William Gordon Stables
William Gordon Stables (published as Gordon Stables; 21 May 1840 – 10 May 1910) was a Scottish medical doctor and surgeon in the Royal Navy, medical columnist, and author of several non-fiction books and more than 100 boys' adventure novels, usually with a nautical or historical setting. Stables was a leading authority on dogs. From 1907 to 1910 he was the vice-president of the Caravan Club of Great Britain and Ireland.
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Quotes
[edit]- In general appearance the St. Bernard is an extremely large and powerful fellow, with a beautiful head and speaking countenance, in which sagacity is blended with nobility, and a body of great symmetry, combining, one might say, the agility of the Newfoundland with the strength of the British Mastiff.
- Our friend the dog, a complete practical guide (7th ed.). Fleet Street, London: Dean & Son, Ltd. 1895. p. 255. (428 pages; 3rd edition 1883)
Medical Life in the Navy (1868)
[edit]- Very few of the old surgeons interfere with the duties of their assistants, but there be men who seem to think you have merely come to the service to learn, not to practise your profession, and therefore they treat as mere students, or at the best hobble-de-hoy doctors. Of this class was Dr. Gruff, a man whom I would back against the whole profession for caudle, clyster, castor-oil, or linseed poultice; but who, I rather suspect, never prescribed a dose of chiretta, santonin, or lithia-water in his life.
- Medical Life in the Navy. London: Robert Hardwicke. 1868. pp. 35–36. (103 pages)
- Three days at Madeira, and up anchor again; our next place of call being St. Helena. Every one has heard of the gentleman who wanted to conquer the world but couldn't, who tried to beat the British but didn't, ... was caught and chained ... to a rock somewhere in the middle of the sea ... The rock was St. Helena, and a very beautiful rock it is too, hill and dell and thriving town, its mountain sides tilled and its straths and glens containing many a fertile little farm. It is the duty of every one who touches the shores of this far-famed island to make a pilgrimage to Longwood, the burial-place of the "great man." .... both sides of the road all the way to the tomb are strewn with Bass's beer-bottles, empty of course, and at the grave itself there are hogsheads of them; and the same is the case at every place which John Bull has visit4ed, or where English foot has ever trod.
‘’The Domestic Cat’’ (1876)
[edit]- When I was a little boy at school, floundering through Herodotus, and getting double doses of fum-fum daily for my Anabasis—for my old teacher, when he couldn't get enough Greek into one end of me, took jolly good care to put it in at the other—there was no man I had greater respect for than Alexander the Great, owing to his having done that Gordian knot business so neatly. I practiised afterwards on the dominie's tawse (i.e., the fum-fum strap); I tied a splendid knot on it, and then cut it through with a jackknife; but woe's me! the plaguy dominie caught me in the very act, and—and I had to take my meals standing for a week.
- The Domestic Cat. George Routledge & Sons. 1876. p. 57. (116 pages)
- Every child knows how fond cats are of hunting and catching mice, but no cat any respectability would think of confining her attention to mice alone. The very presence of a cat about a house will usually suffice to keep these destructive pests at bay; and if one should pop out of its hole, it knows, or ought to know, what to expect.
- I have dozens of well-authenticated anecdotes of cats who are very expert at fishing. I have, myself, watched a cat by the banks of a stream, until I have seen him dive into the the water, and emerge almost immediately with a large trout in his mouth. Cats who fish, generally belong to millers, or are bred and reared somewhere near a river. They not only catch fish of all sorts, but even water-rats; often springing many feet off the bank after prey of this kind, and even diving under to secure it. In Scotland cats often attack and destroy large quantities of salmon in small streams, in the spawning season.
External links
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Works related to Author:William Gordon Stables on Wikisource- W. Gordon Stables. Librivox.
