"Slimy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and so I fell about only just enough to get used to the feel of the ground as a preliminary to what was coming later. It had rained heavily two or three days before, consequently there were lake districts, slimy reaches of mixed oil and mud and dried, hard-looking islands that were in reality traps to the unwary. The top only was firm, and it had the playful property of sliding rapidly on the greasy substratum and thus sitting you down without warning when you thought you had ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... Southampton to Jersey on a calm summer night without exhibiting all the horrors of seasickness. Vixen thought of the sufferings of poor black human creatures in the middle passage, of the ghastly terrors of a mutiny, of a ship on fire, of the Ancient Mariner on his slimy sea, when ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... eyes. As usual he had been left. That swift and slimy artist-chap had chipped in while he was thinking ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... in and tell me!" she laughed. "You dassn't, Jim! You're afraid! come in," she flashed, "and I'll make you lick my shoes! And when you're crawling on the floor, Jim, like a slimy dog, I'll kick you out. Hear me, you pup? What you take my child in there for?" she cried. "Hear me? Aw, you pup!" she snarled. "You're afraid ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... roof grows more intricate, and soon It is featureless and proof to the lost forgotten moon. But they could not look above as with blind-drawn feet they move Onwards on the scarce-felt path, with quick and desperate breath, For their circling fingers dread to caress some slimy head, Or to touch the icy shape of a hunched and hairy ape, And at every step they fear in their very midst to hear A lion's rending roar or a tiger's snore.... And when things swish or fall, they shiver but dare ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... these, fish, being the lowest of the vertebrated; next, reptiles and birds, which occupy higher grades; and finally, along with the rest, mammifers, the highest of all—all this appears natural enough. How could it be otherwise? When the earth was a slimy bed, what but the lowest forms of life—the mollusca, and other soft animals, without bony structure—could possibly live in or occupy it? During the carboniferous era, when the earth was enveloped in an atmosphere of hydrogen, vegetation might thrive; but man, and animals like him, dependent on ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... father, a stealthy, cunning, merciless father, soft-winged, foul-eyed, hungry-taloned, flitting noiselessly in circles, that grew ever and ever narrower, sure, and unfaltering to the final triumphant swoop! Or no—Rather a coiled and quiescent father, horrible-eyed, lying in slimy rings at the foot of the tree, basilisk gaze fixed upward, while the enthralled bird fluttered hopelessly down, twig by twig, ever ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the sea-born stranger roves, Each muscle quickens, and each sense improves; Cold gills aquatic form respiring lungs, And sounds aerial flow from slimy tongues. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... open wide. For a moment he lies, staring up at the green fronds which afford shade no longer, then starts up into a sitting posture. And simultaneous with the movement here and there a faint circular ripple widens on the slimy surface of the lagoon, as each of those dark specks, representing the snout of ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... is such an awfully nice place," said Marjorie, looking round at the slimy green walls which shone wet ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... opened their eyes to the dangers of a dreaming idealism which refuses to see evil until evil has had its way, if it has made them swear to purge America of the things which has made Germany the slimy crawling enemy of the universe, if they have come back feeling that God is in His Heaven but that things can't be right with the world until we come to think in terms of personal as well as of national righteousness—if they have ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... from slimy nest, The bedded fish in banks outwrest, Let curious Traitors sleave silk flies, To 'witch poor wandring ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... any unevenness, strain to hold ourselves just right. We could not look except out of the corners of the eyes; all was done by the touch of the elbows. For a few yards, rods, it was good. We safely crossed a slimy patch where a great puddle had just dried, through which on Monday I tramped ankle deep, and where now a fall would be natural. Then—ah! we expected this! Frothingham, I, Knudsen, found ourselves marching alone, the other men out of touch with us, having drawn away to the right and left. I ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... was at the door, with two lamps outside and one within; the latter smelt most horribly, and I found out later on that it leaked and had ruined my new overcoat. With an agility quite marvellous under the circumstances the horse slipped its slimy way over the greasy streets to Lambeth, and dashed through the fog over Westminster Bridge in a most reckless manner, which disconcerting performance was partly explained by its suddenly stopping at the stable door of Sanger's and refusing to budge. I was partially consoled by the fact that we were ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... hoofs had fairly died away and Sir Julian stood just where Cedric had left him, debating with his several ideas, a soft touch was laid almost tenderly upon his arm; had it been the soft, slimy trailing of a serpent, 'twould not have so startled him. He turned suddenly and caught the slender ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... his tricks which appeared to me to be truly abominable. He played it upon a person reputed to be a brave man, but who was nevertheless horribly frightened. One night, after getting snugly into bed, this gentleman felt something cold and slimy along side of him, he touched it with his foot; it seemed a round elongated body; he placed his hand upon it; it was a serpent coiled upon itself! In an ecstacy of terror, he leaped from the bed with a cry of disgust and horror, when Ganguernet made his appearance, shaking his fat sides ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... hazarding more than a prudent regard for truth would justify. But, if not, why the pain and spasms which preceded it, and the alternation of these symptoms with each other? and, especially, why the slimy appearance, mixed with red matter, without a trace of any thing like coagula? Certainly we do not find these appearances in ordinary cases of haemorrhage. So that there is no other way of accounting for the discharge in ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... an inch at a time, its weight compelling me to brace the muscles of my back. It reached my chin, it touched my lips,—and I stood still and bore it all, while it enveloped my face with its huge, slimy, evil-smelling body, and embraced me with its myriad legs. The horror of it made me mad. I shook myself like one stricken by the shaking ague. I shook the creature off. It squashed upon the floor. Shrieking like some ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... said Marriott, 'and it's all bad. I bar the man. He's slimy. It's the only word for him. And he uses scent by the gallon. Thank goodness this ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... worst courts in Liverpool are absolutely without gaslight. It was into one of these now that Bet ventured. She leaned her back against the slimy, slippery, dirty wall, and breathed hard and fast. Her father could not see her nor find her there, and she was in a mood at that moment to fear no other living creature. Boys and men, girls and women, talked and swore and quarreled ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... not relieve it. I was at Stirling Castle not long ago. It gave me no pleasure. The declivity seemed to me abrupt, not sublime; for in truth I did not shrink back from it with terror. The weather-beaten towers were stiff and formal: the air was damp and chill: the river winded its dull, slimy way like a snake along the marshy grounds: and the dim misty tops of Ben Leddi, and the lovely Highlands (woven fantastically of thin air) mocked my embraces and tempted my longing eyes like her, the sole queen and mistress of my thoughts! I never found ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... brekekekekex, coax. Slimy offspring of the marshland, let our harmonious voices mingle with the sounds of the flute, coax, coax! let us repeat the songs that we sing in honour of the Nysaean Dionysus[414] on the day of the feast of pots,[415] when the drunken throng reels towards our temple ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... spoiled, will ye not think of the poor?—will ye not shudder in your couches to think how rain, wind, and smoke dwell with the blanketless peasant?—will ye not turn from the sumptuous board to look at those hard-won meals of black and slimy roots on which man, woman, and child feed year after year?—will ye never try to banish wringing hunger and ghastly disease from the home of such piety and love?—will ye not give back its dance to the village—its mountain play to boyhood—its ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... near Eaton Square examining the numbers on the doors as he passed. He held his umbrella open over his shoulder, for propitiation rather than for shelter, since the white fog had not yet formed into a drizzle. His trousers were turned up, and his feet, wisely, for the streets were wet and slimy, encased in neat galoshes. After a little puzzling at the end of the street, where the numbers became confusing, he found the house he sought on the other side—a narrow house, painted grey, a shining knocker upon its bright green door, and rows of evenly clipped box in ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... unpleasant place to live in than this cavern. It might be safely guaranteed to kill in a very short time any man with a modern constitution, unless he were miraculously preserved from rheumatism and other evils of the flesh. The damp oozes perpetually from the slimy rock, and the air is like that of a well. Indeed, there is a little well here called St. Emilion's Fountain. The spring is intermittent; every two or three minutes the water is seen to rise with one or more bubbles. It never fails, no matter ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... a break in skate a little lunch so slimy, a west end of a board line is that which shows a little beneath so that necessity is a silk under wear. That is best wet. It is so natural, and why is there flake, there is flake to ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... disseminated by the slightest breath of air. Specimens of Geaster and Bovista are easily separated from the spot on which they grew; when rolling from place to place, the spores are deposited over a large surface. In the Phalloidei the spores are involved in a slimy mucus which would prevent their diffusion in such a manner. This gelatinous substance has nevertheless a peculiar attraction for insects, and it is not altogether romantic to believe that in sucking up the fetid slime, they also imbibe the spores and transfer them ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... tired of floral beauty, had, in a sudden malevolent mood, purposely torn and blurred the fair green frondage and twisted every bud awry! Great, jagged leaves covered with prickles and stained all over with blotches as of spilt poison, . . thick brown stems glistening with slimy moisture and coiled up like the sleeping bodies of snakes, . . masses of purple and blue fungi, . . and blossoms seemingly of the orchid species, some like fleshy tongues, others like the waxen yellow fingers of a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... self again, and meet their furies, Meet, and consume their mischiefs: make some shift, Sceva, To recover the Fleet, and bring me up two Legions, And you shall see me, how I'le break like thunder Amongst these beds of slimy Eeles, and scatter 'em. ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... advantage; that for above the length of a front, or two or three hundred yards, there was no rampart, or even intrenchment, but only small ditches, in the low and marshy grounds next the river, which, however, were dry at low water, yet the bottom remained muddy and slimy. Towards the river, no rampart, no batteries, no parapet, on either side appeared, and on the land-side he observed some high ground within the distance of one hundred and fifty or two hundred yards of the town; in which condition, the colonel was told by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... a slimy fog crept into the city, as it grew blind. Street lights were gloomy swamp flowers, which flickered on blackish, glowing stalks. Objects and creatures had only chilly shadows and blurred movements. ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... of the lake, two alligator nests, formed of many twigs and branches stuck together, half in the water and half in the soft slimy mud. There they deposited their eggs, oblong tough ones; and one could always count on finding the female in the neighbourhood, should one desire to visit her. I came near stepping on one of these female alligators during a morning hunt with my camera. I was intently examining a group of eggs ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... dumped over the dam dragged slimy mud from their faces and surveyed him with sullen rebuke, remembering sharply that he had run away from the girl whose cause ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... edge of the slimy ooze; trees behind—that was all we could see. We gave our attention to the business of getting our men, our effects, and ourselves ashore. The ooze proved to be just above knee deep. The porters had a fearful and floundering time, and received much obvious comment from us perched in ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... dreamless ooze: Lethe is the river of oblivion in Hades; its slimy depths of forgetfulness are not even disturbed ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... frank and loyal; to fall is an unconquerable necessity of their nature; they have always preferred, to the voice of an honorable man, the perfidious whisper of the evil spirit, which shows its painted face among the leaves and wraps its slimy coils around the ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... the bed of the stream, where scattered threads of water tinkled as they fell over huge blocks into little pools below, and then went whispering on their way towards the darkness. At the botton of a long slant of greenish slimy stone, patched here and there with moss, I stopped a few minutes, feeling that I could not grasp without an effort the deep gloom and grandeur of my surroundings. The jackdaws had all flown away, and there ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... is the presence of contaminating bacteria among the yeasts. These bacteria have been more or less carefully studied by bacteriologists, and their effect upon the beer or wine determined. Some of them produce acid and render the products sour; others make them bitter; others, again, produce a slimy material which makes the wine or beer "ropy." Something like a score of bacteria species have been found liable to occur in the fermenting material and destroy the value of the product of both the wine ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... pass, avoiding the batteries to the south of the town, in case the other efforts should fail." A wetter winter had never been known. The whole complicated network of bends and bayous, of creeks, streams, runs, and tributary rivers, was overflowing the few slimy trails through the spongy forest and threatening the neglected levees which still held back the encroaching waters. There was nothing to do, however, but to keep the men busy and the enemy confused by trying first one line ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... suddenly found himself sinking. At the same time the grasp on his collar tightened, while with almost superhuman power he was flung backward. With such force did Jack handle his adversary that he sent him flying several yards away, where he fell in a pool of dark, slimy water. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... otherwise with the attention, and began to pluck the delicate flowers with which it was painted and gather them into a nosegay. In some dudgeon, I blew a small jug of great beauty on to a carved prie-dieu, to which it adhered as though made of some slimy substance. ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... outset that he was up against a hard fight. In his hurry to close with the red-bearded man, his foot had slipped on the slimy grass and he had been forced to clinch to save himself from falling. This placed him at a marked disadvantage. His opponent had the best of him in weight by at least twenty pounds and was heavily muscled. Moreover ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Ah seen eyes in there, and a cold, grimy, green, slimy smell in there. Ain't that where that broad-faced bird flew at me and I fell down them ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... mind going in to oblige you," ses Bob Pretty, "but the pond is so full o' them cold, slimy efts; I don't fancy them crawling up agin me, and, besides that, there's such a lot o' deep holes in it. And wotever you do don't put your 'ead under; you know 'ow ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... brought into play to draw the log into the hold and place it properly among other monarchs of the forest, thus ignominiously laid low, and become what "Mantalini" would style "a damp, moist, unpleasant lot." From the wharf above we look down into the hold, and, seeing this black, slimy, muddy cargo, say regretfully, "How are the mighty fallen!" as we think of the grand forests of which these trees were once the pride and glory, but of which ruthless man is so rapidly ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... size, by its fine pink or flesh-colored gills and pleasant smell. In a more advanced stage, the gills become of a chocolate color; and it is then more liable to be confounded with other kinds of dubious quality: but the species which most nearly resembles it is slimy to the touch, and destitute of the fine odor, having rather a disagreeable smell. Further, the noxious kind grows in woods, or on the margin of woods; while the true Mushroom springs up chiefly in open pastures, and should be gathered ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... Greeks when They talked to austere gods, nor turned to men. Teach thou the order of the singing stars. Behold, in mad disorder these are set, And yet they sing in ceaseless harmonies. They spill as jewels spilt through space. They fret The souls of men who measure melodies As they would measure slimy deeps ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... of the lake at the end of the street,—a narrow blue slab of water between two walls. The vista had a strangely foreign air. But the street itself, with its drays lumbering into the hidden depths of slimy pools, its dirty, foot-stained cement walks, had the indubitable ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... twig, the ticking of an insect—there was none—the silence was the silence of stone. I thought of worms; I imagined countless legions of them making their way to me from the surrounding mouldering coffins. Every now and then I uttered a shriek as something cold and slimy touched my skin, and my stomach heaved within me as a whiff of something ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... stooped, and, taking up the fish, put them in the pockets of his queminzolle, all slimy from the sea ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he landed on an inclined pan midway of a patch of water between two greater pans. His feet shot out and he began to slide feet foremost into the sea, with increasing momentum, as a man might fall from a steep, slimy roof. The pan righted in the trough, however, to check his descent over the edge of the ice. When it reached the horizontal in the depths of the trough, and there paused before responding to the lift of ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... (although pressed for time) to examine the uterus, and posterior and internal parts of those glands—the cornua as well as the other parts of the uterus were much thickened, and apparently highly injected with blood. On opening the cavity I found it throughout thickly coated with slimy or mucal secretion (the only uterus found by me in this state.) I now extended my examination in front of the womb to the posterior part of the mammae, and in doing so discovered a small gelatinous mass, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... is not fresh is a very dangerous food and great care should be taken in selecting only fish fit to eat. If the fish is hard in body and the eyes are clear and bright, the gills a bright red and slimy, the flesh so firm that when pressed the marks of the fingers do not remain, the scales not dry or easy to loosen, then the fish ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... fell into the error of believing that the frame of the sponge was the outer case of worms or polypes. Later examination, however, has shown that the frame or sponge, commonly so called, is an internal skeleton, while the vital power is simply composed of a slimy film which coats over every fibre, and which, inert as it appears, possesses the power of secreting the particles ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... sparkling grape Than nurse the earth-worm's slimy brood, And circle in the goblet's shape The drink of gods than ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... attack was simple, straightforward violence. It was not the slimy, underhand plotting to deliver her up like a slave, which had sickened her heart and had made her feel in her loneliness that her oppressors were too many for her. She was no longer alone in the world now. She resisted without a moment of faltering, because she was no longer deprived ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... to him at each home thrust. This lasted nearly five minutes, when all at once Mr. B. stopped short, and then followed one or two convulsive shoves—he grinning in a very absurd way at her. He remained quiet for a few minutes, and the drew out his cock, all soft, with slimy drops falling from it onto the carpet. Taking a towel, he wiped up the carpet, and wrapping it round his cock, went to the ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... gate caught sight of their blazing vessels, saw the sea rapidly rising over the dyke, became panic-struck at being thus enclosed between fire and water, and dashed off in precipitate retreat along the slippery causeway and through the slimy and turbid waters, which were fast threatening to overwhelm them. Many were drowned or smothered in their flight, but the greater portion of the force effected their escape in the vessels which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... The two clergymen busied themselves with teaching the sailors, and several of them presented themselves at Holy Communion in consequence, the last Sunday before we landed. The most trying time we passed was on the coast of Java, becalmed under a broiling sun, the very sea dead and slimy with all sorts of creatures creeping over it. As for ourselves, we were gasping with thirst, for we had already been on short rations of water for six weeks, one of the tanks having leaked out. One quart of water a day for each adult, and none for the babies, so of course ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... pictured. I am sure she must have seen those awful prisons of his, out of which the Opium-Eater got his nightmare vision, described by another as "cemeteries of departed greatness, where monstrous and forbidden things are crawling and twining their slimy convolutions among mouldering bones, broken sculpture, and mutilated inscriptions." Such a black dungeon faced the page that held the blue sky and the single bird; at the bottom of it something was coiled,—what, and whether ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... caught could be nothing else than a couple of interlaced, twisted branches, or roots, of some tree which had fallen into the pool in a former caving-in of the bank. In that dark deep wherein his foot was held fast, his mind's eye could see it all well enough—the water-soaked, brown-green, slimy, inexorable coil, which had yielded to admit the unlucky member, then closed upon the ankle like the jaws of an otter trap. He could feel that grip—not severe, but uncompromisingly firm, clutching the joint. As he considered, he began to draw ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and hurtled into the water. For a long time I groped in the depths of the pool. To me it seemed that I struggled there for hours in the blackness; that serpents drew their slimy lengths across my face; that fishes poked their noses with bold inquisitiveness about me and dared to nibble at my hands; that Mr. Pound looked up at me from the abyss, benignly in his triumph, and that his solemn voice joined with the roaring of the torrent. Knowing well that my end had come ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... on all sides, snowy jets gushed up, and streams spouted out of the mouths and nostrils of stone monsters, and fell in glistening drops; while other rivulets, that had run wild, came leaping from one rude step to another, over stones that were mossy, slimy, and green with sedge, because, in a Century of their wild play, Nature had adopted the Fountain of Trevi, with all its elaborate devices, for her own. Finally, the water, tumbling, sparkling, and ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has she bought them than she must begin to skimp because in a month or six weeks she will need another pair. The hour or two hours' walk each day through streets thickly spread, oftener than not, with a slimy, miry dampness literally dissolves these shoes. Long after up-town streets are dry and clean, those of the congested quarters display the muddy travesty of snow in the city. The stockings inside these cheap shoes, with their worn linings, wear out even more quickly than the shoes. It is ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... well-stretched rope; and there they will hang me by the neck until I am dead. The red wrath always has undone me in all my lives; for the red wrath is my disastrous catastrophic heritage from the time of the slimy things ere ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... gripping into his heart, and with that red stream went Herakleophorbia IV, in a state of solution, into the being of a new client. The only thing that had a chance with these monsters to get any share of the Food were the rushes and slimy green scum in the water and the seedling weeds in the mud at the bottom. A clean up of the study presently washed a fresh spate of the Food into the puddle, and overflowed it, and carried all this sinister expansion of the struggle for ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... part of my day business, choosing the noxious from the useful. And in my dreams I shall be hauling on recalcitrants, and suffering stings from nettles, stabs from citron thorns, fiery bites from ants, sickening resistances of mud and slime, evasions of slimy roots, dead weight of heat, sudden puffs of air, sudden starts from bird-calls in the contiguous forest—some mimicking my name, some laughter, some the signal of a whistle, and living over again at large the business of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Not pray! (Seizing him again) Pray this instant, you dog, you rotten hound, you slimy snake, you beastly ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... prisoners had no shelter from the scorching rays of the sun through the long summer days, nor from the sleety rains and freezing nights of winter. They dug holes in the ground with their hands, and made the cold, damp earth their bed. A slimy brook ran through the grounds, foul with filth from the camps of the Rebels. There was a marsh in the centre of the yard, full of rottenness, where the water stood in green and stagnant pools, breeding flies, mosquitos, and vermin, where all the ooze and scum and slops of the camp came ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... were transported in a dog sledge to the vessel, where part of them was placed in spirits for the zoologists and the rest fried, not without a protest from our old cook, who thought that the black slimy fish looked remarkably nasty and ugly. But the Chukches were right it was a veritable delicacy, in taste somewhat resembling eel, but finer and more fleshy. These fish were besides as tough to kill as eels, for after lying an hour and a half in the air they swam, if replaced in the water, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... leaving their smear upon the cheerful, single-hearted, constant devotion to duty, which is so often seen in the decline of such sufferers, recall the slimy trail left by the snail on the sunny ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... in a call with the unreasoning obstinacy with which men will cling to hope, but no answer came back to us save a hollow moaning from the depths beneath. Footsore and heart-sick, we retraced our steps and climbed the slimy ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the albatross following, until one day the Ancient Mariner, in a mad moment, shot the beautiful bird. In punishment for this deed terrible disasters fell upon that ship and its crew. Under a blazing sun, in a hot and slimy sea filled with creeping, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... turbidity it is customary to use oak or beech shavings that have been washed in hot water and then dried. These shavings, which must be very long and extremely thin, are put in a barrel with a second and perforated bottom, to a depth of 12 to 34 inches. The vinegar that runs through them deposits its slimy constituents on the shavings and becomes perfectly clear, and presents to the eye ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... may carry our own atmosphere with us, and like the diver that goes down into depths of the sea, and cannot be reached by the hungry water around his crystal bell, and has communication with the upper air, where the light of the sun is, so you and I, down at the slimy bottom, and with the waste of water all around us, which if it could get at us would choke us, may walk at liberty, in peace and gladness. And so, 'though the labour of the olive shall fail and the fig tree not blossom, though the flocks ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... who knows that Almira, but for these keys, which throb away her wild impulses in harmless discords would not have been floating, dead, in the brown stream which slides through the meadows by her father's door,—or living, with that other current which runs beneath the gas-lights over the slimy pavement, choking with wretched weeds that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... boy-angel singing at your casement wouldn't you expect a cherubim face upturned with heaven-lights all over it? Billy's face was upturned as he heard me draw the shade, but it was streaked like a wild Indian's with decorations of brown mud and he held a long slimy fish-worm on the end of a stick while he wiped his other grimy hand down the front ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and born, I had no feeling but the keenest scorn For those fine lady "ah's" and "oh's" of fear So much assumed (when any man is near). But God implanted in each human heart A natural horror, and a sickly dread Of that accursed, slimy, creeping thing That squirms a limbless carcass o'er the ground. And where that inborn loathing is not found You'll find the serpent qualities instead. Who fears it not, himself is next of kin, And in his bosom holds some treacherous art Whereby ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... report shook the cavern; then, as Forbes turned to flee, the enraged monster, with blood streaming from a hole in his neck, threw his slimy coils forward in convulsions of agony, and, before the eyes of his horrified companions, Melton was pinned to ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... well-known naturalist, says: "Impossible. The burrowing owl will generally be seen where dogs congregate, and wherever the ground is undermined his snakeship is apt to be found; but rest assured there is some lively 'scattering' to get out of his way if he draws his slimy carcass into their burrows. The dogs have no desire to contest his right to it, and give him all the room he wants." The dogs at home are neat little fellows, and allow no litter to accumulate around their doors. They go to bed early, and never go around disturbing ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... yelling, "Enough! Enough!" which according to the rules of the game entitled him to be let alone; but I knew nothing about the rules of the game. I saw the blood spurting from one or two cuts in his scalp. I felt it warm and slimy on my hands, and I rained my blows on him, madly and blindly, but with cruel effect after all. I did not see the captain when he came in. I only felt his grip on my right arm, as he seized it and snatched the horseshoe from me. I did not hear what he said, though I heard him saying something. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... out of the hut, and kicked after him a few rags of clothing which were lying about on the floor, all filthy and slimy. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Constitutionnel. But the Presse was the first to make the leading article subsidiary to the feuilleton. It was, even when not a professed Socialist, a great promoter of Socialism, by the thorough support which it lent to all the slimy, jesuitical corruptions of Guizoism, and all the turpitudes and chicanery of Louis Philippism. When the Presse was not a year old it had 15,000 subscribers, and before it was twelve years old the product of its advertisements amounted ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... climbed twisting turnpike stairs to windy roosts under the gables, or they scuttled through noble doors into foul courts and hallways. Beggars and pickpockets swarmed under the arches of the bridge, to swell the evil smelling human river that flowed at the dark and slimy bottom of ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... "captain," his wife, and old Bill were concerned— our two friends were invited by the proud commander to pay a visit of inspection to the Betsy Jane. That venerable craft proved to be lying in the stream, the outside vessel of a number of similar craft moored in a tier, head and stern, to great slimy buoys, laid down as permanent moorings in the river. A wherry was engaged by the skipper, for which old Bill paid when the time of settlement arrived, the "captain" being apparently unconscious of the fact that payment was necessary, and the three proceeded on board. ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers all round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling round corpses; but above the waterline, I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the most squeamish immoralist in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? When, however, the Siren disappears and dives below, down among ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... back by keeping as direct a line as she could, for the path was straight as an arrow. But she could not see enough even to start her in a line, and she had not gone far before she found herself hemmed in, apparently on every side, by ditches and pools of black, dismal, slimy water. And now it was so dark that she could see nothing more than the gleam of a bit of clear sky now and then in the water. Again and again she stepped knee-deep in black mud, and once tumbled down in the shallow edge of a terrible pool; after which she gave up the attempt to ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... terrifying enough, but when, a moment later, two tremendous arms shot out from the body near the eyes, flung themselves around the boat and held on tight, a yell of fear escaped from several of the men, and with good reason, for if the innumerable suckers on those slimy arms once fairly attached themselves to the boat there seemed to be no chance of escape from the deadly embrace. In that moment of danger Little Stubbs proved himself equal to the occasion. With the hatchet he ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... hateful thing, Thorny and twisted like a snake, Writhing to work a mischief, in the brake It stands at menace, in its cling Is danger and a venomed sting. It grows on green and slimy slopes, It is a thing of shades and slums, For passing feet it wildly gropes, And loops to catch all feet that run Seeking a ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... from the bemudded "parade" ground we were fed up. Constant rain had rendered an always muddy surface into a slimy quagmire, in which every step forward was a conscious effort. There was little singing in either Companies (A. and D.), during the short march to the train conveying the party to near a shell-infested area where the said party would partake of its outdoor picnic. ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... at the point of our landing, the banks of the canal consisted of black slimy foetid mud, out of which grew a belt of mangroves, their curious twisted roots straggling in a thick complicated mass of net-work over the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... sea, unsinkable and steady, blown upon by the free winds of all the world. In the half-gale out of the west I note the smell of the shoals, a suggestion of bilge in the brine, not altogether pleasant. I fancy a heavy sea stirs the slimy depths and brings their ooze uppermost. I had noticed this from an incoming liner's deck when off the lightship before, but charged it to the ship. Now I know it for a strange odor of the sea. It makes me half ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... growing close to the water's edge, laced together with black snake—like withes, while the jungle was thick and impervious, and actually grew down into the water, for beach, or shore, or cleared bank, there was none,—all water and underwood, except where a heavy soft slimy steaming black bank of mud hove its shining back from out the dead waters near the shore, with one or more monstrous alligators sleeping on it, like dirty rotten logs of wood, scarcely deigning to lift their abominable long snouts to look at us as we ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... here made, of course, to sections where the milk of the cow is of some account for the dairy, and where it is too valuable to be devoted entirely to nourishing the calf. In this case, as soon as the calf is dropped the cow is allowed to lick off the slimy moisture till it is dry, which she will generally do from instinct, or, if not, a slight sprinkling of salt over the body of the calf will immediately tempt her. The calf is left to suck once or twice, which it will do as soon as it is able to stand. It should, ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... variety, after being boiled, may be fairly compared with oatmeal. Mr. Cook actually preferred it to the Scotch article, both for taste and texture. The seeds retain their form after being cooked and "do not appear so slimy as oatmeal." Other varieties of quinoa are bitter and have to be boiled several times, the water being frequently changed. The growing quinoa presents an attractive appearance; its leaves assume ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... him, save that which flowed in the castle moat, On whose green and slimy surface newts and mosses loved to float— Bread—a crust a day—so, starving, freezing, there the Doomed was spread, Pressed with weights of stone and iron till he answered or ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... we commenced to climb a steep hill, thickly covered with a very pricklesome heather, and black slimy bogs, wherein the varnish of my patent-leather shoes did soon become totally dimmed. So, being gravely incommoded by the shortness of my wind, I entrusted my musket to an under-keeper, begging him to inform me of the early approach of any ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... by the spear points of the Pongo, we landed in the slimy mud. Brother John went first with a smile upon his handsome countenance that I thought idiotic under the circumstances, though doubtless he knew best when he ought to smile, and the wretched Kalubi came last. Indeed, so great was his shrinking from ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... he turned, swung aboard a car as it shot groaning and clanking around the curve from Fifty-ninth Street, and settled down to brood and ponder and consider until it was time for him to swing off the car into the slimy ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... rumination, or chewing the cud, irregular; tongue coated, mouth slimy, feces passed apparently not well digested and offensive in odor, dullness and fullness of the flanks. This disease may, in some cases, assume a chronic character, for in addition to the above mentioned symptoms, slight bloating of the left flank may be observed. The animal breathes with great difficulty ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... surged through his mind like dreams of the past, which had made a deep impression. He thought of the Chuetas, who, according to popular opinion, were not the same as other people; reputed to be creatures of sordid poverty and slimy to the touch, who, no doubt, concealed terrible deformities. Who could say that Catalina was like ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... valley road, all this is a bit of the touch of God upon life, where the hurt of sin has come in. Only the Lord Jesus can make music where sin had brought in and wrought out such discord. Only He can change the weaving into beauty, where the ugly slimy sin-threads have come in. He can lead up again out of the depths, but only He. His blood, Himself, is the thing added that makes music where no melody had ever been a possible thing; and gives the weaver's threads the transforming touch that works ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... a slimy but harmless toad or a stinging fly? It seemed ridiculous, contemptible and pitiable to think of hate in connection with the melancholy figure of this discomfited intriguer, this fallen leader ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... all; for crawling together on flat tables of rock, or letting themselves drop into the sea with loud reports, I beheld huge slimy monsters—soft snails, as it were, of incredible bigness—two or three score of them together, making the rocks to echo with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and the green stuff made a sort of slimy mildew which ran over Golightly in several directions—down his back and bosom for choice. The khaki color ran too—it was really shockingly bad dye—and sections of Golightly were brown, and patches were violet, and contours were ochre, and streaks were ruddy red, and blotches ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the strong-neck'd ox; no gentle bud The sun had dried; the cattle chew'd the cud Low levell'd on the grass; no fly's quick sting Enforc'd the stonehorse in a furious ring To tear the passive earth, nor lash his tail About his buttocks broad; the slimy snail Might on the wainscot, by his many mazes, Winding meanders and self-knitting traces, Be follow'd where he stuck, his glittering slime Not yet wip'd off. It was so early time, The careful smith had in his sooty forge Kindled no coal; nor did his hammers urge His neighbours' ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... rains, which caught us in motion, and nearly drowned some of the troops in the rice-fields of the Savannah, swept away our causeway (which had been carefully corduroyed), and made the swamps hereabout mere lakes of slimy mud. The weather is now good, and I have the army on terra firma. Supplies, too, came for a long time by daily driblets instead of in bulk; this is now all remedied, and I hope to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... with which the world is laden. Of all disagreeable colour schemes, it is certainly one of the least appealing ever put upon a canvas. It is hardly a scheme at all, since I do not believe the juxtaposition of so many different slimy greens, nowhere properly relieved nor accentuated by a complementary red, can ever be called a scheme. Technically speaking, the canvas is well painted, but it is hardly worthy of the attention its size and subject win. Dagnan-Bouveret has rendered good service as a teacher ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... girls arose and went down, proudly, calmly, loftily. Their inborn senses of humor came to their assistance when they entered the living-room. The Slaughter boys looked far more slaughtered than slaughtering. They sat limply in their chairs, nervously twitching their yellowed slimy fingers, their dull eyes intent upon the worn spots in the carpet. It was funny! Even Carol smiled, not the serene sweet smile that melted hearts, but the grim hard smile of the joker when the tables are turned! She flattered herself ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... was lost in a London fog, so thick that he could hardly see his hand before his face. He became seriously alarmed when he found himself in a slimy alley. Then he heard footsteps approaching through the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... a gate is opened into a lock the water begins to pour in with a steady rush and covers the slimy walls and ugly fissures, so peace poured into the discolored emptiness of his mind. Suddenly the gate was shut again. What ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... may be stayed and the potatoes saved; but if the damp weather continue, the number of spotted leaves among the potatoes increases day by day, until the spotted leaves are the majority; and then the haulm dies, gets slimy, and emits a characteristic odor; and it will be found that the tubers beneath the soil are but half developed, and impregnated with the disease to an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... hands from slimy nest The bedded fish in banks out-wrest; Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies, Bewitch poor fishes' ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... you do, General. Now I suppose I shall be court-martialled. Well, I don't mind being court-martialled; but (with solemn determination) I tell you, General, if ever I catch that innocent looking youth, I'll spoil his beauty, the slimy little liar! I'll make a ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... tardy steps: here shalt thou rest Upon this holy bank, no deadly Snake Upon this turf her self in folds doth make. Here is no poyson for the Toad to feed; Here boldly spread thy hands, no venom'd Weed Dares blister them, no slimy Snail dare creep Over thy face when thou art fast asleep; Here never durst the babling Cuckow spit, No slough of falling Star did ever hit Upon this bank: let this thy Cabin be, This other set with ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... between the two collegians before the coming of Monday morning took Randall Clayton back to his money mill. His first impulse to give up the apartment had returned to him. He now loathed the memory of Arthur Ferris as the slimy snake in the grass; and yet he resisted his desire to shove all the traitor's traps ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... overboard and commenced descending slowly, while the captain anxiously and watchfully plied out the signal line and hose. He reached bottom which was full of rocks covered with a slimy growth of marine vegetation; the pressure on him was something enormous. It was very dark and he groped for some time without discovering anything. He signaled the boat to move with him as he pursued his explorations. At last his heart was gladdened by the sight of a wreck overgrown ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... bank, grasped at the litter to save himself. The result of this was what might have been expected. The litter was pulled over the edge of the bank, the bearers let go, and the whole thing, including Billali and the man who had been bitten, rolled into the slimy pool. When I got to the edge of the water neither of them were to be seen; indeed, the unfortunate bearer never was seen again. Either he struck his head against something, or get wedged in the mud, or possibly the snake-bite paralyzed him. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... idealism into the artificial lake of eighteenth century Europe produced a splash that seemed to splash the heavens, and a storm that drowned ten thousand men. What would happen if a star from heaven really fell into the slimy and bloody pool of a hopeless and decaying humanity? Men swept a city with the guillotine, a continent with a sabre, because Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were too precious to be lost. How if Christianity was yet more maddening because ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the Lieutenant led him past groups of men and officers. It was an appalling scene of desolation. The approach of night had brought a slight drizzling rain, and the ground, pitted with shell holes, was slimy with wet, greasy mud. Nearly all the trees in the vicinity were blasted as if by lightning, and along the right hand side of the road was a line of A.S.S. carts and limbers blown to pieces. One horse, completely ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... escaped beyond my reach. A hollow log lay near—the trunk of a large tulip-tree, with the heart-wood decayed and gone. The snake had made for this—no doubt its haunt—and before I could come up with it, I saw the long slimy body, with its rhomboid spots, disappear within the dark cavity. Another "sker-r-rr" reached my ears as it glided out of sight. It seemed a note of triumph, as if ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... inasmuch as they richly deserve every degree of poverty, every ounce of indignity, and every inch of condescension they stagger under. But their children don't deserve these things. And just mark the slimy little word-shuffle which, in order to keep the "deserving poor" up to their work, pronounces upon them the blessings obviously adherent only to that unquestionable guarantee of unselfish purpose, namely, voluntary poverty. A subtle confusion ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... dainty foot on the first stepping-stone, another on the next, and so on to the fourth; and if she had been a boy she would have cleared them all. But holding her skirts instead of keeping her arms to balance herself, and wearing idiotic shoes, her heels slipped on the fifth stone, which was rather slimy, and she fell into the middle of the ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... pot from the bench, with the remains of the porridge that had been made for supper still in it, set it on the fire, and pouring some water in it, began to stir it vigorously. It was thick and slimy, and altogether a most repulsive-looking mixture, and Mrs. Murray no longer wondered at Macdonald Dubh's ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... a minute as if the small boy would get a severe beating, but by some trick he hurled the other headlong into the green, slimy water that edged the road; then, seizing the quirt and the opportunity at the same time, he belabored Billy without mercy as that individual climbed up the slippery embankment, blubbering and whipped. Still sobbing, he climbed upon his patient pony, which stood waiting, and galloped off down the ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... made from the sugar of water-brambles," remarked the frog, with a self-satisfied smile. "No doubt you are surprised at the delicacy and refinement of our tastes. Many human beings are under the deplorable mistake of supposing we live on slimy water and dirty insects—ha, ha, ha! whereas our cuisine is astounding in variety and delicacy of material and flavour. If it were not too late in the season, I wish you could have tasted our mushroom pates and minnows' ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... double object. In the common system of shoeing, to avoid slipping in winter upon the ice, and in the cities upon the wet, slimy surface of pavement, or to assist draft, it is customary to weld a calk upon the toe of a shoe, and to turn up the heels to correspond. In this motion the horse is placed upon a tripod, his weight being entirely upon ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... travel for league after league along this slimy water and make head for days and weeks against its current—which glides everlastingly past the dahabiya, in little hurrying waves—without seeing this warm, fecundating river, compared with which our rivers of France are mere negligible streams, either diminish or increase ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... much outwards beyond the limits of a Globe; just as it would happen, if a heap of exactly round Balls of soft Clay were heaped upon one another; or, as I have often seen a heap of small Globules of Quicksilver, reduc'd to that form by rubbing it much in a glaz'd Vessel, with some slimy or sluggish liquor, such as Spittle, when though the top of the upper Globules be very neer spherical, yet those that are prest upon by others, exactly imitate the forms ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... grass, are very high in nitrogen, similar to the best horse or cow manure. Anyone who has piled up fresh grass clippings has noticed how rapidly they heat up, how quickly the pile turns into a slimy, airless, foul-smelling anaerobic mess, and how much ammonia may be given off. Green grass should be thoroughly dispersed into a pile, with plenty of dry material. Reserve bags of leaves from the fall or have a bale of straw handy to mix in if needed. Clippings allowed ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... slipped a slimy thumb from the meshes of a mackerel-net and crossed himself. "She has a hoarse ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... on the surrounding darkness the mystery was solved. The Pioneer was lodged in mid channel on a timber dam. The bow projected a foot or two over the edge, but could go no further owing to lack of water. None was running over at all at this point, and the slimy timbers protruded six or eight inches above the ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... ascribed to the side-car. His account of Epping Forest, for instance, was simply young love with its soul at its lips. But his Huckley 'Mobiquity' would have sickened a soap-boiler. It chemically combined loathsome familiarity, leering suggestion, slimy piety and rancid 'social service' in one fuming compost that fairly lifted me ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... in watery mountains spread, Beats on his back, or bursts upon his head. Yet dauntless still the adverse flood he braves, And still indignant bounds above the waves. Tired by the tides, his knees relax with toil; Wash'd from beneath him slides the slimy soil; When thus (his eyes on heaven's expansion thrown) Forth bursts the hero ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... shrimps their patience tax When put down people's backs - Surprising, too, what one can do with fifty fat black beedles - And treacle on a chair Will make a Quaker swear! Then sharp tin tacks And pocket squirts - And cobblers' wax For ladies' skirts - And slimy slugs On bedroom floors - And water jugs On open doors - Prepared with these cheap properties, amusing tricks to play, Upon a friend a man may spend a most ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... dragon—a huge, slimy creature, all yellow and green, with great red claws, and a tail which seemed to Charming to be ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... get back into the mudhole. It was so deep that he laid a branch across it to cling to, before venturing in. A big moccasin crawled from under a root beside the pool of mud as Dick stepped in it and the boy shut his teeth tight as he forced himself to wallow through the slimy, snaky mass from ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... slimy ooze, compounded of fat soil, rotting vegetation and verdigris-colored scum, with a fainter green mark meandering through it—such was the ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the antipathy which had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and spreading denser shade daily, excluded me from every glimpse of the sunshine of life; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid darkness out of the slimy walls of ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the slimy-weeded sea. 'Lo! herebeneath' (another coward cries) 'The cursed land of sunk Atlantis lies: This slime will suck us down — turn while thou'rt free!' — 'But no!' I said, 'Freedom bears West for me!' Yet when the long-time ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... front yelled, "We've got him," and then it was that the attack on the bleeding Negro was resumed. A vicious kick directed at the Negro's head sent him into the gutter, and for a moment the body sank from view beneath the muddy, slimy water. "Pull him out; don't let him drown," was the cry, and instantly several of the men around the half-drowned Negro bent down and drew the body out. Twisting the body around they drew the head and shoulders up on the street, while from the waist down the Negro's body remained under ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... the Valley of Expiring Life, which had seemed to them even worse than the Valley of Death. As he followed the rays with a pair of powerful field glasses, Redgrave fancied that he saw huge, dim shapes moving about the stunted shrubbery and through the slimy pools of the stagnant rivers, and once or twice he got a glimpse of what might well have been the ruins of towns and cities, but the gloom soon became too deep and dense for the searchlights to pierce and he was glad when the Astronef soared up into the ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... wake up: so, slowly and steadily, they begin to put up long stems to reach the surface of the water. Chambered stems they are, each having four passages leading up to the air, and down to the root and black mud. The walls of these chambers are brown and slimy, and each stem bears at its top a slimy bud,—slimy on the outside, brownish-green as it pushes up through the water; for this outer coat is stout and waterproof, and can well afford to be unpretending, since it carries something very precious ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... because of gratitude for bygone pleasures—but the former beauty and nobility were not there, and in their place stood irritating intervals of descending fourths and fifths. Those once transcendent progressions, luxuriant suggestions of Debussy chords of the 9th, 11th, etc., were becoming slimy. An unearned exultation—a sentimentality deadening something within hides around in the music. Wagner seems less and less to measure up to the substance and reality of Cesar Franck, Brahms, d'Indy, or even Elgar (with all his tiresomeness), ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... up to the reeds, dived, and began fumbling among their roots. Burrowing in the slimy, liquid mud, he felt something sharp and unpleasant—perhaps it really was a crayfish. But at that minute someone seized him by the leg and pulled him to the surface. Spluttering and coughing, Yegorushka opened his eyes and saw before him the wet grinning face ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... first opening the door had surprised and puzzled her; but now, as she timidly looked up and around her, she felt a shock of horror and revulsion such as might come over a man who, walking by night and believing that he is treading on flowers, suddenly finds that the slimy slope of a bottomless bog is leading him to perdition. She tottered and clutched at a statue, gazing about her, listening to the uproar, and wondering whether she were ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... your spell Be daunting to a cuttle, think you now? We had a bout with one on our way here; It had green lidless eyes like lanterns, arms As many as the branches of a tree, But limber, and each one of them wise as a snake. It laid hold of our bulwarks, and with three Long knowing arms, slimy, and of a flesh So tough they'ld fool a hatchet, searcht the ship, And stole out of the midst of us all a man; Yes, and he the proudest man upon the seas For the rare powerful talisman he'd got. And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... The November haze rose from the moist ground and dulled the blue of heaven with smoky clouds amid which the sun, a red sailless boat, floated at anchor among golden and crimson furrows and glimmering far-dotted fleeces. The small lake was slimy, reflecting the trees on its borders as a network of dirty branches. A solitary swan ruffled its plumes and elongated its throat, doubled in quivering outlines beneath the muddy surface. All at once the splash of oars was heard and the sluggish waters ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... lie on the hearthrug before the fire, leaning his head upon his hands, and think on those sentences. He shivered as if he had cold slimy water next his skin. That was mean of Wells to shoulder him into the square ditch because he would not swop his little snuff box for Wells's seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty. How cold and slimy the water had been! A fellow had once seen a big rat jump into ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... happy he looked up at her. 'N' he says, quite placid 'n' contented, 'Can't you get some water out o' the pond?' he says. 'Out o' the pond!' says Hannah, high-keyed like,—Gran'ma Mullins says Hannah always went high-keyed easy,—'out o' that muddy, swampy, slimy, marshy, cow-churned pond,' says Hannah, 'out o' that nasty, dirty, filthy, green pond,' says Hannah, gettin' high-keyeder 'n' high-keyeder. 'I can get it clean for you,' says Rufus, a-openin' the Dead ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... A pale rectangle of light showed before him, and he dived through it. He was in a corridor, dim-lit by phosphorescent fungi that cloaked the damp walls. He halted, at fault. The long hall stretched away to either side, cluttered with grimed bones, slimy with mold. By the age-blistered name cards on closed doors he knew himself to be on a residential level. But which way should he turn? Whence had come that scream? He crouched against the wall, his heartbeats thudding loud in his ears, and ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... Brown, and descended the kitchen stairs three at a time. He flung open the door of a black cavity and stepped in, feeling in his pocket for matches. As his right hand was thus occupied, a pair of great slimy hands came out of the darkness, hands clearly belonging to a man of gigantic stature, and seized him by the back of the head. They forced him down, down in the suffocating darkness, a brutal image of destiny. But the Major's ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... very like the town of Boston. It stands upon a river which is very narrow and which curves, and in which there rises and falls a most considerable tide, and which is bounded by slimy wooden sides. Here, as at Boston, the boats cannot turn round; if they come in frontways they have to go out backwards, like Mevagissey ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... already"—Chad could see the rock fence where he had sat that spring day—"it's curious and mournful that you can see in any season a sign of the next to come." And there was the creek where he found Dan fishing, and there the road led to the ford where Margaret had spurned his offer of a slimy fish—ugh! "I do love the autumn. It makes me feel like the young woman who told Emerson that she had such mammoth thoughts she couldn't give them utterance—why, wake up, Mr. Buford, wake up!" Chad ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... not bear to look at the cold, silent water. The soft splashing against the broad, square bow of the old-fashioned ferry served to increase his nervousness. The horrid fancy struck him that Rosabel Vick was out there ahead clawing at the slimy timbers in the vain effort to draw herself out of the water....He wished to ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... loch, where they rest. But suppose there is a dry summer—and such things have been even in Argyleshire. The heart of the tourist is glad within him, but as the river shrinks and shrinks, a silver thread among slimy green mosses in the streams, a sheet of clear water in the pools, the angler repines. Day after sultry day goes by, and there is no hope. There is a cloud on the distant hill; it is only the smoke from some moor ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... creature does possess this psychical function. Mr. Lonsdale placed two snails in a small and badly kept garden. One of them was weak and poorly nourished, the other strong and well. The strong one disappeared and was traced by its slimy track over a wall into a neighboring garden where there was plenty of food. Mr. Lonsdale thought that it had deserted its mate, but it subsequently appeared and conducted its comrade over the wall into the bountiful food-supply of the neighboring garden. It seemed to coax and assist ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... told you, they are genuine, but they have no pearls of any account, the conditions being unfavorable for their formation. You know the pearls grow within the oysters, being composed of slimy secretions deposited around some foreign substance that enters them. It may be that a peculiar action of the tide drives a grain of sand into the mollusks, where we are to ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... of the classic Ilm are sluggish and slimy in places, and in places clear and brooklike, but always a dull dark green in color. They flow in the shadow of pensive trees, and by the brinks of sunny meadows, where the after-math wanders in heavy windrows, and the children sport joyously over the smooth-mown surfaces ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... weak solution of silver nitrate at about one hundred degrees with a long rectual tube. Dr. Hare, of Philadelphia, recommends one two-hundredth grain of bichloride of mercury every hour or two (in adults), if the stools are slimy and bloody and if much blood is present, and high rectal injections of witch-hazel water and water, half and half. I know this last is good, and also the following; Oil of fireweed, five drops on sugar ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... fleshpots and effeminacy. Aldermen of our ancient conception, they may teach him that he has been backsliding once more, and must repent in ashes, as those who are for jewels, titles, essences, banquets, for wallowing in slimy spawn of lucre, have ever to do. They dispossess ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... responsible, woman had therefore a right to express herself in public on all questions of morals and religion, the Rev. Mrs. Crane began with fine sarcasm: "To women has always unquestionably been allowed the being good. They are called too good to enter the slimy pool of politics. They are complimented often in the spirit of the man who said to his wife: 'Angelina, you get up and make the fire; it will seem so much warmer if laid by your fair hands!' To women is also conceded the right to be religious and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... die in. They passed from this God-forsaken land to a district of springs welling with sweet water, calabashes and tamarinds, and circlets of deep, dew-fed verdure. The air was spicy, and zebras and antelopes browsed in the distance. Then the scene again changed, and they were in a slimy, malarious swamp. They were bitten by pismires an inch long, and by the unmerciful tzetze fly. The mercenaries, who threatened to desert, rendered no assistance, and the leader, one Said bin Salim, actually refused to give ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... well known that the gymnotus is a kind of eel, with a blackish, slimy skin, furnished along the back and tail with an apparatus composed of plates joined by vertical lamellae, and acted on by nerves of considerable power. This apparatus is endowed with singular electrical properties, and is apt to ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne |
