|
|
|
More "Black cat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mice, all nicely dressed and hanging upon spits to tempt the hungry passers-by, while above a large pot from which the steam was issuing was a card, which, being translated by our guide, read, "A big black cat within; ready soon." The dogs which are eaten are fed especially for the purpose, and are hung up in state with labels setting forth their superior merits. As far as I should have known, they might have passed for delicious ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... dark lak' wan black cat, De wave run high an' fas', W'en de captinne tak' de Rosie girl An' tie her to de mas'. Den he also tak' de life preserve, An' jomp off on de lak', An' say, "Good-bye, ma Rosie dear, I go drown for ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... not a witch-mark! I escaped a red gown that time, however. I laughed at his stupidity, and bewitched him for it in earnest. I was young and pretty then! He died in a year, and Satan sat on his grave in the shape of a black cat until his friends set a cross over it. I like to be a woman, I do, it is so easy to be wicked, and so nice! I always tell the girls that, and they give me twice as much as if I had told them to be good and nice, as they call it! Pshaw! Nice! If only ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... black hair and dark eyes like her father, while Buster John had golden hair and brown eyes like his mother. As for Drusilla, she was as black as the old black cat, and always in a good humor, except when she pretended to be angry. Sweetest Susan had wonderful dark eyes that made her face very serious except when she laughed, but she was as full of fun as Buster John, ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... I seen a engineer goin' to work the other day and a black cat run in front of him, and he went back 'cause he said he would have a wreck with his train if he didn't. So you see, the white folks believes in things ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... never was, by her own account, such a discreet, amiable, well-spoken, benevolent, and virtuous gentlewoman! And how the cruel Captain continued to laugh at, and quiz, and draw her out: until Juliet, in order to cause a diversion in her aunt's favor, pinched her favorite black cat's ear. But this stratagem only turned the whole torrent of the old maid's ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... habits, which, unlike those just described, lives almost entirely among the branches of the trees. In shape it is somewhat like a weasel, and is the largest of the tree martens. It is known as the wood-shock or pekan, and is also called the black cat, and fisher. This last term is inappropriate, as it is not in any way piscivorous. It is of a dark brown hue, with a line of black shining hair reaching from the neck to the extremity of the tail. The under parts are lighter; some entirely white. It ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... worried," cried Mrs. Rabbit, "I just saw the Kind Farmer's Black Cat cross the path from right to left, and that ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... into the power of the genius Maimoum, the son of Dimdim," replied the first voice. "But it would be quite simple for this holy chief of the dervishes to cure her if he only knew! In his convent there is a black cat which has a tiny white tip to its tail. Now to cure the princess the dervish must pull out seven of these white hairs, burn three, and with their smoke perfume the head of the princess. This will deliver her so completely that Maimoum, the son of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... superstition and sorcery. They have always been regarded as attendants upon witches; and witches themselves have been said to borrow their shapes when on their mysterious expeditions. I was once told, that Lord Cochrane was accompanied by a favourite black cat in a cruise through the northern seas. The weather had been most unpropitious; no day had passed without some untoward circumstance, and the sailors were not slow in attributing the whole to the influence of the black cat on board. ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... unsuspected in Mr. Vanstone's pocket, the object of it was traveling home, as fast as railways could take him. At half-past ten at night, while Mr. Clare was sitting in studious solitude over his books and his green tea, with his favorite black cat to keep him company, he heard footsteps in the passage—the door opened—and ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... creeping out of the forest, carrying a sack bigger than himself. The women and children ran by his side, weeping and trying to drag the sack from off his back, but he shook them off, and went on his way. There was also a tale of a magnificent black cat as large as a foal, but men could not believe all the wonders told by the peasant, and it was difficult to make out what was true and what was false in his story. However, the fact remained that strange things did happen there, and the King of Sweden, to whom this part of the country belonged, more ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... the ridge pole of the next roof, sat a black cat, big and terrible against the sky. "Ma-a-uw," said the cat again, louder ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... nurse's account, 'must be a haggard old woman, living in a little rotten cottage under a hill by a wood-side, and must be frequently spinning by the door; she must have a black cat, two or three broom-sticks, and must be herself of so dry a nature, that if you fling her into a river she will not sink: so hard then is her fate, that, if she is to undergo the trial, if she does not drown she ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... tea first and see your mother afterward," observed Uncle Geoffrey; but I would not take this prudent counsel. On the stairs I came upon Jack, curled up on a window-sill, with Smudge, our old black cat, in her arms, and was welcomed by both of them with much effusion. Jack was a tall, thin girl, all legs and arms, with a droll, freckled face and round blue eyes, with all the awkwardness of fourteen, ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... stirring the brew. Behind her a small baby in a red and white striped blanket was pushed up to its armpits through a hole on four legs, where it hung. In a dark corner a small boy was worrying a black cat. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... on the most friendly, and even intimate, terms, was working with him, and apparently under his close and constant supervision. A thrush with very bright eyes looked on from an adjacent elder bush. Upon the wall, near the end of the Bishop's Palace, a black cat was sunning itself and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... her own application to studies, going to and from the Owl's Nest, "like clockwork, you little grinder!" as the boy expressed it, making his awkward admission to her on Christmas Eve, the two wreathing the house with holly and evergreens. This was something which Carlo and Smut the black cat thought it their duty to look into, to judge from the way they pryingly inspected the monster heap of greenery in the wide passage, where the boy and girl worked, making Inna laugh and laugh again, till her uncle peeped ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... morning; "and, what's more," the chief officer stopped on the gangway to call down to me on the quay, "a black cat crossed my path when I left home this morning, and a very nice black cat it was." The gangway was hauled up. The tugs began to move the big steamer away from us, a process so slow that the daylight between us and ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... that," said the woman, "after a time the stock will affect mortal illness, and will then take possession of the first black cat she sees, and in that shape leave the house, and come home. But the figure that is like you will remain lifeless in the bed, and will be duly buried. Then your people, believing you to be dead, will never look for you, and you will always ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... go, left it hanging, and sat down on a great stone, with her black cat, who had followed her all around the cave, by her side. Then she began to knit, and mutter awful words. The snake hung like a huge leech, sucking at the stone; the cat stood with his back arched, and his ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... timidly tiptoed out to the saucer of brandy, and, taking a sip, went more boldly back, then came again with considerable swagger; and at last took a good drink and then strutted up and down saying, 'Bring on your old black cat!' That's how I feel, Fred,—I'm going to be a mother to these two little children whose own mother has passed on and whose father is holding up the pillars of the Empire. It would hardly be fair to leave them to ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... Sally Ruth was feeding and scolding her cooing pigeons, which fluttered about her, lighting upon her shoulder, surrounding her with a bright-colored living cloud; the judge's black cat Panch lay along the Mayne side of the fence and blinked at them regretfully with his slanting emerald eyes. From the Mayne kitchen-steps came, faintly, Daddy January's ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... everything came out all right after all, and if the cork doesn't pop out of the ink bottle and go to sleep in the middle of the white bedspread, like our black cat, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... been a child of God until very near his end, and much given to prayer; albeit I had indeed marvelled why he had other thoughts in his last illness; she answered, that one day he had seen her spirit, which she kept in a chest, in the shape of a black cat, and whose name was Kit, and had threatened that he would tell me of it; whereupon she, being frightened, had caused her spirit to make him so ill that he despaired of ever getting over it. Thereupon she had comforted him, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... been known to be locked, and to my surprise I found it bolted. Thinking that perhaps the widow had gone to purchase provisions, I walked around to the rear of the building and tried every door, but found that all of them were locked. A miserably starved black cat, that made a ten foot leap when she first espied me, was the only sign of life on the place, while the many rag-stuffed broken window panes plainly indicated that great changes had been made at the "big" house since my last departure. There was ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... with a long beard came out of the wood, carrying a sack longer than himself. The women and children shouted out, and ran to meet him, dancing round him, and trying to pull the sack off his back; but the old man shook himself free. After this, a black cat as large as a foal, which had been sitting on the doorstep glaring with fiery eyes, leaped upon the old man's sack, and then disappeared in the cottage. But as the spectator's head ached and everything swam before his eyes, his report was not clear, and people could not quite distinguish between ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... game closed I had the five thousand and a few odd dollars, and all Bill Bassett had was the wanderlust and a black cat he had bought for a mascot. Bill shook hands with me ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... has become a typical figure: she was usually a simple, old woman living in a lonely cottage with a black cat, gathering herbs by the light of the moon. But she was not always an ancient beldam; some witches were known as the purest and fairest maidens of the village; some were ladies in high station; some were men. A ground for suspicion was sometimes furnished by the fact that ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... all crouched a huge black cat, glaring steadily with great yellow eyes out of the murky confusion, like the familiar ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... squeaked the mice, "go and find the black cat. He is very hungry; give him a slice of ham and he ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... calamity,—Larry, who is so soaked in a species of folk-lore, blended of tradition, imagination, and high spirits that, after hearing him talk, it is easy to believe that he deals in magic by the aid of a black cat, and unfortunately the cat brought in by ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... wound. Just as she had told this tale, the lay sister, as if to prevent all commentary, was seized with convulsions, and Barre recommenced his prayers and exorcisms, but was soon interrupted by shrieks; for one of the persons present had seen a black cat come down the chimney and disappear. Instantly everyone concluded it must be the devil, and began to seek it out. It was not without great difficulty that it was caught; for, terrified at the sight of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... A black cat with a twisted stump of a tail and feet like small boxing gloves and ears almost as big as rabbits' hopped clumsily in view. He lifted it down, gave it a pat. Then, nodding familiarly to Effie, he unstrapped a little pack from his back ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... enough—as I was trying to tell you just now, only you didn't seem to be listening—a black cat ran across my path only this afternoon.' He smiled, gratified at ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... of the Goat; they set him up to the theater, with supper at the Black Cat or Pabst's afterward, and lay awake nights howling at the recollection of his naive and shrewd comments; they took him walking to show him the historical landmarks of New York, extemporizing the landmarks and the history as they went ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... forgot what he had been told. After long remaining silent before his book, absorbed in the contemplation of a wood-cut depicting a black cat, he began to hum some words of his own composition: 'Oh, you pretty cat; oh, you ugly cat; oh, you pretty, ugly cat,' and so on, ad infinitum, ever in the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... but the same wolf lying down at his ease before the fire that burned in the middle of the room! His long tongue was hanging out, and I could see his great white teeth. At his side was the old woman's black cat. At the other side of the fire sat Elspeth herself, calmly eating of a dish of brose. Even as I stood there, the old witch bent down and laid the dish before the wolf that he might finish the brose. When I leapt forward ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... knew not the meaning of fear. But I DID, and perhaps even Nelson would have found out "what fear was," or the boy in the Norse tale would have "learned to shiver," if he had been left alone to peruse 'Jane Eyre,' and the 'Black Cat,' and the 'Fall of the House of Usher,' as I was. Every night I expected to wake up in my coffin, having been prematurely buried; or to hear sighs in the area, followed by light, unsteady footsteps on the ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... morning he will see, as it were, the footmarks of fowls on the surface. But if one would see the demons themselves, he must burn to ashes the after-birth of a first-born black kitten, the offspring of a first-born black cat, and then put a little of the ashes into his eyes, and he will not fail to see them," ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... which seemed to have little to recommend them, besides rust and the antiquity which it indicates. In the midst of this wreck of ancient books and utensils, with a gravity equal to Marius among the ruins of Carthage, sat a large black cat, which, to a superstitious eye, might have presented the genius loci, the tutelar demon of the apartment. The floor, as well as the table and chairs, was overflowed by the same mare magnum of miscellaneous trumpery, where it would have been as impossible ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... what kind of things these were, and they were described to him as small brushes made of camels' hair fastened in a quill. As there were, however, no camels in America, he could not think of any substitute, till he happened to cast his eyes on a black cat, the favourite of his father; when, in the tapering fur of her tail, he discovered the means of supplying what he wanted. He immediately armed himself with his mother's scissors, and, laying hold of Grimalkin with ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... patient as ever. They were all waiting and viewing each other gravely as they waited. On the table there were now only some dirty plates, Mme Bron having recently distributed the last of the bouquets. A single fallen rose was withering on the floor in the neighborhood of the black cat, who had lain down and curled herself up while the kittens ran wild races and danced fierce gallops among the gentlemen's legs. Clarisse was momentarily inclined to turn La Faloise out. The idiot wasn't ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... she said. And I would have pressed the matter further but the old black cat had come out of the cottage and was looking at me whimsically and saying nothing so that I knew I was asking silly questions. And I asked instead why some of the poets were idle and were watching butterflies without being beaten. And she said: "The butterflies know where ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... silence followed, finally broken by Peg, who introduced her pets to us and told how she had come by them. The black cat ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... head to foot when he heard what Dolly Varden said, for he knew it all was true, and he was much afraid that a very hard punishment would be given to him. Then the old black cat, on whom Hal had thrown a dipper of hot water, was called to the witness stand. Poor old thing! the hot water had taken the fur off his back. Then came another cat, limping up to the witness stand, whose leg had been ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... anything," said the other of her capturers, "young or old. I saw her one night near Madaura, a month ago, in the tombs in the shape of a black cat." ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... a furry shape calmly ascended the stairs and stopped at Duval's feet. It was a black cat, which stopped to lick his right paw. Duval stooped down and examined him. Then he arose with ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... "A slender black cat reclining on a chain of old silver" guarded treasure in the old days. For a long time cats were dreaded by the people because they thought human beings had been changed to that form by ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... these colored people do, and can't strike their level. People who have heard Kellogg, and Marie Rose, and Gerster, are sick when a black cat with a long red dress comes out and murders the same pieces the prima donnas have sung. We have seen a colored girl attempt a selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech, and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel, limber up her ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... on to a chair and thence to the table, but so quietly that the large black cat with four white paws, called Muff, because she was so fat and soft and her fur so long, who sat dozing in front of the fire, just opened one eye and went to sleep again. She had tried to get her nose into ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... garden-path. The little widow was waiting for me in the porch, her face beaming with welcome. Tinker rushed out of the kitchen as soon as he heard my voice, and gambolled round us with awkward demonstrations of joy that nearly upset us, and Joe the black cat came and rubbed himself against my gown, with tail erect ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and above again towered the lofty houses on whose massive beauty Time has only set the hand of approval. The sun was hot and we were lazy; time was our own, and we lingered, leaning on the wall. Just below us was a pretty sight—a great black cat lying stretched in the sun, whilst round her gambolled prettily a tiny black kitten. The mother would wave her tail for the kitten to play with, or would raise her feet and push away the little one as an encouragement ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... yourself!" ordered little fat Flossie, as she set down a wooden cage containing a black cat. "Be good, Snap!" ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook • Laura Lee Hope
... for Mr. Woodbourne greatly disliked little dogs in the house, his wife dreaded them much among her children, and there were symptoms of a deadly feud between him and Elizabeth's only pet, the great black cat, Meg Merrilies. But still his birth, parentage, and education, were safe subjects of conversation; and all were sorry when Mrs. Hazleby had exhausted them, and began to remark how thin Elizabeth looked—to tell a story of ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... coal-black one. "Choose this, Hilary! Miranda says a black cat brings luck, though it don't look like we needed any black ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... tasted, the rest poured out in sacrifice. Men and women were also bled on these occasions. The seekers for buried treasure, over which fairies were supposed to have influence, immolated a black cock or a black cat to propitiate them. Again, a cow, suffering from sickness believed to be due to fairy malice, was bled and then devoted to St. Martin. If it recovered, it was never sold or killed. The first new milk of a cow was poured out on the ground to propitiate the fairies, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... young man's ghost continued to visit her as usual, and she began to grow pale and thin. The father discovered the state of the case, and consulted the priest, who learned from the girl, in confession, how matters stood, and came with a black cat, a stole, and book, to conjure the ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... which for thirty-five years I had not seen, was the same, except that it looked a deal smaller. It wore the same shingles—I was sure of it; for did not I know the roof where we boys, night after night, hunted for the skin of a black cat, to be taken on a dark night, to make a plaster for a poor lame man? Lowry the tailor lived there when boys were boys. In his day he was fond of the gun. He always carried his powder loose in the tail pocket of his coat. He usually ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... And Margery's black cat came and mewed to me, and rubbed itself against my pinafore, and walked up and down with me till I went in and got the "Ancient Mariner" and my little chair, and came back ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... foreign ministers of these countries are themselves. Foreign governments and our own government live from hand to mouth and have fewer deep plans than people might suppose. There is an old warning that you should not spend too much time in looking at the dark cupboard for the black cat that is not there, and I think if sometimes we were a little less suspicious of deep design or motive that the affairs of the world would ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... he lit one of his "mild but they satisfy" cigarettes and sat in the comfortable warmth of a near-by radiator. A large black cat lay sprawled on the next chair. Up at the service counter there was a pleasant clank of stout crockery as occasional customers came in and ordered their victuals. Aubrey began to feel a relaxation swim through his veins. Gissing Street was ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... an experienced critic the picture would certainly have seemed crude. It was a study of a dark-eyed child holding a large black cat. Statisticians estimate that there is no moment during the day when one or more young artists somewhere on the face of the globe are not painting pictures of children ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... crying, tears rolling down to her high white chest and finally on to the crispiness of her plain nightgown. Crept to bed finally, into a darkness as sleek as a black cat's flank, silently, to save the sag of mattress, her body curving to the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... rain-charm employed by sorcerers was made from the blood and gall of a black ox. In a district of Sumatra, in order to procure rain, all the women of the village, scantily clad, go to the river, wade into it, and splash each other with the water. A black cat is thrown into the stream and made to swim about for a while, then allowed to escape to the bank, pursued by the splashing of the women. The Garos of Assam offer a black goat on the top of a very high ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... woollen cloth, or lined with flannel, gave out when moved a succession of sounds, like the crackling and snapping of fire, and in the absence of a candle emitted sparks of a pale whitish blue light, similar to the flashes produced by cutting loaf-sugar in the dark, or stroking the back of a black cat: the same effect was also produced when I combed ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... made Lemuel giddy as he stood and looked at the abundance. The men were not saying much; now and then one of them priced something, the owner pretended to figure on it, and then they fell into a playful scuffle, but all silently. A black cat lay luxuriously asleep on the canvas top of a barrel of melons, and the man who priced the melons asked if the owner would throw the cat in. There was a butcher's cart laden with carcasses of sheep, and one of the men asked the butcher if he called that stuff ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... grieve if a black cat run befo' us, or see de new moon thru de tree tops, and when we start somewhere and turn back, us sho' made a cross-mark and spit in it befo' we ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... to those that had preceded. The spirits, which took extraordinary and bizarre forms, were the offspring of the same perverted imaginations, but they had assumed new shapes. Ursley Kemp kept a white lamb, a little gray cat, a black cat, and a black toad. There were spirits of every sort, "two little thyngs like horses, one white, the other black'"; six "spirits like cowes ... as big as rattles"; spirits masquerading as blackbirds. One spirit strangely enough remained invisible. It will be observed by the reader that ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... only our old black cat!' said the old woman; 'he always comes up to this room to sleep, but we thought we had shut ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... the little stove crackled; the water in the little kettle spluttered; a gaunt black cat crowded his way through the poorly fastened door and rubbed himself against Tim's legs, whereat the widow threw a stick of ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... charge to the kitchen, where she fed and soothed it with such good effect that, when she came back, half an hour later, the little black cat cuddled down on her arm, purring like a teakettle in spite ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... scarcely a footprint in the road to break the soft mass of new-fallen snow. Isabelle could see a black cat deliberately stealing its way from the barn across the road to the house. It lifted each paw with delicate precision and pushed it firmly into the snow, casting a deep shadow on the gleaming surface of white. The black cat, lean and muscular, stretching itself across the snow, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... afternoon, the old man had taken up his place on the curb; and a big black cat had taken advantage of the warmth offered by the charcoal fire and was curled up, sleeping peacefully in the pan nearest the fire. The old man paid no attention to the cat, but went on rotating his ball of coffee and puffing away pensively ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... ye'll ken the breed o' them, for they will be sore feart o' clean burn-water, but they'll be coorieing ower a fire a' day, and talking to the black cat, and I had it in my mind to be turning when I saw her, for did she not come into the byre at Dyke-end when the beasts were at their fother, and she ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... was 'a deformed thing with many feet, black of colour, rough with hair, the bigness of a cat'; her daughter, Margaret Waite, had as 'her spirit, a white cat spotted with black, and named Inges'; Jennet Dibble had 'her spirit in the shape of a great black cat called Gibbe, which hath attended her now above 40 years'; Dibble's daughter, Margaret Thorpe, had a 'familiar in the shape of a bird, yellow of colour, about the bigness of a crow—the name of it is Tewhit'; Elizabeth Dickenson's spirit was 'in the likeness of a white cat, which ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... not turn into a bull, or a bull into a man, the line of demarcation is clearly drawn; but the rustic has no such conviction even to-day. That crone, his aged aunt, may any day come in at the window in the shape of a black cat; why should she not? It is not, then, that a god 'takes upon him the form of a bull,' or is 'incarnate in a bull,' but that the real Bull and the worshipper dressed as a bull are seen and remembered and give rise to an imagined Bull-God; but, ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... and mystery as "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia"; such fascinating hoaxes as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall," "MSS. Found in a Bottle," "A Descent Into a Maelstrom" and "The Balloon Hoax"; such tales of conscience as "William Wilson," "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-tale Heart," wherein the retributions of remorse are portrayed with an awful fidelity; such tales of natural beauty as "The Island of the Fay" and "The Domain of Arnheim"; such marvellous studies in ratiocination as the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... once saw a black cat perched on the shoulder of an innocent, chattering old gran'ma. The next day a neighbor had a convulsion; and Cotton Mather went forth and exorcised Tabby with a hymn-book, and hanged gran'ma by the neck, high on Gallows Hill, until she ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... smoke luxuriously through his delicately chiselled nostrils. His eyes wandered round the cornice of the room, took in the pictures and decorations, and then came down to meet the faces of his companions. As they did so, the black cat, having finished its meal, sprang on to his shoulder to crouch there, watching the three men through the curling smoke drift with its green blinking, fiendish eyes. Dr. Nikola smiled as he noticed the effect the animal had ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... call that old great-grandmother black cat Chops? Well, thereby hangs a tale. I don't mean the black tail which is standing upright and quivering at your caresses, but a story that there will be time to tell you before Charlie gets home ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... its height, when a black cat (a pet of Miss Lefevre's) suddenly leaped on the top of the piano with a canary in its mouth, and in the presence of them all, laid its captive before Julius Courtney. The music ceased with a dissonant crash. With a cry Julius rose ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... time," said George, quietly. Up ran Tom to prepare the entertainment for his brother, and opened the door fearing nothing—bang slam came great bundle, tin kettle and wash basin, and out jumped the great black cat, howling and ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... "I shouldn't have thought you'd have believed in the like of that—but I do—that old devil's dam, dame Parker, that lives alone up in Hatherleigh Wood, got gibbering some infernal nonsense at me the other day, for shooting her black cat. I made the cross in the road though, so I suppose it ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Poe, dropping a kind of veil between us and the salutary realities of existence. If Poe be fully as gifted, he is, for this reason, less sanely endowed. It may be conceded that he is not always as shudderingly sardonic and removed from human sympathy as in "The Cask of Amontillado" or "The Black Cat"; yet it is no exaggeration to affirm that he is nowhere more typical, more himself. On the contrary, in a tale like "The Birth Mark," what were otherwise the horror and ultra-realism of it, is tempered by and merged in the suggestion that no man shall with impunity tamper with Nature nor set ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... never was so flustered. But as soon as I laid eyes on that air man, I says, says I, that air man, says I, has got the shingles, says I. I know'd the minute I seed it. And if they'd gone clean around, nothing could a saved him. I says, says I, git me a black cat. So I jist killed a black cat, and let the blood run all over the swellin'. I tell you, doctor, they's nothin' like it. That man was well in ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... high. Tom rose upon his hind feet, clawed the air futilely and came down sheepishly upon all fours. Next, a small, nimble black cat jumped and fell short of the bait. Uncle Ike snickered, and I drew in my breath excitedly, as the pampered exquisite, My Lady Preciosa, tripped mincingly into the open. The moon shone out obligingly to let us see her fall into position, her ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... with a stick. The Town Councillors did not interfere, and the rabble passed bawling by the Pack-horse. Long before it came the Emigrant had recognised the ungainly man. It was Dicky Loony, the town butt. He had chivvied the imbecile a hundred times in just the same fashion, yelling "Black Cat!" after him as these young imps were yelling—though why "Black Cat" neither he nor the imps could have told. But Dicky had always resented it as he resented it now, wheeling round, shaking his stick, and sputtering ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... large, cushioned rocking-chair, resting her swollen slippered feet on a velvet stool, while her silver-mounted crutches leaned against the arm of her chair. An ugly and very diminutive brown terrier snarled and frisked on the rug, tormenting a staid and aged black cat, who occasionally arched her back and showed her teeth; and Dr. Grey stood leaning over his sister's chair, smoothing the soft grizzled locks that clustered under the rich lace border of her cap. He was talking of other days,—those of his boyhood, when, kneeling by that hearth, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... day, she had ventured nearer to the house than usual, and was lying reposing herself in the sun by a clod of dirt, near a rain-water butt, when she was disturbed by a noise near her, and to her horror she beheld the black cat with a fine kitten by her side, proceeding down the walk where she lay; to escape was almost impossible, even the attempt was vain, and hapless Downy gave herself up for lost. A month back, and she might have trusted to her ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... girl about three years old, and she had a large black cat. The cat was of a jet black color, and her fur was very soft and glossy. It was as ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... wonderful than these. I will make it so, that it will draw down the electricity from the sky. Have you ever rubbed a cat's fur the wrong way, in the dark?" "Oh, that I have! it's great fun. There's our black cat, at home, I have often done it to her, and I can see the sparks in cold weather." "Well, that is electricity, and there is electricity in every thing, only some objects have more than others. When you see the sparks, it is ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... cottage, and by a general plebiscitum, ransacked the little dwelling, partly in indignation, and partly, if the truth be told, in the hope of plunder; but plunder there was none. Lucy had decamped with all her movable wealth, saving the huge black cat among the embers, who at the sight of the bloodhound vanished up the chimney (some said with a strong smell of brimstone), and being viewed outside, was chased into the woods, where she lived, I doubt not, many happy years, a scourge to all ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... it is: the air of mystery about a woman makes a man like a kid again. She reminded me of a sleek, black cat, with her large, hazel eyes. I bumped into her one day on the verandah, and spent every day with her ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad
... a walk, dad, after school, out in the lanes; we saw a big black cat, and t' dogs chased her into a tree, then we got 't a pond, and d'ye know, dad, Bess went in ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... two stools by the heads of our bunks, turned in, and filled up and smoked comfortably, dropping in a lazy word now and again about nothing in particular. Once I happened to look across at Dave, and saw him sitting up a bit and watching the door. The door opened very slowly, wide, and a black cat walked in, looked first at me, then at Dave, and walked out again; and the door closed ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... family of field mice took in Grasshopper Green and gave him gooseberry syrup for his cough and made him very comfortable. Eyes will grow big at the exciting climax of the story, when Grasshopper Green saves the mice children from a big black cat. ...
— Grasshopper Green and the Meadow Mice • John Rae
... did he?" answered the young man, slyly. "My belief is, he has fallen in love with her. I saw a black cat on the stairs. She can make any body do it, as I was telling Aggey" (the young rogue had been to Soho since the morning); "I shall be the next victim, no doubt. It's no use saying to myself, 'Thou shalt not marry thy grandmother.' Her charms are too powerful for the rubric. ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... we enter a wretched hole, where we find an old woman sitting on a rickety bed, holding a black cat in her arms, with five or six more purring around her. The two old cronies held together a long discourse of which, most likely, I was the subject. At the end of the dialogue, which was carried on ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... it may be said: Sua eum perdidit pinguitudo, that is, his admirable condition was the cause of his death. He was killed by idiotic fanciers of jugged hare. His murderers, however, perished before the end of the year in the most painful manner; for the death of a black cat, an eminently cabalistic animal, ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... do? To show myself would have been to displease them and run into danger; it was better to wait for a favorable opportunity which chance would doubtless offer. For a whole month I lay in ambush, witnessing the same spectacle every morning, when one day I saw a huge black cat arrive first at the place of meeting and hide itself behind a rock, almost under my hand. A black cat could be nothing else than an enchanter, according to what I had learned in my childhood, and I resolved to watch him. ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... and atrocious has been eliminated in the editing, as unfit for modest ears and eyes. What remains, however, will give a sufficient picture of the Mormon Church in its hateful attitude towards all that is moral or republican among our people. A black kitten makes a black cat; what the Mormon Church was under President Young it is under President Smith, and will be with their ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... o'clock. A ray from the rising moon shone between the trees in the garden. A big black cat crept across the lawn, shaking its wet paws. In the darkness it looked like a tiger. In my mind's eye I saw Madeleine sitting with her eyes fixed on her dead hearth, telling her beads, her thoughts running with mine: "It is years since Monsieur Mouillard was up at ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... service, the captains of the companies of state troops and constabulary, the Chief of Police, the Mayor himself, and some representatives of the conservative element of organized labor. Quiet men, these last, uneasy and anxious, as ignorant as the others of which way the black cat, the symbol of sabotage and destruction, would jump. The majority of their men would stand for order, they declared, but there were some who would go over. They urged, to offset that reflection on their organization that the proletariat ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... A second bull enters into details. On the reception of a convert, a toad made its appearance, which was adored by the assembled crowd. On sitting down to the banquet a black cat comes upon the stage, double the size of an ordinary dog, advancing backwards with up-turned tail. The neophytes, one after another, kissed this feline demon, with due solemnity, on the back. Walter Mapes has given an account of the similar ceremonies ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... and—could Eileen believe her eyes?—for one instant she saw the knight flash past her, and then there was nothing living in the room besides her but a great black cat clinging by his claws half-way up the arras, and a little brown mouse between ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... did not reply at once. He seated himself, curled his tail into a graceful ring around his paws—and stared at the boy. It was a large black cat with one white spot on his chest. His fur lay sleek and soft, and shone in the sunlight. The claws were drawn in, and the eyes were a dull gray, with just a little narrow dark streak down the centre. The cat looked ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... unlike Hester's lithe quietness or the heavier stride of Ann, and knew that the little old lady who entered, fresh and tidy as a clean withered apple, was their mother. She had a pan of new-picked peas in one arm and a saucer of milk balanced in the other hand, plainly the breakfast for the sleek black cat that bounded in beside her. This she set carefully on a flagstone corner before she noticed her visitor, it seemed, and yet she did not appear startled at company, and showed all of the younger women's untroubled ease as she explained that a ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... in a church—no one dared do that; of what dreadful places churchyards were, how the dead in long grave-clothes rose up from their graves at night and frightened the life out of people, while the Devil himself ran about the churchyard in the shape of a black cat. In fact, you could never be sure, when you saw a black cat towards evening, that the Devil was not inside it. And as easily as winking the Devil could transform himself into a man and come up behind the person ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
