"Elephant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their horses had ever seen an elephant, and they were so taken aback by the strange sight that, long before the beasts came to close quarters, the mere sound of their trumpeting, the sight of their gleaming tusks relieved against dark bodies, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... there is one thing I cannot believe, that Your Excellency can transform yourself into an elephant and a tiger. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... added Reddy, "they say he's as big and strong as a bull elephant, and it's aching he'll be to stack ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... of you ever see an elephant's skin?" asked the master of an infant school. "I have," shouted a six-year-old at the foot of the class. ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... guided by mahouts in red and yellow uniforms, and attended by servants in liveries of the same colour, to the bazaars. Contents most interesting, especially the carved woodwork, copper-work, and Persian armour. Went to Golden Mosque and Fort, the palace, elephant-pool, and Runjeet Singh's tomb. Wonderful sight. Great fun bargaining. Shops each more curious than the others. Returned to station and resumed ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... walking through the streets of the same city, his thoughts were so wholly taken up with God, that he perceived not a furious elephant, who, being broken loose, caused a general terror, and every man made haste out of his way. It was in vain to cry out to the Father, that he might avoid him; he heard nothing, and the enraged beast passed very near him without ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... nothing about it. No information was given me as to the expert's report, and I was absolutely ignorant whether it was good, bad, or indifferent, though from the fact that we were to sell the stock I inferred that it was unfavorable. The public took the 50,000 shares at between 32 and 36, much as an elephant takes in water after a thirsty tramp across sandy deserts—the shares were just sucked in without a gulp or a gasp. I did not know until long afterward that the purchasers were the English holders who had contributed the greater ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... successful. As a statesman he was incorruptible, and of great use to his country. Previous to the battle of Asculum, Pyrrhus attempted to bribe him by large sums of money, and, failing in this, thought to frighten him by hiding an elephant behind a curtain; the curtain was suddenly removed, but Fabricius, though immediately under the ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... nihil;" for a few feathers of the bird alone were visible: he had been blown to nothing; and, peeping cautiously round the angle of the wall, he beheld a portly gentleman in black running along with the unwieldy gait of a chased elephant. ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... sat down and ate a little with him, after which he would have held his hand: but [whilst he was not looking] the Christian took a banana and peeled it, then, splitting it in twain, put into one half concentrated henbane, mixed with opium, a drachm whereof would overthrow an elephant. This half he dipped in the honey and gave to Ali Shar, saying, 'O my lord, I swear by thy religion that thou shalt take this.' Ali was ashamed to make him forsworn; so he took the half banana and swallowed it; but hardly had it ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... came, the children, going down to the foot, rolled over each other in the grass, with loud shouts. At last only two were left to dispute the letters in asparagus, elephant, constancy, and philosophical. Then Mr. Jeminy ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... in the light of his judgment. "As to a Nisi-prius lawyer (said Burke) giving an opinion on the duration of an Impeachment—as well might a rabbit, that breeds six times a year, pretend to know any thing of the gestation of an elephant."] took the wrong, the pedantic, and the unstatesmanlike side of the question,—while in all these indications of the spirit of that profession, and of its propensity to tie down the giant Truth, with its small threads ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... be objected to this view that there are many cases, as in the Elephant-Hawk-moth, in which caterpillars have both. A little consideration, however, will explain this. In small caterpillars these oblique lines would be useless, because they must have some relation, not only in color, but in their distance apart, to the ribs of the leaves. Hence, while there ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... flung round his loins and his great black eyes fronting, eagle-like, the sun—merits something considerable for condescending to act as guide and servant to the Western moneyed civilian who clothes his lower limbs in straight, funnel-like cloth casings, shaped to the strict resemblance of an elephant's legs, and finishes the graceful design by enclosing the rest of his body in a stiff shirt wherein he can scarcely move, and a square-cut coat which divides him neatly in twain by a line immediately above the knee, with ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... of speech or an instrument like the hand by which to place himself in closer relation to the outer world, he would doubtless be on a footing of mental equality with man, according to Mr. Laing. [69] The elephant's trunk accounts for his superior sagacity, and the horse suffers by his hoof-enclosed forefoot. [70] "Given a being with man's brain, man's hand, and erect stature, it is easy to see how intelligence ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Ananda, "how should the merits which barely suffice to effect the cure of a miserable Pariah avail to restore the offspring of an Elephant among Kings?" ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... agreed to board and lodge me for any length of time not less than a month. The vehicle, in which I took my place, was considerably larger than an English stage-coach, to which it bore much the same proportion and rude resemblance, that an elephant's ear does to the human. Its top was composed of naked boards of different colours, and seeming to have been parts of different wainscots. Instead of windows there were leathern curtains with a little eye of glass in each: they perfectly ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... histories, Egyptian histories, Eastern histories, inscriptions, national epics, legends, fragments of legends—in the New World as in the Old—all tell the same story. Not the story without an end, but the story without a beginning. As in the Hindoo cosmogony, the world stands on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on—what? No man knows. I do not know. I only assert deliberately, waiting, as Napoleon says, till the world come round to me, that the tortoise does not stand—as is held by certain anthropologists, some honoured by me, some personally ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... god K we recognize the ornament so common in the temple ruins of Central America—the so-called "elephant's trunk." The peculiar, conventionalized face, with the projecting proboscis-shaped nose, which is applied chiefly to the corners of temple walls, displays unquestionably the features of god K. The significance of god K in this architectural relation is unknown. Some connection with his ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... a Circus. I fairly ache to sit in a Red Wagon just behind the Band and drive a Trick Mule with little pieces of Looking Glass in the Harness. I want to pull Mugs at all the scared Country Girls peeking out of the Wagon Beds. The Town Boys will leave the Elephant and trail behind my comical Chariot. In my Hour of Triumph the Air will be impregnated with Calliope Music and the Smell of Pop-Corn, modified ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... men had borne these buffets without shrinking, and had shown themselves thereby to be more useful, much more efficacious; but he could no more imitate them than he could procure for himself the skin of a rhinoceros or the tusk of an elephant. And this shrinking was what men called pride,—was the pride of which his old friend wrote! "Have I ever been haughty, unless in my own defence?" he asked himself, remembering certain passages of humility in his life,—and certain passages ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... linkt in happie nuptial League, Alone as they. About them frisking playd 340 All Beasts of th' Earth, since wilde, and of all chase In Wood or Wilderness, Forrest or Den; Sporting the Lion rampd, and in his paw Dandl'd the Kid; Bears, Tygers, Ounces, Pards Gambold before them, th' unwieldy Elephant To make them mirth us'd all his might, and wreathd His Lithe Proboscis; close the Serpent sly Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine His breaded train, and of his fatal guile Gave proof unheeded; others ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... coarse elephant turned into a Romeo, sighing like a furnace?" he said to himself, and ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... by them to the present day; the last instance I noticed is that of Prof. Ernst Haeckel, translated in Dr. Paul Carus' late work, "The Soul of Man." This law measures the progress of organisms from the homogeneous jelly-fish to the complex elephant or man; from the savage tribe to the Roman Empire, or the future "Federation of Mankind and Parliament of the World." Integration is the mother, nurse, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... The elephant was said to be seen about Cape Unsing, where several teeth are still found; but it is conceived this animal is extinct on the island. There are no dromedaries nor camels; nor are horses, asses, or ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... sometimes with one hand, sometimes with the other, he interposed a flat poker between the red mass and the hammer, sharing a vibration that was powerful enough to dislocate the shoulder of any lesser man. "Hold," he cried: the elephant-like machine stopped. He took and hauled the great ball into a new position. "Go on," he shouted: the elephant machine went on, and again the red sparks flew as though a thousand Homeric blacksmiths had been striking in unison, until it was time again to ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... the Future before your Spectatorial Authority. On Sunday last, one, who shall be nameless, reproving several of his Congregation for standing at Prayers, was pleased to say, One would think, like the Elephant, you had no Knees. Now I my self saw an Elephant in Bartholomew-Fair kneel down to take on his Back ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... giraffe is found in the Luanga valley; it is also met with in the extreme north-east of the country. The ordinary African rhinoceros is still occasionally, but very rarely, seen in the Shire Highlands, The African elephant is fairly common throughout the whole territory. Lions and leopards are very abundant; the zebra is still found in great numbers, and belongs to the Central African variety of Burchell's zebra, which is completely striped down to the hoofs, and is intermediate in many particulars between the true ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... a panther, this is an elephant," was Billy's uncheering opinion. "It's got weight. Listen to that. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... but he had seen a man, and knew, therefore, how to vary him to a monster. A man who would draw a monstrous cow, must first know what a cow commonly is; or how can he tell that to give her an ass's head or an elephant's tusk will make her monstrous. Suppose you show me a man who is a ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... fragments of what is called the Chimalpopoca manuscript. Probably this theory of a series of kalpas is only one of the devices by which the human mind has tried to cheat itself into the belief that it can conceive a beginning of things. The earth stands on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and it is going too far to ask what the tortoise stands on. In the same way the world's beginning seems to become more intelligible or less puzzling when it is thrown back into a series of beginnings and endings. This method also was in ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... lives therein a different life for every day in the week; for no monarch alive is so all-powerful as he whose throne is the imagination. Little tin soldier, Shem, Ham, and Japhet from the Noah's Ark, the hornless cow, the tailless dog, and the elephant that won't stand up, these play their allotted parts in his innocent comedies, and meanwhile he grows steadily in sympathy and in comprehension of the ever-widening circle of human relationships. "When ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... of incense,' 'stools upset towards heaven,' 'part of elephant's eyes,' 'squares,' 'chains,' 'plum blossom,' and 'willow ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... jibboom, which knocked him over into the moat and broke two of his ribs, and it was also maintained with equal truth that when she came to the wharf it was found she had brought away a small brass gun on her bowsprit, into which she had thrust it like the long trunk of an elephant." ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... was that of Phineas Taylor Barnum, the greatest showman the world has ever seen, the originator of the great travelling circus, the exploiter of Tom Thumb and Jenny Lind, the owner of Jumbo, the most famous elephant that ever lived, whose name has passed into the English language as ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... by a combination of sounds, in which they could distinguish the roar of the lion, the trumpet-like notes of the elephant, mingled with the voices of some creature they could not ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... fall weather, after they have nearly completed the labors of the season. Weighing hives is unnecessary. A moderate degree of judgment will determine whether a swarm has a sufficient store for winter. If not, feed them. Never give bees dry sugar. They take up their food, as an elephant does water in his trunk; it, therefore, should be in a liquid form. Boil good sugar for ten minutes in ale or beer, leaving it about as thick as honey. Put it in a feed trough; which ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... strength, And where a while they chance to fall Fling a faint splendour over all. See, o'er the woods where grass is wet With hoary drops that cling there yet, With soft light clothing earth and bough There steals a tender glory now. Yon elephant who longs to drink, Still standing on the river's brink, Plucks back his trunk in shivering haste From the cold wave he fain would taste. The very fowl that haunt the mere Stand doubtful on the bank, and fear To dip them in the wintry wave As cowards dread to meet the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... 11, 17: when al-Walid b. al-Mughira was dead, the Arabs dated after his death to the year of the elephant, which thereafter was made an epoch. According to others they reckoned nine years after the death of Hisham b. al-Mughira, to the time when they built the Caaba, and then they dated from the building of the Caaba. Comp. the 'Am al Ramada ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... was announced, would perform on the occasion. It was a fine moonlight night, and the inhabitants of Auckland turned out in force. There must have been at least two thousand well-dressed people promenading about, listening to the music. The Prince's elephant was there too, and afforded a good deal of amusement. How the poor brute was slung out of the 'Galatea,' got on shore, and got back on ship-board again, was ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... especially the larger members of these orders, the grooves, or sulci, become extremely numerous, and the intermediate convolutions proportionately more complicated in their meanderings, until, in the Elephant, the Porpoise, the higher Apes, and Man, the cerebral surface appears a perfect ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... fer ter sorter straighten out marters en hear de complaints, en w'en de day come dey wuz on han'. De Lion, he wuz dar, kase he wuz de king, en he hatter be der. De Rhynossyhoss, he wuz dar, en de Elephant, he wuz dar, en de Cammils, en de Cows, en plum' down ter de Crawfishes, dey wuz dar. Dey wuz all dar. En w'en de Lion shuck his mane, en tuck his seat in de big cheer, den de sesshun begun ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... the fir-trees. How long this state of things endured we know not, but at length it came to an end. The upheaved glacial mud hardened into the soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grew once more, the wolf and the beaver replaced the reindeer and the elephant; and at length what we call ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... to say a word, and when I jerked loose, which I did right away, for I didn't want to stir up any fuss there, I left quite a piece of my ear with the tame hyena, and tripped backward over the rope and rolled right in front of a creature called an elephant, about as big as a ...
— How Mr. Rabbit Lost his Tail • Albert Bigelow Paine
... edicts of the senate on, with a black colour; and the expression of libri elephantini, which some authors imagine alludes to books that for their size were called elephantine, were most probably composed of ivory, the tusk of the elephant: among the Romans they ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... this 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
... said the man. "Why, only last month a brute of a dog bit me in the leg, at a back door Sutton way. An' once I see a elephant." ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... harsh grating sound; if a pin be laid upon it, we hear a blow like a blacksmith's hammer; and, more astonishing than all, if a fly walk across it we hear it tramping like a charger, and even its peculiar cry, which has been likened, with some allowance for imagination, to the snorting of an elephant. Moreover it should not be forgotten that the wires connecting up the telephone may be lengthened to any desired extent, so that, in the words of Professor Hughes, 'the beating of a pulse, the tick of a watch, the tramp of a fly can then be heard at least a hundred ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... have done, and, if he does, wishing it may be attended with a more favourable issue. He determines to make the experiment; and by their direction, after certain preparations, is flown away with through the air by a roc, a stupendous bird, that is capable in the same manner of carrying off an elephant. By this means he is brought to a castle of the most extraordinary magnificence, inhabited by forty ladies of exquisite beauty. With these ladies he lives for eleven months in a perpetual succession of delights. But in the twelfth month they tell him, that ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... she looked after him. "My first 'romance,'" she thought. "With a baby elephant! Slim is a dear boy and I hate myself now because I used to make such fun of him." And where the passionate laments of the girls had failed to move her, the thought of Slim's offered sacrifice brought the tears to her eyes. "'Oh, was there ever such a knight in friendship or in ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... boy, I warn you against putting any of your ill-gotten gains into that sort of speculation. They may perhaps start one from the Elephant and it'll get about as fur as the Obelisk, and there it'll stick. And they'll have to take it to pieces, and sell it for scrap iron. I know ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... Sedgwick's corps was next in order, while Burnside held the left. Just as the commanders were forming their lines and some men at a Union battery seemed to shrink from the Confederate sharpshooters, Sedgwick went forward to encourage them, saying, "Men, they couldn't hit an elephant at that distance." But the next instant he himself fell dead! His command of the Sixth Corps was ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... passed away, the express brought to Bok one day a beautiful plaque of red clay, showing the elephant's head, the lotus, and the swastika, which the father had made for the son. It was the original model of the insignia which, as a watermark, is used in the pages of Kipling's books and on the cover of ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... light coat and a quaintly piquant Napoleon hat of Alice Blue, and they walked along the Avenue and into the Zoo, where they properly admired the grandeur of the elephant and the collar-height of the giraffe, but did not visit the monkey house because Gloria said that monkeys smelt ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... (room of the people), where she received supplicants for alms and various other favours, was upholstered in Godstone blue, with hangings of griffin pink; her salle a manger (dining-room) was a tasteful melange of elephant green, cerise, and burnt umber. Her salle de bain (bathroom) deserves special mention, owing to its bizarre mixture of mustard colour and vetch purple—while her chambre a coucher (bedroom) was a truly fitting setting for so brilliant a gem. The ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... people' are able to 'convers with a straunger' in English. The bitterness aroused by the religious question was intensified by a report which was 'blazed abroad,' as Hooker says, 'a Gnat making an Elephant, that the gentlemen were altogether bent to over-run, spoil, or destroy the people.' No one could have acted with greater loyalty and courage than the Mayor, John Blackaller, and his powers were put to a hard trial before the end of the siege. Not only ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... echoed when the customs were dropped into it; but the change was still new. What could a man be more than Capitaine Lemaitre was—the soul of honor, the pink of courtesy, with the courage of the lion, and the magnanimity of the elephant; frank—the very exchequer of truth! Nay, go higher still: his paper was good in Toulouse Street. To the gossips in the gaming-clubs he was the culminating proof that smuggling was one of ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... that the creek could easily be flumed to the barn, and as that was the only objection of the others to this location, they wrote the owner of the property for a price. They were astonished when they received the figures. It had come by inheritance to a man to whom it was a white elephant of the most exasperating sort, and he was glad to get rid of it for almost a song. They were a jubilant three at the news. It saved the cost of building a mill, and including that, the price was as ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Jack and Bob went, but [Jimmy Crow] was left at home. The [two boys] bought [a bag of peanuts] and fed the [elephant] and [monkeys]. Jack put his [hand] full of nuts between the bars, and a little brown [monkey] pulled his [fingers] open and ...
— Jimmy Crow • Edith Francis Foster
... and willing to do so and so? I am not prepared to deny your competence. To the human mind belongs the faculty of enlarging and diminishing, of distorting and combining, indefinitely the objects revealed by the senses. It can imagine a mouse as large as an elephant, an elephant as large as a mountain, and a mountain as high as the stars. It can separate congruities and unite incongruities. We see a fish and we see a woman we can drop one half of each, and unite in idea the other two halves to a mermaid. We see a horse and we see a man; ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... table. The same shall helpe as much to lerne without boke the names of trees, herbs, and beastes, and also their properties, inespecially of these whych be not common to be seene in euerye place, as is Rhinoceros, whyche is a beaste that hathe a horne in hys nose, naturall enemye to the Elephant: Tragelaphus, agoate hart, Duocrotalus, abyrd lyke to a sw, whyche puttyng hys head into the water brayeth lyke an asse, an asse of Inde and an Elephant. The table maye haue an Elephant whom a Dragon claspeth harde ...
— The Education of Children • Desiderius Erasmus
... the drinking of spirituous liquors. Were I about to storm an enemy's battery, with no alternative before me but victory or death, I might, principle aside, infuriate my men with the maddening influence of ardent spirit, and let them loose upon the charge, as I would a wounded elephant, or an enraged tiger. But in attaining an object to which the combined energies of mind and body were requisite, I should never think of the appropriateness of spirituous liquor to ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... Information accordingly came in and the city as a result was stirred up. This lasted till the scarcity of grain subsided, when gladiatorial games in honor of Drusus were given by Germanicus Caesar and Tiberius Claudius Nero, his sons. [In the course of them an elephant vanquished a rhinoceros and a knight distinguished for his wealth fought as a gladiator.] The people were encouraged by this honor shown to the memory of Drusus and by Tiberius's dedication of the temple of the Dioscuri, upon which he inscribed not only his name but also that of Drusus. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... other plants which have underground parts that are commonly called bulbs but which are not bulbs at all; for example, the gladiolus and the caladium, or elephant's ear. Their underground parts are bulblike in shape, but are really solid flattened stems with eyes like the underground stem of the Irish potato. These parts are called corms. They may be cut into pieces like the potato and ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... with great pomp: representatives of every tribe and nation in the Empire took part, with native costumes and musical instruments: some rode on camels, some on deer, others were drawn by oxen, dogs and swine. The bridal couple were borne in a cage on an elephant's back. A palace was built entirely of ice for their reception. It was ornamented with ice pillars and statues, and lighted by panes of thin ice. The door and window posts were painted to represent green marble: droll pictures on linen were placed in ice frames. All the furniture, the chairs, ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... other Females all Yellow, fair or Black, To thy Charmes shall prostrate fall, As every kind of elephant does To the white Elephant Buitenacke. And thou alone shall have from me Jimminy, Gomminy, whee, whee, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... or show any glimmering of what we call reason, is a much-debated question among animal psychologists, and I shall have more to say upon the subject later on. Dogs undoubtedly show gleams of reason, and other animals in domestication, such as the elephant and the monkey. One does not often feel like questioning Darwin's conclusions, yet the incident of the caged bear which he quotes, that pawed the water in front of its cage to create a current that should float within its reach a piece of bread that had been placed there, ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... life on the Indian frontier, building roads, and relieving famines and minimizing earthquakes, and all that sort of thing that one does do on frontiers. He could talk sense to a peevish cobra in fifteen native languages, and probably knew what to do if you found a rogue elephant on your croquet-lawn; but he was shy and diffident with women. I told my mother privately that he was an absolute woman-hater; so, of course, she laid herself out to flirt all she ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... boat's-crew from the "Alabama" went aboard to take possession. The prize proved to be the mail steamer "Ariel," with five hundred passengers, besides a hundred and forty marines and a number of army and navy officers. Now Capt. Semmes had an elephant on his hands, and what to do with that immense number of people he could not imagine. Clearly the steamer could not be burned like other captures. For two days Capt. Semmes kept the prize near him, debating what ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Colonel Sahib," she cried. "I felt you were when I was down there looking at the fountain. It sort of pulled at me with remindings of you ages and ages ago, in the gardens of the club at Bhutpur—when you brought me a present—a darling little green jade elephant in a sandalwood box, as a birthday gift from Henrietta. Later there was a terrible tragedy. An odious little boy broke my elephant, on purpose, and broke my ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... up," disagreed Elfreda. "I never had a very good time when I was little, because I was always grieving over being a prize fat child. The way of the baby elephant is pretty thorny. Well, well!" she exclaimed playfully as the two little girls, laughing gleefully, ended their run by flinging themselves ecstatically upon herself and Grace. "What's the meaning of this onslaught? If we hadn't been very large, sturdy persons we might ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... Erik equipped a fleet to meet the promised bride. There were twelve men-of-war, which were got ready for fighting if necessary, James Bagge, a famous seaman of those days, being admiral of the Elephant, with command of the fleet. The assigned purpose of the expedition was to bring the bride over from Luebeck, but it is said that Admiral Bagge had secret orders to seek and attack the Danish fleet, and thus punish King Frederick ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... more whimsical extremes. He accepts, in all apparent seriousness, the theory of his favourite, Mr. Shandy, that a man's name influences his character. Thus, for example, a man called Minoret-Levrault must necessarily be 'un elephant sans trompe et sans intelligence,' and the occult meaning of Z. Marcas requires a long and elaborate commentary. Repeat the word Marcas, dwelling on the first syllable, and dropping abruptly on the second, and you will see that the man who bears it must be a martyr. The zigzag ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... and a white-spotted blue necktie, I have instinctively thought of Bower, who wore such a waistcoat and such a necktie, with the glossiest of silk hats and most shapely of patent-leather boots, throughout the siege of Paris, when he was fond of dilating on the merits of boiled ostrich and stewed elephant's foot, of which expensive dainties he partook at his club, after the inmates of the Jardin des Plantes had ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... weighed three hundred pounds if he did an ounce, and the idee of his bein' turned into a fly seemed to bring down my soarin' emotions more than considerable. Truly, we ort to be careful how we handle metafors. If he'd said he wanted to be changed into a elephant or a camel, or even a horse, it wouldn't have seemed so curious, but ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... with the dazzling brightness of numberless precious stones attired in all the outward pomp of her high position, the Prince was habited in the splendid uniform of a Danish regiment of horse; and the most honourable Order of the Elephant, surmounted with a castle, set in diamonds, and suspended to a sky-blue watered ribbon, passed over his right shoulder; a white ribbon from which depended a small cross of diamonds, and an embroidered star on the breast of his coat denoted ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... to the section the result of some calculations he had made with great difficulty and labour, regarding the state of infant education among the middle classes of London. He found that, within a circle of three miles from the Elephant and Castle, the following were the names and numbers of children's ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a great many soldiers in India, and the elephant has gradually become one of the most important ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... and fierse, Whereof oft times we see, at going downe of Sunne, Diuers descend in companie, and to the sea they come. Where as vpon the sand they lie, and chew the cud: Sometime in water eke they stand and wallow in the floud. The Elephant we see, a great vnweldie beast, With water fils his troonke right hie and blowes it on the rest. The Hart I saw likewise delighted in the soile, The wilde Boare eke after his guise with snout in earth doth moile. A great strange beast ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... and elephant hide, and had a fierce battle with a huge negro whose two little naked children they carried off,—but though the chronicle of the voyages stops here for several chapters of rapturous reflection on the greatness of the Nile, and the valour and spirit of the Prince ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... a warlike expedition.[18] In Laos the hunting of elephants gives rise to many taboos; one of them is that the chief hunter may not touch the earth with his foot. Accordingly, when he alights from his elephant, the others spread a carpet of leaves for him to step upon.[19] German wiseacres recommended that when witches were led to the block or the stake, they should not be allowed to touch the bare earth, and a reason suggested for ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... I think, for one night; let's have the eatables removed, and we will have a pipe, and hear what Jem has got to say; and you have told us nothing about birds, either, you old elephant; what do you mean by it? That's right, Tim, now bring in my cigars, and Mr. Forester's cheroots, and cold iced water, and boiling-hot water, and sugar, out of my box, and lemons. The shrub is here, and the Scotch whiskey; will you have ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... elephants sway Each at a chain at the end of a day, Hurrumdi-didddlidi-um-di-ay! Nothing to do but rock and swing, Clanking an iron picket ring, Plucking the dust to flirt and fling; Keep et ceteras out of range, Anything out of the way or strange Suits us elephant folk for change - Various odds and ends appeal To liven the round of work and meal. Curious trunks can reach and steal! Fool with Two-tails if you dare; Help yourself. But fool, beware! Whatever results is your ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... he began; "I've been seeing that young fool Lawless start in his new tandem, as he calls it. A pretty start it was too; why, the thing's as high as a stage-coach—ought to have a ladder to get up—almost as bad as mounting an elephant! And then the horses, fiery devils! two men at each of their noses, and enough to do to hold 'em even so! Well, out comes Master Lawless, in a greatcoat made like a coal-sack, with buttons as big as five-shilling pieces, a whip as long as a fishing-rod in his hand, and a cigar in his mouth. ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... your kinfolk's immediate endeavors was none too difficult; and I wanted Guienne—and, in consequence, the person of your brother. Hah, death of my life! does not the seasoned hunter adapt his snare to the qualities of his prey, and take the elephant through his curiosity, as the snake through his notorious treachery?" Now the King ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... Stuffed Animals were, and you may imagine how I did stare—sure enough they were a lot of the beasts from the Zoological Gardens. But the most curious thing was, that many of them were dressed just like Christians. First came the big Elephant, putting me in mind, for all the world, of Mr. Trunk, the great City merchant; then the Hippopotamus, with a fez cap on exactly like the Abyssinian prince, Ippo, that was in the Exhibition a few days before; then a Kangaroo, with a smart bonnet ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... or regents of the world, often thus appealed to, are eight: Kubera, Isha, Indra, Agni, Yama, Niruti, Waruna, and Wayu: and they ride on a horse, a bull, an elephant, a ram, a buffalo, a man, a ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... work with tremendous seriousness, much like an elephant hunting for peanuts hidden in a bale of hay. He saw no humour in the operation. As a matter of fact, Nature had not intended there should be any humour about it. Thor's time was more or less valueless, and during the course of a summer he absorbed in his system a good many hundred thousand ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... of coral—the skeletons of the polyps—is methodical and very slow. We speak of coral as if it were a plant, yet the reproduction is by means of eggs, and the polyp is as much an animal as a horse or an elephant. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... our second grievance I must break, 277 'That loss of strength makes understanding weak.' I grieve no more my youthful strength to want, Than, young, that of a bull, or elephant; Then with that force content, which Nature gave, Nor am I now displeased with what I have. When the young wrestlers at their sport grew warm, Old Milo wept, to see his naked arm; And cried, 'twas dead. Trifler! thine heart and head, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... clearness of Cicero or Caesar! In the treatise on husbandry, Varro is at great pains to describe a magnificent aviary in his villa at Casinum, but his auditors must have been clear-headed indeed if they could follow his description. [20] And in the De Lingua Latina, wishing to show how the elephant was called Luca bos from having been first seen in Lucania with the armies of Pyrrhus, and from the ox being the largest quadruped with which the Italians were then acquainted, he gives us the following ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... a lady, who said, 'I think the little girl said the box of beasts.' And, oh! Mother, Mother! here is the box of beasts! They're not common beasts, you know—not wooden ones, painted; they're rough, something like hair. And feel the old elephant's ears, they're quite leathery, and the lion has real long hair for his mane and the tip of his tail. They are such thorough beasts. Oh, how the boys will like them! Tom shall have the darling brown bear. I do think he is the very ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... not live to the end of the week if this sort of thing goes on. I don't know what to do with the little beast; he's as bad as an elephant to take care of," said the poor lady, in despair, as she saw Jocko throw his corncob down on the minister's hat as that stately ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... Fritz, "here comes a great elephant carrying an organ in his trunk. See, he is setting it down; now he is turning the crank and playing a ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... explain to her the differences of language in this world, she was embarked on the full tide of another subject. "What do you think, Father? Bhola says there is an elephant in the clouds, blowing water out of his trunk, and that ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... even more than his crippled limbs, it put him on a canine footing. In short, as in appearance he seemed a dog, so now, in a merry way, like a dog he began to be treated. Still shuffling among the crowd, now and then he would pause, throwing back his head and, opening his mouth like an elephant for tossed apples at a menagerie; when, making a space before him, people would have a bout at a strange sort of pitch-penny game, the cripple's mouth being at once target and purse, and he hailing each expertly-caught copper with a cracked bravura from his tambourine. To be ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... other hand, the steady increase in size of certain other species of animals during the later geologic ages is a curious and interesting fact. The first progenitors of the elephant that have been found show a small animal that steadily grew through the ages till the animal as we now find it is reached. Among the invertebrates this same progressive increase in size has been noted, a small ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... highest of the elephants adorned with a large tower, and with military trappings of gold to guard him, and supposing that Antiochus himself was upon him, he ran a great way before his own army, and cutting his way through the enemy's troops, he got up to the elephant; yet could he not reach him who seemed to be the king, by reason of his being so high; but still he ran his weapon into the belly of the beast, and brought him down upon himself, and was crushed to death, having done ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... were doing? Hurlingham and Ranelagh, Maidenhead and Henley, Eton and Oxford, Sandhurst and Aldershot, Piccadilly in the season, Simla in the heats, the results for Kempton Park and Newmarket Races—of all these they talked, with rhino and elephant shooting and the big battues of pheasants now taking place in the Home Midlands and up North. But though the watch-fires of their pickets burned upon the veld, and though the Boer lay in laager over the Border, of him they said not one word. That reticence upon the vital point ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... wished to build up an elephant or mammoth, he placed four cakes of clay upon the ground, at proper distances, which were moulded into shape, and became the feet ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... the handsome sister of the young wirth, a noted beauty of the neighborhood. "Their house was full already. Nine guests, who had never sent word beforehand, were quite out of the question, but the Herrschaft could be accommodated at the Elephant opposite, which was related to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... is a bear, who climbs a pole to get cake and gingerbread from the spectators. Elsewhere, a circular building, with compartments for lions, wolves, and tigers. In another part of the garden is a colony of monkeys, the skeleton of an elephant, birds of all kinds. Swans and various rare water-fowl were swimming on a piece of water, which was green, by the by, and when the fowls dived they stirred up black mud. A stork was parading along the margin, with melancholy strides of its long legs, and came slowly ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... no longer a government which falls that it may give way to another; it is all government which ceases to exist in order to make way for an intermittent despotism, for factions blindly impelled on by enthusiasm, credulity, misery, and fear.[1233] Like a tame elephant suddenly become wild again, the mob throws off it ordinary driver, and the new guides who it tolerates perched on its neck are there simply for show. In future it will move along as it pleases, freed from control, and abandoned to its own feelings, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the Roman Pantheon had divinities. We are not "well-informed," but "posted" or "posted up." We are not "hospitably entreated" any more, but "put through." We do not "meet with misadventure," but "see the elephant," which we often do through the Hibernian process of "fighting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... pretended that he was the pirate, and that the others were his prisoners. He made them dig little holes in the sand, and bring in shells and stones as well as seaweed. This last he made believe was hay for a make-believe elephant. ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... facts. It was a great belt of saffron encircling his whole soul. That she, Wilhelmina Bennett, who had gone through the world seeking a Galahad, should finish her career as the wife of a man who hid under beds simply because people shot at him with elephant guns was abhorrent to her. Why, Samuel Marlowe would have perished rather than do such a thing. You might say what you liked about Samuel Marlowe—and, of course, his habit of playing practical jokes put him beyond the pale—but nobody could question his courage. Look at the way ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... miles around to borrow his head. He always charged everybody just the same no matter what it was that they'd lost. One dollar was what he charged. It was just as much trouble to him he said to think about a thimble that was lost as it was to think about an elephant that was lost.—I never knew anybody who ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the moon is up! The larks begin to fly, And, like a drowsy buttercup, Dark Phoebus skims the sky, The elephant with cheerful voice, Sings blithely on the spray; The bats and beetles all rejoice, Then let me, too, ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... flirting," said Jane. "Every animal has its own way—and an elephant's way is different ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... and live with us? Joe wants you, too. There's the little room upstairs; it's not very big, but we can put in a Franklin stove for you and make you pretty comfortable. Joe says he should think you ought to sell that white elephant of a place. He says he could put the money into his store and pay you good interest. I wish you would, mother. We'd just love to have you here. You'd be such a comfort to me, and such a help with the babies. And Joe just loves you. Do come now, and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... charming thou didst appear to me then, frightful tulle cabbage, with thy flaunting strings like unto an elephant's ears, and thy enormous bows resembling those pompons with which horses' heads are decorated! How much dearer to me wert thou than the diadem of an empress, a vestal's fillet, the ropes of pearls twined among the jetty locks of Venice's loveliest ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... other organic remains accompanying the stone implements were of living species. But memorials have of late been brought to light of a still older age of stone, for which, as above stated, the name Paleolithic has been proposed, when man was contemporary in Europe with the elephant and rhinoceros, and various other animals, of which many of the most conspicuous have ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... remarked Clarence. "Only wants a couple of clowns with bladders on horseback and a performing elephant." ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... issues: a long civil war and recurrent drought in the hinterlands have resulted in increased migration of the population to urban and coastal areas with adverse environmental consequences; desertification; pollution of surface and coastal waters; elephant poaching for ivory is ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... "Elephant" Small, who did not happen to be on the nine, because of his customary slow ways. "Perhaps you'll be saying that dandy two-bagger you whanged out, that brought in the winning run, ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... Holmes upon a second expedition to Africa in 1663 with orders to protect the company's rights. As a further means of encouragement Charles II ordered all gold imported from Africa by the Royal Company to be coined with an elephant on one side, as a mark of distinction from the coins then prevalent in England.[35] These coins were called "Guineas"; they served to increase the reputation and prestige of the company. Moreover, the king with many of his courtiers made important additions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... 'Because I like it.' 'Why do I like it?' 'Because it meets my needs, or my desires, or my tastes, or my intellect.' Why do you make the meeting of your needs, or your desires, or your tastes, or your intellect your sole object? Is there any answer to that? The Hindoos say that the world rests upon an elephant, and the elephant rests upon a tortoise. What does the tortoise rest on? Nothing! Then that is what the world and the elephant rest on. And so, though you may go bravely through the first stages of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... So shrunk my sinews, or so chilled my veins, But conscious virtue in my breast remains: But had I now That strength, with which my boiling youth was fraught, When in the vale of Balasor I fought, And from Bengal their captive monarch brought; When elephant 'gainst elephant did rear His trunk, and castles jostled in the air; My sword thy way to victory had shown, And owed the conquest ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... the author, having an inscription on the fly leaf, apparently in Bunyan's autograph, 'This for my good and dearly beloved frend mistris Backcraft.' It has a false title, bearing the imprint of 'London, Printed for Francis Smith, at the Elephant and Castle without Temple Barr, 1669.' The editor's copy, soiled and tattered, cost him twenty shillings, a striking proof of its rarity. This has the original title, with the real date, 1665, but without a printer's or publisher's name-from which it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... nothing of small obstacles, and was but little affected by things that might have retarded ordinary mortals. Small bushes went down before him like grass, larger ones he turned aside, and thick ones he went crashing through like an African elephant through jungle, while the fine frosted snow went flying from his snow-shoes right and left. There was no hesitancy or wavering as to direction or pace. The land he was acquainted with, every inch. Reserve force, he knew, lay stored in every muscle, and he was prepared to draw it all out when fatigue ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mosaick Work of the Ancient Romans, which is adornd with several Figures alluding to Mirth and Concord, in particular that of Bacchus seated on a Panther.) This is to give Notice the Exact Delineation of the same is Engraven and Imprinted on a large Elephant sheet of Paper, which are to be sold at Mr. Charles Lillies, Perfumer, at the corner of Beauford Buildings, in the Strand, at 1s. N.B. There are to be had, at the same Place, at one Guinea each, on superfine Atlas Paper, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... was a female, and a small one. When it re-appeared harpoons and lances were at once driven into it, and it was killed almost immediately. This is not always the result of such an encounter, for this elephant of the polar seas is naturally a ferocious brute, and when bulls are attacked they are prone to show ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... to go out hunting tigers on the back of an elephant. He did not, however, bestride it as he would a horse, but sat with one or two other persons in a sort of box, called a howdah, fastened on the animal's back. The huge creature was guided by a man called a mahout, seated on its neck, with a sharp-pointed stick in his hand. To get into the howdah ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... animal but man commands an articulate language, with verbs and nouns, or is ever likely to command one (and I question whether in reality he means much more than this), no one will differ from him. No dog or elephant has one word for bread, another for meat, and another for water. Yet, when we watch a cat or dog dreaming, as they often evidently do, can we doubt that the dream is accompanied by a mental image of the thing that is dreamed of, much like what we experience in dreams ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... dozen times—the size of the other. Beside her might stand a six-foot man, erect, mighty-muscled, bronzed, with the body of a god, yet with feet and calves so swollen that they ran together, forming legs, shapeless, monstrous, that were for all the world like elephant legs. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... Battering Ram, a fearful beast, I think he weighs a thousand tons at least. Stronger than any other kind of butter, He goes his way calmly, without a flutter. Big as an elephant, bigger than a horse, He seems the best example ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... appears that it was not very easy to find a better term. For my own part I should be very much puzzled to find a name really suitable for such an irregular company as this, in which all the huge beasts of the earth—the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus—are heaped one upon the other, side by side with the horse, the ass, and the hog; begging your pardon ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... everything. So they worked at top speed, and left the final performance to Tuxall. In their excitement they forgot to find out from their accomplice who Bailey was. Consequently, they found themselves presently driving across country with an unknown and undesired white elephant of a boy on their hands. One of them conceived the idea of tossing his clothes upon the sea-beach to establish a false clue of drowning, until they could decide what was to be done with him. In ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... talking, he spied on a sudden a boat in the lake, made of red sandal wood. It had a mast of fine amber, and a blue satin flag: there was only one boatman in it, whose head was like an elephant's, and his body like that of a tiger. When the boat was come up to the prince and Mobarec, the monstrous boatman took them up one after another with his trunk, put them into his boat, and carried them over the lake in a moment. He then again took them up with his ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous |
