"Snake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Senate, for its constitutional action thereon, a treaty made with the Woll-pah-pe tribe of Snake Indians on the 12th of August, 1865, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... the cave and its surroundings were visited by a prominent naturalist who appears to have been delightfully liberal in the diffusion of scientific knowledge and the explanations of methods of pursuing investigations. His practical instruction in snake catching is particularly interesting as it was never before introduced into this state, where the copperhead and rattler are known to have survived among the fittest. Seeing a snake hole and desiring information ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... pagan forms of religion, which offered a very feeble, and also a very limited gamut for giving expression to the human capacities of sublimity or of horror. We read it in the fearful composition of the sphinx. The dragon, again, is the snake inoculated upon the scorpion. The basilisk unites the mysterious malice of the evil eye, unintentional on the part of the unhappy agent, with the intentional venom of some other malignant natures. But these horrid complexities ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... without yet a cloud, They seek each other's eyes at intervals Of gratefulness to firelight and four walls For love's obliteration of the crowd. Serenely and perennially endowed And bowered as few may be, their joy recalls No snake, no sword; and over them there falls The blessing of what neither ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... begun to wrinkle in detached belts and patches the mirror-like blackness of the previous calm, in which the broad Firth had lain sleeping since day-break; and the sunlight danced on the new-raised wavelets; while a thin long wreath of blue mist, which seemed coiling its tail like a snake round the distant Inchkeith, was slowly raising the folds of its dragon-like neck and head from off the Scottish capital, dim in the distance, and unveiling fortalice, and tower, and spire, and the noble curtain of blue hills ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... boyhood. After his return from the chase, he was in the habit of cutting the throats of hares and other animals, and of amusing himself with their dying convulsions. He also frequently took pleasure in roasting them alive. He once received a present of a very large snake from some person who seemed to understand how to please this remarkable young prince. After a time, however, the favorite reptile allowed itself to bite its master's finger, whereupon Don Carlos immediately retaliated ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Instructed thus to shun the fatal spring, Whence flow the terrors of that day I sing; More boldly we our labours may pursue, And all the dreadful image set to view. The sparkling eye, the sleek and painted breast, The burnish'd scale, curl'd train, and rising crest, All that is lovely in the noxious snake, Provokes our fear, and bids us flee the brake: The sting once drawn, his guiltless beauties rise In pleasing lustre, and detain our eyes; We view with joy, what once did horror move, And strong aversion ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... are for. Just to sit on when you're tired, I reckon." The sibilant burring of a rattler in the brush set his neck and back tingling. "And what snakes was made for, gets me! They ain't good to eat, nohow. And they ain't friendly like some of the bugs and things. I'm thinkin' that that there snake what clumb the tree and got Mrs. Eve interested in the apple business would 'a' been a whole lot better for folks, if he'd 'a' stayed up that tree and died, instead o' runnin' around and raisin' young ones. Accordin' ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... a dense volume of smoke, that rolled in black masses along the corridor. They went in again, and the sergeant pushed open the door of the room where Moll lay bound, but shut it quickly again, as a tongue of flame lashed itself toward him like an angry snake. ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... If that snake had wriggled in, he would have drawn after him the whole herd of vipers; his brother Demogorcon and all. 'Tis ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... But, as I was saying, I took it off that night, and tucked it safely away, as I supposed, in my pocket, and I slept sweetly till about midnight, when I happened to open my eyes, and saw something long and black crawl off my bed and slip under the berth. Such a shriek as I gave, my dear! "A snake! a snake! oh, a snake!" And everybody began talking at once, and some of the gentlemen swearing, and the porter came running with the poker to kill it; and all the while it was that ridiculous switch of mine, that had worked out of my pocket. And glad enough I was to grab it up before anybody saw ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... his account with them. He spent whole days scanning the winter colored slope for the flicker and slide of light on a hairy flank that betrayed his enemy, or, rifle in hand, stalking a patch of choke cherry and manzanita within which the mule-deer could snake and crawl for hours by intricacies of doubling and back tracking that yielded not a square inch of target and no more than the dust of his final disappearance. Wood gatherers heard at times above their ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... conspicuous in the dusk when it roams about, so that it is not likely to be pounced upon by any of the carnivora mistaking it for other night-roaming animals. In reptiles, the beautifully banded coral snake (Elaps), whose bite is deadly, is marked as conspicuously as any noxious caterpillar with bright bands of black, yellow, and red. I only met with one other example amongst the vertebrata, and it was also a reptile. In the woods around Santo Domingo there are many frogs. Some are green ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... for tarantulas or centipedes. No one was to dress without subjecting every article of apparel to the same scrutiny. No one was to go out at night without a "bug" for fear of the blind striking of a rattler. Every one must learn to kill a snake with a snake stick. And every one, even Felicia, must ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... happened. Once again the car broke down on the level, and once again Stanton had to go upon his belly, like the snake, while his passengers sat on a rug ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... the fire going all night, and equally well with wood or coal, thus saving the expense of kindling and the trouble of starting a new fire. When the fuel is of good quality, all that is needed in the morning is to draw the back-damper, snake the grate, and ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... He turned it back and disclosed the initials B. R. 'This also is the work of our man-devil, as I thought. I begin to think that we shall be eternally thwarted, until we first clear our Italy of its vermin. Here is a weazel, a snake, a tiger, in one. They call him the Great Cat. He fancies himself a patriot,—he is only a conspirator. I denounce him, but he gets the faith of people, our Agostino among them, I believe. The energy of this wretch is terrific. He has the vigour of a fasting saint. Myself—I declare ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... their solemn processions, crowning themselves with garlands, and decorating their houses and temples with them; and, while they worshipped their gods according to the simple rites which tradition says their prophet, Quetzalcoatl, ("Feathered Snake,") appointed, before he left them and embarked in his canoe on the Eastern ocean, no name could have been more appropriate for their temple. This pleasant custom did not disappear after the Conquest; and to this day the churches in the Indian districts ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... the form of birds among the ancient Greeks, although as for this purpose the birds were sold in the Athenian public market, the token lost its chief charm—secrecy. The Romans had a better—the ring, which, as the symbol of eternity, like the Egyptian snake touching its mouth with its tail, was the ideal emblem of love, which, too, should be, even if ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... ago it was reported that the late M. Pasteur 'cultivated' the poison of human saliva to such a point that he was able to produce with it many of the effects of the most virulent snake poisons."[19] Had they not been inflamed by the terror of the struggle for existence, "tigers and hyaenas, vultures and sharks, ferrets and polecats, wasps and spiders, puff-adders and skunks" might have turned their undoubted abilities in other more desirable ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... board ship for convenience of stowage. They are laid up round, one fake over another, or by concentric turns, termed Flemish coil, forming but one tier, and lying flat on the deck, the end being in the middle of it, as a snake ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... brought sobering influences to bear on Pyotr Petrovitch. Intensely unpleasant as it was, he was forced little by little to accept as a fact beyond recall what had seemed to him only the day before fantastic and incredible. The black snake of wounded vanity had been gnawing at his heart all night. When he got out of bed, Pyotr Petrovitch immediately looked in the looking-glass. He was afraid that he had jaundice. However his health seemed unimpaired so far, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Camilla Tyrrell, beautiful still, but more than ever like the weird tragic head with snake-wreathed brows, in the wasted contour of her regular features and the flush on her hollow cheeks, while her eyes burned with a strange fire that almost choked back Julius's salutation of peace, even while he breathed it, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sullen mouth twisted into a half-snarl as he went back to his corner. He was too decided an atavism to draw the crowd's admiration. Instinctively the crowd disliked him. He was an animal, lacking in intelligence and spirit, a menace and a thing of fear, as the tiger and the snake are menaces and things of fear, better behind the bars of a cage than ...
— The Game • Jack London
... engulf you in her ranks of gigantic ferns. Her mood is never as placid and sane as in the North. There is a tree in the Hawaiian woods that suggests a tree gone mad. It is called the hau-tree. It lies down, squirms, and wriggles all over the ground like a wounded snake; it gets up, and then takes to earth again. Now it wants to be a vine, now it wants to be a tree. It throws somersaults, it makes itself into loops and rings, it rolls, it reaches, it doubles upon itself. Altogether it is the craziest vegetable growth I ever saw. Where you can get ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... Veracruz, was considered to be an intergrade between P. deppei and P. lineaticollis by Smith (1943: 461), who stated that, although the snake had 231 ventrals and dark lateral streaks as does deppei, it had light-centered dorsal blotches and stripes on the neck as does lineaticollis. This specimen (USNM 110892) has a high number of ventrals for deppei; one from Jalisco has ...
— A Taxonomic Study of the Middle American Snake, Pituophis deppei • William E. Duellman
... look for it, and did not join us before we had arrived at our camp, after an unusually long and fatiguing stage. He brought us the melancholy news that he had found the poor beast on the sands of the Lynd, with its body blown up, and bleeding from the nostrils. It had either been bitten by a snake; or had eaten some noxious herb, which had fortunately been avoided by the other horses. Accidents of this kind were well calculated to impress us with the conviction of our dependence on Providence, which had hitherto been so kind ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... sandhills begins. Next day our friends departed for the Charlotte, after making me several presents. From Mr. McMinn I obtained the course and distance of the pillar from our camp, and travelling on the course given, we crossed the Finke three times, as it wound about so snake-like across the country. On the 22nd we encamped upon it, having the pillar in ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... brought her such lasting reputation. In token of her fidelity and her general attitude toward the world and society at this time, Vittoria had adopted as her device a small Cupid within the circlet of a twisted snake, and under it was the significant motto: Quem peperit virtus prudentia servet amorem [Discretion shall guard the love which virtue inspired]. The soldier-husband came for a hasty visit to Ischia whenever distances and the varying fortunes of war ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... a swift breath of delight, as her wide-open eyes surveyed the marvellous scene of mingled loveliness and grandeur. The stream, curving like a great snake, gleamed amid the acres of green grass, its swift waters sparkling in the sun. Here and there it would dip down between high banks, or disappear for a moment behind a clump of willows, only to reappear in broader volume. ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... said. "She never said what hat I had to wear, just so it's a hat. Honest to gran'ma, my hat's in the creek and I couldn't poke it out with a stick or anything. It sailed into the swimmin' hole. I was goin' to go after it," he explained further, "but—a snake was swimmin—and I hated ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... three times a week, as I passed by, I would pause to see how the nest was prospering. The mother bird would keep her place, her yellow eyes never blinking. One morning, as I looked into her tent, I found the nest empty. Some night-prowler, probably a skunk or a fox, or maybe a black snake or a red squirrel by day, had plundered it. It would seem as if it was too well screened; it was in such a spot as any depredator would be apt to explore. "Surely," he would say, "this is a likely place ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... is full of snakes," she answered. "Man or beast isn't safe from them. Rattlesnakes and all kinds—sometimes, I've heard folks say, if the nights are the least bit chilly, the rattlers crawl under the blankets to get warm. Imagine waking up in the morning and finding a snake in ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... the magic word. All through the year we go on and on in the eddying whirl of business. Money comes and goes, circulates, attracts other money, vanishes; and the fortune of the firm, like a slippery, gleaming snake, always in motion, expands, contracts, diminishes, or increases, and it is impossible to know our condition until there comes a moment of rest. Not until the inventory shall we know the truth, and whether the year, which seems to have been ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... snake wriggled across the dark pool above the ford, and the minnows disappeared under the shadow of the bridge. Then Will sighed, lifted his head, and walked on. There seemed to be something prophetic in it, and he drew a long breath. That's the way his ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... spoke, she designedly stepped in and searched about for her. This over, she betook herself away, adding: "she's certain to have got again into that cave in the hill, and come across a snake, which must have bitten her and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... The camoudi snake has been killed from thirty to forty feet long; though not venomous, his size renders him destructive to the passing animals. The Spaniards in the Oroonoque positively affirm that he grows to the length of seventy or eighty feet and that he will destroy the strongest ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... of the king of Tethertown said that when the battle was fought he would be there to see it, and would bring back word who was to be king. But in spite of that, he was almost too late, and every fight had been fought save the last, which was between a snake and a great black raven. Both struck hard, but in the end the snake proved the stronger, and would have twisted himself round the neck of the raven till he died had not the king's son drawn his sword, and cut off the head of the snake at a single blow. And when ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... latitude, eighty miles north of New York, hardly shuts up house at all. That season I heard a little piping frog on the 7th of December, and on the 18th of January, in a spring run, I saw the common bullfrog out of his hibernaculum, evidently thinking it was spring. A copperhead snake was killed here about the same date; caterpillars did not seem to retire, as they usually do, but came forth every warm day. The note of the bluebird was heard nearly every week all winter, and occasionally that of the robin. Such open winters make one fear that his appetite ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... in the Norse mythology, that the gods tied Loki, the impersonation of the evil principle, to three sharp rocks, and hung a snake over him in such a way, that its venom should drip on his face. But, in this dreadful case, there was one who did not forsake him. His wife Sigyn sat close by his head, and held a bowl to catch the torturing drops. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... birds are about the size of a pigeon, and when skinned and smoked we thought them passable food. Any quantity could be procured by sending people on shore in the evening. The sole process was to thrust in the arm up to the shoulder and seize them briskly; but there was some danger of grasping a snake at the bottom of the burrow instead ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... tempts you, Horace," said he, "scorn it, if it looks ever so white! Put your foot on it, and crush it like a snake!" ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... these lies, and he wanted the world to know he had done so. Yet that was not enough, he wanted to throttle the throat from which the words had come; the man ought to be killed; it was right to kill him just as it was right to kill a poisonous snake that somehow disguised itself as a man, and was received into the houses ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age. So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale comes down Of a terror which haunted bush and brake, The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... science, it becomes us not to report the chatterings of these two till they reached the base of the vast brick chimney, towering nearly eighty feet into the air above them. Its long shadow lay like a stiffened snake upon the fields, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the uttermost, but Dennis was immovable, rooted to the spot by the strange, snake-like fascination of the nightmare. Then, as suddenly as it had arisen, the rock disappeared again, and there before our startled gaze was a peacefully flowing river. Dennis turned to me with a face as white as ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... to a certain thing, he will get the brain fever. If he be expected at seven in the morning, his child will suffer an attack of croup at 6:45. The lightning is darting around him silently all the time, a good deal like the movements of a snake's tongue. After all, it is a scrag that has been struck, and everybody laughs and seems to think it a good joke. It is, indeed, close to the ridiculous to see the number of undoubted afflictions which ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... their beds, of the safe people in the next compartment to mine—to his. Not moving a muscle, we sat there, we two, watching each other, like two hostile cats. Or rather, I thought, he watched me as a snake watches a rabbit, and I, like a rabbit, could not look away. I seemed to hear my heart beating time to the train. Suddenly my heart was at a standstill, and the double beat of the train receded faintly. The man was pointing upwards...I shook my head. He had ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... yards and more mills, for five miles or so, until at last they emerged into an open, flat country, divided by the old-fashioned snake fences; dotted with blackened stumps of the long-vanished forest; eaten by sloughs and bayous from the river. The sawdust ceased. Bobby leaned out to watch with fascinated interest the sand, divided by the tire, flowing back in a beautiful curved ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... in advance, and by the cracking of his postilions' whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his traveling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Morton took exception. "I don't see that. There has never been a religion too gross, too fallacious, to fail of followers. Remember the sacred bull of Egypt and the snake-dance of the Hopi. The whole theory, as Spencer says, is a survival of a more primitive life ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... at a low ebb. Only two clergymen accepted my offer to come and help hoe my potatoes for the privilege of using my vegetable total-depravity figure about the snake-grass, or quack-grass as some call it; and those two did not bring hoes. There seems to be a lack of disposition to hoe among our educated clergy. I am bound to say that these two, however, sat ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... bravado, capable enough of any crime or cruelty, but devoid of boldness in plan or execution; a fellow I would kick with pleasure, but against whom I should never expect to be obliged to draw a sword. He was a snake, who could never be made into a lion—a character to despise, not fear. And so I dismissed him, feeling no longer any serious sense of danger in his presence, yet fully determined to watch closely his future movements in ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... proprium had been temporarily subjugated by some other will or wills; and whose natural powers of discrimination were as much distraught as are those of the subjects of the itinerant biologist; who are made to believe, most firmly, that cayenne pepper is sugar, that water is fire, that a cane is a snake. As for the readers of this periodical who still insist that even animal and spiritual magnetism are humbugs, I can only say, with the author of the 'Night Side of Nature,' 'How closely their clay must be wrapped about them!' For one, I have generally avoided any witnessing of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pillars in one of the vestibules of the hall, the Prince Seti, who was clad in purple-broidered garments and wore upon his brow a fillet of gold from which rose the uraeus or hooded snake, also of gold, that royal ones alone might wear, leaning against the base of a statue, while the rest of us stood silent behind him. For a time he was silent also, as a man might be whose thoughts were otherwhere. At length he turned and said ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... I clutch, whose devices were such, That death must have lent them his sting— So daring they were, so reckless of fear, As heaven had wanted a king? Did the tongue of the lie, while it couch'd like a spy In the haunt of thy venomous jaws, Its slander display, as poisons its prey The devilish snake in the grass? That member unchain'd, by strong bands is restrain'd, The inflexible shackles of death; And, its emblem, the trail of the worm, shall prevail Where its slaver once harbour'd beneath. And oh! if thy scorn went down to thine urn ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... horrible beauty confined to their hues of fire. Now brightly blue, as the most azure depth of a southern sky; now of a livid and snake-like green, darting restlessly to and fro, as the folds of an enormous serpent; now of a lurid and intolerable crimson, gushing forth through the columns of smoke far and wide, and lighting up all Pompeii; then ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... the mouth. His eyes were sunken and surrounded by livid circles, but they themselves seemed consuming with the dry and thirsty fire of fever: hot, red, staring, they glided ever to and fro with a snake-like motion, as uncertain, wild, and painful, in their unresting search, as those of a wounded and captive hawk. The same restlessness, approaching in violence the ceaseless spasmodic habit of a confirmed Chorea, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... the amount of difference between the precipitation of the low lands and the high. Where the two were nearly the same, that is, a balance of precipitation,* the slopes might be rounded and verdure-clad, though this would depend on the AMOUNT of precipitation. On lower Snake River a change seems to be going on. The former canyon-cliffs are covered by debris and vegetation, but in places the old dry cliff-lines can be discerned beneath like a skeleton. The precipitation there has not been great enough to destroy the old ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... flowing around the corner of the passage behind him as the vault doors began to slide together. He was aware mainly of swift, smooth, oiling motion like that of a big snake; then, for a fraction of a second, a strip of brighter light from the outside passage showed a long, heavy wedge of a head, a green ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... hard, cold wood or stone, Iron, and ache in every bone; They hate the night: they see no eyes Of loved ones in the starlit skies. They see the cold, dark water near; They dare not take long looks for fear They'll fall like those poor birds that see A snake's eyes staring at their tree. Some of them laugh, half-mad; and some All through the chilly night are dumb; Like poor, weak infants some converse, And cough like giants, deep ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... begin to be myself again. Ever since I was a child I have feared nothing so much as horses and the chilly snake. Come along, the huge mob ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... was gazing on the landscape with lack-lustre eyes, submitted to be led into the shade of a big maple, without evidencing any especial appreciation of Lucy's thoughtfulness. Lucy tied the halter to the snake fence, and returned to the group on the grass, who were already justifying their claims regarding their appetite by an ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... zeal, O glowing friend, That would indignant rend The northland from the south? Wherefore? to what good end? Boston Bay and Bunker Hill Would serve things still;— Things are of the snake. ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... titanic powers, for Last Bull's greatest strength lay in the muscles of his ponderous and corded neck. Raving and bellowing, he plunged this way and that, striving in vain to wrench himself free from that incomprehensible, snake-like thing which had fastened upon him. Bong, trumpeting savagely, braced himself with widespread pillars of legs, and between them it seemed that the steel fence must go down under such cataclysmic shocks as it was suffering. But the noisy violence of the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... lived long, and watched out many days, And am well sick of watching. Three days since, I had gone out upon the slopes for herbs, Snake-root, and subtle gums; and when the light Fell slantwise through the upper glens, and missed The sunk ravines, I came where all the hills Circle the valley of Gargaphian streams. Reach beyond reach all down the valley gleamed,— Thick branches ringed them. Scarce a bowshot past My platan, ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the horizon—a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. In 1843 the evil had "travelled on from birth to birth." Already it had failed in what may be called one conspiracy; already it had entered upon a second, viz. to rear up an Anti-Kirk, or spurious establishment, which should twist itself with snake-like folds about the legal establishment; surmount it as a Roman vinea surmounted the fortifications which it beleaguered; and which, under whatsoever practical issue for the contest, should at any rate overlook, molest, and insult the true church for ever. Even this brief ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... question was a train-bandit popularly known as the Lone-Hand Kid, because always he conducted his nefarious operations without confederates. He was a squat, dark ruffian, as malignant as a moccasin snake, and as dangerous as one. He was filthy in speech and vile in habit, being in his person most unpicturesque and most unwholesome, and altogether seemed a creature more viper than he was man. The sheriffs of two border States and the officials of a contiguous reservation sought for him many times, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... lest the roof fall on you, for I am sure that every cruel word you speak shall become a snake to strike you. Will you not take warning by what befell you last night, or must there ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... shriek and a jump. There on the path before her lay a snake, or what looked like one. It did not move. Mell grew bold and went nearer. Alas! alas! it was not a snake. It was a pigtail of braided hair,—Isaphine's hair: the red color was unmistakable. She seized it. A smell of kerosene met her nose. Oh ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... out and walk around, if you don't want to catch cold," said Nyoda. We walked up and down for a while, each with a hand on the other's shoulder so as not to get separated and lost in the fog. This walk soon turned into a snake dance and then a war dance around the Glow-worm. It must have been a weird sight if anyone had seen us, ghostly figures flitting about in the illumined fog around the car. I suppose they would have ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... almost crying, and Pony laughed and said: "Why, nothing could happen to you with shooting-crackers"; and she could have the powder to keep for him; and he would just make a snake with it Fourth of July night; put it around through the grass, loose, and then light one end of it, and she would see how it would go off and not make the least noise. But she said she did not want to see it; only he must be careful; and she kissed him again and let him go, and when he got away ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... outlaw's foot struck the prostrate corpse; he staggered, and for one brief instant his sword arm rose, ever so little, as he strove to retain his equilibrium; but that little was enough. It was what the gray old snake had expected, and he was ready. Like lightning, his sword shot through the opening, and, for the first time in his life of continual combat and death, Norman of Torn felt cold steel tear his flesh. But ere he fell, his sword responded to the ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... intimate conversations about the plot and its development. It tells how young Charlie Shandross, bidding his preposterous soldier uncle be hanged, shook the stale dust of Ballybar off his feet, served three years in the C.M.R., and so prepared himself for the deadly adventure of the rod of the snake, the image of the ape, the Haytian attache and the sinister priestess of Voodoo rites—Paris its setting. I won't spoil your pleasure by giving the details away; I will only say it is all very splendidly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... the death cry of a monkey. Probably some python or other snake has seized it in its sleep; and the other noise is the outcry of its companions heaping abuse upon the snake, but unable to do ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... is the absence of the essence of all phenomena, that which cannot be conceived either as anything which has ceased or as anything which is produced (aniruddham anntpannam}. In nirva@na all phenomena are lost; we say that the phenomena cease to exist in nirva@na, but like the illusory snake in the rope they never existed [Footnote ref 2]. Nirva@na cannot be any positive thing or any sort of state of being (bhava), for all positive states or things are joint products of combined causes (sa@msk@rta) and are liable to decay and destruction. Neither can it be a negative ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... breath away, and he walked up the nave between silent men and women. His eyes were fastened on Ruby, and she in turn stared at him as a rabbit at a snake, shrinking slightly on her father's arm. Tresidder's jaw dropped, and his eyes ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... soft thud, followed by a low startled cry of pain and terror from one of their female attendants caused them to glance hastily round. The sight which then met their eyes was startling enough to make them spring instantly to their feet. A snake fully seven feet long, and of the most deadly venomous kind (which had evidently just dropped out of the thatch of the hut), had flung its coils round the bare leg of one of the women, and, before help could ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... away forests, rocks, trail, pack-train and all. The story is told of one slide seen by the guide at the head of a long pack-train. He had judged it to be ten miles away; but out from the upper valley it came coiling like a long white snake, and before he could turn, it had caught him. In a slide death was almost certain, from suffocation if not from the crush of falling trees and rocks. Miners have been taken from their cabins dead in the trail of a snowslide that swept ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... a low hoarse voice when I flashed the light over her. "I know all, and I am going to die. I have eaten the poison things in your box, and just now a snake came on my neck and I let him. He has bitten me, I suppose, and I am glad. Go away: I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... confounding of the elect. Even Winthrop does not escape, and in the midst of wise suggestions for the management of affairs sandwiches such a record as the following: "At Watertown there was (in the view of divers witnesses) a great combat between a mouse and a snake; and after a long fight, the mouse prevailed and killed the snake. The pastor of Boston, Mr. Wilson, a very sincere, holy man, hearing of it, gave this interpretation: That the snake was the devil; the mouse was a poor, contemptible, people, which God had brought hither, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... was around him now, even over that new suit. It circled him like a snake. He took it off, his lips working in another splendid speech. "And I don't wear it ever again," he declared, looking down at Barber. "Do y' understand that?" He flicked a big arm with the leather, though not hard ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... wolf roasted, some a snake cut up, some to Guthorm served the wolf, before they might, eager for crime, on the ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... within the paw of the law may be so. But this is the most innocent in him who doth it, and the most eligible to him who is to suffer it. Believe me, lad, the tongue of a viper is less hurtful than that of a slanderer, and the gilded scales of a rattle-snake less dreadful than the purse of the oppressor. Let me therefore hear no more of your scruples; but consent to my proposal without further hesitation, unless, like a woman, you are afraid of blooding your cloaths, or, like a fool, are terrified with the apprehensions ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... had been set his rescuer. It was only when the angry roar of the great rapids floated up-stream to them, increasing in volume till they could see the terror of tumbling waters just below, and the canoe shot forward like a snake through the swift, smooth current which would sweep them into the vast caldron, that he realized the terrible hazard ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... arm upon the topmost log of the snake fence and looked down the slope. His insight into her own trials caused her to sympathise with him in spite of his absurdity. She made an honest effort to assist him to self-analysis. She said, "A great many things come ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... the King was in France, and Madame Freneuse {196} wound her charms the tighter round the hearts of the garrison officers, and bided her time, to the scandal of the parish and impotent rage of the priest. Was she vixen or fool, this fair snake woman with the beautiful face, for whose smile the officers risked death and disgrace? Was she spy or adventuress? She signed herself as "Widow Freneuse," and had applied to the King for a pension as having grown sons fighting in the Indian wars. She will come ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... this, she turned from the window, just as a darting snake of fire cleft the sky. A crash of thunder followed; and, at that moment, the door of the chamber bursting open, old Mary Antony, breathless, stumbled in, forgetting to knock, omitting to kneel, not waiting leave to speak, ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... would fain be kinglier, say, than I am? Even so, you will not sit like Theseus. You would prove a model? The Son of Priam Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use. 100 You're wroth—can you slay your snake like Apollo? You're grieved—still Niobe's the grander! You live—there's the Racers' frieze to follow: You die—there's ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... absorb all there is of Liberalism. Mackenzie King knows it. He knows that the Liberals will suffer more than the Government from the plough movement. Yet he is invited by The Globe to try the trick of the bird swallowing the snake! ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... round his legs, and his terror reached its culminating point, became a sort of intoxication, entertained delusions, acquired the characteristics of delirium tremens. He positively saw snakes now. He saw the woman twined round him like a snake, not to be shaken off. She was not deadly. She was death ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... reached the brow of the hill beyond the town, the white dusty road stretched like a sinuous snake over the moor before him, while on the left, the sea lay soft and grey in the twilight, and the moon rose full and bright on his right. The evening air was very still, but an occasional strain of the band he had left behind him reached his ears, and with a musical voice he hummed the old Welsh ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... punishment did not end here. A snake, whose fangs dropped poison, glided to the top of the rock and leaned his head over to peer at Loki. The eyes of the two met and fixed each other. The serpent could never move away afterwards; but every moment a burning drop from his ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... the station—the very same train which had brought the Serpent into Paradise. Dorothy smiled a little at the idea of a snake travelling on a train unless it belonged to a circus, and wiped her eyes. Having mapped out her line of conduct, the rest was simple enough—to abide by it even to the smallest details, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... interest was hardly the kind of which the professor had been thinking when he spoke. For, whilst standing on the opposite side of the heap, contemplating the remains of an ancient and grass-grown wreck, they were startled by the appearance of a sharp snake-like head with a pair of fierce gleaming eyes which was suddenly protruded from a gap in the ship's side, and in another moment the creature—a conger-eel of truly gigantic proportions—emerged from its hiding-place, and, possibly attracted by ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... before the coming of dawn, Hampton, without uttering a word, calmly turned up the collar of his tightly buttoned coat, so as better to conceal the white collar he wore, gripped his revolver between his teeth, and crept like some wriggling snake among the black rocks and through the dense underbrush in search after water. By some miracle of divine mercy he was permitted to pass unscathed, and came crawling back, a dozen hastily filled canteens dangling across his shoulders. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... a pocket-knife, a water-bag, etc., which are indispensable to a traveller in our country, everyone ought to carry with him a good plaster, a nosebag, and some snake poison; maize (mealies) for his horse, the cheapest and most strengthening food that we know of, can always be carried in the nosebag. Snake poison prepared by a good Kaffir doctor is the only cure ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... despairing of influencing the populace by human reasoning, just as a dramatist has recourse to supernatural machinery, produced signs and wonders and oracles. He argued that it was a portent that the sacred snake during those days deserted his usual haunt. The priests, who found their daily offerings to him of the first fruits of the sacrifices left untouched, told the people, at the instigation of Themistokles, that the goddess Athena (Minerva) had ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Quotations, I shall conclude this Head with Virgil's Advice to young People, while they are gathering wild Strawberries and Nosegays, that they should have a care of the Snake ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... life was a magic life; but the descendants of the gods are degenerate. Now and then as a medicine-man by practicing sorcery can perform great feats, so now and then there is a medicine-bear, a medicine-wolf, or a medicine-snake that ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... Assyrian Hunting Scene (British Museum, London). A Babylonian Map of the World. An Egyptian Scribe (Louvre, Paris). Excavations at Nippur. Excavations at Troy. Lions' Gate, Mycenae. Silver Fragment from Mycenae (National Museum, Athens). A Cretan Girl (Museum of Candia, Crete). Aegean Snake Goddess (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). A Cretan Cupbearer (Museum of Candia, Crete). The Francois Vase (Archaeological Museum, Florence). Consulting the Oracle at Delphi. The Discus Thrower (Lancelotti Palace, Rome). Athlete using ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... great ash-tree Yggdrasill, which, with its roots anchored deep in the primordial abyss, rose up through the vast central mountains of the world, and, stretching forth its branches to the furthest heaven, bore the stars as its fruit. Encircling the whole earth like a ring, lay the huge snake Midgard,—always hidden in the sea, save when half drawn forth on one occasion by the god Thor; outside the snake a broader ring of ice-mountains swept round both land and ocean, and formed the outer frame of the world,—for there lay only blank space beyond; and over all, the sun and ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... ploughed her way through the sea, raising a mass of foam brilliant with globules of light. These globules swept astern along the sides of the ship, and disappeared further on. We left behind us an undulating luminous wake, resembling a long bright snake following us, which was gradually in the distance engulfed by the ocean. This luminous track seemed to be reeled off from a windlass at ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... an Opossum who had gone to sleep hanging from the highest branch of a tree by the tail, awoke and saw a large Snake wound about the limb, between him and ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... escort of twoscore horsemen; they in the full panoply of war; and behind them, on foot, in procession extending like a gigantic snake down the Rhine road, an army of at least three thousand men, the setting sun flashing fire from the points of their spears. Here and there, down the line, floated above them silken flags, and Roland recognized the device on ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... establishing an oracle of Aesculapius at his native town. Having circulated a prophecy that the son of Apollo was to be born again, he contrived that there should be found in the foundations of the temple to Aesculapius, then in course of construction at Abonouteichos, an egg in which a small live snake had been placed. In an age of superstition no people had so great a reputation for credulity as the Paphlagonians, and Alexander had little difficulty in convincing them of the second coming of the god under the name of Glycon. A large tame snake with a false ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Agiochook! the jackals of the negro- holder.... What boots thy zeal, O glowing friend, that would indignant rend the northland from the South? Wherefore? To what good end? Boston Bay and Bunker Hill would serve things still—things are of the snake. The horseman serves the horse, the neat-herd serves the neat, the merchant serves the purse, the eater serves his meat; 'tis the day of the chattel, web to weave, and corn to grind; things are in the ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... touch, and his pulse not fast; his breathing seemed wholly ventral; the bust still, the belly moving strongly. Presently he got from his bed, and ran for the door, with his head down not three feet from the floor and his body all on a stretch forward, like a striking snake: I say 'ran,' but this strange movement was not swift. Lloyd and I mastered him and got him back in bed. Soon there was another and more desperate attempt to escape, in which Lloyd had his ring broken. Then we bound him to the bed humanely with sheets, ropes, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... considerable time after. I remember a story, which is, I believe, well-authenticated, of a man who had been bitten through his boot by a rattle-snake in America. The man died, and shortly afterwards his two sons died one after the other, with just the same symptoms as their father, although they had not been bitten by snakes. It was afterwards discovered, that upon the ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Charles Sumner expressing my wonder at the undecided conduct of the administration; at its want of foresight; its eternal parleying with Baltimoreans, Virginians, Missourians, etc., and no step to tread down the head of the young snake. No one among them seems to have the seer's eye. The people alone, who arm, who pour in every day and in large numbers, who transform Washington into a camp, and who crave for fighting,—the people alone ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... time; Sixth and Main was in a turmoil. The dragon had broken up in a hundred parts, like a jointed snake, and each part was thrashing around blindly, trying to get rid of its papier-mache so it could see where it was and ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... colander, and who seemed to have been made on purpose to wait on Valerie, smiled meaningly in reply, and brought the dressing-gown. Valerie took off her combing-wrapper; she was in her shift, and she wriggled into the dressing-gown like a snake into a ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... power—and matters went chiefly as they and his fiery brothers chose to direct. Wiser counsellors recommended securing the other seaport, Alexandria; but Prince Alfonse declared, that the only way to kill a snake, was to strike the head, and persuaded the council that the move should be upon Grand Cairo, or, as the Crusaders ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... again. And reluctant, and yet obviously fascinated by his French, like a bird by a snake, Mademoiselle led up the narrow stairs and into a sizeable room, clean as a pin and as naked. On the threshold Madame washed her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... some from England, Canada, and America. Boys and girls whom she had never seen sent her letters telling her of their cats and dogs, of football, and lessons and school. With her replies sometimes went a snake skin, a brass tray, a miniature paddle, or other curio. But it was the letter, rather than the gift, that was enjoyed. As one girl wrote; "You are away out helping the poor black kiddies and people, and just as busy doing good as possible, and yet you've time to send a letter ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... snake in the grass somewhere," answered Solonet, in a low voice, replying to the Italian proverb with a ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... tug came alongside to snake her outside the Heads, the mate came aboard with his lee rail pretty well under and was indiscreet enough to toss a piece of his lip at the Old Man. Five minutes later he was paid and off and kicked out on the dock, while the cook packed his sea ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... snake fence into the woodland and splashed rapidly through the wet growth. The big leaves that he brushed in passing, emptied their load of water upon him; Timothy was getting wetter and wetter, but rather enjoying it all. Then he spied Arethusa propped up against her tree with ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... below the church, and glanced at the conglomeration of grain-sellers, jewellers, confectioners, and dealers in metal or earthen vessels, every man sitting knee-deep in his wares, smoking the eternal "hubble-bubble;" we noted the keen eyes of the buyers and the hawk's glance of the sellers, the long snake-like fingers eagerly grasping the passing coin, and seemingly convulsed into serpentine contortion when they relinquished their clutch on a single "pi;" we marked this busy scene, set down, like a Punch and Judy show, in the midst ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... scotch the snake of Jacobitism, began with religious persecution. The Episcopalian clergy had no reason to love triumphant Presbyterianism, and actively, or in sympathy, were favourers of the exiled dynasty. Episcopalian ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... The snake was coiled some half-dozen yards from us. Upon the top coil was poised his hideous head; above it vibrated the bony, fleshless vertebrae of the tail. The little schoolmarm stared at the beast, fascinated by fear and horror. Ajax cut a switch from ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... was generally raining. The chief things to avoid were the tent ropes. As I left the cook-house I decided exactly in my own mind where the bell-tent ropes extended, ditto those of the store tent and the Mess, but invariably, just as I thought I was clear, something caught my ankle as securely as any snake, and down I crashed on top of the tray, the plates, mugs, and knives scattering all around. Luckily it was months since the latter had been sharp, or a steel proof overall would have been my only hope. Distances and the supposititious length of tent ropes are inclined ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... to her with the mingled daring and repugnance with which one advances to crush a snake, "do you mean to say that you are going to publish this much of your story and publish no more? That you will tell the ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... thigh." "Who might that be, O Fergus?" asked Ailill. "I know, then," replied Fergus: "it is battle against foes; it is the inciting of strife; it is the rage of a monster; it is the madness of a lion; it is the cunning of a snake; it is the rock of the [W.5558.] Badb; it is the sea over dikes; it is the shaking of rocks; it is the stirring of a wild host, namely Conall Cernach ('the Victorious'), the high-glorious son of ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... with his character. He had the head of a gladiator, round; compact, combative, with something alert and snake-like in its movements. The black, closely-shorn hair was erect and bristling. The forehead was lofty and narrow. The features were, handsome, the nose regularly aquiline, the eyes well opened, dark piercing, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hear him preach, looking up at him with her blue, blue glance. In the meantime he would not rob that marsh hen's nest which he had found. He would never steal another egg. He wished that he didn't have that drawerful at home. He would give them to Sairy Jane if she wanted them—all except the snake's egg, which he might keep, because serpents were an accursed race. Yes, Sairy Jane might have them all, and he wouldn't pull her hair again when he caught her looking at them on ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... chalk; and the same maybe said of many other Foraminifera. I think it probable that critical and unprejudiced examination will show that more than one species of much higher animals have had a similar longevity; but the only example which I can at present give confidently is the snake's-head lampshell (Terebratulina caput serpentis), which lives in our English seas and abounded (as Terebratulina striata of authors) ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the table like a snake and he grabbed Tom by the jacket. "Where is he?" he asked ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... spring of the year, while hunting eggs in the second story of the old log house, she discovered a large snake on one of the rafters over her head. Hastening quietly to her own room for a gun, she brought the snake to the floor with the first shot. It measured over four feet in length, was dark in color and was of the kind, that eats ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... of polite English when he steps out of the school building just as a snake sheds its skin. He is ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... as he'd have looked at a snake," thought Hetty. "I guess he's an honest fellow after all. He's got a ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... beings, or a worse one than any of the other animals, according as the gentle reader may be a native of Scotland or of somewhere in the remainder of the world. You may charm seals by the bagpipes just as a snake is charmed by pipes with no bag. It has even been suggested that all the sealing vessels leaving this country should carry bagpipes with them, and I can see no sound objection to this course—so long as they take all the bagpipes. I could also reconcile myself to a general extrusion of concertinas ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... burial-place of the old Culdee,—came full in view. The unsteady devotion, that journeyed, fancy-bound, along the heights, to gloat over a dead man's bones, had its clue to carry it on in a straight line. Its trail was on the ground; it glided snake-like from cross to cross, in quest of dust; and, without its finger-posts to guide it, would have wandered devious. It is surely a better devotion that, instead of thus creeping over the earth to a mouldy sepulchre, can at once launch into the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... and hard, Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand At any time, might have cured me of the typhus, Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost. And only to think that my soul could not react, As Byron's did, in song, in something noble, But turned on itself like a tortured snake — Judge me this ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... MASHA). So here you are—you cursed little stray sheep. No disrespect to you, sir. (To MASHA.) You black-hearted, ungrateful little snake. How dare you treat us like ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... whereas thy burns can be treated with fragrant rose-water; and that, whereas I was like to lose my muscles and the use of my limbs, thou, for all thy excoriation by the heat, wilt yet be fair again, like a snake that has sloughed off the old skin." "Alas! woe's me!" replied the lady, "for charms acquired at such a cost, God grant them to those that hate me. But thou, most fell of all wild beasts, how hast thou borne thus to torture me? What more ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Germans. To get a clear conception of the battle one must picture a fifty-foot-high railway embankment, its steeply sloping sides heavily wooded, stretching its length across a fertile, smiling country-side like a monstrous green snake. On this line, in time of peace, the bloc trains made the journey from Antwerp to Brussels in less than an hour. Malines, with its historic buildings and its famous cathedral, lies on one side of this line and the village of Vilvorde on the other, five miles separating them. ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... halted and turned about, carelessly and casually, and looked back along the way he had come. Everything was as it should be—the weedfield steaming in the heat; the empty road stretching along the crooked ridge like a long gray snake sunning itself; and beyond it, massing up, the dark, cloaking stretch of swamp. Everything was all right, but——The squire's eyes, in their loose sacs of skin, narrowed and squinted. Out of the blue arch ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Lump Perry, the parlour snake, Famous through the city for the way he drinks his tea; Plays with it, toys with it, Makes no noise with it, Balanced on a napkin on ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... critter close beside me, when Nep come up, and barked just as plain as speakin'. 'Take care,' says he, 'ole Joe, you're in danger,' an' with that I woke in a hurry, an' jist then I saw that big eagle come soarin' overhead, and then Marsa Graham come and give that snake ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... incident I again wended my steps into the secluded Brandenburg valley, and found the eagles thriving and much grown. Being curious to see if their confinement had subdued their wild and ferocious spirit, I removed one of the laths and entered the barn. An angry hiss, similar to that of a snake, warned me of danger, but too late to save my hands some severe scratches. With one bound and a flap of their gigantic wings they were on me, and had it not been for Tomerl, who was standing just behind me armed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... down and proceeded to oil them all. Before she had finished, out from the tub, the water of which had kept on a slow motion ever since she had ceased stirring it, came the head and half the body of a huge gray snake. But the witch did not look round. It grew out of the tub, waving itself backwards and forwards with a slow horizontal motion, till it reached the princess, when it laid its head upon her shoulder, and gave a low hiss in her ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... few inches long, with weak limbs and short tails, and broad, crescent-shaped heads, their bodies clothed in the fine scaly armour of their fish-ancestor (the Branchiosaurs). Some (the Aistopods) were long, snake-like creatures, with shrunken limbs and bodies drawn out until, in some cases, the backbone had 150 vertebrae. They seem to have taken to the thickets, in the growing competition, as the serpents ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... "A snake is as round as a hole in the ground, And weasels are wavy and sleek; And no alligator could ever be straighter Than lizards that live in a creek, But a Camel's all lumpy And bumpy and humpy— Any ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... threatened to tear open the door and jump out. The important thing was that he kept her from doing it, perhaps by bribes of gold and precious stones, and the Aigle moved on, writhing like a wounded snake as she obeyed the hand on the wheel. If the slightest thing should go wrong in the steering-gear, as we read of in other motor-cars each time we picked up a newspaper—but other cars were not in charge of Mr. Jack Dane. I felt sure, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... prevalent belief that a snake can never die till the sun is down. Cut or hack it as you will, it will never die till sunset. This idea has evidently its source in the amazing ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various |
