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Mule   Listen
noun
Mule  n.  
1.
(Zool.) A hybrid animal; specifically, one generated between an ass and a mare. Sometimes the term is applied to the offspring of a horse and a she-ass, but that hybrid is more properly termed a hinny. See Hinny. Note: Mules are much used as draught animals. They are hardy, and proverbial for stubbornness.
2.
(Bot.) A plant or vegetable produced by impregnating the pistil of one species with the pollen or fecundating dust of another; called also hybrid.
3.
A very stubborn person.
4.
A machine, used in factories, for spinning cotton, wool, etc., into yarn or thread and winding it into cops; called also jenny and mule-jenny.
5.
A slipper that has no fitting around the heel.
Synonyms: mules, scuff, scuffs.
Mule armadillo (Zool.), a long-eared armadillo (Tatusia hybrida), native of Buenos Ayres; called also mulita.
Mule deer (Zool.), a large deer (Cervus macrotis syn. Cariacus macrotis) of the Western United States. The name refers to its long ears.
Mule pulley (Mach.), an idle pulley for guiding a belt which transmits motion between shafts that are not parallel.
Mule twist, cotton yarn in cops, as spun on a mule; in distinction from yarn spun on a throstle frame.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mule" Quotes from Famous Books



... points as far distant as 700 yards. As we turned to go a piece whistled over our heads and hit one of the Red Cross waggon lead-mules. The poor beast dropped and brought down his frightened, kicking, companion mule also. The drivers had released them by the time Major Veasey and I came up. The wounded mule found his feet, and was led a few yards away. A horrible tear, 8 inches long, showed a smashed jawbone and cheekbone; he moved his head from side to side in ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... home-grown "punkin" pie. When I should have been learning to relish pate de foie gras and love my neighbor's wife in a purely passionless way, I was following one of McCormick's patents around a forty-acre field or arguing a point of ethics with a contumacious mule. That I am unable to appreciate that Platonic yearning of soul to soul, that deep calling unto deep on which Stella dotes, is my misfortune rather than my fault. It appears to me too much like voting the Prohibition ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... name of Le Boeuf is remarkably apposite to the character of that antiquarian; or where, speaking of the indefatigable diligence of Tillemont, he informs us, that "the patient and sure-footed mule of the Alps may be trusted in the most slippery paths." But allowing every thing for the happiness of his irony, and setting aside our private sentiments respecting the justice of its application, we cannot help thinking it absolutely incompatible, with the laws of history. For our own ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... wheels, was covered with groups of Cupids, and with Anacreontic attributes, such as lyres, tambourines, Pandaean pipes, cooing doves, and hearts pierced with arrows, executed at some remote period by a pencil more remarkable for audacity than correctness of design. The mule harnessed to this gaudy car, had the upper half of his body closely clipped, bore a lofty panoply of coloured worsted upon his head, and was covered with bells from nose to tail. A ferocious-looking charioteer, stripped to his shirt-sleeves, a sheepskin jacket dangling from his shoulder, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... would bring some pleasant volume and read it aloud to me. When Hareton was there, she generally paused in an interesting part, and left the book lying about: that she did repeatedly; but he was as obstinate as a mule, and, instead of snatching at her bait, in wet weather he took to smoking with Joseph; and they sat like automatons, one on each side of the fire, the elder happily too deaf to understand her wicked nonsense, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... Porcupine round his neck; swore bonne amour et fraternite, and they kissed each other with tears of joy. On 23rd November a forged missive was handed to the Duke of Orleans, requiring his attendance on the queen. He set forth on a mule, accompanied by two squires and five servants carrying torches. It was a sombre night, and as the unsuspecting prince rode up the Rue Vieille du Temple behind his little escort, humming a tune and playing with ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... mule is to a hoss what a woman is to a man. Ever notice? The difference ain't so much in what they do as what they don't do. Me speakin' personal, I'll take a lot from any hoss and lay it to jest plain spirit; but a mule can make me mad by standin' still and doin' nothing ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... felt for the ladies. That he feared one of the young ladies was not a strong or accustomed traveller, and had been over-fatigued two or three hours ago. That he had observed, from his station in the rear, that she sat her mule as if she were exhausted. That he had, twice or thrice afterwards, done himself the honour of inquiring of one of the guides, when he fell behind, how the lady did. That he had been enchanted to learn that she had recovered ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... as the adjective signifies, was the property of his master, as much so as were the horse or the mule with which he worked, and he was cared for in much the same way and for ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... long moustaches reflectively. "Well, well," he said finally, with a flick of the whip at the off mule, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... and good sense is essential to success. Time and tide waits for no man. The tall sunflower and the little violet is turning its face to the sun. The mule and the horse was harnessed together. Every green leaf and every ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... exclaimed in her outspoken, decided way—"no sense of proportion. High-tempered, obstinate as a mule, and a hundred years—yes, five hundred years behind his time. And he—could have stopped it all too if he had listened to me. Did you ever hear anything so stupid as his turning Harry—the sweetest boy who ever lived—out of doors, and in a pouring rain, for doing what he ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... a few steps away, and the courtiers left him alone. Presently he saw Cornelius, mounted on his mule, riding away in ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac

... not much. Ye see it's just home stuff. The old 'oman's awful smart. She raises enough chickens and turkeys and ducks and guineas to eat, and she sells a few eggs and young chickens and turkeys when they brings anything in the market. I got six sheep, a cow, a calf, a mule, a couple o' pigs in the pen. But they won't bring much money. Ye see I never felt so poor ez long ez I had a home where I can live independent like. That house ain't much, sir. But you ain't no idea how deep down ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... Why, when I was comin' along people was healthy and portly lookin'. Why, look at me. I ain't never had but two spells of sickness and I ain't never had the headache. The only thing—I broke these three fingers. Hit a mule in the head. Killed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... of his own head and trusted that no person would ever be fool enough to go there. Hows'ever, the weather keeping mild, we won through the passes with no more damage than the loss of Mr. Fett's mule (which tumbled over a precipice on the third day), and a sore on Mr. Fett's heel, brought about by his having to walk the rest of the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... succeeded by delicious fruits and coffee. After dinner we visited the vegetable garden, and the well, where we found Candido, the rich negro who had saved six hundred dollars, drawing water with the help of a blind mule. Now the philanthrope of our party was also a phrenologist, and had conceived a curiosity to inspect the head of the very superior negro who had made all this money; so, at his request, Candido was summoned from the well, and ordered to take off his hat. This ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... exceed the quiet gravity and unpretentiousness of the little cavalcade. First rode a stout muleteer, leading a pack-mule laden with the provisions of the party, together with a few cheap crucifixes and hawks' bells. After him came the devout Padre Jose, bearing his breviary and cross, with a black serapa thrown around his shoulders; while on either side trotted a dusky convert, anxious to show a proper sense of his ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... noticed the disputes which arose when the Pope demanded from Lothair and from Frederick I that the Emperor should perform the office of groom to the Pope—hold his stirrup as he mounted and walk by the side of the mule. St. Bernard rightly points out that in thus appearing in public adorned in jewels and silks, covered with gold, riding a white horse, and surrounded with guards, the Pope was the successor not of Peter, but of Constantine. And if he required so much state outside the Church, much more did ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... tenants, Lifted our produce, driven our clerics out— Why they, your friends, those ruffians, the De Brocs, They stood on Dover beach to murder me, They slew my stags in mine own manor here, Mutilated, poor brute, my sumpter-mule, Plunder'd the vessel full of Gascon wine, The old King's present, carried off the casks, Kill'd half the crew, dungeon'd the other ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... sar. Friar and I get on two mule as soon as it quite dark. He make me carry all tousand dollars—and we ride out of town. We go up mountain and mountain, but the moon get up shine and we go on cheek by jowl—he nebber say one word, and I nebber say ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... came the damosel Linet, that some men called the damosel Savage, and she came riding upon an ambling mule; and there she cried all on high, Sir Gawaine, Sir Gawaine, leave thy fighting with thy brother Sir Gareth. And when he heard her say so he threw away his shield and his sword, and ran to Sir Gareth, and took him in his arms, and sithen ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... point besieged the city. Food became very scarce in Valencia. Wheat, barley and cheese were all so dear that none but the rich could buy them. People ate horses, dogs, cats and mice, until in the whole city only three horses and a mule were left alive. ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren

... supplies and provisions. All the missions of Lower California were laid under contribution of vestments and sacred vessels for the new missions to be established, also dried fruits, wine, oil, riding horses and mule herd; for Galvez had decided to supplement the maritime expedition by one by land, lest the infinite risks and dangers attending a long sea-voyage should render the attempt abortive. The governor, Don Gaspar de ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera

... Bellagio. The next day a more prosperous start was made, and on the 8th of December the party set off on horseback to cross the mountain passes. But the hardships of the journey were not yet over. A rough mule-track was the only road that led in those days over the Alps that divided the Valtellina from the Tyrol, "that fearful and cruel mountain of Nombray," as the Venetian chronicler calls the pass now crossed by the Stelvio road. No wonder the sight of those precipitous cliffs filled ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... quietly, but when advancing day made them visible, multitudes of tribesmen were descried collecting on the slopes of the neighbouring hills. Some friendly Natives were sent to ascertain their intentions, followed by a Cavalry reconnoitring party, when suddenly a number of camel-drivers and mule-men, who had gone to the nearest village to procure fodder for their animals, came rushing back to camp in the wildest terror and excitement, declaring that the enemy seemed to rise as if by magic out of the ground, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... predicament. Not one of them carried a watch, or he might have known that it was about three o'clock, and very dark, when a worse disaster than the visit of the locusts took place. By five or six minutes past three it was all done completely, and it was the work of a wicked old mule. ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... the interior of China are five— the donkey, the sedan chair, the wheelbarrow, the cart and the shendza (mule litter), and naturally the first problem of the traveller is to decide which one he ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... Animals; Being a History and Description of the Horse, Mule, Cattle, Sheep, Swine, Poultry, and Farm Dogs, with Directions for their Management, Breeding, Crossing, Rearing, Feeding, and Preparation for a profitable Market; also, their Diseases and Remedies; together with full Directions for the Management of the Dairy, and the Comparative ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... Christ we must fast and pray for a number of days. I remember, too, the unsuccessful attempt which I made to give myself to Jesus in this way. I was a farm boy and was plowing hard every day, and it was hard work for a boy of my age to follow the mule all day in the tough grass, and I always felt like eating when meal time came, but still I tried to become a Christian by doing as the minister said I must, and so for a few days I ate no breakfast, no dinner, and no supper, though I worked on. They told us, also, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 5, May, 1889 • Various

... to be borne away, faultless, skilled in works, as well as a handled tripod of two-and-twenty measures, for the first; but for the second he staked a mare six years old, unbroken, pregnant with a young mule; for the third he staked a fireless tripod, beautiful, containing four measures, yet quite untarnished;[744] for the fourth he staked two talents of gold; and for the fifth he staked a double vessel, untouched ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... I will try it," said I, "let the consequences be what they may. The matter can be no worse than it now is." So I tackled up the Deacon's best mule with his saddle, &c., and started that night and went off eight or ten miles from home. But I found the mule to be rather troublesome, and was like to betray me by braying, especially when he would see cattle, horses, or any thing of the kind in ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb

... Barney the good-natured mule that was once a family pet. Later he becomes the celebrated bucking mule, and a prize is offered to anyone who will keep on his back for one minute. Audiences go into fits of laughter at his antics. But the audiences do not know that ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... in a difficulty; and, mule-like, since he does not know which way to turn, stands stock still. He can do nothing, he says, without the Admiral's consent. The next day Bobadilla, again hearing mass in state, causes further documents to be read showing that a still greater degree of power had been entrusted to ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... to the necessity of giving greater jurisdiction to the local magistrates, in order that contests of miners respecting their claims might be tried in their vicinity. As things then existed the right to a mule could not be litigated without going to the county seat, at a cost greater than the value of the animal. I was in favor of legislation which would protect miners in their claims, and exempt their tents, rockers, and utensils used in ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... talk," exclaimed Tom, as he snuffed the odor of the cooking meat by the camp fire. "I'm hungry enough to chaw up my moccasins. What have you there—buffalo, mule or ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... There are all manner of difficulties attached to it. Perhaps no direct road to and from any city on the world's surface is subject to sharper fatigue while it lasts. Journeying by this route also, the traveller leaves San Jose mounted on his mule, and so mounted he makes his way through the vast primeval forests down to the banks of the Serapiqui river. That there is a track for him is of course true; but it is simply a track, and during nine months of the twelve is so deep in mud that the mules ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope

... coffee, 'with,' speedily corrected, and were en route at 4.30 A.M. Formerly animals were left at the lower estancia; now they are readily taken on to Alta Vista. My wife rode a sure-footed black nag, I a mule which was perfect whilst the foot-long lever acting curb lay loose on its neck. Returning, we were amazed at the places they had passed during ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... man that Billy Brue now sought with his news of death, a philosopher of this school would unhesitatingly declare that he had sounded the last note of human wisdom. Far up in some mountain solitude old Peter Bines, multimillionaire, with a lone pack-mule to bear his meagre outfit, picked up float-rock, tapped and scanned ledges, and chipped at boulders with the same ardour that had fired him ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... I've been up the trail this year; delivered our cattle on the Yellowstone, where the outfit I worked for has a northern range. When I remember this summer's work, I sometimes think that I will burn my saddle and never turn or look a cow in the face again, nor ride anything but a plow mule and that bareback. ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... content to ride to the westward, only on the back of the laggard and unambitious coach, that tortoise of travel, crawling on through prairie and swamp. And it is still within the recollection of almost the youngest inhabitant, how the daily trains, drawn by horse, mule, or ox, dragged themselves through our streets, proclaiming from their cotton coverings their distant destination, illustrating on their ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... at the gate of the courtyard, talking to a man and woman who had just arrived. The man was tall, with a long beard, and he led by a rope a snow white mule, on which sat the drooping figure of the woman. As Ruth and her mother came near, they heard the father say, "But I tell thee that there is no more room in the inn. Hast thou no friends where thou canst go to spend the night?" The man shook his head. "No, none," he answered. "I care ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various

... the Orlando Furioso," cried the king, laughing heartily. "Is your skin so tender still that the needles of the little critics disturb you, and to gratify their malice will you become a mule? If you are driven to abandon the Muses, friend, who will have the hardihood to stand by them? No, no! do not follow in the footsteps of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not 'visit the sins of the fathers upon ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... reached Lhasa in 1846 from China. He had adopted the dress of the Tibetan Lama—the yellow cap and gown—and he piloted his little caravan across the wide steppes on horseback, while his fellow-missionary, Gabet, rode a camel and their one Tartar retainer rode a black mule. It took them a year and a half to reach the sacred city of Lhasa, for many and great were the difficulties of the way. Their first difficulty lay in crossing the Yellow River, which ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... machinery can scarcely be realized. It is reckoned that fifty men with modern machinery could do all the cotton-spinning of the whole of Lancashire a century ago. Mr. Leone Levi has calculated that to make by hand all the yarn spun in England in one year by the use of the self-acting mule, would take 100,000,000 men. The instruments which work this wonderful change are called "labour-saving" machinery. From this title it may be deemed that their first object, or at any rate their chief effect, would be to lighten labour. It seems at first sight therefore strange to find ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... we get as far as hanging them, my dear brother will happen to be in Paris instead of in Rome. You might as well try to catch a street cat by calling to it micio, micio! as try and catch a priest. You may as well expect to kill a mule by kicking it as one of those animals, Burn the Vatican over their heads and think you have destroyed them like a wasps' nest, they will write you a letter from Berlin the next day saying that they are alive and well, and that Prince ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... See yonder roof?—plates of beaten gold! Yonder mule hath harness of exquisitely chased silver! Here comes a noble chief and his favourite wife, with a retinue of slaves. The soles of his sandals are of gold, the straps are studded with gems; pearls are sewn in hundreds in his bright-hued ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... bunched. A rear guard sped to protect the caballada. Captain Charles Bent tore back from the advance. He was bare-headed. His long black hair streamed in the breeze that he made. He was mounted on a rangy, raw-boned black mule, with split ears—Comanche brand. No man more fearless ever ranged the plains. A host in himself, ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... built of green brick and thatched with grass. Behind this hut is a fence of thorns, rough but strong, designed to protect all within it from the attacks of lions and other beasts of prey. At present, save for a solitary mule eating its provender by the wheel of a tented ox-waggon, it is untenanted, for the cattle have not yet been kraaled for the night. Presently Thomas Owen enters this enclosure by the back door of the hut, and having attended to the mule, ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard

... the thighs. They put into the grave their guns, bows and arrows, tobacco, and if they have it a blanket, moccasins, and trinkets of various kinds. One or more horses are killed over or near the grave. Two horses and a mule were killed near Black Hawk's grave. They were led up near and shot in the head. At the death of a Comanche chief, some years ago, I am told about seventy horses were killed, and a greater number than that were said to have ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... Billy was good to his Negroes and when they wanted a pass, if it was for a good reason, he give 'em one. Didn't none of Marse Billy's slaves run off to no North. When Marse Billy had need to send news somewhere, he put a reliable Negro on a mule and sent him. I sho' didn't hear about no trouble ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... A man who could not enjoy his wife, freed from his disorder. 5 A young man who had been bewitched, and turned into a mule miraculously cured by Christ being put on his back, 28 and is married to the girl who had been cured ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... an entree; he constructed it with care, And he vowed that e'en APICIUS would have owned it rich and rare. And when JOACHIM protested that "soup first" was a fixed rule, ARTHUR B. insinuated that his colleague was a mule. ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various

... mule boat Armenian was torpedoed on June 28, as a result of which twenty Americans are ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... standing by him; which, they say, is the beast on which the prophets used to ride, when they were carried from one place to another, upon the execution of any divine command. Mahomet describes it to be a beast as white as milk, and of a mixed nature, between an ass and a mule, and also of a size between both; but of such extraordinary swiftness as ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... we might be gratified and pleased we came. Since then we have been staying with Mike in Minnesota, where we were either riding or driving (anything to do with horses) all day long. Driving four miles, jumping the horses over a pole, taking them down to water, having a mule race (which was truly amusing as the course was just in front of the house and several bolted home), and driving, a gang plough, were a few of the "diversions" found for us. Our host was most kind and anxious to make us comfortable; he worked ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... about my equipment, and in a few days we set forth, myself on a good young chestnut gelding, Nicolas on a strong black mule, which carried also our baggage. Before I mounted, and while my mother, doing her best to keep back her tears, was adding some last article of comfort to the contents of my great leather bag, my father led me into the window ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... some character who is really doing something in earnest; that is, some cowboy, miner, prospector, teamster,—one of those twenty-mule-team kind, you know,—or any such chap. Why, even the real estate men that have been up to my hotel seem to be acting a part. One expects every minute to see one of them pull a gun and hold up a fellow. No doubt ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... with y'r ramrod independence! Bend a stiff neck, or you'll break a sore heart! Ride ahead, I tell you, you young mule!" and he brought a smart ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... moment the mule arrived bearing the sutler's supplies, which had been long and impatiently expected. There was no table; but one was made of a door placed on casks, and seats were improvised with planks. The chief officers seated themselves, and the others ate ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... tied to the tail of a savage mule loaded with nuts, was broken into as many pieces as there were nuts upon the ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... year was full The thread was cut and finished the school. Death snapped the old worn-out tool, Snapped him short while he stood and stirred (Though stiff he stood as a stiff-necked mule) ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... to protest. Ringan was as obstinate as a Spanish mule when he chose, and, besides, there was reason in what he said. Two were better than one both for speed in travel and for fighting if the need came, and though I had more woodcraft than he, he had ten times my wisdom. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... dreams he had been crossing high passes with her; he had halted suddenly and stayed her mule. In his dream because he was a man of letters and a poet it was always a mule, never a train de luxe. "Look," he had said, "below there,—Italy!—the country you have ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... a remarkable sight to see a pack mule eating off his own back!" observed Hippy. "There are several animals that can turn their heads all the way around, I believe, but ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower

... There is in the village of Bocking, at a corner, a curious and very large grotesque figure of oak, which was evidently in the time of Elizabeth a pilaster in some house-front. My friend Edwards, who was wont to roam all over England in a mule-waggon etching and sketching, when in Bocking was informed by a rustic that this figure was the image of Harkiles (Hercules), a heathen god formerly worshipped in the old Catholic convent upon the hill, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... solitary oak a party of weary travellers have halted, to rest and refresh themselves and their animals; or, as the diggers have it, to take their "nooning." In the midst of that party sits our captain, on the back of a long-legged mule. ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... travelling along the shores of Lake Leman, and noticing neither the azure of the waters nor the luxuriance of the vines, nor the radiance of the mountains with their robe of sun and snow, but bending a thought-burdened forehead over the neck of his mule—even like this monk, humanity had passed, a careful pilgrim, intent on the terrors of sin, death, and judgment, along the highways of the world, and had not known that they were sightworthy, or that life is a blessing. Beauty is a snare, pleasure a sin, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... back of an old mule which a darky had ridden to the kite ground, he started full tilt after the disappearing wire, the whole membership of the League streaming ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... him the old war horse, and the old battle-axe, and the old charger and the old champion and all sorts of things of that kind. The Conservatives called him the old jackass and the old army mule and the old booze fighter and the old grafter and ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... to have similar notions. Horses were very hard to borrow that Friday afternoon. But a negro man, named Isaac Waddell, agreed to hire them his horse Hector, for fifty cents for the day; and the storekeeper, after much persuasion, lent a big gray mule, Grits by name. There was another mule in the village, which the boys could have if they wanted her; but they did not want her—that is, if they could get anything else with four legs that would do to go in their team. This was Polly, a little mule, ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton

... old English flavor that have fallen into disuse elsewhere varied the life at the White. One day the gentlemen rode in a mule-race, the slowest mule to win, and this feat was followed by an exhibition of negro agility in climbing the greased pole and catching the greased pig; another day the cavaliers contended on the green field surrounded by a brilliant ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... is, and never can catch the low whisper which will come to us by providences, by movements in our own spirits, through the exercise of our own faculties of judgment and common-sense, if only we will keep near to Him. 'Be ye not as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding, whose mouths must be held in with bit and with bridle, else they will not come near to thee,' but walk close behind Him, and then the promise will be fulfilled: 'I will guide thee with Mine eye.' A glance ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... but bad luck followed them, the torment of mosquitoes and sandflies, added to bad feed, caused their horses to ramble incessantly, and whilst the brothers were away on these hunting excursions, the party at the camp allowed their solitary mule to stray away with his pack on; and despite all efforts he was never found again. Unfortunately, this animal carried a lot of their most necessary articles, and their loss reduced them almost to the same state as ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... 'way past Cherry Pond, 'n' their hired man see her ridin' by 'n' made after her on a mule. The gasolene give out before the mule did, so he hauled her home, 'n' the man in the cap come 'n' took the automobile back ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner

... what a sailor would term the fore and after part of his head. He reaps his hirsute crop dry, using no lather. His cue is pieced out by silken braid, so interwoven as gradually to taper into a slim tassel, something like a Missouri mule-driver's "black snake" whip-lash. To lose this cue is to lose caste and standing among his fellows. No misfortune for him can ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... to go to court, his son Diego was sent thither in his place, to look after his interests and transact his business. Letter after letter followed the young man from Seville, one by the hands of Amerigo Vespucci. A license to ride on mule-back was granted him on February 23, 1505;[11] and in the following May he was removed to the court at Segovia, and thence again to Valladolid. On the landing of Philip and Juan at Coruna (April 25, 1506), although "much oppressed with the gout and troubled ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... noon I met a man who tarried in the shade, He led a mule, and riding it a maid— A maiden with a face I'll ne'er forget, A wondrous face, I seem to see it yet Lit with an inward shining, as if God Had set a lighted lamp within her soul. Many have passed all day, but none ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare

... husband at the mines. Direful predictions and disapprobation of friends. Indelicacy of her position among an almost exclusively male population. Indians, ennui, cold. Leaves for Marysville. Scanty fare on way. Meets husband. Falls from mule. An exhausting ride. A midnight petit souper at Marysville. Dr. C. leaves on muleback for Bidwell's Bar. The author follows in springless wagon. Beautiful scenery. Marysville Buttes. Sierra Nevada. Indian women, their near-nudity, beautiful limbs and lithe forms, picturesqueness. Flower-seed ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... forward to attack, two thousand strong, led fiercely by Little Raven, an Arapahoe; Santanta, a Kiowa, and Little Rock, a Cheyenne. Dismounting his men he prepared for a desperate resistance, although the troopers' ammunition was running low. Suddenly, crashing through the very Indian lines, came a four-mule wagon. The quartermaster was on the box, driving recklessly. Only Hamlin and a dozen other men were still in saddle. Without orders they dashed forward, spurring maddened horses into the ranks of the Indians, hurling them left and right, firing into infuriated red faces, and slashing about with ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... some twisted ivy-net, Now by some tinkling rivulet, In mosses mixt [2] with violet Her cream-white mule his pastern set: And fleeter now [3] she skimm'd the plains Than she whose elfin prancer springs By night to eery warblings, When all the glimmering moorland ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... difficult to obtain food either suitable or sufficient. The beef was horrible. Upon two occasions rations of mule meat were issued, and eaten with the only sauce which could have rendered it possible to swallow the rank, coarse-grained meat,—i.e., the ravenous hunger of wounded and convalescent men. Meal was musty, flour impossible to be procured. All ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... her, to her. She's like a mule. I never saw such a will in a woman. I—I've fought her until I'm weak. Where she got her temper I don't know.' He collapsed feebly and I was forced to smile, for there's only one thing stubborn enough to overcome a Harman's resistance, and ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... taking all my money, purchased two ox-carts, intending to make my living by carrying freight. One cart I drove myself, and to drive the other I hired a boy whom I called Mula, though that was not the name his godfathers gave him, but because he was stubborn and sullen as a mule. His mother was a poor widow, living near me, and when she heard about the ox-carts she came to me with her son and said, 'Neighbour Mariano, for your mother's sake, take my son and teach him to earn his bread, for he is a boy that loves ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... a full century after the complete settlement of New England and the Virginia colonies that the wonderful big-game fauna of the great plains and Rocky Mountains was really discovered; but the bison millions, the antelope millions, the mule deer, the mountain sheep and mountain goat were there, all the time. In the early days, the millions of pinnated grouse and quail of the central states attracted no serious attention from the American people-at-large; but they lived and flourished just the same, far down in the seventies, when ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... for nearly four hours, his troops having been for some time with empty cartridge-boxes, twenty-four hours without food, and having passed several nights without sleep, while intrenching, Williams now felt that he could no longer hold his ground. The enemy was still pressing on, and the mule-train of small ammunition could not be got up under the heavy fire. His artillery had also exhausted its supplies; Sickles was in similar plight; Jackson's men, better used to the bayonet, and possessing the momentum of success, still kept up their ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... they would have heard him read "Josh Billings," particularly "On the Mule," from the New York Weekly columns. It was as "good as a play," the stenographers said, to see the President dart a glance over his spectacle-rims at some demure counselor whose molelike machinations were more than suspected, and with ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... are; but you talk too much by half, Passford, and I have been dreading that you would make a slip of some kind," replied Mr. Galvinne rather crustily. "You were as stupid as a Kentucky mule when you stopped to talk with Byron ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... a one-eyed cobbler. "Notary Mule offers to abolish all these Seigneur's rights if we elect him ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... proof of it the pulpit contributed its argument. Negro preachers with wives scattered throughout the community urged their fellow bondsmen to drop upon their knees and thank God for the privilege of following a mule in a Christian land. The merciless work of driving the negroes to their tasks was performed by men from the North. Many a son of New England, who, with emotion, had listened to Phillips and to Garrison, had afterward hired his harsh energies to the slave ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... did not move. I ran forward along the trench and there found a white pack-mule all loaded up with baggage; I could make out the queerly worked trappings, with brass-coins on the fringed bridle and coloured fly-tassels over the eyes. It was stone dead and stiff. Its eyes glared at me—a glassy ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... Psaumis' mule-chariot it draweth nigh to thee—Psaumis, who, crowned with Pisan olive, hasteth to raise up glory for Kamarina. May God be gracious to our prayers for what shall be! For I praise him as a man most zealous in the rearing of horses, and delighting in ever-open hospitality, ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... that Fuller, soon after leaving his engine, in passing a cabin in the country, found a mule, having on a bridle but no saddle, and tied to a fence. "Here's your mule," he shouted, as he leaped upon his back, and put out as fast as a good switch, well applied, could impart vigor to the ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger

... his treaty. This imposition had to be submitted to, since the Afghans stopped the supplies until the extortion was complied with. The next concession required was the surrender of the artillery of the force, with the exception of six field and three mule guns; and the military chiefs endured this humiliation, against which even the demoralised soldiery chafed. Then the demand for hostages had to be complied with, and four officers were sent on to join the two hostages already in Afghan hands. ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... of Queen Isabella; in fact, the priest to whom she told all her sorrows and troubles. He was a quiet man and talked but little. After a long conference with Columbus, in which he was convinced that Columbus was right, he borrowed a mule and getting on his back rode for many miles across the open country to the palace in which the queen was then staying. I do not know how he convinced her of the truth of Columbus' plan, when all the ministers ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... Prescott's[33] room. I went and listen'd at the door, As I had often done before; I found the Juniors in a high rant, They call'd the President a tyrant; And said as how I was a fool, A long ear'd ass, a sottish mule, Without the smallest grain of spunk; So I concluded they were drunk. At length I knock'd, and Prescott came: I told him 't was a burning shame, That he should give his classmates wine; And he should pay a heavy fine. Meanwhile the rest grew so outragious, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... written under some little depression from languid health due to this cause. Tarentum, where his friend lived, and whose praises are so warmly sung, was a favourite resort of the poet's. He used to ride there on his mule, very possibly to visit Septimius, before he had his own Sabine villa; and all his love for that villa never chilled his admiration for Tibur, with its "silvan shades, and orchards moist with wimpling rills,"— the "Tiburni lucus, et uda ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... make a big fuss over any li'l ole dog or cat an' I don't know whut all, an' after they done buy her all the candy from all the candy sto's in the livin' worl', an' all the flowers from all the greenhouses they is, it's a wonder some of 'em ain't sen' her a mule fer a present, 'cause seem like to me they done sen' her mos' every kine of animal they is! Firs' come Airydale dog you' grampaw tuck an' give away to the milkman; 'n'en come two mo' pups; I don't know whut they is, 'cause they bofe had dess sense enough to run away ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... David's command they brought out the mule on which no one but the king was allowed to ride; and they placed Solomon upon it; and with the king's guards, and the nobles, and the great men, they brought the young Solomon down to the valley of ...
— The Wonder Book of Bible Stories • Compiled by Logan Marshall

... old soldier came up to speak to me, and glancing down toward the other end of the table, he asked: "Is n't that old Harris of Tennessee?" When I replied that it was, he continued: "Well, well! The last time I saw him, he was wearing a linen- duster, riding a mule, and going ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... said the lady, "but of course not a mule skinner touched. Talk about charmed lives! Besides, they wasn't accidents; they was just incidents. It was part of ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... allow his head to hang to the left, due, presumably, to much practice in holding down the large end of his violin with his chin. He was prone to sleep a great deal, and even as he sat in the driver's seat of a "prairie-schoner," or astride a mule, the attitude described often resulted in his being accused of napping while on duty. The climatic conditions peculiar to the plains, and the slow, steady movement of the conveyances, were conducive to drowsiness, in consequence of which everybody was all the time sleepy. But "Jack" ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell

... brat? Why should I be burdened with it? Can't you see? We've got to drag her wherever we go, delaying us, an unhallowed worry, and a darn danger at all times. Cut it out. Pass her along to some blamed orphan outfit. Leave her to the mule-headed folks who guess their mission in life is to round up other folks' 'strays.' Steve's not a thing to you now, Nita, and never will be again. You can't ever go back to him. He'd kick you out without mercy, if I know Steve. He's ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... I paid my usual visits to the fountain, and likewise rode about the neighbourhood on a mule, for the purpose of circulating tracts. I dropped a great many in the favourite walks of the people of Evora, as I felt rather dubious of their accepting them had I proffered them with my own hand, whereas, should they be observed lying ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... while this picture I draw: In chattering a magpie, in pride a jackdaw; A temper the devil himself could not bridle; Impertinent mixture of busy and idle; As rude as a bear, no mule half so crabbed; She swills like a sow, and she breeds like a rabbit; A housewife in bed, at table a slattern; For all an example, for no one a pattern. Now tell me, friend Thomas,[1] Ford,[2] Grattan,[3] and Merry Dan,[4] Has this any ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... Bichieri, where I was well entertained of a Iewe which was the Customer there, giuing me Muskadine, and drinking water himselfe: hauing broken my fast with him, he prouided mee a Camell for my carriage, and a Mule for mee to ride vpon, and a Moore to runne by me to the City of Alexandria, who had charge to see mee safe in the English house, whether I came, but found no Englishmen there: but then my guide brought me aboord a ship of Alderman Martins, called the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... were not uncommon in the villages which bordered the merchants' trail, from the Yangtze to the Irriwaddi, but Peter's interest was kindled. As he made off in the direction of the most reliable village mule-seller, he decided that the secretive young bridegroom, Meng, might be ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... into the saddle of one of the three horses in his care. He himself rode the middle horse. I was on his off side. The horse I mounted had a keg of spirits lashed to the saddle behind me; the horse beyond Marah was laden like a pack-mule. ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... you may forego the pleasure and burden altogether, as wood for fires is everywhere abundant. Only a little food will be required. Berries and plums abound in season, and quail and grouse and deer—the magnificent shaggy mule deer as well ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... and 5 feet in length, closed in front by a hermetically jointed door. This cylinder, which constitutes the disinfection chamber, is mounted upon wheels and is provided with shafts, so that it can easily be hauled by a horse or mule. The cylinder is of riveted iron plate, and is covered with a wooden jacket. The door is provided with a flange that enters a rubber lined groove in the cylinder, and to it are riveted wrought iron forks that receive the nuts of hinged bolts fixed upon the cylinder. The nuts are screwed up tight, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... voice of the gifted granddaughter. But the influence of heredity is strong, more especially "down South." Also there are many charming stories redolent of the South. I was about to mention the page on which will be found the thrilling history of a mule aptly named "Satan." On reflection I won't spoil the reader's pleasure in unexpectedly coming upon it somewhere about the middle of the book. Nobody—man or woman, girl or boy—who begins to read My Beloved South will skip a page. So the story ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various

... A superannuated gray mule hitched to a heavy cart had come to a standstill in the middle of the street, and a group of excited negroes were vainly trying to induce him to move on. With one ear cocked forward, and his forefeet firmly planted, the decrepit animal dumbly made his declaration of independence, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... due time comes Robert Fulton and the Clermont begins to flap flap her weary 36 hours from New York to Albany. A new tool but the same route. In time she passed into a more modern type. The steamboat developed, and came the canal with its mule power. How strange it seems in these days to think of mule power ever having been considered. Yet I have in my possession a letter to the constructing engineer of the Erie Railroad urging that it should be operated ...
— Address by Honorable William C. Redfield, Secretary of Commerce at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highway Transport Committee Council of National Defence • US Government

... was drier than even the Manzanares, its rocky bed, wide enough to hold the upper Connecticut, entirely taken up by mule and donkey paths and set with the cloth booths of fruit sellers. As one moves south it grows cooler, and Monterey, fifteen hundred feet above sea-level, was not so weighty in its heat as Laredo and southern Texas. But, on the other hand, being ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... of the country abounds with mule, which are used in carriages, carts, waggons, ploughs, &c. These animals are of a remarkable size here. The roads, ever since we left Lyons, excepting where we met with a hundred or two hundred yards of pavement, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... the village, Frobisher took Ling with him and went off to see that the carts were properly loaded, and the mule-drivers at their stations; and to his astonishment found that, in spite of the proverbial slackness of the Korean, everything was in readiness, and only his word was necessary to enable the caravan to start. During his previous visit to the shore he had done a little exploration, and had quite ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... and trouble to work me up into that kind of thing—and at least a dozen girls. Netta's very pretty, to be sure, but she has a will of her own, and so has Howel. I am sure they would soon fight. As to father, he is as obstinate as a mule. And Howel with such a mint of money! But I like father's pride, and I must say I reel proud of him for it. I would never give in just because a man has suddenly got ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... the city, and was walking toward the palace, when he beheld a lady mounted on a mule richly accoutred. She was followed by several ladies mounted also on mules, with a great number of guards and black slaves. All the people formed a lane to see her pass along, and saluted her by prostrating ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... at Nancy in one month, and at Metz, over a game of checkers, he killed the poor Vicomte de Megrigny, who was worth a hundred of him and danced so well! Some one described Bergenheim as being 'proud as a peacock, as stubborn as a mule, and as furious as a lion!' Ugly race! ugly race! What I say to you now, Clemence, is to excuse your husband's faults, for it would be time lost to try to correct them. However, all men are alike; and since you are Madame de Bergenheim, you ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... sanguine, but in the fall the bucks are very aggressive and dangerous, and to be carefully avoided. The mule deer is sanguine, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... buy back de old place. Money mighty plentiful out dar, Aunt Vi'let say. Gwine way ain't nothin' ter a man; he kin come back 'gin. I went 'way ter Richmond onct myse'f ter rake up money 'nouf ter buy one mule, an' rent er scrop o' lan', so ez I could marry Sarah. Mars Jim's comin' back; las' word he sed ter Aunt Vi'let, was dat. Miss Pocahontas ain't kick him n'other. What she gwine kick him fur? Mars Jim's er likely man, an' all de ginnerashuns o' de Byrds an' Masons bin marryin' one n'other ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... what it was that had occasioned the alarm during the night; so they leaned their muskets up in one corner of the cabin, and ran out on the bank, and there, weltering in his blood, lay, not a rebel, but a white mule. He it was that, while feeding about in the woods, had occasioned the disturbance in the bushes, and Frank's shot had done its work. The two men with muskets had existence only in the corporal's imagination. Simpson burst into a ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon

... and in the centre of the floor of the hall were four men sitting on a carpet of velvet, Owain the son of Urien, and Gwalchmai the son of Gwyar, and Howel the son of Emyr Llydaw, and Peredur of the long lance. And thereupon they saw a black curly-headed maiden enter, riding upon a yellow mule, with jagged thongs in her hand, to urge it on; and having a rough and hideous aspect. Blacker were her face and her two hands than the blackest iron covered with pitch; and her hue was not more frightful ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... Miss Fair say she was gwine ter walk, and den Mars Bev say hit too far for her; dat she got ter ride de mule: and she up an tell him ef it too far fer her ter walk, she ain't gwine, 'cause it suttenly too far ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.

... cavalry were responsible for the safety of the baggage convoy, and with Colonel Byng, who commanded the column, I waited and watched the almost interminable procession defile. Ox waggons piled high with all kinds of packages, and drawn sometimes by ten or twelve pairs of oxen, mule waggons, Scotch carts, ambulance waggons, with huge Red Cross flags, ammunition carts, artillery, slaughter cattle, and, last of all, the naval battery, with its two enormous 4.7-inch pieces, dragged by long strings of animals, and guarded by straw-hatted khaki-clad bluejackets, passed ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... mule-trains began to crawl along the ledges of Margath Mountain, and over Shaknon came adventurers, and after them, wandering men seeking a new home, women and children coming also. But when these came he had passed the spring-time of his years, and had grown fixed in the love of the valley, where ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... was a good specimen of that extraordinary hybrid or mule between democracy and chrysocracy, a native-born New-England serving-man. The Old World has nothing at all like him. He is at once an emperor and a subordinate. In one hand he holds one five-millionth part (be the same more or less) of the power that sways ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... saw many people who had met Gilbert including a journalist who took him to a "bootleg joint"—which is Western for a Speakeasy. There he asked for "some specialty of the house" and was offered a Mule. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... return to Loeche, as winter was approaching, and the descent was becoming dangerous. Three mules started first, laden with baggage and led by the three sons. Then the mother, Jeanne Hauser, and her daughter Louise mounted a fourth mule and set off in their turn and the father followed them, accompanied by the two men in charge, who were to escort the family as far as the brow of the descent. First of all they passed round the small lake, which was now frozen over, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... Chaplain's got a banjo, an' a skinny mule 'e rides, An' the stuff 'e says an' sings us, Lord, it makes us split our sides! With 'is black coat-tails a-bobbin' to Ta-ra-ra Boom-der-ay! 'E's the proper kind o' padre for ten ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling

... along the sky to scatter, When there arose a hideous clatter, Slaves slanging bargemen, bargemen slaves; 'Ho, haul up here! how now, ye knaves, Inside three hundred people stuff? Already there are quite enough!' Collected were the fares at last, The mule that drew our barge made fast, But not till a good hour was gone. Sleep was not to be thought upon, The cursed gnats were so provoking, The bull-frogs set up such a croaking. A bargeman, too, a drunken lout, And passenger, sang turn about, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... which men's hands have never made, nor human feet trodden into a road. He will 'guide us with His eye,' if our eyes be fixed on Him, and be swift to discern and eager to obey the lightest glance that love can interpret. Shall we be 'like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding,' and need to be pulled with bridles and beaten with whips before they know how to go; or shall we be like some trained creature that is guided by the unseen cord of docile submission, and has learned to read the duty, which is its joy, in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... what the world would smile at or deride will provide the sage with food for thought and reflection. "Nothing is trivial in the majestic problem of nature; our laboratory acquaria are of less value than the imprint which the shoe of a mule has left in the clay, when the rain has filled the primitive basin, and life has peopled it with marvels"; and the least fact offered us by chance on the most thoroughly beaten track may possibly open prospects as vast as all the ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... some people, that they have actually believed him a good-natured easy creature, and blamed me because I did not manage him to better purpose; but, upon further acquaintance, they have always found him obstinate as a mule, and capricious as a monkey. Not that he is utterly void of all commendable qualities. He is punctual in paying his debts, liberal when in good humour, and would be well-bred, were he not subject to fits of absence, during which he is altogether unconversable; but he is ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... his orders,—he stopped me to ask if I had authorized the stable-sergeant to let out one of the ambulances within the hour. Of course I was amazed and said no. 'Well,' said he, 'not ten minutes ago a four-mule ambulance drove up the road yonder going full tilt, and I thought something was wrong, but it was far beyond my challenge limit.' You can understand that I went to the stables on the jump, ready to ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... understand a word of,' whispered Rastignac; 'he is a chemist, a historian, a novelist, and a political writer; he has gone halves, thirds, or quarters in the authorship of I don't know how many plays, and he is as ignorant as Dom Miguel's mule. He is not a man so much as a name, a label that the public is familiar with. So he would do well to avoid shops inscribed with the motto, "Ici l'on peut ecrire soi-meme." He is acute enough to deceive an entire congress of diplomatists. In a couple of words, he is a moral ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... firmness of heart and sweetness of speech. Then she robed him in a sumptuous dress and gave him diners in plenty, saying, "Be lavish of largesse to the Caliph's household as thou goest in to him." Presently Ja'afar, mounted on his Nubian mule, came to fetch him; and Ghanim advanced to welcome the Wazir and, wishing him long life, kissed the ground before him. Now the star of his good fortune had risen and shone brightly; and Ja'afar took him; and they ceased not faring together, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... me exactly," he said, cheerfully. "I'm a perfect mule when I like, and I'm liking it all I know ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... attacking the second redoubt, commanded by the chief bombardier. The Asiatic troops of Baltadgi Pacha rushed to its defence. At their head appeared the chief Imaun of the army, mounted on a richly caparisoned mule and repeating the curse fulminated by the mufti against Ali, his adherents, his castles, and even his cannons, which it was supposed might be rendered harmless by these adjurations. Ali's Mohammedan Skipetars ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... he! Imagine a kicked, cuffed, pounded, and dragged across a road, bracing himself at every step, but forced over at last and tied to a post; then imagine that mule straightening himself up and saying, 'Thank Heaven, we crossed that road, didn't we?' It was difficult to move the mule, he was obstinate, but it made no difference. My opponent was obstinate too, ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger

... her fresh youth. She enchanted every one, but she looked only at me. I alone understood her looks and words with their double meaning. The guides lifted her joyfully on the seat with the swinging foot-board, which serves as a saddle for the women of Savoy; and I walked beside the mule with the tinkling bells which was that day to carry her to the ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... the spinning-mule, born near Bolton; for five years he worked at his project, and after he got it into shape was tormented by people prying about him and trying to find out his secret; at last a sum was raised by subscription to buy it, and he got some L60 for it, by which others became ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... boys have known all along that he was not a real country-jake; but when the trained mule begins, and shakes everybody off, just like the horse, and another country-jake gets up, and offers to bet that he can ride that mule, nobody can tell whether he is a real country-jake or not. This is always the last ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... I'd gladly be lowering down thy bridge to the bottom, If from stupor inanimate peradventure he wake him, Leaving muddy behind him his sluggish heart's hesitation, 25 As some mule in a glutinous sludge her ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... called up with more ammunition. These do the same thing, but after unhooking trot round and hook into the other two (now empty) waggons, and trot them back. The empty waggons are refilled from the mule-waggons, which follow the battery with the reserve shells, and their black crews and all. 'Limber-supply,' that is, use of the shells in the gun-limber, is only ordered in the last resort or in exceptional ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... adjudged," gabbled the Swallow) "on a charge of cruelty" ("and feloniously killing and slaying," prompted the Swallow) "to birds and animals," ("the term not applying to horse, mare, pony, bull, ox, dog, cat, heifer, steer, calf, mule, ass, sheep, lamb, hog, pig, sow, goat, or other domestic animal," interposed in one breath the Swallow, quoting the Cruelty to Animals Act) "she is" ("hereby," put in the Swallow) "brought to trial on" ("divers," whispered the Swallow) "charges," ("hereinafter," said the Swallow) "to be named ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... table in recognition of the unwritten law that none may enter a wine-shop without buying drink. His eye was in constant motion as if it were trying to do the work of the two; but when Byrne made inquiries as to the possibility of hiring a mule, it became immovably fixed in the direction of the door which was closely besieged by the curious. In front of them, just within the threshold, the little man in the large cloak and yellow hat had taken his stand. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... character, original, nonesuch, nonsuch[obs3], monster, prodigy, wonder, miracle, curiosity, flying fish, black sheep, black swan, lusus naturae[Lat], rara avis[Lat], queer fish; mongrel, random breed; half-caste, half-blood, half-breed; metis[Lat], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, mulatto; tertium quid[Lat], hermaphrodite. [mythical animal] phoenix, chimera, hydra, sphinx, minotaur; griffin, griffon; centaur; saggittary[obs3]; kraken, cockatrice, wyvern, roc, dragon, sea serpent; mermaid, merman, merfolk[obs3]; unicorn; Cyclops, "men whose heads do grow beneath ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... old school-mates, the others were strangers. Everything that met my eyes reminded me of war. Sentinels patrolled the beach; drums beat; soldiers marching and counter-marching; great cannons being drawn along the beach, hundreds of men pulling them by long ropes, or drawn by mule teams. Across the bay we could see on Sullivan's Island men and soldiers building and digging out foundations for forts. Morris' Island was lined from the lower point to the light house, with batteries ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... the mountains on the Trinity river, Dr. —— was kicked by a mule in such a manner as to rupture the ligamentum patellae. The tendon of the quadriceps femoris, at once drew the patella at least two inches above its normal position. Of course he was unable to walk, but was taken ...
— Report on Surgery to the Santa Clara County Medical Society • Joseph Bradford Cox

... Combe was similarly warned to depart. All espostulation was in vain, and leaving Savoy, in which her labours had been so much blessed, she set out on a wearisome journey into Piedmont, crossing the perilous Mont Cenis on a mule, and came to Turin. ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... natural two-sided jars of wedlock, sufficed in itself to establish Mrs. Ming as a conjugal martyr. Being an amiable body—peaceably disposed to every living creature, with the exception of William—she had hastened to the door to reprimand him for some trivial neglect of the grey mule, when her glance lighted upon the stranger, who had come a few minutes earlier by the Applegate road. As he was a fine looking man of full habit and some thirty years, her eyes lingered an instant on his face before she turned with the news to her slatternly negro maid who ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... a sorry program of education which blinked the fact that the student must be rendered responsive to the nobler ideals of the human race, that his eyes must be opened to the immanent values of life. If a clear title to forty acres and a mule represents the extreme upper limit of a black man's ambition, why call him a man? If a bank-account represents the sum of his happiness, that happiness lacks humanity. If you would educate for life, you must arouse spiritual interests. "The life is more than meat, and the body ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... you! In another hour I'd have been rustling for the Great Republic. Still, I guess the game's up. Don't be a mule, Fletcher; ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... tarry there three days, go betimes to land, for then ye may have lodging before another; for it will be taken up anon'. Similarly at Jaffa in choosing a mount for the ride up to Jerusalem 'be not too long behind your fellows; for an ye come betime, ye may choose the best mule' and 'ye shall pay no more for the best than for the worst'. 'Also take good heed to your knives and other small japes that ye bear upon you: for the Saracens will go talking by you and make good cheer; but ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... the brains of man—into the Corinthian Capital of Mortality, so to speak. When that man" (pointing with his right forefinger to the circle of bone in his left palm) "was kicked in the head by his mule, three of my colleagues were on the scene before me—standing around like old women, doing nothing. I have elaborate instruments, sir—I don't read any more books—the world's literature is here" (tapping his forehead). "I've thought too much to care for other men's ideas. ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... women with long black rosaries hanging from the girdle, go to and fro among the wheat and the clover. One rubs one's eyes. Are these the days of Friar Laurence and Juliet? Shall we meet the mitred abbot with his sumpter mule? Shall we meet the mailed knights? In some places whole villages belong to English monks, and there is not a man or woman in them who is not a Catholic; there are even small country towns which by dint of time, money, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... unfrequent; but considered in reference to "well done," it means partially cooked or underdone. This, then, is a clear case of Exclusion. Other examples: "Men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, and men whose shoulders do grow beneath their heads;" "Cushion, Mule's Hoof;" "Ungoverned, Henpecked;" "Bed of Ease, ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... the palace, and the scene became to the eye only a motionless ocean of roofs and gables, amid which one mountainous undulation was distinctly visible. Serapion urged his mule forward, my own at once followed at the same gait, and a sharp angle in the road at last hid the city of S——— for ever from my eyes, as I was destined never to return thither. At the close of a weary three-days' journey through ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier

... incomparable. The Yosemite makes us think of the Alps; San Francisco reminds us of Chicago; Foss, the stage driver, hurling his passengers down the mountain at break-neck speed, suggests the driver of an Alpine diligence; Hutchings' mountain horse, that stumbled and fell flat upon us, suggested our mule-back experiences in Tete Noir Pass of Switzerland; but the geysers remind us of nothing that we ever saw, or ever expect to see. They have a voice, a bubble, a smoke, a death-rattle, peculiar to themselves. No photographist can picture them, no words describe them, no ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage



Words linked to "Mule" :   mule fat, equid, mule deer, mule driver, Equus, slipper, white-rayed mule's ears, genus Equus, carpet slipper, scuff, muleteer, mule skinner, equine, mule's ears



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