"Snail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... muffled through the doors and partition. 'Look here, now,'—in a coaxing tone,—'I don't like to be cross; but though I'm so bad afther the sickness, I'd set ye back in your little hole there at the fut of the stairs as aisy as I'd put a snail in its shell.' ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... struggling desperately with a great snail, clinging to one of its horns, and nearly breaking his poor little back in his efforts to drag it over a ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... between two paragraphs of a story. I spent three months on that little trip after goat-feathers, and in the meantime Arnold Bennett probably wrote three novels of several hundred thousand words each, gained an international reputation, and passed me on the road to fame like an airplane passing a snail. George Ade kept pegging away at his "Fables" with the regularity of a day laborer, and Peter Finley Dunne ground out his "Mister Dooley" like ...
— Goat-Feathers • Ellis Parker Butler
... king and attendant are enveloped in long robes, in which there is no indication of folds, though fringes and tassels are elaborately rendered. The faces are of a strongly marked Semitic cast, but without any attempt at portraiture. The hair of the head ends in several rows of snail-shell curls, and the king's beard has rows of these curls alternating with more natural-looking portions. Little is displayed of the body except the fore-arms, whose anatomy, though intelligible, is coarse and false. As for minor matters, such as the too high position of ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... on the floor. Two of the Germans sat in the cushioned seat while the two linemen, the one who had been hit still unconscious, were pitched in beside him. The other two Germans were in front, and the car began to move at a snail's pace. The man beside the driver began speaking in German, his companion replied. But one of the two ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... with 2.9 per cent. increase, and Nebraska, with only 0.7 per cent., showed the slowest progress, the figures resulting in considerable part from padded returns in 1890. Vermont, Delaware, and Maine crawled on at a snail's pace. In numerical advance New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois led. Texas marched close to them, overhauling Massachusetts. In percentage of increase the southern, central, and western ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... a goose ring a hog, Fie! man, fie! I see a goose ring a hog, Who's the fool now? I see a goose ring a hog, And a snail that bit a dog; Thou hast well drunken, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... books which I gave him, Herr Lazarus of Ravensburg has given me a big fish scale, five snail shells, four silver medals, five copper ones, two little dried fishes and a white coral, four reed arrows and another white coral. I changed 1 florin for expenses, and like-wise 1 crown. I have dined alone so many times: IIIIIIIII. The factor of Portugal has given ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... and Bawly saw that both the sly creature's front feet were lame from the rheumatism, like Uncle Wiggily's, so the fox couldn't run at all. Bawly knew he could easily hop away from him, as the sly animal couldn't go any faster than a snail. ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... "thou dreamest already that our men-at-arms are in thy refectory and thy ale-vaults. But do me one cast of thy holy office, and, come what list of others, thou shalt sleep as safe in thy cell as a snail within ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... (inactivity) 683; drawl; creeping &c v., lentor^. retardation; slackening &c v.; delay &c (lateness) 133; claudication^. jog trot, dog trot; mincing steps; slow march, slow time. slow goer^, slow coach, slow back; lingerer, loiterer, sluggard, tortoise, snail; poke [U.S.]; dawdle &c (inactive) 683. V. move slowly &c adv.; creep, crawl, lag, slug, drawl, linger, loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c (be inactive) 683; grovel, worm one's way, steal along; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... same in all places, and even during the journeys taken by their Majesties, who were thus never separated, except for a few minutes at a time. They passed their lives in one long tete-a- tete. When they travelled it was at the merest snail's pace, and they slept on the road, night after night, in houses prepared for them. In their coach they were always alone; when in the palace it ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... members of the animal kingdom in virtue of certain apparently slight though really fundamental resemblances which they present. But a man and a fish are members of the same sub-kingdom Vertebrata, because they are much more like one another than either of them is to a worm, or a snail, or any member of the other sub-kingdoms. For similar reasons men and horses are arranged as members of the same Class, Mammalia; men and apes as members of the same Order, Primates; and if there were any animals more like men than they were like any of the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... monster swam slowly by the motion of its long and strong legs, thrusting out two short, hornlike antennae over the top of its mask. It seemed to be eyeing a snail-shell on a stem above, and waiting for the snail's soft body to emerge from the citadel; when on a sudden, through the stems, it caught sight of the basking tadpole. Instantly it became motionless, and sank, like a waterlogged twig, to the level of the mud. It crept around, effacing itself ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... It is the greatest spectacular night the American knows. The noisy, good-natured crowds in the streets, the jostling, snail-moving crowds; the illuminated canvas-sheets in front of the newspaper offices; the blare of tin horns, the cries, the yells, the hoots and hurrahs; the petty street fights; the stalled surface cars; ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... said Pepsy. "If people have something the matter with their hips you can't fix them. Because, anyway, if they're going to die on a Friday even snail water won't ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a warrior. Go back to thy people, and tell them what return the Sagamore of the Pequots makes for thy breach of hospitality. His promise to his brother saves thy life this time. But, beware! A Sagamore does not forget. Be a snail that keeps its head within its shell. If the snail puts it out, Sassacus will step upon ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... in command. Captain Russell led his half Company 500 yards straight across the front, with two scouts on either side, checking. At every five yards a man dropped and was placed, facing his proper front. They moved slowly, snail pace, but only three times in the 500 yards had the line to drop flat, until the last man was placed. The next thing was to get in touch with "A" Company, who were putting out the platoon to guard "B" Company's left flank. ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... of the earth creep on at snail's pace: the Republic thunders past with the rush of an express," says a recent American writer. "Think of it!" he continues; "a Great Britain and Ireland called forth from the wilderness, as if by magic, in less than the span of a man's few days ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... out, meaning to anticipate his ring. A vague foreboding drove the blood from her lips as she stood waiting at the open hall-door. Seeing the streaming light, the boy managed to accelerate his snail's pace. ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... guilty. At other times, a bar of red hot iron was passed along the leg, or the arm was thrust into scalding water, and if the natural effect followed, the person's head was immediately struck off. Snail shells, applied to the temples, if they stuck, inferred guilt. When a dispute arose between man and man, the plan was, to place shells on the heads of both, and make them stoop, when he, from off whose head the shell first ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... hair, full of duck weed, and tangled With snail shells, and moss and eel-grass It was, and it straggled and dangled Over forehead and shoulders—alas, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... glance in her direction she perceived her tall figure swaying from side to side, as if under an intolerable strain of feeling. Her eyes were on the clock, the hands of which seemed to creep with snail-like pace along the dial, when unexpectedly, and a full minute before the minute hand had reached the stroke of five, Violet caught a movement on her part, saw the flash of something round and white show for an instant ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... of amorous intelligence, awoke the lady's fantasy, who, half laughing and half smitten, repeated "To-morrow," and dismissed him with a gesture which the Pope Jehan himself would have obeyed, especially as he was like a snail without a shell, since the Council had just deprived him of ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... he flipped a rosebud covered with blight, kicked off a snail which was crawling on the path; then, halfway down the path, he suddenly raised his head and gave a look ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... it make to me who he belongs to? I don't care if he belongs to Vanderbilt, or Aster'ses family. Principle—that is what I am a workin' on; and the same principle that would hender me from buyin' a feller that was poor as a snail, would hender me from buyin' one that had the riches of Creshus; it wouldn't make a mite of ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... distant, and that on this far frontier of the solar system the sun could not appear to it larger than the blaze of a tallow candle. To us it was wholly incredible how, in that dim remoteness, it could still hold true to the central force and follow at a snail-pace, yet with unvarying exactitude, its stupendous orbit. Clemens said that heretofore Neptune, the planetary outpost of our system, had been called the tortoise of the skies, but that comparatively ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... longer the traveller goes at a snail's pace through the deep sand over the heath; the railroad conveys him in a few hours to Altona and Hamburg. The circle of my friends there is increased within the last years. The greater part of my time I spent with my oldest friends Count Hoik, and the resident ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... good, that nobody drinks, and that does not run down in brooks, upon the banks of which kumara and trees grow. My heart is all rock, all rock, and no good thing will grow upon it. The lizard and the snail run over the rocks, and all evil runs ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... Scottish Episcopalians have so recently adopted as the characteristic vignette of their service-book. The toad and the newt had crept over it, and it had borrowed a new tint of brilliancy from the slime of the snail. Destruction had run riot along the walls of this parish church. There were carvings chipped and mutilated, as if in sport, less apparently with the intention of defacing, than rendering them contemptible and grotesque. A huge cross of stone ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... three diminutive houses on wheels drawn by a huge motor. What their end and purpose might be, is imaginable. If it is for the comfort of the High Command en campagne, the great clumsy procession rivaling the speed of a snail is a heap of trouble ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... snail, this means Chinamen, it does there is no doubt that to be right is more than perfect there is no doubt and glass is confusing it confuses the substance which was of a color. Then came the time for discrimination, it came then and it was never mentioned it was so triumphant, ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... lived a very lonely and happy life; and as they had no children themselves, they had adopted a little common snail, which they brought up as their own; but the little one would not grow, for he was of a common family; but the old ones, especially Dame Mother Snail, thought they could observe how he increased in size, and she begged father, if he could not see it, that he would at least feel ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... spring, The day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled: The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven— All's right ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... inching along, At the pace of a snail, we are inching along, Our horses are hardy, our camels are strong, We all shall reach ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... wardens of your farms, Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, And from your harvest keep a hundred harms; Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, And crying havoc on the slug and snail." —FROM "THE ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... same crustacean has a parasite living under its shell, a degenerated form of a snail that has lost all powers of movement. A true parasite that takes food from its host's body and gives nothing in return. Inside this snail's gut there is a protozoan that lives off the snail's ingested food. Yet this little ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... three miles per hour; the engines needing to be just started, and then stopped again for a few minutes in order to keep the speed down to this very low limit. But they were all as yet so new to Arctic scenery—everything was so entirely novel to them—that even this snail's pace failed to prove wearisome, especially as ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... there a week ago. All his letters were addressed to his club in Piccadilly. I drove thither. How has mankind contented itself for these thousands of years with a horse as its chief means of locomotion? Oh, the exasperation I suffered behind that magnified snail! I dashed into the club. Mr. Pasquale had not been there all day. No, he was not staying there. It was against the rules to ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... missed the long walks on which, from puppyhood, he had always accompanied the Mistress and the Master. Unknown to the old dog, these walks had been shortened, mercifully, and slowed down, to accommodate themselves to Lad's waning strength: But the time came when even a half-mile, at snail-pace, over a smooth road, was too much for his ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... The Snail he lives in his hard round house, In the orchard, under the tree: Says he, "I have but a single room; But ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... year's flight I count like miser's gold; I keep the "watches of the night," I wait until the morning light Its glories snail unfold. ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... watering her sweet-peas and mignonette; had inspected each of the four standard roses beside the front gate in search of green-fly; had caught a snail sallying forth to dine late upon her larkspurs, and called to Cai Tamblyn to destroy it; had, in short, performed all her ritual for the cool of the day; and was removing her gardening gloves when a vehement knocking agitated the front door, and Scipio hurried to announce that ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... laughed as low And fine as the whine of a mus-kee-to! I kept still—watchin' him closer—and I noticed a little guitar in his hand, Which he leant 'ginst a little dead bee—and laid His cigarette down on a clean grass-blade; And then climbed up on the shell of a snail— Carefully dusting his swallowtail— And pulling up, by a waxed web-thread, This little guitar, you remember, I said! And there he trinkled and trilled a tune— "My Love, so Fair, Tans in the Moon!" Till presently, out of the clover-top He seemed to be singing to, came k'pop! The purtiest, daintiest ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... Miss Digges, "Miss Mowbray sometimes gallops as if the lark was a snail to her pony—and it quite ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... acting as his own chauffeur, Margaret would have been sitting beside him in front. Instead, she was behind him, in the body of the car, and had evidently been talking with him over the back of the seat. The big machine, too, was moving at a snail's pace, clearly in order that they might talk at leisure. In other words, Logotheti had arranged a secret meeting with Margaret, with her consent; and that could only mean one thing. The Greek had gained enough influence over her to make her do ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... went down in the west; a long bar of dusky gray outlined a cloud low upon the horizon in the northeast. She was on the verge of collapse. Her skin, the inside of her mouth, were hot and dry. She had to walk along at snail's pace or her heart would begin to beat as if it were about to burst and the blood would choke up into the veins of her throat to suffocate her. A terrible pain came in her side—came and went—came and stayed. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... of the train, and the snail's pace of the taxicab through the traffic, it would be quite six o'clock before she reached Mrs. Hetty Hills' house in Washington Square; he would be absolutely ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... "A snail, sir," repeated the youth. "I've got a book on natural history, and I've just been reading about them. I saw this one as I was passing, and I went inside to study its habits. They are very ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... clasped her robe to draw her back, but she turned on him with the spear, whereon he shrank back into his litter like a snail into his shell and left her alone. So following the steep path they marched on, and after them came the two litters with the priests, carried by all the bearers who could still stand, for these old men weighed no more than children. From far below them ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... primitive maternal responsibility, she gave no more thought to them than a thrush gives to its fledglings when she has educated them to their first flights, and to the useful knack of cracking a snail ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... shock to her. She paddled along shore quite near them for a while, trying to be resigned to it. And then she waddled out on the grassy bank, and fed them with some newts, and a tadpole, and a few blue-bottle flies, and a snail, and several other delicacies, which they seemed to enjoy quite as much as if they had been young ducks. And then Quackalina, seeing them quite happy, struck out for the very middle of the pond. She would have one ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... on my list of friends (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path; But he that has humanity forewarn'd, Will tread aside, and let the reptile live. Ye, who love mercy, teach your sons To ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... time of the ice blockade from the 9th of December to the 13th, the slopes in front of the lines were a continuous glare of ice, so that movements away from the roads and broken paths could be made only with the greatest difficulty and at a snail's pace. Men and horses were seen falling whenever they attempted to move across country. A man slipping on the hillside had no choice but to sit down and slide to the bottom, and groups of men in the forts and ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... bought a dress at the shop. No one should say of her, it was easy for a snail to live in a castle! before they did what was irrevocable. They are little better than ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... asleep. She wakened with a start to find that the coach had halted to apply the brakes, at the top of the precipitous hill that led down to the railway township. In a two-wheeled buggy this was an exciting descent; but the coach jammed on both its brakes, moved like a snail, and seemed hardly ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... Black Cat and the Sable, was given me by Mrs. W. Wallace Brown.[9] The original was told into the phonograph in Passamaquoddy by Peter Selmore, in the presence of Noel Josephs. A bark picture of Pookjinsquess leaving the island, representing the gulls, and Black Cat on the back of the Snail, was made by Josephs. A copy of this picture is given at the end ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... this direction is small compared to the actual needs of an efficient national organization, and considering the mass of interest and prejudice which it must continue to overcome, it can hardly continue to progress at more than a snail's pace. The great obstacle to American national fulfillment must always be the danger that the American people will merely succumb to the demands of their local and private interests and will permit their political craft ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... beautiful caverns we may make aquariums, and transplant as many animal-flowers as we wish. Wherever we place them their fleshy, snail-like foot spreads out, takes tight hold, and the creature lives content, patiently waiting for the Providence of the sea to send food to ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... that there is a way for you and me to throw this fellow down. Simple enough, if you are on your guard. Did you notice how Jesus handled him? He quoted Scripture to him. Scripture to the devil is just like salt on a snail. He can't stand it. ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... soul and passions, at having to deprive themselves of so fine a show. Then, as all the life of Paris had been drawn into the great artery of the boulevard, there began through the deserted and silent streets—a capricious and irregular drive—the snail-like progress of a cab taken by the hour. First touching the extreme points of the Faubourg Saint-Martin and the Faubourg Saint-Denis, returning again towards the centre, and at the conclusion of circuits and dodges finding always the same obstacle in ambush, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... tied up in a cotton pocket-handkerchief. Occasionally you pass a deal table, on which are exposed pen'orths of pickled salmon (fennel included), in little white saucers: oysters, with shells as large as cheese-plates, and divers specimens of a species of snail (wilks, we think they are called), floating in a somewhat bilious-looking green liquid. Cigars, too, are in great demand; gentlemen must smoke, of course, and here they are, two a penny, in a regular authentic cigar-box, with a lighted tallow ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... could go with you," cried a voice from the road-side. It was Fred, who had not been able to finish his work before, and who had only painted his last snail just in season to throw his now illustrated list ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... Helston, dusk had fallen. She found a carriage that would drive her the twelve miles to the coast. It was a quiet, grey evening and as they jolted slowly along the dusty roads and climbed the steep hills at a snail's pace, she leaned back too tired to feel anything any longer. And now they were out upon the moors where the gorse was breaking into flowers; and now, over the sea, she saw at last the great beacon of the Lizard lighthouse sweeping the country with its vast, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance? Will you, won't you, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... ground, climbing almost hidden in the withered grass underfoot. Poterloo points out with his foot this bit of abandoned track, and smiles; "That, that's our railway. It was a cripple, as you may say; that means something that doesn't move. It didn't work very quickly. A snail could have kept pace with it. We shall remake it. But certainly it won't go any ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... goose ring a hog, And a snail bite a dog! I saw a mouse catch a cat, And a cheese eat a rat. Fie, man, fie. Who's ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... for ants; but we do not go the length of some of their historians, or believe them to be, any more than ourselves, infallible. We have seen a laborious ant (magni Formica laboris) tugging a snail-shell (for some reason only known to himself) up a hill, stopping to take breath, and going cheerily to work again till he had nearly accomplished his ascent, and found himself on the very edge of its summit. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... sending this letter by the packet of the 24th inst., and am in hopes of sending with it some intelligence from those from whom I have been so long expecting something. Everything moves at a snail's pace here. I find delay in all things; at least, so it appears to me, who have too strong a development of the American organ of 'go-ahead-ativeness' to feel easy under its tantalizing effects. A Frenchman ought to have as many lives as a cat to bring to pass, on ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... how old they were, but they could very well remember that there had been a great many more of them; that they had descended from a large family. They led a very retired and happy life and, as they had no children, they had adopted a little common snail which they brought up as their own child. But the little thing would not grow, for he was only a common snail, although the mother declared that he was getting too large for his shell. And when the father noticed how small their child was, ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... the Ottoman kingdom, he avoided their camp, dexterously inclined to the left, occupied Caesarea, traversed the salt desert and the river Halys, and invested Angora; while the Sultan, immovable and ignorant in his post, compared the Tartar swiftness to the crawling of a snail. He returned on the wings of indignation to the relief of Angora; and as both generals were alike impatient for action, the plains round that city were the scene of a memorable battle, which has immortalized the glory of Timur ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... sisters had to slacken their steps to a snail's pace as they approached the great shop. They had a full view of the interior, though it was a little dark, unless to the most modern taste. There was an air of old-fashioned substantiality, comfort, and something like modest dignity about the long-lasting, glossy ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... stars, but what might she expect me not to do? And what was an Occidental, a city man, before her? She retired behind a bird's-nest fern, on the long, lanceolate leaves of which were the shells of the mountain snail. At her feet was the bastard canna, the pungent root of which makes ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... side in a long spirally-coiled band, forming the wall of a subcylindrical cavity. The cavity of the tube of Helicopsyche, composed of grains of sand, is itself spirally coiled, so that the case exactly resembles a small snail-shell in shape. One species of Limnophilus uses small but entire leaves; another, the shells of the pond-snail Planorbis; another, pieces of stick arranged transversely with reference to the long ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... us are tall and others short, some straight and others crooked, some strong, others feeble; some of us run, others walk, others snail it. But all, all have their feet upon the same level of the common earth. And America's worst enemy is he—or she—who by word or look encourages another to think otherwise. Head as high as you please; but feet always upon the common ground, never upon anybody's shoulders or neck, even though ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... chain faith daisy wait main paint daily nail brain faint plainly pail drain snail waist pain claim frail complain pain train praise sailor aim plain quail raise maid ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... Sprinkle out of flower bells Mortal sense entrapping spells; Make no sound On the ground; Strew and lap and lay around. Gnat nor snail Here assail, Beetle, slug, nor spider here, Now descend, Nor depend, Off from ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail. "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven— All's ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... thinness. We should not have cared about this if it were not that we could look, unseen ourselves, at the infrequent passer-by, for the hedge grew luxuriantly. Further down it became partly a clay bank, and there on the coarse grass used to hang snail-shells of all sizes, and, as I remember them, of shining gold and silver. The inhabitant was the drawback to all that beauty, yet when we found an empty house, it was cold, dull, and ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... said the hare. "Justice must still be carried out, even when one has relations and good friends among the prize committee; but that the snail should have received the second prize, I consider almost ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... grown, the larva builds for itself a snail-shaped, fairly firm case, fastened by a slender girdle of silk to a piece of wood or other support. Keep this over winter, and in March, or early April, the black-and-blue-and-gold ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... turn capitalists yourselves for a while, you hard-working farmers. Money is easy and credit long, now. Take your chance at it and make five hundred per cent on your investments. I'm ready to take subscriptions for stock in this new town right now. Why not stop this snail's pace of earnin' and go to livin' like gentlemen—like some Careyville men I know who own hundreds of acres they never earned and they won't improve so's to ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... flying at a snail's pace but a few feet above the ground—literally feeling our way along through the darkness, for both moons had set, and the night was black with the clouds that are to be found only at ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... an army upon the land, A navy upon the seas, Creeping along, a snail-like band, Or waiting the wayward breeze; When I saw the peasant faintly reel, With the toil which he faintly bore, As constant he turned at the tardy wheel, Or tugged at the ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... middle-class cousinry seizes a victim, he is so carefully gagged and bound that complaint is impossible; he is smeared with slime and wax like a snail in a beehive. This invisible, imperceptible tyranny is upheld by powerful reasons,—such as the wish to be surrounded by their own family, to keep property in their own hands, the mutual help they ought to lend each other, the guarantees given to the administration by the fact that their agent is ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... the famous "Georgetown Loop," crept at a snail's pace—for that is the natural gait of the burro—through the town of Silver Plume, and pursued our leisurely journey toward the beckoning, snow-clad heights beyond. No, we did not hurry, for two reasons: First, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... and charlatans to tell their fortunes, when a little wine is clearer than the most mystic ball of crystal. Before the bottle the priests of Egypt and the Delphic oracle seem as faint, my son, as the echoes in a snail shell. Palmistry and astrology—let us fling them into the whirlpool of vanity! But give a man wine enough, and any observer can tell his possibilities. A touch of it—and where are the barriers with which he has surrounded himself? Another drop, and how futile are all the ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... and a little past sunrise, but there was no hint of early summer freshness in the noxious air of the sleeping-car as it toiled like a snail over the infinity of prairie. From behind the green-striped curtains of the berths, now the sound of restless turning and now a long-drawn sigh signified the uneasy slumber due ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... broken trees and tangled underbrush; rising swift on one side of a windfall without knowing what lies on the other side till he is already falling; driving like an arrow over ground where you must follow like a snail, lest you wrench a foot or break an ankle,— finds himself asking with unanswered wonder how any deer can live half a season in the wilderness without breaking all his legs. And when you run upon a deer at night and hear him go ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... afraid of being there, In the little green orchard; Why, when the moon's been bright, Shedding her lonesome light, And moths like ghosties come, And the horned snail leaves home: I've stayed there, whispering and listening there, ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... travelled a thousand feet, that is, three hundred arms' length, which is the sixth of a mile. Thus the course of the sun during twenty-four hours would have been the sixth part of a mile, and this venerable snail, the sun, would have travelled twenty-five arms' length in ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... a roadside ditch or pool in spring-time, take from it any bit of stick or straw which has lain undisturbed for a time. Some little worm-shaped masses of clear jelly containing specks are fastened to the stick: eggs of a small snail-like shell-fish. One of these specks magnified proves to be a crystalline sphere with an opaque mass in its centre. And while you are looking, the opaque mass begins to stir, and by-and-by slowly to turn upon its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... loiterers. The shop windows were as full as ever, the toilettes of the women as wonderful. Mankind, though khaki-clad, was plentiful. The narrow thoroughfare was so crowded that his taxicab went only at a snail's crawl, and occasionally he heard scraps of conversation. Two pretty girls were talking to ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the dull insensibility of a horse who does not lash his tail when the whip cuts him!... How many times I have been happy and hopeful, and have made enemies and humbled myself for nothing! How many times I have taken flight like an eagle—and returned crawling like a snail whose shell has been crushed!... Where have I not been! What roads have I not travelled!... And the roads are often dirty,' added Rudin, slightly turning away. 'You know ...' he was continuing.... 'Listen,' interrupted Lezhnyov. 'We used once to ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... Silenus, with the usual peculiarities of figure ascribed to the jolly god rather exaggerated, and an owl sitting on his head between two huge horns, which support stands for lamps. Another represents a flower-stalk growing out of a circular plinth, with snail-shells hanging from it by small chains, which held the oil and wick; the trunk of a tree, with lamps suspended from the branches; another, a naked boy, beautifully wrought, with a lamp hanging from one hand, and an instrument for trimming ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... answer. In his last, of 31 closely written sides of note-paper, he informs me, with reference to my obstinate silence, that though I think myself and am thought by others to be a mathematical Goliath, I have resolved to play the mathematical snail, and keep within my shell. A mathematical snail! This cannot be the thing so called which regulates the striking of a clock; for it would mean that I am to make Mr. Smith sound the true time of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... and where it is most expedient to sow it, for some lands are best suited for hay, some for corn, some for wine and some for oil. So also should be considered the forage crops like basil, mixed fodder, vetch, alfalfa, snail clover and lupines. All things should not be sown in rich land, nor should thin land be left unsown, for it is better to sow in light soil those things which do not require much nourishment, such as snail clover and the legumes, except always chick peas (for ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... upland country of Utah, but a naked and bony world of colored rock and sand—a painted desert of heat and wind and flying sand and waterless wastes and barren ranges. But it did not daunt Slone. For far down on the bare, billowing ridges moved a red speck, at a snail's pace, a slowly moving dot of color ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... which led towards the common. This lane was scarcely wider than a path, and was only divided from the grounds of the villa by a ditch and a slight railing. I was intently occupied in examining an ant's nest, and the various evolutions performed by its black citizens on the sudden fall of a snail among them, which had dropt off a branch of dog-roses while I was gathering it, when all at once a sound as of many people running, joined to loud cries and vociferations, caught my ear. There was something ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... trying to tell you all the shameful things he has done in all these years. There is never a year goes by without his doing something dreadful; and he has made everybody miserable at one time or other by killing their friends or relations, from the snail to the partridge. He is quite merciless, and spares no one; why, his own children are afraid of him, and it is believed that he has pecked several of them to death, though it is hushed up; but people talk about it all the same, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... as your hand, with a row of holes along the edge, and a lining of brilliant black mother-of-pearl. These were lying about in heaps mixed with white mother-of-pearl shells, as big as your two fists, and shaped like a snail-shell. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... have my own views in the matter.— Besides, there's something else. You have been exceedingly indelicate. You took advantage of my ignorance. You let me think you were a rose-beetle and yesterday the snail told me you are a tumble-bug. A considerable difference! He saw you engaged in—well, doing something I don't care to mention. I'm sure you will now admit that I must take back ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... a moving square of light through the high grating across the floor of the cellar. The damp walls became dimly visible with shining snail-tracks on them, and his great form leaning negligently upon a cask, his hand arrested in the pulling of his long beard, his eyes gleaming upon her, sardonic and amused. The light twisted round abruptly ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... blacksmith had to bring clamps and a jackscrew before the new wheel could be adjusted. Even then it had an air of uncertainty that rendered speed impossible. The concluding five miles of the journey were taken at a snail's pace, and Helen reflected ruefully that it was possible to "bruk ze leg" on the level high road as well as on the ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... time in the mountains. A feather-bed was spread upon the floor, the head raised by means of a turned-down chair, and here I was reposing comfortably when the brother arrived. It was late in the forenoon when the minister reached home, his rickety wagon creaking through the snow, and drawn at a snail's pace by a long-furred, knock-kneed horse. The tall but not very clerical figure was wrapped in a shawl and swathed round the throat with many turns of a woolen tippet. The daughter ran out with eagerness to ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... not easily enticed out; he had his home where he hid himself like a snail in its shell. He had the responsibility for this little world of five people, and he had not even succeeded in securing it. His strength and industry were not enough even to keep one little home above water; a benefactor was needed for ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... to take your liking me, without examining too curiously into the materials it is made of. Only we need not walk at a snail's' pace.' ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... answered the sober sailor, pulling towards the sloop, which was, as he had asserted would be the case, floating leisurely along, like a snail on a garden path. He soon pulled up alongside, when the Count and the Baron scrambled on board. The tipsy skipper and his tipsy crew were still both fast ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... great warrior, it is customary to include in the funeral procession the hero's favorite horse, his battle-horse, compelled to adapt to the snail-like pace of the cortege the prancing gait which survives the smell of gunpowder and the waving of standards. On this occasion Mora's great coupe, the "eight-spring" affair which carried him to social or political gatherings, occupied the place of that companion in victory, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... miles, but in Spanish style it requires eight or nine hours to accomplish it. Needless delay is the rule here, and forms a national infirmity; but in the present instance we did not feel in special haste, nor regret the snail's pace at which the cars were run, as the road lay mostly through a very beautiful valley, lined on either side by high hills extending back until they terminated in lofty, snow-clad ranges. The contrast between these ice-crowned elevations not very far away, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou |
