"Snail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hermit crab has taken possession of a sea snail's shell, and set up housekeeping; with body partly hidden he waves his long bony tentacles, while his beady eyes stare at us from the ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whaling school-boy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... twelve or fifteen feet deep, at the bottom of which are rocks. From these rocks proceed certain substances that present at first, sight beautiful flowers, but on the approach of a hand or instrument, retire like a snail, out of sight! On examination, there appears in the middle of a disk, filaments resembling spiders' legs, which moved briskly round a kind of petal. The filaments, or legs, have pincers to seize their prey, when the petals close, so that it cannot ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... but in vain. Then came the inevitable breakdown. She quit trying, and appealed pitifully to Signor Mancinelli for help. He seemed to have lost his head as completely as the lady had her memory. So had the prompter, who pulled his noddle into his shell like a snail and remained as mute. Signor Tamagno entered in character, and indulged in dumbshow to a few detached phrases from the orchestra. Then the awfulness of the situation overwhelmed him, and he fairly ran off the stage, leaving Matilda alone. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... property. Not finding it in town he sends men out on the roads leading to the country, himself taking one. In a very short time he overtakes the noted horse-thief. Gus was sitting in the buggy sound asleep; the lines were hanging down over the dashboard, and the old horse was marching along at a snail's pace. He was out some two miles from town, and, no doubt, had traveled at this gait all the way. He was faced about, and, assisted by the sheriff, drove back to town. He was then placed under arrest and sent to jail, subsequently had his trial, and for ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... Her chariot of a snail's fine shell, Which for the colours did excel, The fair Queen Mab becoming well, So lively was the limning; The seat the soft wool of the bee, The cover, gallantly to see, The wing of a pied butterfly; I ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... driver throttled his car to a snail's pace or brought it to a full stop to avoid running over one of those children who, so far as self-preservation goes, appear to be deaf, dumb, blind, and without powers of locomotion; and during one of these halts a little girl, walking slowly backward, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... inhabited by the man who received an annual income of two hundred thousand roubles; for he thought to discern therefrom the nature of its proprietor, even as from a shell one may deduce the species of oyster or snail which has been its tenant, and has left therein its impression. But no such conclusions were to be drawn. The rooms were simple, and even bare. Not a fresco nor a picture nor a bronze nor a flower nor a china what-not nor a book was there to be seen. In short, everything ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... by finding the ground strewn with spirited fruit,—some of it, perhaps, collected at squirrel-holes, with the marks of their teeth by which they carried them,—some containing a cricket or two silently feeding within, and some, especially in damp days, a shelless snail. The very sticks and stones lodged in the tree-top might have convinced you of the savoriness of the fruit which has been so eagerly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... accepted: he lingered but a moment, to give directions by which they might find his camp, and then, wheeling round, and giving the reins to his mettlesome steed, was soon out of sight. The travellers followed, with gladdened hearts, but at a snail's pace; for their poor horses could scarcely drag one leg after the other. Captain Bonneville, however, experienced a sudden and singular change of feeling. Hitherto, the necessity of conducting his party, and of providing ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... feeling rather than by sight, so thick were the cutting swirls of snow. As the drift heaped denser and denser about his legs, the terrible effort, so long sustained, began to tell on him, till his progress became only a snail's pace. Little by little, in the obstinate effort to conserve strength and vitality, his faculties all withdrew into themselves, and concentrated themselves upon the one purpose—to keep going onward. He began to feel the lure of just giving up. He began to think ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the 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 with ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... slippery, and, in addition to their being filled with infantry, there was the artillery, and hundreds of baggage wagons to be got over this piece of road before daylight. Owing to the condition of the soil, almost everyone had frequent falls. The column moved at a snail's pace, probably on an average of not over a mile an hour. We were on our feet all night, crossing the corduroy bridge that spanned the stream at the further side of the swamp as daylight began to show in the East. The ground beyond the swamp was a bluff some 20 or 30 feet above it, and on the ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... yesterday's fight—the dead footmen that lay in squares and the fringe of dead horsemen that had charged them, and above on the slope the dead gunners, who lay round their broken piece. The Guards' column had left a streak right up the field like the trail of a snail, and at the head of it the blue coats were lying heaped upon the red ones where that fierce tug had been before they ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... spoke he caught up a long pole, and pressing one end against the bed of the river exerted himself with might and main to impel the boat forward. He called to the two men to do the same, and under their united propulsion the boat advanced, but at a snail's pace. ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... and snail have trailed Their slimy silver up and down The beds where once the moss-rose veiled Rich beauty; and the mushroom brown Swells where ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... 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 ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... grander both in appearance and size; but, nevertheless, whether from habit or from choice, her custom was, in her daily needlework, to use this old friend. Often and often had Charley played with it many wicked pranks. Once, while Katie had as yet no pretension to be grown up, he had put a snail into it, and had incurred her severe displeasure. He had stuffed it full of acorns, and been rewarded by being pelted with them round the lawn; and had filled it with nuts, for which he had not found it so difficult to obtain pardon. He knew every hole and corner ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... those shells fell and exploded, earth and stone and iron melted into dust under the terrific force of the exploding gases, and the air-ships, moving with a velocity compared with which the utmost speed of the aerostats was as a snail's pace, flitted hither and thither wherever a battery got into action, and destroyed it before the second ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... into the past so sluggishly that one is fairly maddened by the snail's pace of them, into the past they must go eventually. Jean had sat and listened to the wheels of the Golden State Limited clank over the cryptic phrase that meant so much. "Letter-in-the-chaps! Letter-in-the chaps!" was what they had said ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... phrases, the more so, if these are well sprinkled with polysyllables. Cicero, in his treatise on Divination (LXIV) criticizes the lack of perspicuity in the style of certain writers, and supposes the case of a physician who should prescribe a snail as an article of diet, and whose prescription should read, "an earth-born, grass-walking, house-carrying, unsanguineous animal." Equally efficacious might be the modern definition of the same creature as a "terrestrial, air-breathing, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... filled with a morbid counting of the matches, the measure of his life. So, when there was only the one, he felt that the end was, indeed, come upon him. He strove his mightiest, but his might was shrunken to a puny sham. He struggled forward valiantly, but his advance was like the progress of a snail. Then, suddenly, another step became an infinite labor—something of which he could not even think. He lurched forward, and fell against a tree-trunk. The concussion aroused him to a clearer understanding. Very slowly, with a dreadful clumsiness of movement, he hacked off fragments of the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... the 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
... for me—the swift 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
... in zig-zagging mountain roads of daring construction, and none are more wonderful than this. As we crawl at a snail's pace between rocks and ravine, silvery grey masses towering against the glowing purple sky, deepest green fastnesses below that make us giddy to behold, all is still but for the sea-like war of the little ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... sat on the ground, while my poor horse feebly staggered from bush to bush, and nibbled at the stunted herbage. I then remounted him and pursued my way, at a snail's pace, towards the Fort. The most serious apprehension I entertained at this moment was that of sun-stroke, as my head was only shielded from the rays by a white handkerchief; my hat had blown off in the conflict with the bears, and, in my distress and anxiety to start for ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... are sown, they have many natural enemies. The slug, the snail, the wire-worm, the impudent sparrow, and the most impudent and insolent chaffinch, who all seem to have an idea that the seed is put into the ground entirely for their benefit. As soon as the pea-shoot comes above the earth, the slug has a mouthful in its tenderest ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... the Gosport shore, on which, being carefully landed, it was set up in its proper position, facing the harbour. Great, as may be supposed, was the consternation of the 'Relief' when it arrived at the post, to find sentry-box and sentry gone. The soldier could not have walked off with it as a snail does its shell on its back. A rigid search was instituted, but no sign of sentry or box could be discovered, and the sentry at the Dockyard gates, having also been snoozing at the time, had neither seen nor heard anything unusual. The captain of the guard, unable, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Spider, needs a cranny for hers, which is contained in a non-waterproof felt. In a heap of stones, well exposed to the sun, she will choose a large slab to serve as a roof. She lodges her pill underneath it, in the company of the hibernating Snail. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... should carry my whole fortune on my back; all that remains of my ancient house I should bear, snail-fashion, upon my head and shoulders. No, little dreamer, of two facts you may rest assured: one is that I shall never wear these jewels; the other that I never shall be a bride. Come, let me undress you; your blue eyes are so sleepy they ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... 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 and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "now I come to think of it. Only natural they should be going at snail's pace. Carrai! the wonder is the gringo being able for even that, or go at all. I thought I'd given him his quietus, for surely I sent my spear right through his ribs! It must have struck button, or buckle, or something, and glinted off. Mad fool ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... how to be even more brutal, for that was Dennis Kavanagh's style of attack. He came out upon the porch, a broad, stocky chunk of a man, with eyebrows sticking up like the horns on a snail, and the eyes beneath them keen with humor of the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... at the 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— ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... francs, or even eight thousand francs a year, is nothing at all towards buying Roguin's practice. Little Xandrot, as we call him, thinks, like all the rest of the world, that we are richer than we are. If his father, that big farmer who is as close as a snail, won't sell a hundred thousand francs worth of land Xandrot can't be a notary, for Roguin's practice is worth four or five hundred thousand. If Crottat does not pay half down, how could he negotiate the affair? Cesarine ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... with anybody, with women endlessly, with meanness like a snail, and when his blood was up, to the most nonsensical place you ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... patch is kind enough;[68] but a huge feeder, Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day More than the wild cat: drones hive not with me, Therefore I part with him; and part with him To one that I would have him help to waste His borrow'd purse.—Well, Jessica, go in; ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... a question whether snails, even if it were possible to obtain the superior Burgundian, fat and juicy and cooked even as our own Oscar used to prepare them for certain Waldorf guests, would ever appeal to the American taste, as even the common hedgerow sort of snail ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... almost gone now, and he got his men into a series of well-concerted, steady, deadly efforts, that threatened to bring the whole Kingston four over with the snail-like white cord. But Sawed-Off pleaded with his men, and they buried their faces in the board and worked like mad. To the spectators they seemed hardly to move, but under their skins their muscles were ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... last came, that is to say, a day finally dawned upon a long and weary night of impatience; and then the hours until "one" were snail-paced, dreary, and innumerable. But even Stamboul, it is said, shall have an end, and there came an end to this long delay. The clock struck. As the last echo ceased, I stepped into B—'s and inquired ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... next to human faces, I delight in human abodes, which will always, more or less, according to the amount of choice vouchsafed in the occupancy, be like the creatures who dwell in them. Even the soldier-crab must have some likeness to the snail of whose house he takes possession, else he could not live in ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... couple of long loaves, a good-sized piece of raw bacon, and another of boiled pork which he thought he recognized, some butter in a cloth, a bottle which looked as if it might contain spirits, the powder-flask, and a small linen bag containing bullets, snail-shot, and percussion caps. These, with Bernel's gun and the blanket, and the old woollen cloak, which he recognized as Mr. Hamon's roquelaure, and his pipe, and the tobacco he happened to have in his pouch, constituted, for the ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... starting, patently lagged behind. Unskilled and desperately in earnest, he could not lead up to his moment. He was laboriously framing the essential words when Tara scattered them with a light remark, rallying him on his snail's pace. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of Horsam, a wondre no doubt most terrible and noysome to the inhabitants thereabouts. There is always in his tracke or path, left a glutinous and slimy matter (as by a small similitude we may perceive in a snail) which is very corrupt and offensive to the scent, in so much that they perceive the air to be putrified withall, which must needs be very dangerous: for though the corruption of it cannot strike the ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... that I made seven days from Calais to Paris, by laying out my journeys at the rate of travelling in England, thirty miles a-day; and did not find but that I could have gone in a third of the time! I shall not be such a snail the next time. It is said that on Lord Tavistock's return, he is to decide whom he will marry. Is it true that the Choiseuls totter, and that the Broglios are to succeed; or is there a Charles Townshend at Versailles? Adieu! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... 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 ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... that I am 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 sat there, whispering and listening there, In ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... so disposed as not to fecundate the ova of the same body, but require the co-operation of two individuals, notwithstanding the co-existence in each of the organs of both sexes. Each in turn impregnates the other. The common leech, earth-worm, and snail, propagate in ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... he could see it was a case of pure willing with him. The nature of his experiences so far disinclined him for any further experiments, at least until he had reconsidered them. But he lifted a sheet of paper, and turned a glass of water pink and then green, and he created a snail, which he miraculously annihilated, and got himself a miraculous new tooth-brush. Somewhere in the small hours he had reached the fact that his will-power must be of a particularly rare and pungent quality, a fact ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... nine points were with me; and here I sat and faced him; and here he stormed, and would do this and should do that; and I went on with my work. Then he would buy my Colisyum, and I wouldn't sell it for all his puffball lordship might offer. Isn't the house of the snail as much to him as the turtle's shell to the turtle? I'll have no upstart spilling his chemicals here, or devilling the stars from a seat on my roof." "Last autumn," said I, "David Claridge was housed here. Thy palace was a prison then." "I know well of that. Haven't I found his records ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... started for Fredericksburg to find my regiment. The only directions I had about disposing of this frame of a horse was to "turn the bones loose when you get through with him." He could go only at a snail's pace, and when I reached Fredericksburg it must have been nine o'clock. I crossed the pontoon bridge, which had been laid the morning before under circumstances of the greatest gallantry by Howard's ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... stiffened animals and place them convenient; to swallow our hot coffee and our pork and beans, and flapjacks when the cooks were in the humor; to hook the teams to the wagons and break corral, and amidst cracking of lashes stretch out into column, then to lurch and groan onward, at snail's pace, through the constantly increasing day until soon we also were wrung and parched by a relentless heat succeeding ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... complete. In like manner, a cat develops into a spinster aunt; a monkey into a mischievous urchin; a pig into a gourmand; a sheep into a country bumpkin; a weasel into a lawyer; a dancing bear into a garrotter; a shark into a money-lender; a snail into the schoolboy to which Shakespeare likens him; a fish into a toper, and so on. These "developments" (twenty in number), which were dedicated to Mr. Darwin, are signed "C. H. B." and these are the initials of CHARLES H. BENNETT, one ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... breaking something with their beaks by knocking it against the ground; just look." Yes, they are thrushes, and I can tell you what they are doing and what we shall find when we come up to the spot. We shall see several broken snail shells (Helix), which the thrushes find on the grassy slopes of the canal bank, and then bring up to the path in order to get at the animals inside the shells by breaking them against the hard ground ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... 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, ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... palate, and I looking for my way home. It was nut-time. I had a pouch of them in my jacket, and I cracked and ate them as I went. Not a star pricked the sky; the dark was the dark of a pot in a cave and a snail boiling under the lid of it. I had cracked a nut and the kernel of it fell on the ground, so I bent and felt about my feet, though my pouch was so full of nuts that they fell showering in the fin dust. I swept every one with a shell ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... drove of wild, shaggy buffaloes, or a travelling carriage rattling and jilting along, or a stray priest or so, trudging homewards from some outlying chapel. That red-bodied funereal- looking two-horse-coach, crawling at a snail's pace, belongs to his Excellency the Cardinal, whom Papal etiquette forbids to walk on foot within the city, and whom you can see a little further on pottering feebly along the road in his violet stockings, supported by his clerical secretary, and followed ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... Butterflies are familiar enough to us all; yet how many realise how 'fearfully and wonderfully' they are made? What a marvellously complex weapon is the 'sting' of the bee! What a wonderful 'rasp' the snail possesses! How many can tell how an insect smells, and where its organs of taste and hearing lie? Since these are questions which young people often ask again and again, some of them will be answered in the course of these articles. To explain such matters clearly is a very ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... back the delinquent, hearing her at last, and wriggling himself in from the window like a snail withdrawing itself into its shell, turning round the while his face, slightly flushed with the ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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 able ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... round! And here another have I found, And yet mo can I find. I can mow[198] on a man, And make a lesing[199] well I can, And maintain it right well then. This cunning came me of kind, Yea, sirs, I can well geld a snail, And catch a cow by the tail: This is a fair cunning, I can dance and also skip, I can play at the cherry-pit,[200] And I can whistle you a fit,[201] Sires, in a willow rine: Yea, sirs, and every day, When I to school shall take the way Some good man's garden I will essay, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... anxious to be hauled before the court of the country-seat time after time during a trial conducted at a snail's pace and be relieved of several hundred francs, for this is what a proces-verbal meant. It was easily seen that the Baron was in a no more tranquil state ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... shells of a small snail, are found on the shores of several islands, and are shipped as an article of commerce to Singapore, &c., where they are, I believe, purchased by the Siam and Calcutta traders, as they serve for money in several of the countries of Asia. Those found ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... looked a wondrous vast field of ice going into the south, and it stared very ghastly upon the dark green sea out of the clouds whose gloom sank behind it. I could not observe that we had drifted anything to the north, whilst our set to the westwards had been steady though snail-like. The sea in the north and north-west swarmed with bergs, like great snowdrops on the green undulating fields of the deep. Now and again the swell, in which fragments of ice floated with the gleam of crystal ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... besides, the casement was open to the fragrant court. Mr. Buxton was so large, and the parlor so small, that when he was once in, Maggie thought when he went away, he could carry the room on his back, as a snail does its house. ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sentimentalists are ahead of us, not by weight of brain, but through delicacy of nerve, and, like all creatures in the front, they are open to be victims. I pray you to observe again the shrinking life that afflicts the adventurous horns of the snail, for example. Such are the sentimentalists to us—the fat body of mankind. We owe them much, and though they scorn us, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... efforts after purity. There is nothing that makes a man so down-hearted in his work of self-improvement as the constant and bitter experience that it seems to be all of no use; that he is making so little progress; that with immense pains, like a snail creeping up a wall, he gets up, perhaps, an inch or two, and then all at once he drops down, and further down than he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... by the epithets of an animal trailing with its slime over the herbage, without blood or bones, and carrying its house upon its back, meaning simply a snail."—Coste] ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... noontide walks avail, To clear the leaf, and pick the snail, Then wantonly to death decree An insect usefuller than thee? Thou and the worm are brother-kind, As low, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... croose," replied Gideon Kemp; "for though his castle stands proud in the green valley, the time may yet come when horses and carts will be driven through his ha', and the foul toad and the cauld snail be the only visitors around the unblest hearth ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... time crept on at a snail pace the howling of the wintry gale continued unabated, with the roar of the wind through the tree-tops ashore, the dash of the waves on the point above, and the constant wabbling motion of the shanty-boat to remind them ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... "We calls her the Snail, Miss, among ourselves," said the Porter. "She's oftener be'ind'and nor any train ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... head, and the next morning came forth, as it were, raised from the dead; and walked about till four in the afternoon. This was a curious coincidence! a very amusing occurrence! to see such a similarity of feelings between the two [Greek text]! for so the Greeks called both the shell-snail and the tortoise. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence! Beetles black, approach not near; Worm nor snail, do no offence. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... be crossed, and for the ignorance which made him the easy dupe of feints and misleading reports. As to Wittgenstein, the caution which he exercised because operating alone was near in its character to cowardice; his snail-like movements prevented any efficient cooeperation in the general plan, and he failed in grasping a situation of affairs which left open but a single line of retreat for Napoleon. Neither of these ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... again the pursuit of Rokoff. Now that he was positive that the woman ahead of him was indeed Jane, and that she had again fallen into the hands of the Russian, it seemed that with all the incredible speed of his fleet and agile muscles he moved at but a snail's pace. ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... invitations to great houses reached him every week;—his poems began to sell by thousands; yet with all this, the obstinacy of his erratic nature asserted itself as usual, undiminished, and Zouche withdrew from the shower of praise like a snail into its shell,—answered none of the flattering requests for 'the pleasure of his company,' and handed whatever money he made by his poems over to the funds of the Revolutionary Committee, only accepting as much out of it as would pay for his clothes, food, lodging, and—drink! ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... and land shells is exceedingly easy, the greater number of specimens requiring only to be plunged into boiling water, and the contents removed—an easy operation in the case of the bivalves, and the contents of univalves or snail-like shells being also easily wormed out with a pin or crooked awl. [Footnote: Mr. R. B. Woodward, F.G.S, etc. in one of the very best and most practical of those wonderful little penny "Handbooks" for young collectors, advises a large spoonful of salt being added ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... view. Both 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 ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... aroused. It did not know how far the Republicans were prepared to go in their drive for action, so on the day of this flurry in the House the snail-like Rules Committee suddenly met in answer to the call of its chairman, Mr. Pou, and by a vote of 6 to 5 decided to report favorably on the resolution providing for a Woman Suffrage Committee in the House "after all pending war ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... picket fence, was the proclamation of his shame,—coming from a gentle, superannuated horse with no more spirit than a snail's. By some means, perhaps instinctive,—for all the world, when it finds out, will hunt down and destroy whatsoever fears it (although the boy had not reasoned it out thus),—the beast had learned that the boy was afraid, and had then found an interest in life. Let him but have a glimpse of ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... of your journey reminds me of one of the latest American stories, how a traveller by stage-coach said to the driver: "Did you ever see a snail, sir?" "Yes, sir." "Where did you meet him, sir?" "I didn't meet him, sir!" "Wa'al, sir, I think you did, if you'll excuse me, for I'm damned if ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... use my 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, sometimes. As for the way he has behaved to the ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... not prevent him, when we chat about animals, from making the most crazy assertions. For him the Bat is a Rat that has grown wings; the Cuckoo is a Sparrow-hawk retired from business; the Slug is a Snail who has lost his shell with the advance of years; the Nightjar (Known also as the Goatsucker, because of the mistaken belief that the bird sucks the milk of Goats, and, in America, as the Whippoorwill.—Translator's Note.), the Chaoucho-grapaou, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... would not have called them treasures, though they were looked upon as such by Mercer, who was exceedingly proud of a snake-skin which he found in a patch of dwarf furze, and of a great snail shell that was nearly white, and had belonged to one of the molluscs used by the ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... days; every night and all the nights. 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow!'" said Ivory, taking off his fur cap and opening the door of the living-room. "But we've got to wait for her a whole fortnight, Rod. Isn't that a ridiculous snail of a law?" ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it crossed the heather for some thousand yards, then plunged into the woods, and so went up over the hills to the town of Teramo, thirty-five kilometres away. It was a narrow, rough, steep road, wholly unfit for vehicles of any kind more tender than the rude ox-treggia, slow as a snail, with rounds of a tree-trunk for its wheels, and seldom used ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... taken too large a toll of American soldiers at that point in the line. The four night raiders left the American trench at one o'clock in the morning. They crawled on their bellies through snow for one hour before reaching the sniper's post. Seven yards per minute is a snail's pace, but pretty good time in No Man's Land, where you must remain motionless each time a star-shell lights up the darkness around you ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... said little Miss Digges, "Miss Mowbray sometimes gallops as if the lark was a snail to her pony—and it quite frights one to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 an ...
— Goat-Feathers • Ellis Parker Butler
... the water and of the atmosphere, but ordinarily takes place in three or four days. This precaution is adopted for the purpose of getting the young shoots as quickly as possible out of the way of a small snail, which abounds in some of the watered lands of Kashmir, but sometimes proves insufficient to defend it against the activity of this destructive enemy. When the farmer suspects, by the scanty appearance of the plants above the water in which the grain has been sown, and by the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... carrying a large luminous cod," continued the stranger, in his listless way. "How quaint it would be if one could carry it about like a lantern, or have little sprats for candles. Some of the seabeasts would really be very pretty like lampshades; the blue sea-snail that glitters all over like starlight; and some of the red starfish really shine like red stars. But, naturally, I'm ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... structure, young crabs pass through a stage when to all intents and purposes they are counterparts of lobsters. Even the twisted hermit crab, which has a soft-skinned hinder part coiled to fit the curve of the snail shell used as a protection, is symmetrical and lobster-like when it ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... before the audience had been created; and although "Old Neb" of Babylon had destroyed a million of Hebrews several hundred years previous to the birth of the Bethlehem "Savior of Mankind," the "frog" and "snail" eaters of France were still breaking their lungs and throats in cheering for the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... The girl, though not nearly as active under the increased pull of gravity as a person of Earth might be, was yet more agile than the Rogans. And she was the faster mover in this tortuous, snail-like race. While the Rogan leader was still several feet away, ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... the human herd. Man considers that he has the right of selection—quite a mistake of his I'm sure, for he has no real sense of beauty or fitness, and generally selects most vilely. All the same he is an obstinate brute, and sticks to his brutish ideas as a snail sticks to its shell. I am an obstinate brute!—I am absolutely convinced that I have the right to choose my own woman, if I want one—which I don't,—or if ever I do want one—which ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... crawl, snail-like, over the virgin sky. We panted in its heat. We saw it drop again behind the mountain wall, leaving the sky gorgeously barred with colour from a tawny orange glow to an ice-pale green—a regular pousse cafe of a sunset. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Avories came to know the great Hamish MacAngus; for when Robert led them round to visit him the next morning ("And it is right for us to call first," said Janet, "since we have lived here longer"), they found that the owner of the Snail was nothing less than the famous—But I must tell you in ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... fresh-water snails are the pond snail (Lymnaea; see Fig. 3); the Physa (see Fig. 6), which is remarkable for having the coil turned to the left instead of the right; and the orb-snail, (Planorbis: see Fig. 4) which has its coil flat. All of {96} ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... reflection will show the reasonableness of this statement and prove our contention that all we see here is really crystallized thought. Our houses, our machinery, our chairs and tables, all that has been made by the hand of man is the embodiment of a thought. As the juices in the soft body of the snail gradually crystallize into the hard and flinty shell which it carries upon its back and which hides it, so everything used in our civilization is a concretion of invisible, intangible mind-stuff. The thought of ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... and dispersed in either direction like sheep before a dog—all except one man, who, walking with two sticks, could not move above a snail's pace. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... friend, and that in the time of his sore need. So true was his heart in its love, that, giving thanks for his friend, he forgot that friend was the Marquis of Lossie, before whom his enemy was but as a snail ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... the trip, though many of my fellow passengers were pale and limp. Whirling to Paris in an easy car, through the beautiful wheatfields and vineyards, I thought of the old lumbering diligence, in which we went up to Paris at a snail's pace forty years before. I remained in Paris until October, and never enjoyed six months more thoroughly. One of my chief pleasures was making the acquaintance of my fourth son, Theodore. I had seen but little of him since he was sixteen ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... bony labyrinth, consists of three distinct parts, or variously shaped chambers, hollowed out in the temporal bone,—the vestibule, the semicircular canals, and the cochlea, or snail's shell. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... first with the chief of their kindred, and most of the clergy and young ladies around. But it was hard that where Rachel really liked and met half-way, the intimate confidence should always be bestowed upon Grace, or even the mother. She had yet to learn that the way to draw out a snail is not to, grasp its horns, and that halfway meeting is not to launch one's self to the opposite starting point. Either her inquiries were too point blank to invite detailed replies, or her own communications absorbed her too much ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he, "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 his ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... little office on the old Battle Ground, where they drove a snug little business, and fought a great many small pitched battles for a great many contending parties. Though it could hardly be said of these conflicts that they were running fights - for in truth they generally proceeded at a snail's pace - the part the Firm had in them came so far within the general denomination, that now they took a shot at this Plaintiff, and now aimed a chop at that Defendant, now made a heavy charge at an estate in Chancery, and now had some light skirmishing ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... have power over his self-interest, since I have none over his heart. I will bribe him into honor!' And then—and then—God saw that I was very proud, and I was punished. Tell them to drive faster,—faster; why, this is a snail's pace!" ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tyrannous crew depart, Knowing there was a storm in Hero's heart, Greater than they could make, and scorn'd their smart. She bow'd herself so low out of her tower, That wonder 'twas she fell not ere her hour, With searching the lamenting waves for him: Like a poor snail, her gentle supple limb Hung on her turret's top, so most downright, As she would dive beneath the darkness quite, To find her jewel;—jewel!—her Leander, A name of all earth's jewels pleas'd not her Like his dear name: "Leander, still my choice, Come naught but my Leander! O my voice, Turn to ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... and crept home at a slow snail's pace. I felt thirsty, luckily for the first time through the whole day, and I went and sought about for a place where I could get a drink. I was a long distance away from the bazaar, and I would not ask at a private house. Perhaps, though, I could wait till I got ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... 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
... breakneck pace over loose rocks and 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 smashing off in the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Grasshopper Abraham Cowley On the Grasshopper and Cricket John Keats To the Grasshopper and the Cricket Leigh Hunt The Cricket William Cowper To a Cricket William Cox Bennett To an Insect Oliver Wendell Holmes The Snail William Cowper The Housekeeper Charles Lamb The Humble-Bee Ralph Waldo Emerson To a Butterfly William Wordsworth Ode to a Butterfly Thomas Wentworth Higginson The Butterfly Alice Freeman Palmer Fireflies Edgar Fawcett The Blood Horse Bryan Waller Procter ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... dangerous walking it is,' said he, 'in this ploughed field! If I were to fall from one of these great clods, I should undoubtedly break my neck.' At last, by good luck, he found a large empty snail-shell. 'This is lucky,' said he, 'I can sleep here very ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... . . The sun is baking hot. The shadows begin to grow shorter and to draw in on themselves, like the horns of a snail. . . . The high grass warmed by the sun begins to give out a strong, heavy smell of honey. It will soon be midday, and Gerassim and Lubim are still floundering under the willow tree. The husky bass and the shrill, ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Tsay-ee-kah and of the Petrograd Soviet, lay miles out on the edge of the city, beside the wide Neva. I went there on a street-car, moving snail-like with a groaning noise through the cobbled, muddy streets, and jammed with people. At the end of the line rose the graceful smoke-blue cupolas of Smolny Convent outlined in dull gold, beautiful; and beside it the great barracks like faade of Smolny Institute, two hundred yards long and three ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... shall never view things in the same light. You are not the man of the world you should be, Walter. Men of half your merit will eclipse you, winning opulence and distinction—while you, with your common sense notions, will be plodding on at a snail's pace. You are behind the age, and a stranger ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... the only chance. If we had stayed on the other course we might have found enough breeze to carry us home, but we would have gone at a snail's pace, just as we were doing, and there was no chance at all to catch Gladys and the ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... nothing but Flora; could only hope and pray that she might have made good her escape. The catamaran was sailing as well as ever, for there was a strong breeze blowing, yet Leslie ground his teeth in a fever of impatience at what he deemed her snail-like pace; for his first business now must be to ascertain the fate of the girl he loved. The very worst that could possibly have happened, apart from harm to her, was comparatively unimportant. Yet, all the same, his ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... was instantaneously gauged as dyspeptic or eupeptic, friend or foe. On the march, Javert was on the alert, snuffing up the air, until some savory odor crossed his path, when he would shut himself up, like a snail within his shell. Yet he was not sleeping, for no titbit ever passed the portals beneath. Perhaps, however, they were themselves trusty now, having made habit a second nature. I cannot imagine them watering at sight of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... The frugal snail, with fore-cast of repose, Carries his house with him, where'er he goes; Peeps out—and if there comes a shower of rain, Retreats to his small domicile amain. Touch but a tip of him, a horn—'tis well— He curls up in his sanctuary shell. He's his own landlord, his own tenant; stay Long ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... familiar of mollusks is the common snail, which may serve as a type of the "class" of mollusks to which it belongs—the class Gasteropoda. The snail, with the slug, are representatives of land-forms of mollusca, but the bulk of the class and of the whole sub-kingdom are aquatic animals, such as the whelk (Buccinum), ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... dusty road. For hours the man had not been able to urge the beast out of a walk. The loss of time consequent upon his having followed wrong roads during the night and the exhaustion of the pony which retarded his speed to what seemed little better than a snail's pace seemed to assure the failure of his mission, for at best he could ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... weaknesses do not strike you. You may not be on the spot when he flies across Piccadilly Circus, pursued, as he fancies, by a Brompton omnibus which has not yet reached St. James's Church, and is moving at a snail's pace; you may not have been with him on that occasion when, in his eagerness to be in time for the 'Flying Dutchman,' he arrives at Paddington an hour before it starts, and is put into the parliamentary train which is shunted at Slough to let the 'Dutchman' pass; but when you ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... named Begourat, who led them to the war. They were arranged one behind the other, with their bows and arrows, clubs, and round shields with which they provide for fighting. They went leaping one after the other, making various gestures with their bodies, and many snail-like turns. Afterwards they proceeded to dance in the customary manner, as I have before described; then they had their tabagie, after which the women stripped themselves stark naked, adorned with their handsomest matachiats. Thus naked and dancing, they entered ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... lap on the bank, paddled out past the first point to the north, and pillowing her head on a cushioned thwart, gave herself up to dreamy contemplation on the sky. There was scarce a ripple on the lake. A faint breath of an offshore breeze fanned her, drifting the canoe at a snail's pace out from land. Stella luxuriated in the quiet afternoon. A party of campers cruising the lake had tarried at the bungalow till after midnight. Jack Fyfe had risen at dawn to depart for some distant logging point. Stella, once wakened, had risen and breakfasted with him. She was tired, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the roof collapsed, the sides went in, the ice passed over all, and the hut of Peegwish was finally obliterated from off the face of the earth. So, a giant with his foot might slowly and effectually crush the mansion of a snail! ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... snail's pace, and at last dismounted, and groped his way. He got more than one fall in the snow, and thought himself very fortunate, when, at last, something black towered before him, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... grain found how treat dead staid ground town beast stead waif hound growl bleat tread rail mound clown preach dread flail pound frown speak thread quail round crown streak sweat snail ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... then, remind ourselves that excess and precipitation are more than wasteful,—they are directly destructive. The fire that blazes beyond bounds not warms the house, but burns it down, and only helps infinitesimally to warm the wide out-of-doors. Any live snail will out-travel a wrecked locomotive, and besides will leave no trail of slaughter on its track. Though despatch be the soul of business, yet he who outruns his own feet comes to the ground, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... he had been down to scratch like a fowl among the dead leaves under the privet-hedge for grubs, who "kidded" themselves that they were going to be fine, flashing insects next summer. He also prospected a snail or two, and broke through their fortifications by hammering the same upon a stone. And, by some magic process that looked akin to the way in which some men divine water, he divined a worm out of seemingly bare earth. It was there, too, and it came up, not joyfully, but tugged, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... in the car now and proceeding at a snail's pace toward the Arc de Triomphe. Her eyes narrowed. He was sure that she clutched her slim fingers tightly although, for an excellent reason, he was not by way of knowing. He was rapturously watching those ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... was that to me Who in that summer darkness furled, With but an owl and snail to see, Had blessed ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... imagination without object or result, had aged her prematurely, and although she was still young she did not seem so. It might be said of her that with her habits and manner of life she had wrought a sort of rind, a stony, insensible covering within which she shut herself, like the snail within his portable house. Dona Perfecta rarely came out of ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... men, to one so bound by such a vow, And women were as phantoms. O, my brother, Why wilt thou shame me to confess to thee How far I faltered from my quest and vow? For after I had lain so many nights A bedmate of the snail and eft and snake, In grass and burdock, I was changed to wan And meagre, and the vision had not come; And then I chanced upon a goodly town With one great dwelling in the middle of it; Thither I made, and there was I disarmed By maidens each as fair as any flower: But when they led me into ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... brown spires. They are Turritellae, snail- like animals (though the form of the shell is different), who crawl and browse by thousands on the beds of Zostera, or grass wrack, which you see thrown about on the beach, and which grows naturally in two or three fathoms water. ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... mother earth of the universe in the maturity of her creation when the conditions arrive within suitable limits." That no intelligent beings appeared upon the earth for millions upon millions of years, that for whole geologic ages there was no creature with more brains than a snail possesses, shows the almost infinitely slow progress of development, and that there has been no arbitrary or high-handed exercise of creative power. The universe is not run on principles of modern business efficiency, and man is at the head of living forms, not by the fiat of some omnipotent power, ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... brilliant rapidity; but by the standards of desert warfare it must have seemed that Kitchener and his English made war as slowly as grass grows or orchards bear fruit. The horsemen of Araby, darting to and fro like swallows, must have felt as if they were menaced by the advance of a giant snail. But it was a snail that left a shining track unknown to those sands; for the first time since Rome decayed something was being made there that could remain. The effect of this growing road, one might almost say this ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... snail, and confident the others would do their part, Keith thrust his knife blade deep into the narrow crack, and began probing after the latch. In spite of all caution this effort caused a slight noise, and suddenly he started back, at the ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... second day we reached the Hoang Ho, China's sorrow and the engineer's despair. The much-discussed bridge is two miles long, crossing the river on one hundred and seven spans. As the train moved at snail's pace there was plenty of time to take in the desolate scene, stretches of mudflats alternating with broad channels of swirling, turbid water; and, unlike the Yangtse, gay with all sorts of craft, the strong current of the Yellow River rolled along undisturbed ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... a box some of the exquisite little violet snail-shells, and gave them to Lena, who cried out with delight, and instantly resolved to have a pair of ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... passed—Jimmie Dale's eyes shifting occasionally from the gray thread of road ahead of him under the glare of the dancing lamps, to the road map spread out at his feet, upon which, from time to time, he focused his pocket flashlight. And then, finally, he slowed the car to a snail's pace—he should be very near his destination—that very ultra-exclusive subdivision of Charleton ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... whips cracked, bells jingled, and away we thundered by the arrowy Rhone. I had had the idea that a diligence was a rickety, slow-moulded antediluvian nondescript, toiling patiently along over impassable roads at a snail's pace. Judge of my astonishment at finding it a full-blooded, vigorous monster, of unscrupulous railway momentum and imperturbable ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... frame in the land of fire," he said, "Frame me a soul like thine: Swift as the snail's soft horn to feel, Yet hard and keen as the tempered steel, And be there a fire in heart and ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... tram to Sefton Park. The crowded street had all that prosperous air of catching or missing something which characterises the town where London and New York and Dublin meet. Old Heythorp had to cross to the far side, and he sallied forth without regard to traffic. That snail-like passage had in it a touch of the sublime; the old man seemed saying: "Knock me down and be d—-d to you—I'm not going to hurry." His life was saved perhaps ten times a day by the British character at large, compounded ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... declivity than upon an ascent. The school-boy toils patiently and slowly up the hill with his sled, but when he descends he comes down with railroad-speed, scattering the snow before him in all directions. But here we have a school-boy that tears and scatters things going up-hill, and sneaks down-hill snail-fashion. ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... everywhere, and before all, the questions of crime and shame (the inflexibility of the law producing laxity of conscience), is there no child that grows but to be stunted, no virgin but matures for sin, no rose that blooms but for the slime of the snail? ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... friend, a Snail, Beneath his house, with slimy trail, Crawls o'er the grass; whom, when he spies, In wrath ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... Occasionally he would plead with the old farmer to urge his horses a trifle faster, and even hint at certain rewards if they should reach Hartford in a given time. But the grumpy old man was proof against coaxing or even bribing, and they jogged along, almost at a snail's pace. ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... grand fight was on. And the fort divided into two ships, that chased each other, and then sank. Then there was a chariot with two horses, and chasing that was a strange thing like a serpent, a snake's head at one end, and a bulk at the other like a snail's house. And it gained on the chariot and gave it a blow. And out of the chariot came a bull, and after it came a dog, and the bull and the dog fought as in a gaming-pit. And then suddenly all was clear, no cloud or mist or anything ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... of our first parents. In one we see the newly created and lovely Eve standing by the side of the sleeping Adam, and regarding him with pleasurable anticipation. Another shows us the animals marching in line to be inspected and named. The snail heads the procession and sets the pace. The lion and the tiger stroll gossiping together. The unicorn walks alone, very stiff and proud. Two rats and two mice are closely followed by two sleek cats, who keep them well covered, and plainly ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... know They are the winged wardens of your farms, Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, And from your harvests 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. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various |
