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More "Skunk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... haow the fellers cut up wen the news come. T'was like a match dropping intew a powder bar'l. Tuesday's court day tew Barrington, an ef thar ain't more'n a thousand men on han with clubs an guns, tew stop that air court, wy, call me a skunk. An wen that air court's stopped, that air jail's a comin open, or it's a comin daown, one o' ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... regiment to back me up, Broadcastle, or even the Kenton City police, why, well and good! But am I? No, sir! No, sir! Not with Elijah Abbott in the Governor's chair, I'm not! You know that as well as I. Why, Broadcastle, I'd rather see McGrath himself at the capitol than that smooth-spoken skunk!" ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... deceitful skunk!" cried the boy, slamming the door behind him, and ignoring his brother's outstretched hand. "I'd like to smash every bone in your body until there wasn't a piece as big as a toothpick left of you! You made me think you didn't care a rap about her—you said I wasn't worthy of her—that I was ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... God, parson, that part of it had never struck me. I ain't bright and never was. But I ain't no skunk. I give that woman some of her own money back and that week I sold out at a loss and slunk around some more. I couldn't go back to my own work. I had a grudge against it, someway. By and by the money was all gone and an old pal of mine offered ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... Don't git sick now. We'll have to watch Eli Crump purty close. I don't know why I hain't killed thet spyin' skunk long ago, 'ceptin' I never had a shore an' sartin reason ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.
... my younker, that ere Lone Wolf that they call such a great chief (and I may as well own up and say that he is), is heavy on ransoms and he ain't the only chief that's in that line. That skunk runs off with men, women and boys, and his rule is not to give 'em up ag'in till he gits a good round price. He calculated on making a good thing off you, and I rather think ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... we heard you a while back!" said Scott. "Sounded as if a grizzly had been bitten by a hydrophobia skunk." ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... this, but not tipping dice. Smythe is a skunk. He's no Twenty-fifth, or he wouldn't have any need to go crooked. He saw a chance to make a killing. He suggested it to Rose, who fell for it and went along. Rose decided to steal Simonetti's half of the business from ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I guess when Cynthy can't get along with the sight of Jeff Durgin, she'll be a different girl from what she's ever been before. If she's got to see that skunk ag'in, I guess this is about the best time ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... said to Jackson, "only it won't do for that d——d skunk of a lawyer to think you're too anxious—sabe? We want to rub into him that we are in the habit out yer of havin' things left to us, and a fortin' more or less, falling into us now and then, ain't nothin' alongside of the Zip Coon claim. It won't hurt ye to keep up a big bluff on ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... like to soil my hands on you," he said, "but I don't mind telling you that any man who ruins a girl's life and then tries to get out of it by defaming her, is a skunk." ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... they're all alike; no more idea o' savin' anything than a skunk-blackbird! I can't spare any money for gew-gaws, and you might as well understand it first as last. Go up attic and open the hair trunk by the winder; you'll find plenty there to last ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... action, Julian," he agreed. "I'm hot with shame when I think of it. But don't, for heaven's sake, think I had anything to do with the affair! We have a secret service branch which arranges for those things. It's that skunk Fenn who's responsible. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I tell you. It saved my life. At it they went, as if trying to drive me overboard with the noise! . . . 'I wonder you had pluck enough to jump. You ain't wanted here. If I had known who it was, I would have tipped you over—you skunk! What have you done with the other? Where did you get the pluck to jump—you coward? What's to prevent us three from firing you overboard?' . . . They were out of breath; the shower passed away upon the sea. Then nothing. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... "You onery, sheep-herding skunk!" rasped the Texan. "If you touch my bat again, I'll grease the ground with you! They'll sure carry you home on a stretcher, and you can bet ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... railway in the compass of a single western state! More than all Hindostan can boast of, and nearly half the railway mileage of the United Kingdom. Of this immense system of interior connexion Chicago is the centre and heart. Other great centres of commerce have striven to rival the City of the Skunk, but all have failed; and to-day, thanks to the dauntless energy of the men of Chicago, the garden state of the Union possesses this immense extent of railroad, ships its own produce, north, east, and south, and boasts a population scarcely inferior to that of many ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... that impressed us deeply and painfully was the skunk. They were fearless little beasts and in the evening would come quite boldly about the house, and if seen and attacked by a dog, they would defend themselves with the awful-smelling liquid they discharge at an adversary. When the wind brought a whiff of it into ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... worth of fumigating and a hundred dollars' worth of damage," he said, "and now, I'd like to have a Missouri sign. In other words, I want to be shown. What did some skunk want to kill my ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... cold rage before which the other slinks away). Peters, the more I see of you the better I like a skunk! If it wasn't for other people losing weight you couldn't get any joy out of life, could you? (Roughly.) Get away from me! (He ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... gasps; for a moment he was stunned. The first thing he thought of was his mother; but his call sounded hollow and unnatural and there was no response. He had been out-generaled, vanquished and insulted by a skunk, a creature but a fraction his size, and the realization of it hurt. His good opinion of himself fell, and he needed sympathy and encouragement as he had never needed them before. But they were not forthcoming. He was alone in the world and must fight his way or perish. In sheer distress ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... Squire went on eating his supper for some minutes without comment; but just as we finished, he said, "Boys, where did we put our skunk fence ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... fragment of rock contentedly smoking his cigarette and giving instructions, he being an adept at such matters, having stripped off hundreds if not thousands of hides in his day, from bison cattle and bear down to panther and skunk. ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... was a man with brains and with courage and rectitude beyond praise, set off by a powerful and noble frame, but he lacked every minor quality of greatness. He would not call his opponent in debate a skunk, but he would expend great verbal ingenuity in coupling his name with repeated references to that animal's attributes. On this occasion he used to the full both the finer and the most exquisitely tasteless qualities of his eloquence. This sort of thing passed the censorship of many excellent ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... thing of all that happened, was that the cats adopted a skunk; or else it was the skunk that adopted the cats; I don't know which would be the proper way of stating it; but at any rate the skunk joined the family, lived with them in the woodpile, came with them every morning to be fed, and went off with them hunting gophers every day. It must have been there ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... several different ways of skinning animals: one is called "case skinning" and another is called "split skinning." To case skin an animal such as ermine, fox, fisher, lynx, marten, mink, otter, muskrat, rabbit, or skunk, the skin is cut down the inner side of each hind leg until the two cuts meet just under the tail, and then the pelt is peeled off by turning it inside out. To split skin an animal such as wood-buffalo, moose, wapiti, caribou, deer, bear, beaver, wolf, or wolverine, the skin ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... intestines differ little in calibre, and many of them (i.e. the family) can diffuse at will a disgusting stench." This last peculiarity is a specialty of the American members of the family, notably the skunk, of the power of which almost incredible stories are told. I remember reading not long ago an account of a train passing over a skunk, and for a time the majority of the passengers suffered from nausea in consequence. Sir John Richardson writes: "I have known a dead skunk thrown over the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... so we had to tie a handkerchief around his nose, and his feet made such a noise on the floor that we put some baby's socks on his feet. Gosh, how frowy a goat smells, don't it? I should think you Masons must have strong stummix, Why don't you have a skunk or a mule for a trade mark. Take a mule, and annoint it with limburg cheese and you could initiate and make a candidate smell just as bad as with a gosh ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... rosary The night mumbles over And the snow with its devilish and silken whisper... Patrolling arcs Blowing shrill blasts over the Bread Line Stalk them as they pass, Silent as though accouched of the darkness, And the wind noses among them, Like a skunk That ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... it, this story really began at Skunk's Misery. But Skunk's Misery was the last thing in my head, though I had just come from ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... and a skunk," Alix had frankly contributed. Cherry, now quietly established in her father's lap, had smiled with mischievous enjoyment; nobody else, to Peter's surprise, had paid this extraordinary remark the slightest attention. He remembered that he had fancied only the smallest of these ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... Now, I hold that she hain't got no call to treat me that away. I never tuck no hand in 'er disputes with my wife, an' ef hard things has been said about Sally, why they never come from me. Lord, I've got plenty else to think about besides gals an' women. I think I'm on track o' the skunk 'at stole ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... action was a most dastardly piece of impertinence, to give it its tamest name. Naturally, we don't expect Court manners from one of your profession, but we do look for ordinary common honesty. But it seems that we look in vain. You have behaved like a mighty fine skunk, sir. And if you don't see that there's any crying need for a very humble apology, you've got about the thickest hide that ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... ejaculated, after I had related to him in detail the incidents connected with the seizure of the Zenobia by her crew, under the leadership of Bainbridge; "if that don't beat everything! And you say that the skunk means to set up in business as a pirate? But is this here barque of yourn armed? Do she mount any guns? Because, if she don't, how do that crowd of toughs reckon they're goin' to hold up ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... fix of the skunk that stood on the track and humped up his back at the lightning express—there was nothing left of him except a deficit and the stink he'd kicked up. And a fellow can't dictate terms with those assets. In the end he left the room with a ring in ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... "That old skunk rather turned you down, I guess," remarked Ike, after a long silence; "that old Macfarren, I mean," in answer to Shock's ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... appropriated a last year's hawk's nest and deposited therein her two white eggs. At the foot of the sunny hill where the spring has freely flowed all winter long, we tramp around the swamp in the vain hope of finding the purplish monk's-hood of the skunk's cabbage; but look up to see, instead, the many "mouse ears," shining like bits of silvery fur, along the slender stems of the pussy willow. Or we tramp through a hazel thicket, where the squirrels have been festive among the nuts all winter, in the hope of finding, among the myriads of short, ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... taken down and used in evidence against him, he continued to say with a kind of delight that he had done his work faithfully, and that he could have done it quite successfully if he had not been mated with a coward and a skunk, and that he didn't much care now what came of him, since he didn't suppose they would let him loose and give him one hour's chance again, and see if he couldn't work the thing somewhat better than he had had a chance of doing before. If he had not trusted too long to the courage ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... has protected the crustaceans against their enemies by protective armor, e. g., the turtle and the armadillo; to the birds, it has given sharp eyes and wings, as, for instance, the wild goose to another species—the skunk—it has given a noisome odor for its protection. The turtle, protected by its armor against trauma, is in a very similar position to that of the sheltered brain of man and, like the brain, the turtle does not respond ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... been attracted by newspaper work, and had found his first billet on a Western journal of the type whose society column consists of such items as "Jim Thompson was to town yesterday with a bunch of other cheap skates. We take this opportunity of once more informing Jim that he is a liar and a skunk," and whose editor works with a pistol on his desk and another in his hip-pocket. Graduating from this, he had proceeded to a reporter's post on a daily paper in Kentucky, where there were blood feuds and other Southern devices for preventing life from becoming dull. All this was ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... "There's a skunk down there with a bad eye an' a gun that jumps out of its leather like it had a mind of its own. He picked me for fifty bucks by nailing a dollar I tossed up at twenty yards. Then he gets a hundred because I couldn't ride this hoss of his. Which he's made a plumb fool of me, ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... eat an animal which has lost one or both eyes, nor one the foot of which has been crushed, nor an animal of strong odour (like civet cat, skunk, etc., not an offensive smell to these natives); nor are she and her husband permitted to gather rubber, nor may wood be gathered for fire-making which has roads on it made by ants. She must not drink water from a back ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... the other. Salts and quartz, as well as some coal and pumice-stone, still appear. The bars of the river are composed principally of gravel; the river low grounds are narrow, and afford scarcely any timber; nor is there much pine on the hills. The buffalo have now become scarce; we saw a polecat (skunk) this evening, which was the first for several days; in the course of the day we also saw several herds of the bighorned animals among the steep cliffs on the north, and ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... he's got away on us—the skunk! He's down there in the brush, somewheres, waiting for somebody to go in and drag him out by the ear. I betche he's laying low, right now, waiting for a chance to pot-shot us. We better git back out ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... egg-suckin', skunk-backed loafers! Go on, there! Aw, don't yer talk back to me 'r I'll let m' horse bite yer pants off! Back yer go! ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... incubator chickens all are dead! Max fights with Shep, he scorns to follow me! Some fresh disaster momently I dread; Is that a skunk approaching?—try to see! ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... gun!" roared the rustler. "Lemme sit hyar an' shoot the eyes outen this—lyin' pup of a Belllounds!... Wade, put a gun in my hand—a gun with two shells—or only one. You can stand with your gun at my head.... Let me kill this skunk!" ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet! Gus, if you ever come into my office and fail to unload a scheme on me I'll think you aren't enjoying your usual robust health. What are you going to start now? A skunk farm for cornering the market ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... Bill and harem did not come to water. Cash done the regular hike after them. His thumb don't hurt him for hazing donkeys. Bill and harem come in after Cash left. They must of saw him go. Cash was out four hours and come in mad. Shot a hidrophobia skunk out by the creek. ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... he had stolen the rat trap from the oat bin, and had set it up in the wood lot, and yesterday morning was so fortunate as to catch a fine big skunk. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... enraged them. "What? You want to put it on us now, do you? ... you dirty little skunk! To say WE made you tell that pack of lies?—Look here: as long as you stay in this blooming shop, I'll never open ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... had the gall," he muttered. "Acting like he'd been bit by a hydrophoby skunk. Nothing meaner 'n a mad wolf. I'd 'a' give him Carmena quick enough.... Learn her not to pass up a white man agin when she had her chance. But the young gal—— Blast Cochise. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... mean? Say, fellows, if that don't make me think of a blessed old skunk I don't know the odor when I meet it!" and Wallace drew back as he was about to get down on his hands and knees to investigate the meaning of the odd sounds under ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... made up my mind to beat on ahead and take you myself. I want you to understand. And you do know, I guess. You must have heard, for I thought you were sure-enough dead in the box, an' I swear to Heaven I meant all I said then. I wouldn't have come. I was glad you two got away. But this Bucky is a skunk and a scoundrel— and mebbe if I take you— I can help you— later on. They'll be ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... Daylight commanded. "Take that chair over there, you gangrene-livered skunk. Jump! By God! or I'll make you leak till folks'll think your father was a water hydrant and your mother a sprinkling-cart. You-all move your chair alongside, Guggenhammer; and you-all Dowsett, sit right there, while ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... him ten marks to send the telegram. The miserable beast has sneaked the lot. I'll get at the railway company through the Embassy and have the brute sacked and put in prison. Did you ever hear of such a skunk?" ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... working on now was a very different sort of basket. But then—you see, he intended to give it to a very different sort of person. He was going to hang this one on Henry Skunk's door. ...
— The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit - Sleepy-TimeTales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Wild Cat. Opossum. Skunk Alligator. Rattle Snake. Green Snake Pelican. Wood Stock Flying Squirrel. Roseate Spoonbill. Snowy Heron White Ibis. Tobacco Worm. Cock Roach Cat Fish. Gar Fish. Spoonbill Catfish Indian Buffalo Hunt on Foot Dance of the Natchez Indians Burial of the Stung ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... the graceful skunk opossum And the stylish leopard mink Scamper as you come across 'em, Climb upon the canon's brink, Gambol with the pony musquash, Claimed not for a collar yet— Far away from London's bus-squash And advertisements of tusk-wash ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... fetor^; bad &c adj.. smell, bad odor; stench, stink; foul odor, malodor; empyreuma^; mustiness &c adj.; rancidity; foulness &c (uncleanness) 653. stoat, polecat, skunk; assafoetida^; fungus, garlic; stinkpot; fitchet^, fitchew^, fourmart^, peccary. acridity &c 401.1. V. have a bad smell &c n.; smell; stink, stink in the nostrils, stink like a polecat; smell strong &c adj., smell offensively. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to call the dog off the trail. That camp scavenger, the American skunk, is the mildest mannered little creature in the world—providing he is left strictly alone. Being timid and otherwise defenseless, God has given ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... positive statements. The Old Man glanced quickly around the group. Then his face slowly changed. "That's so," he said reflectively, after a pause, "certingly a sort of a skunk and suthin of a fool. In course." He was silent for a moment as in painful contemplation of the unsavoriness and folly of the unpopular Smiley. "Dismal weather, ain't it?" he added, now fully embarked on the current of prevailing sentiment. "Mighty rough papers on the boys, and ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Chipmunk and started for the old stone wall to look for him. Another went in search of Danny Meadow Mouse. A third headed for the dear Old Briar-patch after Peter Rabbit. A fourth remembered Jimmy Skunk and how he had once set Blacky the Crow free from a snare. A fifth remembered what sharp teeth Happy Jack Squirrel has and hurried over to the Green Forest to look for him. A sixth started straight for the Smiling Pool to tell Jerry Muskrat. And every one of ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... do this! Lydia, you go home and tell your father I'll renew that note, but he's got to pay the interest and ten per cent. of the principal, every year till he's paid it up. Here, I'll write it down. And tell him that I'm not doing it for him or for that skunk of a Levine, but I'm doing it for you. Here, ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... brain that skunk with a pin?" was the inquiry of our profound oathsman, who also expressed regret that he happened to be sitting too far away from the negro to reach him. He accompanied the announcement with a warmth of language that must have relieved the negro ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... illustrations might be quoted; as for instance the web of the Spider, the pit of the Ant Lion, the mephitic odour of the Skunk. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... Other stunning costumes were worn by Mrs. Alexander Britton, who was in purple velvet with lace and brilliants; Miss Catherine Britton, scarlet chiffon. Miss Mary Green wore a lovely gown of blue charmeuse and chiffon with bands of skunk. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... darkness and was guarded by Tcápani (the Bat) and an animal called Çantsò (of crepuscular or nocturnal habits). Here dwelt many young men and young women who were skunks (golÃji), and they taught the Navajo wanderer how to make and how to bury the kethà wns which are sacred to the skunk. ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... half yelp. "Let 'im go like ye would a snake; like ye would a slimy worm a crawlin' at yer feet." Still snarling in pain, she lifted one shaking arm and pointed a crooked forefinger at Waldstricker. "She won't always stay with ye, ye skunk ye!" Then she staggered away, Helen and Ebenezer staring after her until she was lost in ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... suspect they wus bein' tracked. Well, thet was my chance; what I 'd been campin' out yere months a-waitin' fer. I did n't expect ter git nuthin' back, y' understand; all I wanted was ter kill that damn skunk, an' squar accounts. It looked ter me then like I hed him on the hip. He did n't know I was in the kintry; all I hed to do was lay out in the hills, an' take a pot-shot at him ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... delicacy on the border; the next, the paws of the bear soused, which, when served on a white dish, very much resembled the foot of a negro, but were good; then, again, roasted muskrat, which in the winter is as delicate as a young chicken; then fricasseed skunk, which, in season, is free from all offensive odor, and extremely delicate,—all served with le riz sauvage. In fact, he exhausted the resources of the country ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... brought the nightie, and reached out her two eager arms to take the kid off Chip's knees where he was perched contentedly relating his adventures with sundry hair-raising additions born of his imagination. The Kid was telling Daddy Chip about the skunk he saw, and he hated to be interrupted. He looked at his Doctor Dell and at the familiar, white garment with lace at the neck and wristbands, and he waved his hand with a ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... wild animals are very common and very troublesome to the farmer. The skunk, which looks like a pretty black and white kitten with a bushy tail, and also the weasel, destroy all the chickens and eggs they can reach, and they are so cunning that it is hard to keep them out of the hen-house. That little pest, the ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... think of the skunk saying Frank pushed him in!" echoed Elephant, "when he actually risked his life to save the cur. Ain't I glad now I didn't carry out my first impulse and jump after Puss, even before Frank went. Why, maybe he'd have even said ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... muttered he to himself, as he started to his feet; "the skunk is coming this way. Good! he has the advantage of me in being mounted; but I have a rifle that I dare say will make up for the difference—enfant de grace! he ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... my friend: he killed that skunk in a duel and it's not the only one he has fought either. Old Hickory's got ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... terror, as I saw him coming in at the door. He saw what I was doing, and glared at me vengefully. He actually turned white with rage at this breach of his authority, and came at me with set teeth and doubled fists. "Give me that apple, damn yeh!" he cried. "You sneakin' skunk, you, I'll larn ye to eat ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... to the sullen bear, in cautious silence passed him by and shunned the fetid breath of monster lizards and venom stings of centipedes and scorpions; but woman-like she feared the hydrophobia-skunk more for its scent than ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... the open road, by G—d, not THREE MILES from whar ye men are sittin' here yawpin'! If thar's a man among ye that hasn't got the soul of a skunk, he'll foller and close in upon 'em before they have a chance to get into the brush." Having thus relieved himself of his duty as an enforced noncombatant, and allowed all further responsibility to devolve ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... and the night, dreams and the phantoms of the gloom were supposed to be sent by Tezcatlipoca, and to him were sacred those animals which prowl about at night, as the skunk and the coyote.[1] ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... something about a sailor that conduces to sentiment in every passer-by, and Jay, who was fleeing from that very feeling, looked hastily at some one else. Her seeking eye lit on a lady who had a complete skunk climbing up the nape of her neck, and a hat of the approximate size of a five-shilling piece worn over her right eyebrow. She looked such a fool that Jay concluded that the look was intentional, and indeed I suppose it must be, for the worst insult you can offer to young ladies of this type ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... was!" he exclaimed, angrily. "A thorn of some kind, put there so that when I jumped into my seat my weight would drive it in. And I reckon, too, it would be just like the cowardly sneak to pick out one that had a poison tip! Oh! what a skunk! and how I'd like to see some of the boys at the ranch round him up! But I wonder, now could I find it? I'd like to get ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... to say I'm nothing of the kind," spiritedly replied the under-dog. "You all time wanting somebody to call theirselfs someping. You're a low-down Isabella skunk yourself." ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... indeed gone so well and the week that followed was so peaceful that Douglas did not sleep in the chapel on the following Saturday night. When Mr. Fowler unlocked the door on Sunday morning, a skunk fled from under the pulpit out into the aspens, and there was no ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... raised in northern N'York. O-a-ah, yeh jest oughto live there. No beer ner whisky, though, way off in the woods. But all th' good hot grub yeh can eat. B'Gawd, I hung around there long as I could till th' ol' man fired me. 'Git t' hell outa here, yeh wuthless skunk, git t' hell outa here, an' go die,' he ses. 'You're a hell of a father,' I ses, 'you ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... again because he had been fleeced of so much of the five pounds. A wave of anger shook him as he thought of that, but he suppressed it; he felt that he must not give way, so he looked steadily at the window. There were furs displayed there, muffs and collarettes of skunk and other animals, even the humble rabbit artistically treated to meet the insatiable female appetite for sable at all prices. The Captain decided on the best collarette displayed and turned towards the shop door feeling a little better in the glow of benevolence that returned ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... mouth were grim. "Oh, all right," he said, after a moment, "I promise;—for I think you are right, Crowther. I think too that I should probably have to tell her—whether I wanted to or not. She's that sort—the sort that none but a skunk could deceive. But—" his voice altered suddenly; he turned brooding eyes upon the sleeping sea—"I wonder if she will ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... Bill Jackson, drawing Banion to one side. "Do ye know what ye're a-sayin'? Whiles he was a-layin' thar I seen the bottoms o' his boots. Right fancy they was, with smallish heels! That skunk'll kill ye in the dark, Will. Ye'd orto hev put out'n ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... whining hypocrites, half of whom would sell their souls for a copper cent and throw in their risen Lord as lagniappe. It was a mob that writhed and wriggled in its own putridity like so many maggots, while the local press cowered before its impotent wrath like young skye-terriers before a skunk. If I couldn't beget better men with the help of a digger Indian harem I'd take to the woods and never again look upon the face of woman. It was a glorious sight to see these "pore mizzuble wurrums of the dust" ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... so," sighed Uncle Ezra. "More money! And that skunk Hank Crittenden got ten dollars out of me! I'll never hear the last of that. I'd rather have landed anywhere but on his land. Oh, this is awful! I wish I'd never gone ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... Mr. Bundercombe declared. "A withered old skunk, if ever there was one! You want a live man to see you through this, Paul. You let me go down and sound Harrison this afternoon. No reason that I can see why we shouldn't use this fellow's address, too, if we can ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... would go round to have tea with her sister and him. How often she went I don't know, but I followed her one day, and as I broke in at the door Fairbairn got away over the back garden wall, like the cowardly skunk that he was. I swore to my wife that I would kill her if I found her in his company again, and I led her back with me, sobbing and trembling, and as white as a piece of paper. There was no trace of love between us any longer. I could see that she hated ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to be hanged, I should have laughed at this sight; for to all this outrageous grimace, was added a fantastic habiliment, and an odour from Desdemona and company, that associated the ideas of the skunk or the polecat. I presume that their august majesties, the emperor and empress of Hayti, have some means of destroying this association of ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... of eleven were great chums; they chased wild bees together, putting honey on the stone wall, getting a line on the bees; shelled beechnuts and cracked butternuts for the chipmunks; caught skunks in a trap, just to demonstrate that a skunk can be carried by the tail with impunity, if you only do it right (and, though succeeding one day, got the worst of the bargain the next); and waged war early and late on the flabby woodchucks which one could see almost any ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... was sobbing and struggling for breath. "Measly skunk!" he panted; "a-campin' on my trail an' lettin' me do the work, an' then shootin' me in ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... me while I was asleep, the damned skunk!" she flared. "I'd sooner hev rattlesnake-pizen on my lips!" She stopped rubbing the arm to scrub fiercely at her mouth with ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... but as to that Mr. Blasted Heyst, the time isn't yet. My head's cooler just now than yours. Let's go in again. Why, we are exposed here. Suppose he took it into his head to let off a gun on us! He's an unaccountable, 'yporcritical skunk." ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... house, Peter Rabbit almost ran plump into Bobby Coon and Jimmy Skunk, who had been quarreling and were calling each other names. They stopped when they ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... anything about the matter to the fellows; in fact, I only got on to the game about the time you dropped in. Just turn to the right a little, will you, Jack. I'm not pointing, because it would tell the skunk we knew about his being there. See that bunch of trees over yonder, do you? Pretty thick, all right, and offering a splendid asylum to any chap who might want to watch what we were doing out in the open field. He's up in the ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... know." Anne looked thoughtful. "I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage. I suppose my father could have been a good man even if he had been called Jedediah; but I'm sure it would have been a cross. Well, my mother was a teacher in the High school, too, but when she married father she gave up teaching, of course. ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... INDIAN.—The contact of the two races has greatly influenced our language, literature, and customs. Five and twenty of our states, and hundreds of counties, cities, mountains, rivers, lakes, and bays, bear names derived from Indian languages. Chipmunk and coyote, moose, opossum, raccoon, skunk, woodchuck, tarpon, are all of Indian origin. We still use such expressions as Indian summer, Indian file, Indian corn; bury the hatchet, smoke the pipe of peace. To the Indians we owe the canoe, the snowshoe, the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... the skin, which is 9 feet 8 inches long. The temperature was charming, although in the distance we could see the snow-capped mountains. We run through the antelope valley, gather some juniper plant, see a skunk, see natural oil wells at Saugus, pass the head of the Santa Clara Valley, see the San Fernando mountains, go through the greatest tunnel in America—the San Fernando tunnel, 6,967 feet long, go ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... Thing in the World," said Jimmy Skunk. "Why, that must be packs and packs of beetles!" And for once in his life Jimmy Skunk began to hurry down the Lone Little Path after Striped Chipmunk and Peter Rabbit ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... for instance, they show that this creature possesses, in common with every other creature, some observable property. Thus, man is, in one particular, like a sponge; in another, he is like an oyster; a hog is like a man; the skunk has one peculiarity of a man; the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... air some surprised," said the snappy, birdlike old woman whom Janice ushered into the sitting room. "I only got back from Skunk's Holler, where I been visitin', this very day. And what d'ye s'pose I found when ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... whispered conversation, betraying astonishment at his appearance; but he was greeted kindly and invited to the camp. Nearing the fire through the woods, his nostrils were assailed by a horrible smell which one of the men explained by saying he had just shot a skunk. There were eighteen in the party, comfortably fixed with two good sized tents and an abundance of buffalo robes. After he had removed his suit the cook prepared an excellent meal and urged him ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... said, shaking his head, "I didn't think it of you—I didn't indeed. A skunk like that! a woman-shooter, and a Frenchman! You didn't use to ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... of a skunk!" No, I forget—skunk was not the word; it seems to me it was still stronger than that; I know it was, in fact, but it is gone from my memory, apparently. However, it is no matter—probably it was too strong for print, anyway. It is the landmark in my memory which tells me where I first encountered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said Owen, taking up the story; "and it was by the greatest luck ever that Uncle Jim just happened to look in at the open window and discovered the skunk. Just think what might have happened if we'd burst in on the little ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the notorious skunk of America, the overwhelming odour which they emit appears to serve exclusively as a defence. With shrew-mice (Sorex) both sexes possess abdominal scent-glands, and there can be little doubt, from the rejection of their bodies by birds and beasts of prey, that the odour is protective; ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... indeterminate interval the four left the still, taking a bottle with them so that it might be had without delay, should they meet a snake or a hydrophobia skunk or some other venomous reptile. It was Casey who made the suggestion, and he became involved in difficulties when he attempted the word venomous. Once started Casey was determined to pronounce the word and pronounce it correctly, because Casey Ryan never backed up when he once started. ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... a man, woman, or child that will be kept away. Don't you go back on your luck, now; it's something awful and nigger-like. You've got this crowd where the hair is short; excuse me, but it's so. Talk of revivals! You could give that one-horse show in Tasajara a hundred points, and skunk them easily." Indeed, had Gideon been accessible to vanity, the spontaneous homage he met with everywhere would have touched him more sympathetically and kindly than it did; but in the utter unconsciousness ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... dead silence that lasted for the breathless passage of a dozen seconds. Then: "You—skunk!" ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... things are standing," Jordan was saying, "we got to get rid of this skunk Perris. Good-looking, as I remember him, and Marianne is so darned lonely on the ranch that she might begin to take him serious and—Hervey, I'll give you a written note. That'll be authority. I'll give you a note to Marianne, telling her that I've got to go across the mountains and that ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... over to relieve that old skunk," Reid announced, "not without orders from Sullivan. If he gets off you'll have to relieve him yourself. I don't want that Hall guy to get it into his nut that I'm runnin' away ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... "He's a skunk. He'll sign anything there's a buck in, and sometimes he'll do it for fifty cents. He'd be a disgrace even to a park bench, and why they haven't caught up with him I'll ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... like young brats, they take natural to deviltry. Ye may have my hide fer sole luther if ye ketch me in an Injun village with a load o' fire-water. Some Injuns is smart, an' gol ding their pictur's! they kin talk like a cat-bird. A skunk has a han'some coat an' acts as cute as a kitten but all the same, which thar ain't no doubt o' it, his friendship ain't wuth a dam. It's a kind o' p'ison. Injuns is like skunks, if ye trust 'em they'll sp'ile ye. They eat like beasts an' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... pass the word to that old Provancher, through the superintendent of the Gamonic, that unless he comes across with all the stuff he knows about that Farr he'll be fired. And I've got a hunter out on my own account. It will be easy enough to catch the skunk and ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... the result. After some time she heard the shotgun go off, and in a few minutes the farmer entered the house. 'What luck had you?' said she. 'I hid myself behind the woodpile,' said the old man, 'with the shot-gun pointed toward the hen-roost, and before long there appeared, not one skunk, but seven. I took aim, blazed away, and killed one—and he raised such a fearful smell I concluded it was best to let the other six alone.'" The Senators retired, and nothing more was heard from them about ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... that Potter. He'd smell me out as quick as if I was a skunk to windward of him. Besides, it's time I was pitchin' on a few new holes; we must talk it ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... can see it in his eye!" thought Jack. "Well," continued he mentally, "let him do his worst; I mean mischief too, and we will see who is the better player at the game. But I must keep cool if I am to come out on top; and, who knows? the skunk may say something which will ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... all right. He's just been living on his own fat," said another voice. It was Jimmy Skunk who had spoken, and he now stood holding out his hand to Johnny Chuck and grinning good-naturedly. He had come up without either of ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... Hendricks skeered a skunk out of a holler log. Si Pettingill stirred up a hornet's nest, Deacon Witherspoon sot down in a huckleberry pie and Aunt Nancy Smith got a spider on her, and she started in to yellin' and jumpin' like she had a fit, and two dogs got to fitin', and old Jim Lawson he tried to git 'em apart ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... nose of his is as tender as a baby's, and he is snuffed out by a blow that would hardly bewilder for a moment any other forest animal, unless it be the skunk, another sluggish non-combatant of our woodlands. Immunity from foes, from effort, from struggle is always purchased with ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... would have had the panel swing both ways," said Mr. Bodge, "and he would have a kitchen full of strange cats, with a skunk or two throwed in for luck. You see that I've hinged a pane of winder-glass and hitched it to a bevelled stick that tips inward. Cat gets up on the sill outside and meows. Dog runs to the winder and stands up to ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... of such bitter hatred as to cause her companion to glance uneasily at the passionate young face before him. "I know, only too well. And right thoroughly has Lablache done his work. Say, Bill, do you know that that skunk holds mortgages on our ranch for two hundred thousand dollars? And every bill of it is for poker. For twenty years, right through, he has steadily sucked the old man's blood. Slick? Say a six-year-old steer don't know ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... angrily across the floor, Santry gazed out into the twilight. "That dirty, low-lived Swede? But we'll fix him, boy. I know his breed, the skunk! I'll...." The veins in the old plainsman's throat stood out and the pupils of his eyes contracted. "I'll run his blamed outfit out of the valley before noon termorrer. I'll ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... "I'm Victor Jones of Philadelphia. I'm the partner of a skunk by name of Stringer. I'm the victim of a British government that doesn't know the difference between tin plate and Harveyised steel. I'm a ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... "you and I have always got along all right. You know I've tried to do the right thing by your daughter. I'm ready to now. She's too decent a girl to have done this thing on her own. This is the work of that rotten skunk of a lawyer—I apologize to the other skunks and the real lawyers. She has done a frightful injustice to the best woman on earth. She can never undo it, but surely she doesn't want to do any more. She's through with me, I suppose, but we ought to be ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... best that could be done," said Richard. "And if that skunk hasn't got some sort of new hold upon father, I shall be satisfied. The worst of it is that it will be all over town in an hour that Bittridge has made up with us. I don't blame father; he couldn't help it; he never could ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... another one of the men said. "We wuz promised a station, but we haint goin' ter have no changin' of names. The railroad folks tried that down ter Skunk Hollow, settin' up a jim-crack station, all red shingles and fancy roof, and callin' it Ozone Valley. But they can't come any of that ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... sure to fetch along with him when taking this big hike, and that was his little camp hatchet. Fritz had begged to be allowed to carry his old Marlin shotgun, under the plea that they might run across some ferocious animal like a wildcat, or a skunk, and would find a good use for the reliable firearm; but the scoutmaster had set his foot ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... drifting out on the ocean," answered the old tar, and then he continued: "You know how they tried to board us—after Carey, Bossermann, that skunk o' a Wingate, an' Ulligan went to 'em. Well, fust we kept 'em off with fireworks and with a shotgun. We didn't have much steam up, but Frank Norton—bless his heart—worked like a beaver, and the boys, Fred and Hans, helped ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... trail, so close are we to the rest of the pack. In the thick of the swamp I stopped a moment to examine the footprints of an otter at a shallow, shelving place along the bank, where, opening through the skunk-cabbage and Indian turnip, and covered almost ankle-deep with water, ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... fur a skunk, but we've stood this long as we ought to!' exclaimed Baldy Bicknell, when he returned. 'You take care of yourselves ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... hepatica lie bedded not alone in the fallen leaves of the forest but amid their own enduring foliage. The skunk cabbage raises his hooded head first in sheltered hollows. The marsh marigold lies in the protection of bog tussocks and stream banks. The first bloodroot is always found at the foot of some natural windbreak, while the shad-bush, that ventures farther afield and higher in ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Buck Mason. "Don't we all know that Quade was fast with a gun? He barely had it out in his hand when the other gent drilled him. And he was shot from above. No, sir, the way it happened was something like this. The murderin' skunk sat on his hoss saying goodby to Quade, and, while they was shaking hands or something like that, he goes for his gun and plugs Quade. Maybe it was a gent that knew he didn't have ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... disappearing only less rapidly than the buffalo. As yet his most destructive foe in this region is perhaps the hawk, although he is raided from the timber by the opossum, raccoon, and three species of cat, while on the open his nest has marked attractions for the skunk and probably the coyote. He has survived these dumb discouragers so long, and the heat at his proper season is so trying to his human foe, that he may long find a refuge here and proudly lead forth his young Texans for scores of Augusts. He and his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... like his nature, was as sensitive as it was massive, and it instantly expressed his pain at the doubt cast on his high seriousness. "Duke," he asked, "d'you take me for a skunk?" ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... him. Mr. Pierson was out, and the young ladies were away. He asked for Mrs. Laird's address, and turned away, almost into the arms of Pierson himself. The greeting was stiff and strange. 'Does he know that Leila's gone?' he thought. 'If so, he must think me the most awful skunk. And am I? Am I?' When he reached home, he sat down to write to Leila. But having stared at the paper for an hour ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... dress the skins aboard; kill fish and salt 'em aboard. Ye know when that fam'ly is at sea by the smell that pervades the briny deep an' heralds their approach. Yesterday the air smelt awful. So I said to Vespasian here, 'I think that sea-skunk is out, for there's something a-pisoning the cerulean waves an' succumambient air.' We hadn't sailed not fifty miles more before we run agin him. Their clothes were drying all about the rigging. Hails me, the varmint does. Vesp ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... what amounts to a religious taboo against landing anywhere and leaving without stealing something. The real loot was at these two other towns; a steel mill and big stocks of steel at one, and all that skunk-apple oil at the other. So what did they do? They dropped a five-megaton bomb on each one, and blew both of them to Em-See-Square. That was a terror-raid pure and simple, but as Boake inquires, just who were they terrorizing? If there were big cities somewhere else on the planet, ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... Venters raised his rifle, ready to take snap shots, and waited for favorable opportunity when Bells was out of line with the forward horses. Venters had it in him to kill these men as if they were skunk-bitten coyotes, but also he had restraint enough to keep from shooting ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... After a long while he backed to the bed and sat down, but he kept the gun pointed toward the door and the window. A skunk came prowling through the trampled snow before the cabin, hunting food where Mike had thrown out slops from the cooking. It rattled a tin can against a half-buried rock, and Mike was on his feet, shaking with cold ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... compromises. A rough sense of justice in the community, while doubting her ability to take care of the whole fortune, suggested that she ought to be content with three hundred thousand dollars. "She's bound to throw even THAT away on some derned skunk of a man, natoorally; but three millions is too much to give a chap for makin' her onhappy. It's offerin' a temptation to cussedness." The only opposing voice to this counsel came from the sardonic lips of Mr. Jack Hamlin. "Suppose," suggested that gentleman, turning abruptly ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... once in a while. But he always thought of Old Mr. Toad as one of the homeliest of all his friends,—slow, awkward, and too commonplace to be very interesting. So when, in the glad joyousness of the spring, Old Mr. Toad had told Jimmy Skunk that he was going down to the Smiling Pool to sing because without him the great chorus there would lack one of its sweetest voices, Peter and Jimmy had ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... camp-fire. He was fond of it and he said: "You eat all time—much pop corn—just so long you keep mouth going all same like horse—you happy." We were troubled a good deal by skunks. Now some skunks were not bad neighbors, but others were disgusting and dangerous. The hog-nosed skunk, according to westerners, very often had hydrophobia and would bite a sleeper. I knew of several men dying of rabies from this bite. Copple said he had been awakened twice at night by skunks biting the noses of his companions in camp. Copple had to choke the skunks off. One of these men died. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... and Blades let out a long, ragged breath. They sat a while trembling before Chung muttered, "That skunk as good ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... and she stood just before his chair, her head coming very little higher than his own as he sat there, big and ominous. "So the skunk took your money, too. I hain't carin' a whoop for them others. They got what was comin' to 'em, and I didn't calculate to do nothin'. But you! By crimminy!... Wa-al, Grandmother, you go off home and knit. I'll look into things. It's on your account, ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... stability by the British Empire. The exact particulars of the similarity never came to light, but apparently the lady had, in a fit of high-minded inadvertence, had gone through the ceremony of marriage with, one quotes the unpublished discourse of Mr. Butteridge—"a white-livered skunk," and this zoological aberration did in some legal and vexatious manner mar her social happiness. He wanted to talk about the business, to show the splendour of her nature in the light of its complications. It was really most embarrassing to a press that has always possessed ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... early spring, when gentle Sister South Wind had melted all the snow, excepting a little patch right under the window of Mr. Skunk's house, Mr. Rabbit came strolling along that way with nothing special on his mind. Mr. and Mrs. Skunk were having a little family talk, and Mr. Skunk was speaking some loud. Mr. Rabbit stopped. Then Mr. Rabbit grinned and sat right down on that bed ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... and stay away from the lake. There was a hell of an explosion over there this morning. Three men went to see what'd happened. They didn't come back. Two more went after 'em, and something hit them on the way. They smelled something worse than skunk. Then they were paralyzed, like they had hold of a high-tension line. They saw crazy colors and heard crazy sounds and they couldn't move a finger. Their car ditched. In a while they came out of it and they came back—fast! They'd just got back when we ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... imprudent and reckless, Birrell so prudent and incapable of giving himself away, Sir Henry Fowler so commonplace and trite. He looked so wicked. I thought of Mr. Haldane's story of Fowler's fur coat and his single remark on examining it: "skunk." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... weak man in the lodge," cried McGinty. "True as steel, every man of them. And yet, by the Lord! there is that skunk Morris. What about him? If any man gives us away, it would be he. I've a mind to send a couple of the boys round before evening to give him a beating up and see what they can get ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... to his feet and throwing off the mask completely. "You damned skunk, are you accusin' me of crooking the ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... in winter, when the lodge was full of old and young people, and through lack of attention the fire died down, some older person would call out, "Look out for the skunk!" which would be a warning to the boys to put some sticks on the fire. If this was not done at once, the man who had called out might throw a stick of wood across the lodge into the group of children, hitting and hurting one or more of them. It was taught also that, if, when young and old ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... pride," snorted grandma, "it's of the skunk order. He'd make use of every one because he thinks he's an English swell, and then wouldn't speak to them if he met them out no more than they were dogs. I don't think there's a single thing he could do to save his life. If there's a bit ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... a hot time!" shouted Yellin' Kid, as he spurred forward. "And I don't see th' skunk that spoiled ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... Scattergood, and she stood just before his chair, her head coming very little higher than his own as he sat there, big and ominous. "So the skunk took your money, too. I hain't carin' a whoop for them others. They got what was comin' to 'em, and I didn't calculate to do nothin'. But you! By crimminy!... Wa-al, Grandmother, you go off home and knit. I'll look into things. It's ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... impossible, however, to call the dog off the trail. That camp scavenger, the American skunk, is the mildest mannered little creature in the world—providing he is left strictly alone. Being timid and otherwise defenseless, God has given him ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... year's hawk's nest and deposited therein her two white eggs. At the foot of the sunny hill where the spring has freely flowed all winter long, we tramp around the swamp in the vain hope of finding the purplish monk's-hood of the skunk's cabbage; but look up to see, instead, the many "mouse ears," shining like bits of silvery fur, along the slender stems of the pussy willow. Or we tramp through a hazel thicket, where the squirrels have been festive among the nuts all winter, ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... licentious intrigue of the lowest and least sentimental kind, between an impudent London rake and the idiot wife of a country squire. We will not go into details. In truth, Wycherley's indecency is protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters. It is safe, because it is too filthy to handle and too noisome ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to take his advice, and lay quiet while the cowboys gathered. From all directions I heard them coming, calling to each other that "the skunk that shot the woman is corralled," and other forms of the same information. In a moment I was jerked to my feet, only to be swept off them with equal celerity, and was half carried, half dragged, along the tracks. It wasn't as rough handling as I have taken on the football-field, but ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... Say, fellows, if that don't make me think of a blessed old skunk I don't know the odor when I meet it!" and Wallace drew back as he was about to get down on his hands and knees to investigate the meaning of the odd sounds under the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... to his feet like a flash, a gun in each hand, saying, 'Stand up, you measly skunk, so I can see you.' Half a dozen men rose in different parts of the house and cut loose at him, and as they did so the lights went out and the room filled with smoke. Masterson was blazing away with two guns, which so lighted up the rostrum that we could see the professor crouching ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... As for larger game, rabbits and the like, the crow is hardly nimble enough for them, nor are his claws well adapted for seizing; anything of this kind he will scarcely get, except as the leavings of the weasel or skunk. These he will not refuse; for though he is of a different species from the carrion crow of Europe, with whom he was formerly confounded, yet he is of similar, though perhaps less extreme, tastes as to his food. But when the ground is freshly covered with snow, all supplies of this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... from their nests. This is an invariable device of the Partridge, and I have no doubt that it is quite successful with the natural foes of the bird; indeed it is often so with Man. A dog, as I have often seen, is certain to be misled and duped, and there is little doubt that a mink, skunk, racoon, fox, coyote, or wolf would fare no better. Imagine the effects of the bird's tactics on a prowling fox: he has scented her as she sits; he is almost upon her, but she has been watching him, and suddenly, with a loud 'whirr,' she springs up and tumbles ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... all—poor little Runtie had been sickly from the first. He bore his half-shell on his back for hours after he came out; he ran less and cheeped more than his brothers, and when one evening at the onset of a skunk the mother gave the word 'Kwit, kwit' (Fly, fly), Runtie was left behind, and when she gathered her brood on the piney hill he was missing, and ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... so well and the week that followed was so peaceful that Douglas did not sleep in the chapel on the following Saturday night. When Mr. Fowler unlocked the door on Sunday morning, a skunk fled from under the pulpit out into the aspens, and there was no service ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... patting it from time to time with her hind feet. This process takes much longer than digging the hole. When it is done to her satisfaction she waddles towards the creek. You might have some trouble to find the eggs but the skunk often gets them. Does the mother turtle watch over them till they are hatched by the sun or is it a mere picked-up crowd of youngsters that we sometimes see in the early fall sitting with her on a boulder ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... drummin', An' it did bonyfidy seem millanyum wuz a-comin'; Wen all on us gots suits (darned like them wore in the state prison), An' every feller felt ez though all Mexico was hisn. This 'ere's about the meanest place a skunk could wal diskiver (Saltillo's Mexican, I b'lieve, fer wut we call Salt river). The sort o' trash a feller gits to eat doos beat all nater, I'd give a year's pay fer a smell o' one good blue-nose tater; ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... would have given us five hundred ounces for it. Well, I didn't say nothing, it was what pretty nigh anyone on the mines would have done if he had the chance, but Harry turned on our partner like a mountain lion. 'You are a mean skunk, New Jersey' says he. 'Do you think that I would be one to rob a man only because he would be fool enough to take a place without looking at it? We've worked to the edge of the claim both ways, and I don't reckon there is a dollar's worth of gold left in it, now that it ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... he said stupidly. "I'll do anything you want me to. I feel like a skunk about this—it had sort of slipped my mind, Mart! Every fellow lets himself in for something ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... railway station as if he owned the German navy and ran trains as a genteel hobby. I gave him ten marks to send the telegram. The miserable beast has sneaked the lot. I'll get at the railway company through the Embassy and have the brute sacked and put in prison. Did you ever hear of such a skunk?" ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... scarce, there was no lack of trade for the lonely store in the woods. All through the summer there was a procession of birchbark canoes, filled with red men and white, coming down the river to the bay, laden with skins of wolf, fox, beaver, wolverine, squirrel, and skunk, the harvest of the winter's trapping. Then in winter the cove and the river were often crowded with boats, driven to anchorage there by the ice, and to escape the fearful storms sweeping over the bay. The river was ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... the heart across thirty years of distance. Do you not turn, I say, sometimes, reader, from the roar and hustle of the city with its ill-gotten wealth and its godless creed of mammon, to think of the quiet homestead under the brow of the hill? You don't! Well, you skunk! ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... mind, Duster," muttered the scout. "Did you ever see a skunk-trap? Oughts is for mush-rats, and number ones is mostly used for 'coons and 'possums, and I guess they'd do for a skunk. But you and we'll call this here trap a number two, Duster, for the skunk I'm after is a big one. All you've to do ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... in the Conservative party than ought to be tolerated in any decent community. I bear," he continued, "malice towards none and I wish to speak with gentleness to all, but what I will say is that how any set of rational responsible men could nominate such a skunk as the Conservative candidate passes the bounds of my comprehension. Gentlemen, in the present campaign there is no room for vindictive abuse. Let us rise to a higher level than that. They tell me that my opponent, Smith, is a common saloon ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... "See thet air brown hoss go by. Knew 'im soon es I sot eyes on 'im—use' t' ride 'im myself. Hed an idee 't wus you 'n the saddle—sot s' kind o' easy. But them air joemightyful do's! Jerushy Jane! would n't be fit t' skin a skunk ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... The chief one—Fact is, Josh, I've acted like a howling skunk about you with her. I ran you down to her; tried to get ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... a man; possibly he was not an abnormally big man, but certainly he looked so to Peter. His smooth-shaven face was pink with anger, his brows gathered in a terrible frown, and his hands clenched with deadly significance. "You dirty little skunk!" he ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... it!" Mr. Bundercombe declared. "A withered old skunk, if ever there was one! You want a live man to see you through this, Paul. You let me go down and sound Harrison this afternoon. No reason that I can see why we shouldn't use this fellow's address, too, if we can ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... schmells I efer schmelt, Py gutter, sink, or well, At efery gorner of Cologne Dere's von can peat dat schmell. Vhen dere you go you'll find it so, Don't dake de ding on troost; De meanest skunk in Yankee land ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... door was of darkness and was guarded by Tcápani (the Bat) and an animal called Çantsò (of crepuscular or nocturnal habits). Here dwelt many young men and young women who were skunks (golÃji), and they taught the Navajo wanderer how to make and how to bury the kethà wns which are sacred to the skunk. ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... him say 'Why, of course, Master, but why do you keep on testing me this way?' He'll ask me that about four times more, the stubborn, single-tracked, brainless skunk, and I'll really go nuts. Are you getting anywhere trying to make ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... be said here for skunks and moles. A great deal of the skunk diet is insect life. The same is true of the mole whose diet probably consists of 75% insects, mostly in their larval state. This is an important feature of mole and skunk as they dig these insects out ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... peculiar acid secreted by ants. It is supposed to be used by them offensively in warfare—just as the skunk, eh?" ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... absently before he bit into it. "But I got even with 'im," he added. "I laid off till he got his tires on—an' I wouldn't lend him no tools to put 'em on with, neither. And then I looked up an' down the road an' seen there was no dust comin' an' we wouldn't be interrupted, an' I went up to the old skunk an' I says, 'I got a bill to colleck off you. Thankin' you in advance!' an' then I shore collected. You ask anybody in Patmos. Say, I bet he drove by-guess-an'-by-gosh to the orange belt, anyway, the way his eyes was ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... — N. fetor^; bad &c adj.. smell, bad odor; stench, stink; foul odor, malodor; empyreuma^; mustiness &c adj.; rancidity; foulness &c (uncleanness) 653. stoat, polecat, skunk; assafoetida^; fungus, garlic; stinkpot; fitchet^, fitchew^, fourmart^, peccary. acridity &c 401.1. V. have a bad smell &c n.; smell; stink, stink in the nostrils, stink like a polecat; smell strong &c adj., smell offensively. Adj. fetid; strong-smelling; high, bad, strong, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... women always say; they're all alike; no more idea o' savin' anything than a skunk-blackbird! I can't spare any money for gew-gaws, and you might as well understand it first as last. Go up attic and open the hair trunk by the winder; you'll find plenty there to last ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Between three and four hundred head. The water is running still up in the range. We should have done better if that skunk ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... went on eating his supper for some minutes without comment; but just as we finished, he said, "Boys, where did we put our skunk fence last fall?" ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... you Joke! Who sent you—Burns or Pinkerton? No, by God, you're such a bonehead I'll bet you're in the Secret Service! Well, you dirty spy, you rotten agent provocator, you can go back and tell whatever skunk is paying you blood-money for betraying your brothers that he's wasting his coin. You couldn't catch a cold. And tell him that all he'll ever get on us, or ever has got, is just his own sneaking plots that he's framed ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... Mr. Blasted Heyst, the time isn't yet. My head's cooler just now than yours. Let's go in again. Why, we are exposed here. Suppose he took it into his head to let off a gun on us! He's an unaccountable, 'yporcritical skunk." ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... them well on with their task, Joses being seated upon a fragment of rock contentedly smoking his cigarette and giving instructions, he being an adept at such matters, having stripped off hundreds if not thousands of hides in his day, from bison cattle and bear down to panther and skunk. ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... as Paddy does, and lives in very much the same way. The truth is, he is no more closely related to Paddy than he is to the rest of you. He is a true Rat. He is called Muskrat because he carries with him a scent called musk. It is not an unpleasant scent, like that of Jimmy Skunk, and isn't used for the same purpose. Jerry uses his to tell his friends where he has been. He leaves a little of it at the places he visits. Some folks call him Musquash, ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... his father's ranch in Wyoming. From there he had gone to a local paper of the type whose Society column consists of such items as "Pawnee Jim Williams was to town yesterday with a bunch of other cheap skates. We take this opportunity of once more informing Jim that he is a liar and a skunk," and whose editor works with a revolver on his desk and another in his hip-pocket. Graduating from this, he had proceeded to a reporter's post on a daily paper in a Kentucky town, where there were blood feuds and other Southern devices for ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... not to the sullen bear, in cautious silence passed him by and shunned the fetid breath of monster lizards and venom stings of centipedes and scorpions; but woman-like she feared the hydrophobia-skunk more for its scent ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... NOT frightened—no, I'm not. The Phoenix has never been a skunk yet, and I'm certain it'll see us through somehow. I believe ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... without upsetting any of the three. He told of long wanderings in the twilight solitudes of Canadian forests; of dangers from wolves and the wild coyotes, half-dog, half-wolf, heard nightly howling round the Indian camp-fires; and from the intangible malice of the skunk, a beautiful but dreadful power, to be propitiated with bated breath and muffled footstep. He told, too, of the chip-munks, with their sharp twittering bark; and he contrived to invest even these tiny ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... for the Skunk. Indeed, I once maintained that this animal was the proper emblem of America. It is, first of all, peculiar to this continent. It has stars on its head and stripes on its body. It is an ideal citizen; minds ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... "'Trouble, yeh skunk,' he howls; 'our throats is hot as hell, all th' skin's comin' off 'em; Bill Tomson's got his lips that blistered he can't hold his pipe between 'em. What ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... (for it was a pole-cat—the mephitis chinga, or American skunk) after he had discharged the fetid shower, stood for an instant looking over his shoulder, in such a way that we could almost fancy he was laughing. Then jerking his tail from side to side in a frolicksome manner, he made a bound into the ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... sneak and a skunk," Alix had frankly contributed. Cherry, now quietly established in her father's lap, had smiled with mischievous enjoyment; nobody else, to Peter's surprise, had paid this extraordinary remark the slightest attention. He remembered that he had fancied only the smallest of these ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... de wah,—dat his shoulder pains him powerful at times,—an' he is tryin' to get a pension, an' Mandy Ann is helpin' him. Beats all what women won't do for a man if they love him, no matter how big a skunk he is. Miss Dory died for one, an' Mandy Ann is slavin' herself to deff for one. I'se mighty ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... brine, with rice bran. It is very porous, and absorbs a good deal of the pickle in the three months in which it lies in it, and then has a smell so awful that it is difficult to remain in a house in which it is being eaten. It is the worst smell I know of except that of a skunk!" ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... door, you durned skunk!" he said, five minutes later. Gerard was on the point of retorting furiously, but one look at the strong, ugly face and sturdy figure convinced him of the wisdom of silence until he was actually on the doorstep of ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... of that crafty old skunk—the genuine truth of things—draws them forward through the reeds and rushes of the great dim forests' edge, but they seldom touch the hide of the evasive animal; no, not so much as with the end ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Welton. "You don't know the lowlived skunk! Erbe told me that if this suit was brought and you testified in the matter, that Baker would turn state's evidence against me! That would ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... white it wouldn't 'a' showed a chalk mark! And he was holdin' up his thumb like it was pizen—which it was! And he was cuttin' for old Doc Struthers that fast his cayuse was sparkin' out of his ears. Bit by a hydrophoby skunk—yes, sirree. Got to the Doc's just in time, too! But he allus was lucky—the Doc! Money jest rolled into that party all the time. But some folks don't jest quite make it—horses gives out, or something. And if they ain't got the sand to shoot ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... committee of the Academy has received numerous protests against the admission of Charles Ranck, the skunk trapper of Ellsworth, Neb., and J. K. Garlick, the "practical ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Mop was ever really overcome was a black-and-white, common, every-day, garden skunk. He treed this unexpected visitor on the wood-pile one famous moonlight night in Onteora. And he acknowledged his defeat at once, and like a man. He realized fully his own unsavory condition. He retired to a far corner of the small estate, and ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... urged to Al Hutchins, who was drawing the lacing. "Throw your feet into the skunk. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... a time there was a fox and a skunk, and the fox was walking down the path with a lot of prickly bushes on the side of the path. Then he saw a skunk coming along. He said, "Will you let me throw my little bag of perfume on you?" And then ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... working at the stirrup leather got to his feet, indeed, carelessly, rifle in hand, and stared into the gloom; but presently he turned on his heel and sauntered back to his job of saddlery. Evidently the hound was used to voicing false alarms whenever a coyote slipped past or a skunk nosed inquisitively near. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... "Listen, you infernal skunk," Old Heck went on coldly, "as quick as you're able to travel you'll find Eagle Butte's a right good place to get away from! You understand what I mean. If I catch you around, well, I won't use no fists!" And without waiting for an answer he turned ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... her husband. "If it was a young skunk that Snoop had, you'd have known it long before this. And Snoop never would try to catch a skunk—Snoop ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... bald," grated the old man with a death's-head grin, indescribably ferocious, "but it's got brains enough in it to 'skunk' any man in this crowd three ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... like a Bear-track, but scarcely two inches long. "There's the B'ar we'll find in that; that's a bushy-tailed B'ar," and Bonamy joined in the laugh when he realized that the victim in the big trap was nothing but a little skunk. ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... N'York. O-a-ah, yeh jest oughto live there. No beer ner whisky, though, way off in the woods. But all th' good hot grub yeh can eat. B'Gawd, I hung around there long as I could till th' ol' man fired me. 'Git t' hell outa here, yeh wuthless skunk, git t' hell outa here, an' go die,' he ses. 'You're a hell of a father,' I ses, 'you are,' an' I ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... they had to be so economical! But he refused, patiently. To be patient, Maurice did not need, now, to remind himself of the mountain and her faithfulness to him; he had only to remind himself of the yellow-brick apartment house, and his faithlessness to her. "I've got to be kind, or I'd be a skunk," he used to think. So he was very kind. He did not burst out at her with irritated mortification when she telephoned to the office to know if "Mr. Curtis's headache was better";—he had suffered so much that he had gone ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the nightie, and reached out her two eager arms to take the kid off Chip's knees where he was perched contentedly relating his adventures with sundry hair-raising additions born of his imagination. The Kid was telling Daddy Chip about the skunk he saw, and he hated to be interrupted. He looked at his Doctor Dell and at the familiar, white garment with lace at the neck and wristbands, and he waved his hand with ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... I've handed it to you pretty bad," said Randerson. "But you had it comin' to you. If you hadn't tried to play the skunk at the last minute, you'd have got off easier. I reckon your hand ain't so active as it's been—I had to pretty near stamp it off of you—you would keep pullin' the trigger of that pop-gun. Do you reckon you c'n get up now, an' ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... bread, you son of a skunk!" No, I forget—skunk was not the word; it seems to me it was still stronger than that; I know it was, in fact, but it is gone from my memory, apparently. However, it is no matter—probably it was too strong for print, anyway. It is the landmark in my memory which tells me where I first encountered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "The skunk has followed us all the way from Missouri, and after we saw the sights of New York, and gave him the slip, he must have discovered that we started for home in this train. Now he has evidently hired that locomotive to chase ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... told her she'd done it on purpose, too; he hit the nail on the head all right; but it was her poor head, and that showed me my unworthy impulse in its true light, Bunny. I didn't need your reproaches to make me realise what a skunk I'd been all round. I saw that the necklace was morally yours, and there was one clear call for me to restore it to you by hook, crook, or barrel. I left for Carlsbad as soon after its wrongful owners as ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... 'Skunk!' he said, as we turned the animal and started to walk him home. 'Don't min' bein' beat, but I don't like t' hev a man rub it in on me. I'll git even ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... bales of them—seal, sea-otter, beaver, skunk, marten, and a few bear, the sight of all raising up in our hearts endless ideas of sport and adventure possibly never to ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... said I. "There is something you can do for me on the spot. You can try to believe that I have not meant to be quite such a skunk as I may have seemed—to you," I was on the point of adding, but I stopped short of that advisedly, as I thought ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... as with the notorious skunk of America, the overwhelming odour which they emit appears to serve exclusively as a defence. With shrew-mice (Sorex) both sexes possess abdominal scent-glands, and there can be little doubt, from the rejection of their bodies by birds and beasts of prey, that the odour is protective; nevertheless, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... did succeed in convincing, and that was the C.O., who knew his East. "Very good," said he. "If the skunk won't be trained he shall go untrained. He sails for France with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... remarkable illustrations might be quoted; as for instance the web of the Spider, the pit of the Ant Lion, the mephitic odour of the Skunk. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... likely C. M. Lampson & Co. will have about 100,000 in their September sale, and prices will very likely fall to 1s., or lower. The result will be, that the skunks will live in peace, and increase and multiply for some years to come. The skunk is the most 'disagreeable' of animals to man; but it is not, therefore, destroyed. I have a catalogue (Row, Row, Goad & Reece, brokers) of a fur sale (by the candle) at the London Commercial Sale Room, Mincing Lane, on the 21st and 22nd March, 1821, which I compare below with catalogues ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... could not resist putting my nose down for a sniff, so good is the smell of a fresh trail, so close are we to the rest of the pack. In the thick of the swamp I stopped a moment to examine the footprints of an otter at a shallow, shelving place along the bank, where, opening through the skunk-cabbage and Indian turnip, and covered almost ankle-deep with water, was ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... a survivor from some desperate episode that makes your blood tingle. I would that we were over on the North Sea side, where Providence might lay us alongside a German destroyer some gray dawn. This submarine-chasing business is much like the proverbial skinning of a skunk—useful, but ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... he asked. "Well, you see, I went over to the Free Trader's, and this God the law don't take into account went with me, and we found the skunk alone. First I licked him until he was almost dead. Then, sticking a knife into him about half an inch, I made him write a note saying he was called south suddenly, and authorizing me to take charge in his absence. Then I chained him in a ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... "the dog who dares thus to spit in my face! Hearken all! As with my last breath I command that this Slaughterer be torn limb from limb, he and all his tribe! And thou, thou darest to bring me this talk from a skunk of the mountains. And thou, too, Mopo, thy name is named in it. Well, of thee presently. Ho! Umxamama, my servant, slay me this slave of a messenger, beat out his brains with thy stick. ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... dryly, "what the Duke is planning to get in on is an hour of tender dalliance. Before the Camelot arrives, necessarily. The cold-blooded little skunk!" She hesitated a moment; when she spoke again, her voice had turned harsh and nasal, wicked amusement sounding through it. "Sort of busy at the moment, sweetheart, but we might find time for a drink or two later on ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... long before noon, the fear of consumption will greatly pass from the minds of people. We have long since known and proven that a cough is only an effect. If an effect then a wise man will set his mental dogs on the track, which is (effect) to hunt the skunk, (cause). He has all the evidence by the cough, location of pain, tenderness of spine, neck, and quality of the substances coughed up to locate the cause, and to know, when he has found it, how to remove the cause, and give relief; will ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... sennyritas hez the littlest kind o' feet. When any feller finds her tracks, he'll fire, an' then we'll rally on him. I wish them other fellers, instid of goin' off half-cocked, hed tracked Codago, the low-lived skunk. To think of him runnin' away from wife, an' ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... soul, my younker, that ere Lone Wolf that they call such a great chief (and I may as well own up and say that he is), is heavy on ransoms and he ain't the only chief that's in that line. That skunk runs off with men, women and boys, and his rule is not to give 'em up ag'in till he gits a good round price. He calculated on making a good thing off you, and I ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... learned his first lesson in the woods, which was that a well-behaved skunk when taking his morning walk, ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... pharmacopoeia which still makes use of the foulest matter—the extract of wood-lice, the venom of snakes, the poison of the cockchafer, the secretions of the skunk and the matter from pustules, all disguised in sugar of milk to conceal their taste and appearance; the world of letters, in the same way, triturates the most disgusting things to get them swallowed without raising your gorge. There is an incessant manipulation ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... for the first time his voice really exhibited temper. "I'd kill you with this, but for the noise. No, by God! there is a safer way than that to settle with you. Have you got the skunk, Carver?" ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... yet. Hey, you Joke! Who sent you—Burns or Pinkerton? No, by God, you're such a bonehead I'll bet you're in the Secret Service! Well, you dirty spy, you rotten agent provocator, you can go back and tell whatever skunk is paying you blood-money for betraying your brothers that he's wasting his coin. You couldn't catch a cold. And tell him that all he'll ever get on us, or ever has got, is just his own sneaking plots that he's framed up to put us in jail. We are what our manifesto says we ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... astonishment at his appearance; but he was greeted kindly and invited to the camp. Nearing the fire through the woods, his nostrils were assailed by a horrible smell which one of the men explained by saying he had just shot a skunk. There were eighteen in the party, comfortably fixed with two good sized tents and an abundance of buffalo robes. After he had removed his suit the cook prepared an excellent meal and urged him to eat heartily which he ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... to wish that old Spot would come along—or a skunk or a fox. For it seemed as if Uncle Jerry never would ...
— The Tale of Billy Woodchuck • Arthur Scott Bailey
... This is an invariable device of the Partridge, and I have no doubt that it is quite successful with the natural foes of the bird; indeed it is often so with Man. A dog, as I have often seen, is certain to be misled and duped, and there is little doubt that a mink, skunk, racoon, fox, coyote, or wolf would fare no better. Imagine the effects of the bird's tactics on a prowling fox: he has scented her as she sits; he is almost upon her, but she has been watching him, and suddenly, ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... if I were loose I 'd take you by the dirty gullet and twist it until you roared. I 'd kick you off my path like a snarling cur. Of what filth does nature sometimes compound a man! Shall a skunk walk two-legged to infect the air? Three cowards will hang on Wapping wharf before the ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... relieve the pain are sometimes useful, but very much less effective, and often of little or no value. Dry heat, moist heat, gentle massage, and prolonged baking in special metal ovens, will often give much relief. Liniments of all sorts, from spavin cures to skunk oil, are chiefly of value in proportion to the amount of friction and massage administered when they are ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... stolen the rat trap from the oat bin, and had set it up in the wood lot, and yesterday morning was so fortunate as to catch a fine big skunk. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... believe it—I'd ha' dropped him without a word. I'd have given him the pacificator as well as the peace-breaker. Oh, no! I can't think it—I can't—I won't! Margaret Cooper is not a girl to my liking, but, Lord help us! she's too beautiful and too smart to suffer such a skunk, in so short a time, to get the whip-hand of her. No, gran'pa, I can't and ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... kill yu' worse than a snake bite," said another, presently. "No, I don't mean that way," he added. For I had smiled. "There is a brown skunk down in Arkansaw. Kind of prairie-dog brown. Littler than our variety, he is. And he is mad the whole year round, same as a dog gets. Only the dog has a spell and dies but this here Arkansaw skunk is mad right along, and it don't seem to interfere with his business in other ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... able to talk about the titled people. So my furrier (whose name was Ramsack), having to make robes for peers, and cloaks for their wives and otherwise, knew the great folk, sham or real, as well as he knew a fox or skunk ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... World," said Jimmy Skunk. "Why, that must be packs and packs of beetles!" And for once in his life Jimmy Skunk began to hurry down the Lone Little Path after Striped Chipmunk and Peter ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... and lives in very much the same way. The truth is, he is no more closely related to Paddy than he is to the rest of you. He is a true Rat. He is called Muskrat because he carries with him a scent called musk. It is not an unpleasant scent, like that of Jimmy Skunk, and isn't used for the same purpose. Jerry uses his to tell his friends where he has been. He leaves a little of it at the places he visits. Some folks call him Musquash, but ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... before we arrived on the scene, and bore traces of their customary depredations and violations. The stories related by the nuns themselves were not of a description to bear retailing in the public Press. I would to God that they could be told to every coward of a shirker at home, to every skunk of a "conscientious objector," to every rat of a "stop-the-war" "pacificist." They would stir to boiling indignation the dregs of their manhood—if they have any dregs. They would make them sick—even them; and I should like them ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... cowardly action, Julian," he agreed. "I'm hot with shame when I think of it. But don't, for heaven's sake, think I had anything to do with the affair! We have a secret service branch which arranges for those things. It's that skunk Fenn who's responsible. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... example, the log-cabin experiment was not a success. They slept with all the doors and windows open, an' one night a skunk came in an' got under the bed. Mrs. Bill discovered that they had company, an' Bill got up an' lit the lantern, an' followed the clew to its source. He threatened an' argued an' appealed to the skunk's better nature with a doughnut, but the little beast sat unmoved in his corner. The ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... navy and ran trains as a genteel hobby. I gave him ten marks to send the telegram. The miserable beast has sneaked the lot. I'll get at the railway company through the Embassy and have the brute sacked and put in prison. Did you ever hear of such a skunk?" ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... listened to your schemes," said Bill, "and I'm going to say this about them: I think you are the dirtiest, meanest skunk I ever ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... rustler. "Lemme sit hyar an' shoot the eyes outen this—lyin' pup of a Belllounds!... Wade, put a gun in my hand—a gun with two shells—or only one. You can stand with your gun at my head.... Let me kill this skunk!" ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... escaped his watchful eye. From the crest of the Cumberland to the yellow flood of the Ohio he knew that land, and he loved every acre of it, whether blue-grass, bear-grass, peavine, or pennyroyal, and he knew its history from Daniel Boone to the little Boones who still trapped skunk, mink, and muskrat, and shot squirrels in the hills with the same old-fashioned rifle, and he loved its people—his people—whether they wore silk and slippers, homespun and brogans, patent leathers ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... minutes the farmer entered the house. 'What luck had you?' said she. 'I hid myself behind the woodpile,' said the old man, 'with the shot-gun pointed toward the hen-roost, and before long there appeared, not one skunk, but seven. I took aim, blazed away, and killed one—and he raised such a fearful smell I concluded it was best to let the other six alone.'" The Senators retired, and nothing more was heard from ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... similarity never came to light, but apparently the lady had, in a fit of high-minded inadvertence, had gone through the ceremony of marriage with, one quotes the unpublished discourse of Mr. Butteridge—"a white-livered skunk," and this zoological aberration did in some legal and vexatious manner mar her social happiness. He wanted to talk about the business, to show the splendour of her nature in the light of its complications. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... triphyllum). Green dragon (Arisoema dracontium). Sweet-flag (Acorus). Skunk cabbage (Spathyema). Calla (Richardia). Caladium (Caladium). Calocasia (Calocasia). Phyllodendron (Phyllodendron). Fuchsia (Fuchsia). Wandering Jew (Tradescantia). Rhubarb (Rheum). Grape (Vitis). Onion ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... right," muttered he to himself, as he started to his feet; "the skunk is coming this way. Good! he has the advantage of me in being mounted; but I have a rifle that I dare say will make up for the difference—enfant de grace! ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... he had been right. That young skunk had paid a hundred dollars for a watch for Anna. To Rudolph it meant ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... play jokes on him once in a while. But he always thought of Old Mr. Toad as one of the homeliest of all his friends,—slow, awkward, and too commonplace to be very interesting. So when, in the glad joyousness of the spring, Old Mr. Toad had told Jimmy Skunk that he was going down to the Smiling Pool to sing because without him the great chorus there would lack one of its sweetest voices, Peter and Jimmy had laughed till ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... distance above the northern boundary of Illinois, and for 50 miles interior, is a valuable country, purchased of the Indians in 1832. Its streams rise in the great prairies, run an east or south-eastern course into the Mississippi. The most noted are Flint, Skunk, Wau-be-se-pin-e-con, Upper and Lower Iowa rivers, and Turkey, Catfish, and Big and Little Ma-quo-ka-tois, or Bear creeks. The soil, in general, is excellent, and very much resembles the military tract in Illinois. The water ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... "Now maybe you'll believe me when I say that I saw him to-night. That skunk thought that I had seen him, and slipped into the saloon to get out of sight. Probably he went out through a rear door and has been following ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... Crow replied. "Maybe I know more about your chum than you do. Perhaps you weren't aware that in spite of all the elegant names you've spoken of, he's nothing but a Skunk Blackbird after all!" And with a loud haw-haw Mr. Crow rose upon the breeze and flapped into the woods. That was a favorite trick of his. After making some specially rude remark he would hurry away before anybody had time ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... thoughtfully. "There was a field-hand with a great line of philosophy. Some of it was sort of crude, but—one day Uncle John was saying something about tough things we all have to do, and this fellow chimed in and said: 'Yes, sir, every man's got to skin his own skunk.'" ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... right, Dick. If you want to know, she's got a right to make a doormat of me. I lied to her. I was up against it, and I kinder had to. You ride along and join her. If you want to get right solid, tell her how many kinds of a skunk I am. Worst of it is, I ain't ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... claws deep into the bark, stretched himself again and again, yawned prodigiously, and ended the exercise with a big, rasping miaow. At the sound there was a sudden rustling in the bushes behind the windfall. Instantly the catamount sprang, taking the risk of catching a porcupine or a skunk. But whatever it was that made the noise, it had vanished in time; and the rash hunter returned to his ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... people. More than this, they enjoy a sort of "droit du seigneur," and no man's wife or daughter is safe from them. Of some of their manners and morals it is impossible to write. As Macaulay has said of Wycherley's plays, "they are protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters." They are "safe, because they are too filthy to handle, and too noisome ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... "That lyin' skunk's so crooked he cain't lay straight in bed, Gregg. I was honin' somethin' powerful to horn in on that little shindy—but I reckon Shane's bunged him up conside'ble," he drawled with immense satisfaction, as he leaned over and felt the trader's arm. "'Pears ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... northern N'York. O-a-ah, yeh jest oughto live there. No beer ner whisky, though, way off in the woods. But all th' good hot grub yeh can eat. B'Gawd, I hung around there long as I could till th' ol' man fired me. 'Git t' hell outa here, yeh wuthless skunk, git t' hell outa here, an' go die,' he ses. 'You're a hell of a father,' I ses, 'you are,' an' I ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... "Skunk," muttered Spofforth. "So we've been taking a dirty Hun under our wing, so to speak. I don't mind admitting now that I didn't think much of the blighter when he pushed ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... Congress from the 4th Congressional District of Californy. I'm jist lying here, with a derringer into each hand,—jist lying here kivered up and holdin' in on'y to keep from blowin' the top o' this d——d skunk's head off. I kinder feel I can't hold in any longer. What I want to say to ye, stranger, is that this yer skunk—which his name is Wiles—hez bin tryin' his d—dest to get a bribe onto Josh, and Josh, outo respect for his constituents, is jist waitin' ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... had found his first billet on a Western journal of the type whose society column consists of such items as "Jim Thompson was to town yesterday with a bunch of other cheap skates. We take this opportunity of once more informing Jim that he is a liar and a skunk," and whose editor works with a pistol on his desk and another in his hip-pocket. Graduating from this, he had proceeded to a reporter's post on a daily paper in Kentucky, where there were blood feuds and other Southern devices for preventing life from becoming dull. All this was good, but even ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... patient, Maurice did not need, now, to remind himself of the mountain and her faithfulness to him; he had only to remind himself of the yellow-brick apartment house, and his faithlessness to her. "I've got to be kind, or I'd be a skunk," he used to think. So he was very kind. He did not burst out at her with irritated mortification when she telephoned to the office to know if "Mr. Curtis's headache was better";—he had suffered so much that he had gone beyond the self-consciousness of mortification;—and he walked with her ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... it ain' good. W'at you care you call um cat—dog—pig? Plenty t'ing good to eat w'en you fin' dat out. De owl, she good meat. De musquash, w'at you call de mushrat—dat don' hurt de meat 'cause you call um rat! De skunk mak' de fine ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... Jim himself!" He laughed. "He just made a joke of it. But he is a mean skunk! I've found out since that he wanted to buy Preston out for the part Preston had taken in another affair. There's a pretty case coming on directly, with Jim for hero. You have heard ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would that we were over on the North Sea side, where Providence might lay us alongside a German destroyer some gray dawn. This submarine-chasing business is much like the proverbial skinning of a skunk—useful, but ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... What's the use of fighting a skunk like that? We have our dog back and Daly must acknowledge that he has been beaten. That is about all I want. He won't try anything more for I have a whiplash over him as he is well aware. Any time I can prosecute him for receiving stolen goods and being an ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... free American republic a man is free to dig coal, but not to vote for a skunk like MacDougall." Then, having tied up the sugar, the "J. P." whittled off a fresh chew from his plug, and turned ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... Day!" chirped the little old woman with a birdlike tilt of her head when the girl welcomed her. "You be a pleasant sight to see when a body comes home. And I be glad to get home. I tell my son's wife I can't make many more of these trips to Skunk's Holler. It's too fatiguing, and at my age I like my own bed and my own fireside. I s'pose ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... a skunk went to a circus, the duck and the bullfrog got in, why didn't the skunk ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... ugly tief!" said the virtuous Sunday. "I'll gib you what for; you shall hab what Paddy gib the drum, you 'fernal black skunk; I show yar what John up the orchard is, you—you Italian organ-grinding sweep—You ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... infernal skunk," Old Heck went on coldly, "as quick as you're able to travel you'll find Eagle Butte's a right good place to get away from! You understand what I mean. If I catch you around, well, I won't use no fists!" ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... Chipmunk saw that he could get no milk there. And he was feeling quite downcast when he chanced to meet Henry Skunk, to whom ...
— The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk • Arthur Scott Bailey
... giglet's Was a gowk's at the end of June. Do you call to mind We sat the livelong day in a golden carriage, Squandering a fortune, forby the tanner I dropt? They wouldn't stop to let me pick it up; And when we alighted from the roundabout, Some skunk had pouched it: may he pocket it Red-hot in hell through all eternity! If I'd that fortune now safe in my kist! But I was a scatterpenny: and you were bonnie— Pink as a dog-rose were your plump cheeks then: Your hair'd ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... And yet I don't know. Haven't I been a skunk too? And yet I don't feel a skunk. If only father would be happy! Then things would be better than they've ever been. You don't know how good Annie is, Joan. How fine and simple and true! Why are we all such mixtures? Why can't you ever do what's right for yourself without hurting other people? ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... a man ez does the odor uv the gentle skunk to clothes, and it is got rid uv only by the same means, ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... the man suddenly, "I am not going to be done in this way." And with that he drew out a bowie-knife which he had concealed among the things which he had extracted from the bag. "You don't know the sort of country you're in now. They don't think much here of the life of such a skunk as you. If you mean to live till to-morrow morning you must ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... Haines will give the orders right enough." Craigin's laugh was like the growl of a bear. "There's a reason, ain't there, Haines? Now you hear me. Those men are going out to-day, and so are you, you blank, blank interferin' skunk." ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... gown of pink satin with a beaded tunic of purple chiffon. Other stunning costumes were worn by Mrs. Alexander Britton, who was in purple velvet with lace and brilliants; Miss Catherine Britton, scarlet chiffon. Miss Mary Green wore a lovely gown of blue charmeuse and chiffon with bands of skunk. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... on his doorstep with his chin in his hands, and it was very plain to see that Danny had something on his mind. He had only a nod for Jimmy Skunk, and even Peter Rabbit could get no more than a grumpy "Good morning." It wasn't that he had been caught napping the day before by Reddy Fox and nearly made an end of. No, it wasn't that. Danny had learned his lesson, ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... Virginia, Proud Massachusetts, and proud Maine, Planting the trees that would march and train On, in his name to the great Pacific, Like Birnam wood to Dunsinane, Johnny Appleseed swept on, Every shackle gone, Loving every sloshy brake, Loving every skunk and snake, Loving every leathery weed, Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed, Master and ruler of the unicorn-ramping forest, The tiger-mewing forest, The rooster-trumpeting, boar-foaming, wolf-ravening forest, The spirit-haunted, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... take his advice, and lay quiet while the cowboys gathered. From all directions I heard them coming, calling to each other that "the skunk that shot the woman is corralled," and other forms of the same information. In a moment I was jerked to my feet, only to be swept off them with equal celerity, and was half carried, half dragged, along the tracks. It wasn't as rough handling as I have ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... I can see it in his eye!" thought Jack. "Well," continued he mentally, "let him do his worst; I mean mischief too, and we will see who is the better player at the game. But I must keep cool if I am to come out on top; and, who knows? the skunk may say something which will afford me a ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... that woman—I'd have made her happy, and I'd have been a better man myself than I am to-day." He swung round restlessly, found her steady eyes upon him, and came back to her. "The fact of the matter is, Miss Moore," he said, "I was a skunk ever to ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... a long story short, she said she'd do it, though I could see she was still thinkin' me mistaken about Tex doin' anythin' out of the way. He's a rotten skunk, but you'd better believe he don't let her see it. He's got her so she believes every darn word ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... that is all right, that is agreed on. To-morrow, monsieur le cure. Whoever draws back is a skunk!" ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... to melancholy is recognized by Thoreau. The characteristic suggestion of this nature-lover is that the melancholic go to the woods and study the symplocarpus foetidus (skunk cabbage), whose English name savors of contempt, but whose courage is such that it is already in the autumn jauntily thrusting forth its buds ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... a pug dog; Uncle Jason, who has needed a bath ever since I knew him—I want he should spend his legacy for soap—and his epileptic stepson, whose name I forget, though he lived with me five years hand-running; lying Sally Simmons and her half-witted daughter; that old hen, Belinda Dodd; that skunk, Harold Vernon Perkins, who never did a stroke of honest work in his life till he began to dig for this box; monkey-faced Lucretia and the four thieving little Riley children, who are likely to get into prison when they grow up; that human undertaker's waggon, Betsey Skiles, and ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... and squally weather again. Local atmospheric conditions seem upset. Volcano still leading strenuous life. Climbed the headland this afternoon. Wind very shifty. Got an occasional whiff of volcanic output. One in particular would have sent a skunk to the camphor bottle. No living on the headland. Will explore cave to-morrow with a view to domicile. Have come down to an allowance of seven ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... McBane. Billings was the white Republican mayor. "Is that skunk to be allowed to ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... shaking his head, "I didn't think it of you—I didn't indeed. A skunk like that! a woman-shooter, and a Frenchman! You didn't use to ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... tail, much against the 'chuck's will. If Thoreau's friends were to claim that he could carry Mephitis mephitica by the tail with impunity, I can say I have done the same thing, and had my photograph taken in the act. The skunk is no respecter of persons, and here again the trouble is to get hold of the tail at the right moment—and, I may add, to let go of it ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... spitting into my mouth, but I cannot avoid his smoke. A man seems to think that he is free to project his stinking breath in my face on the street, in hotels, in sleeping cars, coaches—indeed, in every public place. Now I would as soon smell a skunk. There is some excuse for a skunk; he can't help being one. But men have become so rank in their persons from this poisonous odor that they almost knock me down as they pass me. And when I say, "Man, don't throw that awful stench in my face," he answers, "You get away." I reply, ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... kicking up a lot of dust, maybe—but we won't do anything like what he'd do, in our places. He knows the Old Man and Chip are gone, and he knows we've just naturally got to sit back and swallow our tongues because we haven't any authority. Mamma! It comes pretty tough, when a low-down skunk like that just banks on your doing the square thing. He wouldn't do it, but he knows we will; and so he takes advantage of white men and gets the best of 'em. And if we should happen to break out and do something, he knows ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... is at least partially familiar with the plant and bird world, travel holds so much more of interest and enthusiasm than it does to one who cannot tell mint from skunk cabbage, or a sparrow from a thrush. Having made acquaintance with the flowers and the birds, every journey will take on an added interest because always there are unnumbered scenes to attract our attention; which ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... a noise, looked around and there was one of the seals coming out under the curtain behind him. It took Nat just two jumps to get off the stage. An attendant came out and captured the seal. Nat came back. "Well," he said, scratching his head; "I have followed every animal on earth but a skunk and a lizard, and now I have got that. Humph; Professor Woodward's Trained Shad. I ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... beasts, unlike all other inferior animals, except, perhaps, some of the more intelligent species of monkeys, will learn lessons from isolated experiences. In this regard they are indeed quite as apt as the lower kinds of men. Thus a dog who has had an unsavory or painful experience with a skunk or a porcupine is apt to keep away from these creatures for a long time thereafter. Where, as is not infrequently the case, a cur takes to eating eggs, a single dose of tartar emetic concealed in an egg which is placed where he can readily ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... right, sir," whispered the man, breathless, in part from his exertions, and partly also, Leslie believed, from apprehension; "it's all right. But let go, sir, please, and let's get a few fathoms away from the ship, for there's no knowin' when that skunk Turnbull may take it into his head to come on deck and 'ave a look round; 'e's as nervous as a cat, and that suspicious that you can't be up to 'im. There, thank 'e, sir; I dare say that'll do; they won't be able to see or 'ear us from where we are now, for I couldn't ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... hear what he called us? You foul-mouthed brute! You liar! How dare you put such a name to a decent woman? Let me get at him. You coward! Oh, he struck me: did you see that? Lynch him! Pete, will you stand by and hear me called names by a skunk like that? Burn him: burn him! Thats what I'd do with him. Aye, ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... popular saying in Mazowsze: "As the skunk smells, so the Krzyzak lies." The prince waved his hand to such thanks, and after they went out he said that by the intervention of the Knights of the Cross, one would go to heaven as swiftly ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... The skunk is known at once by its black coat with white stripes, its immense bushy tail tipped with white, and its size, nearly that of a cat. It weighs three to seven pounds. It ranges from Virginia to Hudson Bay. In the Northwest is a larger ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... to the camp and stay away from the lake. There was a hell of an explosion over there this morning. Three men went to see what'd happened. They didn't come back. Two more went after 'em, and something hit them on the way. They smelled something worse than skunk. Then they were paralyzed, like they had hold of a high-tension line. They saw crazy colors and heard crazy sounds and they couldn't move a finger. Their car ditched. In a while they came out of it and they came back—fast! They'd just got back when we got short wave orders ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... finding them well on with their task, Joses being seated upon a fragment of rock contentedly smoking his cigarette and giving instructions, he being an adept at such matters, having stripped off hundreds if not thousands of hides in his day, from bison cattle and bear down to panther and skunk. ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... said gently, "you're talkin' foolish. An' you know it. What I did was only right by you. I'd 'a' been a skunk to have acted different. I lit on the trail o' your folk, don't matter how, an' I had to see you righted, come what might. Now it's done. An' I don't see wher' the hangin' comes in. Guess you ken come an' see Ma later, ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... just leaving the outer gate when Belden came clattering up and reined his horse across the path and called out: "See here, you young skunk, you're a poor, white-livered tenderfoot, and I can't bust you as I would a full-grown man, but I reckon you better not ride ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... that way myself. He abandoned her like a skunk, and his people threw the blame on her for tempting him. Tempting him! He had a motor smash soon after, and I tried my utmost to pull him through, because he would have been a hideously disfigured cripple; but he died, and I ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... that part of it had never struck me. I ain't bright and never was. But I ain't no skunk. I give that woman some of her own money back and that week I sold out at a loss and slunk around some more. I couldn't go back to my own work. I had a grudge against it, someway. By and by the money was all gone and an old pal of mine offered to set ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... carrot, he came boldly up to the saucer. The yellow cat flattened back her ears, growled, and stood her ground till he was within a foot of her. Then, with an angry 'pf-f-f' she turned tail and fled. The stranger was so calmly sure of himself that she concluded he must be some new kind of skunk—and her respect for all skunks ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... deeply and painfully was the skunk. They were fearless little beasts and in the evening would come quite boldly about the house, and if seen and attacked by a dog, they would defend themselves with the awful-smelling liquid they discharge at an adversary. When the wind brought a whiff of it into ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... But I kin fergive ye, kase ye hain't seen our mountings. They hain't no other place more beautiful. Mister Sutton done told me so, an' he's been all over the hull world. An', besides, hit's home. A man what don't love his home country better'n any other—why, mum, he's jest a plain skunk.... An' Plutiny, she's the best part o' home. There hain't no land so beautiful, nor no woman. No, mum, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... that time Ruben Hendricks skeered a skunk out of a holler log. Si Pettingill stirred up a hornet's nest, Deacon Witherspoon sot down in a huckleberry pie and Aunt Nancy Smith got a spider on her, and she started in to yellin' and jumpin' like she had a fit, and two dogs got to fitin', and old Jim Lawson ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... of the skunk saying Frank pushed him in!" echoed Elephant, "when he actually risked his life to save the cur. Ain't I glad now I didn't carry out my first impulse and jump after Puss, even before Frank went. Why, maybe he'd have even said I tried to ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... guess for why he hangs back." He blinked truculently into the faces gathered about him, mutely daring anybody else to state that reason. But few cared to discuss the redoubtable doctor, so he was permitted to continue. "Doc's a sight too friendly disposed toward sech a skunk as Jim Thorpe. We've clear enough proof that feller is a cattle-rustler. We've the evidence of our eyes, sure. There's the cattle; ther's his brand—and—running with his own stock, hidden away up in the foot-hills. Do we need ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... springing to his feet and throwing off the mask completely. "You damned skunk, are you accusin' me of crooking ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... the old road, and note the tracks in the thin layer of mud. When do these creatures travel here? I have never yet chanced to meet one. Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a woodcock; here, a squirrel or mink; there, a skunk; there, a fox. What a clear, nervous track Reynard makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a little dog,—it is so sharply cut and defined! A dog's track is coarse and clumsy beside it. There is as much wildness in the track of an animal as in its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... lot of yalla flowers and black-burds. The rode was full of dust and wagging marks. I met a man with a top buggy and smelt a skunk. Mrs. M. made a kake ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... one of the hands protruding from the robe. The skin was perfectly black and was stuck fast to the bones of the hand. On seeing this the hunter arose and going over to his medicine sack which hung on a pole, took down the sack and, opening it, took out some roots and mixing them with skunk oil and vermillion, said ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... 'as to die, As it sometimes 'appens, why, Far better die a 'ero than a skunk; A' doin' ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... got a pile of ripe tomatose. then we would ding old William Hobbs door bell and when he come to the door we wood paist him. He always drives us out of his yard so we done it. when it struck 8 oh clock i sed i forgot to shet up my hens and a skunk may come round. Keene sed i will help you. i sed no i will do it. what would you do if we met a skunk. so i went down and hipered over to Elm Strete. Pewt and Beany was there with their hands full of tomatose. Pewt tiptode up and rung the ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... too near that Potter. He'd smell me out as quick as if I was a skunk to windward of him. Besides, it's time I was pitchin' on a few new holes; we must talk it over ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... about your law!" Webb broke in. "I'm law-abidin', but when a law is passed givin' an upstart like you the right to make a decent man jump out of your way, like a frost-bitten grasshopper, I'll break it. The minute a skunk like you buys a machine on credit an' starts out he ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... him. "I'm going to buy myself a musquash coat with a skunk collar. I've always wanted one frightfully. You'll stay and have luncheon with us, ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... tone of such bitter hatred as to cause her companion to glance uneasily at the passionate young face before him. "I know, only too well. And right thoroughly has Lablache done his work. Say, Bill, do you know that that skunk holds mortgages on our ranch for two hundred thousand dollars? And every bill of it is for poker. For twenty years, right through, he has steadily sucked the old man's blood. Slick? Say a six-year-old steer don't know more about a branding-iron than does Verner Lablache about his ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... your breath with that skunk," she exclaimed, pointing a bejewelled finger at him. "He's too tough a fox for you gentlemen. I'm one of his own sort, and I'll show you what he's made of. Jasper, my fine friend, you sold me as well as Mr. Leroy there, and I'm going ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... Ugger, when everything had quieted down again, "afore we could git near enough tew th' murderers tew use our pistols, they held us up with their rifles, an' ordered us tew git an' git lively; an', by way of makin' plain their meaning that skunk," and he glared at Thure, "sent a bullet a-whistlin' so close tew my ears that it made this hole through th' brim of my hat," and the man held up his wide-brimmed hat and pointed with his finger to a little round hole in the brim close to the crown. "Three ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... hissed, "the dog who dares thus to spit in my face! Hearken all! As with my last breath I command that this Slaughterer be torn limb from limb, he and all his tribe! And thou, thou darest to bring me this talk from a skunk of the mountains. And thou, too, Mopo, thy name is named in it. Well, of thee presently. Ho! Umxamama, my servant, slay me this slave of a messenger, beat out his brains with thy stick. ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... unoffending animals, would sympathize with him and fetch him unbidden another of the expensive three- for-a-dollar cigars so that his feelings might be soothed. Grimshaw would curl his lip in a sneer and mutter: "The cheap skate. The skunk. No man with half the backbone of a man would take it out of the harmless creatures. He's that kind that if he didn't like you, or if you criticised his grammar or arithmetic, he'd kick your dog to get even . . . or poison it. In the good old days up in Colusa we used to hang men like him just to ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... was looking beautiful in a bottle-green suiting, collared with skunk, but a little thin, I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... yet," answered Uncle Dick. "St. Louis is to-day the greatest fur market in the world, though now skunk and coon and rat have taken the place of beaver and buffalo and wolf. But within the past four years a muskrat pelt has sold for five dollars. In 1832 the average price for the previous fifteen years had been twenty cents for a rat-hide—many ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... lad of eleven were great chums; they chased wild bees together, putting honey on the stone wall, getting a line on the bees; shelled beechnuts and cracked butternuts for the chipmunks; caught skunks in a trap, just to demonstrate that a skunk can be carried by the tail with impunity, if you only do it right (and, though succeeding one day, got the worst of the bargain the next); and waged war early and late on the flabby woodchucks which one could see almost any hour in ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... he called out, with a harsh, scornful laugh, to those behind him. "He will teach me manners, from his hiding-place behind the petticoats.—Come out, you skunk-skin pedler, and I'll break that sword of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... man, with a convulsive gasp. "I shan't ever see it again. The mean skunk's cheated me out of it. Consarn his picter! It took me most six months to save it up. I was workin' for Deacon Pinkham in our place. Oh, I wish I'd never come to New York! The deacon, he told me he'd keep it ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... diminished again because he had been fleeced of so much of the five pounds. A wave of anger shook him as he thought of that, but he suppressed it; he felt that he must not give way, so he looked steadily at the window. There were furs displayed there, muffs and collarettes of skunk and other animals, even the humble rabbit artistically treated to meet the insatiable female appetite for sable at all prices. The Captain decided on the best collarette displayed and turned towards the shop door feeling a little better in the glow of benevolence that returned ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... exclaimed, angrily. "A thorn of some kind, put there so that when I jumped into my seat my weight would drive it in. And I reckon, too, it would be just like the cowardly sneak to pick out one that had a poison tip! Oh! what a skunk! and how I'd like to see some of the boys at the ranch round him up! But I wonder, now could I find it? I'd like to ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... fetch along with him when taking this big hike, and that was his little camp hatchet. Fritz had begged to be allowed to carry his old Marlin shotgun, under the plea that they might run across some ferocious animal like a wildcat, or a skunk, and would find a good use for the reliable firearm; but the scoutmaster had set ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... his head, "I didn't think it of you—I didn't indeed. A skunk like that! a woman-shooter, and a Frenchman! You didn't use to ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... said Penrose. "A chap who doesn't do his bit at a time like this is just a skunk, that's all; and I made up my mind that I would learn what a private soldier's life was like before I ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... like an abominable blackguard! this he gathered from what she said: he had lied like a mean skunk and betrayed the man who had rendered him an infinitely great service. Of him Clyffurde wouldn't even think! Such despicable, crawling worms did exist on God's earth: he knew that! but he possessed the happy faculty, ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Squirrel, Blacky the Crow, Sammy Jay, Ol' Mistah Buzzard, Mistah Mockingbird, and Sticky-toes the Treetoad. From the Green Meadows came Danny Meadow Mouse, Old Mr. Toad, Digger the Badger, Jimmy Skunk, and Striped Chipmunk, who lives near the old stone- wall between the edge of the Green Meadows and the Green Forest. Johnny and Polly Chuck came down from the Old Orchard and Drummer the Woodpecker ...
— Mrs. Peter Rabbit • Thornton W. Burgess
... with excellent effect. "I suppose," says he, "you think you are going shares with Harris, I suppose you think you will see to that yourselves; you would naturally not think so flat a rogue could cozen you. But have a care! These half-idiots have a sort of cunning, as the skunk has its stench; and it may be news to you that Harris has taken care of himself already. Yes, for him the treasure is all money in the bargain. You must find it or go starve. But he has been paid beforehand; my brother paid him to destroy me; look at him if you doubt—look at him, grinning and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to us, do no kind of justice to the humor and invention of the people. Most of them have no characteristic at all, except coarseness. We hope there is nothing peculiarly American in such examples as these:—"Evil actions, like crushed rotten eggs, stink in the nostrils of all"; and "Vice is a skunk that smells awfully rank when stirred up by the pole of misfortune." These have, beside, an artificial air, and are quite too long-skirted for working proverbs, in which language always "takes off its coat to it," if we may use a proverbial phrase, left out by Mr. Bartlett. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... purple chiffon. Other stunning costumes were worn by Mrs. Alexander Britton, who was in purple velvet with lace and brilliants; Miss Catherine Britton, scarlet chiffon. Miss Mary Green wore a lovely gown of blue charmeuse and chiffon with bands of skunk. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... bird means spring; the poking through of the skunk-cabbage in low ground, the growing green mist upon the woods. But there is one thing that has more positive spring in it than any of these—more of the stir and throb of awakening, something identified with ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... goes to the trapper to-day for such common skins as red-fox and skunk and muskrat than was ever paid to the fur-hunter for beaver, seal, and sea-otter in the old days. Six million dollars worth of raw furs are sold annually by auction in London, and Canada is the Mother Country's chief feeder. Included in these London sales are some hundred thousand martens, or Hudson ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... extent the hound has robbed him," Jacky answered in a tone of such bitter hatred as to cause her companion to glance uneasily at the passionate young face before him. "I know, only too well. And right thoroughly has Lablache done his work. Say, Bill, do you know that that skunk holds mortgages on our ranch for two hundred thousand dollars? And every bill of it is for poker. For twenty years, right through, he has steadily sucked the old man's blood. Slick? Say a six-year-old steer don't ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the Duke is planning to get in on is an hour of tender dalliance. Before the Camelot arrives, necessarily. The cold-blooded little skunk!" She hesitated a moment; when she spoke again, her voice had turned harsh and nasal, wicked amusement sounding through it. "Sort of busy at the moment, sweetheart, but we might find time for a drink or two later on ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... wild cougar alive but twice, and both times by chance. On one occasion one of my men, Merrifield, and I surprised one eating a skunk in a bull-berry patch; and by our own bungling frightened it away from its unsavory repast without ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... played at love with our Simeon for a whole year. Such a Herod, the skunk! I didn't have a whole spot on me. I always went about in black and blue marks. And it wasn't for any reason at all, but just simply so—he'd go in the morning into a room with me, lock himself in, and start in to torture me. He'd wrench my arms, pinch my breasts, grab my throat ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Enoch. "But to punish him don't turn yourself into the same kind of a skunk he is. Kill him if you have to. Don't be a filthy ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Massachusetts, and proud Maine, Planting the trees that would march and train On, in his name to the great Pacific, Like Birnam wood to Dunsinane, Johnny Appleseed swept on, Every shackle gone, Loving every sloshy brake, Loving every skunk and snake, Loving every leathery weed, Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed, Master and ruler of the unicorn-ramping forest, The tiger-mewing forest, The rooster-trumpeting, boar-foaming, wolf-ravening forest, The spirit-haunted, fairy-enchanted forest, Stupendous and endless, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Castlewood, no more he can! He said 'twas you that wanted for spirit, cousin, and angered me by telling me that you was always abusing of me. But I forgive you, George, that I do! And when I tell you that it was he was afraid—the mean skunk!—and actually sent for them constables to prevent the match between you and he, you won't wonder I wouldn't vally a feller like that—no, not that much!" and her ladyship snapped her little fingers. "I say, noblesse oblige, and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... So he had been right. That young skunk had paid a hundred dollars for a watch for Anna. To Rudolph it meant but ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... no more closely related to Paddy than he is to the rest of you. He is a true Rat. He is called Muskrat because he carries with him a scent called musk. It is not an unpleasant scent, like that of Jimmy Skunk, and isn't used for the same purpose. Jerry uses his to tell his friends where he has been. He leaves a little of it at the places he visits. Some folks call him Musquash, but Muskrat ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... of the Cumberland to the yellow flood of the Ohio he knew that land, and he loved every acre of it, whether blue-grass, bear-grass, peavine, or pennyroyal, and he knew its history from Daniel Boone to the little Boones who still trapped skunk, mink, and muskrat, and shot squirrels in the hills with the same old-fashioned rifle, and he loved its people—his people—whether they wore silk and slippers, homespun and brogans, patent leathers and broadcloth, or cowhide boots and jeans. And now serious troubles were threatening them. ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... than the buffalo. As yet his most destructive foe in this region is perhaps the hawk, although he is raided from the timber by the opossum, raccoon, and three species of cat, while on the open his nest has marked attractions for the skunk and probably the coyote. He has survived these dumb discouragers so long, and the heat at his proper season is so trying to his human foe, that he may long find a refuge here and proudly lead forth his young Texans for scores of Augusts. He and his family will often quietly walk off while the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... us deeply and painfully was the skunk. They were fearless little beasts and in the evening would come quite boldly about the house, and if seen and attacked by a dog, they would defend themselves with the awful-smelling liquid they discharge at an adversary. When the wind brought ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... He never kills for the sake of killing, but lives peaceably, so far as he can, with all creatures. And he stops fishing when he has caught his dinner. He is also most cleanly in his habits, with no suggestion whatever of the evil odors that cling to the mink and defile the whole neighborhood of a skunk. One cannot help wondering whether just going fishing has not wrought all this wonder in Keeonekh's disposition. If so, 't is a pity that all his tribe do not ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... Opinion in their grasp. There is something about a sailor that conduces to sentiment in every passer-by, and Jay, who was fleeing from that very feeling, looked hastily at some one else. Her seeking eye lit on a lady who had a complete skunk climbing up the nape of her neck, and a hat of the approximate size of a five-shilling piece worn over her right eyebrow. She looked such a fool that Jay concluded that the look was intentional, and indeed I suppose it must be, for the worst insult you can offer to ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... a wide berth," suggested Snap, "unless you want to put a whole perfumery shop to shame." And they did give the animal a wide berth, for it was a skunk, and one "ready for business," as ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... mischief; I can see it in his eye!" thought Jack. "Well," continued he mentally, "let him do his worst; I mean mischief too, and we will see who is the better player at the game. But I must keep cool if I am to come out on top; and, who knows? the skunk may say something which will afford ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... a bullfrog and a skunk went to a circus, the duck and the bullfrog got in, why didn't the skunk ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the darkness and the night, dreams and the phantoms of the gloom were supposed to be sent by Tezcatlipoca, and to him were sacred those animals which prowl about at night, as the skunk and the coyote.[1] ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... than this, they enjoy a sort of "droit du seigneur," and no man's wife or daughter is safe from them. Of some of their manners and morals it is impossible to write. As Macaulay has said of Wycherley's plays, "they are protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters." They are "safe, because they are too filthy to handle, and ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... "You damned skunk!" he cried, "you've sold us out after promisin' not to, that's what you've done! But I'll get back at you if it costs me ten years in ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... always keen on Ormsby. When she's married—and settled down—then you must tell her the truth—that I didn't alter those checks, that I wasn't such a cheat, nor a coward either. Don't let her think I died a skunk who wanted to be shot to avoid the consequences of a forgery. Yes, you'll have to tell her that, father—you'll ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... git the truth—git the whole of it. Git what you ain't lookin' for. There ain't no liars up in our mountains 'cept them skunks in Gov'ment pay you fellers send up to us, and things like Hank Halliday. He's wuss nor any skunk. A skunk's a varmint that don't stink tell ye meddle with him, but Hank Halliday stinks all the time. He's one o' them fellers that goes 'round with books in their pockets with picters in 'em that no girl oughter see and no white man oughter read. He gits 'em down to Louisville. There ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... animals, as with the notorious skunk of America, the overwhelming odour which they emit appears to serve exclusively as a defence. With shrew-mice (Sorex) both sexes possess abdominal scent-glands, and there can be little doubt, from the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... was guarded by Tcápani (the Bat) and an animal called Çantsò (of crepuscular or nocturnal habits). Here dwelt many young men and young women who were skunks (golÃji), and they taught the Navajo wanderer how to make and how to bury the kethà wns which are sacred to the skunk. ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... he said gently, "you're talkin' foolish. An' you know it. What I did was only right by you. I'd 'a' been a skunk to have acted different. I lit on the trail o' your folk, don't matter how, an' I had to see you righted, come what might. Now it's done. An' I don't see wher' the hangin' comes in. Guess you ken come an' see Ma later, ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... anything on top of the earth he absolutely despises it's a gossiping man. He says a gossiping woman is a creation of God—must be, there's so many of 'em; but a gossiping man—he can't find any word in the dictionary mean enough for that sort of a low-down skunk." ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... began to side-step and limp. "Count me out on that," said he. "The old skunk treated me just about the same way. I don't blame you; a feller sure has a right to have his postmaster make a bluff at shuffling the ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... utter would be taken down and used in evidence against him, he continued to say with a kind of delight that he had done his work faithfully, and that he could have done it quite successfully if he had not been mated with a coward and a skunk, and that he didn't much care now what came of him, since he didn't suppose they would let him loose and give him one hour's chance again, and see if he couldn't work the thing somewhat better than he had ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Making a ghastly rosary The night mumbles over And the snow with its devilish and silken whisper... Patrolling arcs Blowing shrill blasts over the Bread Line Stalk them as they pass, Silent as though accouched of the darkness, And the wind noses among them, Like a skunk That roots ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... many twins throughout the country. I quote it for its value as a specimen of that sort of journalistic and political utterance amongst us, which is as seriously embarrassed by facts as a skunk by its tail. Had its author said: "The Declaration of Independence was signed by Christopher Columbus on Washington's birthday during the siege of Vicksburg in the presence of Queen Elizabeth and Judas Iscariot," his statement would have been ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... because his name was Andrew Jackson, or the Hero, or Old Hickory. And when he left those principles which induced me to support him, I considered myself justified in opposing him. This thing of man-worship I am a stranger to; I don't like it; it taints every action of life; it is like a skunk getting into a house—long after he has cleared out, you smell him in every room and closet, from the cellar to ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... Chippewas at Shakopee, and proceeded to celebrate the event with a scalp dance. This dance and the whoops of the Indians attracted spectators from Traverse and St. Peter; and with boyish curiosity, I was as near as possible to the dancers. Suddenly I spied one brave, dancing about, with a skunk skin tied to his heel and trailing on the ground behind him. Obeying a mischievous impulse, I jumped upon the trailing skin, and stopped the wild dancer. The savage wheeled, quickly raised his tomahawk, and was ready to strike; but when he saw ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... his mouth were grim. "Oh, all right," he said, after a moment, "I promise;—for I think you are right, Crowther. I think too that I should probably have to tell her—whether I wanted to or not. She's that sort—the sort that none but a skunk could deceive. But—" his voice altered suddenly; he turned brooding eyes upon the sleeping sea—"I wonder if she will forgive ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... he steal. Well, his time bein' no airthly use, dey gib him six month pensiontary; and niggar, who can airn a dollar or may be 100 cents a day, only one month. I spise a poor white man as I do a skunk. Dey is a cuss to de country; and it's berry hard for you and me to pay rates to support 'em: our rates last year was bominable. Let us pass dis law, Missus, and fowl stealin' is ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... anxiously awaiting the result. After some time she heard the shotgun go off, and in a few minutes the farmer entered the house. 'What luck had you?' said she. 'I hid myself behind the woodpile,' said the old man, 'with the shot-gun pointed toward the hen-roost, and before long there appeared, not one skunk, but seven. I took aim, blazed away, and killed one—and he raised such a fearful smell I concluded it was best to let the other six alone.'" The Senators retired, and nothing more was heard from them ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... bars of the river are composed principally of gravel; the river low grounds are narrow, and afford scarcely any timber; nor is there much pine on the hills. The buffalo have now become scarce; we saw a polecat (skunk) this evening, which was the first for several days; in the course of the day we also saw several herds of the bighorned animals among the steep cliffs on the north, and killed several ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... nest, you blinking cuckoo, you, or I'll cut your silly insides out! Come out of it—you pock-marked rat! Stealing another man's 'ome away from 'im! Come out and look me in the face, you squinting son of a Skunk!..." ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... you! That's the way it's always gone: first the liar tells his lie, and some of the fools believe it, and proselyte the other fools, and when there are enough of them, their faith begins to work on the liar's own unbelief, till he takes his lie for the truth. Was that the way, you miserable skunk?" ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... things in my life, but I can't do this! Lydia, you go home and tell your father I'll renew that note, but he's got to pay the interest and ten per cent. of the principal, every year till he's paid it up. Here, I'll write it down. And tell him that I'm not doing it for him or for that skunk of a Levine, but I'm doing it for you. Here, I'll write that ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the how, that's the very thing itself. Put it to the skunk, let him deny that if he can—let him deny that his name is Jared Bunce—that he hails from Connecticut—that he is a shark, and a pirate, and a pestilence. Let him deny that he is a cheat—that he goes about with his notions ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... that being Mr. John Coulter," chuckled he. "And, oh, the things I said to him! I tremble to recall them. I told him Corcoran was a low-down skunk, I know that. And I gushed on a lot about Hal and Louise. I only wish I could remember what I did say. Jove! He must have split his ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... hard to think of some good way to catch Freddie asleep, when who should come strolling along but Henry Skunk! Frisky always supposed that he was called "Henry" because he was so fond of hens—for he visited Farmer Green's hen-house oftener than any other of the forest-people—but whether that was why he was so named I should really ...
— The Tale of Frisky Squirrel • Arthur Scott Bailey
... day without a poorly spelled, spattered, daubed and profane valentine threatening his life. The last time I saw him he showed me a few of them. They generally referred to him as a blankety blank "skunk," and a "hound of hell." He said he hoped I wound pardon him for the apparent egotism, but he felt as though the Tribune was attracting attention almost everyday. Some of these little billet-doux invited him to call at a trysting place on Tribune avenue and get his alleged brains scattered ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... I guessed it, this story really began at Skunk's Misery. But Skunk's Misery was the last thing in my head, though I had just come from ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... Bundercombe declared. "A withered old skunk, if ever there was one! You want a live man to see you through this, Paul. You let me go down and sound Harrison this afternoon. No reason that I can see why we shouldn't use this fellow's address, too, if we can make ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... least partially familiar with the plant and bird world, travel holds so much more of interest and enthusiasm than it does to one who cannot tell mint from skunk cabbage, or a sparrow from a thrush. Having made acquaintance with the flowers and the birds, every journey will take on an added interest because always there are unnumbered scenes to attract our attention; which ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... Barred Owl. It is one of the strongest of the family, and captures rabbits, grouse and poultry, and is very often found to have been feeding upon, or to have been in the immediate vicinity of a skunk. They nest very early, January, February and March. Deserted Hawk's or Crow's nests are very frequently used by this bird, if they are located in dense woods. They also sometimes nest in hollow cavities in large trees. ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... he to himself, as he started to his feet; "the skunk is coming this way. Good! he has the advantage of me in being mounted; but I have a rifle that I dare say will make up for the difference—enfant de ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... another to mark its site. I judge that the bobolink escapes the dangers to which I have adverted as few or no other birds do. Unless the mowers come along at an earlier date than she has anticipated, that is, before July lst, or a skunk goes nosing through the grass, which is unusual, she is as safe as bird well can be in the great open of nature. She selects the most monotonous and uniform place she can find amid the daisies or the timothy and clover, and places her simple structure upon the ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... while I tell you somethin'. The day 'Drag' Harlan got in Lamo he brought news that Lane Morgan had been killed out in the desert. I heard the boys sayin' you had a hand in it. But I thought that was just talk. I didn't believe you was that kind of a skunk. I waited. ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... their faces. Prairie chickens and quail, startled and confused by the double line of flame, whirred above their heads, uncertain how to seek safety. A terrified jack rabbit leaped up almost at Sherm's feet. Rabbits, ground squirrels, one lone skunk, and even an occasional coyote, darted past them. Back at the road where they had begun, the head fire was already meeting their line of back fire and dying down in sullen smoke. Still, that hundred yards ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... terrified the crafty Norman. He suddenly made up his mind and held out his hand, as after buying a cow, saying: "Put it there, M'sieu le Baron; it is a bargain. Whoever draws back is a skunk!" ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... on that skunk," he had said, the malodorous epithet being his designation for Louis Laplante, "If you lay hands on that skunk, don't be a simpleton. Skin him, Sir, by the Lord, skin him! Let him play the ostrich act! Keep your ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... mice I laid down large doors over some hay or long grass and they gathered underneath and then I lifted the doors up every day and with a stick I smashed hundreds of them. I have posted a notice to leave the skunk and mink alone; I don't want anybody ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... and hepatica lie bedded not alone in the fallen leaves of the forest but amid their own enduring foliage. The skunk cabbage raises his hooded head first in sheltered hollows. The marsh marigold lies in the protection of bog tussocks and stream banks. The first bloodroot is always found at the foot of some natural ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... If it ain' good, it ain' good. W'at you care you call um cat—dog—pig? Plenty t'ing good to eat w'en you fin' dat out. De owl, she good meat. De musquash, w'at you call de mushrat—dat don' hurt de meat 'cause you call um rat! De skunk mak' de fine meat, an' ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... Georgy," said his uncle; "but it was lucky it did not squirt into your eyes, or you might have been blinded for life. That was a skunk, and very likely thinking of paying a visit to the chickens when you disturbed it. It makes great havoc in a hen-roost, Annie; and I would advise you to get Tom ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... stay there, and Mary would go round to have tea with her sister and him. How often she went I don't know, but I followed her one day, and as I broke in at the door Fairbairn got away over the back garden wall, like the cowardly skunk that he was. I swore to my wife that I would kill her if I found her in his company again, and I led her back with me, sobbing and trembling, and as white as a piece of paper. There was no trace of love between us any longer. I could see that she hated me and feared me, and when the ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Boyle had needed anything more to stir him to the fighting point, that one sentence admirably supplied the lack. "Yuh low-down skunk!" he cried, and struck him full upon the insulting, smiling mouth. "If I was as rotten-minded as you are, I'd go drown myself in the stalest alkali hole I could find. I dunno why I'm dirtying my hands on yuh—yuh ain't fit ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... labor" was also desirous of ridding the town of the hated I.W.W. Hall. A switchman named Henry, a member of the Railway Brotherhood, was nominated. When he indignantly declined, Hubbard, red in the face with rage, called him a "damned skunk." ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... Liff Loop," broke in Anderson sternly. "Don't say anything more. All I got to say is that it wasn't you your wife insulted when she called you a skunk. Good ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... had to be so economical! But he refused, patiently. To be patient, Maurice did not need, now, to remind himself of the mountain and her faithfulness to him; he had only to remind himself of the yellow-brick apartment house, and his faithlessness to her. "I've got to be kind, or I'd be a skunk," he used to think. So he was very kind. He did not burst out at her with irritated mortification when she telephoned to the office to know if "Mr. Curtis's headache was better";—he had suffered so much that he had gone beyond the self-consciousness ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... should be said here for skunks and moles. A great deal of the skunk diet is insect life. The same is true of the mole whose diet probably consists of 75% insects, mostly in their larval state. This is an important feature of mole and skunk as they dig these insects out before they mature into winged ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... thrown down]. Oh, did you hear what he called us? You foul-mouthed brute! You liar! How dare you put such a name to a decent woman? Let me get at him. You coward! Oh, he struck me: did you see that? Lynch him! Pete, will you stand by and hear me called names by a skunk like that? Burn him: burn him! Thats what I'd do with ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... are several different ways of skinning animals: one is called "case skinning" and another is called "split skinning." To case skin an animal such as ermine, fox, fisher, lynx, marten, mink, otter, muskrat, rabbit, or skunk, the skin is cut down the inner side of each hind leg until the two cuts meet just under the tail, and then the pelt is peeled off by turning it inside out. To split skin an animal such as wood-buffalo, moose, wapiti, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... betraying astonishment at his appearance; but he was greeted kindly and invited to the camp. Nearing the fire through the woods, his nostrils were assailed by a horrible smell which one of the men explained by saying he had just shot a skunk. There were eighteen in the party, comfortably fixed with two good sized tents and an abundance of buffalo robes. After he had removed his suit the cook prepared an excellent meal and urged him to eat heartily which ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... wood-pile,' said the old man, 'with the shotgun pointed towards the hen roost, and before long there appeared not one skunk, but seven. I took aim, blazed away, killed one, and he raised such a fearful smell that I concluded it was best to let ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... lot of dust, maybe—but we won't do anything like what he'd do, in our places. He knows the Old Man and Chip are gone, and he knows we've just naturally got to sit back and swallow our tongues because we haven't any authority. Mamma! It comes pretty tough, when a low-down skunk like that just banks on your doing the square thing. He wouldn't do it, but he knows we will; and so he takes advantage of white men and gets the best of 'em. And if we should happen to break out and do something, ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... only one species out of 3,000,000 should develop into man, that it certainly was not the case. All had the same start, many had similar environments. Yet witness the motly products of evolution: Man, ape, elephant, skunk, scorpion, lizard, lark, toad, lobster, louse, flea, amoeba, hookworm, and countless microscopic animals; also, the palm, lily, melon, maize, mushroom, thistle, cactus, microscopic bacilli, etc. All developed from one germ, all in some way related. Mark well the difference in size between the ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... of those and Blacky the Crow and Butcher the Shrike and Sammy Jay in winter, and Buster Hear and Jimmy Skunk and several of the Snake family in summer," replied Whitefoot. "It seems to me sometimes as if I need eyes and ears all over me. Night and day there is always some one hunting for poor little me. And then some folks wonder why ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... going over to relieve that old skunk," Reid announced, "not without orders from Sullivan. If he gets off you'll have to relieve him yourself. I don't want that Hall guy to get it into his nut that ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... body!" ejaculated a woman. "I hope they don't forgit to lock them cages up! Folks git awful careless when they do a thing every day! I forgot to shet up the hins last week, an' that was the night the skunk got in." ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... or by asking it on what day of the month came Christmas. The worse of the Tremblays encountered this creature and it filled him with dismay. When he returned his neighbors observed an odor—not of sanctity—on his garments, and their view of the matter was that he had met a skunk. The graceless man felt convinced, however, that he had received a devil's baptism from the Nain Rouge, and St. Patrick had no stancher allies than ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... chief one—Fact is, Josh, I've acted like a howling skunk about you with her. I ran you down to her; tried to ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... up his hand impatiently. "You see I had to find an answer. I couldn't think of being a skunk—running away—and I couldn't stay. I wasn't intended to stay. Some men are intended to work and take care of children and serve women perhaps but others have to keep trying for a vague something all their lives—like me trying for a tone on a violin. If they don't get ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... shouldn't wonder if some of them hadn't got me in tow. But, I ain't going to give it up yet. I don't forget the old chap's knocking me down in the dark behind my back, as though I'd been no better than a woodchuck or a skunk." ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... type whose Society column consists of such items as "Pawnee Jim Williams was to town yesterday with a bunch of other cheap skates. We take this opportunity of once more informing Jim that he is a liar and a skunk," and whose editor works with a revolver on his desk and another in his hip-pocket. Graduating from this, he had proceeded to a reporter's post on a daily paper in a Kentucky town, where there were blood feuds and ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... parson, that part of it had never struck me. I ain't bright and never was. But I ain't no skunk. I give that woman some of her own money back and that week I sold out at a loss and slunk around some more. I couldn't go back to my own work. I had a grudge against it, someway. By and by the money was all gone and an old pal of mine offered to set me up in business out here, away from the city ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... have the Panther and Black Bear in the wooded portions of the State, though rare; the Lynx, the Gray and Black Wolf, and the Prairie Wolf; the Skunk, the Badger, the Woodchuck, the Raccoon, and, in the southern part of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... "You skunk!" said Polly. And Mamise laughed. Everything made her laugh now; she was so happy that she began ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... material as therein described, covering with moss, chaff, leaves or some other light substance. The clog should be fully twice as heavy as that used for the fox. Some trappers rub the traps with "brake leaves," sweet fern, or even skunk's cabbage. Gloves should always be worn in handling the traps, and all tracks should be obliterated as much as if a fox were the object sought to ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... This is no place for me," whispered Peter and started for the dear Old Briar-patch. He was in such a hurry to get there that on his way across the Green Meadows he almost ran into Jimmy Skunk ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... that for a treetur an' a cowart! Strip the skunk! He's got sumthin' steely under his shirt; I heerd the chink ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... a popular saying in Mazowsze: "As the skunk smells, so the Krzyzak lies." The prince waved his hand to such thanks, and after they went out he said that by the intervention of the Knights of the Cross, one would go to heaven as ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... scoffed at that pompous question-begging word "Evolution," having, so to speak, found it out. Evolution, some illuminating talker had remarked at the Britten lunch table, had led not only to man, but to the liver-fluke and skunk, obviously it might lead anywhere; order came into things only through the struggling mind of man. That lit things wonderfully for us. When I went up to Cambridge I was perfectly clear that life was a various and splendid disorder of forces that ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... were, bales of them—seal, sea-otter, beaver, skunk, marten, and a few bear, the sight of all raising up in our hearts endless ideas of sport and adventure possibly never ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... grew great store of high-bush blackberries. Along the roadside were bayberry-bushes, hung all over with bright red coral pendants in autumn and far into the winter. Then there were swamps set thick with dingy alders, where the three-leaved arum and the skunk's-cabbage grew broad and succulent, shelving down into black boggy pools here and there at the edge of which the green frog, stupidest of his tribe, sat waiting to be victimized by boy or snapping-turtle long after the shy and agile leopard-frog had taken the six-foot spring that plumped ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... young devil had the gall," he muttered. "Acting like he'd been bit by a hydrophoby skunk. Nothing meaner 'n a mad wolf. I'd 'a' give him Carmena quick enough.... Learn her not to pass up a white man agin when she had her chance. But the young gal—— Blast Cochise. When I ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... early this evening a'hangin' around these here premises and I ups and chases him twicet, but the skunk outrun me," the newcomer gurgled, as he excitedly swung a policeman's billy the ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... but not tipping dice. Smythe is a skunk. He's no Twenty-fifth, or he wouldn't have any need to go crooked. He saw a chance to make a killing. He suggested it to Rose, who fell for it and went along. Rose decided to steal Simonetti's half of the business ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the next morning contained a skunk, and we moved on as quickly as possible, without attempting to secure the thong, of which we had several. We gathered some puffballs to soak for breakfast and in a clearing I found some blackberry bushes. We were very ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... tief!" said the virtuous Sunday. "I'll gib you what for; you shall hab what Paddy gib the drum, you 'fernal black skunk; I show yar what John up the orchard is, you—you ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... Well, Heman, I ain't as well up in tricks as you claim to be, nor my stockin' isn't as well padded as yours, maybe. But while there's a ten-cent piece left in the toe of it I'll fight you and the skunk whose 'rights' you seem to have taken such a shine to. And, after that, while there's a lawyer that 'll trust me. And, meantime, that little girl stays right here, and you touch her if you dare, any of you! ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... mug, and saw a turbid, yellow concoction, not at all attractive to the eye; he smelt of it, and was partly of opinion that Aunt Keziah had mixed a certain unfragrant vegetable, called skunk-cabbage, with the other ingredients of her witch-drink. He tasted it; not a mere sip, but a good, genuine gulp, being determined to have real proof of what the stuff was in all respects. The draught seemed at first to burn in his mouth, unaccustomed to any drink but water, and to go scorching all ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... called a skunk, and a cur, and a coward, and by most other names that are bad and contemptuous. But the dingo at bay is as brave as a weasel; and no lion in all Africa is braver than a weasel at bay. Finn had brought himself ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... things 'bout Injuns but, like young brats, they take natural to deviltry. Ye may have my hide fer sole luther if ye ketch me in an Injun village with a load o' fire-water. Some Injuns is smart, an' gol ding their pictur's! they kin talk like a cat-bird. A skunk has a han'some coat an' acts as cute as a kitten but all the same, which thar ain't no doubt o' it, his friendship ain't wuth a dam. It's a kind o' p'ison. Injuns is like skunks, if ye trust 'em they'll sp'ile ye. They eat like beasts an' think like beasts, an' live like beasts, an' talk ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... commended to players of golf, who are inclined to be "worldly." The episode of Oconio at the best is too long to quote; it, too, has its lesson! One reads Mr. Abbott's defence of the skunk cabbage, for it harbours at ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... See those red fibers? Why shouldn't such roots, and nuts like those great, burnished horse-chestnuts there—yes, and cattails, and poke-berries, and skunk cabbages, give forth an entirely new outfit of fruits and vegetables?" Berber smiled his young ruminating smile; then, with inevitable courtesy, he seemed to remember that he had not answered her question. "I am not surprised that you and Mr. Strang thought such things about me. I ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... disliked you. But there at the Front and in the Forest you were brave and extraordinarily competent. You treated Trenchard abominably, of course—but he rather asked for it in some ways. Here you've been nothing but the meanest skunk and sneak. You've set out deliberately to poison the lives of some of the best-hearted and most helpless people on this earth.... You deserve hanging, if any murderer ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... I saw a smile growing slowly at the corners of his lips. I knew that smile. Jerry wore it the day Skookums disobeyed orders and had the encounter with the skunk. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... a man a maniac," Prale mused. "And that Shepley man! He was all right when we parted on the ship. Somebody said something to him about me after he landed. He treated me as if I had been a skunk." ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... he ejaculated, after I had related to him in detail the incidents connected with the seizure of the Zenobia by her crew, under the leadership of Bainbridge; "if that don't beat everything! And you say that the skunk means to set up in business as a pirate? But is this here barque of yourn armed? Do she mount any guns? Because, if she don't, how do that crowd of toughs reckon they're goin' to hold up and ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... did, Uncle Felix. You said so. And if it's true that these strangers in our country are going to be abused because they're poor,—what else could I do with my money and not feel like a skunk? ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... Sonora; but at the door he called back to the greaser: "Come on, you oily, garlic-eatin', red-peppery, dog-trottin', sunbaked son of a skunk!" ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... tells him that Jesus Christ could not have "gone up" from two places at once; common sense tells him that turning devils out of men into pigs is a fable not half as good as the poorest of AEsop's; common sense tells him that nobody but a skunk would consent to be saved from the penalty of his own misdeeds by the sufferings of an innocent man; common sense tells him that while men object to having their pockets picked and their throats cut, they want no divine command against theft and murder; common sense tells him ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... black. Then Naganschitn, the Badger, was sent to see if the land was good, but just as soon as he had crawled through he sank in the black mud and could go no farther, so Little Whirlwind was despatched to succor him. To this day Badger's legs are black. Next Keldinshe{COMBINING BREVE}n, the Skunk, was sent, because he was light in weight; but even he sank in the mud and blackened his legs. Then the people sent Cha, the Beaver, who travelled about for a long time, and finding all the water running away in streams, built dams and thus formed many lakes. ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
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