"Wild-cat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the signal for hiding to all the timid ones. Jay and crow cried Thief! thief! and kingbird sounded his war cry and rushed out to battle. Now the little birds build their nests among the sticks of his great house, and the shadow of his wings is a sure protection. For owl and hawk and wild-cat have learned long since the wisdom of keeping ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... before has had nerve enough to jump her horse over the lawn hose, cleared the wall that runs along O'Brien's mill,—nobody's ever done it before,—and she came in hanging to the horse's mane and yelling like a wild-cat. Gad, it was two hours before we got 'em quiet and sent'em to town. They thought it was a tiger, I understand, although some of them held out for the lion and the hyena. Mrs. Scudaway was game enough to stay and ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... abounded in the larger species of game common to the forests of North America. Among these were the beaver and otter, buffalo, deer, wolf, wild-cat, panther, bear, fox, and elk or wapiti (Cervus canadensis), noble herds of which ranged the mountain sides ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... a monkey!" retorted Joel, with a pause in the work of emptying the bag to investigate the animal in David's hand, "that's a wild-cat." ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... Quite likely, your Excellency. I have seen rifle fire that had not the slightest effect on a wild-cat for the very reason that the firing ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... shouting went Where o'er the vales the branches bent; The wild-cat we chased from the glens, that the cheer And cries of our hunting might fall on ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... fitting an arrow to his bow, and discharging it so hastily that he missed the animal, and hit the earth about half a foot to one side of it. To our surprise the wild-cat did not fly, but walked slowly towards the arrow, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Fosse!" was his oath. "The honour to stand by you shall be mine, my Bardelys! You owe it me, for am I not in part to blame for all this ado? Nay, you'll not deny me. That gentleman yonder, with the wild-cat moustaches and a name like a Gascon oath—that cousin of Mironsac's, I mean—has the flair of a fight in his nostrils, and a craving to be in it. But you'll grant me the honour, will you not? Pardieu! It will earn me a ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Mills in a hectoring tone, "and I will soon explain why. You lost a large sum in South Africans, but won it back again in Americans. You then again, and again contrary to my advice, embarked in perfect wild-cat affairs, which ended in our—I say 'our' here—getting severely scratched and mauled. Altogether you have frittered away L30,000, and have placed the remaining ten in a venture which to my mind is as wild as all the rest of your unfortunate ventures. These ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... Holding my head down, I had little source of amusement but reading the foot-marks on the road; and these were strangely diversified to an English eye. Those of the elephant, camel, buffalo and bullock, horse, ass, pony, dog, goat, sheep and kid, lizard, wild-cat and pigeon, with men, women, and children's feet, naked ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... her smart for her folly. The bad end, which he always prophesied for anyone who did not conform to his arrogant decrees, loomed imminent and forbidding. He was little better than a monster, with no more paternal instinct than the wild-cat. He would only chuckle and rub his hands in glee at the thought of her humiliation in the eyes of her friends. He might accuse the rector of complicity in her fraud. He would spread ruin around, ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... deep, because of the wild-cat and the hungry Kaffir dogs. It should be wide, to leave room for him. The ground was hard, with boulders of ironstone embedded in it. What did that matter? All the day through, and all through the night of wind-driven mists and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... in their ears all night, And the sturgeon splashed, and the wild-cat screamed, And they did not wake till the morning light Red through the willowy ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... ain't got so much on them dames!' An' at that one o' them wore a wild-cat's skin an' that's all—an' a wild-cat ain't big. And t'other she ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... the happy slave-voices used to sing "Monkey Motions," and the merry feet used to dance to "Cotton-eyed Joe," weeds and thick underbrush have all grown up, and partridges build their nests there; and sometimes, at dusk, a wild-cat or a fox may be seen stealing across the ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... tell Tillie that he had received this letter; but somehow, every time he opened his lips to speak the words, the memory of her wild-cat behavior in defense of the teacher that afternoon in the woods, and her horribly death-like appearance when she had lain unconscious in the teacher's arms, recurred to him with a vividness that effectually checked him, ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... rejoices and beats more freely among them, and doubtless, in the days which "I can hardly remember" (as Rosalind says of her Irish Rat-ship), I was a bear or a wolf, or what your people call a "panter" (i.e. a panther), or at the very least a wild-cat, with unlimited range of forest and mountain. [The forests and hill-tops of that part of Massachusetts had, when this letter was written, harbored, within memory of man, bears, panthers, and wild-cats.] That cottage ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... untill'd earth, Let her joy in a mighty birth,— Night from the land has pass'd away, The desert basks in noon of day. Joy, to the sullen wilderness, I come, her gloomy shades to bless, To bid the bear and wild-cat yield Their savage haunts to town and field. Joy, to stout hearts and willing hands, That win a right to these broad lands, And reap the fruit of honest toil, Lords ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... A wild-cat-like creature was abroad. To it the Abolitionists were to be thrown. It was to destroy Garrison, make an end of Thompson, and suppress between its enormous jaws the grandest moral movement of the century. Besides doing up this ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... reeled about the living-room. . . . They broke. . . . Shane, livid with rage, side-stepped, and with the agility of a wild-cat leaped again at his adversary. His arm encircled and tightened about the trader's neck. Kilbuck turned in the grip and chest to chest they swayed, strained, their tentative blows rendered impotent by their very nearness to each other. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... his comrade, and without condescending to look after him, and himself neither ascending nor descending, followed the flank of the mountain horizontally, hanging on by rocks, branches, and even by plants, with the strength and energy of a wild-cat, and soon found himself on firm ground before a small wooden hut, through which a light was visible. The adventurer went all around it, like a hungry wolf round a sheepfold, and, applying his eye to one of the openings, apparently saw what determined ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... of mingled pain and rage, Farrington endeavoured to free himself from this human wild-cat. He struggled and fought, and at length succeeded in tearing away that writhing, battering form. With one hand he held him at arm's length and shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. Dan struggled, squirmed and bit, but all in vain; he was held as in a vice. Not satisfied with shaking ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... fringed lids, "you—you're regularly reformed, aren't you? You're stouter, too, and altogether more solid and commercial looking. Yet who'd have thought of your keeping a hotel or ever doing anything but speculate in wild-cat or play at draw poker. How did you drift into it? Come, tell me! I'm not Mrs. Sylvester just yet, and maybe I might like to go into the business too. You don't ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... answer, because at that moment the singing stopped. One of the rybalts, a fat and heavy man, suddenly rose, and the bench tilted to one side. Danusia tottered and stretched out her little hands, but before she could fall or jump, Zbyszko rushed up like a wild-cat and seized her ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... doughnuts she had, which was two, and he flung them down; she offered him half a paper of pins, worth forty ravens, and he made a mouth at her and jabbed one of them in the raven's back. That was the limit, you know. It called for the other twin. Her eyes blazed up, and she jumped for him like a wild-cat, and when she was done with him she was rags and he wasn't anything but an allegory. That was most undoubtedly the other twin, you see, coming to the front. No, sir; don't tell ME he ain't in there. I've seen him with my own eyes—and plenty of ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... a line against the wall, are some cages for rare animals from foreign lands destined for the Museum of Paris. Most of the cages, however, were empty. In front of one, in a narrow grated yard, a convict was teaching a young wild-cat to obey commands like a dog. Hasn't this man had enough of slavery himself? Why does he torment this poor little beast? The lashes with which he is threatened he gives the wild-cat, which, some day, will probably ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... way remains," thought the Earl, as they approached the Spa, "and that is to work on the fears of this d—d vindictive blue-stocking'd wild-cat.—Your ladyship," he said aloud, "is aware what severe damages have been awarded in late cases where something approaching to scandal has been traced to ladies of consideration—the privileges of the tea-table have been ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... cry of rage he whirled around and struck me full in the face, knocking me head over heels into the ashes on the hearth. Then he burst into a fit of violent weeping, or rather convulsions more befitting a wild-cat than a human being, stamping furiously with his feet, and screaming that he ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... "That wild-cat must not remain here," said he, shaking his head. "She will kill my gentle patient. Where did you find her, Mrs. Linwood? From what ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... limped away, bruised and bleeding, scarcely able to walk—for such fights were wild-cat fights with claws and teeth. He bided his time; he grew rapidly, and by April, 1771, being six feet tall at last (the true border height) and strongly muscled, he challenged ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... which your first article appears," Kendricks said, "Freudenberg will strike. Your life here will never be wholly safe. You will be encompassed with spies and enemies. Why, this wild-cat scheme of his of sending you off on some expedition was solely because you are the one man of whom he is afraid. He feared lest Carraby might make some hideous blunder in a crisis and that the country might demand you back. That is why ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Seyfried, or Young Kubbeling, I often remember that he was ever wont to wear three wild-cats' skins, which he laid on his breast and on each leg, as a remedy against pains he had. And the falcon-seller, who was thick-set and broad-shouldered, was in truth not unlike a wild-cat in his unkempt shagginess, albeit free from all craft and guile. His whole mien, in his yellow leather jerkin slashed with green, his high boots, and ill-shaven face covered with short, grey bristles, was that of a woodsman who has grown strange to man in the forest ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... except that the Government was strictly in the banking business. Have not they always told us, that when state or other banks issue paper money without the Government in the banking business to back up the issue, such money in case of a failure of the issuing bank became wild-cat money, and did they not say to us wild-cat money made paupers? Now they go squarely back on all they have taught us on the money question, and advocate the wild-cat money system themselves according ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... I sprang to investigate this surprising condition of things, there came a sudden gurgle and a groan from Maudita, who had risen in her own little bed at my motion. I turned to see her clutching her throat, as if her hands were the claws of a wild-cat: she was laughing and howling and crying all at once; her face was of a dark purple tint; her body—that lithe and supple waltzing body of hers—was bending itself rigidly into the shape of a bow, resting by the head and the heels on the bed—the dignified ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... for lack of game," declared Walter, "in the last half mile, I have seen coons, possums, deer, and a wild-cat, to say nothing of the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... of a sudden, Molly, she'll take it into her head to spend goodness knows what on some trumpery or other and come to me for the money. If I have n't got it to give her, out she flies about 3 per cent., and worries me to invest in some wild-cat or other, like your friend's thing, the Jaco what is it? I don't pay the slightest attention ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... any fancy furniture or looking-glasses, and such like, to attract folks, nor anything to look like the old times. I don't think any of the boys would care to come here. And I got rid of a lot of sporting travelers, 'wild-cat' managers, and that kind of tramp in this way. But"—She hesitated, and ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... wing-tips of a great bird. In one hand he carried a white hare—not the Polar hare—but a much smaller kind, also an inhabitant of these snowy regions; and over his shoulders was slung a fierce-looking creature, the great wild-cat or lynx of America. The bird in his bag was the golden eagle, one of the few feathered creatures that brave the fierce winter of a northern climate, and does not migrate, like its congeners, the "white-head" and the osprey, to more ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... stag's huge antlers swung; For all around, the walls to grace, Hung trophies of the fight or chase: A target there, a bugle here, A battle-axe, a hunting-spear, And broadswords, bows, and arrows store, With the tusked trophies of the boar. Here grins the wolf as when he died, And there the wild-cat's brindled hide The frontlet of the elk adorns, Or mantles o'er the bison's horns; Pennons and flags defaced and stained, That blackening streaks of blood retained, And deer-skins, dappled, dun, and white, With otter's fur and seal's unite, In rude and uncouth tapestry all, To garnish ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... was kept for the possible appearance of an enemy, either two-footed or four-footed. But no man came to disturb them, and if any wild beasts were near they kept well out of sight. Once Lukins brought down a small wild-cat, but ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... wrong thought! she said to herself: was he not an enemy of her tribe? Yet she could not help closing her eyes when she saw Black Arrow aiming a terrible blow at his head. She did not know what to make of herself. She suddenly began to think of the hurt wild-cat she and Nautauquas had pitied during the night. But no one ought ever to pity an enemy. What was ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... heard him tell all this, and how she had written notes of entreaty to him, she screamed aloud, and springing at him like a wild-cat, buried her ten nails in his hair, shrieking, "Thou liest, traitor; it is ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... was more familiarly than favorably known in financial circles of Boston, as the man who had put afloat more wild-cat stocks than any other speculator on the street. It might be supposed that his connection with any scheme would be enough to wreck its prospects, yet whatever he took hold of floated for a time. There was always a feeling among ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... train of smaller boys running along-side, to support the chicken coop he was wheeling. Norman's face shone with importance, and he called excitedly as he fumbled at the gate latch, "Look, Mary! You can't guess what we've got in this box! A young wild-cat! Lupe wants to ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Mr. Scott became interested in the lake marine by the purchase of the brig Amazon, of 220 tons, then considered a craft of good size. At the time of the purchase, the West was flooded with wild-cat money, and specie was very scarce. The brig was sold by order of the Chancellor of Michigan, and specie demanded from the purchaser, a condition that made buyers shy. In 1842, Mr. Scott purchased the schooner John Grant, of 100 tons, and in the following three years ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... man Zbyszko is!" said Macko; "there is no other like him in the world. He is brave and as agile as a wild-cat. Do you know that when they conducted him to the scaffold in Krakow, all the girls standing at the windows were crying, and such girls;—daughters of knights and of castellans, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and O discourser-with-the-wild-cat, is a new and wonderful kind of lead which U-Sessellodes has dug out of a hole in the ground far deeper than any other hole that was ever made. You will observe that my knife is sharp, and therefore I cut the lead easily. You may see how the metal shines when newly cut. Now, ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... building of the Stock Exchange. Down the street were throngs of men within a roped arena, pushing, shouting, jostling; this was "the curb," where one could buy or sell small blocks of stock, and all the wild-cat mining and oil stocks which were not listed by the Exchange. Rain or shine, these men were always here; and in the windows of the neighbouring buildings stood others shouting quotations to them through megaphones, or signalling ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... pockets but being searched to the hide every night like them poor unfortunate Zulus that toil in the diamond mines of Africa. Of course I could see then that this boy had become merely enraged like a wild-cat at having a dollar crowded onto him for some one else every time a head waiter grovelled Angus out of ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... gorgeously decorated and furnished after the manner of oriental houses—yet there is always a certain sense of imprisonment about Damascus, as the windows of the houses are all barred and latticed, and the gates of the city are shut at sunset. This would not have suited our wild-cat proclivities; we should have felt as though we were confined in a cage. So after a search of many days we took a house in the environs, about a quarter of an hour's ride from Damascus, high up the hill. Just beyond it was the desert sand, and in the background a saffron-hued mountain ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... the ranks to beg newspapers and cigars from us. On the mountain ash the bright red berries dangled in clumps like Christmas bells, and some of the leaves of the elm still clung to their boughs; so that the wide yellow road was dappled like a wild-cat's back with black splotches of shadow. Only when we curved through some village that had been the scene of a skirmish or a reprisal did the roofless shells and the toppled walls of the houses, standing gaunt and ugly in the sharp ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Brindle pleads the good old cause; And frisks his pretty tail, and half unsheathes his claws! Yet not the less, for modern lights unapt, 55 I trust the bolts and cross-bars of the laws More than the Protestant milk all newly lapt, Impearling a tame wild-cat's whisker'd jaws! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... feasting, or drunkenness, and that fetich he carries with him to bring good luck, in love or in combat, in the hunt or on the journey. He carries a fetich suspended to his neck, he ties a fetich to his bow, he buries a fetich under his tent, he places a fetich under his pillow of wild-cat skins, he prays to his fetich, he praises it, or chides it; if successful, his fetich receives glory; if he fail, his fetich is disgraced. These fetiches may be fragments of bone or shell, the tips of the tails of animals, ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... not her ancestors hidalgos of Aragon? Three steps she made across the velvety grass, and set her aristocratic sole upon a bunch of Johnny's burrs. Dona Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas emitted a yowl even as a wild-cat. Turning about, she fell upon hands and knees, and crawled—ay, like a beast of the field she crawled ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... man looked as if he knew nothing at all about the matter, and was quite willing to take Burl's word for it and let the noise in question pass either for the bellowing of a buffalo bull-calf or for the mewing of a wild-cat kitten, he cared not a whistle which. By this time Burl had climbed back over the fence into the field, and was now slowly turning his horse and plow to run his ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... from specimens they kept alive. Hutton also writes: "I have a beautiful specimen alive, so savage that I dare not touch her." I should like to possess a young one, having been successful with many so-called savage animals. I had a wild-cat once which was very savage at first, but which ultimately got so tame as to lie in my lap whilst I was at work in office or writing, but she would never allow me to touch or stroke her; she would come and go of her own sweet will, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... and all the irritability of a stout Champenoise peasant, roused by his insults to the aristocracy, one of whom she probably regarded herself, from having lived so long under their roof, watched her opportunity, made a spring at him like a wild-cat, wrested the sabre from his hand, and, grasping the struggling and screaming little functionary in her strong arms, carried him like a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... din, two Iroquois crept close to the palisade, where they lay motionless till near dawn. By this time the last song had died away, and the tired singers had left their posts or fallen asleep. One of the Iroquois, with the silence and agility of a wild-cat, climbed to the top of a watch-tower, where he found two slumbering Hurons, brained one of them with his hatchet, and threw the other down to his comrade, who quickly despoiled him of his life and his scalp. Then, with the reeking trophies of their exploit, the adventurers ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... black sprawling monster trying to swim. Recovering somewhat from his fright, he began to bark at the creature, and ran round and round his milk-pan, wouf-woufing, gurring, growling, like an old dog barking at a wild-cat or a bear. The natural astonishment and curiosity of that boy dog getting his first entomological lesson in this wonderful world was so immoderately funny that I had great difficulty in keeping from ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... buffalo, which have not crossed the Wahsatch Range into the Great Basin, within the recollection of the oldest trapper. The only wild animals common in the country of the Utahs are the hare, or "jackass-rabbit," the wild-cat, the wolf, and the grizzly bear. There are few antelope or elk. Trout abound in the mountain-brooks and in Lake Utah. In the Salt Lake, as in the Dead Sea, there are no fish. Before the advent of the Mormons, the habits of all the Utah bands were very degraded. No agency had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... far before he met the wild-cat. "Good morning, friend," says Cock-alu, "and where may you be going ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... Ketury. She used to come to meetin's sometimes, and her husband was one o' the prayin' Indians; but Ketury was one of the rael wild sort, and you couldn't no more convert her than you could convert a wild-cat or a painter [panther]. Lordy massy! Ketury used to come to meetin', and sit there on them Indian benches; and when the second bell was a-tollin', and when Parson Lothrop and his wife was comin' up the broad aisle, ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... shiny web betwixt the fingers. All over it was a white fluffy dust, like the flour of a new-baked loaf. It lay thick on Sharkey's neck and cheek. With a cry of disgust he flung the woman from his lap; but in an instant, with a wild-cat bound, and a scream of triumphant malice, she had sprung at the surgeon, who vanished yelling under the table. One of her clawing hands grasped Galloway by the beard, but he tore himself away, and snatching a pike, held her off from him as she gibbered and mowed with the blazing ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... young Kennedy literally took to the woods and drove the rivers in Muskoka and Michigan as a lumberjack till he was a chunk of whalebone in a red flannel shirt and corked boots and could pull the whiskers out of a wild-cat! With varying success he fought the battle of life and learned that many things glitter besides gold and that the four-leafed clover in this life after all is ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... hair didn't turn white that very instant, for what I saw was a big, tawny wild-cat, with blazing eyes and quivering claws, crouched on a narrow limb. I knew the animal was going to spring, and I tried to shout as loudly as I could, but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and the ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... subjects—so the Paris-American Gazette said—were intimately connected with matters of finance, and de Mersch's personal finances and his grand ducal were inextricably mixed up with the wild-cat schemes with which he was seeking to make a fortune large enough to enable him to laugh at half a dozen elective grand duchies. Indeed, de Mersch's own portmanteau was reported to be packed against the day when British support of his Greenland schemes would let him afford to laugh ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... the least of the ill practices current among us. Almost the only cheerful reminiscence in connection with the place which arises in my mind is that of a battle I had with one of my classmates, who had bullied me until I could stand it no longer. I was a very slight lad, but there was a wild-cat element in me which, when roused, made up for lack of weight, and I licked my adversary effectually. However, one of my first experiences of the extremely rough-and-ready nature of justice, as exhibited by the course of things in general, arose out of the fact that ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... first they may have had their doubts, they gradually came to accept the statement without question. They came to regard it as a kind of right to have little Hans sit on the top of the log pile when they worked, or running along the chute, while the wild-cat strings of logs shot down the steep slide with lightning speed. They were not in the least afraid lest the logs should jump the chute, as they had often done before, killing or maiming the unhappy man that came too near. For ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... yi!' 'Bow, wow!' Archibald wa'n't hankerin' for little tables. He was goin' to eat with us, that's what. His ma, she argued with him and pleaded, and he yelled and stamped and hurrahed. When Margaret tried to soothe him he went at her like a wild-cat, and kicked and pounded her sinful. She tried to take him out of the room, and then Cousin Harriet come down on her like a scow load ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... out," he often said to himself, "I have an odd instinct which tells me that there is the sleeping lioness or the wild-cat hidden somewhere beneath all that languid, gracious carelessness. Poor little girl! she has managed to captivate us all, but I should not be surprised if she turned out more difficult and troublesome to manage than the whole of my ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... mayest deal with him, and be none the sorer when thou liest down to-night. To be short, this is it: when thou hast got a stroke in upon him, and he falters, then give him no time, but fly at him in thy wild-cat manner and show what-like thews thou hast under thy smooth skin; now thine helm, lad. So art thou dight; and something tells me thou shalt do ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... induced to try. To her a horse was a thing that kicked or bit or showed the whites of his eyes and set his ears back and switched his tail and gave other evidences of depraved moral nature, and she would no more touch or approach one than she would a wild-cat, except when in so doing, with an admiring audience, she could become the central figure in an effective tableau. Ray wished her in Jericho, as she stood at arm's length and touched Dandy with the tips of her dainty fingers and began to speak of him as "it." Equine sex was ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... all around, the walls to grace, Hung trophies of the fight or chase: 545 A target there, a bugle here, A battle-ax, a hunting spear, And broadswords, bows, and arrows store, With the tusked trophies of the boar. Here grins the wolf as when he died, 550 And there the wild-cat's brindled hide The frontlet of the elk adorns, Or mantles o'er the bison's horns; Pennons and flags defaced and stained, That blackening streaks of blood retained, 555 And deer-skins, dappled, dun, and white, With otter's fur and seal's unite, In rude and uncouth ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... have some fun watching you defend that little old twenty-thousand dollars I just gave you. Do you know, Matt, that I never knew a man to save up a thousand dollars, by denying himself many things, that he didn't invest the thousand in a wild-cat mine or a dry oil well? Ah, Matt, it's those first few dollars that come so hard and go so easy that break most men's hearts; but here you are with twenty thousand that came so easy I've just naturally got ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... startin' off, to tell you not to come to the church nur to the grave. She was clean out o' her senses, an' under ordinary circumstances I'd say not to pay a bit of attention to 'er, but she's so upset she might liter'ly pounce on you like a wild-cat at the meetin'-house." ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... made shadows so weird and changeful that the boys imagined they saw every form of wild beast and flight of strange bird with which pictures had made them familiar. Owls hooted in the distance. A wild-cat screamed like a frightened child. A partridge, waked from its perch by a flash of the torch, whirred ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... A fortune in one hundred days. Our dredger will work three thousand yards of sand in heavy surf at Cape Nome. It will take out twenty-four thousand dollars in a day. You can make more money with us than by taking flyers in wild-cat oil schemes, etc." The poster was illustrated by a huge machine gotten up on the centipede plan; at least, it resembled that hated insect from having attached to its frame two sets of wheels of different sizes along the sides like the legs of a centipede, but ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... fair, old girl," said Vane bending over and patting her neck; "but I s'pose it's only in keeping with everything else these days—it's not fairness that counts; it's just luck—fatuous idiotic luck. It's not even a game; it's a wild-cat gamble all over the world. And may Heaven help us all when the bottom does drop ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... charming. Her family, like mine, had become more or less decayed about the time I enlisted, but fortunately her mother had a quarter section of land down in Ventura County and when a wild-cat oil operator on adjacent land brought in a splendid well, Senora Sepulvida was enabled to dispose of her land at a thousand dollars an acre and a royalty of one-eighth on all of the oil produced. The first well drilled was a success and in a few years the Sepulvida family ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... became Wise by being Original, and of the Terrible Tricks which he by Magic played Loup-Cervier, the Wicked Wild-Cat ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... and I saw this: I saw Baleka, my sister, walking towards us, and on her shoulders was a kaross of wild-cat skins, and behind her were two soldiers. She walked proudly, holding her head high, and her step was like the step of a queen. Now she saw the sight of death, for the dead lay before her like black water in a sunless pool. A moment ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... read the letters in YOUNG PEOPLE, and I thought I would tell you about a wild-cat. On the evening of April 28, about five o'clock, I had just finished my music lesson, when I saw a large crowd standing near our house. I ran out, and I heard some one saying, "It is a wild-cat." I thought at first it was a prairie-wolf. It was two feet in ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... said Mr. Bell, measuring his words, "do you recollect that wild-cat gold mine scheme you were interested in more years ago than you'll ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... a wild-cat," cried her aunt. "I never saw such a girl. But now be sensible, come and sit down beside me. Will you come or not? I'll never say another kind word to you as long as I live if you won't sit down here a minute and keep still. Uli, order another bottle. Keep still now, girl, and don't interrupt ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... eyes watching the camp from the tangle of green, was busy muttering spells over a calabash containing a magic concoction composed of the entrails of a white goat, certain herbs and the eyes of a black wild-cat. When the roof of the forest was a patterned ceiling against an incandescent glow, Birnier stripped to the waist, and submitted himself to the hands of the wizard who, after scattering the feathers of a scarlet parrot into the calabash, smeared ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... like herds of white elephants pasturing across heavenly fields, too slowly for the eye to note their motion; and below, the far-reaching, tremulous sheen of reed and bulrush, the wet lair of serpent, wild-cat, and alligator. Now and then there was the cool blue of sunny, wind-swept waters winding hither and thither toward the sea, and sometimes miles of deep forest swamp through which the railroad went by broad, frowzy, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... a wild-cat could not produce more astonishment and consternation than this sudden coming of ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... velvet hand on his hot brow; for, woman-like, she laid her hand like down on that burning brow to aid her words in soothing it. Nor did it occur to him just then that this admonition, delivered with a kind maternal hand, maternal voice, came from the same young lady who had flown at him like a wild-cat with this very problem in her mouth. She mesmerized him, problem and all; he subsided into a complacent languor, and at last went to sleep, thinking only of her. But the topic had entered his mind too deeply to be finally dismissed. It returned next day, though in a different form. You must ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... sublime species may you be?" turning short round upon him, clicking his rifle-lock, with an air which would have seemed half cynic, half wild-cat, were it not for the grotesque excess of the expression, which made its sincerity ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... Indian? Yes, as a wild-cat loves the deer when he sucks his blood, as the water loves the fire it extinguishes. The lips of Peena ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... voice what sort of an animal he has in view. Arrived at the scene of the clamor, the dogs are found in frantic excitement around the foot of a tree, in whose shadowy foliage something is supposed to be hidden. Will it be a 'coon, or will it turn out a 'possum, a wild-cat, or ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... happened to be huntin' down nigh Mart's place last fall an' heerd her screamin',—you could hear the blows landin' on her back, too,—so I jest stepped sort o' spry to'ards his cabin an' ketched him layin' it on with a wilier branch as thick as your thumb, an' her a screechin' like a wild-cat in a trap. Well, what happened inside the next minute made a friend o' her fer life,—an' an enemy o' him. You'd have thought any dootiful an' loyal offspring would o' tried to pull me off'n him, but ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... totem, though a few belonging to other totems may be borrowed and deposited for a time with them. For example, a sacred store-house of the honey-ant totem was found to contain sixty-eight birth-sticks of that totem with a few of the lizard totem and two of the wild-cat totem.[126] Any store-house will usually contain both sticks and stones, but as a rule perhaps the sticks predominate in number.[127] Time after time these tribal repositories are visited by the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... to learn that you were absorbing your rations with clock-work regularity and doing business at the same old stand. I once saw an egotistical brindle-pup joyfully bestride the collar of an adult wild-cat, and the woeful result convinced me that Ambition and Judgment should blithely foot it hand in hand. That is why, my dear Colonel, I approach you by siege and parallel, instead of capering gayly down your right-o'-way like a youthful ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... fancy I shall have to let you go," said Yarnall. He was not above tormenting the wild-cat. Female ferocity always excites the teasing boy in a man. "You're getting too ambitious for us. You see, once these rich New Yorkers take you up, you're no more use to a plain ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... room, and went, not to the still-room, but to her own garret, and there she gave way. She flung herself, with a wild cry, upon her little bed, and clutched her own hair and the bedclothes, and writhed all about the bed like a wild-cat wounded. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... hardly seem the same face, so heavy was the lower jaw, so insistent and coercive his eye. But if he took off his hat to place therein his cotton bandana handkerchief or (if he were in luck and burdened with game) the scalp of a wild-cat—valuable for the bounty offered by the State—he showed a broad, massive forehead that added the complement of expression, and suggested a doubt if it were ferocity his countenance bespoke or force. His long black hair hung to his ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... a life, with such a wife, were strange! But if you have a stomach, to't i' God's name; You shall have me assisting you in all. But will you woo this wild-cat? ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... on the ground immediately beside the spring, crouched a large wild-cat, the hairy tips of her ears twitching nervously. Under her claws was a rabbit, evidently just caught, into which the wild-cat had just sunk her teeth when the approach of the boy was heard. At first Wilbur could not understand why she had not sprung into the woods with her prey at the first ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the frosty pole, The northern dawn was red, The mountain-wolf and wild-cat stole, To banquet ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... herself, her shyness, the strange house, and all her alarms. If Lady Niton took nothing for granted at Tallyn, that was not, it seemed, the case with John Barton. He, on the contrary, took it for granted that everybody there was at least a good Radical, and as stoutly opposed as himself to the "wild-cat" and "Jingo" policy of the Government on the Indian frontier, where one of our perennial little wars was then proceeding. News had arrived that afternoon of an indecisive engagement, in which the lives ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... given up hunting, Miss Tempest?" he asked one Sunday afternoon, when they had gone the round of the stables, and Arion had been fondled and admired—a horse as gentle as an Italian greyhound in his stable, as fiery as a wild-cat out ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... over. When he recovered, he wrote to Maurice, offering his evidence, and"—smiling whimsically across at Kennedy—"received a haughty letter in reply, assuring him that he was mistaken in the facts and that the writer did not dispute the verdict of the court. My brother rather suspected some wild-cat business, so before he went to Australia, some years later, he placed in my hands properly witnessed documents containing the true facts of the matter, and it was only when, through Mrs. Durward, we learned that ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... told regarding the Mormon methods of carrying on business with the merchants of Cleveland. A bank was started, like other "wild-cat" banks of that period, without a charter from the State of Ohio. The institution was called "The Kirtland Safety Society Bank." A number of its bills of issue may be seen at the rooms of the Western Reserve ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... stopping at public houses until my means were about gone. When I got to the Black Swamp in the county of Wood, Ohio, I stopped one night at a hotel, after travelling all day through mud and snow; but I soon found that I should not be able to pay my bill. This was about the time that the "wild-cat banks" were in a flourishing state, and "shin plasters"[3] in abundance; they would charge a dollar ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... Hamil could see nothing in the tangle of brier and saw-palmetto, but after a while he became aware of a wild-cat, tufted ears flattenend, standing in the shadow of a striped bush and looking at him out of the greenest eyes he had ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... bowls. Handle with the head of an animal, probably a wild-cat, at the tip; figures of birds in ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... was unwisely invested. A large part of it was in wild-cat mining stocks, which were not worth the ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... be to-day. How do you know,' says I, 'that that green goods man hasn't a large family dependent upon his extortions? It's you supposedly respectable citizens who are always on the lookout to get something for nothing,' says I, 'that support the lotteries and wild-cat mines and stock exchanges and wire tappers of this country. If it wasn't for you they'd go out of business. The green goods man you was going to rob,' says I, 'studied maybe for years to learn his trade. Every ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... the manifest evils that follow from the lack of a highly developed civic spirit. In this connection may be noted also the influence of frontier conditions in permitting lax business honor, inflated paper currency and wild-cat banking. The colonial and revolutionary frontier was the region whence emanated many of the worst forms of an evil currency.[32:1] The West in the War of 1812 repeated the phenomenon on the frontier of that day, while the ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... before he could move, Aura dashed past him, fighting her way out to where the Very Young Man lay. In a moment she was beside him. Her fragile body seemed hopelessly inadequate for such a struggle, but the spirit within her made her fight like a wild-cat. ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... and beavers we caught them in deadfalls and in steel traps. The mink we usually took in deadfalls, smaller, of course, than the ones we used for the bears. The musk-rat we caught in box traps like a mouse trap. The wild-cat we ran down like the ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... to the barn to milk the cow,—for we kept her in a kind of a home-lot like, a part that had been cleared afore we come, lest she should stray away in the woods, if we turned her loose; she was put in the barn, too, nights, for fear some stray wild-cat or bear might come along and do her a harm. So I let her into the yard, and was jest a-goin' to milk her when she begun to snort and shake, and finally giv' the pail a kick, and set off, full swing, for the fence to the lot. I looked round to see what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... penny-whistle: as soon as he chooses they're sitting one on each side of the gramophone, listening to Their Master's Voice. Vivisection?—Farrell's an ass. The only inhuman thing I've ever known Jack do was to domesticate a wild-cat and restore her to the woods unprotected by her natural amenities. These people hear a shindy going on in the laboratory in '—' Street, and conclude that he's holding the wrong sort of tea-party. Now, if he'd had an ounce of practical wisdom to-night, ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bars in the menagerie of the Tower. But if, by Habeas Corpus, or otherwise, he was to come into the lobby of the House of Commons whilst your door was open, any of you would be more stout than wise who would not gladly make your escape out of the back windows. I certainly should dread more from a wild-cat in my bedchamber than from all the lions that roar in the deserts behind Algiers. But in this parallel it is the cat that is at a distance, and the lions and tigers that are in our antechambers and our lobbies. Algiers is not near; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... steal chickens. I reckon it's a wild-cat gets yours. I heard one scream in the swamp not ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... don't want it. Won't have it. I sounded her coming home from church on Sunday; asked her if she would like to sleep in a new room, if we built on. She fired up like a little wild-cat and said she'd made her own room all herself, and she didn't think anybody ought to take it ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... which were solemnly seated, nodded to and fro their enormous heads, showing their long yellow incisors, and seemed to sniff the air. Suddenly they all rushed towards their burrows. A jaquarete had scattered them by springing in among them. The new-comer, a species of wild-cat, with a coat of the darkest black, left two or three victims dead upon the ground, and then ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... has met my boy?"—turning on her sharply. "No, that's silly,"—the sad vagueness coming back into the faded eyes. After a pause,—"Derrick, thee said? He was short, the lad was,—but with legs and arms as tender and supple as a wild-cat's. I loss much of my strength when he was born; it was wonderful, for a woman, before; I giv it to him. I'm glad of that! I thank God that I giv it to him!"—her voice sinking, and growing wilder and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... all, and those with whom he gained audience listened to what he had to say with open impatience, or with a half-amused toleration that was almost as difficult to bear. Perhaps this was not astonishing, as most of them already had had somewhat costly experiences with what they called wild-cat mining schemes. ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... strange suspicions of mortgages, and dealings with Jews. He has actually inklings of horrid post-obits; and groans as he looks on his old oaks, as he rides through his woods and parks, foreseeing their overthrow; nay, he fancies he sees the land-agent among his quiet old farmers, like a wild-cat in a rabbit warren, startling them out of their long dream of ease and safety, with news of doubled rents, and notices to quit, to make way for threshing-machines, winnowing-machines, corn-crushers, patent ploughs, scufflers, scarifiers, and young ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the things he desires, the man who has no aptitude for physical labor on account of his great bulk sometimes turns his attention to crime. This type of man may be a gambler, a grafting politician, a confidence man, a promoter of wild-cat stocks or bonds, the man who sits behind the scenes and directs a band of criminals or, perhaps, a whole community of them, or in some other way preys upon the gullibility ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... don't know. It will be a jolt to me if there's a square man left on the ranch! Go down to the bunk-house and tell the cook I'm here and I'm hungry as a wild-cat. Tell him and any of the boys that are down there that I've come to stay and that Trevors is fired. They take orders from me and no one else. And hurry, if you know how. Goodness knows, you look as though it would take you half an hour ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... conservatives would succeed; but gradually one industry after another got a foothold. Then the panic of 1872 demonstrated that a man who has money must invest it where he can watch it, instead of trusting to luck in some wild-cat railroad scheme out West. By the concentration and investment at home of some of the money saved from the wreck, the Wamsutta mills have become a corporation with a capital of three million dollars. ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... corner, spitting and growling. On trying to dislodge her, she flew at Mr. St. John's face, over the dog's heads; but he struck her while in the air, and she fell among the dogs, who soon dispatched her, even though they say, that a wild-cat has twelve instead of nine lives. If one be taken, those in the neighbourhood are sure to be also secured, as they will all, in the manner of foxes, assemble round the body ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Brenchfield was on him like a wild-cat. Phil wriggled, but the Mayor got behind him, with an arm pressing his throat and a hand over his mouth. With a quick movement and without the slightest noise he bore Phil backward full length on the thickly carpeted floor. He moved ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... to see me?' He was in a playful mood. 'What do you want? A new automobile?' I answered, 'I haven't any automobile, new or old, and you know it. What I want is you. I always loved you—surely I proved that to you.' 'What you proved to me was that you were a sort of wild-cat. I'm afraid of you. And anyway, I'm tired of women. I'll never ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... a hunt the Indian carried his bow strung ready for use, and his bundle of assorted arrows in a quiver made of the skin of a small fox, wild-cat or fisher, hung conveniently ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... of victory, found himself attacked in the rear. One of the smaller boys, who had gone out with the rest, hearing the fight, had rushed back, and, just as Keith drove Jake Dennison to his seat, sprang on him like a little wild-cat. Turning, Keith ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... mineralogist come over here to examine the stones. This man was out west on business for Tom Latimer's father, and Tom said it would cost next to nothing to send for him. The man said the jewels would create the greatest wild-cat speculations in New York if they were placed on the market. Those were his ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... "Oho! My Gringo wild-cat is much tamer, isn't he?" sneered Gato. "But he shall be tamer still before the night ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... Garey, "ee 'll shoot fust; yur gun's furrest carry. Plug the big un on the clay-bank hoss. This child's for Number 2 on the grey mustang. An, young fellur! ee'll jest pick off thet niggur on the roan. I know yur wild-cat to the back-bone, but keep yur eye skinned an yur narves steady, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... its decorated walls, and squirrel and wild-cat skins, was duly admired, the luncheon-basket of the Saunders party was re-enforced by provisions from Rand's larder, and spread upon the ledge; the dimensions of the cabin not admitting four. Under the potent influence of a bottle, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... recognised his worthy host, though a maud, as it is called, or a gray shepherd's-plaid, supplied his travelling jockey-coat, and a cap, faced with wild-cat's fur, more commodiously covered his bandaged head than a hat would have done. As he appeared through the morning mist, Brown, accustomed to judge of men by their thews and sinews, could not help admiring ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... reached a position of half-nelson behind the man's head. He was now in a position to break this assailant's neck. Bones snapped as he applied the terrific muscles of his right arm and the brown man's muscles relaxed. Johnny's head and arms were free. With the speed of a wild-cat, he sprang to his feet, faced about, then, with a bounding leap, cleared the remaining assailant and went tobogganing down the hill. He had seen five others of the brown villains approaching. He had had enough for ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... off with a barrel of the completed product. A fine and successful adventure it might have seemed, but there were no arrests. The moonshiners had fled the vicinity. For aught the officer had to show for it, the "wild-cat" was a spontaneous production of the soil. He made himself very merry over this phase of the affair, when seated at the prettily appointed dinner table of the bungalow, and declared that however the marshal might regard the matter, he could not ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... fugitive slave has his concealed hut; O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impassable swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake; The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon—singing through the moon-lit night, The humming-bird, the wild-turkey, the raccoon, the opossum; A Tennessee corn-field—the tall, graceful, long-leaved ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... the stuffed wild-cat that is in the bar at the "Ship," but we decided that our decorations must be very quiet—and the wild-cat, even in its stuffed state, was anything but; so we borrowed a stuffed roach in a glass box and stood it on the chest of drawers. It looked very calm. Sea-shells are quiet ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... of population to our settlement came adventurers of all classes; desperadoes, gamblers, broken down professional men, nymphs du pave of the coarse and vulgar sort, gentlemen who "had interests" in "wild-cat" mines in half the counties of the Pacific States, greasers, or Mexicans, Indians (pueblas)—in short, a conglomerate mass of humanity; or, judging by later events, one might rather say inhumanity—such as is nowhere to be seen but in the mining towns of the far West. Under the instructions ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... of b'ar about by spells; and once't in a while a painter or a wild-cat-wolverines, some ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... concerned! Here she had been fighting herself for a fortnight to conquer a useless passion for her man of all the world, fit to command an array of giants; and she saw him now almost breathless as he spoke of a great wild-cat of a woman who ought to be by his side now. What sort of a woman was she anyhow, who could let him go into exile as he had done and live apart from her all these years, while he "slogged away"—that was the Western phrase which came to her mind—to pull himself level with things ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... side,—that is to say, while writing to Friedrich. But while writing of him, to third parties, sometimes almost simultaneously, the contrast of styles is not a little startling; and the beautiful affectionately chirping Mouse is seen suddenly to be an injured Wild-cat with its fur up. All readers of Voltaire are aware of this; and how Voltaire handles his "LUC" (mysterious nickname for KING FRIEDRICH ), when Luc's back is turned. For alas, there is no man or thing but has its wrong side ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... preceded, surrounded and followed her. They are of French breed and education, and when the claret and water were poured out for my refreshment they jumped on the table for a sit-to.... I had to leave the wild-cat on the Rio Grande; he was too savage and had grown as large as a small sized dog. He would pounce on a kid as Tom Tita [his daughter's cat] would on a mouse and would whistle like a tiger when ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... knowledge!" returned the trapper, laughing with great exultation. "So much for the l'arning of one who has look'd into so many books, that his eyes are not able to tell a moose from a wild-cat! Now my Hector, here, is a dog of education after his fashion, and, though the meanest primmer in the settlements would puzzle his information, you could not cheat the hound in a matter like this. As you think the object no man, you shall see his whole formation, and then ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... stood in a corner, half-fierce, half-terrified, and wholly flushed. She had her hand wrapped up in a 'kerchief already stained with blood; and from this I gathered that the king in his frenzy had wounded her slightly. Standing before her mistress, with her hair bristling, like a wild-cat's fur, and her arms akimbo, was Fanchette, her harsh face and square form instinct with fury and defiance. Madame de Bruhl and Simon cowered against the wall not far from them; and in a chair, into which he had apparently just thrown himself, sat the king, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... flourish. Mrs. Osgood headed a party of gardeners whose attempts at grafting produced such startling results as cro-custards and gerani-umbrellas. When some one requested help in developing the theme of a disaster, Judge Arthur shouted from the animal table that he had attempted to draw a wild-cat-astrophe and the picture would probably ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... wild-cat when her back is up," he said. "Why, when this thing first began, and I told her to beware how she went on with this American, for that I would kill him if he came in my way, she caught up a knife, and if I had not run like a rabbit, she would have ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... in the scuffle, had wisely crept into the thicket which overhung the road, and was already mounting the cliff with the agility of a wild-cat. Frank hastily followed his example. For the spattering fire, directed on the advancing party of soldiers, the loud reports of muskets, and the explosion of the grenades, made the path no comfortable place for those ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett |
