"Wild-cat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worthy host, though a 'maud,' as it is called, or a grey shepherd's plaid, supplied his travelling jockey-coat, and a cap, faced with wild-cat's fur, more comrhodiously covered his bandaged head than a hat would have done. As he appeared through the morning mist, Brown, accustomed to judge of men by their thewes and sinews, could not help admiring his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... turn'd, came yet too nigh; it miss'd his helm, but gash'd his thigh: The Tuscans raised a joyful cry to see the red blood flow. He reel'd, and on Herminius he lean'd one breathing-space; Then, like a wild-cat mad with wounds, sprang right at Astur's face. Through teeth, and skull, and helmet, so fierce a thrust he sped, The good sword stood a hand-breadth out behind the Tuscan's head. And the great Lord of Luna fell at that deadly stroke, As falls on Mount Alvernus a thunder-smitten ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... them on the green before Wood-grey's door (for that was the name of the dead goodman), and they were saying that they would not bury such accursed folk, but would bear them a little way so that they should not be vexed with the stink of them, and cast them into the thicket for the wolf and the wild-cat and the stoat to deal with; and they should lie there, weapons and silver and all; and they deemed it base to strip such wretches, for who would wear their raiment or bear ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... not give the locality very precisely. Indeed, we could not describe it ourselves so that anyone could find it, and nobody would go looking for it before spring comes and the snow clears. Besides, there are scores of wild-cat claims registered every year. Until they turn out good no one thinks anything of them. When we have got that done we will go back to Bridger, and fetch the rock over here. We will write to-morrow to Pittsburg for the mining outfit, for all the ironwork of the stamps, the concentrator, and everything ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... stately cats with visages grim and tails erect, who preceded, surrounded and followed her. They are of French breed and education, and when the claret and water were poured out for my refreshment they jumped on the table for a sit-to.... I had to leave the wild-cat on the Rio Grande; he was too savage and had grown as large as a small sized dog. He would pounce on a kid as Tom Tita [his daughter's cat] would on a mouse and would whistle like a tiger when you ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... and bleeding, scarcely able to walk—for such fights were wild-cat fights with claws and teeth. He bided his time; he grew rapidly, and by April, 1771, being six feet tall at last (the true border height) and strongly ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... knows by his cur's voice what sort of an animal he has in view. Arrived at the scene of the clamor, the dogs are found in frantic excitement around the foot of a tree, in whose shadowy foliage something is supposed to be hidden. Will it be a 'coon, or will it turn out a 'possum, a wild-cat, or mayhap ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... of a wild-cat could not produce more astonishment and consternation than this sudden coming ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... wrong thought! she said to herself: was he not an enemy of her tribe? Yet she could not help closing her eyes when she saw Black Arrow aiming a terrible blow at his head. She did not know what to make of herself. She suddenly began to think of the hurt wild-cat she and Nautauquas had pitied during the night. But no one ought ever to pity an enemy. What was ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... lamb; but wolves, if hungry, were savage in the extreme, and as the noise continued, he brought the muzzle of the gun to bear, and the click, click, made by the locks sounded so loudly in the still evening air, that the creature, whatever it was, probably a lemur or wild-cat, took alarm, bounded off, and was ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... and beavers we caught them in deadfalls and in steel traps. The mink we usually took in deadfalls, smaller, of course, than the ones we used for the bears. The musk-rat we caught in box traps like a mouse trap. The wild-cat we ran ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... 'you,'" said Mills in a hectoring tone, "and I will soon explain why. You lost a large sum in South Africans, but won it back again in Americans. You then again, and again contrary to my advice, embarked in perfect wild-cat affairs, which ended in our—I say 'our' here—getting severely scratched and mauled. Altogether you have frittered away L30,000, and have placed the remaining ten in a venture which to my mind is as wild as all the rest of your unfortunate ventures. These speculations have, almost without exception, ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... it came in this wise: When the hat was passed he threw in a bill, an act so generous that it could not fail to call attention to the contributor. The next day he received a call from the Minister, who desired him to replace the "wild-cat" bill by one of more respectable currency, as those kind of bills were beginning to be refused ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... a watch was kept for the possible appearance of an enemy, either two-footed or four-footed. But no man came to disturb them, and if any wild beasts were near they kept well out of sight. Once Lukins brought down a small wild-cat, but ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... the jug on her head, was about half-way, Nicolas slid like a wild-cat down the trunk of an elm, among the branches of which he was hiding, and fell like a thunderbolt in front of the girl, who flung away her pitcher and trusted to her fleet legs to regain the pavilion. But a hundred feet farther on, Catherine Tonsard, who was on the watch, rushed ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... likely, your Excellency. I have seen rifle fire that had not the slightest effect on a wild-cat for the very reason that the firing was ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... from specimens they kept alive. Hutton also writes: "I have a beautiful specimen alive, so savage that I dare not touch her." I should like to possess a young one, having been successful with many so-called savage animals. I had a wild-cat once which was very savage at first, but which ultimately got so tame as to lie in my lap whilst I was at work in office or writing, but she would never allow me to touch or stroke her; she would come and go of her own sweet will, and used to come daily, but she would spit and snarl if I attempted ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... fasting, or feasting, or drunkenness, and that fetich he carries with him to bring good luck, in love or in combat, in the hunt or on the journey. He carries a fetich suspended to his neck, he ties a fetich to his bow, he buries a fetich under his tent, he places a fetich under his pillow of wild-cat skins, he prays to his fetich, he praises it, or chides it; if successful, his fetich receives glory; if he fail, his fetich is disgraced. These fetiches may be fragments of bone or shell, the tips of the tails ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... want any fancy furniture or looking-glasses, and such like, to attract folks, nor anything to look like the old times. I don't think any of the boys would care to come here. And I got rid of a lot of sporting travelers, 'wild-cat' managers, and that kind of tramp in this way. But"—She hesitated, and her ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... regardless of the din, two Iroquois crept close to the palisade, where they lay motionless till near dawn. By this time the last song had died away, and the tired singers had left their posts or fallen asleep. One of the Iroquois, with the silence and agility of a wild-cat, climbed to the top of a watch-tower, where he found two slumbering Hurons, brained one of them with his hatchet, and threw the other down to his comrade, who quickly despoiled him of his life and his scalp. Then, with the reeking trophies ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... expected from his rude character, or than was expressed in his uncouth phrases, "if that don't make me eat a niggur, may I be tetotaciously chawed up myself! Oh, you anngelliferous madam! jist look up and say the word, for I'm now ready to mount a wild-cat: jist look up, and don't make a die of it, for thar's no occasion: for ar'n't I your niggur-slave, Ralph Stackpole? and ar'n't I come to lick all that's agin you, Mingo, Shawnee, Delaware, and all! Oh, you anngelliferous crittur! ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... indeed came; but when he saw them all as frightened as rabbits before the wild-cat, he laughed aloud and forgave them, for he was noble and generous. And as they were hungry—for he had come in hard times—he gave them much venison, and sorrow departed from their wigwams. But as they ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... county abounded in the larger species of game common to the forests of North America. Among these were the beaver and otter, buffalo, deer, wolf, wild-cat, panther, bear, fox, and elk or wapiti (Cervus canadensis), noble herds of which ranged the mountain sides and valleys of ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... strangled. I began screaming in a frantic, heartrending manner, and continued screaming, each cry surpassing the last in intensity and agony. At rehearsal I could not get these screams right for a long time. Madame de Rhona grew more and more impatient and at last flew at me like a wild-cat and shook me. I cried, just as I had done when I could not get Prince Arthur's terror right, and then the wild, agonized scream that Madame de Rhona wanted came to me. I reproduced it and enlarged it in effect. On the ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... worthy host, though a maud, as it is called, or a gray shepherd's-plaid, supplied his travelling jockey-coat, and a cap, faced with wild-cat's fur, more commodiously covered his bandaged head than a hat would have done. As he appeared through the morning mist, Brown, accustomed to judge of men by their thews and sinews, could not help admiring his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and the steady ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... life, with such a wife, were strange! But if you have a stomach, to't i' God's name; You shall have me assisting you in all. But will you woo this wild-cat? ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... was ready, for she was quick, too, and it was her anger that made her miss—and the two started home, Chad stalking ahead once more. To save him, he could not say a word of thanks, but how he wished that a bear or a wild-cat would spring into the road! He would fight it with teeth and naked hands to show her how he felt and to save ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... "That wild-cat must not remain here," said he, shaking his head. "She will kill my gentle patient. Where did you find her, Mrs. Linwood? From what ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... sprang upon them. Once Nam tried to draw his knife, but failing in his attempt he submitted without further struggle. With Soa it was different. She bit and tore like a wild-cat, and Juanna saw that she was striving to reach the panel and to speak ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... or walked on by ambitious doodle-bugs, who wondered next day to learn that you were absorbing your rations with clock-work regularity and doing business at the same old stand. I once saw an egotistical brindle-pup joyfully bestride the collar of an adult wild-cat, and the woeful result convinced me that Ambition and Judgment should blithely foot it hand in hand. That is why, my dear Colonel, I approach you by siege and parallel, instead of capering gayly down your right-o'-way like a youthful William ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... irritability of a stout Champenoise peasant, roused by his insults to the aristocracy, one of whom she probably regarded herself, from having lived so long under their roof, watched her opportunity, made a spring at him like a wild-cat, wrested the sabre from his hand, and, grasping the struggling and screaming little functionary in her strong arms, carried him like a child ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... the chief inspiration of this mob. The draft may have been its inciting cause, but it has degenerated into an insatiable thirst for violence, blood, and plunder. I saw an Irishwoman to-day who fought like a wild-cat before she would give up her ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Tillie that he had received this letter; but somehow, every time he opened his lips to speak the words, the memory of her wild-cat behavior in defense of the teacher that afternoon in the woods, and her horribly death-like appearance when she had lain unconscious in the teacher's arms, recurred to him with a vividness that effectually checked ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... active, and merry matron, dazzlingly fair as ever, among her growing sons and pretty daughters, and indeed far more handsome than when she sat in the salons of Paris, weary and almost fierce, in her half-tamed, wild-cat days, whereas now her step was about the house and garden everywhere, as the notable ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Indians, moving their hunting-camps along the woodland paths, saw no sign in the stars that morning, and no different color in the sunrise from what had been in the days of their fathers. Panther and wild-cat under their furry coats felt no thrill of coming dispossession, and saw nothing through their great golden eyes but the dawning of a day just like all other days—when "the sun ariseth and they gather themselves into their dens and lay them down." And yet alike to ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... against one of them, would have been transfixed by it as surely as though it had been of steel. We pushed on, however, in Indian file, following the two guides, who kept at the head of the party, and making our way through places where a wild-cat would have difficulty in passing; through thickets of mangroves, mimosas, and tall fern, and cactuses with their thorny leaves full twenty feet long; the path turning and winding all the while. Now and then a momentary improvement in the nature of the ground ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... was concerned! Here she had been fighting herself for a fortnight to conquer a useless passion for her man of all the world, fit to command an array of giants; and she saw him now almost breathless as he spoke of a great wild-cat of a woman who ought to be by his side now. What sort of a woman was she anyhow, who could let him go into exile as he had done and live apart from her all these years, while he "slogged away"—that was the Western phrase which came to her mind—to pull himself level ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... notwithstanding this by no means encouraging reception, to attempt to seize and embrace her, as he was accustomed to do with the colonel's wife's maid, when, making eyes at him in the ante-room, she whispered under her breath: "Let me go, or I'll scream!" she rushed upon him literally like a wild-cat, and, in an instant, so mauled him that he could neither hear nor see, and considered himself fortunate to find his way out quickly. And when all three heroes had finished their tragi-comic general confession, they unanimously ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... on the ground immediately beside the spring, crouched a large wild-cat, the hairy tips of her ears twitching nervously. Under her claws was a rabbit, evidently just caught, into which the wild-cat had just sunk her teeth when the approach of the boy was heard. At first Wilbur could not understand why she had not sprung into the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Skye terriers gave chase till she took refuge in a corner, spitting and growling. On trying to dislodge her, she flew at Mr. St. John's face, over the dog's heads; but he struck her while in the air, and she fell among the dogs, who soon dispatched her, even though they say, that a wild-cat has twelve instead of nine lives. If one be taken, those in the neighbourhood are sure to be also secured, as they will all, in the manner of foxes, assemble round ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... the black sprawling monster trying to swim. Recovering somewhat from his fright, he began to bark at the creature, and ran round and round his milk-pan, wouf-woufing, gurring, growling, like an old dog barking at a wild-cat or a bear. The natural astonishment and curiosity of that boy dog getting his first entomological lesson in this wonderful world was so immoderately funny that I had great difficulty in ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... as ever we slew stoat or wild-cat,' cried the other, slipping under the waggon. 'We are keeping the Lord's preserves now, brother Wat, and truly these are some of the vermin that ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... troops for defence against the French and the Indians; and the legislatures were apt to be short-sighted and unreasonably stingy about such matters. Again, the people were sometimes seized with a silly craze for "paper money" and "wild-cat banks"—devices for making money out of nothing—and sometimes the governors were sensible enough to oppose such delusions but not altogether sensible in their manner of doing it. Thus in 1740 there was fierce excitement in Massachusetts over a quarrel between ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... neat cabin, with its decorated walls, and squirrel and wild-cat skins, was duly admired, the luncheon-basket of the Saunders party was re-enforced by provisions from Rand's larder, and spread upon the ledge; the dimensions of the cabin not admitting four. Under ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... wild-cat schemes I ever heard of, that is the worst. The idea, Wilson, of a man of your length of service proposing such a thing. Hanging is too good for that son of yours, and you know it. I'll have nothing ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... have taken the constable with him," said old Mrs. Fidgit, "then perhaps he'd have got him back. I guess the thieves won't keep the boy long though, he's too troublesome! His ma sent him over once on an errand, and I'd as lieve have a wild-cat in the house any day. Mark my word, they'll let him ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... a wild-cat, kicking, struggling, scratching; striking with elbows and fists. He caught one of the three by his collar, and tore his jacket open from the neck to the waist; he drove his foot into the pit of the stomach of another, ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... narrowing slightly, followed her, like points of steel. Suddenly he shot a disturbing glance at Tressan's face, and the corner of his wild-cat mustachios twitched. He stood erect, ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... reminiscence in connection with the place which arises in my mind is that of a battle I had with one of my classmates, who had bullied me until I could stand it no longer. I was a very slight lad, but there was a wild-cat element in me which, when roused, made up for lack of weight, and I licked my adversary effectually. However, one of my first experiences of the extremely rough-and-ready nature of justice, as exhibited by the course ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... darkness on either bank, and made shadows so weird and changeful that the boys imagined they saw every form of wild beast and flight of strange bird with which pictures had made them familiar. Owls hooted in the distance. A wild-cat screamed like a frightened child. A partridge, waked from its perch by a flash of the torch, whirred off into ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... though a few belonging to other totems may be borrowed and deposited for a time with them. For example, a sacred store-house of the honey-ant totem was found to contain sixty-eight birth-sticks of that totem with a few of the lizard totem and two of the wild-cat totem.[126] Any store-house will usually contain both sticks and stones, but as a rule perhaps the sticks predominate in number.[127] Time after time these tribal repositories are visited by the men ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Kennedy literally took to the woods and drove the rivers in Muskoka and Michigan as a lumberjack till he was a chunk of whalebone in a red flannel shirt and corked boots and could pull the whiskers out of a wild-cat! With varying success he fought the battle of life and learned that many things glitter besides gold and that the four-leafed clover in this life after all is a ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... to walk home. As for riding, she couldn't be induced to try. To her a horse was a thing that kicked or bit or showed the whites of his eyes and set his ears back and switched his tail and gave other evidences of depraved moral nature, and she would no more touch or approach one than she would a wild-cat, except when in so doing, with an admiring audience, she could become the central figure in an effective tableau. Ray wished her in Jericho, as she stood at arm's length and touched Dandy with the tips of her dainty fingers and began to speak ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... "Oho! My Gringo wild-cat is much tamer, isn't he?" sneered Gato. "But he shall be tamer still before the night ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... first article appears," Kendricks said, "Freudenberg will strike. Your life here will never be wholly safe. You will be encompassed with spies and enemies. Why, this wild-cat scheme of his of sending you off on some expedition was solely because you are the one man of whom he is afraid. He feared lest Carraby might make some hideous blunder in a crisis and that the country might demand you back. That is why he wanted you ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more familiarly than favorably known in financial circles of Boston, as the man who had put afloat more wild-cat stocks than any other speculator on the street. It might be supposed that his connection with any scheme would be enough to wreck its prospects, yet whatever he took hold of floated for a time. There was always a feeling among his victims that at length he had come to the place ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... poised that a finger could swing it on its hinges. And opposite to this was the white Grecian building of the Stock Exchange. Down the street were throngs of men within a roped arena, pushing, shouting, jostling; this was "the curb," where one could buy or sell small blocks of stock, and all the wild-cat mining and oil stocks which were not listed by the Exchange. Rain or shine, these men were always here; and in the windows of the neighbouring buildings stood others shouting quotations to them through megaphones, or signalling in deaf and dumb language. Some of these brokers wore coloured hats, ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... broke from the ranks to beg newspapers and cigars from us. On the mountain ash the bright red berries dangled in clumps like Christmas bells, and some of the leaves of the elm still clung to their boughs; so that the wide yellow road was dappled like a wild-cat's back with black splotches of shadow. Only when we curved through some village that had been the scene of a skirmish or a reprisal did the roofless shells and the toppled walls of the houses, standing gaunt and ugly ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... at once, and let us have an end of his impertinence," cried several voices: "he's like a wild-cat." ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... 1840, Mr. Scott became interested in the lake marine by the purchase of the brig Amazon, of 220 tons, then considered a craft of good size. At the time of the purchase, the West was flooded with wild-cat money, and specie was very scarce. The brig was sold by order of the Chancellor of Michigan, and specie demanded from the purchaser, a condition that made buyers shy. In 1842, Mr. Scott purchased the schooner John Grant, of 100 tons, and in the following ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... so many sounds in the woods at night, all sorts of wild birds and little animals that one never hears in the daytime—sometimes a rabbit would dart out of a hole and whisk round a corner; sometimes a big buse (sort of eagle) would fly out of a tree with great flapping of wings; occasionally a wild-cat with bright-green eyes would come stealthily along and then make a flying leap over the bushes. His nerves were so unstrung that every noise seemed a danger, and he had visions of Germans lying ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... make her smart for her folly. The bad end, which he always prophesied for anyone who did not conform to his arrogant decrees, loomed imminent and forbidding. He was little better than a monster, with no more paternal instinct than the wild-cat. He would only chuckle and rub his hands in glee at the thought of her humiliation in the eyes of her friends. He might accuse the rector of complicity in her fraud. He would spread ruin around, rather ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... bowls. Handle with the head of an animal, probably a wild-cat, at the tip; figures of ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... in New England buy stocks in wild-cat prospect holes in Nevada. Do the promoters have to bring them out ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... don't know. It will be a jolt to me if there's a square man left on the ranch! Go down to the bunk-house and tell the cook I'm here and I'm hungry as a wild-cat. Tell him and any of the boys that are down there that I've come to stay and that Trevors is fired. They take orders from me and no one else. And hurry, if you know how. Goodness knows, you look as though it would take you half an hour ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... special instance he shall ask little or none; and that, such is his regard for him, it is a matter of no moment whether he live in Lowell or Louisiana, in New Bedford or Nebraska, or whether he pay New England bank-notes within thirty days, or wild-cat money and wild lands, which may be converted into cash, with more or less expense and loss, somewhere between nine ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... pioneers, and how he was awakened by them fighting and crowding for places against the warm walls and chimney-corners. If he had had opened his door and crept back into bed, he might soon have had a buffalo on one side of his fireplace and a bear on the other, with a wild-cat asleep on the hearth between, and with the thin-skinned deer left shivering outside as truly as if they had all ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... for Mr. Cragg, purchasing supplies and forwarding them, with money, to the patriots in Ireland. I suppose he made a fair rake-off in all these dealings, but that did not satisfy him. He induced Cragg to invest in some wild-cat schemes, promising him tremendous earnings which could be applied to the Cause. Whether he really invested the money turned over to him, or kept it for himself, is a subject for doubt, but it seems that the old man soon suspected him of double-dealing and they had so many ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... porch upon which one of my library windows opens, and look to the east, I see the mountain clad with its primeval forest, crowding down to the water's edge. It looks as though one might naturally expect to come upon a camp of Indian wigwams there. Two years ago a wild-cat was shot in those same woods and stuffed by the hunters, and it still stands in the ante-room of the public school, the first, and last, and only contribution to an incipient museum of natural history which the sole scientific enthusiast of Wheathedge has founded—in imagination. ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... offered-bounty destructive animals are carefully reared in illicit kindergartens. As some states pay for the scalps of these animal pests and other states for the tails, the undertaking is interesting and profitable. The only gamble is in the nursery. When the gladsome breeder gets his wild-cat or coyote big enough to market, it is "heads I win, tails you lose." The United States, in twenty-five years, has paid two and a half millions in wild animal bounties. California paid in a year and ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Government was strictly in the banking business. Have not they always told us, that when state or other banks issue paper money without the Government in the banking business to back up the issue, such money in case of a failure of the issuing bank became wild-cat money, and did they not say to us wild-cat money made paupers? Now they go squarely back on all they have taught us on the money question, and advocate the wild-cat money system themselves according to their own statements. One thing I will concede is, that the Republicans and gold standard Democrats ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... Aura dashed past him, fighting her way out to where the Very Young Man lay. In a moment she was beside him. Her fragile body seemed hopelessly inadequate for such a struggle, but the spirit within her made her fight like a wild-cat. ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... back from the valley of the shadow the night before, in his search for food that day, found a luckless little wild-cat. And that cat without sauce or dressing ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Indian? Yes, as a wild-cat loves the deer when he sucks his blood, as the water loves the fire it extinguishes. The lips ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... forty ravens, and he made a mouth at her and jabbed one of them in the raven's back. That was the limit, you know. It called for the other twin. Her eyes blazed up, and she jumped for him like a wild-cat, and when she was done with him she was rags and he wasn't anything but an allegory. That was most undoubtedly the other twin, you see, coming to the front. No, sir; don't tell ME he ain't in there. I've ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... home to Hogg's we paid a visit to a wild-cat's lair in the Eagle's Cragg, and of all the incarnate devils, for fighting I ever saw, they "cow the cuddy," as the Scotch say; perfect fiends on earth. There was pa and ma, or rather dad and mam, (about the bigness of tiger-cats, one was four feet and a half from tip to tail) ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... cry All jubilant of victory! "Joy," she cried, "to th' untill'd earth, Let her joy in a mighty birth,— Night from the land has pass'd away, The desert basks in noon of day. Joy, to the sullen wilderness, I come, her gloomy shades to bless, To bid the bear and wild-cat yield Their savage haunts to town and field. Joy, to stout hearts and willing hands, That win a right to these broad lands, And reap the fruit of honest toil, Lords of the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... not," said Mr. Bell, measuring his words, "do you recollect that wild-cat gold mine scheme you were interested in more years ago than ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... bucketful and gravel running two ounces to the dish, was Tony Taylor; still less did they expect that he would leave his selection home, to say nothing of the charms of Birralong and Marmot's verandah, for a wild-cat yarn of travelling fossickers. He was one of the brightest lights in the district, handsome, dare-devil Tony. There was not a horse he could not ride, and his rivals had brought some pretty tough buckjumpers to test him at different times—"fair ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... rapid commercial expansion and of unsound speculation. The high prices of commodities after the war had given a sort of fictitious prosperity to industry and trade, and had encouraged unduly the spirit of commercial enterprise. On credit easily secured from wild-cat banks, the Western pioneer had bought lands beyond the purchasing power of his own meager capital; and the speculator in turn had borrowed money to secure title to lands which he would unload upon ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... "Can't do it, Jeff. You know the situation as well as I. If the river comes in the whole country will go to smash; and with the class of structures they have put in to control it and with an eastern engineer in charge, it's too big a chance. The S. & C. is not spending money to help out wild-cat projects promoted by ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... say three i'deed. Durn the glint o' thet sun! Billee!" he continued, addressing Garey, "ee 'll shoot fust; yur gun's furrest carry. Plug the big un on the clay-bank hoss. This child's for Number 2 on the grey mustang. An, young fellur! ee'll jest pick off thet niggur on the roan. I know yur wild-cat to the back-bone, but keep yur eye skinned an yur ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... hears you first will soon appear in your neighborhood. But you must be very watchful, or you may be made a fawn of by a large wild-cat. They understand the characteristic call of the doe ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... hunting, Miss Tempest?" he asked one Sunday afternoon, when they had gone the round of the stables, and Arion had been fondled and admired—a horse as gentle as an Italian greyhound in his stable, as fiery as a wild-cat out of it. ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... antlers swung; For all around, the walls to grace, Hung trophies of the fight or chase: A target there, a bugle here, A battle-axe, a hunting-spear, And broadswords, bows, and arrows store, With the tusked trophies of the boar. Here grins the wolf as when he died, And there the wild-cat's brindled hide The frontlet of the elk adorns, Or mantles o'er the bison's horns; Pennons and flags defaced and stained, That blackening streaks of blood retained, And deer-skins, dappled, dun, and white, With otter's fur and seal's unite, In rude ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... was eager to give something, even Silas, who sent home for a stuffed wild-cat killed in his youth. It was rather moth-eaten and shabby, but on a high bracket and best side foremost the effect was fine, for the yellow glass eyes glared, and the mouth snarled so naturally, that Teddy shook in his little shoes at sight of it, when he came bringing his most cherished treasure, ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... just like a wild-cat," cried her aunt. "I never saw such a girl. But now be sensible, come and sit down beside me. Will you come or not? I'll never say another kind word to you as long as I live if you won't sit down here a minute and keep still. Uli, order another bottle. Keep still ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of high explosive stuff Across the intervening seas of space Bang into Luna's unoffending face. Meanwhile our own alert star-gazing chief, DYSON (Sir FRANK), is rather moved to grief Than anger by the astronomic pranks Played by unbalanced professorial cranks, Who study science in the wild-cat vein And "ruin ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... about old Ketury. She used to come to meetin's sometimes, and her husband was one o' the prayin' Indians; but Ketury was one of the rael wild sort, and you couldn't no more convert her than you could convert a wild-cat or a painter [panther]. Lordy massy! Ketury used to come to meetin', and sit there on them Indian benches; and when the second bell was a-tollin', and when Parson Lothrop and his wife was comin' ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the year, they have access to the buffalo, which have not crossed the Wahsatch Range into the Great Basin, within the recollection of the oldest trapper. The only wild animals common in the country of the Utahs are the hare, or "jackass-rabbit," the wild-cat, the wolf, and the grizzly bear. There are few antelope or elk. Trout abound in the mountain-brooks and in Lake Utah. In the Salt Lake, as in the Dead Sea, there are no fish. Before the advent of the Mormons, the habits of all the Utah bands were very degraded. No agency had been established ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... story is told regarding the Mormon methods of carrying on business with the merchants of Cleveland. A bank was started, like other "wild-cat" banks of that period, without a charter from the State of Ohio. The institution was called "The Kirtland Safety Society Bank." A number of its bills of issue may be seen at the rooms of the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland. An examination of these bills ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... ain't sense," cried a man, with a cap made out of a wild-cat's skin; "not a step backwards—the enemy must soon come, and then we'll whip 'em so glorious, that it will be a pleasure to see it; the miserable vampires that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder; Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day More than the wild-cat; drones hive not with me, Therefore I part with him; and part with him To one that I would have him help to waste His borrow'd purse. Well, Jessica, go in; Perhaps I will return immediately: Do as I bid you, shut doors after you: 'Fast bind, fast find,' A proverb ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... when a kid in his hands. His head was bent and he was trying to sew. I went to his side and asked him what the trouble was. He looked up but he didn't know me. He never knew me again. He died a few days afterwards. I found then that he had invested all his savings in a wild-cat mining scheme. They had ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... ain't got so much on them dames!' An' at that one o' them wore a wild-cat's skin an' that's all—an' a wild-cat ain't big. And t'other she sported ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... before he met the wild-cat. "Good morning, friend," says Cock-alu, "and where may ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... account of a simple pipe, with a small bowl; but most of the pipes found in the mounds are highly ornamented with elaborate workmanship, representing animals such as the beaver, otter, bear, wolf, panther, raccoon, squirrel, wild-cat, manotee, eagle, hawk, heron, swallow, paroquet, etc. One of the most interesting of the spirited sculptures of animal forms to be found on the mound pipes, is the representation of the Lamantin, or Manotee, a cetacean found only in tropical waters, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... for a moment the sudden fury of her attack drove him back, big though he was; but it was only for a moment. It gave her a chance to scream once more; then, closing in upon her, he seized her again in his ape-like embrace. She fought like a cornered wild-cat, but slowly and surely he was bending her to his will. Her nails were leaving raw marks upon him, until the blood ran down his face, and presently catching between her teeth one of the fingers of the hand which gagged her, ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... close together. And she had reason to be glad she went, seeing that her bankers received her with perfect cordiality, and convinced her that she would certainly lose all her money if she insisted on investing it in any such wild-cat scheme as the one she had set her heart upon. They suggested, instead, certain foreign bonds on which she would receive a perfectly safe four-and-a-half per cent.; and so pleased was she at having been preserved from risking her two thousand pounds that she not only ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... on Herminius He leaned one breathing-space; Then, like a wild-cat mad with wounds, Sprang right at Astur's face. Through teeth, and skull, and helmet, So fierce a thrust he sped, The good sword stood a handbreadth out Behind the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... goan to b'leeve that o' a man who fit like a wild-cat, wuz offered permotion on the field, and reported tew headquarters arfter his fust scrimmage. Try ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... I fancy I shall have to let you go," said Yarnall. He was not above tormenting the wild-cat. Female ferocity always excites the teasing boy in a man. "You're getting too ambitious for us. You see, once these rich New Yorkers take you up, you're no more use to a plain ranchman ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... round the frosty pole, The northern dawn was red, The mountain-wolf and wild-cat stole, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... fun watching you defend that little old twenty-thousand dollars I just gave you. Do you know, Matt, that I never knew a man to save up a thousand dollars, by denying himself many things, that he didn't invest the thousand in a wild-cat mine or a dry oil well? Ah, Matt, it's those first few dollars that come so hard and go so easy that break most men's hearts; but here you are with twenty thousand that came so easy I've just naturally got to see how hard they go! You'll be worth more ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... contraction for leopard; cat-o'-mountain may be another name for wild-cat, though wild-cats are not spotted. Probably the term is loosely used to mean any spotted animal of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... want it. Won't have it. I sounded her coming home from church on Sunday; asked her if she would like to sleep in a new room, if we built on. She fired up like a little wild-cat and said she'd made her own room all herself, and she didn't think anybody ought to take it away ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... monkey!" retorted Joel, with a pause in the work of emptying the bag to investigate the animal in David's hand, "that's a wild-cat." ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... her out," he often said to himself, "I have an odd instinct which tells me that there is the sleeping lioness or the wild-cat hidden somewhere beneath all that languid, gracious carelessness. Poor little girl! she has managed to captivate us all, but I should not be surprised if she turned out more difficult and troublesome to manage than the whole of my seven daughters ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... "Come here, my little wild-cat," he said, drawing her to him and kissing her; "you are a good girl after all. I suppose you think this ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... oblivious of it, allowed it to drop without the least concern, and eventually flew away with an abstracted air, as if he had been another bird entirely. The paper got into a manzanita bush, where it remained suspended until the evening, when, being dislodged by a passing wild-cat on its way to Mulrady's hen-roost, it gave that delicately sensitive marauder such a turn that she ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... round the frosty pole The northern dawn was red, The mountain-wolf and wild-cat stole To banquet on ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... requirements of the business he left with me. I stood now feeling like a fool. I'd grown gray in the work, and here in my prosperous middle life, a boy's whim and a girl's pretty face had put me in the position of consulting a clairvoyant. Worse, for this was a wild-cat affair, without even the professional standing of establishments to which I knew some of the weak brothers in my line sometimes sneaked for ghostly counsel. If it should leak ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... was, by the way) I made sit by my wife, and drove them both out to the races in my curricle. Lady Lyndon fought very hard against this condescension; but I had a way with her, as the saying is, and though she had a temper, yet I had a better one. A temper, psha! A wild-cat has a temper, but a keeper can get the better of it; and I know very few women in the world ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shouting went Where o'er the vales the branches bent; The wild-cat we chased from the glens, that the cheer And cries of our hunting might ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... granted at Tallyn, that was not, it seemed, the case with John Barton. He, on the contrary, took it for granted that everybody there was at least a good Radical, and as stoutly opposed as himself to the "wild-cat" and "Jingo" policy of the Government on the Indian frontier, where one of our perennial little wars was then proceeding. News had arrived that afternoon of an indecisive engagement, in which the lives of three ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... courage tries; And dread of devious way; And oft she hears the wild-cat shriek A ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... uttered a hideous yell, and springing nearly his own height into the air, darted behind a tree with the agility of a wild-cat. ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... has met my boy?"—turning on her sharply. "No, that's silly,"—the sad vagueness coming back into the faded eyes. After a pause,—"Derrick, thee said? He was short, the lad was,—but with legs and arms as tender and supple as a wild-cat's. I loss much of my strength when he was born; it was wonderful, for a woman, before; I giv it to him. I'm glad of that! I thank God that I giv it to him!"—her voice sinking, and growing wilder and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... nominees to the Ministry. These are adroit, versatile, and unscrupulous men, hampered by no western prejudice in favour of carrying any plan to completion. Through and at the bidding of these men, the holy Monarch acts; and the acts are wonderful. To criticise these acts exists a wild-cat Press, liable to suppression at any moment, as morbidly sensitive to outside criticism as the American, and almost as childishly untruthful, fungoid in the swiftness of its growth, and pitiable in its unseasoned rashness. Backers of this press in its wilder moments, lawless, ignorant, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... discourser-with-the-wild-cat, is a new and wonderful kind of lead which U-Sessellodes has dug out of a hole in the ground far deeper than any other hole that was ever made. You will observe that my knife is sharp, and therefore I cut ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... plover of the moors, 'Tis not a bittern of the fen; Nor can it be a barking fox, Nor night-bird chambered in the rocks, Nor wild-cat ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... little source of amusement but reading the foot-marks on the road; and these were strangely diversified to an English eye. Those of the elephant, camel, buffalo and bullock, horse, ass, pony, dog, goat, sheep and kid, lizard, wild-cat and pigeon, with men, women, and children's feet, naked ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... became Wise by being Original, and of the Terrible Tricks which he by Magic played Loup-Cervier, the Wicked Wild-Cat ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... were placed close together, as palisades in fortifications, to prevent the escape of domestic animals, and as a safeguard against depredations upon the young cattle, sheep, and poultry, by bears, wolves, foxes, the loup-cervier, or wild-cat, with which the woods were infested. Grover seems to have wrought on the Orchard Farm for a short time. We find, that, a few years after the point to which his testimony goes back, he had a farm of his own. Some wrought there for a longer time, and were permanent ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... of game," declared Walter, "in the last half mile, I have seen coons, possums, deer, and a wild-cat, to say nothing of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... revolver twice at the ceiling, hoping to arouse some one, either guests or servants, and fired again at the shoulder of the man whose leap towards me was like the spring of a wild-cat. Both rooms were suddenly plunged into darkness, the elder of the two men, stepping back for a moment, had turned out the electric lights. For a short space of time everything was chaos. My immediate assailant I flung away from me with ease; his companion, who tried ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... time it did look as though the conservatives would succeed; but gradually one industry after another got a foothold. Then the panic of 1872 demonstrated that a man who has money must invest it where he can watch it, instead of trusting to luck in some wild-cat railroad scheme out West. By the concentration and investment at home of some of the money saved from the wreck, the Wamsutta mills have become a corporation with a capital of three million dollars. The ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... thousands out of the millions we spend on education be used to found fellowships of creative poetry? These would not be given at first to those who wish to learn to write poetry; for the first thousands would be far too precious for use in any such wild-cat speculations. They would be devoted, rather, to poets of proved quality, who have already, somehow, learned their art, and who ask no more wondrous boon from life than fresh air and time to regain and keep that necessary ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... them all is Pietro, the young man who lounges on the wharf to carry things from the steamer. He starts up from sleep like a wild-cat as somebody claps him on the shoulder. It is the start of a man who has many enemies. He is almost an outlaw. Will he ever find himself in prison? He is the gamin of the ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... was on a hair-trigger of resentment myself. I knew better than to accept any abuse or the slightest patronizing. At the first hint of such, I went off—I exploded. I might be beaten in the subsequent fight, but I left the impression that I was a wild-cat and that I would just as willingly fight again. My intention was to demonstrate that I would tolerate no imposition. I proved that the man who imposed on me must have a fight on his hands. And doing my work well, the innate justice of the men, assisted by their wholesome ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London |
