"Elephantine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now, the place of the elephantine black horse and the little tram cars and the man was taken by the masts of ships lying beyond. They rose straight and tall, their cordage like spider webs, in a succession of regular spaces until they were lost behind the mill. From the exhaust of the mill's engine a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... were ten to one that such would be the mission of any party leaving Kadabra by the pass through which we entered the valley, since that way leads directly to the vast plains frequented by this elephantine beast ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had undergone a change. He had become suave and unctuous, a kind of elephantine irony pervading his laborious attempts at conciliation. He and the Public Prosecutor would be severely blamed for this day's work, if the popular Deputy, relying upon the support of the people of Paris, chose to ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... has been careful to embody in his history the very latest discoveries and information. Notice, it will be found, has been taken even of the stela of Meneptah, recently disinterred by Professor Petrie, on which the name of the Israelites is engraved. At Elephantine, I found, a short time since, on a granite boulder, an inscription of Khufuankh—whose sarcophagus of red granite is one of the most beautiful objects in the Gizeh Museum—which carries back the history of the island to the age of the pyramid-builders of the fourth dynasty. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Alec used to bring him bazaar sweets, of which he was very fond, and sugar-cane. He was a great wonder to the elephant, who could never understand why his pockets were full of all sorts of uneatable things. He loved to go through them, slowly considering each in his elephantine way. The bright metal handle of Alec's pocket-knife pleased Maharaj, and it was always the first thing he abstracted from the pocket and the last he returned, but the bits of string and the ball of wax he worried over. The key of ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Emperor Ulpius Trajanus, from whom it was denominated the Ulpian Library. It was erected in Trajan's Forum, but afterwards removed to the Viminal Hill, to ornament the baths of Diocletian. In this library were deposited the elephantine books, written upon tablets of ivory, wherein were recorded the transactions of the emperors, the proceedings of the senate and Roman magistrates, and the affairs of the provinces. It has been conjectured that the Ulpian Library consisted of both Greek and Latin works; and some authors ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... such tales of [5090]lovers, descriptions of their persons, lascivious discourses, such as Astyanassa, Helen's waiting-woman, by the report of Suidas, writ of old, de variis concubitus modis, and after her Philenis and Elephantine; or those light tracts of [5091]Aristides Milesius (mentioned by Plutarch) and found by the Persians in Crassus' army amongst the spoils, Aretine's dialogues, with ditties, love songs, &c., must needs set them on fire, with such like pictures, as those ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Empress of my life, Your ample waist Just fits the gown I fancy for my wife, And suits my taste; Yet there you stand, flat-footed, square and deep, An unresponsive, elephantine heap, Coquetting with the stars while ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... lived they could not kill. When Rama saw no arms might slay The fiend who like a mountain lay, The glorious hero, swift to save In danger, thus his counsel gave: "O Prince of men, his charmed life No arms may take in battle strife: Now dig we in this grove a pit His elephantine bulk to fit, And let the hollowed earth enfold ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the most ancient of all nations, except indeed that its superior antiquity is contested by the Scythians: their country is bounded on the south[134] by the greater Syrtes, Cape Ras, and Cape Borion, the Garamantes, and other nations; on the east, by Elephantine, and Meroe, cities of the Ethiopians, the Catadupi, the Red Sea, and the Scenite Arabs, whom we now call Saracens. On the north it joins a vast track of land, where Asia and the Syrian provinces begin; on the west it is ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the plantation of the far South doubtless retained many of his most primitive savage traits. Olmsted, an unprejudiced observer, describes him as on the average a very poor and a very bad creature, "clumsy, awkward, gross and elephantine in movement ... sly, sensual and shameless in expression and demeanor." "He seems to be but an imperfect man, incapable of taking care of himself in a civilized manner, and his presence in large numbers must be considered a dangerous circumstance ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... of course the two thousand grinders brought up from the exposed surface of the drift must have borne but a small proportion to the thousands still dispersed throughout the entire depth of the deposit. Any argument, however, founded on the mere numbers of these elephantine tusks and grinders, and which evaded the important question of species, might be eluded, however unfairly, by the assertors of a universal deluge. Floods certainly do at times accumulate, in great heaps, bodies of the same specific gravity; and why might not a universal flood ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... there was absolutely none, while even the pasture-land gave small return. The men had done well, however, and were stiffening nicely into field soldiers, while my Teutonic second in command had sufficiently recovered from his wounds to sit his saddle with some elephantine grace. He early proved himself a good soldier, and I learned he had seen ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... read, the month's Six Selling Best The Bookman scored with elephantine Jest, Have sold a half a Million in a Year, Yet no one ever heard of them, ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... all; no root query of what sex is, of whether it alters this or that, and why, anymore than there is any imaginative grip of the humor and heart of the populace in the popular education. There is nothing but plodding, elaborate, elephantine imitation. And just as in the case of elementary teaching, the cases are of a cold and reckless inappropriateness. Even a savage could see that bodily things, at least, which are good for a man are very likely to be bad for a woman. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... did on the high mountains. The Ice-Maiden sat in her proud castle and arrayed herself in her winter costume; the ice walls stood in glazed frost; where the mountain streams waved their watery veil in summer, were now seen thick elephantine icicles, shining garlands of ice, formed of fantastic ice crystals, encircled the fir-trees, which were powdered ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... the cloistered galleries of the court-yard Clarence sometimes felt himself borne down by the protecting weight of this paternal hand; in the midnight silence of the dormitory he fancied he was often conscious of the soft browsing tread and snuffly muffled breathing of his elephantine-footed mentor. ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... rigid until "Jimmy" got out of his seat with elephantine deliberation, and shuffled to the edge of the platform, where he ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... hurried Mr. Sagittarius from the room, driving Mr. Ferdinand, in a condition of elephantine horror, before him, and abandoning Madame to an acquaintance with the classics that she had certainly never achieved in the society of the renowned ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... spectacular, and probably the worst innings of the School Eleven was that played by Moles White. He dragged his elephantine form to the wicket, and, looking round with his genial smile, prepared to enjoy the Masters' bowling. Again and again he lifted the ball high into the air and grinned as master after master dropped the catches. It was a method that could only ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... not required; before many minutes had elapsed the slow, measured, elephantine tread of the perambulating night-policeman woke the sullen echoes of Dawson Place, and if there were any evil-doers lurking thereabouts, caused them to melt away into the dim shadows. Taking her letters, a candle, and a shilling which she had in readiness, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... Nile, with the stipulation, that they should ever respect and guard the frontier of the empire. The treaty long subsisted; and till the establishment of Christianity introduced stricter notions of religious worship, it was annually ratified by a solemn sacrifice in the Isle of Elephantine, in which the Romans, as well as the barbarians, adored the same visible or invisible powers of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... naturalism in other arts—we have Millet instead of Claude; we have Zola instead of Georges Sand; we have Dumas fils instead of Corneille; we have Mercie instead of Canova; but in music we have precisely the reverse, and we have the elephantine creations, the elaborate and pompous combinations of Baireuth, and the Tone school, instead of the old sweet strains of melody that went straight and clear to the ear and the heart of man. Sometimes my enemies write in ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... some elephantine attempts at smartening his appearance. He gave his fiery mustache a heavenward twist; he dragged into sight a pair of black-edged cuffs, deepened the crease in his middle by tightening his belt another hole, and ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... are not hypercritical in the matter of amusement, and the feat received three encores. The last time he missed his cast through overconfidence. Whereat the old cow tossed her head and tail in the air, and tore off at an elephantine gallop, with a bawl that sounded to Red ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... not understand English, but she shook her fist in Mr. Merrick's face and danced around in an elephantine fashion and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... any age, is the result of the gradual modification of the forms which peopled it in the preceding age,—if that has been the case, it is intelligible enough; because we may expect that the creature that results from the modification of an elephantine mammal shall be something like an elephant, and the creature which is produced by the modification of an armadillo-like mammal shall be like an armadillo. Upon that supposition, I say, the facts are intelligible; upon any other, that I am ...
— A Critical Examination Of The Position Of Mr. Darwin's Work, "On The Origin Of Species," In Relation To The Complete Theory Of The Causes Of The Phenomena Of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... tropical forest growth rise from the sandy shores of the Cape, and along its face are three creeks or bays, deep inlets showing through their narrow entrances smooth beaches of yellow sand, fenced inland by the forest of cotton-woods and palms, with here and there an elephantine baobab. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... that he is drawn from a real Professor of my acquaintance, who is anything but a fool, I should imagine not. But in that case I am all the more mystified by the incredibly weak fight which he makes in the play in answer to the elephantine sophistries of Undershaft. It is really a disgraceful case, and almost the only case in Shaw of there being no fair fight between the two sides. For instance, the Professor mentions pity. Mr. Undershaft says with melodramatic scorn, "Pity! the scavenger of the Universe!" Now if any ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... doubtless found him "good for service," for the door opened into a brightly lighted drawing-room into which he followed Arthur Papillon, like a frail sloop towed in by an imposing three-master, and behold the timid Amedee presented in due form to the mistress of the house! She was a lady of elephantine proportions, in her sixtieth year, and wore a white camellia stuck in her rosewood-colored hair. Her face and arms were plastered with enough flour to make a plate of fritters; but for all that, she had a grand air and superb eyes, whose commanding glance was softened by ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... also belong the land-monsters of bygone days, whose skeletons you may see in museums: such as the Mammoth, or hairy elephant, found in the British Isles, and also over half the globe; the Mastodon, another elephantine extinct monster, whose remains are found in America; the Woolly Rhinoceros, with two large horns on his face, dug out of the frozen soil of Siberia; the Great Irish Deer, whose antlers measured 9 feet from tip to tip; and Giant Sloths ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... tow-rope. While these orders were being carried out the lad caught sight of a young girl who had just arrived in a great state of excitement. She was dressed in dazzling finery, and carrying something in a basket. The boy sprang on to the dock wall, and created much merriment with his elephantine caresses. They shouted to him from the vessel to jump aboard or he would lose his passage. He made a running spring for the main rigging as she was being towed from her berth. A wild cheer went up from the crowd when ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... the power of her Celtic lungs, plucked off her downtrodden shoes, slapped their soles together smartly, and, with a gesture of royal prodigality, tossed them right and left into the air, performed a caper of surprising agility on elephantine, blue-yarn-stocking-covered feet, and was carried away by a roaring surge ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... stood in his moccasins, yet seemed not tall, so broad he was and ponderously thick. He had an elephantine leg, with a foot like a black-oak wedge; a chimpanzean arm, with a fist like a black-oak maul; eyes as large and placid as those of an ox; teeth as large and even as those of a horse; skin that was not skin, but ebony; a nose that was not a nose, but gristle; hair that was not ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... his feet as lightly as though he had been a rubber ball, and performed a solemnly joyful dance around his office. His eyeglasses jigged on his nose, a lock of his sleekly brushed hair fell upon his forehead. Meeting the fixed stare of the secretary, he winked! And with a sort of elephantine religiosity he finished his amazing measure, caught once more the glassy eye of the ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... wrong. But foolish bees, Who will contend for points like these, Should not suppose good taste in roses Depends on elephantine noses. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... visiting the island advised him to walk; and though it broke the habits of a life and the traditions of his rank, he practised the remedy with benefit. His corpulence is now portable; you would call him lusty rather than fat; but his gait is still dull, stumbling, and elephantine. He neither stops nor hastens, but goes about his business with an implacable deliberation. We could never see him and not be struck with his extraordinary natural means for the theatre: a beaked profile like ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... faces, they have grown very stout. Their walk is a waddle, and they bulge with seaming corpulency. This is due to the amount of clothing they have on. I noticed Larry, to- day, had on two vests, two coats, and an overcoat, with his oilskin outside of that. They are elephantine in their gait for, in addition to everything else, they have wrapped their feet, outside their sea-boots, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the extinct form. This conjecture is rendered probable, amongst other reasons, by the fact that no traces of a horny sheath surrounding the horn-cores of the Indian fossil have been as yet detected. Upon the whole, therefore, we may regard the elephantine Sivatherium as being most nearly allied to the Prongbuck of Western America, and thus as belonging to the ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... the real grand, miscellaneous, popular, and populous morning concert! Now for elephantine dimensions and leviathan bills of fare. It is nominally, perhaps, or really, perhaps, the annual benefit concert of some well-known performer, or it is the speculation of a great musical publishing house, in the name of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... the strongest of her early impressions was naturally that of the house in which she was to live. It was big and roomy; it was detached, and thus open to light and air. But its elephantine woodwork repelled her, for she had grown up amid the rococo exuberances of Paris apartments. The heavy honesty of black-walnut depressed her after the gilded stucco of her mother's salon. And that huge, portentous orchestrion took up ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... passed rapidly through my mind, and were accompanied with myriads of others. I bethought me of every thing connected with Mr. Tims—his love for Julia—his elephantine dimensions, and his shadow, huge and imposing as the image of the moon against the orb of day, during an eclipse. Then I was transported away to the Arctic sea, where I saw him floundering many a rood, "hugest of those that swim the ocean stream." Then he was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... and of the spongy nature of a mushroom, bulging out, and lending an expression of owlish wisdom to his otherwise heavy features. As on that of the Memnon, not a vestige of a hair was to be seen on the head of Split-log. His lips were, moreover, of the same unsightly thickness, while the elephantine ear had been slit in such a manner, that the pliant cartilage, yielding to the weight of several ounces of lead which had for years adorned it, now lay stretched, and coquetting with the brawny shoulder ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... in lonely state. When not admiring Mr. Burton in Shakespeare we admired him as Paul Pry, as Mr. Toodles and as Aminadab Sleek in The Serious Family, and we must have admired him very much—his huge fat person, his huge fat face and his vast slightly pendulous cheek, surmounted by a sort of elephantine wink, to which I impute a remarkable baseness, being ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... as if he expected me to snatch it from him and run, but he was still trying in an elephantine way to treat the matter ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... recreative reading for all," with Robert Browning, Charles Kingsley and Monckton Milnes among its contributors. Thinking they had a market, an enterprising publisher rushed out a volume, The Lectures of Lola Montez. When a copy reached the editor, it was reviewed in characteristically elephantine ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... outward aspects may differ, they are of the same blood and know it. A featherweight bantam cock will stand up to an elephantine brahma and fight him according to the rules of the ring and next minute pay compliments to his lady in language which she will be at no loss to understand. And if the artificial conditions of their life ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... it always amuses me much. So Terence was a nigger. There is no trace of the negro 'boy' in his Davus. My nigger has grown huge, and has developed a voice of thunder. He is of the elephantine rather than the tiger species, a very mild young savage. I shall be sorry when Palgrave takes him. I am tempted to buy Yussuf's nice little Dinka girl to replace him, only a girl is such an impossibility where there is no regular hareem. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... is not distinguished; nez camus, as a Frenchman would say; no illustrious steeple, no imposing tower; the water-edge of the town looking bedraggled, like the flounce of a vulgar rich woman's dress that trails on the sidewalk. The New Ironsides lies at one of the wharves, elephantine in bulk and color, her sides narrowing as they rise, like the walls ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... moment. I merely maintain my right as an individual. I have just been telling you what I think, in order to explain why the elephantine gambols of Madame Tetralani spoil the orchestra for me. The world's judges of music may all be right. But I am I, and I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind. If I don't like a thing, I don't like it, that's all; and there is no reason under the sun why I should ape a liking ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... male friend to whom her husband turned for consolation. Miss Fox seems to have been the only woman who inspired Bentham with a sentiment approaching to passion. He wrote occasional letters to the ladies in the tone of elephantine pleasantry natural to one who was all his life both a philosopher and a child.[235] He made an offer of marriage to Miss Fox in 1805, when he was nearer sixty than fifty, and when they had not met for sixteen years. The immediate occasion was presumably the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... a great many breeds of horses. The Shetland pony is so small, that many specimens are no larger than a Newfoundland dog; on the other hand, Clydesdale horses sometimes attain to almost elephantine proportions. There is a wide difference between the bull-like Suffolk Punch and the greyhound-like racer. The English and Irish racer is said to owe its origin to a cross between the old English light-legged breed and the Arabian. ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... nowadays from the abominable "stores"; but I must not leave my artist, and shall let the saddler growl to himself for the present. The polished writer goes on to speak of the ruddy farmer who strolls round in elephantine fashion and hooks out sample-bags from his plethoric and prosperous pockets; the dealers drive a brisk trade, the small shopkeepers are encouraged by their neighbours from the country, and everything ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... storm subsided we went on. It was a remarkable sight—a long procession of "Tommies," burghers, carts, and the naval gun, 18 feet long, an elephantine one when compared with ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... not want to stop now," said the other, in his elephantine simplicity, "but we must stop for a moment, because it is a sign—perhaps it is a miracle. We must see what is at the end of the road of sand; it may be a bridge built across ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... of Tesla. In the back of his brain the city tumbled—an elephantine grimace, a wilderness of angles, a swarm of gestures that beat at his thought. But before his eyes there were no longer the precise patterns of another day. He was no longer outside. He had been sucked into something, the something ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... for special work upon the lands of Perthshire. Notwithstanding all the brilliant successes of Bakewell, long-legged, raw-boned cattle were admired by the majority of British farmers at the opening of this century, and elephantine monsters of this description were dragged about England in vans for exhibition. It was only in 1798 that the "Smithfield Club" was inaugurated for the show of fat cattle, by the Duke of Bedford, Lord Somerville, Arthur Young, and others; and it was about ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... as numerous then as now, but there were quite enough of them to publish caricatures of me and of my horses. It goes without saying that, profiting by the latitude allowed to caricature, I was represented as of elephantine bulk and appearance, like the god Ganesa, the Hindoo god of wisdom, and that my ponies were shown as no larger than poodles, rats, or mice. It is also true that I could readily enough have carried my pair one under each arm, and taken the carriage on my back. I did for a moment think ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... wet grass, was on his hands and knees, searching. He accomplished a complete circuit of the body, his round-shouldered, stooping figure making grotesque, elephantine shadows under the light of the torch as he moved about slowly, not trusting his eyes, but feeling with his hands every inch of the ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... everybody in her brown poplin that she knew now was different from any other dress she had seen at school. And Jerry could not get that shiny pump out of her mind! Her own feet, in their sturdy black, square-toed shoes, commenced to assume such elephantine proportions that, when the signal came for the debaters to go forward, she could scarcely drag ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... I don't think I've ever liked you so much as then. I think you're really much more interesting when you're elephantine. It was quite glorious the way you were planning to go galumphing ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... bar and puffing thoughtfully at a cigar of elephantine proportions, suddenly took his cigar from his lips, held it poised, examined it with the eye of a connoisseur—of cattle—and remarked slowly: "Now, why didn't I think of it? Wonder you fellas didn't think of it. They need a cook bad! Been without a cook for a ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... write to make a request of the most moderate nature. Every year I have cost you an enormous—nay, elephantine—sum of money for drugs and physician's fees, and the most expensive time of the twelve ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imply that a man of the new world was a sort of new Pharaoh, who built not so much a pyramid as a pagoda of pyramids. It would suggest houses built by mammoths out of mountains; the cities reared by elephants in their own elephantine school of architecture. And New York does recall the most famous of all sky-scrapers—the tower of Babel. She recalls it none the less because there is no doubt about the confusion of tongues. But in truth the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... not Tenu believe that it belongs to thee like thy dogs. Behold this flight that I have made: I did not have it in my heart; it was like the leading of a dream, as a man of Adehi (Delta) sees himself in Abu (Elephantine), as a man of the plain of Egypt who sees himself in the deserts. There was no fear, there was no hastening after me, I did not listen to an evil plot, my name was not heard in the mouth of the magistrate; but my limbs went, my feet wandered, my heart ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... loaf of bread, a pair of boots, a bunch of cigars, and some clay pipes (the only things, by the way, rendered utterly hors de combat in the assault). But one piece of furniture retained its attitude, and that was the elephantine bedstead, which nothing short of an earthquake could move. Almost at the same moment several acquaintances rushed in, begging me not to be alarmed, as the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... early as the ninth century B. C. in the inscription of Ben Hadad (Pognon, Inscr. semit., 1907, pp. 165 ff.; cf. Dussaud, Rev. archeol., 1908, I, p. 235). In Aramaic papyri preserved at Berlin, the Jews of Elephantine call Jehovah "the god of heaven" in an address to a Persian governor, and the same name was used in the alleged edicts of Cyrus and his successors, which were inserted in the book of Esdras (i. 1; vi. 9, etc.)—If there were the slightest doubt as to the identity of the god of thunder with Baalsamin, ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... What's that? you rat, don't try to interrupt me. Don't try to bully me. It never succeeds. Montague Nevitt, I tell you, I WON'T be bullied." And the great Q.C. put his foot down on the path with an elephantine solidity that made the prospect of bullying him seem tolerably unlikely. "I know the facts, and I'll stand no prevarication. Now, tell me, what vile use did you mean to make of your ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... room, upholstered and carpeted in green, with green-shaded electroliers above two billiard tables that stood ghastly and bier-like beneath their blanketing covers of white cotton. Against the walls stood massive, elephantine club chairs of green fumed oak, and it was into one of these that MacNutt had dropped the inert and unresponding Durkin. At the far end of the room the stealthy observer could make out what was assuredly the entrance to an electric elevator. ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... left his shaggy coat, but the earmarks still are there, the ponderous strength, the elephantine dignity. His eyes are dull,—never were bright,—but they seem not vacant, and most often fixed on the Golden Gate where the river ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... though far from skilful with her needle, contrived to make dozens of hospital slippers, which it was the pride of her heart to deliver to the ladies of the Commission. Chloe added her quota of socks, often elephantine in shape, and sometimes oddly decorated with red tops and toes; but with a blessing for "the boys in blue" running through all the threads. There is no need to say how eagerly they watched for letters, and what a relief it was to recognize the writing of beloved ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... more execrable taste than the emanations from the pedants of Louvain. The "Rhetoricians" are not responsible for all the bad taste of their generation. The gravest historians of the Netherlands often relieved their elephantine labors by the most asinine gambols, and it was not to be expected that these bustling weavers and cutlers should excel their literary superiors in taste ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... William, it is tender—but not for everybody,' I added warningly. Really, it was going to be very awkward if he, in his elephantine way, had conceived an infatuation for me. My conscience was perfectly clear—I had not encouraged him in any way, but nevertheless I did not wish to see him suffer from unrequited affection. It would be so awkward in many ways. William, even in his sane moods, has a dreadful habit ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... meekly, "I wonder how Frieda will like my elephantine efforts at assisting with the housework. If she gives notice, Norah will be lost ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... Cleishbotham, are clearly laborious at times. And even his own letters to his daughter-in-law, which Mr. Lockhart seems to regard as models of tender playfulness and pleasantry, seem to me decidedly elephantine. Not unfrequently, too, his stereotyped jokes weary. Dalgetty bores you almost as much as he would do in real life,—which is a great fault in art. Bradwardine becomes a nuisance, and as for Sir Piercie Shafton, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, Onias IV sought refuge in Egypt. Here, as the legitimate head of the Jewish high-priesthood, he was favorably received by Ptolemy and granted territory in the Nile Delta to the north of Memphis in which to rear a temple to Jehovah. In the light of recent discoveries at Elephantine it is evident that this step was not without precedent (Section XCI:vii). Ptolemy's object was to please his Jewish subjects and to attract others to the land of the Nile. Josephus's statement in The Jewish War, VII, 10:4 favors the conclusion that the temple was built two hundred ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... under the name not merely the Nile valley and the Delta, but the entire tract interposed between the Libyan Desert on the one side and the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea on the other, is a country of nearly the size of Italy. It measures 520 miles from Elephantine to the Mediterranean, and has an average width of 150 or 160 miles. It must thus contain an area of about 80,000 square miles. Of this space, however, at least three fourths is valueless, consisting of bare rocky mountain or dry sandy plain. It is only along the course of the narrow ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... Crosby came, and Mr. Magoun, as lean, brusque and mosquito-like as his partner is elephantine; and after a few words with them I was called into the Judge's private room, where a great lump rose in my throat when I tried, and miserably failed, to thank him ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... in his clumsy, elephantine way, showing that, despite Merkle's recent insinuations, he still trusted her. "This is the only woman who ever cared for me, John," he explained, after some hesitation, "and we're going to stick together. We ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... well-known carelessness of American readers, and knowing full well how easily they are duped—how easily they are cozened out of their senses and led into false beliefs with mere plausibilities and sophisms—this imperial and far-reaching Wall Street, this elephantine fox of the world, takes possession of American journalism—owns it, controls it. It seizes and subsidizes the metropolitan press. It purchases newspapers and magazines by the score. It establishes bureaus; it buys every purchasable ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... terms with their successors. The roguish eye of J——ll, ever ready to be delivered of a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. But what insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas Coventry?—whose person was a quadrate, his step massy and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, his gait peremptory and path-keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving column, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow-beater of equals and superiors, who made a solitude ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... perhaps, Big Liza the cook, to enquire for "comp'ny's" health with elephantine coquetries; then Lige, erstwhile stable-boy and butler, now promoted to the proud role of valet, requesting orders for the day, and lingering with an appreciative ear for the conversation ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... looked round hurriedly. The Division bell had just rung. The smoking-room was almost empty. This was fortunate. It would have been very awkward for a man in Sir Bartholomew's position to be caught in the act of hearing an Emperor called elephantine. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... he mastered his irritation to some degree, and spoke his command briefly. "Well, Smithson, apologize to her. It can't be helped." Then his face lighted with a sardonic amusement. "And, Smithson," he went on with a sort of elephantine playfulness, "I shall take it as a personal favor if you will tactfully advise the lady that the goods at Altman and Stern's are ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... nearer, slowly yet hurriedly, now stopping to cough and gasp, now taking a few steps by elephantine assault. I should have enjoyed the situation if it had not been for poor Faustina in the cave; as it was I was filled with nameless fears. But I could not resist giving that grampus Corbucci one bad moment ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... way Herodotus: "Passing from the city of Elephantine you will sail upwards until you reach a level plain. You cross this region, and there entering another ship you will sail on for two days, and so reach a great city, whose name is Meroe."[3] Observe how he takes us, as it were, by the hand, and leads us in spirit through ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... for the metropolis turned into the main road from a side one. Immediately Israel limps most deplorably, and begs the driver to give a poor cripple a lift. So up he climbs; but after a time, finding the gait of the elephantine draught-horses intolerably slow, Israel craves permission to dismount, when, throwing away his crutch, he takes nimbly to his legs, much to the surprise of ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the same crevice of the curtain where, only a little while before, the urchin of elephantine appetite had peeped, the butcher beheld the inner door, not closed, as the child had seen it, but ajar, and almost wide open. However it might have happened, it was the fact. Through the passage-way there was a dark vista into the lighter but still obscure interior ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with elephantine playfulness, stretched out his arms to ravish a kiss; but as it required no great agility to elude him, his fair enslaver had vanished before he closed them again; upon which the apathetic youth ate ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... of Elephantine, opposite Aswan, an interesting discovery has lately been made by Mr. Howard Carter. This is a remarkable well, which was supposed by the ancients to lie immediately on the tropic. It formed the basis of Eratosthenes' calculations of the measurement of the earth. Important ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... cranes, being only small fry, stand raking in the mud; the dahuk (coloured herons), merry creatures, dive in the water; other birds of a lighter kind merely fly about. Market-boats sail along at good speed on their own behalf; ferry-boats creep along at elephantine pace to serve the needs of others only: cargo boats make no progress at all—that is ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... Now the ideal State of the elephant is the herd, and yet this herd of wisdom sometimes develops a rebel or "rogue" who seems to be striving after some fresh manner of existence and works terrible havoc among the elephantine conventions. Usually the herd combines to kill him and there is an end of the matter. Yet I sometimes think that the occasional and inexplicable appearance of the "rogue" at intervals during many thousand years may really have been the origin of ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... this uncertainty of character that has rendered the elephant useless for military purposes in the field since the introduction of fire-arms. In olden times there can be no doubt that a grand array of elephantine cavalry, with towers containing archers on their backs, would have been an important factor when in line of battle; but elephants are useless against fire-arms, and in our early battles with the great hordes brought against us by the princes of India, their elephants invariably turned tail, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... from San Antonio to an obscure sheet called the Railway Age, that Brann is not an Englishman as the Age editor in one of his elephantine efforts to be humorous seems to have suggested, and that "all Englishmen in this country repudiate his every utterance." Thanks, awfully; that's the highest compliment ever paid an American sovereign by a British subject. When I next visit San Antonio ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... wall that balanced a coloured advertisement of Tommy Dodd whisky, and recited the rule on vibration. Herbert strenuously denied that any such phenomenon had taken place, and when James appealed to its author he was met with such an outburst of elephantine sarcasm that he refrained from further ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... sitting beside the bleached anatomy of some stranded leviathan, and gazing at the mountains of Squillace that glowed in the soft lights of sunset. The shore was deserted save for myself and a portly dogana-official who was playing with his little son—trying to amuse him by elephantine gambols on the sand, regardless of his uniform and manly dignity. Notwithstanding his rotundity, he was an active and resourceful parent, and enjoyed himself vastly; the boy pretending, as polite children sometimes do, to enter into ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... with a sigh of relief. He was more at his ease sitting than standing. For the first time in his life he was ashamed of his size. Angela's delicate limbs and hands made his, by contrast, appear elephantine. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... flavour which we call mannerism? To speak of authors well known to all readers—Does not The Rambler taste of Johnson; The Decline and Fall, of Gibbon; The Middle Ages, of Hallam; The History of England, of Macaulay; and The Invasion of the Crimea, of Kinglake? Do we not know the elephantine tread of The Saturday, and the precise toe of The Spectator? I have sometimes thought that Swift has been nearest to the mark of any,—writing English and not writing Swift. But I doubt whether an accurate observer would not trace even here the "mark of the beast." Thackeray, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... and Sixth dynasties were reigning, exploring expeditions were sent into the lands of the Upper Nile. The two dynasties had sprung from the island of Elephantine, opposite Assuan; it was, therefore, perhaps natural that they should take an interest in the country to the south. One expedition made its way into the land of Punt, to the north of Abyssinia, and brought back a Danga dwarf, whose tribal name still survives under the form of Dongo. Later ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... phase. And if it's my lot to live alone, I'll back myself to be as happy as most wives I come across. It's my own big, splendid life, and I'm going to make it splendid, or know the reason why!" Hannah struck a dramatic gesture, danced a few fancy steps in an elephantine manner, and stumped towards, the door. "So be it, then! We accept with pleasure, and I'll leave you to trim ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... thought it only plain duty, let fear or prudence say what they might, to visit them at their bedsides and follow them to their tombs. It was not only the outer man of Reisen, but the heart as well, that was elephantine. He had at length come home from one of these funerals with pains in his back and limbs, and the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... have written both addresses as the Indians would chant them. To be sure, they will not scan according to the elephantine grace of the pedant's iambics; but then, neither will the Indian songs scan, though I know of nothing more subtly rhythmical. Rhythm is so much a part of the Indian that it is in his walk, in the intonation of his words, in the gesture of his hands. I think most Westerners will bear me ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... the performance, as the moon shone athwart the great tent, and the brass band was hushed, Sally Stubbs stood against a background of canvas, bathed in the sheen from on high. Quiet reigned in the tents of the elephantine woman and the calf with six legs. The lung-tester had folded up his machine and departed. The sound of "ice-cold lemonade" had died in the general stillness. Mlle. La Sauteuse leaned over lovingly to the new keeper, and asked in a ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... which in real life is associated with so much that is bizarre and violent, is always "regular" in grammar. Ancient and modern tongues tell the same tale—from Hebrew to street-Arabic, from Greek to the elephantine language that was "made in Germany." Not only is "to love" deficient in no language (as home is deficient in French, and Geist in English), but it is never even "defective." No mood or tense is ever wanting—a proof of how it has been conjugated in every mood and tense of life, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... farther back, straightening out his elephantine legs, inserted one fat hand into his trouser pocket and with some difficulty extracted a combined bill-fold and coin-purse, at once heavy with gold and bulky with notes. Moistening thumb and forefinger, "How'll ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... deliberate, elephantine way. Kate made no sign till he was seated, then she asked what ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... flashed the recollection of a supple, expressive, un-English bow, and of a deftness of phrase compared with which Trenby's laboured compliment savoured of the elephantine. Swiftly she dismissed the memory, irritably chasing it from her mind, for was it not five long, black, incomprehensible weeks since Peter had vanished from her ken? From the day of the bridge-party at the Edenhall flat, she had ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... at such a collection as he has formed, and bethink you that these elephantine bones did veritably carry their owners about, and these great grinders crunch, in the dark woods of which the forest-bed is now the only trace, it is impossible not to feel that they are as good evidence of the lapse of time as the annual ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... time with the stars and the moon. He was running like a youthful god, she thought, for her mind had not yet been weaned from certain vanities, and she could not see that a gigantic policeman was in his wake, tracking him with elephantine bounds, and now and again snatching a gasp from hurry to blow furious warnings on ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... no lives, and seldom broke bones. They were chiefly opportunities for the display of brilliant enamelled and gilt armour, at the very acme of cumbrous magnificence; and of equally gorgeous embroidery spread out over the vast expanse provided by elephantine Flemish horses. Even if the weapons had not been purposely blunted, and if the champions had really desired to slay one another, they would have found the task very difficult, as in effect they did in the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... telling her to treat one of her friends. On Anna's absent Thursdays he always offered to take dinner downtown. He brought her pound boxes of candy tied with sly loops and bands of gay satin ribbon which she carefully rolled and tucked away in a drawer. He praised her cooking, and teased her with elephantine playfulness, and told her that she looked like a chicken in that hat. Oh, yes, indeed! Mrs. Mandle was a spoiled ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... "vulgar." Naturally they would be. [101] With "myosotis eyes," peachy cheeks and auburn hair, rolling over ivory shoulders [102], "Louise" was progressing admirably, when, unfortunately for her, there came in view a fleshy, vinous matron of elephantine proportions, whom she addressed as "mother." The sight of this caricature of the "Thing Divine," to use Burton's expression, and the thought that to this the "Thing Divine" would some day come, instantly ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... near the close of our sojourn in Basel, Max, after many elephantine manoeuvres, obtained Yolanda's promise to walk out with him to a near-by hill in the afternoon. It was a Sabbath day, and every burgher maiden in Basel that boasted a sweetheart would be abroad with him in the sunshine. Max could not help feeling that it was most condescending in ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... sailors, you an' me? That's a poser for you; and look at the money he gave away about the Alabama to the Yankees, instead of fightin' them for it like an Englishman. That's another poser for you!" retorted the big, burly antagonist who had wakened up and entered into the discussion with elephantine zeal. "Some of you would let foreigners jump on your stomachs, but Captain Cowan and me says, 'England for ever!' Why, if it hadn't been for Palmerston and the old Jew, we would all have been Russians or blooming Germans ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Hawthorne, in the uncongenial atmosphere of the Liverpool Custom-house, had doubtless much to suffer from a thick-skinned generation. His characteristic shyness made it a hard task for him to penetrate through our outer rind—which, to say the truth, is often elephantine enough—to the central core of heat; and we must not complain if he was too apt to deny the existence of what to him was unattainable. But the problem recurs—for everybody likes to ask utterly unanswerable ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... fighting against Elam. And only in the last decade of the Nineteenth century the Frenchman De Morgan has made marvellous discoveries in the Elamite lands. What a noble passion those Frenchmen have for discovery! For Egypt did not Napoleon provide the most elephantine books of monuments and records that printing-presses have yet issued? And from that time to this have not Frenchmen held the primacy in excavations until, even while England holds and rules Egypt, she leaves, by special ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... helicopters and lovingly polished brass and tested engines. The reek of gasolene and burning lubricants hung heavily over the field. Reporters darted here and there followed by panting photographers bearing elephantine cameras and bulging boxes of plates, for the metropolitan press was "playing up" the tests which were expected to produce a definite aerial type of machine ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... Casby rose up in his list shoes, and with a slow, heavy step (he was of an elephantine build), made for the door. He had a long wide-skirted bottle-green coat on, and a bottle-green pair of trousers, and a bottle-green waistcoat. The Patriarchs were not dressed in bottle-green broadcloth, and yet ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... hundred deckhand jobs were ever open to Neils, yet, for some reason best known to himself, he preferred to stick by the Maggie. In his dull way it is probable that he was fascinated by the agile intelligence of Mr. Gibney, the vitriolic tongue of Captain Scraggs, and the elephantine wit and grizzly bear courage of Mr. McGuffey. At any rate, he delighted in hearing them snarl ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... completely demolished Brugsch's interpretation of this word. He says there are numerous instances of the use of d'd' (which he transliterates doudouiou) in the medical papyri. In the Ebers papyrus "doudou d'Elephantine broye" is prescribed as a remedy for external application in diseases of the heart, and as an astringent and emollient dressing for ulcers. He says the substance was brought to Elephantine from the interior of Africa and ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... vain. Thy intention, O blessed one, it is to have from Surya a son furnished with a coat of mail and ear-rings, and who in point of prowess would be beyond compare in this world! Do thou, therefore, O damsel of elephantine gait, surrender thy person to me! Thou shall then have, O lady, a son after thy wish! O gentle girl, O thou of sweet smiles, I will go back after having known thee! If thou do not gratify me to-day by obeying my word, I shall in anger curse thee, thy father ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... pounced on them with joy, as cats pounce and purr on catnip. The whole country studied Brown's letters with the rapture of eavesdropping. Such letters! Such oozing molasses of sentiment! Such elephantine coquetry! Joel weighed two hundred and eighteen pounds and called himself Little Brownie and ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... as that to the friend who's going to marry them! Upon my word, I've half a mind to go into the concientious scruples business on my own account! Have I any right to be a party to fettering poor airy fairy little Miss Butterfly, with a heavy iron chain for life and always, to this great lumbering elephantine moral Ernest? Am I justified in tying the cable round her dainty little neck with a silken thread, and then fastening it round his big leg with rivets of hardened steel on the patent Bessemer process? If a couple of persons, duly called by banns in their own respective ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... blinded and its long fur smouldering, its rage gave way suddenly into panic. Lifting its giant head high into the air, as if thus to escape its fiery assailants, it turned and scuttled back the way it had come, while the old men swarmed after it, belaboring and jabbing its elephantine rump ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... at November 24th, the day we heard of the victory at Ctesiphon or Sulman Pak. That afternoon I crocked my leg at footer and have been a hobbler ever since with first an elephantine calf and now a watery knee, which however, like the Tigris, gets ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... had better fly," said Miss de Lisle. "I am pretty wet, and there's lunch to think about." She looked at them in friendly fashion. "Thank you all very much," she said—and was gone, with a kind of elephantine swiftness. ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... my voice, Farquhar staggered out of his tent, so changed from my spruce mate who started from Bagamoyo, that I hardly knew him at first. His legs were ponderous, elephantine, since his leg-illness was of elephantiasis, or dropsy. His face was of a deathly pallor, for he had not been out of ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... entirely recovered her spirits and was her old self, and a very charming self it was, so charming, indeed, that even James forgot his learning and the responsibilities of his noble profession and talked, like an ordinary Christian. Indeed, he even went so far as to pay her an elephantine compliment; but as it was three sentences long, and divided into points, it ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... gathering lustre of a tear, Thought I myself must weep, until I caught A grey, smug smile of satisfaction smirch His pallid features at his misery. And laugh did I, to see the little snares He had set for pests to vex him: his great feet Prisoned in greater boots; so narrow a stool To seat such elephantine parts as his; Ay, and the book he read, a Hebrew Bible; And, to incite a gross and backward wit, An old, crabbed, wormed, Greek dictionary; and A foxy Ovid ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... South American forests—a vast sleepy mass, my elephantine limbs and yard-long talons contrasting strangely with the little meek rabbit's head, furnished with a poor dozen of clumsy grinders, and a very small kernel of brains, whose highest consciousness was the enjoyment ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... hopelessly, though I could have suggested another title to the ownership of dogs—a very common one, too, and good enough till the proper person comes interfering. Boys' dogs are generally held under this tenure. My companion, seeing me at fault, remarked with elephantine waggishness, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy |
