"White elephant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I'm satisfied. I just wanted to show you that the Western Union Company wasn't the whole push. Come on over to the White Elephant with me and we'll have a drink together, just to show there's no hard feelings between us," and with that he put away his pistol and we went out. On the way over to the ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... ship land and barter and in a few minutes are gone on their busy way and silence settles down once more. They neither know nor care that, near by, a mighty city spread its splendour for miles along the river bank, that the king known as Lord of the Golden Palace, The Golden Foot, Lord of the White Elephant, held his state there with balls of magnificence, obsequious women, fawning courtiers and all the riot and colour of an Eastern tyranny. How should they care? Now there are ruins—ruins, and the cobras ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... to do with this chap?" queried Jack. "It rather worries me. He's apt to be a white elephant ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Mrs. Jones, who lives at 28, White Elephant Buildings. Mr. Jones is a painter at work for eight months in the year, if he has good luck, but out of work always at that time of the year when housekeeping expenses are highest. For every working man's wife will tell you that coal is always dearer at the time of the year when it is most required. ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... no other king having any but he; and were any other king to have any, he would send for it, and if refused would go to war for it, and would rather lose a great part of his kingdom than not have the elephant. When any white elephant is brought to the king, all the merchants in the city are commanded to go and visit him, on which occasion each individual makes a present of half a ducat, which amounts to a good round sum, as there are a vast many merchants, after ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... flimsiest, most slipshod fashion; and at terrible prices. The Graham House, a pretentious frail structure that had failed as a hotel because a swamp lay between it and the city, was bought at a huge price to serve as city hall. It was a veritable white elephant, and even the busy populace spared time to grumble at the flagrant steal. Nobody knew what it would cost to make the thing habitable even. Soon, to every one's relief, it burned down. The property was then swindled over to Peter ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... said:—"Wonderful building, the new General Post Office, opened in 1829, nearly opposite. They say the Government has got something very like a white elephant in that vast pile. A great deal too big for present needs, or, indeed, for any possible extension of Post ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... the guardian of a fifteen-year-old niece, who was born into the world with a delicate constitution, an unhappy disposition and the proverbial gold spoon in her mouth as far as finances were concerned. The poor professor felt that he had been left with something worse than a white elephant on his hands, for he knew absolutely nothing about girls, and Marion, with her morbid, super-sensitive temperament, was a constant puzzle to him. She had been in a convent school until recently. But now her physicians advised that she be ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... you will think of me, Mr. McCunn. Here are you, coming to do us all a kindness, and lease that infernal white elephant, and here have I been steadily hoaxing you for the last five minutes. I humbly ask your pardon. Set it down to the loyalty of an old family lawyer. Now, I am going to tell you the truth and take you into our confidence, ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... my collecting funds spasmodically, a number of our local friends got "cold feet." Reports started, not circulated by well-wishers, that it was all a piece of personal vanity, that no such thing was needed, and if built would prove a white elephant, to support which I would be going round with my hat in my hand worrying the merchants. We had at that time some ninety thousand dollars in hand. I laid the whole story before the Governor, Sir Ralph Williams, a man by no means prejudiced in ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... showed it both in Edinburgh and in Glasgow, netting another L900, which, however, was quickly eaten up by hungry creditors. The picture was too big to tempt a private purchaser, and in spite of the admiration it had aroused, it remained like a white elephant ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... now. But I did make a mistake," he added, slowly, whether for Gay's benefit or not no one could tell—"I thought the world owed me more than a living—that it owed me a bargain. And there never was a bargain cheaply won that didn't prove a white elephant in time." ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... stronger and handsomer than any child yet born, required no less than ten nurses, and after being weaned ate as much as five men! Such being the case, he was able, by the time he was eight years of age, to slay a mad white elephant with a single stroke of his fist. Many similar feats were performed during the boyhood of this Persian Hercules, who longed to fight when the realm was finally invaded by the Tartar chief Afrasiab and war began to ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... large sum," said Owen, in an unimaginative sort of way, while in his heart he wondered what on earth he should do with this white elephant of a mediaeval castle, and its drawing room ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... the most robust health. Voltaire, if you had not come now I should have considered you a bad penny: in place of the true metal of friendship I should have suspected you of palming off plated lead upon me. It is well for you that you are here. You are like the white elephant for whom the Shah of Persia and the Great Mogul are continually at war. The one who is so fortunate as to possess the white elephant makes it always the occasion of an added title. I will follow their ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... A white elephant, caparisoned with a fillet of gold, runs along, shaking the bouquet of ostrich feathers attached ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... species, the Indian and the African; the latter attains a greater size, and is hunted for the sake of its tusks, which may weigh as much as 70 lbs.; the former is more intelligent, and easily capable of being domesticated; the white elephant is a variety of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... fake!' was what those roughs was crying. 'We want our money back!' But that was a wicked story," added Mr. Sorber, earnestly. "We was giving them a big show for their money. We had a sacred cow, a white elephant, and a Wild Man of Borneo that you couldn't have told from the real thing—he was dumb, poor fellow, and so the sounds he made when they prodded him sounded just as ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... advanced. This is the first time he ever ventured to cross his father's threshold, and yet he talks as familiarly of kingdoms, governments, nations, manners, and other high sounding phrases, as if he had been secretary of state to king Minos, had ridden upon the white elephant, and studied under the Dalai Lama! He is the Great Mogul of politicians! And as for letters, science, and talents, he holds them all by patent right! He is such a monopolizer that no man else can get a morsel! If he were not a plebeian, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... pleasing picture, the vaudeville producer invests in scenery. But he has to figure closely, just as every other business man is compelled to scheme and contrive in dollars and cents, or the business asset of scenery will turn into a white elephant and eat up ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... ladder, turning somersaults all the way. And when he came down to the earth again he had lost all the presents except the pudding, but he had held that all the way down. So he sold it to a man for forty million hundred dollars; and then he was so rich that they made him King of Siam, and he rode on a white elephant with pink ears all the rest ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... won't come high," young Prescott answered. "If it does, we'll begin right by telling him that we have no money—-that we've nothing in fact but a birchbark white elephant ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... ourselves in a fitful and guilty fashion late in the afternoon. But as a rule, even to-day, when you give a Homeburg man a bright golden daylight hour of leisure, he has no more use for it than he would have for a five-ton white elephant with an appetite for ice-cream. And that, Jim, is why I can't speed myself up to appreciate a young man who has never worked and never intends to. I still have to look at him with my Homeburg eyes. And in Homeburg, when a man doesn't work when he has ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... such inhumanity?" he mourned. "I tell him that—thanks to my supernatural diligence in his affairs—his own particular millstone is lifted from his neck. I tell him that a great white elephant of a house, which for years has been eating its head off, and keeping him poor, is at last—by my supernatural diligence—converted into an actual source of revenue. And 'Ah?' is all he says, as if it did n't concern him. Blow, blow, thou winter wind,—thou ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... might, pierced with Krishna's arrows and smitten with the force of his discus, became motionless like waifs and strays stranded on the bank by the violence of the waves. Then Sakra the lord of the celestials, riding on his white elephant, rushed at those heroes, and taking up his thunderbolt which could never go in vain, hurled it with great force. And the slayer of Asuras said unto the gods, 'These two are slain.' Beholding the fierce thunderbolt about to be hurled by their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the "White Elephant" with which the reader is already acquainted—the line from Bloemfontein to ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... 1892. The annalist says "There is a huge white elephant (or image) 100 feet high. Litigants burn incense and kneel before it, reflecting within themselves whether they are right or wrong.... When there is any disaster or plague the king also kneels in front ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... never thought of going before the public as a lecturer. I knew those people only wanted me as they would a white elephant. I did not at this time see the stage ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... Prince of earthly dominance, A Chakravartin, such as rise to rule Once in each thousand years; seven gifts he has The Chakra-ratna, disc divine; the gem; The horse, the Aswa-ratna, that proud steed Which tramps the clouds; a snow-white elephant, The Hasti-ratna, born to bear his King; The crafty Minister, the General Unconquered, and the wife of peerless grace, The Istri-ratna, lovelier than the Dawn. For which gifts looking with this wondrous boy, The King gave order that his town should keep High festival; therefore the ways ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... Pennington read this outburst he smiled. "That's a bright scheme on the part of that Trinidad Redwood Timber Company gang to start a railroad excitement and unload their white elephant," he declared. "A scheme like that stuck them with their timber, and I suppose they figure there's a sucker born every minute and that the same old gag might work again. Chances are they have ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... free negroes also had much to do with causing the civil war. The South was finding black slavery a sort of white elephant. Everywhere the question was what to do with the freeman. Nobody wanted them. Some states declared they were a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... departing, on his return to Karugsar and Mazinderan, Zal went with Rustem to Sistan, a province dependent on his government, and settled him there. The white elephant, belonging to Minuchihr, was kept at Sistan. One night Rustem was awakened out of his sleep by a great noise, and cries of distress when starting up and inquiring the cause, he was told that the white elephant had got ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... are both our names," said Gyali, holding the hat before Desiderius: "draw one of them out: open it, read it, and then put both names into the fire. The one whose name you draw will do the honors to the Cochin-China Emperor's white elephant." ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... proves a very white elephant on their hands. The site is not well chosen, or the stream difficult, and the restrained water pours round the ends of their dam, cutting them away. They build the dam longer at once; but again the water pours round ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... room. It was peculiarly vast and dreary, decorated with the enormous pictures of still life that he remembered as a boy—sleeping dogs with their noses resting on bunches of carrots, together with onions and grapes lying side by side in mild surprise. The house was a white elephant, but he could not conceive of his father living in a smaller place; and all the more ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... easy on the map, and with a motor, in times gone by it was a really royal itinerary, so vastly different and picturesque are the various regions crossed. But now that gasolene is handed out by the spoonful even to sanitary formations, it would be just as easy for the civilian to procure a white elephant as to dream of purchasing sufficient "gas" to ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... you the chap I was reading about this morning—the man who makes photos and sketches of animals before they're shot an' then mounts 'em the same way? Was it you who swiped the skin of a sacred white elephant out o' Siam, an'—" ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... of a singular fact, little known. The Burmahs, who are disciples of Gaudma, equally with the inhabitants of Pegu and Syriam, whose country they have conquered, worship the White Elephant, who is considered as a god. There have been but three white elephants since the foundation of the Burmah dynasty by Alompraa. The first one is dead, and I have one of his teeth carved with figures, which was consecrated to the great Dagon Pagoda. The second now reigns—he ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... feeling that we've just won the largest white elephant in history. We don't just walk off and leave it, you know. We don't want it. But ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... or ignoring the tone of her answer. 'A real, live, white elephant; a thing which has not been seen in Alexandria for a hundred years! It was passing through with two tame tigers, as a present to the boy at Byzantium, from some hundred-wived kinglet of the Hyperborean Taprobane, or other no-man's-land in the far East. I took the liberty of laying an embargo on ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... got hold of all their chief cities except Ava, and why that was not taken is more than I can say. We might certainly have captured it, with the king, his white elephant, and all his lords and ladies together, not to speak of his treasure, which would have given us something handsome in the way of prize-money. Perhaps it was thought best not to drive him to desperation, as we had already punished him, or rather, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... pronounce," said they, "for should the maiden, through the exercise of virtue, have merited to be born as a white elephant, her transmigrations must in the order of nature be but few; whereas should she have unfortunately become and remained a rat, a frog, or other shortlived animal, they cannot but ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... boy," he said when that functionary entered, "Matt and I are going to unload that white elephant of a Lion and get her off our hands for four years at a fancy figure; but to do it we've got to charter another white elephant—the Black Butte Lumber Company's Unicorn. Here's an option Captain Peasley has just secured on her. Have the charter parties made out ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... monasteries marched processions of monks, with intoned services, and many prostrations, and lighted candles that glimmer through the fog. There in their solemn shrines stood the statues of the Arahats, and there, seated on his white elephant, loomed immense and dim, the image of Amitabha, the Lord of the ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... is," agreed Betty. "And dad seems to think that the best thing mother could do would be to take the money and get rid of the ranch. He says it will be a sort of white elephant on our hands, since there isn't very much chance of our going out there to live," she ended, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... have aided Siamese intrigues, the present Raja and his late brother both having so insecure a seat upon their thrones that they readily made concessions to the Siamese in order to purchase their support. Thus, at the present time, the flag of the White Elephant floats at the mouth of the Kelantan river on State occasions, though the administration of the country is still entirely in the hands of the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... official announcement that the Slough depot had been sold, and the chorus of satisfaction in the Press that the Government had disposed of its white elephant at a profit, Mr. HOGGE was disappointed to learn that, though the heads of agreement were being discussed, no contract had yet been signed. He was indeed rather surprised that the Government should think of parting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... four distinct patterns—we cannot call them styles. Siam in the centre has a chocolate-colored tower picked out with silver, and surmounted by a triple pagoda roof, whence floats the flag, a white elephant in a red field. The six feet of homeliness belonging to Tunis has a balcony of wood which neither reveals nor hides the almond-eyed whose supposed relatives are selling trumpery in booths on the other side of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... tender birds. The commonest things are always the most interesting. In summer there is no bird so common everywhere as the swallow, and for that reason many overlook it, though they rush to see a "white elephant." But the deepest thinkers have spent hours and hours in considering the problem of the swallow—its migrations, its flight, its habits; great poets have loved it; great artists and art-writers have curiously studied it. The idea that it is necessary to seek the ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... the chart-room, and opened his International Signal Code-book at the plate where the flags of all the nations are correctly figured in gaudy rows. He ran his finger over them, and when he came to Siam he contemplated with great attention the red field and the white elephant. Nothing could be more simple; but to make sure he brought the book out on the bridge for the purpose of comparing the coloured drawing with the real thing at the flagstaff astern. When next Jukes, who was carrying on the duty that day with a ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... the heads of the gleaming pikes; when, with one hand seizing the sacred peishcush, or fish—which was the banner always borne before Scindiah,—he, with his good sword, cut off the trunk of the famous white elephant, which, shrieking with agony, plunged madly into the Mahratta ranks, followed by his giant brethren, tossing, like chaff before the wind, the affrighted kitmatgars. He, meanwhile, now plunging into the midst of a battalion of consomahs, now cleaving to the chine a screaming and ferocious bobbachee,* ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... political supporters; and that Testimonial, "little Testy" as I called it, was a source of care and dilemma to everybody; for care, it was immediately locked away for fear of burglars; and as to dilemma, the white elephant was too tall for the centre of a table, and too short to stand upon the floor. It seemed closely to illustrate to my mind that wise text about a man's life and his possessions. The cheerful spirit of the mansion and its inmates seemed quite subdued by this unwelcome acquisition. ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... thing that seems to be missing at a first glance is a white elephant; but the farm is that itself in a sense, as one may readily imagine, when the difficulty of keeping it stocked ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... A milk-white elephant or a camelopard is considered more than a substitute for character, incident, or wit. And if an actor presents himself in a dress of unusual splendour, the house is in ecstasies, and a roar of applause, loud as a tempest in the Garganian ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... at what still appear to our weak minds provokingly low prices, his Harleian bargains. By the way, he kept them a tolerably long time. Did some one help him to find the money, or did he pay it by instalments? Seriously speaking, it was rather a white elephant. One of the most notorious private transactions in the way of sales of books en bloc was that by the Royal Society in 1873 of the printed portion of the Pirkheimer Library, presented to it by Henry Howard, Duke of Norfolk, the first president, and originally purchased by his ancestor, the celebrated ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... been a white elephant in Miss Emily's window. Painfully she had seen her supply dwindle. For this last of the herd, she had a feeling far in excess of his value, such as a collector might have for a rare coin of a certain minting, or a bit of pottery of ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... next is dragged forward the fortune of kings, with their hands bound behind them; chariots, litters, carriages, ships hurry on; captive ivory, captive Corinth, is borne along. Democritus, if he were on earth, would laugh; whether a panther a different genus confused with the camel, or a white elephant attracted the eye of the crowd. He would view the people more attentively than the sports themselves, as affording him more strange sights than the actor: and for the writers, he would think they told their story to ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... — N. bane, curse; evil &c 619; hurtfulness &c (badness) 649 [Obs.]; painfulness &c (cause of pain) 830; scourge &c (punishment) 975; damnosa hereditas [Lat.]; white elephant. sting, fang, thorn, tang, bramble, brier, nettle. poison, toxin; teratogen; leaven, virus venom; arsenic; antimony, tartar emetic; strychnine, nicotine; miasma, miasm^, mephitis^, malaria, azote^, sewer gas; pest. [poisonous substances, examples] Albany hemp^, arsenious oxide, arsenious ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he kept relating anecdotes of how people are always sending him shaves about flowers. "I'd a letter the other day, my dear, to describe a white Crown Imperial—a thing that has never been!" Later he announced—"I have written to Barr and Sugden—'Gentlemen! Here's another White Elephant. A lady has seen ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... Mayence is not on the Danube need not bother you. Only last week our uncle lost a white elephant while travelling in a barge on the Regent's Park Canal, near Maida Vale, and it was found inside the hat-box of the Editor of The Manchester Evening News by FRANZ SCHRODER. Bless you, these things are ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... to Sir John Stanley he was in no hurry to put it on. He paid no heed to his Manx subjects, and never saw his Manx kingdom. I dare say he thought the gift horse was something of a white elephant. No wonder if he did, for words could not exaggerate the wretched condition of the island and its people. The houses of the poor were hovels built of sod, with floors of clay, and sooty rafters of briar and straw and dried gorse. The people were hardly better ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... to Howells, and sent him something for the magazine now and then: the "Gambetta Duel" burlesque, which would make a chapter in the book later, and the story of "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn."—[Included in The Stolen White Elephant volume. The "Pitcairn" and "Elephant" tales were originally chapters in 'A Tramp Abroad'; also the unpleasant "Coffin-box" yarn, which Howells rejected for the Atlantic and generally condemned, though for a time it remained ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was, for in spite of the interest I have felt in working the theory out and the information I have been able to collect while doing so, I must confess that I have found it somewhat of a white elephant. It has got me into the hottest of hot water, made a literary Ishmael of me, lost me friends whom I have been sorry to lose, cost me a good deal of money, done everything to me, in fact, which a good theory ought not to do. Still, as it seems to have taken up ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... and Queen, with the grandees of their Court, set out to visit Hsiang Shan, but on the way the monarchs were captured by the Green Lion, or God of Fire, and the White Elephant, or Spirit of the Water, the two guardians of the Temple of Buddha, who transported them to a dark cavern in the mountains. A terrific battle then took place between the evil spirits on the one side and some hosts of heavenly genii, who had been ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... the actions of Lydane. At this time it was assumed that Gale and his partner did not know that it was Mr. Nestor who had been kidnapped by mistake or they might have insisted on his release. As it was, Lydane had Mary's father, and was afraid to let him go, though really their prisoner became a white elephant on the hands of ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... have gone farther and taken four horses; so extreme was my haste, running as I was before the terrors of an awakened conscience. But I feared to be conspicuous. Even as it was, we attracted only too much attention, with our pair and that white elephant, the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wagon would be a white elephant. Why had they not divided among themselves the simple contents of a hunter's camp outfit, cut loose with the horses, and burned the big vehicle, which ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... the porter, as if saying, "You ask me too little. Why will you not ask for a white elephant so that I may prove my devotion?" And within five seconds the screech of a whistle sped through the air to the cab-stand ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... scarlet and purple robes with stars on. Through his Zion City Bank and Zion City Realty Company he became enormously wealthy; he finally announced himself as "Elijah the Restorer." I remember as a boy how he brought his gospel to New York, and P.T. Barnum with Tom Thumb and the white elephant never made such a sensation. The ridicule of the metropolis overwhelmed the old prophet, and he died and passed on his robes and his tabernacle and his bank to his son; straightway, according to the rule of all religions, the followers fell to quarrelling and splitting up, and suing ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... the shop, Calvin following him, and they looked over the low green curtain into the show-window. In the very centre, towering above the lions, camels and rabbits, stood a majestic white elephant fully a foot high. His tusks were of clear barley sugar; he carried a gilded howdah in which sat an affable personage with chocolate countenance and peppermint turban; the whole was a triumph of art, and Mr. Cheeseman gazed on it with pride, and ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... drinking; an' there's fient a thing but watter in the weet dock. My heart bleeds when I go roond the shore an' see all the ships sailin' oot o' the herbir, an' no' a livin' sowl comin' in. Gentlemen, that herbir's growin' a gijantic white elephant." ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... and it seems a probable derivation enough. The chta of the Indian and Burmese princes is large and heavy, and requires a special attendant, who has a regular position in the royal household. In Ava it seems to have been part of the king's title, that he was "King of the white elephant, and Lord of the twenty-four Umbrellas." Persons of rank in the Mahratta court, who were not permitted the right of carrying an Umbrella, used a screen, a flat vertical disc called AA'-ab-gir, carried by an attendant. Even ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... over Hynds House the next morning and took stock, I began to entertain very, very peculiar feelings toward Great-Aunt Sophronisba Scarlett, who, it would appear, had given me a white elephant which I could neither hire out for its keep, nor yet sell out of hand. I had to live in Hynds House, and Hynds House as it stood wasn't to be ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... are abundant, but the fair-coloured are rare, and found nowhere except in this island, and the black ones do homage to them. Having captured such a one, they bring him to the king in Rochapatta, whose peculiar prerogative it is to ride on a white elephant, this being unlawful for his subjects. There are many fierce crocodiles in the rivers, and they are killed by crowds of men who rush with shouts into the water, armed with sharp stakes. And ten days after they arrived in Rochapatta, many ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... by an accident of inheritance, he had come into the property with an immense antipathy:—a white elephant that would bring him neither profit nor honour, but which the modest competence that he had previously enjoyed did not allow him to refuse. It had altered the tenor of his existence, destroyed his youth and his ambitions, and represented for many years, more completely than anything ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... visits so much, partly because of the way in which you always talked of Dad. She left you some jewelry that she was fond of, and that colossal old mahogany buffet that you used to rave over whenever you came up. Heaven knows what you'll do with it! It's a white elephant. If you add another story to it, you could rent it out ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... where he remained some weeks, thence to New Zealand and Australia, finally to Calcutta, and thence home to New York, after a prolonged tour through India, Siam, and China. The incidents of the latter tour formed the basis of his first book, the "Land of the White Elephant," the success of which encouraged him to this, his second venture. The chief characteristic of Mr. Vincent's second work is its freshness and interest. He seems to be profoundly impressed with the truth of the saying of Thales of Miletus, that "the half is sometimes ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... those parts. He then bought a camel, hired proper servants, and set off on his travels. He went through Turkey, Persia, and from thence to Carthage; he next went into the country of Prester John, who rides upon a white elephant, and has kings to wait on him. Fortunatus made him some rich presents, and went on to Calcutta; and, in coming back, he took Jerusalem in the way, and so came again to Alexandria, where he had the good fortune to find the same ship that had brought him, and to learn from the captain that his wife ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... shift the responsibility. He reported the capture of Vaalkrantz to Lord Roberts, and in effect asked what he should do with the white elephant. To carry out his plan would "cost from 2,000 to 3,000 men," and he was "not confident of success." Was Ladysmith worth it? Yes, replied Lord Roberts without hesitation, Ladysmith was worth it ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... brighten with amusement, if not with admiration. Of course, the Stars and Stripes hung highest, with the English lion ramping on the royal standard close by; then followed a regular picture-gallery, for there was the white elephant of Siam, the splendid peacock of Burmah, the double-headed Russian eagle and black dragon of China, the winged lion of Venice, and the prancing pair on the red, white and blue flag of Holland. The keys and miter of the Papal States were a hard ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... address may be correctly said to have as much truth as poetry. It is a graceful summary of the curiosities which Barnum had brought before the world up to his sixtieth year. It does not include the Sacred White Elephant of Siam, the mammoth Jumbo and other wonders of nature which he was yet to reveal to astonished and delighted millions. Nor does it indicate that grand genius of aggregation by which in later years he surpassed all his previous performances—masterly ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... I determined to make some of the compound. We tested what we considered a very small quantity, but this produced such terrible and unexpected results that we became alarmed, the fact dawning upon us that we had a very large white elephant in our possession. At 6 A.M. I put the explosive into a sarsaparilla bottle, tied a string to it, wrapped it in a paper, and gently let it down into the sewer, corner of State and Washington Streets." The associate in this was a man whom he had found endeavoring to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... I'd put it in a nice clean, dry, covered tin pail, and hang it down my well, just like Jerushy said she always did when she had a ten-dollar bill around that worried her. And there Dad's got all the expense of rebuilding Greenacres. It's going to be a regular White Elephant, I'm afraid, because it isn't all paid for anyway, and there's the yearly interest." She hesitated before she added, slowly, "I wonder why on earth it is, Bill Ellis, that the people with the most children who need the most money ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... inhabitants there were only some monks and a score or two of families of the common people. At the spot where stood the old palace of king Suddhodana(2) there have been made images of the prince (his eldest son) and his mother;(3) and at the places where that son appeared mounted on a white elephant when he entered his mother's womb,(4) and where he turned his carriage round on seeing the sick man after he had gone out of the city by the eastern gate,(5) topes have been erected. The places (were also pointed out)(6) where (the ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... anything save loathing. I have also seen boxing and wrestling nastiness and brutality. I also happened to participate in a tiger hunt, at which I sat under a baldachin on the back of a big, wise white elephant ... in a word, you all know this well yourselves. And out of all my great, chequered, noisy life, from which I have grown ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... a white elephant among all those people!" answered Syme somewhat irritably. "As you very truly say, they are on the horizon; but if he were walking with them... by God! I believe ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... authorities were not slow to appreciate the value of the treasures that had thus fallen into their hands, yet for the moment it proved to them something of a white elephant. Montague Mansion was already crowded; moreover, its floors had never been intended to hold such heavy objects, so it became imperatively necessary to provide new quarters for the collection. This was done ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... This position was held by an affable Hebrew, one Benjamin Lumley, an ex-solicitor, who had abandoned his parchments and bills of costs and acquired a lease of Her Majesty's. The house had long been looked upon as something of a white elephant in the theatrical jungle; but Lumley, being pushful and knowledgeable, soon built up a valuable following and set ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... "Pearl of the Danube," a charming retreat in spring and autumn, when the heat does not force Fashion to the mountains, and famous for its mineral springs, hot and cold. It belongs to the King's cousin, Prince Joseph, and is a white elephant. The cost of gardening this beautiful island is colossal, and though the Prince has just drained a portion which used to be a swamp, the Danube is a standing danger. It is scarcely surprising that he cannot find a purchaser at three million florins. One of the walls of his private garden ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... acknowledged, with a little giggle that brought back his scowl. "You've got a white elephant on your hands, Kurt. What are you going to do ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... of many learned societies, and had honors and decorations without stint, including the Order of the White Elephant, the Swedish Order of the Northern Star, and the Order of Kamehameha I. His publications are a 'Russian Anthology,' 'Matins and Vespers,' 'Batavian Anthology,' 'Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain,' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... weakness or resentment about Mrs. Stiles, nor, for a stronger reason,—such is the unexpressed conclusion,—is there any feminine weakness about Mrs. Stiles's eloquent counsel. Well, gentlemen, if Mrs. Stiles is not a woman, what is she? Is she a white elephant? Is she a female suffragist? which, I have heard, is neither man nor woman." (Immense laughter in court, indignation in the cheeks of Mrs. Tarbell, a lofty and contemptuous frown on the forehead of Mrs. Pegley.) "Gentlemen, with the greatest possible ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... if life in India was going to be as quiet as life in England, but in 1824 the king of Ava, a Burmese city, demanded that Eastern Bengal should be given up to him, or war would be instantly declared. The answer sent to the 'Lord of the Great White Elephant' was a declaration of war on the part of our viceroy in India. Sir Archibald Campbell was given the command of the invading force, and he appointed Havelock to be ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... announced by a white elephant, which descends from heaven and declares to the queen, Maya, that she will bring forth a divine man, who "will attune all beings to love and friendship, and will unite them in a close alliance." We read in St. Luke's Gospel: "To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... he said bitterly; "I might as well have a white elephant, and I don't suppose I should enjoy myself much more at a public school than I do here. Let's have no humbug, sir. You're up and I'm down—there's no more to be said—I shall tell the Doctor nothing, but I warn you, if ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... tourist industry. That the royal prince who is the Minister of Communications recently made a tour of the United States for the purpose of studying American railway methods suggests, however, that the Land of the White Elephant is planning to get its share of tourist travel in ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Crowheart Courier, schottisched with Mrs. "Hank" Terriberry, while his no less gifted wife swayed in the arms of the local barber, and his two lovely daughters, "Pearline" and "Planchette," tripped it respectively with the "barkeep" of the White Elephant Saloon and a Minneapolis shoe-drummer. In the centre of the floor the new plasterer and his wife moved through the figures of the French minuet with the stiff-kneed grace of two self-conscious giraffes, while Mrs. Percy Parrott, a long-limbed lady with a ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... quite as wonderful as those of his later years. One night he was awakened from his slumbers by hearing the servants say that the great white elephant on which his father rode on state occasions had broken loose and was running about the royal gardens, mad with rage, pulling up the trees, tearing down buildings and killing every one that came in his way. Not a man dared stand against the fierce ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in the lower animals, and is exemplified ordinarily by rats, mice, crows, robins, etc. In the Zoologic Garden at Baltimore two years ago was a pair of pure albino opossums. The white elephant is celebrated in the religious history of Oriental nations, and is an object of veneration and worship in Siam. White monkeys and white roosters are also worshiped. In the Natural History Museum in London there are stuffed examples of albinism ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... toward the business section. On the way he dropped guiltily the telescope grip into a delivery wagon standing in front of a grocery. He had no use for it, and he had already come to feel it a white elephant ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... Dick, to pass Davenport and that crowd the white elephant," he chuckled. "I only hope they get bit bad, especially if they were the rascals who came here ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer |
