"Slippery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fright turned and trampled down the men behind. Rapidly the panic increased as the showers of missiles came tearing down, and soon the whole army was in a state of wild terror and confusion—a condition greatly assisted by the slippery nature of the ground. Then, with wild shouts, and brandishing their iron-studded clubs and their formidable halberts and scythes, down the mountain-side rushed, with the fury of their native avalanche, the heroic Confederates; and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... that of the day. Conde and Gaston were vainly summoned; the one cared not, the other dared not. Mademoiselle again took her place in her carriage and drove forth amid the terrors of the night. The sudden conflict had passed its cruel climax, but she rode through streets slippery with blood; she was stopped at every corner. Once a man laid his arm on the window, and asked if Conde was within the carriage. She answered "No," and he retreated, the flambeaux gleaming on a weapon beneath his cloak. Through these interruptions, she did not reach the half-burned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... inclination:—perhaps, indeed, she may appear to receive you with some warmth, and you may flatter yourself you have fairly made a canquest of her, and think Dick Worthnought esquire, is out-rival'd; but if so, you are most demnably bit, 'foregad, for she's as slippery as ice, tho' not quite so cold;—she is the very standard of true modern coquetry, the quintessence of the beau-monde, and the completest example of New-York levity, that New-York has the hanor to call ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... color, with occasional patches of evergreen to set off the whole. Once or twice the road left the river to cut across over the mountains, and it cost our horses much exertion to drag the limbers up the steep, slippery trail. It was curious to notice the difference between those who dwelt along the bank and the inhabitants of the upland plateau. The latter appeared distinctly more "outlandish" and less sleek and prosperous. The ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... the interruption. "What would I not give to have and to hold it for an hour?" "Hold an eel, less slippery; a scorpion, less stinging! But—" added Vance, observing his companion's heightened colour—"but," he added seriously, and with an honest compunction, "I forgot, you are a soldier, you follow the career of arms! Never heed what is said on the subject by a querulous painter! The desire ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she knock off from joys like these! Have you or I, young fellows, looked more lean Since this new holder came upon the scene? Holder, I say, for tenancy's the most That he, or I, or any man can boast: Now he has driven us out: but him no less His own extravagance may dispossess Or slippery lawsuit: in the last resort A livelier heir will cut his tenure short. Ofellus' name it bore, the field we plough, A few years back: it bears Umbrenus' now: None has it as a fixture, fast and firm, But he or I may hold it ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... by stained glass windows, which cast a dim light down upon the interior. The white stone flags were here and there covered by Eastern rugs, thrown carelessly down, but for the most part were bare, and as slippery as marble; so slippery that once I nearly fell, and only saved myself by catching at an oak bench. Just as I recovered myself, I saw the figure of a woman descending the huge double oak staircase which terminated ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was of a most tedious, trying character, the weather being disagreeable in the extreme. It rained more or less every day, making the travel exceedingly slow and difficult; it being so muddy and slippery, you seemed as if you went two steps backward to every one you went forward. The trail in many places was washed out and had to be repaired before they could proceed. In some places land-slides had blocked the trail, and it ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... were like continuous claps of thunder. In twenty-six minutes not less than twenty broadsides were discharged. Nor was the struggle confined to the batteries. Riflemen, posted in the tops of the Hyder Ali, picked off one by one the crew of the enemy, until his decks ran slippery with blood and 56 out of his crew of 140 had fallen. All this while Barney stood on the quarter-deck of his ship, a mark for the enemy's sharpshooters, until they were driven from their stations by the superior aim of the Americans. At length, finding further resistance ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... there a clergyman once who thought his baby ought to be baptised by immersion unless it was proved not well able to endure it, as it says in the rubric or somewhere, so he put it in a tub to try if it could endure it or not, and he let it loose by accident and couldn't catch it again, it was so slippery, just like a horrid little fish, and its mother only came in and got hold of it just in time to prevent its being drowned? So after that he felt he could honestly certify that the child couldn't well endure immersion. I'm getting better ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... pinnacle where I was, so that I might get away from the more dangerous locality before the clouds overtook me. In spite of my haste I had not gone half a mile when an edge of fog whisked and circled round me, and in a moment I could see nothing but a grey shroud of mist and a few yards of steep, slippery grass. Everything was distorted and magnified to an extraordinary degree; but I could hear the moan of the sea under me, and I knew my direction, so I worked along towards the village without trouble. In some places the ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... very unfavourable circumstances, in dark caves lighted by one, or sometimes by two candles, with a temperature varying from slightly above to slightly below the freezing-point, and with no surer foot-hold than that afforded by slippery slopes of ice and chaotic blocks of stone. In all cases, errors are due to want of skill, not of honesty; and I hope that they do not generally lie ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... man, in the yellow flicker of the light, the first-comer astride over Howard and still working at the door. Graham turned to the ladder again, and was thrust by his conductor and helped up by those above, and then he was standing on something hard and cold and slippery outside the ventilating funnel. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... A fine sand from the Nile, similar to puzzuclano, which was strewed on the stadium; the wrestlers also rolled in it, when their bodies were slippery ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... never experienced a more exultant pride in his strength than now. He lifted the helpless form, settled the swaying head on his broad shoulder, and, clasping the body tightly, picked his way through the slippery streets, in a manner that would have done credit to an Alp climber. Round this corner and that, to the quiet, deserted street, where every window was closed, and perhaps half the inmates in bed. Only ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Cast in the same poetic mould with mine. One common note on either lyre did strike, And knaves and tools were both abhorred alike. To the same goal did both our studies drive, The last set out, the soonest did arrive, Thus Nisus fell upon the slippery place, While his young friend perform'd and won the race. O early ripe! to thy abundant store, What could advancing age have added more? It might, what nature never gives the young, Have taught the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... such a situation—of course it would be an act of kindness. The question, however, was not how to be kind, but how to be firm. He was a slippery customer. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... was intersected by deep watercourses, and the ground being extremely slippery from the rain which had fallen during the night, I was unable to overtake him until he came to bay in a patch of lofty dense reeds which grew on the lower bank, immediately adjacent to the river's margin. I had brought out eleven of my dogs, ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... the side of the wharf once more, intent on saving the gallant ship from her fate; but at this moment came a strong swirl of tide, the log swung round once more and floated off, and the rescuer fell "all along" into the water. This was nothing unusual, and he came puffing and panting up the slippery logs, and sat down again, shaking himself like a Newfoundland puppy. He wished the shipwrecked crew had not seen him; he knew he should get a whipping when he reached home, but that was of less consequence. Anyhow, she was an old vessel, and now the captain would get a new ship—a fine ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... the last and strongest of the Prussian qualities we have here considered. There is in stupidity of this sort a strange, slippery strength, because it can be not only outside rules, but outside reason. The man who really cannot see that he is contradicting himself has a great advantage in controversy, though the advantage breaks down when he tries ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... eternal God! A soldier push'd his bayonet at him, upon which he struck at him a violent blow and hit the cock of his gun; he saw but one thing thrown, and that was a short stick ; he heard a ratling, & took it to be the knocking of the soldiers guns together; for the ground was slippery, and they were continually pushing at the people; after the firing, while the people were taking up the dead, the soldiers began to present and cock their guns, and then the officer said don't fire any more. - Andrew declared, that the soldiers ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... with the rest of the family, without fear and without reproach. These lesser country-houses of genteel aspirations are much given to patent subterfuges of one kind and another to get heat without combustion. The chilly parlor and the slippery hair-cloth seat take the life out of the warmest welcome. If one would make these places wholesome, happy, and cheerful, the first precept would be,—The dearest fuel, plenty of it, and let half the heat go up the chimney. If you can't afford this, don't try to live in a "genteel" ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... with flying flakes, and new drifts seriously impeded progress. Wading knee-deep in places, stumbling in and out of cuts where the late snow had been removed, clambering over treacherous slopes where other snows lay hard packed and slippery, ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... in buildings which are erected on a hill side, when the hill is composed of stratified rocks with an oblique stratification, because water and other moisture often penetrates these oblique seams carrying in greasy and slippery soil; and as the strata are not continuous down to the bottom of the valley, the rocks slide in the direction of the slope, and the motion does not cease till they have reached the bottom of the valley, carrying with them, as though ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... for he was ashamed of his passion for gardening. Edith was terribly frightened at the three men as well as at the one who had gone into the shop. She was sure that they wished to do her harm. So she turned and ran up the mountain by the steep, slippery path and the narrow, rotten wooden steps which led from terrace ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... dependent flowers with the greatest ease, using the "hairs as footholds while sucking the honey; but the smaller bees are impeded by them, and when, having at length struggled through them, they reach the slippery precipice above, they are completely baffled." Mr. Belt says that he watched many flowers during a whole season in North Wales, and "only once saw a small bee reach the nectary, though many were seen trying in vain to do so." (3/5. 'The Naturalist in Nicaragua' ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... of laborers—men, women, and even tender children—find no favor in the eyes of these Knights of the Quill. The Negro and the Indian, the footballs of slippery politicians and the helpless victims of sharpers and thieves, are wantonly misrepresented—held up to the eyes of the world as beings incapable of imbibing the distorted civilization in the midst of which they live and have their being. They are placed in the attic, only to be aired ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... prayed fervently, "keep him up, spare his strength a little longer, a little longer!" A moment more and he reached the rope and clung to it desperately, while teacher and boys drew the two in over the slippery edge, out of the horrible, seething waters, and took them in their arms. But they were both silent and motionless. Mr. Sharp spoke Guy's name, but he did not answer. Would either of them ever ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... was about the size of both of us put together and a piece over; she used us like a nurse with children. I had started barefoot; Belle had soon to pull off her gala shoes and stockings; the mud was as deep as to our knees, and so slippery that (moving, as we did, in Indian file, between dense scratching tufts of sensitive) Belle and I had to take hands to support each other, and Tauilo was steadying Belle from the rear. You can ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ever try to shovel up soft soap from a cellar floor with a knitting-needle?" inquired the politician. "That's how it's been in this case. Every man I talked with was slippery. I know slippery times when I see 'em. I've been afraid, but I hoped for the best. Now that they are here, with this convention due to be called to order, they are not slippery any longer. They don't need to be. I've just been through the convention ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... shot crashed through her side, and rattled against the most delicate part of the engine. She was helpless at once; and hardly had this damage been reported when a second shot came with a burst into an open port, killed five men, and broke its way out the other side. In ten minutes her decks were slippery with blood, and thick strewn with wounded and dead men. The current of the river drifted her upon a sandbar; and she lay there helplessly, now and again answering the galling fire of her foe with a feeble shot. Pouring in a last broadside, the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... young girl a bedroom to herself. Rachel watched her niece narrowly; but Lucrece neither said nor did anything from which the least information could be gleaned. She was neither elated nor depressed, but just as usual,—demure, slippery, and unaccountable. ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... Step—which was, of course, impassable for the pony—Lionel had to separate from his companions and ford the river, following up the other side. Fortunately there was not much water in the stream; old Maggie knew her way well enough; and with nothing more than an occasional stumble among the slippery boulders and loose stones they reached the opposite bank in safety. About a mile farther up the return crossing had to be made; but this second ford was shallow and easy; and thenceforward the united party went on together. At last they struck the Geinig; and here a rude ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... They went down the slippery steps to the boat, and then the shore glided slowly past them as they pushed off into the stream of ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... into the world of faith in which Andrew lived. Not one of them could have understood that for Andrew to allow the least danger of evil to his Doory, would have been to behold the universe rocking on the slippery ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Madonnas by Old Masters hung above. The Philistine School of Art was represented by a Zoological hearthrug; three Windsor chairs offered accommodation to the visitor; a table of the kitchen pattern was covered by a square of green baize; and a slippery hair-cloth sofa, with a knobbly bolster and a patchwork cushion, supported the long, thin, black clad figure of the Reverend Julius Fraithorn, who ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... with pictured canvases and color, seemed to mock the sullen landscape, and the sterile crags amid which the building was set. An attempt to make a pleasance in this barren waste had resulted only in empty vases, bleak statuary, and iron settees, as cold and slippery to the touch as the sides of ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... up. They were worn and slippery from use, and exhaled a faint odor of tobacco. Had they been left there by some temporary visitor unknown to Tappington and his family, or had they been hastily hidden by a servant? Yet they were of a make and texture superior ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... years: March 20, aspen; twenty-first, hazel and silver maple; twenty-third, pussy willow, prairie willow and white elm; twenty-fourth, dwarf white trillium and hepatica (also known as liverleaf, squirrelcup, and blue anemone); twenty-fifth, slippery elm, cottonwood; twenty-ninth, box elder and fragrant sumac; ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... there were men but no women, and the men did not dare to venture into the sunlight. Once, as they were out in the rain, they perceived four creatures, swift as eagles and slippery as eels. The men called to their aid Caracaracol and his brothers, who caught these creatures and transformed them into women. In time, these became the mothers ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... to cross, and now approached and stepped down into the boat. Though she did not raise her eyes she knew that he was watching her over. At the landing steps she saw from under the brim of her hat a hand stretched down. The steps were steep and slippery. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... people they were sporting upon the verge of a precipice, but its slippery edge was concealed by flowers. They were playing with the firebrands of death and thought they were Roman-candles ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... hindrance the limp form would prove in the descent of the mountain. He thrust the body forward with his foot, close to one of the great "stands" of the mixture, and bade an appreciative assistant apply the ax to the slippery-elm hoops that bound the staves. As the bands fell and the great volume of liquid gushed forth, the raiders leaped aside from the flood. But York never stirred. The down-rushing tide fell fairly on him, engulfed him. He made no movement, no outcry. Even Stone himself was ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... whose hair bore unmistakable signs of having been pruned with a pair of pocket scissors. Little of Carew's past month had been spent in the base camp at Springfontein. With hundreds of other men, he had gone galloping up and down the Free State on the slippery heels of De Wet, now being shot at by prowling Boers, now engaged in a lively skirmish from which he never made his exit totally unscathed, now riding for weary, dusty miles upon a scent which ultimately proved to be a false one. And, meanwhile, ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... a square of light trembled through the screen of snow. Staggering along in Frome's wake I floundered toward it, and in the darkness almost fell into one of the deep drifts against the front of the house. Frome scrambled up the slippery steps of the porch, digging a way through the snow with his heavily booted foot. Then he lifted his lantern, found the latch, and led the way into the house. I went after him into a low unlit passage, at the back of which a ladder-like staircase rose into obscurity. On ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... that of the surgeon. He led her to a steep staircase, formed by blocks of solid stone, which were rendered slippery by the moss that had gathered on them. It was a winding staircase, built in a turret which formed one angle of the tower. Looking upwards, Honoria saw a gap in the roof, through which the moonlight shone bright. But there was no sign ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... sale, were all necessary, to efface as much as possible the stigma that has hitherto been branded on every kind of land-bank. It became necessary on another principle,—that is, on account of a pledge of faith previously given on that subject, that their future fidelity in a slippery concern might be established by their adherence to their first engagement. When they had finally determined on a state resource from Church booty, they came, on the fourteenth of April, 1790, to a solemn resolution on the subject, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... came, until they reached the edge of the cut. Here some plunged in, others were pushed in by the pressure from behind. Those who could swim were pulled down by their struggling comrades. Some got across and tried to climb the slippery side of the dike, but fell back and were seized by the Aztecs; whose canoes now dashed up, and added to the confusion by hurling a storm of missiles into ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... other by a finger even, it is a great advantage, as he would whip nimbly round, and threaten to break the impounded finger; this would be considered quite fair. One will often suddenly drop on his knees and try to reach the ankles of his adversary. I have seen a slippery customer, stoop suddenly down, grasp up a handful of dust, and throw it into the eyes of his opponent. It was done with the quickness of thought, but it was detected, and on an appeal by the sufferer, the knave was well ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... hopes that taunted him,—trifles, too, that he would not have heeded at another time. Pike came in on business, a bunch of bills in his hand. A wily, keen eye he had, looking over them,—a lean face, emphasized only by cunning. No wonder Dr. Knowles cursed him for a "slippery customer," and was cheated by him the next hour. While he and Holmes were counting out the bills, a little white-headed girl crept shyly in at the door, and came up to the table,—oddly dressed, in a frock fastened with great horn buttons, and with an old-fashioned anxious pair of ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... come here to Paris a young man of the name of Ardayre—Ferdinand Ardayre—he is slippery, but he can be of the greatest value to us. See that you become friends—you can reach him through Abba Bey. He hates his brother who is the head of the family and he hates his brother's wife—for family reasons which it is not necessary to waste time in telling you. I knew him ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... knocked her down, for she found herself rising to her knees, reaching for the table to aid her. But her hand was all red and slippery; she looked at it stupidly, fell forward, rose again, with the acrid smell of smoke choking her, and her pretty fur jacket all soaked with the warm wet stuff which now ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... statesmen. I have, I hope, brought out sufficiently the fact that on their own showing they were pursuing contradictory policies, and that it was the consequent failure to follow a policy that was consistent and continuous that in the end led Germany to the slippery slope down which she glided into war. The circumstances of the world before and in 1914 were so difficult, the piling up of armaments had been so great, that nothing but the utmost caution could secure ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... her appearance, was handing her over to the weather-side, where Mrs Ferguson was seated, when a sea of larger dimensions than usual careened the ship to what the sailors term a "heavy lurch." The decks were wet and slippery. Captain Drawlock lost his footing and was thrown to leeward. Isabel would have most certainly kept him company; and indeed was already under weigh for the lee-scuppers, had not it been that Newton Forster, who stood near, caught her round the waist, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... grew dizzy at the thought of a Faust-drama, I fear that one who has no Schiller head on his shoulders may prove a poor guide among the precipices and ravines of Goethe's life-poem, where the path is often very steep and slippery. But I will do my best; and perhaps I had better treat our subject as I proposed. At first I shall point out a little more distinctly some of the characteristics which distinguish Goethe's drama from the earlier ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... for a few countries, and require practised attendants; thorns and rocks lame them, hills sadly impede them, and a wet slippery soil entirely ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... into the woods, to descend the steep side-hill to the waterfall, it was no easy matter to keep our footing. The narrow trail was slippery with wet leaves and moss. Looking over the dizzy edge, you could see the tops of tall trees far below. The depths were an indistinct mass of dripping foliage, dark green and russet. We made our way gingerly and with extreme care, with the distant clamor of the falls ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... blade from Gale's hand; it no longer gleamed, but was warm and slippery in his fingers. Poleon held Stark's gun, which was empty ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... his leap by using lightly his claws. His illusion in regard to the bald head of the Notary, it would seem, led to the catastrophe. Using his claws at first lightly, according to his habit, he went on to use them with a truly savage energy—when he found himself as on ice on that slippery eminence and verging ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... court was indeed crimson now; for the velvet carpeting was dyed a more terrible red, and was slippery with a rain of blood! A score of dead and dying lay groaning on the ground; and the rest, beaten and bloody, gave ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... could find a suitable place it began to rain, not a sweeping storm, but the cold, penetrating drizzle of great heights. Now their bearskin coats protected them in part, but the animals shivered, and the way became so slippery that they had to advance on those heights with exceeding caution and slowness. The rain soon turned to snow, and then back to rain again, but the happy temperament of the Little Giant was able to extract ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... bound over the hearth towards him, purring joyfully at the meeting. She had probably been shut up for some time before she had made her escape, and then she must have sought her master, traversing miles of steep and slippery roofs, along dangerous parapets, and through forests of chimney-stacks, urged on by the strength of her attachment, and guided by a mysterious instinct, till she discovered the funnel which led into his ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... Gaston de Foix, Duc de Nemours, "in the name of God and my lord St. Denis." Drums, trumpets, and bugles sounded an alarm. The enemy replied with a burst of artillery, and the attacking party from the citadel began their descent down the hill, where the ground was very slippery, for there had been rain in the night. The general and many other knights took off their broad, plated shoes to gain a firmer hold with the felt slippers worn under the armour, for no one wished to be left behind. At the first rampart there was a fierce conflict, for it was splendidly ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... and, whilst pushing his own fortunes to the utmost, he contributed a great deal to develop, in the ways of peace, the commercial, industrial, diplomatic, and artistic enterprise of France. In his relations towards his king, Jacques Coeur was to Charles VII. a servant often over-adventurous, slippery, and compromising, but often also useful, full of resource, efficient, and devoted in the hour of difficulty. Charles VII. was to Jacques Coeur a selfish and ungrateful patron, who contemptuously deserted the man whose brains ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... I don't like Trent. He's a slippery customer. I would look after him a bit if I were you, and put Ethel on her guard. I think I am bound to say as ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Burnside himself, at Cincinnati, kept in constant telegraphic communication with all points, assembling the militia where they were most likely to be useful and trying to put his regular forces in front of the enemy. It would have been easy to let the slippery Confederate horsemen back into Kentucky. The force in the river, both naval and military, unquestionably prevented this at Madison, and probably at Lawrenceburg. On the 13th Morgan was at Harrison on the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... has led astray The likeliest of you all, And yet you'r found on slippery ground, And think ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... in a moment, "we're here, as you probably know by this time, in search of an escaped convict. We have positive information that he is hiding somewhere in this district. We have brought in plenty of supplies, and intend to remain here until we find him. He's a slippery fellow, but ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... contested civil suit," writes his associate, Ward Hill Lamon, "Lincoln proved an account for his client, who was, though he did not know it at the time, a very slippery fellow. The opposing attorney then proved a receipt clearly covering the entire cause of action. By the time he was through Lincoln was missing. The court sent for him to the hotel. 'Tell the Judge,' said he, 'that I can't come; my hands are dirty and I ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... down to the trickling stream below. She was miserably conscious of a pastoral scene all gone to mildew—cows beneath willows by the creek, milkweeds dripping, dried mullein weed stalks no longer dry. The bank of the stream was so slippery that she shot down two feet, and nearly went sprawling. Her knee did touch the bank, and the skirt of her gray sports-suit showed a smear of ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... looked round him curiously. There was a small window and it was high up. There was no furniture but the bench on which he was sitting. But Tim was the son of a mason, and it was not for nothing that he had lived with gipsies for so long. He was a perfect cat at climbing, and as slippery as an eel in the way he could squeeze himself through places which you would have thought scarcely wide enough for his arm. His sobs ceased, his face lighted up again; he drew out of his pocket his one dearest treasure, ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... with helmet helmet closed, To armour armour, lance to lance opposed, Host against host with shadowy squadrons drew, The sounding darts in iron tempests flew, Victors and vanquish'd join'd promiscuous cries, And shrilling shouts and dying groans arise; With streaming blood the slippery fields are dyed, And slaughter'd heroes swell ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... same time her work in connection with India, which had begun with the Sanitary Commission on the Indian Army, spread and ramified in a multitude of directions. Her tentacles reached the India Office and succeeded in establishing a hold even upon those slippery high places. For many years it was de rigueur for the newly appointed Viceroy, before he left England, to pay a visit to ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... small boat that seems about to be dashed to pieces by the heavy waves and the cakes of ice, but according to Colonel Koen, who was with Washington on that momentous night, no boats were used. The river was frozen over, and the soldiers, in order to keep their footing on the slippery ice, laid their muskets down on the frozen river and walked across on them to the Jersey shore. At times the ice bent so beneath the tread of the men that they momentarily expected to be submerged in the dark waters, ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... charge in his bill, and the foolish fellow, instead of yielding the point, insisted that the account was correct. The customer went away, and paid out all his money in settling a bill with one of my neighbors. And so I got nothing. Most likely, I shall lose the whole account, as he is a slippery chap, and will, in all probability, see it to be his interest to make a failure between this and next spring. I just wanted that money to-day. Now I shall have to be running around half the morning to make up the sum ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... Paul Smith's and the Fulton Chain. I had camped over night in a spot that did not suit me in the least, but it seemed the best I could do then and there. The night was rough and the early morning threatening. However, I managed a cup of coffee, "tied in," and made a slippery carry of two miles a little after sunrise. Arrived on the shore of the lake, things did not look promising. The whirling, twirling clouds were black and dangerous looking, the crisp, dark waves were crested with spume, and I had a notion of just ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... and the nuts pattered down on the dead leaves unheeded. While the other children raced down the hills and whooped through the frosty hollows, Ann followed gingerly in their wake, picking her way as best she could through the rustling leaves and across the slippery logs that bridged the little brooks. It was too cold to sit down. She was obliged to keep stirring; so all that miserable afternoon she tagged after the others, painfully conscious of her fine shoes, and a slave to the task ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... She had by nature a very light and cheerful heart; her spirit was as bright and cheery as her appearance. She picked up her courage very soon, stepped neatly through the miry, slippery streets, and presently reached her home. Mrs. Reed and the six grandchildren lived in a model lodging-house in a place called Sparrow Street, off Whitechapel Road. The house possessed all the new sanitary improvements, ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... and water before I so much as know that I am engaged. What think ye, heh? Should I lay myself boldly alongside, d'ye see, and ply her with small arms, or should I work myself clear and try a long range action? I am none of your slippery, grease-tongued, long-shore lawyers, but if so be as she's willing for a mate, I'll stand by her in wind and weather ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... slipped and slid and sailed away homewards, like mad things. One after another, they passed her and rushed along, till Matilda was left the last, slowly shuffling her little feet over the track the feet of the others had made doubly slippery; when quick steps came up behind her, and a ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... miles from the spot where the ships lay frozen up to Amsterdam. The Spaniards, a thousand strong, had traversed about a third of the distance when the skaters approached them. Keeping their feet with the utmost difficulty upon the slippery ice, they were astonished at the rapid approach of the Dutchmen. Breaking up as they approached, their assailants came dashing along at a rapid pace, discharged their arquebuses into the close mass of the Spaniards, and then wheeled away at the top of their ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... say such horrid things! Give me your hand—the steps are slippery. What has put drowning into your head? And—why, how pale you are; what ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... he bluntly, "it is just this. We heard De Retz intended to trick us, and that you, instead of having returned to Paris, were still at Vancey. Of course I knew better, but the Abbe is a slippery customer!" ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... came as the train was entering the station, he changed to a local and went down to Fifty-ninth Street. He found an all-night garage, hired a racing-car, and at dawn he was driving furiously through Long Island, a hundred miles from New York, on a roadway perilously slippery with falling snow. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... mountain sheep, ran along the trail. When he came across the Mexican, Rojas's last ally, Gale had evidence of the terrible execution of the .405. He did not pause. On the first part of that descent he made faster time than had Rojas. But he exercised care along the hard, slippery, ragged slope leading to the ledge. Presently he came upon Mercedes and the Yaqui. She ran right into Dick's arms, and there her strength, if not her courage, broke, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... that some menace lay beyond the rim of the valley. Would that other come up the path Shann had trapped? Or had he been wrong? Was the enemy already stalking him from the other beach? The grip of his stunner was slippery in his damp ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... also, is answered, for see, the roof is bare! The current swept the slippery raft, the maiden is not there! An angel band descended, her lover led the way, And now she joins her loved and lost ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... state of the case; you see on what a slippery place I stand, and how much need there is of being wary and cautious where and how I step. My fair name is in danger of being tarnished; my prospects for life blighted; my hopes destroyed and myself suspected of being the ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... experience had also led him to distrust the fidelity of Gonzalo's followers, or, possibly, the capacity of their chief to conduct them through the present crisis. Whatever may have been the motives of the slippery counsellor, Pizarro gave little heed to the suggestion, and even showed some resentment, as the matter was pressed on him. In every contest, with Indian or European, whatever had been the odds, he had come off victorious. He was not now for the first time to despond; and he resolved to ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... and with this much help was able to get along. And so, with the girl he loved upon one arm and the man he hated upon the other, Wilson made his way along the slippery subterranean galleries. He was practically carrying them both, but the lightness of the one almost made up for the burden of the other. The only thing for which he prayed was that none of those whimpering things he had loosed from their cells should cross ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... children have learned to masticate well before giving bananas, and then give only ripe ones. The flesh of the banana is so smooth and slippery that children often swallow it in big lumps, and then ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... with a belt and a pair of rough shoes, and descended the staircase. There were two ladies but they were placed under the care of the guide. The rock projects amazingly, the path is narrow and rather slippery being constantly wet with the spray; at one place we were told to keep our heads down and hold our breath. I must say it proved more of an adventure than I expected; it resembled a tremendous shower of rain blown at us with the utmost fury; nothing much is to be seen, and I scarcely think ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... She had left her sandwiches in the dog-cart, her servant had mistaken whisky for sherry when he was filling her flask; the day had clouded over, and already one brief but furious shower had scourged the curl out of her dark fringe and made the reins slippery. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... into a widening space thick with cedars. It ended in a bare slope of smooth rock. Here we dismounted to begin the ascent. It was smooth and hard, though not slippery. There was not a crack. I did not see a broken piece of stone. Nas ta Bega and Wetherill climbed straight up for a while and then wound round a swell, to turn this way and that, always going up. I began to see similar mounds of rock all around me, of every shape ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... connected with the interior by breakneck paths and by rude steps, slippery with green moss. The people seem to delight in standing, like wild goats, upon the dizziest of 'jumpy' peaks; we see boys perched like birds upon impossible places, and men walking along precipice-faces apparently pathless. The villages are joined ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... and finally bethought her to throw the whole thing overboard—tangled line, rod, and Mr. Eel. In his native element, the slippery chap in some mysterious way got off the hook; but the linen line was a mess, and that stopped the ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... severely, and was down all day, but we march, as I have always found that moving is the best remedy for fever: I have, however, no medicine whatever. We passed over the neck of Mount Kinyima, north-west of Moenekuss, through very slippery forest, and encamped on the banks of the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... rite and solemn ceremony, now fallen into decay. There was a story of one young wife who, getting no answer, left her desolate cottage at midnight and swam out to the Moon Rock at high tide. She had scrambled up its slippery sides and called her husband from the summit. She had called and called his name until he came. In the morning they were found—the wife, and the husband who had been called from the depth of the sea, floating together in one of the sea caverns at the base of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... that the pestilence was sent as a punishment for neglecting to rekindle 'new fire,' or because of the manner in which the fire then in use had been kindled. So, after all the fires were out, two suitable logs of slippery elm (Ulmus fulva) were provided for the new fire. One of the logs was from six to eight inches in diameter and from eight to ten feet long; the other was from ten to twelve inches in diameter and about ten feet long. About midway across the larger ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... dream. The parrot in the golden cage doth shout that it is time the tea to brew. The lustrous windows with the musky moon like open palace-mirrors look; The room abounds with fumes of sandalwood and all kinds of imperial scents. From the cups made of amber is poured out the slippery dew from the lotus. The banisters of glass, the cool zephyr enjoy flapped by the willow trees. In the stream-spanning kiosk, the curtains everywhere all at one time do wave. In the vermilion tower the blinds the maidens roll, for they have made ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... come back at once. But—how are you to get over?" she said, contemplating the slippery stones with some dismay. For Jack's fall had displaced more than one of them, and there was now a great gap between the stones in the deepest part of the ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... now, into a warm bit of country watered by the river, and Hadria drew rein. The spot was so pleasant that they alighted, tied the pony to a tree, and wandered over the grass to the river's edge. Hadria picked her way from stone to slippery stone, into the middle of the river, where there was comparatively safe standing room. Here she was suddenly inspired to execute the steps of a reel, while Valeria stood dismayed on the bank, expecting every moment, to see the dance end in ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... towards the bottomless pit. I at least had no illusions; but it was I, too, who a moment ago had been so sure of the power of words, and now was afraid to speak, in the same way one dares not move for fear of losing a slippery hold. It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... swallowing a dose of 4 to 6 lbs! Captain Hutton's friend testified that trucks to bear the sheep-tails were sometimes used among the Taimunis (north of Herat). This may help to locate that ancient and slippery story. Josafat Barbaro says he had seen the thing, but is vague as to place. (Aelian Nat. An. III. 3, IV. 32; Amoen. Exoticae; Ferrier, H. of Afghans, p. 294; J. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the rally in the last round had convinced his seconds that when it came to give-and-take hitting, their hardy and powerful man was likely to have the better of it. And then on the top of this came the rain. With the slippery grass the superior activity of Wilson would be neutralized, and he would find it harder to avoid the rushes of his opponent. It was in taking advantage of such circumstances that the art of ringcraft lay, and many a shrewd and vigilant second ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... how you steps out, sah," said the colored man. "De rocks am slippery, an' you kin twist an ankle widout ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... they climbed up the steepest places. To be sure they were so awfully tired that I couldn't help pitying them; but Uncle Doc had tried to persuade them not to walk, so that it was their own fault after all. You cannot imagine what a dreadful feeling it gives one to be climbing a slippery, rocky path, and know that a great heavy boy is pulling your horse backwards by the tail. Polly insisted that she heard her mule's tail break loose from its moorings, and on measuring it when she got back to camp she found it three inches ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Le Moyne did not laugh when he turned and saw her. He went out on the sugar-loaf rock, and lifted her bodily up its slippery sides. He had prodigious strength, ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... edge of the Carn, and there, where the last great boulder thrust itself forward over the sea, Sam scrambled off to the left, and lowered himself down upon a turfy ledge. Warning his master to leave his gun behind and beware of the slippery grass, he sidled out alongside the jutting slab, and suddenly ducked under it. The Lord Proprietor, following, crawled under the stone, and found himself staring into the mouth of the adit—a dark hole less than four feet in height, ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... in clefts of the rock. And from the limbs above floated down the scolding voices of lungoor, the black-faced grey-whiskered monkeys, who rebuked the intrusion of the earth-dwellers below. Where the path lay over rocks it was worn smooth and slippery by naked feet, the feet of pilgrims for a thousand years. On the right the mouth of a deep cave had been walled up by masonry. Within, so the legend ran, the High Priest of Mandhatta, centuries before, had imprisoned ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... few of the many arguments I usually employ to establish my point; but there is no pinning my friend down in an argument. He is such a slippery fellow that he wriggles off the pin and declares that these same orators, whose speeches I instance, spoke at less length than their published addresses seem to show. I hold the contrary to be the case, and there are many speeches of ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... account of the elements of speaking, and of the manner in which one may come to an understanding of ambiguous expressions, and of the principles of reasoning: then, after a few more things, it comes to the sorites, a very slippery and hazardous topic, and a class of argument which you yourself pronounced to ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... rock. The gallery twisted, and the thin shaft of daylight from the entrance was lost. The way sloped gently upward. The lanterns waged but a feeble battle against the darkness; Martin felt he was being crushed by that heavy, intense gloom. Their steps echoed upon the glasslike, slippery rock underfoot. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... wedding exhibition in June. The garden must be planted, the lawn graded, harrowed, rolled, seeded, and the grass up and growing, stumps got out and trees got in, conservatory made over, belts planted, holes filled,—and all by three very slippery sort of Irishmen who had rather any time be minding their own business than mine. I have back doorsteps to be made, and troughs, screens, and what not; papering, painting, and varnishing, hitherto neglected, to be completed; also ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... got shot an' ever'body were sho' de Chisolms done it. Ever'body were dat mad. Chisolm an' dem had to go to court. But dey were slippery as eels an' Walter Riley's name come out. (He were a Nigger.) Dey give out at de trial dat Walter were hired to shoot 'im by de Chisolm folks. Dat were not de reason, but dey was blood 'fore folks' eyes by ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... annotations. These were followed by some questions put to the conjurer, who, laying aside his black gown, and plucking off his white beard, exhibited to the astonished spectators the very individual countenance of the empirical politician Ferret, who had played our hero such a slippery trick ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... The slippery path that lies between truth and direct falsehood had always been fatally easy for her to follow; and she followed it now more from natural instinct, and from the child's dread of making people "cross," than from any deliberate ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... hung over the town. Svidrigailov walked along the slippery dirty wooden pavement towards the Little Neva. He was picturing the waters of the Little Neva swollen in the night, Petrovsky Island, the wet paths, the wet grass, the wet trees and bushes and at last the bush.... He began ill-humouredly staring at the houses, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... said than done. Do what he would, Joe could not get up to where I sat, holding out to him first a hand and then a foot. He tried walking and he tried crawling, but in vain; the rock beneath the shale was too steep and too smooth and too slippery. At length, at my suggestion, Joe threw the shovel up to me, when, on my lying flat and reaching downward as far as I could stretch, he succeeded in hooking the pick over the shoulder of the shovel-blade, after which he had no ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... insured a slight passage at arms. At present, this diverted their thoughts from what might be in store at the will of their mutual enemy, and it came with appalling suddenness. Each small boy was lifted, bidden to shut his eyes and mouth, then plunged downward into a barrel of some cold slippery stuff. Here he was soused vigorously up and down, until every portion of his skin was smeared with the stick mess; after which he was placed on his feet and once ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... flushed with the toil and the excitement; climbing the bed of the stream was no child's play, for ugly corners had to be passed, slippery rocks to be skirted, and many breakneck leaps to be effected. Her spirits rose as the spray from little falls brushed her face and the thick screen of the birches caught in her hair. When she reached ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... of air into his lungs. The next instant a great rock reared like a living thing in his face; he plunged against it, was beaten over it, and again he was going down—down—in that deadly clutch of maelstrom and undertow. Again he fought, and again he came to the surface. He saw a black, slippery wall gliding past him with the speed of an express train. And now it seemed as though a thousand clubs were beating him. Ahead of him were ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... gang of thieves, called "The Ugly Mug." When asked a disagreeable question, he always answered, "I'll ask my wife, my memory's so slippery."—Edward Stirling, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... that made the best of every thing: and this Don Dismal would attack his brother—"Oh, brother! brother! brother! what will this world come to?" "The same place it set out from this day twelve-month." "When will the nation's debt be paid {54}off?" "Will you pass your word for it?" "These are very slippery times—very slippery times." "They are always so in frosty weather." "What's become of our liberty?—Where shall we find liberty?" "In Ireland, to be sure." "I can't bear to see such times." "Shut your eyes then." ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... within his lodge. On came the Nicolas, and at last only one hill lay between them and the village of their enemies. To go around this hill would be many miles, so, leaving their horses at the foot, they began to climb its slippery side. At length they reached the top, but they did not know that this was a sheer cliff they had climbed, and that at its foot, between them and the Okanagan village, there ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... of this little place is exquisite. We went through some dozen of state-rooms, paddling along over the slippery floors of inlaid woods in great slippers, without which we must have come to the ground. How did his Royal Highness the Prince of Orange manage when he lived here, and her Imperial Highness the Princess, and their excellencies ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to another, he always picks out the smoothest going. Sometimes in winter he travels quite a bit. Then when he comes to a smooth hill, he slides down it on his stomach. By the way, Little Joe, haven't you a slippery ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... cries Amelia. "I am heartily sorry I ever consented to practise any deceit. I plainly see the truth of what Dr Harrison hath often told me, that, if one steps ever so little out of the ways of virtue and innocence, we know not how we may slide, for all the ways of vice are a slippery descent." ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... quickly enough. I'm going to try again." She felt into the bran for another egg. This time she struck the shell so hard that its contents splashed out sideways with an unexpected squirt and slid to the floor. She was ready to cry as she wiped up the slippery stuff, but there came to her mind some verses which Tippy had taught her long ago. And so determined had Tippy been for her to learn them, that she offered the inducement of a string of blue beads. The name of the poem was ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sun as chief divinity. Other gods among them are the river-god, rain-god, spring, wealth, hill-god, and smallpox-god. All their religious feasts are excuses for excess both in drinking and otherwise. One of their beliefs is that there is a river of hell, which flows around a slippery rock, up which climbs the one that would escape torment. Their method of sacrificing a human victim is to put him into the cleft of a tree, where he is squashed, or into fire. They seem to have an odd objection to shedding blood for this purpose, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... were invested with a particular interest and originality. They were in progress for a whole year, in a thick forest of almost impenetrable brushwood, split with numerous deep ravines and abrupt, slippery precipices. The humidity of the forest is excessive, the waters pouring down from high promontories. The soldiers who struggled here practically spent ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... The darkness did not worry him, but he walked somewhat more slowly than usual, for he knew that under the thin covering of fresh-fallen snow there lay the ice of the night before. He walked carefully, watching for the slippery places. ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... horror. He had seen his father go forth and not come back, his mother drop dead from an arquebuse shot as she leaned from the platform of the tower, his little sister fall with a slit throat across the altar steps of the chapel—and he ran, ran for his life, through the slippery streets, over warm twitching bodies, between legs of soldiers carousing, out of the gates, past burning farmsteads, trampled wheat-fields, orchards stripped and broken, till the still woods received him and he fell face down on the ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... to be spoken, I flew back to the house, anxious enough for a ride now. The little straw saddle seemed now as comfortable as a couch, nor was the bridle missed; for, nerved with that intense desire to find and speak to my love, I could have ridden securely on the slippery back of a giraffe, charging over rough ground with a pack of lions at its heels. Away I went at a speed never perhaps attained by any winner of the Derby, which made the shining hairs of my horse's mane whistle ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... alligators, mister," said the American, "I guess it's jest as I sed, and the slippery coon has skedaddled with the rest ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... Hebraic. He fastens each natural object to a theologic notion:—a horse signifies carnal understanding; a tree, perception; the moon, faith; a cat means this; an ostrich, that; an artichoke, this other; and poorly tethers every symbol to a several ecclesiastic sense. The slippery Proteus is not so easily caught. In nature, each individual symbol plays innumerable parts, as each particle of matter circulates in turn through every system. The central identity enables any one symbol to ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... down a slippery bank of pine-needles. There lay the pond, set in its little alp of green—only a pond, but large enough to contain the human body, and pure enough to reflect the sky. On account of the rains, the waters had flooded the ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... sin, when this message came to him, and, to his surprise, through the Europeans—"Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." At the same time he happened to dislocate his right arm by falling down the slippery side of his tank when about to bathe. He sent two of the children to the Mission House for Thomas, who immediately left the breakfast table at which the brethren had just sat down, and soon reduced the ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... to hear his angelic reasons completely, from the tumbling there was along this slippery street every hour, and I could see some people with ladders scaling the tower, and having reached the highest step fall headlong to the bottom. "To what place are those fools seeking to get?" said I. "To a place high enough," said he; "they are seeking to break into ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... secret, was it? He had tried to soap Baby, bit by bit, as he had seen Winny do, holding him, wrapped in a towel, on his knees—a disastrous failure. It was incredible how slippery he was.) ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... spic and span as they passed their general. Their rifles went up in salute as straight and accurately as if they had just come from quarters and were marching over a level parade ground, instead of over fields filled with shell holes and slippery with ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... had turned. But where were the boys? She looked about her. Out on the sands beyond the rocks on her right, a man was wading in the water with a net, shrimping. Close at hand another was gathering mussels for bait, and a gentleman was walking towards her over the slippery rocks, balancing himself as though he found it difficult to keep his feet; but these were the only people in sight. The gentleman was a stranger. He wore a dark-blue suit, with a shirt of wonderful whiteness, and Beth could not help noticing how altogether ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... prefer) the trunchions being set as big as the small of ones leg, and in length about two foot; whereof one would be plunged in the mud. This profound fixing of aquatick-trees being to preserve them steddy, and from the concussions of the winds, and violence of waters, in their liquid and slippery foundations. They may be placed at four or five foot distance, and when they have struck root, you may cut them, which will cause them to spring in clumps, and to shoot out into many useful poles. But if you plant smaller sets, cut them not till they are ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... were two hours away. San Pietro had climbed gallantly, with little silvery bells tinkling at his ears, to the summit of the mountain, and had descended, with conviction and with accuracy, planting firm little hard hoofs in the slippery path where the dark soil bore a coating of green grass and moss. For all their hard morning's work they were still on the confines of the Villa Gianelli, whose kingdom was partly a kingdom of ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... disturbed in the very depth of their midnight revel, on their arrival at such a scene as this. They stared on each other, and on the bloody work before them, with lack-lustre eyes; staggered with uncertain steps over boards slippery with blood; their noisy brawling voices sunk into stammering whispers; and, with spirits quelled by what they saw, while their brains were still stupefied by the liquor which they had drunk, they seemed like men walking in ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... walls in such places as my companions overlooked. Presently, under a large, bulging bluff, I saw a dark spot, which took the shape of a figure. This figure, I recollected, had been presented to my sight more than once, and now it stopped me. The hard climb up the slippery stones was fatiguing, but I did not hesitate, for I was determined to know. Once upon the ledge, I let out a yell that quickly set my companions in my direction. The figure I had seen was a dark, red ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... he thought perhaps the sun had been too much for him as he came along. Instead, too, of catching one of the cattle at once, as usual, he had the works of the world to get one, the beasts seemed as slippery as eels, and he was so dull in the head, he hardly knew what he was about. However, after a great deal of trouble, and losing his temper more than once, he managed to catch a fine calf, and tying its four feet together, he slung it round his ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... up on his hind legs and gnaw the standing plant. The management of a dry and slippery corn-ear at first presented some difficulty, but, as his muscles strengthened, he found himself able to sit up on his haunches and hold it squirrel-fashion in his fore-paws, nibbling, to begin with, ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... think the Reverend Panurgus O'Blareaway, incumbent of Lower Whitford, at all a sainted young man, but, on the contrary, a very vulgar, slippery Irishman; and she had, somehow, tired of her late favourite, Lord Vieuxbois; so she answered ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... recover her breath and strength for a long bold cast. The crag beneath her feet was trembling with the power of the flood below, and the white mist from the deep moved slowly, shrouding now, and now revealing, the black gulf and its slippery walls. For the last few months Miss Yordas had taken very little exercise, and seldom tasted the open air; therefore the tumult and terror of the place, in the fading of the sky and darkening of the earth, got hold of her more than they ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore |
