"Porcupine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a habitation, save where in the far south-west A solitary tepee lifts its solitary crest, Where Neykia in the doorway, crouched in the red sunshine, Broiders her buckskin mantle with the quills of the porcupine. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... the porcupine-like excrescences appeared in the father and sons at the same age, namely, about nine weeks after {77} birth.[164] In the extraordinary hairy family described by Mr. Crawfurd,[165] children were produced during three generations with hairy ears; in the father the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... which had sat on the bush by the hole, so, they supposed, to escape their vengeance. And ever afterwards the little white-throats were called Weeoombeens. And the memory of Piggiebillah is perpetuated by a sort of porcupine ant-eater, which bears his name, and whose skin is covered closely with miniature spears ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood; Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres; Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful Porcupine. ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... beast doth rule and reign, renting the credit of whom it please. Where serpents' tongues the penmen are to write, Where cats do wawl by day, dogs by night. There shall engorged venom be my ink, My pen a sharper quill of porcupine, My stained paper this sin-loaden earth. There will I write in lines shall never die, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... hour there, we went ashore, up the long straight street, to a frame-house, or store, where there was an extensive display of Indian work. The Lake Superior and Huron Red Indians are particularly noted for the beauty of their embroidery on skins, silk, birch bark, and cloth, in beads, porcupine quills, or silk. Their imitative genius is so great that the squaws can copy anything, and I know people who have had their crests and coats-of-arms embroidered upon their tobacco-pouches and belts, from an impression on paper or sealing-wax. Generally they copy flowers and ferns, ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... came when Leclere gathered his dogs together and floated down in a bateau to Forty Mile, and on to the Porcupine, where he took a commission from the P. C. Company, and went exploring for the better part of a year. After that he poled up the Koyokuk to deserted Arctic City, and later came drifting back, from camp to camp, along the Yukon. And during the long months Batard ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... Mullingong met an Echidna one day, And he cried, "What a very odd nose! So exceedingly sharp. Why, it's funnier far Than your porcupine coat and your toes." Then most rudely he made all the echoes resound With ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... brought into public notice by the enormous speculations and the mad fever of 1845. The large spur of country which projects far out into the lake, having its base resting on a line drawn across from L'Anse Bay to Ontonagon, and the Porcupine Mountains for its spine, became the El Dorado of all copperdom of that day. In this year the first active operations were commenced at the Cliff Mine, just back of Eagle River harbor. Three years later, in 1848, work was undertaken at the Minnesota, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... From the Smiling Pool came Billy Mink, Little Joe Otter, Jerry Muskrat, Spotty the Turtle, and old Grandfather Frog. From the Green Forest came Bobby Coon, Unc' Billy Possum and Mrs. Possum, Prickly Porky the Porcupine, Whitefoot the Woodmouse, Happy Jack the Gray Squirrel, Chatterer the Red Squirrel, Blacky the Crow, Sammy Jay, Ol' Mistah Buzzard, Mistah Mockingbird, and Sticky-toes the Treetoad. From the Green Meadows came Danny Meadow Mouse, ...
— Mrs. Peter Rabbit • Thornton W. Burgess
... was flying about over the Green Meadows and through the Green Forest, pretending that he was attending wholly to his own business, but really watching all the preparations for Peter Rabbit's party. At the foot of a tree, in the top of which Prickly Porky the Porcupine was eating his breakfast, sat old Mr. Toad, nodding sleepily. Sammy Jay saw him there but, smart as Sammy is, he didn't once suspect innocent-looking old Mr. Toad. You see, he didn't know that old Mr. Toad had overheard all ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... in Babylonia appear to be chiefly the following:—the lion, the leopard, the hyeena, the lynx, the wild-cat, the wolf, the jackal, the wild-boar, the buffalo, the stag, the gazelle, the jerboa, the fox, the hare, the badger, and the porcupine. The Mesopotamian lion is a noble animal. Taller and larger than a Mount St. Bernard dog, he wanders over the plains their undisputed lord, unless when an European ventures to question his pre-eminence. The Arabs tremble at his approach, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... Yankees moving about with lights. Whenever we could get a shot we would blaze away. At last one got up very close, and passed right between Tom and I. I don't think I was ever more scared in my life. My hair stood on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine; I could not imagine what on earth it was. I took it to be some hellish machination of a Yankee trick. I did not know whether to run or stand, until I heard Tom laugh and say, "Well, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... who lived far in the East and had nothing to boast of, made up his mind to win the princess. His friends laughed at him but he started out on his trip, taking with him some chickens, a goat, rice, rice-straw, millet-seed, and palm-oil. He met in succession a hungry porcupine, an alligator, a horned viper, and some ants, of all of whom he made friends by feeding them the things he had taken along. He reserved some of the rice, and when he arrived at the King's court he gave it to a hungry servant who in turn ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... and yet, too, gentle;— There will we dine: this woman that I mean, My wife,—but, I protest, without desert,— Hath oftentimes upbraided me withal; To her will we to dinner.—Get you home And fetch the chain: by this I know 'tis made: Bring it, I pray you, to the Porcupine; For there's the house; that chain will I bestow,— Be it for nothing but to spite my wife,—- Upon mine hostess there: good sir, make haste: Since mine own doors refuse to entertain me, I'll knock elsewhere, to see ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... as each word is throng'd with it. Each line's a volume, and who reads would swear Whole libraries were in each character. Nor arrows in a quiver stuck, nor yet Lights in the starry skies are thicker set, Nor quills upon the armed porcupine, Than wit and fancy in this work ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... on his boots, and went out into the field with me. It was now light, and he had no sooner bent down over it than he pronounced it to be a hedgehog fast enough, or rather a Canada porcupine. Its weight was over thirty pounds, and some of the quills on its back were four or five inches in length, with needle-like, finely ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... his newest pimple, and looking with exaggerated moonish simplicity at nobody in particular through his large round magnifying spectacles. "But what could you have done without me, once the little Englishwoman smelled the porcupine in the barrel? When she drove out to your friend Bough's plaats at Haarsgrond in that spider, pretending she was your sister that had married a Duitscher drummer in Gueldersdorp, and buried him, and was afraid to be shut up in the stad with all those lustful rooineks, you thought ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... loves us, that Aunt Maria isn't a prosy old bore, that Uncle John isn't a profiteer; that everybody has his or her good points and that all their bad ones are not sticking out, as they usually appear to us to be, as painfully apparent as those on the back of a porcupine should you happen to sit down upon one in a bathing costume! And it is quite wonderful how this spirit of good will towards all men can be self-distilled, as it were! You try to feel it, and, strangely enough, you do feel it—at least, up to tea time. The public exhibition of ecstacy you ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... and brought with me, as I promised, the "Clockmaker." When I entered the room, I found Jessie there, who received me with her usual ease and composure. She was trimming a work-bag, the sides of which were made of the inner bark of the birch-tree, and beautifully worked with porcupine quills and moose hair. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... white patch, and each time the jackal was the first to see them. The round ears would suddenly prick forward, the sharp nose would twitch, and then Venning would dimly discover something down there in the uncertain light. A porcupine he made out, its quills gleaming and rustling as it went down to the water; then a great wart-pig with curved tusks; and next, after a long interval, a fine buck with long powerful horns. A water-buck he judged it to be from the length of its horns, and it stood there long with its face up-stream, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... naked, but, like all savages, they have their gala dress, of which they are not a little vain. This usually consists of a gray surcoat and leggins of the dressed skin of the antelope, resembling chamois leather, and embroidered with porcupine quills brilliantly dyed. A buffalo robe is thrown over the right shoulder, and across the left is slung a quiver of arrows. They wear gay coronets of plumes, particularly those of the swan; but the feathers of the black ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... not a few political pamphlets in the strictest sense of the term, the infinitely greater part of his work is comprised during his earlier days in the volumes of Peter Porcupine's Gazette, during his later in those of the Weekly Register. This latter, however, he himself for a time actually entitled The Weekly Political Pamphlet, while he alluded to it under that name even at other times; and his whole work was imbued even more deeply than that of Defoe with ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... 1878 at the crossing of the Stikine River, and that of 1899 at the summits of the White and Chilkoot passes, it runs much farther inland from the Klehini than the temporary line of the later modus vivendi, and leaves the entire mining district of the Porcupine River and Glacier Creek within the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the trail, the streams were all muddy. Now and then a tuna on the cactus hedges was red ripe enough to be worth picking and, though full of seeds, was at least wet. It was harder to handle than a porcupine, and commonly left the fingers full of spines. Two men passed, offering dulces, a species of native candy, for sale. I declined. "Muy bien, give us a cigarette." I declined again, being low in stock. "Very well, adios, senor," they replied in the apathetic ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... into a soft white doeskin, well lined with the loose down of cattails, and snugly laced into an upright oaken cradle, the front of which is a richly embroidered buckskin bag, with porcupine quills and deer's hoofs suspended from its profuse fringes. This gay cradle is strapped upon the second grandmother's back, and that dignitary walks ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... brilliant in its adornment of stained quills of the porcupine got from the Indians, Francette paced daintily here and there in the clean-swept yard, now snapping her small fingers, now coaxing with soft noises in her round throat, her sparkling eyes fixed on the gaunt grey skeleton that stood on its four feet ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... of blue cloth worked with colored porcupine quills, and a scarlet mantle glittering ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... known far and wide around the town of Riverport as "Bristles," on account of the way in which his mop of hair stood upright most of the time, much after the manner of the quills on a fretful porcupine. ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Toyman, "that won't do. See-it has clumps of needles like a porcupine's quills. It looks beautiful in the woods, but it wouldn't look so pretty in the parlor. And that cedar yonder is too thick to hang the presents and the ornaments on.—Yes, that hemlock is pretty, and that fir—but I guess we'll stick to the spruce. Let's find one that's ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... cold day, but good sport. I killed two boars, and a doe; the King, nineteen boars, two stags, two does, and a porcupine. He is happy ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... not that there was a mystery connected with it, which I shall explain to you hereafter. All I can tell you now is, that when the three were mounted and about to start, the Colonel hobbled up; and, drawing from his pocket a small leathern bag or case ornamented with stained porcupine quills, he handed it to Basil, saying as he did so: "Take good care of it, Basil—you know its use—never let it part from you—your lives may depend upon it. God be with you, my brave boys. Adieu!" Basil took the case, passed the string over his shoulders, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... Piegan band of Indians shall be on the Old Man's River, near the foot of the Porcupine Hills, at a place ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... Old Porcupine Bear, wise man and prophet, warned us that it would be a hard winter, and the plainsmen agreed that it was a humdinger. I asked the wise old Indian how he could foretell the winter. "By food on shrub and tree," he said, "heap plenty; the heavy coat of the animals; the ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... Dr. Priestley met in due course with a cruel attack upon him by William Cobbett, known under the pen-name of Peter Porcupine, an Englishman, who after arrival in this country enjoyed a rather prosperous life by formulating scurrilous literature—attacks upon men of prominence, stars shining brightly ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... cellar, how in time the mortar and cement had to be ground to a powder and carried secretly away. He told how the tunnel was pushed forward, foot by foot; how the bank was attacked in its one and only vital spot, precisely as a porcupine curled defensively up in the snow is seized by the fisher-marten, not through open attack, but by artfully tunneling up ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... to lawlessness and spleen. It is not all from the isolation; the snow is not merely a blockader; it is a Chemical Test. It is a good man who can show a reaction that is not chiefly composed of a drachm or two of potash and magnesia, with traces of Adam, Ananias, Nebuchadnezzar, and the fretful porcupine. ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... Troops of diggers, or their employees, with their pockets full of gold, would start for town, or for the nearest "public," there to run up a score till the whole "pile" had vanished. We were told of one country hotel called "The Porcupine," whose keeper was making 40,000 pounds a year of net profit. These riotous crowds, at each public-house, indulged in such shocking excesses of language and conduct as to make mere drunkenness the very innocence of the case. But withal ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... shoulders; her face is covered with a semi-parchment, brown as the forest leaves, and drawn tight over her high cheek bones; her eyes are small and sunken in her head, but the fire has not yet gone out. An old elk skin robe, tattered and torn, is thrown across her shoulders, with its few porcupine quills still hanging by the sinew threads where they were placed a century ago. The last of her race! Yes, long ago her people have become extinct, passed away leaving her to die. But alas, death does not claim her, and ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... are made and applied to various useful purposes. The North American Indians prepare strong water-tight Wattape baskets from the roots of a species of abies, and these they frequently adorn with very pretty patterns made from the dyed quills of their native porcupine, Erethizon dorsatum. Wealthy Americans have formed collections of the beautiful ware treasured as heirlooms in Indian families, and large prices have been paid for baskets made by the few squaws who have inherited ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... had had an encounter with a porcupine. One of his paws was filled with quills, and in skinning him we found that some quills had worked well up the leg and lodged by the ankle joint, making ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... returned the lawyer. His face had become expressionless. His shoulders had humped forward. He reminded his companion of some animal who instinctively draws itself together to avoid the enemy's detection. So a tree-toad clings against the bark. So a porcupine rolls itself into a ball. To Miss Lacey the latter simile would have been more appealing. She dreaded the arrows he ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... from him; and while the doctors disagree, simple laymen may well hold their judgment in suspense; or, better still, dismiss Jebus, Zadek, Salem, and Jerusalem, to the limbo of learned trivialities. Counting the spots on a leopard, the quills on a porcupine, or the hairs in a cat's whiskers, is just as amusing and quite as edifying as most of the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... in a white shirt and trousers (he had a confirmed habit of taking off his alpaca jacket on the slightest provocation), his round blue eyes, his straggly, sandy-white moustache sticking out all ways like the quills of the fretful porcupine, his propensity to sit down suddenly and fan himself with his hat. But there's no use concealing the fact that what one remembered really was his daughter, who at that time came out to live with him—and be a sort of Lady of ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... a great deal. I feel as if I had been sleeping on a porcupine. Light up the gas and let's see what ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... the same way with Prickly Porky the Porcupine. You never see anybody bothering him or offering to do him any ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... all this unnecessary rabble is helping to make everything horriblement cher. The price of things makes one's hair stand on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine. I can assure you that le moindre petit diner coute les yeux de la tete. Poor Bobbie Lacklands had a tragic experience yesterday. He said he quite unthinkingly dropped into that most recherche of eating places, Fouquet's, for a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... along we saw a fat porcupine, weighing full twenty-five pounds and deliberately walking up the slope near by, as if going to its den in the rocks, but, though we yelled and shouted, it scorned to notice us and indifferently went its way. A horned owl now and then hooted and bade us begone, while a badger came ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... of the little lake Porcupine Hill raises its spruce-covered head a thousand feet above the water. Proceeding up the Susan, we found that the river valley was enclosed by low ridges covered with spruce and a few scattering white birch and aspen trees. For the most part the ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... now about homely Old Mr. Toad, because I have just got to tell you about another homely fellow,—Prickly Porky the Porcupine,—who carries a thousand little spears. The next book will tell you ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... the laboratory and went to the cabin beside the lake that the two men occupied. From her box in front of the stove a lady porcupine looked up lazily and grunted. Kay raised the porcupine; in the box, of course. Susie was constitutionally indolent, but one does not handle porcupines, however smooth ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... that way, because I remember now I was dreaming about gray-coated panthers. Then I thought about rattlesnakes too, because you know I can't stand for the crawlers. Next thing I opened my eyes with a jump, and saw that old owl, with every feather on his back standing up like the quills of a porcupine, and trying to jab me a ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... and yellow, are found in the thickly timbered parts of California, and the badger makes his home in the mountain canons or pine woods. There, too, the curious porcupine dwells. He is covered with grayish white quills, which bristle out when he is angry or frightened. No old dog will touch this animal, for he knows better than to get a mouthful of sharp toothpicks by biting Mr. Porcupine, who is like a round pincushion with ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... quantities of both Indian corn and petit-ble,[1] beans and the folles avoines,[2] or wild rice; while the squaws added to their quota of merchandise a contribution in the form of moccasins, hunting-pouches, mococks, or little boxes of birch-bark embroidered with porcupine-quills and filled with maple-sugar, mats of a neat and durable fabric, and toy-models of Indian cradles, snow-shoes, canoes, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... returned to Dawson sold our furs and went first to Eagle and chucked up and journeyed to Fort Yukon. Now Fort Yukon stands in the Arctic Circle and the Steel registers during cold weather 65 deg. below zero. From here we went up the Porcupine river to Rampart Ho on the Eastern boundery of Alaska We did not like the country in this part so we returned to Fort Yukon; and turned down the Yukon river to the Tanana river then we up this ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... really beautiful effect (barbaric though it may be) in Indian work. The question almost occurs: with what can one not embroider? In Madras they produce most brilliant embroidery upon muslin with the cases of beetles' wings. In the Mauritius they use fish-scales; in North America, porcupine quills; and everywhere savage tribes use seeds, shells, feathers, and the teeth and ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... don't you recollect the last day there was company, and Master Herbert came to the top of the stairs, and you was looking at the organ's lamp, I said, 'Dear! Master Herbert's hair's as rough as a porcupine's;' and you said directly, ma'am, if you recollect, 'I wish you would make that boy's hair fit to be seen;' those was your very words, ma'am, and I ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... way possible to arrive at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... of the poor leathern sling and smooth stones. The unarmed hand which grasps God's hand should never tremble; and he who can say 'I come ... in the name of the Lord of hosts,' has no need to be afraid of an army of Goliaths, though each bristled with swords and spears like a porcupine. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... found a message from my Dinkie. I came across it this morning, by accident. It was in my sewing-basket, the basket made of birch-bark and stained porcupine quills and lined with doe-skin, which I'd once bought from a Reservation squaw in Buckhorn with a tiny papoose on her back. Duncan had upbraided me for passing out my last five-dollar bill to that hungry Nitchie, but the ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... Molle, often farther. The women wept; for the habits of the Romans are so domestic, that it seemed a great thing to have their sons and lovers gone even for a few months. The English—or at least those of the illiberal, bristling nature too often met here, which casts out its porcupine quills against everything like enthusiasm (of the more generous Saxon blood I know some noble examples)—laughed at all this. They have said that this people would not fight; when the Sicilians, men and women, did so nobly, they said: "O, the Sicilians are quite unlike the Italians; you will see, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... attack Allyn," Theodora said, laughing. "I had you at my mercy; you couldn't escape. Allyn can fight and run away; that makes him doubly dangerous. He does fight, too. He is a dear boy, Billy; but I honestly think that, if he goes on, he won't have a friend left in town. He is a veritable porcupine, and his quills ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... you son of a Tory; my father has worked too hard to help his son get a start in life, for me to stand by and hear such talk! I say, take it back!" John bristled up like a porcupine. ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... ornamented with long fringes. The vanity of dress, if it may be so called, followed him into regions where no eye but his own could see its beauties. His pantaloons were also made of buckskin decorated with variously-colored porcupine quills and with long fringes down the outside of the leg. Moccasins, often quite gorgeously embroidered, fitted closely to his feet. A very flexible hat or cap covered his head, generally of felt, obtained from some Indian trader. There was suspended over his left shoulder, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... beard the rash challenge had heard Which she utter'd, of what was beneath her forgetful Each particular hair stood on end in the chair, Like a porcupine's ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... without emotion upon his sunken flanks, and upon two bones which stick out on each side of his belly. His coat is roughened by the sweat which has repeatedly come out and dried upon him, and which, no less than the dust, has made him gummy, sticky and shaggy. The horse looks like a wrathy porcupine: you are afraid he will be foundered, and you caress him with the whip-lash in a melancholy way that he perfectly understands, for he moves his head about like an omnibus horse, ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... The porcupine is very slow, but its colour and shape make it almost impossible to distinguish from a knot on a log. Its quills form an effective ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Of early Dutch To this great feast of feasts, I'll drink ten drops Of Holland's schnapps," Spoke out the King of Beasts. "That must taste fine," Said the Porcupine, "Did you see him smack his lip?" "I'd smack mine, too," Cried the Kangaroo, "If ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... time; angry in earnest, and Jane felt the irritable palm more than once. I, too, came in for my share of her ill temper, as most certainly would Brandon, had he allowed himself to come within reach of her tongue, which he was careful not to do. An angry porcupine would have been pleasant company compared with Mary during this time. There was no living with her in peace. Even the king fought shy of her, and the queen was almost afraid to speak. Probably so much general disturbance was never before or since collected within one small body as in that ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... from ancient authors which he was so fond of bringing into his text, and which make a writer at this end of the nineteenth century smile at the thought of how all the quills would rise upon that fretful and pampered porcupine, the reading public of to-day, if Latin and Greek were ladled out to ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Nimmaylee is a porcupine with the spines coming; such an one having been brought to the camp just as a girl was ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... of leopards Palm-cat Civet Dogs Jackal The horn of the jackal Mungoos Its fights with serpents Theory of its antidote Squirrels Flying squirrel Tree rat Story of a rat and a snake Coffee rat Bandicoot Porcupine Pengolin Ruminantia.—The Gaur Oxen Humped cattle Encounter of a cow and a leopard Buffaloes Sporting buffaloes Peculiar structure of the hoof Deer Meminna Elephants Whales General view of the mammalia of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... "If I can get the men, it is! Swinnerton stole my last gang—seventy-five of 'em. The blamed little porcupine offered 'em two bits more than we're payin' an' grabbed every one of 'em. The Old Man has wired Denver for a hundred more muckers. Swinnerton can't keep takin' men on all year. He's got more now than he knows what to do with. I guess this gang 'll come ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... over. The nickel-plated revolver he could feel in the bosom of his sad-coloured robe, the amulet was on his neck; begging-gourd, rosary, and ghost-dagger (Mr Lurgan had forgotten nothing) were all to hand, with medicine, paint-box, and compass, and in a worn old purse-belt embroidered with porcupine-quill patterns lay a month's pay. Kings could be no richer. He bought sweetmeats in a leaf-cup from a Hindu trader, and ate them with glad rapture till a policeman ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... by a liberal use of money. As for Master English and his wife, they were, as I have already said, at liberty in the day time, under heavy bonds; and had nothing to do but walk off sometime between sunrise and sundown. As Master English's ship, "The Porcupine," had been lying for a week or two in Boston harbor, and left with a brisk northwest wind early in the morning of the day when they were reported missing, it was not difficult for anyone to surmise as to their mode of escape. ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... the world and the knowledge of it are identical; but if it is talked about or thought about it is denaturalised, although convention and utility may compel the poor human being to talk and to think, exiled as he is from reality in his Babylon of abstractions. Life, like the porcupine when not ruffled by practical alarms, can let its fretful quills subside. The mystic can live happy in the droning consciousness of his own heart-beats and those ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... the running and chasing as much as we did, but when it came to broken ribs and sore heads, it was another matter. Then the porcupines bothered them. Our dogs would never learn to let them alone. If they were going through the woods where there were no signs of moose and found a porcupine, they'd kill it. The quills would get in their mouths and necks and chests, and we'd have to gag them and take bullet molds or nippers, or whatever we had, sometimes our jack-knives, and pull out the nasty things. If we got hold ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... her bosom ripening, her waist 'lissom as the stalk of a flower,' her head; 'of a perfect oval' (literally, bird's-egg shaped), her fingers like the leafy 'spears of lemon-grass' or the 'quills of the porcupine,' her eyes 'like the splendor of the planet Venus,' and her lips 'like the fissure of a pomegranate.'" (W.W. Skeat, Malay Magic, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the face of art for France. Nor was it in painting and sculpture only. The Italian passion for devises, anagrams, emblems, and mottoes became the rage in Paris. It first came in with the return of Charles VIII. from his Neapolitan campaign. Louis XII. adopted the hedgehog or porcupine, with the motto "Cominus et eminus." His Queen Claude's motto was "Candida candidis." The Princess Marguerite's emblem was a marigold or heliotrope; others assigned her the daisy. Her motto: "Non inferiora secutus." The ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... knew Jack tell a lie (meaning his brother), and now I'll fill and stand on. The boatswain, hearing the noise, came on deck. The mate pointed to the monster, and told him to get an axe. The beast had bristled up like an American porcupine and was ready to dart at them when the mate got abaft the foremast and fired at its head, which he missed, but struck it in the neck. The animal, finding itself wounded, darted with its jaws wider than a large ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... took it up, and held it close to the light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and parade the streets of any Christian town in that sort ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... masticate and they blew out defiantly in the breeze. One tag had become loosened and Mrs. Brown picked it up and read the scribbled words. While she was thinking just what she ought to do to Willie, Mrs. Baker came across the yard, bristling like a frightened porcupine. ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... round to the distasteful idea of some help coming from a legitimate adjunct at his elbow: a restraining woman—wife, it had to be said. And to name the word wife for Thomas Rowsley, Earl of Ormont, put up the porcupine quills she bristled with at the survey of a sex thirsting, and likely to continue thirsting, for such honour. What woman had she known fit to bear the name? She had assumed the judicial seat upon the pretensions of several, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... porcupine lumbering awkwardly away. He easily killed it with a stick, and picking it up by its tail, was about to turn back into the trail when a fresh axe cutting ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... do not at once appear. In the case of the newt it is evidently an acrid or other disagreeable secretion, which would cause any animal to repent that took it in its mouth. It is even less concerned at being caught than is the skunk, or porcupine, or stink-bug. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... in itself, must resemble those of some other animal. Hence if you wish to make an animal, imagined by you, appear natural—let us say a Dragon, take for its head that of a mastiff or hound, with the eyes of a cat, the ears of a porcupine, the nose of a greyhound, the brow of a lion, the temples of an old cock, the neck of ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... usual long-handled axe of the primitive woods by the door, three and a half feet long,—for my new black-ash rule was in constant use,—and a large, shaggy dog, whose nose, report said, was full of porcupine quills. I can testify that he looked very sober. This is the usual fortune of pioneer dogs, for they have to face the brunt of the battle for their race, and act the part of Arnold Winkelried without intending it. If he should invite one of his town friends up this way, suggesting moose-meat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... whimpering, babyish-like complaint of the porcupine that had made the sound, and still chuckling over his nervousness he seated himself on a white drift-log that had lain bleaching for half a ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... in which Andy pointed, a fat porcupine was discovered high up in a spruce tree feeding upon the ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... handsomely with porcupine's quills, some inches long, stuck in pretty strongly and deeply; and the animal himself, quite ready for further offensive warfare, crouched in the fork of a small maple, just ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... The Porcupine is large and fine of this kind; but as he lives only upon fruit, and loves cold, is most common about the river Illinois, where the climate is somewhat cold, and there is plenty of wild fruits. The skin, when stripped ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... "never mounted the box of a stage-coach in his life; or leaned against the rails of a balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked down a precipice; or let off a gun." I cannot follow Tipp, it may be, to his extreme tremors—my hair will not rise to so close a likeness of the fretful porcupine—yet in a measure we are in agreement. We are, as it were, cousins, with the mark of our common family strong on both ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... platypus of Australia (Ornithorhynchus) is the only mammal which has teeth formed of horn, yet its furry coat is normal and ordinary. Again, the Dugong and Manatee are dermally alike, yet extremely different as regards the structure and number of their teeth. The porcupine also, in spite of its enormous armature of quills, is furnished with as good a supply of teeth as are the hairy members of the same family, but not with a better one; and in spite of the deficiency of teeth in the hairless dogs, no converse redundancy of teeth ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... animals had sniffed and snivelled its way into the ark—it was a porcupine with a cold in its head—the islanders, the M.A.'s, Lucy and Mr. Noah followed. And when every one was in, the door of the ark was shut from inside by an ingenious mechanical contrivance worked by a more than usually ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... to the house, up the main entrance, and into the dry, dark chamber. When all the tender bark was eaten off, the bare stick would be carried away and deposited on the dam. It was an easy life; and the beavers grew fat while all the rest of the wild kindreds, save the porcupine and the bear, were growing lean with famine. There was absolutely nothing to do but eat, sleep and take such exercise as they would by swimming hither and thither at terrific speed beneath the silver armour ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... hat that had once been white, but which inexorable Time had mellowed in tone, and whose nap, having been brushed up the wrong way, against the grain, frizzed out around its circumference like a furze bush, making it resemble the "fretful porcupine" spoken of by the ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... interior along the Yukon, Kuskokwim, Kowak, and Noatak Rivers, reaching on the Yukon to somewhat below Shageluk Island,[7] and on the Kuskokwim nearly or quite to Kolmakoff Redoubt.[8] Upon the two latter they reach quite to their heads.[9] A few Kutchin tribes are (or have been) north of the Porcupine and Yukon Rivers, but until recently it has not been known that they extended north beyond the Yukon and Romanzoff Mountains. Explorations of Lieutenant Stoney, in 1885, establish the fact that the region to the north of those mountains is occupied by Athapascan ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... lace-edgings), Pasamanos Pasatiempo (pastime), Pasatiempos Picaparte (latch or latchkey), Picapartes Pisaverde (beau), Pisaverdes Portaestandarte (standard bearer), Portaestandartes Portafusil (musket-sling), Portafusiles Puercoespin (porcupine), Puercosespines Quienquiera (whoever), Quienesquiera Quitasol (parasol), Quitasoles Ricahembra (woman of gentle birth), Ricashembras Sobrecama (counterpane), Sobrecamas Sobredicho (aforesaid), Sobredichos Tapaboca (slap on the mouth), Tapabocas ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... hair-like feathers. The head is ornamented with a large horny calque or helmet, and the bare skin of the neck is conspicuous with bright blue and red colours. The wings are quite absent, and are replaced by a group of horny black spines like blunt porcupine quills. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... fourteen hundred feet above the plain, there was no indication of rain having fallen there since the deluge. This want of water prevented my proceeding further to the north-east; but from the summit of the highest of these hills (Mount Porcupine,) I had a clear view of the horizon in every direction, and a more barren, sterile ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... mountains, with outlines that from afar suggested the fantastic castles imagined by Dore; and inland, the towns of the upper ribera floating in an emerald lake of orchard, the distant mountains taking on a violet hue from the setting sun that was creeping like a bristly porcupine of gold into the hot ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... magistrates' clerk, and ask a few questions as to the proceedings at the sitting from which Mr Crawley was committed. He found a very taciturn old man, who was nearly as difficult to deal with in any rummaging process as a porcupine. But, nevertheless, at last he reached a state of conversation which was not absolutely hostile. Mr Toogood pleaded that he was the poor man's cousin,—pleaded that, as the family lawyer, he was naturally the poor man's protector ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... skins, one before, one behind, sewed together at their edges. They were embroidered with porcupine quills brightly dyed, and fringed with the black scalp-locks of the enemies whom he had slain in combat, and tasseled with ermine tails. They were pictured with his deeds, painted ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... across the cranial arbor and down the front to a point over the right eye, where the ends are brought up short as if they were rooted near there. I could say I was not bald. This gave me some satisfaction, but I never boasted of it in public. There was a streak of porcupine in our family. This accounted for the trod-grass appearance of my head, even when prepared carefully for public appearance. It was at its best when it looked like a meadow of tall timothy that had been walked over by the cows on a wet day. Curry-combing ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... among the young men of the family: the Oxonian, particularly, takes a mischievous pleasure now and then in slyly rubbing the old man against the grain, and then smoothing him down again; for the old fellow is as ready to bristle up his back as a porcupine. He rides a venerable hunter called Pepper, which is a counterpart of himself, a heady, cross-grained animal, that frets the flesh off its bones; bites, kicks, and plays all manner of villanous tricks. He is as tough, and nearly as old as his rider, who has ridden him time ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... early in the voyage from the main body, under the pilotage of the veteran Diniz Diaz, had also made their way to C. Verde, had fought with the natives in some desperate skirmishes—one knight had his "shield stuck as full with arrows as the porcupine with quills," and had turned back in the face of the same discouragements as the rest; and so would have ended the whole of this great enterprise but for the dauntless energy of one ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... passions of its inhabitants, and not from siege or in- vasion. The front of Louis XII. is of red brick, crossed here and there with purple; and the purple slate of the high roof, relieved with chimneys beautifully treated, and with the embroidered caps of pinnacles and arches, with the porcupine of Louis, the ermine and the festooned rope which formed the devices of Anne of Brittany, - the tone of this rich-looking roof carries out the mild glow of the wall. The wide, fair windows look as if they had expanded to let in the rosy dawn ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Virginia Deer Black Bear Lynx Wild Cat Red Fox Gray Fox Beaver Raccoon Skunk Otter Fisher Cottontail Rabbit Martin Mink Black Squirrel Gray Squirrel Red Squirrel Fox Squirrel Flying Squirrel Chipmunk Musk Rat Opossum Varying Hare Porcupine ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... floor of the wilderness was like a page on which could be read the tale of all that happened in the night! One could hardly believe that so many creatures were in these woods—there were tracks everywhere one looked. Here a squirrel had run, and here a partridge; here had been a porcupine, with feet like a baby's, and here a fox, and here a bear with two cubs. And in yon hollow a deer had slept through the night, and here he had blown away the snow from the moss; here two bucks had fought; and here one of them had been ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... replied Old Mother Nature. "It isn't a very close relationship, still you are related. All of you are Rodents. So are all the members of the Rat and Mouse family, the Beaver family, the Porcupine family, the Pocket Gopher family, the Pika ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... with the following names in their language: The Bear, the Deer, the Highland Striped Turtle, the Highland Black Turtle, the Mud Turtle, the Large Smooth Turtle, the Hawk, the Beaver, the Wolf, the Snake, and the Porcupine. The rank of the sachem of the nation was inherent in the clan of the Bear, and the rank of military chief had always belonged hitherto to the clan of the Porcupine, but now the right was about to be waived and for ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... looking at the coat and exclaiming over its beauty (it was heavily embroidered with beads and porcupine quills, and was an odd looking garment to one not accustomed to seeing the clothing of the frontiers men), a couple of girls came running to me, saying, "Father wants you to come and eat supper with us, Mr. Bridger is eating now." So I took the meat and coffee off the fire and put my coat ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... bestowed on this bird, and the Major's spoil would have borne the honors of the day, had not Robert come across an animal a few miles further on, and bravely killed it. It was a shapeless creature, half porcupine, half ant-eater, a sort of unfinished animal belonging to the first stage of creation. A long glutinous extensible tongue hung out of his jaws in search of the ants, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... is the porcupine ant-eater, or Tasmanian hedgehog. It is much larger than the English hedgehog, and can not roll itself into a ball. Its back is covered with very stout spines protruding from a coat of thick gray fur, and in place of a mouth it has a round bill about two inches long. One of these strange creatures ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... on all the high hills and commanding positions; strong abatis are made of the forest-trees, and every thing done that can give the city an air of security, and the country round about the appearance of a bristling porcupine. Should this influx of troops continue, we shall be compelled to advance our lines for very room on which to station them. We have some intimations that our advance to this point to-day is ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... declarations at this time, and let's have supper, for I'm uncommonly hungry, I can tell you; and it's no joke to charge a whole herd of swine with their great-grandmother bristling like a giant porcupine at ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... curling away from its apex. Many of the Indians were already crowding about the train, some with polished buffalo horns for sale, and all magnificently dressed in buckskin, decorated with fine, old-fashioned bead work, and the quills of the porcupine. ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... do so, would have made him shuffle his feet over the ground, his eyes were unusually large, grey, and staring; and his hair, which was already so grey that its original colour could scarcely be perceived, was cut short, and stood up on end, all over his head like the quills of the porcupine; his forehead was somewhat narrow, but his features were neither plain nor coarse; there was, however, a startled, frightened look about them, and an otherwise painful and indescribable expression, which told too plainly that the ruling power of the intellect had been ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... fish, but the most remarkable is the sea-porcupine, which is about three feet long, and two and a half feet round, having large eyes, two fins on the back, and a large fin on each side, near the gills. Its body is all beset with sharp spines, or quills, like a porcupine, whence ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... small metal coronet, to which he fixes feathers or quills, similar to those put to his horse's rosette. This coronet is made either of gold or silver, and those who cannot afford to use these metals make it with swan-down or deer-skin, well prepared and elegantly embroidered with porcupine-quills; his arms are bare and his wrists encircled with bracelets of the same material as the coronet; his body, from the neck to the waist, is covered with a small, soft, deerskin shirt, fitting him closely without a single wrinkle; from the waist to the knee he wears a many-folded toga of ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... old porcupine coming here and eating up our grub. They almost gnaw through a steel plate to get at anything greasy or salty," he explained. "We'll call this camp, and we'll stop here to-night, because I can see that if we go up to that trail and do any waiting around it will be too late for ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... sent me information on the subject. Party passions are indeed high. Nobody has more reason to know it than myself. I receive daily bitter proofs of it from people who never saw me, nor know any thing of me but through Porcupine and Fenno. At this moment all the passions are boiling over, and one who keeps himself cool and clear of the contagion, is so far below the point of ordinary conversation, that he finds himself insulated in every society. However, the fever will not last. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... these come from a part of Italy so far south; but it appeared in this instance, that Giuseppe's father being a carrier, had taken him with him to Milan—had there met a friend, rich in an organ and porcupine—and had entrusted the boy to his care, in order that he might see the world, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... red, yellow, green, and white—the pulp of one dark-red gooseberry being tinged with yellow; in flavour; in being smooth or downy,—few, however, of the Red gooseberries, whilst many of the so-called Whites, are downy; or in being so spinose that one kind is called Henderson's Porcupine. Two kinds acquire when mature a powdery bloom on their fruit. The fruit varies in the thickness and veining of the skin, and, lastly, in shape, being spherical, oblong, oval, or obovate. (10/123. The fullest account of the gooseberry ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... fanciful character. A shirt (when he condescended to wear any) of the brightest colors, ornamented with innumerable rows of silver brooches set thickly together; never less than two pairs of silver arm-bands; leggings and moccasins of the most elaborate embroidery in ribbons and porcupine-quills; everything that he could devise in the shape of ornament hanging to his club of hair behind; a feather fan in one hand, and in the other a mirror, in which he contemplated himself every five minutes; these, with the variety and brilliancy of the colors upon his face, the suitable choice and ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... "Well, don't make a porcupine of yourself, it isn't becoming. Settle your wig, Jo, and tell me if I shall telegraph to your mother, or do anything?" asked Laurie, who never had been reconciled to the loss of his friend's ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... of one of your caresses," said a porcupine, meekly; "it has been some time since ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... succeeded in purchasing, after much talk, a pair of moccasins that Hazel conceded to be a work of art, what with the dainty pattern of beads and the ornamentation of colored porcupine quills. Her feminine soul could not cavil when Bill thrust them in the pocket of her coat, even if her mind was set against accepting any peace ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... mistake. His sensitiveness gave him as many quills as a porcupine. "Find myself," he said, quoting her unfortunate words with sarcasm. "What on earth do you mean by that, my ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... with his gun over his shoulder, and I cautiously advanced, commanding them to be discreet and cool. But Jack, with his usual impetuosity, leaped among the high grass to the dogs; and immediately returned, clapping his hands, and crying out, "Be quick, papa! a huge porcupine, with quills ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... crane, northern raven, wild turkey, ivory-billed woodpecker, Carolina parrakeet, trumpeter swan, snowy egret, Eskimo curlew; bison, elk, white-tailed deer, black bear, Canada lynx, beaver, porcupine.—(Amos W. Butler.) ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... that giant box was opened. A porcupine was dropped inside. The cover went on again. This was, at a guess, about five o'clock in the afternoon. The chunky man said drearily, "If this is supposed to be the way they'll feed us, they coulda picked something easier to ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... but bursting into buds of amber hue, a glittering which seemed to be reflected from points of steel. In a few moments they heard above the tender chiming of the church bells the loud voice of a man giving words of command, at which all the metallic points suddenly shifted like the bristles of a porcupine, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... indeed repay you for your so great generosity. See, then!" And with a dramatic gesture he plunged his hand down among the wriggling snakes, and groping among them in a manner that made every hair on Dick's head stand up till he felt like a porcupine, he drew forth a small bundle, and ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... a combination of small tubes, connected at one end to a reservoir, was the invention of another American, John Stevens, in 1804. This boiler was actually employed to generate steam for running a steamboat on the Hudson River, but like all the "porcupine" boilers, of which type it was the first, it did not have the elements of ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... dress was exceedingly plain, he wore his jerkin or hunting coat, of the most beautifully soft and pliant deer skin, on which were visible a variety of tasteful devices exquisitely embroidered with the stained quills of the porcupine. A shirt of dazzling whiteness was carefully drawn over his expansive chest, and in his equally white shawl-turban was placed an ostrich feather, the prized gift of the lady of the mansion. On ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... geological speculations was the supposed presence of the agouti, a South American rodent, "proper to the torrid zone." My friend M. Lartet, guided by Schmerling's figures of the teeth of this species, suggests, and I have little doubt with good reason, that they appertain to the porcupine, a genus found fossil in Pleistocene deposits of certain caverns in the ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... perpendicular lines on the face were referred to in the description of the first sand painting. The projection on the right of the throat is a fox skin. Hostjoghon's headdress is similar to that of Hasjelti's. Two strips of beaver skin tipped with six quills of the porcupine are attached to the right of the throat. The four colored stars on the body are ornaments of beads. The shirt of this god is invisible; the dark is the dark of the body. Hostjoghon carries a staff colored black from a charred plant. The Navajo paint their bodies with the same plant. The ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... body, for she did her best to shield the young one; but the latter received a few notwithstanding. After the first discharge the old one's sides ran down with blood, and in a short time she bristled all over with spears like a monstrous porcupine. She soon seemed to give up all thought of defending her young, and began to flee for her life, so that the calf was quickly killed; but no sooner did the mother observe this, than all fear forsook her; she stopped in her career, turned round, and, ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... my grandmother and work like this. Yes, Chief Totantora taught me to shoot and paddle a canoe, and to do many other things out-of-doors. But my grandmother was the head woman of our tribe, and her beadwork and dyed porcupine-quill work was the finest you ever saw, Ruth Fielding. I was sorry to leave my war-bag with Dakota Joe. It had in it many keepsakes my grandmother gave me before she passed to ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... probably denizens of a deep sea, The Ventriculites of the Chalk (fig. 189) is, however, a genus still more closely allied to the wonderful flinty Sponges, which have been shown, by the researches of the Porcupine, Lightning, and Challenger expeditions, to live half buried in the Calcareous ooze of the abysses of our great oceans. Many forms of this genus are known, having "usually the form of graceful vases, tubes, or funnels, variously ridged or grooved, or otherwise ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... marked from the root upwards with unequal circles or rings, and is crowned by a graceful head of large leaves. The terminal bud of this palm, as well as that of the cabbage palm (Euterpe montana), is used as a culinary vegetable. The wood of the tree is known by the name of porcupine wood. It is light and spongy, and, therefore, cannot be advantageously employed in the construction of ships or solid edifices, though it is used in building huts; vessels made of it are fragile and of little duration. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... spined shells, which they captured from the schools of porcupine fish that swarmed in Penguin Deep, they gathered sea vegetation from the higher levels and trapped sea creatures. These were brought into the subterranean chamber where our glass ball now reposed. Then the chamber ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... letter, and here it is. I was sure to remember it; for you are as hard to forget, as you are soft to roll down a hill with. What fun it was! only so prickly, I thought I had a porcupine in one pocket, and a hedgehog in the other. The next time, before we kiss the earth, we will have its face shaved well. Did you ever go to Greenwich Fair? I should like to go there with you, for I get no rolling at St. John's Wood. Tom and Fanny [Footnote: Hood's son and daughter.] ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... pierced from top to bottom and common wire with three cornered pieces of shiny tin run through all the places. His eyes were very black, shiny and bright, but we could not raise a smile from him. That chief was all porcupine quill and bead embroidery. He was painted, too, as were all the rest. St. Paul, after we had climbed that awful flight of stairs up the bluff, looked like a little town that had been left. Our carriage to St. Anthony was a light express wagon with more boards across for seats. When we came to ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... lengths of about three feet, is a widely-spread home-industry in Venice, and if we go down to the lower parts of the Lagoon city, where the people dwell, we shall see numbers of women and children seated before large baskets, out of which glass pipes protrude like the quills of a gigantic porcupine. With fingers spread wide apart, they carefully weigh and feel the contents of the baskets, till they have sorted all the pipes, according to their sizes. The different bundles are then carried back to the factory, where they are placed ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... much care of their dress and horse equipments; they dash furiously past on wild steeds, astride of the high-pommelled saddles. A fancifully coloured cover, worked with beads or porcupine quills, making a flashy, striking appearance, extended from withers to rump of the horse, while the riders evinced an admirable daring, worthy of Amazons. Their dresses were made of buckskin, high at the neck, with short sleeves, or rather none at all, fitting loosely, and reaching ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... umbrella-mender, and the man who trilled the little bell of the Dutch clock as he went along. It was soon gone again to return no more that day; and the bands of music and the straggling Punch's shows going after it, left it a prey to the most dismal of organs, and white mice; with now and then a porcupine, to vary the entertainments; until the butlers whose families were dining out, began to stand at the house-doors in the twilight, and the lamp-lighter made his nightly failure in attempting to brighten up the street ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... four horses prancing, and steaming, no matter how cold the weather, from the precipitous ups and downs of the mountain roads they had traveled. The return journey in the dusk or by moonlight was never without incident: porcupine, deer, bear, Bighorn, mountain lion—some kind of game invariably crossed ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... porcupine of yourself, it isn't becoming. Settle your wig, Jo, and tell me if I shall telegraph to your mother, or do anything?" asked Laurie, who never had been reconciled to the loss of his friend's ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... many streams, detached mountain spurs and ranges of lofty elevation. Black Butte, as it is known to-day, in Dawson County, Montana, was left on the left, after which they rode through the valley of Little Porcupine Creek to the Yellowstone, which was crossed with considerable difficulty. Turning more to the east, they passed the rough, precipitous section, the scene many years afterward of the appalling Custer massacre, and now an immense Indian reservation, and, ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... the earth at the end of the fourth day, where, on the following day, they were welcomed by Chehonaai, the Sun. There, too, the Bear, the Wolf, the Great Snake, the Mountain Lion, the Weasel, and the Porcupine met them at the direction of Yolkai Estsan, to guard them on their long land journey. The Lightning also she made, ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... on, and we became hungry. Many wild beasts came plunging into the water beside us, and others swam across to our side, and stood still. Although faint and weary, I managed to shoot a porcupine, and we all ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes |
