Good Larkin Moore was well known through the two neighboring counties, Essex and Middlesex. We saw him afterward on the banks of the Merrimack. He always wore a loose calico tunic over his trousers; and, when the mood came upon him, he started off with two canes,--seeming to think he could travel faster as a quadruped than as a biped. He was entirely harmless; his only wish was to preach or to sing.英文原著 · 《A New England Girlhood》
Thank God, the ladder was there still! It leaped under us as we rushed aloft like one quadruped. The breakneck trap-door was still protected by a curved brass stanchion; this I grasped with one hand, and then Raffles with the other as I felt my feet firm upon the tower floor. In he sprawled after me, and down went the trap-door with a bang upon the leading hound.英文原著 · 《A Thief in the Night》
He had, indeed, that strong aversion felt by all the lower ranks of people towards four-footed companions very completely, notwithstanding he had for many years a cat which he called Hodge, that kept always in his room at Fleet Street; but so exact was he not to offend the human species by superfluous attention to brutes, that when the creature was grown sick and old, and could eat nothing but oysters, Mr. Johnson always went out himself to buy Hodge's dinner, that Francis the black's delicacy might not be hurt, at seeing himself employed for the convenience of a quadruped.英文原著 · 《Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson》
Darwin next discusses the question as to the manner in which man attained to the erect position from the state of a climbing quadruped. Here again he puts the influence of Natural Selection in the first rank. The immediate progenitors of man had to maintain a struggle for existence in which success was to the more intelligent, and to those with social instincts. The hand of these climbing ancestors, which had little skill and served mainly for locomotion, could only undergo further development when some early member of the Primate series came to live more on the ground and less among trees.英文原著 · 《Darwin and Modern Science》
His hackles were not bristling. This was no fight; but a jolly game. Lad's dark eyes danced with fun. Midway of his charge, he checked himself. Not through fear, but from utter astonishment. For his new acquaintance had done a right non-quadrupedal thing. Bruin had reared himself upon his hind legs; and was standing there, like a man, confronting the dog. He towered, thus, ever so high above Lad's head.英文原著 · 《Further Adventures of Lad》
Then she rose from her knees, and in tones of honey said, "Puss! pretty puss!" and awaited a result. Thieves and ghosts she did not believe in, yet credited cats under beds, and thought them neither "harmless" nor "necessary" there. After tenderly evoking the dreaded and chimerical quadruped, she proceeded none the less to careful research, especially of cupboards. The door of one resisted, and then yielded with a crack, and blew out the candle. "There now," said she. It was her only light, except her beauty. They allotted each Hebe but one candle, in that ancient burgh.英文原著 · 《Hard Cash》