"Tail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pointed. Skyrocket had been holding back, for he did not like strangers, especially ragged ones, and this boy was rather ragged. But when Uncle Toby made it plain that the boy was to be regarded as a friend, the dog wagged his tail in welcome and curled up on the ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... many Quakers and salt fish—the oysters have a taste of copper, owing to the soil of a mining country—the women (blessed be the Corporation therefor!) are flogged at the cart's tail when they pick and steal, as happened to one of the fair sex yesterday noon. She was pertinacious in her behaviour, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... same as that of the native dogs of Yucatan. Were I to describe these I could not make use of more appropriate words than the following of Du Chaillu: "The pure bred native dog is small, has long straight ears, long muzzle and long curly tail; the hair is short and the color yellowish; the pure breed being known by the clearness of his color. They are always lean, and are kept very short of food by their owners. * * * Although they have quick ears; I don't think highly ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... the water run off then. I did not pay much attention to his talk, for he was so choke-full of larning, and had got such a lot of hard names on the tip of his tongue, that there were no making head or tail ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... inch of canvas spread yet she appeared to be standing still, so faint was the breeze that stirred. And whilst she crawled, the galeasse raced as never yet she had raced since Sakr-el-Bahr had commanded her, for Sakr-el-Bahr had never yet turned tail upon the foe in whatever strength he ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... left, on the road leading from Niagara Falls to the fortress; these were reinforced in the morning with the grenadiers and part of the forty-sixth regiment, commanded by lieutenant-colonel Massey; and another regiment, under lieutenant-colonel Farquhar, was posted at the tail of the works, in order to support the guard of the trenches. About eight in the morning, the enemy being in sight, the Indians in the English army advanced to speak with their countrymen who served under the French banners; but this conference was declined by the enemy. Then ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... much speculation by informing a knot of men that this was old Marshall Sothern; the name carried weight and brought fresh interest. Such a man was Ben Hasbrook, little and dried up and nervous mannered, a power in the network of ramifications of a big corporation having its head in Quebec, its tail in Vancouver, its claws everywhere throughout Canada. These men spelled big interests; these were the lions come to wrest away the prey which the pack ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... Stickleback, who is also a nest-builder. This little fish is fairly common round our coasts, living in weedy pools by the shore, where it devours any small creature unlucky enough to come near. It is about six inches long, this sea Stickleback, with a long snout, and its body is very thin near the tail. ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... late passenger after the receding tail light, and dashed up the steps to the porch that ran the full length of Hart's Tavern. In the shelter of its low-lying roof, he stopped short and once more peered down the dark, rain-swept road. A flash of lightning ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... run after us, wrap round us and whip us with its tail. The first one I remember got after me in de orchard. He wrapped right round me and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... all this danger the great Grand Duke was blown upon our shore, with a good deal less fuss than Jonah had when he took to his life-boat with fins and tail, and discharged cargo on a desert shore, without the first chance of an imperial reception, and nothing but an upstart guard to offer him the hospitalities ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... Birds with beautiful long tail feathers that had traveled hundreds of miles from the warm countries of Africa sat on their perches looking homesick for ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... tourists. The people of the personally conducted party were, it seemed, of two sorts; people the conductor wanted and could not find, and people he did not want and who followed him in a steadily growing tail up and down the platform. These people seemed, indeed, to think that their one chance of reaching Rome lay in keeping close to him. Three little old ladies were particularly energetic in his pursuit, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... nights ago," he explained, "engine trouble—and, although it's enemy's country I don't like to burn the old 'bus, so I've backed its tail as far as I could into the bush and am screening the exposed part with bushes so that it won't be spotted from aloft. There's not much wrong with it, rather a bad strip of the fabric ripped off as I was coming down, but I ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... the size of a full-grown pigeon, perhaps a little larger. He is not handsomely proportioned, his head being too large for his body and his tail very small. His feathers are white and black, and he has a comical appearance that harmonizes well with his humorous manner. He is easily domesticated, and will learn to talk quite as ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the poor man's spirits gone, that he seemed perfectly lost in pathetic resignation. Even the apparently unquenchable handkerchief hung limp and inactive from a coat-tail pocket, where it had been jammed in a moment of unresigned despair; and the big tears dropped one by one on Jeanie's hair, as he talked now ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... bow. Urging his steed to the uttermost he got close up to the bull. Fury was in the creature's little eyes, and madness in its tail. When a buffalo bull cocks its tail with a little bend in the middle thereof, it is time to ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... cold it may be up on the mountain-top, so I brought the sheath-knife, ax, rifle, and other things in case we get the tail-end of a blizzard." ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Moore in many of his. A chorus should, of course, contain the very spirit of the song—bounding, if it be gay; fierce, if it be bold; doting, if it loves. Merely repeating one verse between, or at the head or tail of another, is not putting a chorus; it must be the verse which beats the best on your ear, and has the most echo in your heart. So, too, of burdens; they are not made merely by bringing in the same words in like places. They must be marked words forcibly ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... by the hearth would shake out his long, slender body, rattling his collar, and yawning and wagging his tail, and I would jump up, after those three or four hours of sleep, fully rested and full of ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... gentlemen; but old Harry Verney was in here just now, and had seen a great jack strike, at the tail of the lower reeds. With this fresh wind he will run till noon; and you are sure of him with a dace. After that, he will not be up again on the shallows till sunset. He works the works of darkness, and comes not to the light, because his ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... did not even look up. He merely flung a barbed "Well?" over his shoulder. It reminded Trotter of the preoccupied tail swish of a horse worried by a black-fly. The side flick of one casual monosyllable was plainly all he was worth. Trotter ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... experience of nature's but narrow, And whose faculties move in no small mist When he versifies David the Psalmist) I should study that brute to describe you Illum Juda Leonem de Tribu. One's whole blood grew curdling and creepy To see the black mane, vast and heapy, The tail in the air stiff and straining, The wide eyes, nor waxing nor waning, As over the barrier which bounded His platform, and us who surrounded The barrier, they reached and they rested On space that might stand him in best stead: For who knew, he thought, what the amazement, The eruption of clatter ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... looking over the old man's mount, a beautiful little black-and-white-spotted pony, as clean limbed as a racer, and with a round and compact body. It was a bizarre-looking little animal, with a long, black mane and tail, at the roots of which was a round, white spot. It was the sort of animal that would attract ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... of the frightened pony lay coiled a gigantic rattlesnake, its ugly head and tail raised and its rattles singing ominously. Two more steps and the pony would ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... feathers with an angry "jark;" while Dick, withy staring eyes and his tongue hanging out, ran right between Philip's legs, made a feint at Fred, and then leaped right on Harry, who caught hold of his short stumpy tail as he went down and dragged him towards ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... felt how naughty she was, but her overweening vanity quite stifled her conscience. She scratched the bird's poll, treated him to several lumps of sugar, and, when he was not looking, suddenly jerked one of the finest feathers out of his tail. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... and ill-founded attack. Neither Dr. Johnson, with all his deep learning, nor Mr. Whateley, with all the cultivated fancy of a rich scholastic mind, would either of them have been able to comprehend, or to understand, or even to make head or tail of the first half of Mr. George Mason's poem, with which he closes the above edition of his Essay. As he has been so caustically severe against Dr. Johnson, it cannot be ungenerous if one applies to the above part of his own poem, the language of a ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... need a cat,' The Captain said. So when the painted ship Sailed through a golden sunrise down the Thames, A gray tail waved upon the misty poop, And Whittington had his venture on ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... under the counter; he is so gorged with human flesh, that he can scarcely move his tail in the tinged water; and he now hears the sullen plunges of the bodies, as they are launched through the lower-deck port, with perfect indifference. "Oh! what a ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and down. Half a dozen times I've almost had my fingers on the tail feathers of fortune: only to stumble into some hidden pit of poverty. And in time—well, time mends all things. Besides, I hardly relished facing Mother Leary. There was the chance too that you no longer needed rescuing. I'm not trying to excuse ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... flashes of the sentries' guns as they gave the alarm and fell back. The Federals landed rapidly, and drove the confused Confederates from the battery. Then began the work of spiking the guns. Every fifth man carried a number of rat-tail files, which were to be driven into the vents of the cannon, and then broken off. While the raiders were engaged in this work, the Confederates rallied, and soon drove back the blue-jackets to their boats, with a slight loss in killed and captured. How many guns they had disabled, it is hard to ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... races are five miles long, Doo-da! Doo-da! The Camp Town races are five miles long, Doo-da! Doo-da! Day! Gwine to run all night. Gwine to run all day. I bet my money on the bob-tail nag, Somebody bet ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... impracticable notions in my time; but this is good, and you'll say so. You know that dog, Mark, two doors below—the large yellow one, with cropped ears, and a tail like the handle ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... feet further, and it curved through a wider arc, but still without result. The third cast sent it a little further still, past the edge of a big sunken rock in the current. There was a flash of silver in the amber water, a great splash on the surface, a broad tail waved in the air and vanished—an immense salmon had risen ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... The tail of the column was followed and much harassed by the enemy; but they were kept at bay by the steadiness of the gallant Gurkhas, and so successful were they in safe-guarding the baggage, that, although many ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... few of the prince's supporters to ride within pistol-shot and discharge their pieces at the Royal troops to set them into as disgraceful a panic as ever animated frightened men. The dragoons, ludicrously unmanned, turned tail and rode for their lives, rode without drawing bridle and without staying spur till they came to Leith, paused there for a little, and then, on some vague hint that the Highlanders were on their track, they were in ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... George. "If you were to put some water into a vial and tie it to the tail of a kite, and send it up into the air high enough, the water would freeze, and when it came down you would find the ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... Everything about him spoke of wealth and authority. The old dog returned to the doorstep, and after a careful look at the invader approached him, with a funny doggish grin and a desperate wag of the tail, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... caught several other mysterious messages uttered in the stuttering voice of Dan Cassey, they had not been able to make head nor tail of them. The lads liked mysteries, but they liked them chiefly for the fun of solving them. And they seemed no nearer to solving this one than they had ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... alone in the dusk, in the stalls. Half the footlights and one row of border lights illuminated the stage, and a fat man in very light grey clothes, a vast white waistcoat and a pot hat was singing 'Salut demeure' in a nasal half-voice to the tail of the Commendatore's white horse, from Don Juan. The monumental animal had apparently stopped to investigate an Egyptian palm tree which happened to grow near the spot usually occupied by Marguerite's cottage. The tenor had his hands in his pockets, his ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... distance, the town appeared to have been scattered irregularly or thrown together hastily, as if cast ashore by some overflow—the Cosmopolitan Hotel drifting into the Baptist church, and dragging in its tail of wreckage two saloons and a blacksmith's shop; while the County Court-house was stranded in solitary grandeur in a waste of gravel half a mile away. The intervening flat was still gashed and furrowed by the remorseless engines ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... breaks. If it was not that we saw the clouds flying fast overhead when we started, I should have said it was a thick sea fog that had rolled in upon us. Ah, there is the first drop. I don't care how hard it comes down so that there is not wind at the tail of it. A squall of wind before rain is soon over; but when it follows rain you will soon have your sails close-reefed. You had best go below or you will be wet through in ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... From the tail-pocket of his long broadcloth coat he pulled a red bandanna handkerchief and blew his nose. He put the big blunt forefinger of his right hand on the text of the open ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... sharks heard and waved their tails to one another and winked their cat's eyes in token that they understood his talk. And then he said: 'I shall now dive for a lobster for the king. And no hurt shall befall me, because the shark with the shortest tail is my friend and will ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... stopped short and looked up. For just a little wee minute Reddy couldn't believe that his eyes saw right. Coming down the hill straight towards him was the strangest thing he ever had seen. He couldn't see any legs. He couldn't see any head. He couldn't see any tail. It was round like a ball, but it was the strangest looking ball that ever was. It was covered with old leaves. Reddy wouldn't have believed that it was alive but for the noises it was making. For ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess
... carries on her head the figure of a certain bird. This bird is composed of copper or of gold, according to the quality of the person; the wings spread out, fall over the front of the head-dress, and conceal the temples. The tail, long and open, forms a beautiful tuft of feathers. The beak covers the top of the nose; the neck is fastened to the body of the artificial animal by a spring, that it may the more freely play, and tremble at ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... only consented to get an English saddle (which she declined to do, with one of her customary exaggerations, saying that she "didn't want a thousand pommels"), to rise in that saddle, and to have the tail of her horse cropped properly, he would have been quite happy. As it was, he acknowledged that in her own fashion she was a most graceful and fearless horsewoman, and approved of her accordingly. It soon struck him that she did other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... of the bay now and the boat began to spin. For one terrible moment it seemed as if an overturn were imminent. Out of the tail of his eyes, Enoch saw the Mary ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... That thy suit was unsuccessful, That in vain thy steed had journeyed? Not in vain has been thy wooing, Not in vain thy steed has travelled To the dismal homes of Lapland; He has journeyed heavy laden, Shaken mane, and tail, and forelock, Dripping foam from lips and nostrils, Through the bringing of the maiden, With the burden of the husband. "Come, thou beauty, from the snow-sledge, Come, descend thou from the cross-bench, Do not linger for assistance, Do not tarry to be carried; If too young the one that lifts ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... till the servant came, chatting and patting the horse; but as soon as Bold had disappeared through the front door, he stuck a switch under the animal's tail to make ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... to Live: The Vulgar People love to be deluded; And things the most unlikely they most dote on; A strange Disease in Cattle, Hogs or Pigs, Or any Accident in Cheese or Butter; Though't be but Natural, or a Sluts fault, Must strait be Witchcraft! Oh, the Witch was here! The Ears or Tail is burn'd, the Churn is burn'd; And this to hurt the Witch, when all the while They're likest Witches that believe such Cures; Could I do all that People think I can, I'de ne're take pains to find out stolen Goods, Or hold intelligence with Thieves to bring e'm, Meerly to get ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... plays, not only those which are formed upon fiction, but likewise such as are founded on the truth of history, are all, or the greatest part, universally known to be monstrous productions, without either head or tail, and yet received with pleasure by the multitude, who approve and esteem them as excellent performances, though they are far from deserving that title; and if the authors who compose, and the actors who represent them, affirm that this and no other method ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... eight o'clock next morning the lawyer rattled (according to previous appointment) on the studio door. He found the artist sadly altered for the worse—bleached, bloodshot, and chalky—a man upon wires, the tail of his haggard eye still wandering to the closet. Nor was the professor of drawing less inclined to wonder at his friend. Michael was usually attired in the height of fashion, with a certain mercantile brilliancy best described perhaps as stylish; nor could anything be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... precious. The tropics, with their easy, luxuriant growth, where the footfall turns up the warm soil, grow languid men, and our less smiling latitude grows strenuous ones. Thank God that everything is not easy, even in that which is meant for the revelation of all truth to all men! Instead of turning tail at the first fence, let us learn that it will do us good to climb, and that the fence is there in order to draw forth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... sub-races are (a) peacock, fan or battledore barley, described by Linnaeus as a distinct species, H. zeocriton, with erect short ears about 2-1/2 in. long, broad at the base and narrow at the tip, suggesting an open fan or peacock's tail; (b) erect-eared barleys (var. erectum) with erect broad ears and closely-packed plump grains; (c) nodding barleys (var. nutans). The ripe ears of the last hang so as to become almost parallel with the stem; they are narrower and longer than in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... taking the back track," Chouteau continued. "I wonder if that is the advance against the enemy that they have been dinning in our ears of late! Strikes me as rather queer! No sooner do we get into camp than we turn tail and make off, never even stopping ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... in the year 95, and was thus five years younger than Caesar and eleven years younger than Cicero. He was the great-grandson, as was said above, of the stern rugged censor who hated Greek, preferred the teaching of the plough-tail and the Twelve Tables to the philosophy of Aristotle, disbelieved in progress, and held by the maxims of his father—the last, he of the Romans of the old type. The young Marcus affected to take his ancestor for a pattern. He resembled him ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... draggle-tails; and whatever happens to them, it is good enough for them. And yet, to be sure, the vile baggages are most in fault. I wishes, with all my heart, they were well to be whipped at the cart's tail; for it is pity they should be the ruin of a pretty young gentleman; and nobody can deny but that Mr Jones is one of the most ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... nice of him to make his wife lie down! She thought his broad, red-brown face, with its protecting, not unhumorous, lower lip, looked very friendly. Roy, the Skye terrier at her feet, was smelling at the reverend gentleman's legs with a slow movement of his tail. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... which enter the building from without, these must be connected with the system of conducting wires; but if there are no such metallic connections with distant points, it is not necessary to take any pains to facilitate the escape of the electricity into the earth. But it is not advisable to put up a tail pointed conductor. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... ahead, standing like a statue in the middle of the network of tracks. They stumbled toward him, not knowing whether he was friend or foe. One look into their faces, aided by the flare of a yardman's lantern, and the fellow turned tail and fled, shouting as he ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... station for provision or grain Seth met with tail ends of cyclones, or heard of rumors of those that had just passed through, or were in process of passing, strange enough stories of capers cut by ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... with you, Miss Lady," the Stray pleaded, as he ran along beside me, trying to keep up with my long steps. "I've got me a dog now to keep off turkles from me and you." And the slinking brindle bunch of ears and tail and very little else, at our heels, regarded me with the same brave entreaty. He and the Stray, indeed, presented a picture of chivalrous attention as they ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... letters two feet high: "JEAN, OF THE LAZY A." It blared at the passer-by, but it did not look familiar at all. Beneath was a high-colored poster of a girl on a horse. The horse was standing on its hind feet, pawing the air; its nostrils flared red; its tail swept like a willow plume behind. The machine slowed and stopped for the traffic signal at the crossing, and still Jean studied the poster. It certainly did not look ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... 'flash houses.' One of these is described as follows:—This gaffer laughed a great deal and whistled Moore's melodies, and extracted music from a deal table with his elbow and wrist. When he hid a half-penny, and a flat cried 'head' for L10, a 'tail' was sure to turn up. One of his modes of commanding the turn-up was this: he had a half-penny with two heads, and a half-penny ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the back. "Now, surely," I thought, "that remaining boat will turn tail, and I shall have a chance to wipe her out on her way back to the junk!" But no; on she came, her crew yelling like demons, and churning the placid waters of the lagoon into foam with their oars. They sprang to their feet ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... man as demented, and rode on, not, however, without being caught in a drenching shower. Not being able to account for the source of information through which the rustic had gained his knowledge, he rode back, wet as he was, to learn something. "My cow," answered the man, "always twists her tail in a certain way just before a rain, your Worship, and she so twisted it just before I saw you."[30] Although twisting cow-tails do not figure in his "Principia," it is very probable that such a lesson was not without its remote effects ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... in some conspiracy, so could she and Prince be; and the pent-up feelings and thoughts of rather a lonely little heart were poured out to one who listened and sympathised with his soft brown eyes and curly tail, but who never betrayed the confidence reposed ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... rushed up the short staircase from the lower room, and springing on the bed, stood with bristling tail and glaring eyes, intently watching ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... just the same, however I am treated. I can't sit by and say nothing when I know that I ought to lift up my voice in warning. So I say again—you can mark my word or not as you think best—that we are all a-going to see some mighty wild sights before we see the last of that comet's tail." ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... out his toes in walking, which an Indian never does; I knew he had a short gun by the mark it left on the tree where he had stood it up; I knew the dog was small by his tracks and short steps, and that he had a bob-tail by the mark it left in ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... very much to go on visits to his grandmother, because she always tells him many funny stories. (b) Yesterday I saw a pretty little dog in the street. It had curly brown hair, short legs, and a long tail. ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... porpoises, and flying fish. A voracious dolphin was harpooned, in the maw of which was a barracouta in a half-digested state, and in the throat a flying fish, bitten in half, waiting its turn to be swallowed; for its tail had not disappeared out of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... figure under which the Assyrians represented hills or mountains; on others he found fragments of trees, on others blue undulations, significant, no doubt, of water; on others, again, parts of animals—the foot of a horse, the mane and tail of a lion. A thick, black line upon a blue ground may have stood for the lance of a hunter. Upon one fragment a human eye, looking full to the front, might be recognized.[365] We might be tempted to think that ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... indifferently. She leaped from Uncle William's shoulder, leading the way into the house, her back arched and her tail erect; her toes scarcely touched ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... die without disgracing his manhood. Wah Lee, his companion in captivity, had been brought out first, thrown flat on the ground and fastened securely to stakes. Just out of reach, a rattlesnake, with a buckskin thong passed through its tail, was tied to a stake. Tortured by rage and pain, the reptile struck at the Chinaman's face, but couldn't quite make the distance. Then water was poured on the thong and it began to stretch. With each ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... friendly, in one of those swiftly changing moods of boyhood, assisted in the tying of the string to the little dog's collar, though he cast a longing look at its stout fringed tail that was so admirably built to further the riotous bouncings of ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... be a fool?" Pao-ch'ai laughed. "When we played yesterday that game of wine-forfeits, what did you say? I really couldn't make out any head or tail." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... rid of the fern-seed which she now regarded as a hateful thing. She untied her shoes and shook it out in the grass. It dropped and seemed to melt into the air, for it instantly vanished. A mischievous laugh sounded close behind, and a beetle-green coat-tail was visible whisking under a tuft of rushes. But Toinette had had enough of the elves, and, tying her shoes, took the road toward home, running with ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... or tail of it. And there sits Madge with her mouth open, as if it was something to eat; and Lois's cheeks are as pink as if she expected the people to step out and walk in. Mother, do you like ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... dimples of the clear water, to note the tiny bright fragments of quartz or crystallized limestone that formed a shining pavement below the stream; and often she paused to watch the angry movements of the red squirrel, as, with feathery tail erect, and sharp scolding note, he crossed their woodland path, and swiftly darting up the rugged bark of some neighbouring pine or hemlock, bade the intruders on his quiet haunts defiance; yet so bold in his indignation, he scarcely condescended ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... kettle on the fire, with two cups of lard in it, to get it very hot. Wipe each smelt inside and out with a clean wet cloth, and then with a dry one. Have a saucer of flour mixed with a teaspoonful of salt, and another saucer of milk. Put the tail of each smelt through its gills—that is, the opening near its mouth. Then roll the smelts first in milk and then in flour, and shake off any lumps. Throw a bit of bread into the fat in the kettle, and see if it turns brown quickly; it does if the fat is hot enough, ...
— A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl • Caroline French Benton
... nut; if it is quite hot enough, the bread will brown immediately. Put in the fish, and it will be crisp and brown on the side next the fire, in about four or five minutes; to turn it, stick a two-pronged fork near the head, and support the tail with a fish-slice, and fry the other side nearly ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... ask, what is the difference which takes place when the monkey gradually loses his tail and sets up a superior brain? Is it properly to be described as a development or improvement of the "cosmic process," or as the beginning of ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... kitchens, where caldrons of cabbage were bubbling, and shoals of fish went in raw and came out cooked. In another room some hundreds of peasants were eating with all the energy of a primitive appetite. Soup leaked out of the bowls as if they had been sieves; fishes gave a whisk of the tail and vanished; great round boulders of bread went off, layer after layer, and still the empty plates were held up for more. It was grand eating,—pure appetite, craving only food in a general sense: no picking out of tidbits, no spying here and there for a favorite dish, but, like a huge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... good-natured banter, it occurred to Bill Haskins to ask Pete if he were going to become a permanent member of the family or if he were simply visiting; only Bill said, "Are you aimin' to throw in with us—or are you goin' to curl your tail and ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... want neither necklace, brooch, nor bracelet. For where, pray, would Lord Dolphin wear a breastpin, or how would he look with a string of coral beads about his neck, or a bracelet pinched about his tail? ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... common sense, according to the proverbs of both nations; for the honest English declares, that "Better be the head of the yeomanry than the tail of the gentry;" while the subtle Italian has it, "E meglio esser testa di Luccio, che coda di Storione;" "better be the head of a pike than the tail of a sturgeon." But before we quit Sir John, let us hear him in his own words, reasoning with fine critical tact, which he undoubtedly possessed, on right and left hands, but reasoning with infinite modesty as well as genius. Hear ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... eyes were very keen. He saw Mee-ko and guessed what he was about. So lie picked up a small round stone and threw it at the robber squirrel. His aim was so true that the stone flicked Mee-ko's tail where ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... peace with France, whereby the independence of the Ionian Isles was recognized (Russia keeping only 4,000 troops in Corfu), and Germany was to be evacuated by the French. But the sting was in the tail: for a secret article stipulated that Ferdinand IV. should cede Sicily to Joseph Bonaparte and receive the Balearic ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... bear, a ten-foot mass in tolerable proportion, seemed to be regularly beset by a pack of hungry little swells. First, one would take him on the haunch, then whip back into the sea over his tail and between his legs. Presently a bolder swell would rise and pitch into his back with a ferocity that threatened instant destruction. It only washed ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Jupiter solemnly wagged his tail, and evidently considering he had done enough in accompanying his master some twenty turns up and down, retired quietly to his old corner, and once again composed himself ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... tragedy out of my homecoming. There were gladness and trust in those deep-throated howls of greetings. He even licked the snow off my overshoes and nested his head between my knees, with his bob-tail thumping the floor like a flicker's beak. He sniffed at the Twins rather disgustedly. But he'll learn to love them, I feel sure, as time goes on. He's too intelligent a dog to ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... lance at the queen's tent. As he rode out he was followed by the shouts and laughter of a mob, and when he came within full view of the Spanish army the cavaliers saw, with indignant horror, tied to his horse's tail and dragging in the dust, the parchment with its inscription of "Ave Maria" which Hernan Perez del Pulgar had nailed to ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... more than if a tree had fallen,—I was so busy watching my own men and the enemy, and planning what to do next. Some of our soldiers, misunderstanding the order, "Fix bayonets," were actually charging with them, dashing off into the dim woods, with nothing to charge at but the vanishing tail of an imaginary horse,—for we could really see nothing. This zeal I noted with pleasure, and also with anxiety, as our greatest danger was from confusion and scattering; and for infantry to pursue cavalry would be a novel enterprise. Captain Metcalf stood by me well in keeping the men steady, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... could be desired. The puppy-grafts took faster and proved themselves to be superior to the skin-grafts. There is a case reported in which the skin of a greyhound seven days old, taken from the abdominal wall and even from the tail, was used with most satisfactory results in grafting an extensive ulcer following a burn on the left leg of a boy of ten. Masterman has grafted with the inner membrane of a hen's egg, and a Mexican surgeon, Altramirano, used the gills of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... reacts—and what is the instrument of reflection and speculation save a congeries of cells? At the moment of the contemporary metaphysician's loftiest flight, when he is most gratefully warmed by the feeling that he is far above all the ordinary airlanes and has absolutely novel concept by the tail, he is suddenly pulled up by the discovery that what is entertaining him is simply the ghost of some ancient idea that his school-master forced into him in 1887, or the mouldering corpse of a doctrine that was made official in his country during the late war, or a sort of fermentation-product, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... the store, the clerks were tumbling over each other to secure the hurricane windows; for until the last minute, uneasy as they were, they had persuaded themselves that St. Croix was in but for the lashing of a hurricane's tail, and had bet St. Kitts against Monserrat as flattening in the path of the storm. The hurricane windows were of solid wood, clamped with iron. It took four men to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... all to his breech-cloth and leggins; and you never seed a creatur so handsomely painted. One side of his face was red and the other black. His head was shaved clean, all to a few hairs on the crown, where he wore a tuft of eagles feathers, as bright as if they had come from a peacocks tail. He had colored his sides so that they looked like anatomy, ribs and all, for Chingachgook had a great taste in such things, so that, what with his bold, fiery countenance, his knife, and his tomahawk, I have never seen ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... a dog, and I tell him every day: "You are going to die." His only reply is to show his teeth and to wag his tail gayly. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... a farmer's boy; bred up to the plough handle and cart tail. His father and mother were plain, honest people, of hard-working habits and limited ideas, and without the slightest dash of romance in their temperaments. Their house, their lands were unprepossessing in appearance. The soil was impoverished by long and illiberal culture; and old ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... boys, before you scatter! Line up here, and let's give three cheers and a tail-twister for next-Governor Bucks! Now, ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... trembling like a leaf. Was it frightened, my pretty pet, for Stanny? Stanny's gone off with his tail between his legs. Not a bit of starch left in him. As limp a lawyer as ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... began to laugh at the horses, saying that the white one was the son of the yellow horse; then, perceiving Marius, his face buried under his hat with its cockade, his nose alone preventing it from covering his face altogether, his hands hidden in his long sleeves, and the tail of his coat forming a skirt round his legs, his feet encased in immense shoes showing in a comical manner beneath it, and then when he threw his head back so as to see, and lifted up his leg to walk as if he were crossing a river, she burst into ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... were assembled, bearing something in his mouth, and exhibiting, in an unusual degree, that sense of duty and interest which a dog seems to show when he thinks he has the charge of something important. He entered therefore, drooping his long tail, slouching his head and ears, and walking with the stately yet melancholy dignity of a war-horse at his master's funeral. In this manner he paced through the room, went straight up to Joceline, who had been regarding him with astonishment, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... nostrils had their homes in there. In fact, one was still living in there in our own time. It was as long as a tree, and had a body as big around as a tierce, and scales like overlapping great tiles, and deep ruby eyes as large as a cavalier's hat, and an anchor-fluke on its tail as big as I don't know what, but very big, even unusually so for a dragon, as everybody said who knew about dragons. It was thought that this dragon was of a brilliant blue color, with gold mottlings, but no one had ever seen it, therefore this was not known to be so, it was ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... upon the ground about as often they brought food to their young, I watched their proceedings, and found every day lying near the tower numbers of dead or dying slowworms, and, in a few cases, small lizards, which had, in every Instance, lost about two inches of the tail. This part I believe the starlings gave to their nestlings, and threw away the remainder.] It is doubtful whether any species of serpent has been exterminated within the human period, and even the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh |
