for old, familiar things. I know that it is a popular misconception to compare women with cats and men with dogs. But the analogy is ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... he had not a frank gaze, nor did he meet his friends without a nameless reticence. This veiled manner made him difficult to decipher. Upon the stage Belus was like a desert cat, a gliding movement almost incorporeal, a glance of feline intensity, and then—the puissant attack upon the keyboard. As in sullen dreams one struggles to throw off the spell of hypnotic suggestion, so there were many who mutely fought his power, questioning with rebellious soul his right to conquer. But conquer he did—so all the conservatory pupils ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... a lioness before, striding and chafing in her regal rage, she is again, it must be confessed, a little like one now, but presenting a different aspect of the great feline, a sort of cruelty, a need to torment before sacrificing. "What would King Mark say if I were to slay his best servant, the most faithful of his retainers, who won for him crown and land? Does it seem to you such a paltry matter, that for which he stands indebted to ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... in it—a certain atmosphere of distances and shadows gave mystery to her landscape. Her weather, that is her mood, was now subject to changes which to many made her more attractive. Fits of wild gaiety alternated with glooms, through which would break flashes of feline playfulness, where pat and scratch were a little mixed. She had more admirers than ever, for she had developed points capable of interesting men of somewhat higher development than those she had hitherto pleased. At the same time she was more wayward ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... odd resorts for amusement, he knitted a pair of stockings for the cat who reigned in the household at the time. When tired of reading, he diverted himself with constructing houses of books for the same feline pet, building walls for her to leap, and perhaps erecting triumphal arches for her to pass under. In this period he must have taken a considerable range in literature, for his age; and one would almost say that Nature, seeing so rare a spirit in a sound body that kept him sporting ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... was at the door waiting to be let in. He regarded the pair with the air of condescending boredom which the feline race assumes when confronted with the idiosyncrasies of poor humanity. Possibly he was reflecting that, at least, he knew enough to go in when it rained. Martha opened the door, but Galusha paused for ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... those of all the rest, assented to the arrangement with a willingness which filled me with boding. I had caught his restless furtive eye fixed gloatingly upon me more than once. I saw that he was aware of my terror, and exulted in it, and took a feline pleasure in playing me, as it were, and letting me realize by slow degrees what his power over me would be when he chose finally to exert it. My best hope for the present, once the merciful or prudent Tony was out of sight, lay ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... study, where the lamps were lighted and the silver claret-jug set out. He carefully dusted a big arm-chair and began to smoke, having first carefully extinguished the lamps and seen that the window leading to the garden was wide open. Henson was watching for something. In his feline nature he had the full gift of feline patience. To serve his own ends he would have sat there watching all night if necessary. He heard an occasional whimper, a howl from one of the dogs; he heard Enid's voice singing in the drawing-room. The ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... Susy to get on with her studies in proportion. We had so much to first eradicate in the way of manners, style, and habits of thought which the poor child had picked up from her companions, and for which SHE was not responsible. Of course, with a boy that does not signify," she added, with feline gentleness. ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... Mademoiselle Habert,—one of those glances which pass from old maid to old maid, feline and cruel. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... ardent desire to "kill a panther" and a horrible fear of being eaten alive. No one dared to move; only after five minutes it occurred to one of the carriers to light a match. I then remembered the fear which feline animals exhibit at the presence of fire, and ordered my men to gather two or three handfuls of brush, which I set on fire. We then saw, about ten steps from us, one of our carriers stretched out on the ground, with his limbs frightfully lacerated by the claws of a huge panther. ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... him; he had neither cup nor flask, but he filled the pail and held it with great dexterity to her lips. She drank a little, extracted a lace handkerchief from some hidden pocket, dipped its point in the water, and wiped her face delicately, after a certain feline fashion. Then, catching sight of some small object in the fork of a bush above her, she quickly pounced upon it, and with a swift sweep of her hand under her skirt, put on HER FALLEN SLIPPER, and stood on ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... their organs could be altered, without the change involving the alteration of all the rest. Darwinism affirms, on the contrary, that there was no express construction concerned in the matter; but that among the multitudinous variations of the Feline stock, many of which died out from want of power to resist opposing influences, some, the cats, were better fitted to catch mice than others, whence they throve and persisted, in proportion to the advantage over their fellows ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... in undoubted Assyrian monuments (see Figs. 8, 29, and 123). If we turn the plaque, we find ourselves face to face with the beast. His skull is depressed, his features hideous, his grinning jaws wrinkled like those of a lion or panther. His feline character is enforced ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot |
