Seeing her sitting by the kitchen stove with a baby crooked into her left arm, a two-year-old on her lap, and a three-year-old riding her foot, the while she was trying to fry eggs, bake biscuit and boil potatoes, I observed, by way of bringing a brighter atmosphere with my presence, that it was a pity that the human race hadn't been crossed with octopi, so that young mothers would have enough arms to do their work with.
"Down the Columbia"
Lewis R. Freeman
The creatures I had seen were not snakes at all but the arms of huge octopi.
"The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest"
Captain Wilbur Lawton (pseudonym for John Henry Goldfrap)
The entire walls were lined with ranks of octopi and sharks on guard.
"The Old-Fashioned Fairy Book"
Constance Cary Harrison