"Siamese" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possessed separate bodies, their actions seemed to be governed by a single mind. I stared, and doubtless so would you, Jack, had you been in my place; but my astonishment was at its height, when the partners, keeping side by side as closely as the Siamese twins, stepped gracefully over the fender, and taking a seat directly opposite me, addressed me in a voice broken ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Portuguese, and with the master's assistance I was able to catechize him. He did not deny that his people were "papagentes," but he declared that they confined the practice to slain enemies. He told a number of classical tales about double men, attached, not like the Siamese twins, but dos-a-dos; of tribes whose feet acted as parasols, the Plinian Sciapodae and the Persian Tasmeh- pa, and of mermen who live and sleep in the inner waters—I also heard this from M. Parrot, a palpable believer. He described ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... given at a period when strength and ferocity were deemed the prime qualities of man—is now more justly considered to belong to the mild, majestic, and almost rational elephant. The White Elephant is a sacred animal with the Siamese, and the cow with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... well as over all of what is now Laos. After centuries of gradual decline, Laos came under the domination of Siam (Thailand) from the late 18th century until the late 19th century when it became part of French Indochina. The Franco-Siamese Treaty of 1907 defined the current Lao border with Thailand. In 1975, the Communist Pathet Lao took control of the government ending a six-century-old monarchy and instituting a strict socialist regime ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Rites. Barrent turned away from her and almost ran into a monstrously fat woman who pulled open her blouse to reveal eight shrunken breasts. He ducked around her, moving quickly past four linked Siamese quadruplets who stared at ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... they are as indistinguishable as a bag of unpainted marbles or of black-eyed peas; and, if God had intended that we should all invariably think, feel, and act after one pattern, He would have populated the world with Siamese twins; whereas, the first couple that were born on earth were so dissimilar that all the universe was not wide enough to hold them both, and manslaughter began when the race only numbered a quartette. If mankind had not arrogated the privilege of being its 'brother's ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... frequently volunteered to show to people, with his handkerchief to his eyes. Every fine evening, about sunset, these two, the cook and steward, used to sit on the little shelf in the cook-house, leaning up against each other like the Siamese twins, to keep from falling off, for the shelf was very short; and there they would stay till after dark, smoking their pipes, and gossiping about the events that had happened during the day in the cabin. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... that Cambodia has been invaded by the Siamese, who have pillaged and burned many villages and carried off a ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 37, July 22, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... well, though possibly needless, to ask readers to keep clearly in mind that the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, while knit together like the Siamese twins, are distinct geographical entities. A leading British periodical once accused the writer of calling the Gulf of Mexico the Caribbean Sea, because of his unwillingness to admit the name of any other state in connection with a body of water over which his own country claimed predominance. ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... faces that expressed fear and hate when the tiny searchlight was turned on their dim, blinking eyes. Another pair of hags in a far corner, propped against a bale of hay and bound together like Siamese twins in a brown horse-blanket, moved their eyes feebly, but nothing more. They were paralyzed. A score of children that had been huddled here and there in the straw in twos and threes for warmth's sake came slowly to life and crowded around us, lifting a ring of wan, emaciated ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... last present, it turned out, he ever made to anybody. Partly perhaps, because it was a sacred object, the Wollaston children took to treating it rather irreverently. The "Circassian grand" was one of its nicknames and the "Siamese Elephant" another. It did glare in the otherwise old-fashioned Dearborn Avenue drawing-room and its case did express a complete recklessness of expense rather than any ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... figure things out. But I could figure there's a monkey wrench somewhere—and since the two of you have been sticking together like Siamese twins, I know it will be perfectly all right to ask you in ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... a report came from Bangkok, the capital of Siam, that some Siamese soldiers had fired upon and wounded ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... something tragic to me in this Siamese-twins arrangement of two so uncongenial. I am at one and the same time pupil and teacher, offender and judge, performer and critic, chaperone and protegee, a prim, precise, old maid and a rollicking schoolgirl, a tomboy and a prude, a saint and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... volumes in shape. A mighty good thing it was for the movement that there was an Engels to do it, I can tell you. Nobody else could have done it. But Engels was like a twin brother to Karl. Some of the comrades were a bit jealous sometimes, and used to call Karl and Engels the 'Siamese twins,' but that made no difference to anybody. If it hadn't been for Engels Karl wouldn't have lived so long as he did, and half his work would never have been done. I never got so close to the heart of Engels as ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... after the hyphen upon the apparently latent sex. The sex difficulties produced in these people by the conflict between their conscious sex and their subconscious sex, the sex duel in the same mind, Siamese twins pulling in diametrically opposite directions, are comprehensible only from the viewpoint ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... symbol a complete system of theology and theogony, which has been gradually forgotten or perverted by succeeding ages to the purposes of a ridiculous superstition. It is elaborately carved and painted with numerous symbols, each of which has a profound significance. The liturgy of the Siamese connected with it consists of fifty measured lines of eight syllables each, and contains the names of a hundred and eight distinct symbolical objects,—such as the lion, the elephant, the sun and moon in their cars drawn by oxen, the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... is relatively modern but like Burma it has been subject to several influences. The Siamese probably brought some form of Buddhism with them when they descended from the north to their present territories. From the Cambojans, their neighbours and at one time their suzerains, they must have acquired some Hinduism and Mahayanism, but they ended by adopting Hinayanism. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... descendants of the giants that tradition says once upon a time existed in the country, whose bones are yet found, and whose portraits are painted on the walls of Chaacmol's funeral chamber at Chichen-Itza. The almond-eyed, flat-nosed Siamese race of Copan is not to be mistaken for the long, big-nosed, flat-headed remnant of the Nahualt from Palenque, who are said to have invaded the country some time at the beginning of the Christian era; and whose advent among the Mayas, whose civilization they appear to have ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... library of Pali manuscripts containing the sacred books and stories of Buddha's life and doctrine. Many of these manuscripts were written on palm-leaves and were wrapped in silken coverings. Some had been presented by Siamese and by Burmese kings. Some were ancient. I saw no priest who could read them, and I fancy that the sacred books are really studied only by pundits, whose vocation is that of teaching, and whose personal ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... allied to the Malay, and more remotely to the Siamese, Chinese, and other Mongol races. All these are characterised by a reddish-brown or yellowish-brown skin of various shades, by jet-black straight hair, by the scanty or deficient beard, by the rather small and broad nose, and high cheekbones; but none of the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Alexandria. That barbarian warriors, led by barbarian chiefs, should win a pitched battle against Greek valor guided by Greek science, seemed as incredible as it would now seem that the Burmese or the Siamese should, in the open plain, put to flight an equal number of the best English troops. The Tarentines were convinced that their countrymen were irresistible in war; and this conviction had emboldened them to treat with the grossest indignity one whom they regarded ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nations of the great island of Magindando. The depredations of the proper Malays extend from Junkceylon to Java, through its whole coast, as far as Grip to Papir and Kritti, in Borneo and the western coast of Celebes. In another direction they infest the coasting trade of the Cochin Chinese and Siamese nations in the Gulf of Siam, finding sale for their booty, and shelter for themselves in the ports of Tringham, Calantan and Sahang. The most noted piratical stations of these people are the small islands about Lingin and Rhio, particularly Galang, Tamiang and Maphar. The chief of this ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... President's gracious, courteous welcome in reply. We stood directly opposite him, and had a good opportunity to observe him closely,—a short, thick-set man with a small mustache, much darker than the usual Chinese type, owing to his heritage of Siamese blood. Many people say he has no Siamese blood at all, but it is always like that in China: whatever any one tells you is always flatly contradicted by the next ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... Chang Yao, Chinese general. Chao de Bux (Cavo di Bussi), boxwood. Chaohien, Sung Prince. Chao-Khanahs, bank-note offices in Persia. Chao Naiman Sume Khotan, or Shangtu, "city of the 108 temples". Chao, paper-money. Chao, title of Siamese and Shan Princes. Chaotong. Chapu. Characters, written, four acquired by Marco Polo, one in Manzi, but divers spoken dialects. Charchan (Chachan of Johnson, Charchand). Charcoal, store in Peking, palace garden of. Charities, Kublai's, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in Nan-Chao (infra, p. 79) is said by a Chinese author (Pauthier, p. 391) to signify King in the language of those barbarians. This is evidently the Chao which forms an essential part of the title of all Siamese and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... do—have always gone hand in hand, the organism finding itself able to do more according as it advanced its desires, and desiring to do more simultaneously with any increase in power, so that neither appetency nor organism can claim precedence, but power and desire must be considered as Siamese twins begotten together, conceived together, born together, and inseparable always from each other. At the same time they are torn by mutual jealousy; each claims, with some vain show of reason, to have been the elder brother; each intrigues ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... see if you could guess it. I'll give one of those Siamese elephants to the one who gets ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... the king being so doubtful, the advance of the Siamese army in this direction could not be regarded with indifference by the British. The town of Martaban was the centre of the Burmese military power in Tenasserim, and the advance towards it of the Siamese ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... tail as he clawed at the Burmese peacock; the double-headed eagle of Russia pecked at the Turkish crescent with one beak, while the other seemed to be screaming to the English royal beast, "Come on and lend a paw." In the hurry of hoisting the Siamese elephant got turned upside down, and now danced gayly on his head, with the stars and stripes waving proudly over him. A green flag with a yellow harp and sprig of shamrock hung in sight of the kitchen window, ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... BALLOEN. A Siamese decorated state-galley, imitating a sea-monster, with from seventy to a hundred oars ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Cousin Our Little Panama Cousin Our Little Persian Cousin Our Little Philippine Cousin Our Little Polish Cousin Our Little Porto Rican Cousin Our Little Quebec Cousin Our Little Roumanian Cousin Our Little Russian Cousin Our Little Scotch Cousin Our Little Servian Cousin Our Little Siamese Cousin Our Little South African (Boer) Cousin Our Little Spanish Cousin Our Little Swedish Cousin Our Little Swiss Cousin Our Little Turkish Cousin ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... power is amply attested in an ancient manuscript of undoubted authenticity which has recently been translated from the Siamese. It is an account of the water battle of Loo, by an eye-witness whose name, unfortunately, has not reached us. It is stated that in this famous engagement Smith overthrew the great Neapolitan general, whom he captured and conveyed in chains to ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... conclusions, to ascertain whether any of the Mon-Khmer people in Anam and Cambodia and neighbouring countries possess social customs in common with the Khasis. In case it may be possible for French and Siamese ethnologists in Further India to follow up these inquiries at some subsequent date, it may be stated that information regarding social customs is required with reference to the people who speak the following languages in Anam and Cambodia and Cochin China which ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... coop of fowls, or pig of the true China breed, exchanging their destiny for a watery grave. Fortunately, there were no passengers. Homeward-bound China ships are not encumbered in that way, unless to astonish the metropolis with such monstrosities as the mermaid, or as the Siamese twins, coupled by nature like two hounds (separated lately indeed by Lytton Bulwer, who has satisfactorily proved that "unity between brethren," so generally esteemed a blessing, on the contrary, is a bore). ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... Siam visited St. Louis and was the guest of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company. His entertainment was so generous and his reception throughout the entire country so cordial that he decided to use his influence toward inducing His Siamese Majesty to participate in the exposition of 1904. The plan, consequently, that suggested itself as to the character of Siam's display was to send to St. Louis the most interesting articles and the best ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... east to west. On the N. it is bounded by the dependent state of Manipur, by the Mishmi hills, and by portions of Chinese territory; on the E. by the Chinese Shan States, portions of the province of Yunnan, the French province of Indo-China, and the Siamese Shan, or Lao States and Siam; on the S. by the Siamese Malay States and the Bay of Bengal; and on the W. by the Bay of Bengal and Chittagong. The coast-line from Taknaf, the mouth of the Naaf, in the Akyab district on the north, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... proper. This irregular site often causes the second floor of the houses in one street to be on a line with the ground floor of another. Brest is clean and well built, and consists of three long parallel streets. The principal one, called the Rue de Siam, in commemoration of the Siamese Ambassadors sent to Louis XIV., who landed here, runs the whole length of the town, ending at the fine iron bridge called the Pont Imperiale, the largest swing-bridge ever constructed. You descend by a flight of ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... Coleman, p. 203, and Charton, Voyageurs anciens et modernes, tome i, pp. 365, 366, where engravings of one of the imprints, and of the temple above another, are seen. There are five which are considered authentic by the Siamese, and a multitude of others more or less strongly insisted upon. For the imprint os Moses' body, see travellers from Sir John Mandeville down. For the mark of Neptune's trident, see last edition of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the outbreak of the Great Conspiracy. So close was the communication of thought and feeling, that it seemed as if there were hardly need of a submarine cable to stretch its nervous strands between two national brains that were locked in Siamese union by the swift telegraph of thought. We reprinted each other's books, we made new reputations for each other's authors, we wrote in each other's magazines, and introduced each other's young writers to our own several publics. Thought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... land for a little on the slope of the orchestra, but a sort of horror prevented one from staying long, and made one plunge back again into the dead waters. Then my dream changed, and I was a sort of Siamese pirate, on a very high deck with several others. The ship was almost captured, and we were fighting desperately. The hideous engines we used and the perfectly incredible carnage that we effected by means of them kept me cheery, as you may imagine; ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... absolute unconcern. He studies the phenomena of hurricanes with almost pleasurable interest, while his comrades on the ship abandon hope. When seized with yellow-fever, then known as the Siamese Sickness (mal de Siam), he refuses to stay in bed the prescribed time, and rises to say his mass. He faints at the altar; yet a few days later we hear of him on horseback again, travelling over the mountains in the worst and hottest season of ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... as to whether Schleswig-Holstein should be permitted to join the German Federation. Holstein was a German fief, Schleswig was a Danish fief; unfortunately an old law linked them together in some mysterious fashion, as indissolubly as Siamese twins. Both wanted to join the Federation. Holstein had a good legal claim to do as it liked in this respect, Schleswig a bad one; but the law declared that both must be under the same government. Prussia interfered on behalf of the duchies; England, Austria, ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... the land of the Siamese, Ceylon and the Great Plateau, Over the seas where Sinbad sailed, Where Moses crossed and Pharaoh failed,— There's ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... The Siamese Government has decided that the soldiers were in the wrong, and a lieutenant and four privates who took part in the affair have been severely reprimanded, and suspended from their regiments ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 51, October 28, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... brought here by the prows: five Chinese junks annually visit Pontiana, bringing down produce amounting to about fifty thousand dollars. The depredations of the Pangeran Annam prevent an extension of this most useful of all trades to this country. One or two Siamese junks arrive annually. The Tringanu, Timbilan, Karimata, and Borneo Proper prows trade here; and before Java fell to the British arms, the Buguese from the eastward traded ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... aristocracy of umbrellas is too philosophic to have originated in a nobody—and we have accordingly taken exceeding pains to find out the reason of this harsh restriction. We think we have succeeded; but, while admiring the principle at which he aimed, and while cordially recognising in the Siamese potentate the only man before ourselves who had taken a real grasp of the umbrella, we must be allowed to point out how unphilosophically the great man acted in this particular. His object, plainly, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... burying such beautiful objects of art at so great a depth, yet the reason is very simple. The nations that inhabited the whole of Central America—the Mayas, the Nahuas, the Caras or Carians—had, with the Siamese even of to-day, and the Egyptians of old, many notions in common concerning the immortality of the soul, and its existence after its earthly mission was accomplished. They believed that the sentient ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... other advantage than that of maintaining our Roman faith in its purity in that most remote district of the world, among so warlike nations as are the Japanese, Chinese and Tartars, Tunquinese, Cochin-chinese, Cambojans, Siamese, Joloans, and others who almost surround it. For that alone so great a sum of money is spent as is known, not only in those forts but in all those islands. It has been proved to be very agreeable to God because of the extent to which the holy gospel has spread among them, for they are the best ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... desire to tear up by the roots the Brahmanical idol-worship. Though, of course, we cannot help remembering that his religion remained pure from idol-worship of any kind during centuries, until the Lamas of Tibet, the Chinese, the Burmese, and the Siamese taking it into their lands disfigured it, and spoilt it with heresies. We cannot forget that, persecuted by conquer-ing Brahmans, and expelled from India, it found, at last, a shelter in Ceylon where it still flourishes like the legendary aloe, which is said to blossom ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... of a different race, and the races ranged from France to Slovenia, from Persia to China and Syria. There were negroes and Siamese and Czecho-Slovaks in this remarkable collection of elements from whose fusion Canada of ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... may think that the more attention the artist pays to his manner, the less he has for his matter, and that he is in peril of sacrificing content to form. But the craftsmen themselves know better; they know that no one may surely separate manner and matter, form and content, Siamese twins often, coming into being at a single birth. Furthermore, the artist knows that technic is the one quality he can control, every man for himself, every man improving himself as best he can. His native gift, his temperament,—this ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... Juan de Mendoza and Fray Juan Maldonado, after leaving Camboja proceed on their journey to Siam, but are received there coldly by the king, and their trading is unsatisfactory. Fearing violence they depart one night without notifying the Siamese, taking with them certain Portuguese held in Siam as partial prisoners, but are pursued by the Siamese who molest them until in the open sea. From wounds received during the week's continual conflict both Mendoza and Maldonado die, the latter first writing to his Order and advising them ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... comparison is absurd and pass on. Because you must have noticed that Balzac was often feeble in his reason and couldn't make it keep step with his instinct, while in Thackeray they both step together like the Siamese twins. It is a very striking fact, indeed, that during all Becky's intense early experiences with the great world, Thackeray does not make her guilty. All the circumstances of that world were guilty and she is placed amidst the ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... deplored, among their respective friends, the disastrous Siamese twinship created by a haphazard improvident Liberal camp. Look at us! they said:—Beauchamp is a young demagogue; Cougham is chrysalis Tory. Such Liberals are the ruin of Liberalism; but of such must it be composed when there is no new cry to loosen ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... disgusted was I with this classical episode that I conceived the original and desperate project of running away and going to sea. At that time I enjoyed the proud privilege of a personal acquaintance with the Siamese Twins, and was the envied holder of a season ticket to the Museum, where they exhibited their attractive duplicity. It was an essential part of my preparations to procure from the amiable Chang-Eng a letter of introduction to their ingenious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... not attempt any piece of duty or work separately. They always acted together, when possible; and might, in fact, without much inconvenience, have been born Siamese twins. Whatever Martha did, Jane attempted to do or to mend; wherever Jane went, Martha followed. Not, by any means, that one thought she could improve upon the work of the other; their conduct was simply the result of a desire to assist each other mutually. When Martha spoke, Jane echoed ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... practice of language may not affect the word as such, but, as in English, may be a more or less random or, at best, but a rhetorical phenomenon, while in other languages, as in Swedish, Lithuanian, Chinese, Siamese, and the majority of African languages, they may be more finely graduated and felt as integral characteristics of the words themselves. Varying methods of syllabifying are also responsible for noteworthy acoustic differences. Most important ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... their heads and children in their arms; Poles in shabby coats and astrakhan caps; tall blond Scandinavians, square-jawed, cool-blooded and patient; short, sturdy Italians with felt hats and gay cravats; a handful of pale-brown Siamese jugglers or gymnasts with flat gold-embroidered caps on, and tired, listless faces, melancholy and pallid from cold and seasickness. And amid this dirty chattering human assemblage, devouring nuts and oranges, sometimes making music and gaming, all half ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... rejoined Cumberland, "I really was so buried in thought, trying to solve that problem about bisecting the Siamese twins—you know it, Lawless? However, it is not too late, is it? Allow me ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Latin: The Life of our Savior; in English: Sketches of Chinese History; China Opened; Life of Kanghe, together with a great number of articles on the Religion, History, Philosophy, Literature and Laws of the Chinese; in Siamese: a Translation of the New Testament, with the Psalms, and an English-Siamese Dictionary, English-Cambodian Dictionary and English-Laos Dictionary. These works I left to my successors to finish, but with the exception ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... than the mere breaking-down of the lines of demarcation which separate classes of languages like the Australian from classes of languages like the Malayo-Polynesian. It shows how both may be evolved from monosyllabic tongues like the Chinese or Siamese. The proof that such is really the case lies in the similarity of individual words, and consists in comparative tables. It is too lengthy for the present paper, the chief object of which is to bring down ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... thing used by the Siamese for the same purpose as we now use the umbrella. A work descriptive of Siam, by M. de la Loubere, in which the Talapat is somewhat minutely described, having been translated into English, and having excited some curiosity, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 13 degrees 50' N. to 1 degree 41' N. The northern part, forming the Isthmus of Kraw, which it is proposed to pierce for a ship canal, runs nearly due north and south for one hundred and forty miles, and is inhabited by a mixed race, mainly Siamese, called by the Malays Sansam. This Isthmus is under the rule of Siam, which is its northern boundary; and the northern and eastern States of Kedah, Patani, Kelantan, Pahang, and Tringganu, are more or less tributary ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... possible as possible. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Strait of Malacca we passed into the China Sea, thence to the Gulf of Siam, and lastly to the broad Menam River, with banks showing masses of foliage, and with tiny Siamese villages or isolated houses built close to the water's edge, supported on piles, with thatched ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... of the Hudson, ascended the Niagara from Lewiston to the famous Falls, made his way thence to Fort St. George on the Ontario, crossed the lake, landed at York, the capital of Upper Canada (sic), passed Lakes Siamese, Huron, and Superior, where he was joined by twenty-four Canadians, and on the 29th June, 1825, came to Lake Methye, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... sights of Rangoon is that of the big Siamese elephants piling teak in the lumber yards along Rangoon river. It is the same sight that Kipling pictured in the lines in his perfect ballad, Mandalay, which an Englishman who knows his Burma well says is "the finest ballad in the world, with ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... majority of twenty-five,[255] whereas in the preceding Assembly they had been in a minority of eleven. In the same despatch he availed himself of the opportunity to malign Mr. Bidwell, whom he characterized as the "twin or Siamese companion of Mr. Speaker Papineau." He descanted upon the powerful reaction which had been brought about, and exultingly informed his Lordship that of the four candidates who had contested the constituency of Lennox and Addington Mr. Bidwell ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... a marvel was this vegetable garden at Versailles that it was the object of a pilgrimage of the Doge of Venice in 1685, and of the Siamese ambassadors in the following year. The garden has been preserved as an adjunct to Versailles up to the present day. For two centuries its product went to the "Service de Bouche" of the chief of state, that is, the royal dinner ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... menagerie which had to find refuge from the other animals already housed in their adjoining rooms. Out in the garden there were pigeons fluttering in and out of a cote, and hens solemnly inspecting the newly-seeded flower-beds. A big silver Persian cat, and a smaller yellow Siamese one regularly attended breakfasts, and Rags irregularly attended everything. The cats were Mr. Hoover's favorites. He liked to have one on his ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins; and over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt! Him no Zoologist classes among the Mammalia, no Anatomist dissects with care: when did we see any injected ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... by the kingdom of Siam, which lies between the lower courses of the Mekong and the Salwin, both of which rise in eastern Tibet. Siam is about two-thirds the size of French Indo-China, but has only 9 million inhabitants of various races—Siamese, Chinese, Malays, and Laos. Bangkok, the capital of the King of Siam, contains half a million inhabitants, and is intersected by numerous canals, on which a large proportion of the people live in floating houses. There ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... tip of a branch may grow distinct down to their united ovaries, or their tubes may be partly united, like Siamese twins - a union which in either case accounts for the odd shape of the so-called berry, that shows further traces of consolidation in its "two eyes," the remnants of eight calyx teeth. Experiment proves that when only one of the twin flowers is pollenized by insects ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... which Bonaparte has held forth, will, I fear, produce no other effect than that of determining the British government to persist, from the very spirit of opposition, in their own old system of intolerance and injustice: just as the Siamese blacken their teeth, "because," as they say, "the devil ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... those occasions had been a Japanese kimono embroidered with her favorite flower—a wondrous thing secured by correspondence with the American consul at Kobe: a pair of Siamese kittens which he named Cat-Nip and Cat-Nap: a sandal-wood fan out of India; and a little, triple-chinned, ebony god of Mirth, its impish eyes rolled back in merriment, mouth wrinkled with utter joy ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the arrival and departure of native boats, with fruit, vegetables, and live stock, as well as from the numbers of neat sampans plying for hire, or attending upon the commanders of vessels; while at anchor were numbers of the Cochin-Chinese, Siamese, and Chinese junks, as well as the Bugis and other prahus from all ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... astonished its watchers by suddenly splitting in two. The two comets thus formed out of one separated to a distance of about one hundred and sixty thousand miles, and then raced side by side, sometimes with a curious ligature connecting them, like Siamese twins, until they disappeared together in interplanetary space. In 1852 they came back, still nearly side by side, but now the distance between them had increased to a million and a quarter of miles. After ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... Siamese Buddhists accumulate silver and bury it in secret, to supply the needs of the soul during its wandering in the separate state. "This foolish opinion robs the state of immense sums. The lords and rich men erect pyramids over these treasures, and for their greater security place ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... worthies sentry the woods on the northwest, and confront a steep side-hill where sheep and cattle graze. An equal number crowd up to the line on the east; and their gray, stately trunks are seen across meadows or fields of grain. Then there is a pair of Siamese twins, with heavy, bushy tops; while in the forks of a wood-road stand the two brothers, with their arms around each other's neck, and their bodies in gentle contact for a distance ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... in character for me to dedicate this book in good, stiff, old-fashioned tomb-stone style, but I could not have put in the background of scenery without being reminded of the two boys, inseparable as the Siamese twins, who gathered mussel-shells in the river marge, played hide-and-seek in the hollow sycamores, and led a happy life in the shadow of just such hills as those among which the events of this story took place. And all the more that the generous boy who was my playmate then is the generous man ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... AHAM, a tribe of Shan descent inhabiting the Assam Valley, and, prior to the invasion of the Burmese at the commencement of the 19th century, the dominant race in that country. The Ahoms, together with the Shans of Burma and Eastern China and the Siamese, were members of the Tai race. The name is believed to be a corruption of the word "A-sam,'' the latter part of which is identical with "Shan'' (properly "Sham'') and with "Siam.'' Under their king Su-ka-pha ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of Merritt's poetry, so that I didn't kick when I saw that another one was coming. It was a good assortment: a Legless Wonder, The Man Who Breaks Paving Stones With His Bare Fists, a pair of Siamese Twins, a Leopard Boy and a particularly fuzzy Circassian Beauty. I saw Merritt's eyes grow soft when he looked at her photograph, and I prayed for a large proportion of the newly wedded among the audience ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... — N. duality, dualism; duplicity; biplicity[obs3], biformity[obs3]; polarity. two, deuce, couple, duet, brace, pair, cheeks, twins, Castor and Pollux, gemini, Siamese twins; fellows; yoke, conjugation; dispermy[obs3], doublets, dyad, span. V. pair[unite in pairs], couple, bracket, yoke; conduplicate[obs3]; mate, span [U.S.]. Adj. two, twin; dual, dualistic, double; binary, binomial; twin, biparous[obs3]; dyadic[Math]; conduplicate[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... musicians were masked, and wore queer-looking, conical caps that looked like exaggerated extinguishers, and a sort of light armor in which their unaccustomed limbs were evidently ill at ease. Occupying a conspicuous position in the very front, I noticed a Siamese raknat-player, robed in the native dress—or rather undress—of his country, and his hair cut a la Bangkok. He was singularly expert in the use of his instrument; and I learned afterward that, though ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... the two practices were, indeed, original exchanges of social degradations between the civilised man and the savage, the savage getting very much the worst of the bargain, so the practices largely disappear together. Pipe and glass, cigar and sherry-cobbler, like the Siamese twins, who could only live connected, have both died out in our model city. Tobacco, by far the most innocent partner of the firm, lived, as it perhaps deserved to do, a little the longest; but it passed away, and the tobacconist's counter, like ...
— Hygeia, a City of Health • Benjamin Ward Richardson
... and defiant dithyramb soon became monotonous. They write like very young and enthusiastic chaps, and they are for the most part mature men and experienced painters. Luckily for their public, Signor Marinetti and his friends did not adopt his Siamese telegraphic style in their printed programme. They begin by stating that they will sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and boldness. The essential elements of their poetry will be courage, daring, and rebellion. Literature has hitherto glorified ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... horses walking slowly abreast, jammed together; the riders presenting an indistinct outline of two individuals rolled into one; and it was from this amalgamation that the low, pigeon-like murmurs proceeded. An instinct of delicacy prompted me to pause, and let the Siamese twins pass in peace; but, unfortunately, I happened to be straight in the way, and just as I started to creep aside, one of the horses extended his neck, and, with a low, protracted snore, touched me on the back with ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... allied, in spite, as he said, of Douglas having wandered after strange gods. Douglas absented himself from the Senate when Toombs spoke. For the first time in twenty years, Toombs and Stephens took divergent paths. They were called in Georgia the "Siamese twins." From the election of Harrison to the Democratic split in 1860, they had been personal friends and firm political allies. Mr. Stephens was for Douglas and the Union; Mr. Toombs feared lest ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... forth at an obviously endless building of brownstone about which there was the poetry of a prison. Inside, great folds of lace swept down in orderly cascades, as water trained to fall mathematically. The colossal chandelier, gleaming like a Siamese headdress, caught the subtle ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... circles, as if two or three umbrellas were fastened on the same stick, was permitted to the king alone, the nobles carried a single Umbrella with painted cloths hanging from it. The Talapoins (who seem to have been a sort of Siamese monks) had Umbrellas made of a palm-leaf cut and folded, so that the stem formed a handle. The same writer describes the audience-chamber of the King of Siam. In his quaint old French, he says:—"Pour ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... given by Wilson, the well-known tale of the Lost Camel, it seems probable that the ministers' stories, like those of Bakhtyar, are suited to their own case and illustrate the truth of the adage that "appearances are often deceptive." Whether in the Siamese collection "Nonthuk Pakkaranam" (referred to in vol. i. p. 127) the stories related by the Princess Kankras to the King of Pataliput (Palibothra), to save her father's life, are similarly designed, does not appear from Benfey's notice of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... "Fire." But he is a dexterous manager; he knows how to work the oracle; he understands catering for the mob; in short, he is a very clever showman, who deals in religion just as other showmen deal in wild animals, giants, dwarfs, two-headed sheep, fat women, and Siamese twins. ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... Siamese Twins compose the next group. These remarkable brothers lived together in the greatest harmony, though there was always a bone of contention between them. They were never seen apart, such was their brotherly fondness. They ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... it? But we don't growl, do we, Sammy? When Sammy has anything left over, he brings half of it down to me—he lives on the floor above—and when I get a little ahead and Sammy is behind, I send it up to him. We are the Siamese twins, Sammy and I, aren't we, Sam? Where are you, anyway? Oh, he's after the dog, I see, moving the canvases so the little beggar won't run a thumb-tack in his paw. Sam can no more resist a dog, my dear Mr. O'Day, than a drunkard can ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... it easy enough. They talked everlastingly of turns of luck: how So-and-so got charge of a boat on the coast of China—a soft thing; how this one had an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was doing well in the Siamese navy; and in all they said—in their actions, in their looks, in their persons—could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Monosyllabic or South-Eastern Asiatic Group: Chinese, Burmese, Siamese, Annamese, and Tibetan. Here there are only negatives, you might say, to prove a relationship. They do not meet on the street; they pass by on the other side, noses high in the air; each sublimely unaware of the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... a doubt of the efficacy of that cure was heavy on him. To endure the unendurable, this was his burthen; to be yoked through time with this dolt and fool. Wretchedest of miserable fates, to loathe one's own soul, to find the most despicable of creatures enclosed within one's own skin. To play Siamese twin to a pustulous convict were a trifle beside this. To be your own black beast; to loathe your own soul; with a full heart to despise your own understanding—this is to start upon Despair's Last Journey in one sense or another, to find either the gulf or the gates ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... a great deal of Louis XIV., whom Crebillon had known well for fifteen years, and he related several very curious anecdotes which were generally unknown. Amongst other things he assured me that the Siamese ambassadors were cheats paid by Madame de Maintenon. He told us likewise that he had never finished his tragedy of Cromwell, because the king had told him one day not to wear out his pen on ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... who do not know, the City of Penang lies on the western coast of the Malay Peninsula, just below the Siamese border. It is the shipping point of the Federated Malay States, where 65 per cent. of the world's tin is produced, as well as a great amount of rubber and copra. With a population of 246,000, it is growing by leaps and bounds and gives every indication ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... safely here, well and bright, and settled I hope, for the summer. A., and M., who seems as joyous as a lark, are like Siamese twins, with the advantage of untying at night and sleeping in different beds. I have not been well, and did not go to church to-day; but Prof. Robinson of Rochester, N. Y., preached a very superior sermon, George says. They have gone ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the Siamese, Burmese, Javanese, and Japanese has much in common with that of the Chinese, the difference between the first two and the last named being mainly in the absence of the king, or musical stones, or rather the substitution of sets of drums in place of it. For instance, the Burmese drum-organ, as ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... Gunsaulus, American Consul-General at Singapore; to J. D. C. Rodgers, Esq., American Charge d'Affaires at Bangkok; to his late Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Siam; to his Serene Highness Prince Traidos Prabandh, Siamese Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; to his Serene Highness Colonel Prince Amoradhat, Chief of Intelligence of the Siamese Army, who constituted himself my guide and cicerone during our stay in his country; to ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... the grounds and wanted to hire him fur what he called a ballyhoo man. Which was the first I ever hearn them called that, but I got better acquainted with them since. They are the fellers that stands out in front and gets you all excited about the Siamese twins or the bearded lady or the snake-charmer or the Circassian beauties or whatever it is inside the tent, as represented upon the canvas. The doctor says he will do it fur a week, jest fur fun, and mebby pick up another feller to take Looey's ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... enough image of our understanding; but we are barely acquainted with false sight. There are hardly men who always take a cock for a horse, or a chamber-pot for a house. Why do we often come across minds otherwise just enough, which are absolutely false on important things? Why does this same Siamese who will never let himself be cheated when there is question of counting him three rupees, firmly believe in the metamorphoses of Sammonocodom? By what strange singularity do sensible men resemble Don Quixote who thought ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... one place the history of the plough is illustrated by means of models, beginning with the Egyptian, 2000 years B.C., and going through a long succession; the Greek, 490 B.C., the Roman, the Gallic, the Chinese, the Siamese, the primitive Roumanian (already noticed), with many others of ancient or mediaeval times, and ending with a great variety of improved modern construction. Models of fruits, various products of hemp, and other vegetable ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... American guests were to consist of the coterie known as the "Thirty-four", all millionaires, while "the cake" was to weigh three-quarters of a ton, each guest's grub to cost $500, and for that breakfast the Neva had been ravished for fish and Siamese ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... chiefly by Malays but numerous other races are represented there, especially Chinese and Indians. Without much trouble I succeeded in engaging the services of five porters: a Malay, an Indian, a Chinese, a Siamese and a Sam-Sam, quite a lad. Together they formed a little Babel which I congratulated myself would prove of great help in making ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... say that this means that the Government wishes to have the matter dropped. Otherwise word would have been sent to Bangkok that the Consul-General was to insist upon a proper explanation from the Siamese government. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 17, March 4, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... complete knowledge of human nature Sam Slick shows, when he says, 'A bilious cheek and a sour temper are like the Siamese twins: there's a nateral cord of union atween them. The one is a sign with the name of the firm written on it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... feet to the west, and many of the North American Indians follow the same custom. Others in South America double up the corpse, turning the face to the east. The Peruvians place their mummies in a sitting position, looking to the west; the natives of Jesso also turn the head to the west. The modern Siamese never sleep with their faces turned to the west, because this is the attitude in which they place their dead before burning them on the funeral pile. Finally, the Greeks and all other peoples, both civilized and barbarous, including ourselves, had and continue to have ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... never-ending interest—Arabs, Persians, Afghans, Rajputs, Parsees, Chinese, Japanese, Malays, Lascars, Negroes from Zanzibar, Madagascar and the Congo, Abyssinians. Nubians, Sikhs, Thibetans, Burmese, Singalese, Siamese and Bengalis mingle with Jews, Greeks and Europeans on common terms, and, unlike the population of most eastern cities, the people of Bombay ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... discovery, nor did I make any remarks on the astonishing love that existed between these Siamese twins; still, I kept my eye on Ormond's barracoon until I found his stock had gradually augmented to three hundred. Thereupon, I dropped in one morning unceremoniously, and, in a gentle voice, told him of his treacherous design. My ancient patron was so degraded by debauchery, that ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... the Siamese do leave their things round," she exclaimed, as she surveyed her room after making up the fire and polishing off Boo. "I'll put things in order, and then mend up my rags, if I can find my thimble. Now, let me see;" and she went to exploring her closet, bureau, and table, finding such disorder everywhere ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... many things: of the bark of willows and linden trees, ropes are sometimes made. The Siamese make their cordage of the cocoa tree bark, as do most of the Asiatic and African nations; in the East Indies, they make the bark of a certain tree into a kind of cloth; some are used in medicines, as the Peruvian bark ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... as he solemnly lifted one by one a row of symbols: a round wooden measure, heaped with something white, like rice, in which stuck a gay cluster of paper flags; a brown, polished abacus; a mace carved with a dragon, another carved with a phoenix; a rainbow robe, gleaming with the plumage of Siamese kingfishers. All these, and more, he displayed aloft and replaced ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... ships, and the city was very anxious. For should those galleons be lost, then was lost the strength of the islands. But, finally, the Lord brought them safely home, which was not a little fortunate. In the course of their wanderings they seized two ships or junks, one belonging to Siamese, the other to Japanese. They sent the Siamese vessel to Manila, but sacked and even burned the Japanese vessel. It is said they found great riches on it. Who could know the truth? This was learned in Japon, whereupon the hate and ill-will of that people ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... the other men, and March said: "You ought to be in charge of a Siamese white elephant, Fulkerson. It's a disgrace to be connected ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... January, 1900, and some magnificent cats were shown. It is said by those who are in a position to know that there are no better cats shown in England now than can be seen at the Beresford Show in Chicago. The exhibits cover short and long haired cats of all colors, sizes, and ages, with Siamese cats, Manx cats, and Russian cats. At the show in January, 1900, Mrs. Clinton Locke exhibited fourteen cats of one color, and Mrs. Josiah Cratty five white cats. This club numbers one hundred and seventy members and has a social position and consequent strength second to none ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... with a Siamese joint hose throwing a stream as big as a man's thigh. It got away from them, and for a while there was panic and a struggle up on the heights as well as in the street. The throbbing hose bounded over the roof, thrashing right and left, and flinging ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... occasion from the appointment that I have made this year of admiral in the person of Captain Diego Lopez Lobo—alleging that he is not a citizen but a foreigner, and that he is interested in the capture of the Siamese junk, which they say is reported to be valued at more than three hundred thousand pesos. Commencing with this last, what they say is outside of all truth, as will appear by the accounts made by the accountant and adjuster of accounts, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... speech, and thus betray the secrets of the family. We have learnt that in some of the dialects of modern Sanskrit, in Bengali for instance,[4] the plural is formed, as it is in Chinese, Mongolian, Turkish, Finnish, Burmese, and Siamese, also in the Dravidian and Malayo-Polynesian dialects, by adding a word expressive of plurality, and then appending again the terminations of the singular. We have learnt from French how a future, je parlerai, can be formed by ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... the distribution of plants, and the lower animals, materially influence the migrations of man also; and as the botany, zoology, and climate of the Malayan and Siamese peninsula advance far westwards into India, along the foot of the Himalaya, so do also the varieties of the human race. These features are most conspicuously displayed in the natives of Assam, on both sides of the Burrampooter, as far as the great bend of that ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... those of the foliage amongst which they live concealed. In some of the South American species the tints vie in brilliancy with those of the humming-birds; whilst their forms are so flexible and slender as to justify the name conferred on them of "whip-snakes." The Siamese, to denote these combinations of grace and splendour, call them "Sun-beams." A naturalist[1], describing a bright green species in Brazil (Philodryas viridissimus), writes: "I am always delighted when I find that another tree-snake has settled in ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... worship in Italy; but never was there so vicarious a congregation as ours, and indeed if it had not been for the sight of the busy celibates at the altar one would not have known that one was worshipping at all. The culmination of detachment came when a family of Siamese or Burmese children, in native dress, entered. A positive hum went round, and not an eye but was fixed on the little Orientals. When, however, the organ was for a while superseded and the violas and violins quivered under the plangent melody of Palestrina, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... people upon diets. It was almost inconceivable how Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela, with no actual consultations to that end, practised economies and maintained luxuries. They seemed to move with a spiritual unity like the physical one of the Siamese twins. Meagre meals served magnificently, the most splendid conservatism with the smallest possible amount of comfort, moved them ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to find the dread in which the Lawas [a hill tribe] are held by both Burmese and Siamese. This is due to a fear of being bitten by them and dying of the bite. They are called by their Burmese neighbours the 'man-bears.' A singular custom obtains amongst these people which may perhaps partly account for this superstition. On a ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... Guei ornament themselves with figures impressed by hot irons[143]. Siam abounds in elephants, cattle, and buffaloes. It has many sea-ports and populous cities, Hudia being the metropolis or residence of the court. The religion of the Siamese agrees in many considerable points with Christianity, as they believe in one God, in heaven and hell, and in good and bad angels that attend upon every person[144]. They build sumptuous temples, in which they have images of vast size. They are very religious, sparing in their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... privilege of being ruled by a Siamese Official, who is appointed from Bangkok, as the phrase goes, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... moon. Ch'eng Jih-hsing, who is in that curio shop of ours, unexpectedly brought along, goodness knows where he fished them from, fresh lotus so thick and so long, so mealy and so crisp; melons of this size; and a Siamese porpoise, that long and that big, smoked with cedar, such as is sent as tribute from the kingdom of Siam. Are not these four presents, pray, rare delicacies? The porpoise is not only expensive, but difficult to get, and that kind of lotus and melon ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... through the belt of black tents which at all seasons encircles Oued Tolga as a girdle encircles the waist of an Ouled Nail, and so he rode into the strange city. The houses were crowded together, two with one wall between, like Siamese twins, and they had the pale yellow-brown colour of honeycomb, in the evening light. The roughness of the old, old bricks, made of baked sand, gave an effect of many little cells; so that the honeycomb effect was intensified; and the sand which ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... The elder children clustered round her, daring from long acquaintance, pulling the skirts of her white robe with their dark fingers, and showing their brilliant teeth in expectation of a shower of glass beads. She greeted them with a quiet smile, but always had a few friendly words for a Siamese girl, a slave owned by Bulangi, whose numerous wives were said to be of a violent temper. Well-founded rumour said also that the domestic squabbles of that industrious cultivator ended generally in a combined assault of all his wives upon the Siamese slave. The girl ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... arrangement of the roads meeting at that point, while the farther assemblage of houses bears a similar appellation, "The Four Corners," for a similar reason. The two parts of the town are in reality two distinct villages, although existing as one corporate body, and are banded together like the Siamese twins by a road leading directly from the heart of one to that of the other. On each side of this rural street, at neighborly distances, stand pretty white cottages, a story and a half high, nestling behind white fences under shading maples. Midway between the two Centres these dwellings stand ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... of family affairs, in order that Mr. Judson might not be interrupted in prosecuting the study of the language, yet she made more rapid progress in acquiring it than he did. Subsequently, she studied the Siamese language also, and translated a Catechism and one of the Gospels into that tongue. As soon as she was able to make herself understood, she diligently endeavored to impart the knowledge of the truth, as it is in Jesus, to those who would listen to her instructions. ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... the spiritual and the temporal have been joined, like two Siamese powers, the most August of the two has necessarily lost its independence. Every day, or nearly so, the Sovereign Pontiff finds himself called upon to choose between the general interests of the Church, and the private interests of his crown. Think you he ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... every form of ancient despotism we find exactly the same capacity of self-government among the people: it was manifested by the old Egyptians and Peruvians as well as by the early Greeks and Romans; it is exhibited to-day by Hindoo and Chinese communities; it may be studied in Siamese or Annamese villages quite as well as in Japan. It means a religious communistic despotism,—a supreme social tyranny suppressing personality, forbidding enterprise, and making competition a public offence. Such self-government also has ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... genius nor space of paper to go through the whole of the alphabet; we merely throw out the above four lines—and were we not assured that they are better lines, far more musical, than any to be found in BULWER'S SIAMESE TWINS, we should blush much nearer scarlet than we do—to give an idea of the utility and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... an important part in the national life, and the present King has greatly encouraged the art. Both men and women all over the country are more or less musical, and a great number play some form of instrument, often joining in concerted music. The Siamese have four kinds of bands, divided, as we divide our orchestras, into brass or stringed bands, each with a certain combination of instruments. Some years ago, at one of the London Exhibitions, the King of Siam sent over players of all the national music of his country, and their concerted performances ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... he respected her. But that idea of tying himself down to a household was in itself distasteful to him. "It is a thing terrible to think of," he once said to a congenial friend in these days of his life, "that a man should give permission to a priest to tie him to another human being like a Siamese twin, so that all power of separate and solitary action should be taken from him for ever! The beasts of the field do not treat each other so badly. They neither drink themselves drunk, nor eat themselves stupid;—nor do they bind themselves ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... Sloth. Your dreams are gone from you. I have got them, though, and I am turning them into action. As time goes on, your face will become more bovine, your eyes duller. What will be the end?" His brow darkened. "I don't know. We are like the Siamese twins." ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... free States are identified with those of the slave population. If it were not so, there would be no hope, in my breast, of peaceful deliverance of the latter class from their bondage. Our liberties are bound together by a ligament as vital as that which unites the Siamese twins. The blow which cuts them asunder, will inevitably destroy them both. Let the freedom of speech and of the press be abridged or destroyed, and the nation itself will be in bondage; let it remain untrammeled, and ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... from your birth to your dying a scoundrel; you COULDN'T have been anything else, however your lot was cast; and blessed it was that you were born among the prigs,—for had you been of any other profession, alas! alas! what ills might you have done! As I have heard the author of "Richelieu," "Siamese Twins," etc. say "Poeta nascitur non fit," which means that though he had tried ever so much to be a poet, it was all moonshine: in the like manner, I say, "ROAGUS nascitur, non fit." We have it from nature, and so ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the plum are numerous, and differ greatly in size, shape, quality, and colour,—being bright yellow, green, almost white, blue, purple, or red. There are some curious varieties, such as the double or Siamese, and the Stoneless plum: in the latter the kernel lies in a roomy cavity surrounded only by the pulp. The climate of North America appears to be singularly favourable for the production of new and good varieties; Downing describes no ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... arrive, written very legibly in Siamese. Two workmen lose their sight and the small command ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... to deformity. The slighter those peculiarities, the greater is the merit of the limner who can catch them and transfer them to his canvas. To paint Daniel Lambert or the living skeleton, the pig-faced lady or the Siamese twins, so that nobody can mistake them, is an exploit within the reach of a sign painter. A thirdrate artist might give us the squint of Wilkes, and the depressed nose and protuberant cheeks of Gibbon. It would require a much higher degree ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... has, however, fine parks, streets and open places. The principal hotel is the "Raffles," which I should imagine is also the worst. The most notable feature of Singapore is the variety of "natives" domiciled there—Ceylonese, Burmese, Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, Hindoos and Malays. After leaving Singapore we looked in at Penang, where we had time to inspect a famous Chinese temple. An American Army General, D——, and his wife were among the passengers, and I found much pleasure in their company; indeed, we travelled thereafter much together ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... ambassador from that monarch, was accustomed to hear, with wonder and delight, the foreigner's descriptions of his own country: but the minister having one day mentioned, that in France, water, at one time of the year, became a solid substance, the Siamese prince indignantly exclaimed,—"Hold, sir! I have listened to the strange things you have told me, and have hitherto believed them all; but now when you wish to persuade me that water, which I know as well as you, can ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Rahbanone who keeps the (right) way; or it may be Ruhbanthe Pious. Mr. W. A. Clouston draws my attention to the fact that this tale is of the Sindibad (Seven Wise Masters) cycle and that he finds remotely allied to it a Siamese collection, entitled Nonthuk Pakaranam in which Princess Kankras, to save the life of her father, relates eighty or ninety tales to the king of Pataliput (Palibothra). He purposes to discuss this and similar ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... jaws of death to both sides. So contracted was it, that in many cases the gun-rammers had to be thrust into the opposite ports, in order to enter to muzzles of their own cannon. It seemed more an intestine feud, than a fight between strangers. Or, rather, it was as if the Siamese Twins, oblivious of their fraternal bond, should rage ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... principles of universal liberty. The assumption of the State debts, likely to bring considerable money back to the North, was linked with this question, and both were carried. The admission of Maine into the Union as a free State, and of Missouri as a slave State, were two more of these Siamese twins, not allowed to be separated from each other. A numerous smaller progeny may be found in the laying of imposts, and the successive adjustment of protection to navigation, the ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... watched and waited, so at Petersburg and Richmond a small but sleepless David watched the grim Goliath, stretched in its huge bulk before their gates. Ceaselessly the trains flashed back and forth over the iron link between those two cities—now Siamese-twinned with a vital bond of endurance and endeavor. Petersburg, sitting defiant in her circle of fire, worked grimly, ceaselessly—with what hope she might! and Richmond worked for her, feeling that every drop of blood she lost was from ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... shifting cargo was incessant, and the roaring of the water between the two ships most disturbing. Before she sailed away the Prize Captain handed to my wife most of her jewels which had been recovered from the bottom of our lifeboat. As many of these were Siamese jewellery and unobtainable now, we were very rejoiced to obtain possession of them again, but many rings were ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... duets on the piano. They seemed to have no separate existence, but to have made up their minds just to winter through life together. They were three long graces in drapery, with the addition, like a school-dinner, of another long grace afterwards—the three fates with another sister—the Siamese twins multiplied by two. The eldest Miss Willis grew bilious—the four Miss Willises grew bilious immediately. The eldest Miss Willis grew ill-tempered and religious—the four Miss Willises were ill-tempered and religious directly. Whatever the eldest did, the others did, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... which indeed most of the Asiatics and inhabitants of the southren climates constitutionally excel, from a sensibility more exquisite than is the attribute of the more northern people; but a sensibility ballanced by too many disadvantages to be envied them. The Siamese, we are told, have three dances, called the Cone, the Lacone, and the Raban. The Cone is a figure-dance, in which they use particularly a string-instrument in the nature of a violin, with some others of the Asiatic make. Those who ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... satisfying these requirements, was continued in command of the Nan-Shan, and applied himself to the careful navigation of his ship in the China seas. She had come out on a British register, but after some time Messrs. Sigg judged it expedient to transfer her to the Siamese flag. ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... envelope to the Society of Arts, with a request that they will present it to Prince Albert, approaching H.R.H. in the Siamese manner. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens |
