"Slimy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... capacity of a common ditch, and was almost hidden from view by the overhanging boughs and branches of the park trees on the opposite side, and the half- decayed trunks of former monarchs of the forest that filled its bed—a ditch covered with a superstratum of slimy, green water, lank weeds, and rank vegetation; and wherein, at flood time, urchin anglers could fish for eels and sticklebats, and, at ebb, the village ducks disport themselves ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... ocean. . . . I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles; and laid confounded with all unutterable slimy things, among reeds and Nilotic mud. . . . The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... oars!" shouted a gruff voice, at the foot of the steps, where the salt water, splashing on the snow, had laid bare the green and slimy moss. Two or three volunteers stumbled down the steps, and the first boat got away, swinging down-stream at once, only to be brought slowly back, head to wind. She hung motionless a few yards from the quay, each dip of the oars ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... slimy, and evidently containing gall. The animal becomes visibly thinner, obstinately refuses all solid food, and only manifests thirst. He begins to stagger as he walks; he withdraws himself from observation; he anxiously seeks some dark place where he may lay himself ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... up a stone from the roadside and aimed it at the slimy little body, but his throw erred, and the missile fell harmlessly into the wheat field beyond, startling a blackbird with scarlet marks, which soared suddenly above the bearded grain and vanished, with a tremulous cry ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... above the surface of the waters. Shell-fish cling to this lattice; crabs nestle in the hollow trunks; and the seaweeds, drifted to the coast by the winds and tides, remain suspended on the branches which incline towards the earth. Thus, maritime forests, by the accumulation of a slimy mud between the roots of the trees, increase the extent of land. But whilst these forests gain on the sea, they do not enlarge their own dimensions; on the contrary, their progress is the cause of their destruction. Mangroves, and other plants with which they live constantly in ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... 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 and then another for two ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... scales small, smooth, and imbedded; skin slimy, head and mouth very small, colour yellowish brown ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... forth from several mouths, rivers of boiling matter, which are imperceptibly leaving immense subterranean graves, wherein millions will one day perish! Look at the poisonous soil of the equator, at those putrid slimy tracks, teeming with horrid monsters, the enemies of the human race; look next at the sandy continent, scorched perhaps by the fatal approach of some ancient comet, now the abode of desolation. Examine the rains, the convulsive storms of those climates, where masses of sulphur, bitumen, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... five printed copies of this book to be distributed after his death. A virulent enemy of Sainte-Beuve was not too expressive when he declared that its purpose was "to leave on the life of this woman the gleaming and slimy trace which the passage of a snail leaves on a rose." Abominable in either case, whether or not the implication was unfounded, Sainte-Beuve's numerous innuendoes in regard to Mme. Hugo are an indelible stain on his memory, and his infamy not only cost him his most precious friendships, but ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... chained to a rock round which the heavy waters rose as a wall. He felt his own flesh rot and decay, perishing from his limbs piece by piece; and he saw the coral banks, which it requires a thousand ages to form, rise slowly from their slimy bed; and spread atom by atom, till they became a shelter for the leviathan: their growth, was his only record of eternity; and ever and ever, around and above him, came vast and misshapen things—the wonders of the secret deeps; and the sea-serpent, ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... herrings or 'alewives'; for the true herring does not run up into fresh water. Young shad are said to have teeth, and they live largely on insects, while the full-grown fish have no teeth, and feed chiefly on animalcules that form the greater part of the slimy growths that cover nearly everything that ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... any thought of evil or shame in connection with the specialized organs and functions of sex, let this illumination from on high cast that devil out of your cosmos forever. And if you turn away with soul offended from even 'the slimy gendering of the toad,' you dishonor God who once knew no higher creative formula and still blesses it with ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... with the music. But with us in the line there was intentness to remedy 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 ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... 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 a well. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... a picture of malignant joy, horrible to contemplate. The lips of his large mouth were compressed and bloodless. He came on with the quiet certainty and deadly ease of a slimy thing sure of ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... thundered against rocks of many tons in weight; the sound was deafening, for there was a great volume of water. We were two hours in making less than a mile, and that with danger, sometimes in the river and sometimes on the rock. There was that damp black smell of rocks covered with slimy vegetation, as near some huge waterfall where spray is ever rising. The air was clammy and cold. I cannot conceive how our horses managed to keep their footing, especially the one with the pack, and I dreaded ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... potion in the gloom, And the dark wood Is stifled with the pungent fume Of charred earth burnt to the bone That takes the place of air. Then sudden I remember when and where,— The last weird lakelet foul with weedy growths And slimy viscid things the spirit loathes, Skin of vile water over viler mud Where the paddle stirred unutterable stenches, And the canoes seemed heavy with fear, Not to be urged toward the fatal shore Where a bush fire, smouldering, with sudden roar Leaped on ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... morn I sprang from bed, As o'er the deadly brink The wretch, with courage of despair, Leaps from the slimy river-stair, By hopeless hope unthinking sped, Ere he can pause to think. Cold as the efforts of the dead, The needle-atom'd air, Impinged upon the limbs that shrink. On shivering shanks, and eyelids pink, And bound its bands about the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... the first time, I was imprest with the same idea. For several minutes I stood contemplating this proud and noble river—violent, but not furious; wild, but still majestic. It was swollen, and was magnificent in appearance, and was washing with its yellow mane, or, as Boileau says, its "slimy beard," the bridge of boats. Its two banks were lost in the twilight, and tho its roaring was loud, still ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... 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 Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... Cucurullo came up from the dungeon in a miserable state, unwashed, unshaven, their clothes stained with the slimy ooze of their prison; their hair was damp and matted, their eyes blinked painfully in the light, and their grimy cheeks were of a ghastly colour. But they were not otherwise much the worse for having spent several days and nights underground, for the supply ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... them surrounded the Glass Cat and clung to her claws and tail and ears and made her a prisoner. Then they forced her out of the tent and down to the banks of the stream. The monkeys had noticed that these banks were covered with thick, slimy mud of a dark blue color, and when they had taken the Cat to the stream, they smeared this mud all over the glass body of the cat, filling the creature's ears and eyes with it, so that she could neither see nor hear. She was no longer transparent ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... their heads dropped a mass of waving strands which enveloped both of them. The stuff was adhesive, slimy. Ross let out a choked cry as the lines tightened about his arms ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... being the corner-stone of human society has been made by some wiseacre in behalf of the goat. The plain truth is that only one animal can justly lay claim to such a distinction. At the threshold of human society and civilization lies the slimy figure of the snake, who persuaded man to purchase knowledge at the cost of innocence, a lesson which has been learned by heart and been worked out in all the "history of civilization," for verily "the trail of the serpent is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... the principal symptom, and the stools are either quite liquid or semi-fluid, bilious-looking, dirty-brown or clay-coloured, or mixed with slimy mucus. In some cases they resemble dirty water. Sometimes, as already said, a little blood will be found in the dejection, owing to congestion of the mucous membrane from liver obstruction. In case there be blood in the stools, a careful examination is always necessary ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... cities—then spreading themselves, impelled by the love of glory and zeal of proselytism, over distant countries; the other, reposing ever in luxurious ease and wealth on the rich soil, watered by their slimy river, never quitting it for a foreign clime or displaying, unless forced, the least change in their position or habits of life. The intellectual character, the metaphysical belief, and the religious sentiments and practices of the two nations were equally diverse; one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... thought that the water seemed foul; that her body would become tangled in slimy reeds and floating things; that when they found her she would be horrible to look upon. But even in this there was penance, a meriting of forgiveness, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... sum the freedmen raised $200,000.00! This was conclusive proof that emancipation was no mistake. Slavery was a twofold cross of woe to the land. It did not only degrade the slave, but it blunted the sensibilities, and, by its terrible weight, carried down under the slimy rocks of society some of the best white people in the South. Like a cankerous malady its venom has touched almost every side ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... to feel about with my hands; but instead of touching soft earth or bush I felt rough stones, wet and slimy as if coated with fine moss, and it had lately been raining. A faint musical drip, as of falling water, strengthened this notion; but I did not try to follow it out, for my head throbbed severely. So I lay still trying to rest, and gazing upward expecting ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... substance interposed between the true skin and the scarf-skin. This substance presents different appearances: and it is described sometimes as a sort of organized network or reticular tissue; at others, as a mere mucous or slimy layer; and it is odd that these somewhat incompatible ideas are both conveyed by the term reticulum mucosum given to the intermediate portion of the skin by its orignal discoverer, Malpighi. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... fleshless arms in the breeze. 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 ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... however, which seem—so dependent are we on first impressions—to be always bathed in a rain-cloud. It is quite impossible, for instance, for me to think of London Bridge save as a great reeking thoroughfare, slimy with thin mud, with piles of umbrellas crowding over it, like an army of turtles, and its balustrade steaming with wet. The charming little Dulwich Gallery, with its Bonningtons and Murillos, I remember as situated somewhere (for I could never find it again of my own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... what a tunnel means when you are in a train. But everything is quite different when you walk into a tunnel on your own feet, and tread on shifting, sliding stones and gravel on a path that curves downwards from the shining metals to the wall. Then you see slimy, oozy trickles of water running down the inside of the tunnel, and you notice that the bricks are not red or brown, as they are at the tunnel's mouth, but dull, sticky, sickly green. Your voice, when you speak, is quite changed from what it was out in the sunshine, and it is a long time ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... But they might do what they liked, and make their very best of it, as they fell away to nothing upon stones and mud. For now more important things began to open, the like of which never had been yielded up before—plots of slimy gravel, varied with long streaks of yellow mud, dotted with large double shells, and parted into little oozy runs by wriggling water-weeds. And here was great commotion and sad panic of the fish, large fellows splashing and quite jumping out of water, as their favorite ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... such an awfully nice place," said Marjorie, looking round at the slimy green walls which shone wet in ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... mistletoe, a plant of great fame for the use made of it by the Druids of old in their religious rites and incantations. It bears a very slimy white berry, of which birdlime may be made, whence its Latin name of viscus, It is one of those plants which do not grow in the ground by a root of their own, but fix themselves upon other plants; whence they have been humorously styled parasitical, as being hangers-on or dependants. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... in the lonely streets the infrequent wayfarer never met a carriage. Forty thousand horses had been eaten; dogs, cats and rats were now luxuries, commanding a high price. Ever since the supply of wheat had given out the bread was made from rice and oats, and was black, damp, and slimy, and hard to digest; to obtain the ten ounces that constituted a day's ration involved a wait, often of many hours, in line before the bake-house. Ah, the sorrowful spectacle it was, to see those poor women shivering in the pouring ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... charms have been enabled to silence people who have had the hardihood to throw odium on their superstitions. Believers in amulets and charms remind us that it is a well-ascertained fact in nature, that for every bane there is an antidote. Wherever the stinging nettle grows, the slimy stem of the dock is near; whenever the wasp stings, honey gathered by the industrious bee may be had, without going far, to put on the injured part; when the cold is most intense without, the fire ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... that? 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
... its natural state is a different-looking object from what we see in commerce, resembling somewhat the appearance of the jelly fish, or a mass of liver, the entire surface being covered with a thin, slimy skin, usually of a dark color, and perforated to correspond with the apertures of the canals commonly called "holes of the sponge." The sponge of commerce is, in reality, only the skeleton of a sponge. The composition of this ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... have been one of the fifteen. I'm not quite clear on that point. Indeed I'm somewhat muddled in the main; but I suspect the SQUIRE is up to some deed of infamy, and I have done my best to plumb its slimy depths." ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... when good will is shewed, Though't come to short The Actor may pleade pardon. Ile none now, Giue me mine Angle, weele to'th' Riuer there My Musicke playing farre off. I will betray Tawny fine fishes, my bended hooke shall pierce Their slimy iawes: and as I draw them vp, Ile thinke them euery one an Anthony, And say, ah ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the mud of ponds or rivers; and land-snails hide themselves in the ground or under moss and leaves. The heart then ceases perceptibly to beat, but respiration continues in a very faint degree. The common garden snail closes the mouth of his shell when he wants to hibernate, with a slimy covering; but he leaves a very small hole in it somewhere, so as to allow a little air to get in, and keep up his breathing to a slight amount. My experience has been, however, that a great many snails go to sleep in this way, and never wake up again. Either they get frozen ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... motion varies from light orange yellow to greenish yellow, in number, two to four times daily. Smell should never be offensive. Slimy mucous-like jelly passages indicate worms. Pale green, offensive, acrid motions indicate disordered stomach. Dark green indicate acid secretions and ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... o'clock, but the day had been a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city. Mud-colored clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, to my mind, something eerie and ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to Marjorie, while the dominie stood stock still in the road, like a man thunderstruck, repeating: "The Idiot Boy, the Female Vagrant, a pair?—and he was once my friend! A pair, a pair—the Female Vagrant, the Idiot Boy!—and that slimy, crawling, sickening caterpillar of a garden slug was once known to me! ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... 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 Sea 'n' runnin' his eyes aroun' for his place,—'jus' say when you want it,' he says. Well, Gran'ma ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... impelled by curiousity, ventured to do the same. The turbid water, swollen by the heavy rain, was rushing rapidly on below; and all other sounds were lost in the noise of its plashing and eddying against the green and slimy piles. There had once been a water-mill beneath; the tide foaming and chafing round the few rotten stakes, and fragments of machinery that yet remained, seemed to dart onward, with a new impulse, when freed from the obstacles which ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... men behind, however, stopped pushing when those in 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 the water. ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... philosophical old water- sprite, who showed his good taste in wanting to take up his abode in our conservatory. We even defended his personal appearance, praised the invisible-green coat which he wore on his back, and his gray vest, and solemn gold spectacles; and though he always felt remarkably slimy when we touched him, yet, as he would sit still and allow us to stroke his head and pat his back, we concluded his social feelings might be warm, notwithstanding a cold exterior. Who knew, after all, ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... act is reached, and drama merges again into allegory. In the wan light of the moon rag-pickers, men and women, are dragging their hooks through the slimy muck that flows through the open sewer beneath the fatal window. They sing mockingly to the moon. A flash of light from Fujiyama awakens a glimmer in the filth. Again. They rush forward and pull forth the body of Iris and begin to strip it of its adornments. ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Byrne went on alone. The snow of Sunday had turned to a fine rain which had lasted all of Monday and Tuesday. The sidewalks were slimy; wagons slid in the ooze of the streets; and the smoke from the little stoves in the street-cars followed them in depressing horizontal clouds. Cabmen sat and smoked in the interior of musty cabs. The women hod-carriers on a new building steamed like ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was just about as low and slimy a trick as he had ever heard, and the thought came and would not be denied, that if it was this leader he was to kill he could do it cheerfully and ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... like it now. I watched those trees with sadness at my heart. Millions of brown, ugly, villanous worms gnawed, gnawed, gnawed, at the poor little tender leaves and buds,—held them in foul embrace,—polluted their sweetness with hateful breath. I could almost feel the shudder of the trees in that slimy clasp,—could almost hear the shrieking and moaning of the young fruit that saw its hope of happy life thus slowly consuming; but I was powerless to save. For weeks that loathsome army preyed upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... meetings an eel stood up on end, and wriggled and squirmed lithely in every direction, and declared that, for his part, he went in for rainbows and hot water—how could I help seeing that he was still black and loved a slimy pool? ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... ooze at the bottom would be! Others look at the dancing, glittering surface, but you, if you are a wise man, will go down in the diving-bell sometimes, and for a while stop there at the bottom, and turn a bull's-eye straight upon all the slimy, crawling things that are there, and that would die if ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... softened hard hearts, bred generosity in cold ones, kindled emotion in dead ones, uplifted base ones, broadened bigoted ones, and made many and many a stricken one glad and filled it brimful of gratitude, figuratively spit upon in his unoffending coffin by this crawling, slimy, sanctimonious, self-righteous reptile! ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... people. Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes root; or if it does, it soon withers and dies. Its delicate fiber can not endure the stress and strain of the daily grind. Its soul is too complex to adjust itself to the slimy woof of our social fabric. It weeps and moans and suffers with those who have need of it, yet lack the capacity ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... the rocks on the sides of the cliffs: it is now ripe, of a pale red colour, about the size of the common gooseberry, and like it is an ovate pericarp of soft pulp enveloping a number of small whitish coloured seeds, and consisting of a yellowish slimy mucilaginous substance, with a sweet taste; the surface of the berry is covered with a glutinous adhesive matter, and its fruit though ripe retains its withered corolla. The shrub itself seldom rises more than two feet high, is much branched, and has no thorns. The leaves resemble ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... temporarily succumbing to the fascinations of a gentleman and regretting it bitterly afterward. What had become of the girl was a mystery. Hers might have been one of those nameless corpses which the tide swirls up on slimy river banks. The jury must remember, too, that the relation might not have actually passed into dishonor, it might have been just grave enough to smite the girl's conscience, and to induce her to behave as she had done. It was enough that her letter should have excited ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... a slimy old eel. There! be off with you; go back into the water," said Lane, as he shook the eel free ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... Bezesztan piazza. Everyone hastened away to close his booth, and the whole city seemed to be turned upside down. It was just as if a still standing lake had been stirred violently to its lowest depths, and all the slimy monsters and hideous refuse reposing at the bottom had come to the surface; for the streets were suddenly flooded by the unrecognised riff-raff which vegetates in every great town, though they are out of the ken of the regular and orderly inhabitants, and only appear in the light ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... pythons. The guests thought it was a curious mound; but the Maharajah recognised the reared heads of the young snakes and told his friends what the heap was. When they came closer, they could see that the long slimy bodies were all twisted together; and with an uncanny feeling, the sportsmen watched these serpents uncoil themselves from each other and glide away ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... "Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God knowing good and evil." It was true because by the use of this highest power of choice he would become like God, and through choosing he would know. It is cunningly implied with a sticky, slimy cunning that, by not eating, that likeness and knowledge would not come. That was the lie. The choice either way would bring both this element of likeness to God in the sovereign power of ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... the young potato-bugs, The caterpillars, and the slugs, The beetles striped with yellow lines, That spoil the tender melon-vines, And looked round with his blinking eyes For cabbage-worms and turnip-flies, Low-flying moths with downy wings, And slimy snails in shady nooks. It was the cruellest of things To kill poor Hop Toad ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... the trees of the park that morning, the white atmosphere adhered to the ground like a fungoid growth from it, and made the turfed undulations look slimy and raw. But Lady Constantine settled down in her chair to await the coming of the late curate's son with a serenity which the vast blanks outside ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... may be made that shall also act efficiently as flasks. Porous earthen jars are too brittle for long use, and their pores choke up if slimy water be put inside them. But the Arabs use a porous leather flask, called a Zemsemiya, which is hung on the shady side of the camel, and by evaporation keeps the water deliciously cool: it is a rather wasteful way of carrying water. Canvas ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... more power, and the racing machine continued to move. Soon it was at the edge of the ditch, and then, with something of a jerk, it came up on the roadway, leaving a trail of dirty water and slimy ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... 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 ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... acute diseases, whether they represent healing crises or disease crises, is perfectly natural, because the entire organism, including the mucous membranes of stomach and intestines, is engaged in the work of elimination, not assimilation. Nausea, slimy and fetid discharges, constipation alternating with diarrhea, etc., indicate that the organs of digestion are throwing off disease matter, and that they are not in a condition to take ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... more cautiously; the orange light of their lamp shining as they passed on the empty archways, and on the iron-barred windows, and slimy steps. And always this strange silence in the dead or sleeping city, and the monotonous plash of the oars, and the deep low cry of "Sia premi!" or "Sia stali!" to give warning of their approach. But, indeed, that warning was unnecessary; ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... be the place they call Paradise," said Betty. "I've heard Nan speak of it. I thought it was this," and she pointed to a slimy pool about four yards across, below them on the back campus. "That's the only pond ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... so completely overcame himself that he gave her his hand; but he drew it back immediately: he felt that he had never touched anything so slimy in his life; he thought he had taken hold of a frog. Philippina acted as if she had not noticed what he had done. But scarcely had he gone into his room, when she turned to Gertrude with a diabolic glimmer in her eyes, and, making full use of her vulgar voice, said: "Whew! ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... burns outside our tent had not been lighted at all; but a beam of light fell on the road, and a man's figure slipped across in a black robe sprinkled with gold ornaments which I saw glitter as the pale light of the lantern fell upon them—just as a slimy, black newt glides through a pool. I have good eyes as you know, and I will give one of them at this moment, if I am mistaken, and if the cat that stole into ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... there, with your hands in your pockets and your eye on the mean chance, what care you how much capital is represented by certificates issued? "That's played out," you say? You know it is, you slimy salamander, and so does PUNCHINELLO. You know that by the use of convertible bonds capital can be increased or diminished ad infinitum. Loan your millions to Erie, to save it from destruction or the Sheriff, (synonymous terms,) and you will derive ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... devotees succeed each other in prayer. This contains an enormous brass image of Buddha, 12 feet in height, thickly plastered with the pilgrims' offerings of gold-leaf. Behind the temple are the sacred tanks, whose green and slimy water is alive with turtles, too lazy or too well fed to eat the dainty morsels thrown to them by the onlookers, but which are pounced upon by hundreds of hawks, who often seize the tit-bits ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... before them, until they came to a great tract of desert which Regin said was the haunt of Fafnir. Sigurd now rode on alone until he met a one-eyed stranger, who bade him dig trenches in the middle of the track along which the dragon daily dragged his slimy length to the river to quench his thirst, and to lie in wait in one of these until the monster passed over him, when he could thrust his ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... where the experience of 1870-71, had produced a wariness of all things German, a limited number of men with penetrating, broadened vision, had beheld the fair exterior of Kaiserism, even while they recognized in the background, the slimy abode of the serpent. For years they had sounded the warning until at last their ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... speaking she turned her eyes to the water rushing past the hull, just as a dull, wallowing shape flashed by the bow, assuming form right under her eyes—a dark, soughing, coughing derelict, moving in the waves spinelessly, like a serpent; black, slimy, repulsive, with broken, hemp-littered masts and rusty chains clanking ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... chieftain[93] Is trailing to land, So flabby, so grimy, So sickly, so slimy,— The spots of his prime he Has rusted with sand; Crook-snouted his crest is That ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... know what a German dinner is like? Watery soup with knobby dumplings and pieces of cinnamon, boiled beef dry as cork, with white fat attached, slimy potatoes, soft beetroot and mashed horseradish, a bluish eel with French capers and vinegar, a roast joint with jam, and the inevitable 'Mehlspeise,' something of the nature of a pudding with sourish red sauce; but to make up, the beer and wine first-rate! ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... of that, and he and I commenced under my uncle's directions, who aided us in digging a pit about the size of the rhinoceros, the earth around being somewhat soft and slimy. In the meantime the water in our well had not only bubbled up, but settled down, and was perfectly sweet and clear. Under Mr Sedgwick's directions, we covered over the pit with boughs and leaves, so that the hollow ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... belonging to this group usually have a bitter taste and a slimy, soapy feeling. For our present purposes, the most important characteristic of a base is that it will neutralize an acid and in some measure hinder the damage effected by the former. If, as soon as an acid has been spilled on cloth, ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... explained? Malkiel the Second, after apparently endless wandering, found himself totally unable to proceed further. His legs gave way beneath him. His breath failed. His brain swam. He reeled, stretched forth his hands and clutched at the nearest support. This chanced to be a railing, wet, slimy, cold. He grasped it, leaned against it, and for a few moments remained where he was in a sort of trance. Then, gradually, full consciousness returned. He glanced up and beheld the black garden of a square. Somehow it looked familiar. He seemed to know those shadowy, leafless trees, ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... quite unfinished. Meant, I suppose, for surface and section of sea, with slimy rock at the bottom; but all ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... childhood I have loved to gaze into a spring. The water filled a circular basin, small but deep and set round with stones, some of which were covered with slimy moss, the others naked and of variegated hue—reddish, white and brown. The bottom was covered with coarse sand, which sparkled in the lonely sunbeam and seemed to illuminate the spring with an unborrowed light. In one spot the gush of the water violently agitated ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... transformation among the small wild folk. In the spring he is a dark, slimy, rather forbidding lizard in the pools; now he is more beautiful than the jewel-weed in the woods. This is said to be an immature form, which returns to the ponds and matures the next season; but whether it is the male or the female that assumes this bright hue, or both, I do not know. The ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... hoarckin' in the fog, and I says to my mate—boy by the name of 'Ucklebridge, only chiefly called Slimy, to distinguish him—I says—I says that was my guv'nor, safe and square, by the token of the sound of it. And then I catches him up in the fog, follerin' by the sound. My word, missis, he was bad! Wanted to holler me over the coals, he did, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... their drowning fellows. "He will do you an injury if you save him from the water" was one of their fears. In England, too, the north-country people speak of the River Sprite as Jenny Greenteeth, and children dread the green, slimy-covered rocks on a stream's bank or on the brink of a black pool. "Jenny Greenteeth will have thee if thee goest on't river banks" is the warning of a Lancashire ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... There was nothing monotonous about it but the blackness of darkness. To the touch it was a paysage accidente, a landscape full of surprises. Dead bodies were sprinkled over it. It was pockmarked with small shell-holes and pitted with large craters, many of them full of water, all slimy with mud. Phipps-Herrick nearly slipped into one of the deepest, but a lively kick warned his followers of the danger, and they pulled him ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... to him then, in that moment of his utter anguish, of the utter annihilation of the fantastic faith whereby he had lived for years? From the first he had been right, though with a magnificent lunacy. It was she, in very truth, who had been destined to slay his dragon. It was dead now, a vulgar, slimy monster, incapable of hurt, slain by the lightning flash of love, when his eyes met hers, a moment or two ago. In a confused way he ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... born one morning, Sat on a rose, the rosebud scorning. His wings of azure, jet, and gold, Were truly glorious to behold; He spread his wings, he sipped the dew, When an old neighbour hove in view— The snail, who left a slimy trace Upon the lawn, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... nursing and charitable sisterhoods, and the young medical accoucheurs in their fourth year, with whom I scraped acquaintance, I got to be quite well known in Gee's Court and could go about in safety. But one evening as I was entering the low-browed slimy archway by which it was approached from Oxford Street, a young policeman stopped me and asked me if I knew where I was going. I told him that I was quite intimate with the place and quite safe there. "Well, sir," he answered, "you know your own business best, but I wouldn't go along there ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... wharf and the main highway Ben was borne, and across an open meadow to a deep slimy frog-pond on the edge of a large swamp. Here he was dumped unceremoniously upon the ground, and ordered to remove his clothes. When he hesitated and looked helplessly about as if seeking for some avenue of escape, rough hands seized him and in a ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... to hold safe; there was no burden in sight. Half-consciously he felt the earth once more beneath his feet, but he could not stand. He fell face forward into the water again at his first attempt; and again the strong hand pulled him up and half-carried him over some slimy rocks. It was an endless journey before the strong hand would let him sit or lie down, but at last he was allowed ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... There was also the driver and M.'s luggage. M. had a great deal of luggage. We were horribly cramped. It rained with increasing fury. We passed through a region of pallid mud, chalk, I suppose, which covered us and the car with a slimy paste. But I enjoyed the drive. Sentries, French and English, challenged us, and I could see the rain glistening on their bayonets in the light of our lamps. We rushed through villages and intensely gloomy woods. Sign-posts shone ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... wet weather—they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves. The clash and glare of sundry fiery Works upon the river-side, arose by night to disturb everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that poured out of their chimneys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... first fierce onslaught. It lasted long and when it had gone another silence, as ominous as the preceding one, followed. The rain ceased entirely and the pony again stepped forward, making his way slowly, for the trail was now slippery and hazardous. The baked earth had become a slimy, sticky clay which clung tenaciously to ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer |
