"Skunk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stability by the British Empire. The exact particulars of the similarity never came to light, but apparently the lady had, in a fit of high-minded inadvertence, had gone through the ceremony of marriage with, one quotes the unpublished discourse of Mr. Butteridge—"a white-livered skunk," and this zoological aberration did in some legal and vexatious manner mar her social happiness. He wanted to talk about the business, to show the splendour of her nature in the light of its complications. It was really most embarrassing to a press that has always possessed ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... early spring, when gentle Sister South Wind had melted all the snow, excepting a little patch right under the window of Mr. Skunk's house, Mr. Rabbit came strolling along that way with nothing special on his mind. Mr. and Mrs. Skunk were having a little family talk, and Mr. Skunk was speaking some loud. Mr. Rabbit stopped. Then Mr. Rabbit grinned and sat right down on that bed ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... and stay away from the lake. There was a hell of an explosion over there this morning. Three men went to see what'd happened. They didn't come back. Two more went after 'em, and something hit them on the way. They smelled something worse than skunk. Then they were paralyzed, like they had hold of a high-tension line. They saw crazy colors and heard crazy sounds and they couldn't move a finger. Their car ditched. In a while they came out of it and they came back—fast! They'd just got back when we ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... imprudent and reckless, Birrell so prudent and incapable of giving himself away, Sir Henry Fowler so commonplace and trite. He looked so wicked. I thought of Mr. Haldane's story of Fowler's fur coat and his single remark on examining it: "skunk." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... weak man in the lodge," cried McGinty. "True as steel, every man of them. And yet, by the Lord! there is that skunk Morris. What about him? If any man gives us away, it would be he. I've a mind to send a couple of the boys round before evening to give him a beating up and see what they can get ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... to his feet and throwing off the mask completely. "You damned skunk, are you accusin' me of crooking the ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... and Blades let out a long, ragged breath. They sat a while trembling before Chung muttered, "That skunk as good as ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... in winter, when the lodge was full of old and young people, and through lack of attention the fire died down, some older person would call out, "Look out for the skunk!" which would be a warning to the boys to put some sticks on the fire. If this was not done at once, the man who had called out might throw a stick of wood across the lodge into the group of children, hitting and hurting one or more of them. It was taught also that, if, when young and old ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... pride," snorted grandma, "it's of the skunk order. He'd make use of every one because he thinks he's an English swell, and then wouldn't speak to them if he met them out no more than they were dogs. I don't think there's a single thing he could do to save his life. If there's a bit ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... a hot time!" shouted Yellin' Kid, as he spurred forward. "And I don't see th' skunk that spoiled ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... Scattergood, and she stood just before his chair, her head coming very little higher than his own as he sat there, big and ominous. "So the skunk took your money, too. I hain't carin' a whoop for them others. They got what was comin' to 'em, and I didn't calculate to do nothin'. But you! By crimminy!... Wa-al, Grandmother, you go off home and knit. I'll look into things. It's ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... impossible, however, to call the dog off the trail. That camp scavenger, the American skunk, is the mildest mannered little creature in the world—providing he is left strictly alone. Being timid and otherwise defenseless, God has given him ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... year's hawk's nest and deposited therein her two white eggs. At the foot of the sunny hill where the spring has freely flowed all winter long, we tramp around the swamp in the vain hope of finding the purplish monk's-hood of the skunk's cabbage; but look up to see, instead, the many "mouse ears," shining like bits of silvery fur, along the slender stems of the pussy willow. Or we tramp through a hazel thicket, where the squirrels have been festive among the nuts all winter, ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... licentious intrigue of the lowest and least sentimental kind, between an impudent London rake and the idiot wife of a country squire. We will not go into details. In truth, Wycherley's indecency is protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters. It is safe, because it is too filthy to handle and too noisome ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... taken down and used in evidence against him, he continued to say with a kind of delight that he had done his work faithfully, and that he could have done it quite successfully if he had not been mated with a coward and a skunk, and that he didn't much care now what came of him, since he didn't suppose they would let him loose and give him one hour's chance again, and see if he couldn't work the thing somewhat better than he had had a ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... to take his advice, and lay quiet while the cowboys gathered. From all directions I heard them coming, calling to each other that "the skunk that shot the woman is corralled," and other forms of the same information. In a moment I was jerked to my feet, only to be swept off them with equal celerity, and was half carried, half dragged, along the tracks. It wasn't as rough handling as I have taken on the football-field, but ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... Say, fellows, if that don't make me think of a blessed old skunk I don't know the odor when I meet it!" and Wallace drew back as he was about to get down on his hands and knees to investigate the meaning of the odd sounds under the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... all right. He's just been living on his own fat," said another voice. It was Jimmy Skunk who had spoken, and he now stood holding out his hand to Johnny Chuck and grinning good-naturedly. He had come up without either of ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... to his feet like a flash, a gun in each hand, saying, 'Stand up, you measly skunk, so I can see you.' Half a dozen men rose in different parts of the house and cut loose at him, and as they did so the lights went out and the room filled with smoke. Masterson was blazing away with two guns, which so lighted up the rostrum that we could see the professor crouching ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... As for larger game, rabbits and the like, the crow is hardly nimble enough for them, nor are his claws well adapted for seizing; anything of this kind he will scarcely get, except as the leavings of the weasel or skunk. These he will not refuse; for though he is of a different species from the carrion crow of Europe, with whom he was formerly confounded, yet he is of similar, though perhaps less extreme, tastes as to his food. But when the ground is freshly covered with snow, all supplies of this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... from their nests. This is an invariable device of the Partridge, and I have no doubt that it is quite successful with the natural foes of the bird; indeed it is often so with Man. A dog, as I have often seen, is certain to be misled and duped, and there is little doubt that a mink, skunk, racoon, fox, coyote, or wolf would fare no better. Imagine the effects of the bird's tactics on a prowling fox: he has scented her as she sits; he is almost upon her, but she has been watching him, and suddenly, with a loud 'whirr,' she springs up and tumbles ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... all—poor little Runtie had been sickly from the first. He bore his half-shell on his back for hours after he came out; he ran less and cheeped more than his brothers, and when one evening at the onset of a skunk the mother gave the word 'Kwit, kwit' (Fly, fly), Runtie was left behind, and when she gathered her brood on the piney hill he was missing, and ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... so well and the week that followed was so peaceful that Douglas did not sleep in the chapel on the following Saturday night. When Mr. Fowler unlocked the door on Sunday morning, a skunk fled from under the pulpit out into the aspens, and there was no service ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... patting it from time to time with her hind feet. This process takes much longer than digging the hole. When it is done to her satisfaction she waddles towards the creek. You might have some trouble to find the eggs but the skunk often gets them. Does the mother turtle watch over them till they are hatched by the sun or is it a mere picked-up crowd of youngsters that we sometimes see in the early fall sitting with her on a boulder ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... drummin', An' it did bonyfidy seem millanyum wuz a-comin'; Wen all on us gots suits (darned like them wore in the state prison), An' every feller felt ez though all Mexico was hisn. This 'ere's about the meanest place a skunk could wal diskiver (Saltillo's Mexican, I b'lieve, fer wut we call Salt river). The sort o' trash a feller gits to eat doos beat all nater, I'd give a year's pay fer a smell o' one good blue-nose tater; ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... would have given us five hundred ounces for it. Well, I didn't say nothing, it was what pretty nigh anyone on the mines would have done if he had the chance, but Harry turned on our partner like a mountain lion. 'You are a mean skunk, New Jersey' says he. 'Do you think that I would be one to rob a man only because he would be fool enough to take a place without looking at it? We've worked to the edge of the claim both ways, and I don't reckon there is a dollar's worth of gold left in it, now that it ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... he said stupidly. "I'll do anything you want me to. I feel like a skunk about this—it had sort of slipped my mind, Mart! Every fellow lets himself in for something ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... railway station as if he owned the German navy and ran trains as a genteel hobby. I gave him ten marks to send the telegram. The miserable beast has sneaked the lot. I'll get at the railway company through the Embassy and have the brute sacked and put in prison. Did you ever hear of such a skunk?" ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... scarce, there was no lack of trade for the lonely store in the woods. All through the summer there was a procession of birchbark canoes, filled with red men and white, coming down the river to the bay, laden with skins of wolf, fox, beaver, wolverine, squirrel, and skunk, the harvest of the winter's trapping. Then in winter the cove and the river were often crowded with boats, driven to anchorage there by the ice, and to escape the fearful storms sweeping over the bay. The river was ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... the heart across thirty years of distance. Do you not turn, I say, sometimes, reader, from the roar and hustle of the city with its ill-gotten wealth and its godless creed of mammon, to think of the quiet homestead under the brow of the hill? You don't! Well, you skunk! ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... mind, Duster," muttered the scout. "Did you ever see a skunk-trap? Oughts is for mush-rats, and number ones is mostly used for 'coons and 'possums, and I guess they'd do for a skunk. But you and we'll call this here trap a number two, Duster, for the skunk I'm after is a big one. All you've to do ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... in the Conservative party than ought to be tolerated in any decent community. I bear," he continued, "malice towards none and I wish to speak with gentleness to all, but what I will say is that how any set of rational responsible men could nominate such a skunk as the Conservative candidate passes the bounds of my comprehension. Gentlemen, in the present campaign there is no room for vindictive abuse. Let us rise to a higher level than that. They tell me that my opponent, Smith, is a common saloon ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... "you and I have always got along all right. You know I've tried to do the right thing by your daughter. I'm ready to now. She's too decent a girl to have done this thing on her own. This is the work of that rotten skunk of a lawyer—I apologize to the other skunks and the real lawyers. She has done a frightful injustice to the best woman on earth. She can never undo it, but surely she doesn't want to do any more. She's through with me, I suppose, but we ought to be able to clean up this affair respectably and ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... "See thet air brown hoss go by. Knew 'im soon es I sot eyes on 'im—use' t' ride 'im myself. Hed an idee 't wus you 'n the saddle—sot s' kind o' easy. But them air joemightyful do's! Jerushy Jane! would n't be fit t' skin a skunk ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... The chief one—Fact is, Josh, I've acted like a howling skunk about you with her. I ran you down to her; tried to get ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... a man; possibly he was not an abnormally big man, but certainly he looked so to Peter. His smooth-shaven face was pink with anger, his brows gathered in a terrible frown, and his hands clenched with deadly significance. "You dirty little skunk!" he ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... it!" Mr. Bundercombe declared. "A withered old skunk, if ever there was one! You want a live man to see you through this, Paul. You let me go down and sound Harrison this afternoon. No reason that I can see why we shouldn't use this fellow's address, too, if we can ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... schmells I efer schmelt, Py gutter, sink, or well, At efery gorner of Cologne Dere's von can peat dat schmell. Vhen dere you go you'll find it so, Don't dake de ding on troost; De meanest skunk in Yankee land ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... door was of darkness and was guarded by Tcápani (the Bat) and an animal called Çantsò (of crepuscular or nocturnal habits). Here dwelt many young men and young women who were skunks (golÃji), and they taught the Navajo wanderer how to make and how to bury the kethà wns which are sacred to the skunk. ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... him say 'Why, of course, Master, but why do you keep on testing me this way?' He'll ask me that about four times more, the stubborn, single-tracked, brainless skunk, and I'll really go nuts. Are you getting anywhere trying to make ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... be said here for skunks and moles. A great deal of the skunk diet is insect life. The same is true of the mole whose diet probably consists of 75% insects, mostly in their larval state. This is an important feature of mole and skunk as they dig these insects out ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... peculiar acid secreted by ants. It is supposed to be used by them offensively in warfare—just as the skunk, eh?" ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... absently before he bit into it. "But I got even with 'im," he added. "I laid off till he got his tires on—an' I wouldn't lend him no tools to put 'em on with, neither. And then I looked up an' down the road an' seen there was no dust comin' an' we wouldn't be interrupted, an' I went up to the old skunk an' I says, 'I got a bill to colleck off you. Thankin' you in advance!' an' then I shore collected. You ask anybody in Patmos. Say, I bet he drove by-guess-an'-by-gosh to the orange belt, anyway, the way his eyes was ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... — N. fetor^; bad &c adj.. smell, bad odor; stench, stink; foul odor, malodor; empyreuma^; mustiness &c adj.; rancidity; foulness &c (uncleanness) 653. stoat, polecat, skunk; assafoetida^; fungus, garlic; stinkpot; fitchet^, fitchew^, fourmart^, peccary. acridity &c 401.1. V. have a bad smell &c n.; smell; stink, stink in the nostrils, stink like a polecat; smell strong &c adj., smell offensively. Adj. fetid; strong-smelling; high, bad, strong, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... women always say; they're all alike; no more idea o' savin' anything than a skunk-blackbird! I can't spare any money for gew-gaws, and you might as well understand it first as last. Go up attic and open the hair trunk by the winder; you'll find plenty there to last ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Between three and four hundred head. The water is running still up in the range. We should have done better if that skunk ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... brain that skunk with a pin?" was the inquiry of our profound oathsman, who also expressed regret that he happened to be sitting too far away from the negro to reach him. He accompanied the announcement with a warmth of language that must have relieved the negro ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... went on eating his supper for some minutes without comment; but just as we finished, he said, "Boys, where did we put our skunk fence last fall?" ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... you Joke! Who sent you—Burns or Pinkerton? No, by God, you're such a bonehead I'll bet you're in the Secret Service! Well, you dirty spy, you rotten agent provocator, you can go back and tell whatever skunk is paying you blood-money for betraying your brothers that he's wasting his coin. You couldn't catch a cold. And tell him that all he'll ever get on us, or ever has got, is just his own sneaking plots that he's framed ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... Mr. Blasted Heyst, the time isn't yet. My head's cooler just now than yours. Let's go in again. Why, we are exposed here. Suppose he took it into his head to let off a gun on us! He's an unaccountable, 'yporcritical skunk." ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... them well on with their task, Joses being seated upon a fragment of rock contentedly smoking his cigarette and giving instructions, he being an adept at such matters, having stripped off hundreds if not thousands of hides in his day, from bison cattle and bear down to panther and skunk. ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... as Paddy does, and lives in very much the same way. The truth is, he is no more closely related to Paddy than he is to the rest of you. He is a true Rat. He is called Muskrat because he carries with him a scent called musk. It is not an unpleasant scent, like that of Jimmy Skunk, and isn't used for the same purpose. Jerry uses his to tell his friends where he has been. He leaves a little of it at the places he visits. Some folks call him Musquash, ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... his father's ranch in Wyoming. From there he had gone to a local paper of the type whose Society column consists of such items as "Pawnee Jim Williams was to town yesterday with a bunch of other cheap skates. We take this opportunity of once more informing Jim that he is a liar and a skunk," and whose editor works with a revolver on his desk and another in his hip-pocket. Graduating from this, he had proceeded to a reporter's post on a daily paper in a Kentucky town, where there were blood feuds and other Southern devices for ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... not to the sullen bear, in cautious silence passed him by and shunned the fetid breath of monster lizards and venom stings of centipedes and scorpions; but woman-like she feared the hydrophobia-skunk more for its scent ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... NOT frightened—no, I'm not. The Phoenix has never been a skunk yet, and I'm certain it'll see us through somehow. I believe ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... without upsetting any of the three. He told of long wanderings in the twilight solitudes of Canadian forests; of dangers from wolves and the wild coyotes, half-dog, half-wolf, heard nightly howling round the Indian camp-fires; and from the intangible malice of the skunk, a beautiful but dreadful power, to be propitiated with bated breath and muffled footstep. He told, too, of the chip-munks, with their sharp twittering bark; and he contrived to invest even these tiny ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... for the Skunk. Indeed, I once maintained that this animal was the proper emblem of America. It is, first of all, peculiar to this continent. It has stars on its head and stripes on its body. It is an ideal citizen; minds ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... "'Trouble, yeh skunk,' he howls; 'our throats is hot as hell, all th' skin's comin' off 'em; Bill Tomson's got his lips that blistered he can't hold his pipe between 'em. What ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... (for it was a pole-cat—the mephitis chinga, or American skunk) after he had discharged the fetid shower, stood for an instant looking over his shoulder, in such a way that we could almost fancy he was laughing. Then jerking his tail from side to side in a frolicksome manner, he made a bound into the ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... sneak and a skunk," Alix had frankly contributed. Cherry, now quietly established in her father's lap, had smiled with mischievous enjoyment; nobody else, to Peter's surprise, had paid this extraordinary remark the slightest attention. He remembered that he had fancied only the smallest of these ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... de wah,—dat his shoulder pains him powerful at times,—an' he is tryin' to get a pension, an' Mandy Ann is helpin' him. Beats all what women won't do for a man if they love him, no matter how big a skunk he is. Miss Dory died for one, an' Mandy Ann is slavin' herself to deff for one. I'se mighty ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... brine, with rice bran. It is very porous, and absorbs a good deal of the pickle in the three months in which it lies in it, and then has a smell so awful that it is difficult to remain in a house in which it is being eaten. It is the worst smell I know of except that of a skunk!" ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... door, you durned skunk!" he said, five minutes later. Gerard was on the point of retorting furiously, but one look at the strong, ugly face and sturdy figure convinced him of the wisdom of silence until he was actually on the doorstep of ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... of that crafty old skunk—the genuine truth of things—draws them forward through the reeds and rushes of the great dim forests' edge, but they seldom touch the hide of the evasive animal; no, not so much as with the end ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Welton. "You don't know the lowlived skunk! Erbe told me that if this suit was brought and you testified in the matter, that Baker would turn state's evidence against me! That would ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... white it wouldn't 'a' showed a chalk mark! And he was holdin' up his thumb like it was pizen—which it was! And he was cuttin' for old Doc Struthers that fast his cayuse was sparkin' out of his ears. Bit by a hydrophoby skunk—yes, sirree. Got to the Doc's just in time, too! But he allus was lucky—the Doc! Money jest rolled into that party all the time. But some folks don't jest quite make it—horses gives out, or something. And if they ain't got the sand to shoot ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... committee of the Academy has received numerous protests against the admission of Charles Ranck, the skunk trapper of Ellsworth, Neb., and J. K. Garlick, the "practical ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Mop was ever really overcome was a black-and-white, common, every-day, garden skunk. He treed this unexpected visitor on the wood-pile one famous moonlight night in Onteora. And he acknowledged his defeat at once, and like a man. He realized fully his own unsavory condition. He retired to a far corner of the small estate, and ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... urged to Al Hutchins, who was drawing the lacing. "Throw your feet into the skunk. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... a time there was a fox and a skunk, and the fox was walking down the path with a lot of prickly bushes on the side of the path. Then he saw a skunk coming along. He said, "Will you let me throw my little bag of perfume on you?" And then ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... working at the stirrup leather got to his feet, indeed, carelessly, rifle in hand, and stared into the gloom; but presently he turned on his heel and sauntered back to his job of saddlery. Evidently the hound was used to voicing false alarms whenever a coyote slipped past or a skunk nosed inquisitively near. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... "Listen, you infernal skunk," Old Heck went on coldly, "as quick as you're able to travel you'll find Eagle Butte's a right good place to get away from! You understand what I mean. If I catch you around, well, I won't use no fists!" And without waiting for an answer he turned ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... her husband. "If it was a young skunk that Snoop had, you'd have known it long before this. And Snoop never would try to catch a skunk—Snoop ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... bald," grated the old man with a death's-head grin, indescribably ferocious, "but it's got brains enough in it to 'skunk' any man in this crowd three ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... like a Bear-track, but scarcely two inches long. "There's the B'ar we'll find in that; that's a bushy-tailed B'ar," and Bonamy joined in the laugh when he realized that the victim in the big trap was nothing but a little skunk. ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... N'York. O-a-ah, yeh jest oughto live there. No beer ner whisky, though, way off in the woods. But all th' good hot grub yeh can eat. B'Gawd, I hung around there long as I could till th' ol' man fired me. 'Git t' hell outa here, yeh wuthless skunk, git t' hell outa here, an' go die,' he ses. 'You're a hell of a father,' I ses, 'you are,' an' I ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... they had to be so economical! But he refused, patiently. To be patient, Maurice did not need, now, to remind himself of the mountain and her faithfulness to him; he had only to remind himself of the yellow-brick apartment house, and his faithlessness to her. "I've got to be kind, or I'd be a skunk," he used to think. So he was very kind. He did not burst out at her with irritated mortification when she telephoned to the office to know if "Mr. Curtis's headache was better";—he had suffered so much that he had gone ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the nightie, and reached out her two eager arms to take the kid off Chip's knees where he was perched contentedly relating his adventures with sundry hair-raising additions born of his imagination. The Kid was telling Daddy Chip about the skunk he saw, and he hated to be interrupted. He looked at his Doctor Dell and at the familiar, white garment with lace at the neck and wristbands, and he waved his hand with ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... I've handed it to you pretty bad," said Randerson. "But you had it comin' to you. If you hadn't tried to play the skunk at the last minute, you'd have got off easier. I reckon your hand ain't so active as it's been—I had to pretty near stamp it off of you—you would keep pullin' the trigger of that pop-gun. Do you reckon you c'n get up now, an' ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... bread, you son of a skunk!" No, I forget—skunk was not the word; it seems to me it was still stronger than that; I know it was, in fact, but it is gone from my memory, apparently. However, it is no matter—probably it was too strong for print, anyway. It is the landmark in my memory which tells me where I first encountered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "The skunk has followed us all the way from Missouri, and after we saw the sights of New York, and gave him the slip, he must have discovered that we started for home in this train. Now he has evidently hired that locomotive to chase ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... had the gall," he muttered. "Acting like he'd been bit by a hydrophoby skunk. Nothing meaner 'n a mad wolf. I'd 'a' give him Carmena quick enough.... Learn her not to pass up a white man agin when she had her chance. But the young gal—— Blast Cochise. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... told her she'd done it on purpose, too; he hit the nail on the head all right; but it was her poor head, and that showed me my unworthy impulse in its true light, Bunny. I didn't need your reproaches to make me realise what a skunk I'd been all round. I saw that the necklace was morally yours, and there was one clear call for me to restore it to you by hook, crook, or barrel. I left for Carlsbad as soon after its wrongful owners as ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Don't git sick now. We'll have to watch Eli Crump purty close. I don't know why I hain't killed thet spyin' skunk long ago, 'ceptin' I never had a shore an' sartin reason fer ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.
... 'Skunk!' he said, as we turned the animal and started to walk him home. 'Don't min' bein' beat, but I don't like t' hev a man rub it in on me. I'll git even ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... bales of them—seal, sea-otter, beaver, skunk, marten, and a few bear, the sight of all raising up in our hearts endless ideas of sport and adventure possibly never to ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... said I. "There is something you can do for me on the spot. You can try to believe that I have not meant to be quite such a skunk as I may have seemed—to you," I was on the point of adding, but I stopped short of that advisedly, as I thought ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... as with the notorious skunk of America, the overwhelming odour which they emit appears to serve exclusively as a defence. With shrew-mice (Sorex) both sexes possess abdominal scent-glands, and there can be little doubt, from the rejection of their bodies by birds and beasts of prey, that the odour is protective; nevertheless, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... did succeed in convincing, and that was the C.O., who knew his East. "Very good," said he. "If the skunk won't be trained he shall go untrained. He sails for France with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... remarkable illustrations might be quoted; as for instance the web of the Spider, the pit of the Ant Lion, the mephitic odour of the Skunk. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... likely C. M. Lampson & Co. will have about 100,000 in their September sale, and prices will very likely fall to 1s., or lower. The result will be, that the skunks will live in peace, and increase and multiply for some years to come. The skunk is the most 'disagreeable' of animals to man; but it is not, therefore, destroyed. I have a catalogue (Row, Row, Goad & Reece, brokers) of a fur sale (by the candle) at the London Commercial Sale Room, Mincing Lane, on the 21st and 22nd March, 1821, which I compare below with catalogues ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... could not resist putting my nose down for a sniff, so good is the smell of a fresh trail, so close are we to the rest of the pack. In the thick of the swamp I stopped a moment to examine the footprints of an otter at a shallow, shelving place along the bank, where, opening through the skunk-cabbage and Indian turnip, and covered almost ankle-deep with water, was ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... a survivor from some desperate episode that makes your blood tingle. I would that we were over on the North Sea side, where Providence might lay us alongside a German destroyer some gray dawn. This submarine-chasing business is much like the proverbial skinning of a skunk—useful, but ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... he asked. "Well, you see, I went over to the Free Trader's, and this God the law don't take into account went with me, and we found the skunk alone. First I licked him until he was almost dead. Then, sticking a knife into him about half an inch, I made him write a note saying he was called south suddenly, and authorizing me to take charge in his absence. Then I chained him in a ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... "the dog who dares thus to spit in my face! Hearken all! As with my last breath I command that this Slaughterer be torn limb from limb, he and all his tribe! And thou, thou darest to bring me this talk from a skunk of the mountains. And thou, too, Mopo, thy name is named in it. Well, of thee presently. Ho! Umxamama, my servant, slay me this slave of a messenger, beat out his brains with thy stick. ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... dryly, "what the Duke is planning to get in on is an hour of tender dalliance. Before the Camelot arrives, necessarily. The cold-blooded little skunk!" She hesitated a moment; when she spoke again, her voice had turned harsh and nasal, wicked amusement sounding through it. "Sort of busy at the moment, sweetheart, but we might find time for a drink or two later on ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... long before noon, the fear of consumption will greatly pass from the minds of people. We have long since known and proven that a cough is only an effect. If an effect then a wise man will set his mental dogs on the track, which is (effect) to hunt the skunk, (cause). He has all the evidence by the cough, location of pain, tenderness of spine, neck, and quality of the substances coughed up to locate the cause, and to know, when he has found it, how to remove the cause, and give relief; will ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... sennyritas hez the littlest kind o' feet. When any feller finds her tracks, he'll fire, an' then we'll rally on him. I wish them other fellers, instid of goin' off half-cocked, hed tracked Codago, the low-lived skunk. To think of him runnin' away from wife, an' ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... skunk has got there before us," said Hawk to his fellows, as they prepared to set out before daybreak, "the pale-faces will be ready for us, and we may as well go back to our wigwams at once; but if that badger's whelp has been slow of foot, we shall hang the scalps ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... soul, my younker, that ere Lone Wolf that they call such a great chief (and I may as well own up and say that he is), is heavy on ransoms and he ain't the only chief that's in that line. That skunk runs off with men, women and boys, and his rule is not to give 'em up ag'in till he gits a good round price. He calculated on making a good thing off you, and I ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... learned his first lesson in the woods, which was that a well-behaved skunk when taking his morning walk, ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes |
