"Venomous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their premature rejoicings over what, with an extraordinary want of proportion, and ignorance of our national character, they imagined to be a damaging blow to the British Empire. France, Russia, Austria, and Germany were equally venomous against us, nor can the visit of the German Emperor, though a courteous and timely action in itself, entirely atone for the senseless bitterness of the press of the Fatherland. Great Britain was roused out of her habitual apathy ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rounded—lined with small cobblestones. In one house, at the foot of "cellar stairs" we found a subterranean room, or tomb. The entrance to it was covered with a single stone lintel. In examining this tomb Mr. Tucker had a narrow escape from being bitten by a boba, a venomous snake, nearly three feet in length, with vicious mouth, long fangs like a rattlesnake, and a strikingly mottled skin. At one place there was a low pyramid less than ten feet in height. To its top led a flight of rude ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... have a share of the persecuting work; and after murdering a number of the Lord's witnesses at Pentland, he came west to Kilmarnock, where he committed many unheard of cruelties; instance, his putting a woman in the thieves hole there, in the Dean amongst toads and other venomous creatures, where her shrieks were heard at a distance, but none durst help her, and all because a man pursued ran through her house: and also his shooting one Findlay at a post without the least crime or shadow of law; with the many cruelties exercised upon the country ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... What a venomous spirit is in that serpent Milton, that black-mouthed Zoilus, that blows his viper's breath upon those immortal devotions from the beginning to the end! This is he that wrote with all irreverence against the Fathers of our Church, and showed as little duty to the father that begat him: the same that ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... Librarians' Association. While the train bearing the excursionists was en route through Arizona, a stop of twenty minutes was made one evening for supper at a rude eating-house, and here Dr. Poole had an exciting experience with a tarantula. The venomous reptile attacked the kindly old gentleman with singular voracity, and but for the high-topped boots which Mr. Poole wore, serious injuries would have been inflicted upon our friend's person. Mr. Fred Hild, our Public Librarian, hearing Dr. Poole's cries for help, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... hiding delicious yawns, and cordially pretending that we had never been more fit. The day was different from other days; it had a unique romantic quality, tonic, curative of all ills. On that day even the tooth-ache vanished, retiring far into the wilderness with the spiteful word, the venomous thought, and the unlovely gesture. We sang with gusto "Christians awake, salute the happy morn." We did salute the happy morn. And when all the parcels were definitely unpacked, and the secrets of all hearts disclosed, we spent the rest of the happy morn in waiting, candidly greedy, for ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... altogether essentially like unto gold and gems, are now, by deceit of Satan, so utterly perverted that they are the true and living image of Satan, and, as it were, filthy or rather consisting of an infernal flame, not otherwise than when the sweetest and purest mass, infected with the most venomous ferment, is altogether and substantially changed and transformed into a lump of the same ferment." (Gieseler 3, 2, 254.) Original sin "is not a mere accident in man, but his inverted and transformed essence or new form itself, just as when a most wholesome medicine is changed into ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... he lay with his eyes closed, a high-pitched voice broke the quiet. "If a man starts to haul on that line, I'll shoot him dead!" Jeremy turned his head and looked. There stood Stede Bonnet, his face ashen gray and trembling, but with a venomous fire in his sunken eyes. He held a pistol in each hand and two more were thrust into his waist-band. Not a ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... abducting Io, who was guarded by Argus of the hundred eyes; Mercury I say, was the God of concord, or eloquence, and of mystery. Except to inspire them with friendly feeling and kind affections, Mercury never went among mortals. Touched by his wand, venomous serpents closely embraced him. Listening to him, Achilles forgot his pride, extended hospitality to Priam and permitted him to take away the body of Hector. The ferocious Carthaginians were softened through the influence of this God of peace, and received the Trojans in friendship. Mercury ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... life, weaving down there in the dim light that filters past the ladder, the rugs and belts and other material mysteriously used for religious ceremonial. And down in the snake priests' kiva, just over yonder, the venomous reptiles have been kept for weeks past in the sacrificial clay jars, out of which they have crawled during the rites of their purification and hung in twisted hissing knots out of the crevices between the sides of the kiva walls, from which places ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... list, cold and venomous as a snake. Enthusiasm in him there was none. The problem of his character is too complex to be entered on here. But we may lay to heart the warning that, if a man is not knit to Christ by heart's love and obedience, the more he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Yes, such pity As when the viper hath been cut to pieces, The separate fragments quivering in the sun, In the last energy of venomous life, Deserve and have. Why, I should think as soon 30 Of pitying some particular fang which made One in the jaw of the swoln serpent, as Of saving one of these: they form but links Of one long chain; one ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... so numerous that you could scarcely walk through them; it would be a dreadful plague. As it is, two or three might cause you considerable annoyance, and pain: what then if there were millions doubly venomous, because sent to punish you? So these little flies must have greatly punished the Egyptians. The fourth plague was flies that filled the land and covered everything, to the great disgust of the people. The ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... earth she sank to sleep, If slumber her eyelids knew, She lay where the deadly vine doth weep Its venomous tear, and nightly steep The flesh in blistering dew, And near her the she-wolf stirred the brake, And the copper snake breathed in ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... shall immediately cast us into that Fermentation and Putrefaction, which will utterly dissolve All the Vital Tyes within us; Ev'n as an Aqua Fortis, made with a conjunction of Nitre and Vitriol, Corrodes what it Siezes upon. And when the Divel has raised those Arsenical Fumes, which become Venomous. Quivers full of Terrible Arrows, how easily can he shoot the deleterious Miasms into those Juices or Bowels of Men's Bodies, which will soon Enflame them with a Mortal Fire! Hence come such Plagues, as that Beesome ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... icy fang And churlish chiding of the winter's wind, Which when it bites and blows upon my body, Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say, 'This is no flattery: these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am.' Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... what hideous beings these three sisters were. Why, instead of locks of hair, if you can believe me, they had each of them a hundred enormous snakes growing on their heads, all alive, twisting, wriggling, curling, and thrusting out their venomous tongues, with forked stings at the end! The teeth of the Gorgons were terribly long tusks; their hands were made of brass; and their bodies were all over scales, which, if not iron, were something as hard and impenetrable. They ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... electrical attraction; it leaps to the embrace of the atom it selects, but only under the influence of powerful affinities; and what it clasps once, it clasps for ever. That is the pure air which we drink in on the heather-clad heights—not the venomous air of the crowded casino, nor even the close air of the middle-class parlour. It thrills and nerves us. How we smile, we who live here, when some dweller in the mists and smoke of the valley confounds ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... we reply, is without force (because as a matter of fact we do see real effects to result from unreal causes), for we observe that death sometimes takes place from imaginary venom, (when a man imagines himself to have been bitten by a venomous snake,) and effects (of what is perceived in a dream) such as the bite of a snake or bathing in a river take place with regard to a dreaming person.—But, it will be said, these effects themselves are unreal!—These effects themselves, we reply, are unreal indeed; but not ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... about the man. Not once had he appealed for mercy, not once had he complained, not once had he asked about his brother; he showed neither curiosity nor concern over Jim's fate, and now he betrayed the utmost indifference to his own. He merely shifted that venomous stare from one face to another as if indelibly to photograph each and every one of them ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us ply the throne of grace, in the name and merit of our Blessed Mediator, taking all possible opportunities, public, private, and secret, to pour out our supplications to the God of our salvation. Prayer is the most proper and potent antidote against the old Serpent's venomous operations. When legions of devils do come down among us, multitudes of prayers should go up to God. Satan, the worst of all our enemies, is called in Scripture a dragon, to note his malice; a serpent, to note his subtilty; ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... beasts trotting after us, we returned to where we had left Juag. Here I had the dickens' own time keeping the female from Juag's throat. Of all the venomous, wicked, cruel-hearted beasts on two worlds, I think a female ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... waiters, drawn to the spot by the fury of my lady's tone, peered in at the half-opened door, and asking one another what the fracas was about, thought so; and softly called to others to witness it. On one side of the table rose Lady Dunborough, grim and venomous; on the other the girl stood virtually alone—for the elder woman had fallen to weeping helplessly, and the attorney seemed to be unequal to this new combatant. Even so, and though her face betrayed trouble and some irresolution, she did not blench, but faced her accuser with a slowly rising passion ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... supposed that there was a possibility of Stoddard desiring to marry Johnnie; but the flurried eagerness of Miss Sessions convinced him that such a possibility was a very present dread with her, and he sent a venomous glance ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... personally as much as his little finger against the social edifice. He was no man of action; he was not even an orator of torrential eloquence, sweeping the masses along in the rushing noise and foam of a great enthusiasm. With a more subtle intention, he took the part of an insolent and venomous evoker of sinister impulses which lurk in the blind envy and exasperated vanity of ignorance, in the suffering and misery of poverty, in all the hopeful and noble illusions of righteous anger, pity, and revolt. The shadow of his evil ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... given it a very right description, in calling of it the Father and Mother of a great many other prodigious wickednesses: for it is so venomous and vile a thing, that it puts the whole course of Nature out of order, and makes it fit for nothing but confusion, and a hold for every evil thing. For where envy and strife is, there is confusion, and every evil work. {139c} Wherefore, ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... life of martyrdom to atone for it. But that my girl should be entangled in the same meshes which held me was more than I could suffer. I struck him down with no more compunction than if he had been some foul and venomous beast. His cry brought back his son; but I had gained the cover of the wood, though I was forced to go back to fetch the cloak which I had dropped in my flight. That is the true story, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... supper, and there is everything that wealth can purchase, and all the spacious splendor that thirty feet front can afford. They are hot, and crowded, and glaring. There is a little weak scandal, venomous, not witty, and a stream of weary platitude, mortifying to every sensible person. Will any of our Pendennis friends intermit their indignation for a moment, and consider how many good things they have said or heard during the season? If Mr. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... about to drag him out of the august atmosphere as if he had been some venomous, dangerous beast come there to slay, but the voice he had heard speak of the stove said, in kind accents, "Poor little child! he is very young. Let him go: let him speak ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... 'play me for a fool.' Let you ring up Ned Stillman and ask him to fetch you away from my house in his car!" He stopped and took a deep breath; his words were no longer passionate; instead, they were precise and cool and venomous. "Understand me, young lady, I'm through with you. I wouldn't care, if I thought you were really virtuous. But you're too clever for a virtuous woman.... Oh, I dare say you subscribe to the letter of the law, all right. For instance, you take care not to run around with married men whose ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... venomous eyes toward the speaker for just an instant. Then he stood respectfully looking at his master again. Ned saw the movement, the quick hostility of the glance, and felt surer of his ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... out the question, and with my teeth set firm, and my eyes fixed upon the sandy ground of the enclosure, some such thoughts as these ran through my brain—"It is only just that these men should suffer for their horrible crimes, for they are more dangerous than venomous serpents, and I suppose that Captain Thwaites and Lieutenant Reardon are obliged to come as a kind of duty; but we three came under the idea that we were to see some kind of exhibition, and old Ching ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... eight feet of him The Spider's gun roared again. Gary's body jerked stiff at the shock and then slowly collapsed. The fourth man, Longtree, with his hands above his head, begged The Spider not to kill his old pal! The Spider's face, horribly distorted, venomous as a snake's, colorless and glistening with sweat, twisted queerly as he spoke: "Kill you, you damned coyote?" And he shot Longtree down as a man ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the code of honor in this duel a outrance. Knowing our time was short, we fought as men who fight with halters round their necks; not to decide a nice point at issue, but to kill this accursed villain as we would kill a mad dog or a venomous reptile whose living on imperiled the life and honor of the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Saxon composer and his opponents raged incessantly both in public and private. The newspaper and the drawing-room rang alike with venomous diatribes. Handel was called a swindler, a drunkard, and a blasphemer, to whom Scripture even was not sacred. The idea of setting Holy Writ to music scandalized the Pharisees, who reveled in the licentious ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Perhaps some day when your clothes are moulded, and your brain feels mouldy too with damp heat, and you can neither work in the sun nor be at peace in the shade, you may wish you were sitting on a stool in your uncle's office, undisturbed by venomous insects, and cool in ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... laughter which greet the appearance of a rabbit, and the air is thick with the sticks that the joyous, beery beaters fling at the scurrying form of their hereditary foe. It is marvellous to note with what a venomous hatred the beater regards the bunny. Pheasant or partridge he is careless of; even the hare is, in comparison, a thing of nought, but let him once set eyes on a rabbit, and his whole being seems to change. His eye absolutely flashes, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... of German towns is the prevalence of malicious and venomous gossip. This is almost entirely due to that pestilent institution the "Coffee Circle," or Kaffee Klatsch, that standing feature of German provincial life. Amongst the bourgeoisie, the ladies form associations, and meet once a week in turn at each others' houses. ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... as toward the gentian? Beauty is a thing not merely of form and color, but of memory and association. The thistle is an ugly customer. In a single respect it lays itself out to be agreeable; but even its beauty is too much like that of some venomous reptile. Yet it has its friends, or, at all events, its patrons (if you wish to catch butterflies, go to the thistle pasture), and no doubt could give forty eloquent and logical excuses for its offensive traits. Probably it felicitates itself upon its shrewdness, and pities the poor estate ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... O, do not you go for to leave your old mammy again what has mourned you as if you was dead all the years. Do not you go for to leave I and the wicked around of I as might be the venomous beasts in the grass. Stop with I, my pretty child—Stop along of your old mother, for the days of I be few and numbered, and the enemies ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... loved with his very soul, who held his heart, his mind, his imagination captive, whose every look on him was joy, whose every smile was a delight, had gone out of his life for ever! She had turned away from him as she would from a venomous snake! she hated him so cruelly that she would gladly hurt him—do him some grievous wrong if she could. And Clyffurde was left in utter loneliness with only a vague, foolish longing in his heart—the longing that one day she might have her wish, and might have ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... the wordy onslaught. But Carew's hot words, and his appearance, conveyed to Martin's alert mind a startling truth—it was not lust for treasure that inspired Wild Bob's verbal flogging, or venomous glances; it was jealousy, a wild, hate-filled jealousy of him, Martin Blake. Ruth was the core of ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... desolation. It was like being ordered into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Dense everglades, swamp-fevers, malaria in the air, poisonous underbrush, and venomous reptiles and insects, and now and then a wily unseen foe picking off the men, one by one, as they painfully cut out roads through the thickets,—these were the features of military life in Florida at that period. Men who would have marched boldly to the cannon's mouth, officers who ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... shoot a President or a successor to a President. Yes, but if you leave the Southern mobocrat to shoot John Jones, an unknown entity, the element of anarchism remains pregnant in the body politic and is liable at any time to show its venomous head. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... being that in default fatal effects follow a wound. But a black who suffers the rare chance of contact fortifies his theoretical cure of pulverising the offending fish by immersing the injured foot or hand in running water for a whole day, the popular treatment for all venomous wounds. As to the effect of the wound they say, "Suppose that fella nail go along your foot, you sing out all a same bullocky all night. Leg belonga you swell up and jump about? Bingie (belly) belonga ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... late. He was up until one o'clock writing a reply to a peculiarly venomous attack on his integrity which a morning paper had printed. The writer had boldly accused him of being the hired tool of the group of financial cut-throats who were coining millions out of the ruin of others in ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... he held her, she reminded Gordon of a venomous snake; he had never seen such a lithe, wicked hatred in any other human being. "You are a gentle object," he ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... symptoms which I at once attributed to the exposure of the preceding night. Cold shiverings and a burning fever succeeded one another at intervals, while one of my legs was swelled to such a degree, and pained me so acutely, that I half suspected I had been bitten by some venomous reptile, the congenial inhabitant of the chasm from which we had lately emerged. I may here remark by the way—what I subsequently gleamed—that all the islands of Polynesia enjoy the reputation, in common with the Hibernian isle, of being free from the presence ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Utgard-Loke, Loke of the skirts of the World, as it were; is treated as a venomous giant bound in agony under a serpent-haunted cavern (no mention is made of "Sigyn" or her ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... and in again with an impudent smile. "Well, what's the matter with it? It's quite a candid one—like your own. A little more pointed perhaps and something venomous upon occasion. But it has its good qualities also. At ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... a look at once sorrowful and terrible, a look which spelled death and destruction. Nor did he only look. With a strange outcry, shrill and piercing, awaking the canyon in unnatural echoes, he whirled in his harness and reared, reared despite his harness, and struck out with venomous force. It was quick as a lightning flash, but, quick as it was, Felipe avoided it. And it was fortunate that he did. Terror-stricken and dropping the whip, he sped to the rear, to a point behind the cart, and there turned amazed eyes at ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... indulgent to us as to allow of but one venomous reptile of the serpent kind in these kingdoms, and that is the viper. As you propose the good of mankind to be an object of your publications, you will not omit to mention common salad-oil as a sovereign ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... at him, for the moment speechless. His eyes were venomous, his mouth a thin, cruel slit. He pushed the newcomer aside, opened the door of the apartment opposite, went in, and slammed it ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... Sin began to take pipes—long pipes and short pipes, pipes of gold and pipes of silver, pipes of ivory and pipes of jade. Some were carved to represent the heads of demons, some had the bodies of serpents wreathed about them; others were encrusted with precious gems, and filled the night with the venomous sheen of emeralds, the blood-rays of rubies and golden glow of topaz, while the spear-points of diamonds flashed ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... as these evoked so little attention that it is impossible to find them recorded in most of the newspapers of the time; and if mentioned it was merely as the object of venomous attacks. In varying degrees, now in outright abuse and again in sneering and ridicule, the working class was held up as an ignorant, discontented, violent aggregation, led by dangerous agitators, and arrogantly seeking to upset all business by seeking to dictate to employers ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... folly. Ships against forts had long been held a futile and unequal contest. But it was not the forts that saved Constantinople. In the narrow gulf leading to the Sea of Marmora no less than eight mine fields zigzagged their venomous coils across the channel. The strong, unchanging current of the Dardanelles, flowing steadily south, carried with it all floating mines dropped in the upper reaches. Torpedo tubes ranged on the shore discharged ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... established. He had during many years studied science and philosophy, and had acquired the knack of writing while unsuccessfully knocking at the doors of the academies. The outbreak of the Revolution found him soured, and ready to turn a venomous pen against all detainers of power. A morbid streak fast developed into a mania of persecution and suspicion, and it was by giving free rein to his imagination in that respect that he came into ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... limbs 185, Crocodiles Their power of burying themselves in the mud Tortoises—Curious parasite Land tortoises Edible turtle Huge Indian tortoises (note) Hawk's-bill turtle, barbarous mode of stripping it of the tortoise-shell Serpents.—Venomous species rare Cobra de capello Instance of land snakes found at sea Tame snakes (note) Singular tradition regarding the cobra de capello Uropeltidae.—New species discovered in Ceylon Buddhist veneration for the cobra de capello Anecdotes of snakes The Python ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... eyes tells me different. Time and time ag'in I've been told he's a quare creetur. Some say he's strong as a horse and venomous as a snake. Some say he's swifter than the wind and slicker than a red fox. And many's the time by my own h'a'th-stone I've had to pooh-pooh these relations; yet there's no denying that for mighty nigh ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... recognised that the very thought of individual rights is only the outcome of the venomous quality in himself, that it is the hiss of the snake of self which poisons with its sting his own life and the lives of those about him, then he is ready to take part in a yearly ceremony which is open to all neophytes who are prepared for it. All weapons of defense and offense are given up; ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... was a misanthrope until he took to gathering scarabs. Fenton, over there, has the finest collection of circus posters in the world. Bellerding's house is a museum of obsolete musical instruments. De Gay collects venomous insects from all over the world; no harmless ones need apply. Terriberry has a mania for old railroad tickets. Some are really very curious. I've often wished I had the time to be a ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... your own door. Left alone, I would have saved him. Your drugs have weakened him; your unreasonable doubts have killed him utterly. Between the two of you, yourself and—him," and the little pause was venomous with unspoken hatred; "you have killed my baby boy. I did my best; I took the final chance. But I could not go to seek the help of my own church, and leave you, unguarded, to do your harm in your own way. I did the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... not our schools teach a little practical natural history? Once, when walking in the Catskills, I saw the burly driver of a stage-load of ladies bound out of his vehicle to kill a garter-snake, the pallid women looking on, meanwhile, as if the earth were being rid of some terrible and venomous thing. They ought to have known that the poor little reptile was as harmless as one of their own garters, and quite as useful in its way. Every country boy and girl should be taught to recognize all our helpers in our incessant fight with insect enemies—a fight which ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... getting a little too threatening," reflected the Professor, satisfied that the three natives were as venomous as so many serpents; "at the first move war ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... his hand over his eyes,—"I thank you—yes! Let me sit down amongst you." And he sat down, the child by his side, and partook of their fare, and was merry with them,—the proud Philip!—had he not begun to discover the "precious jewel" in the "ugly and venomous" Adversity? ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... coquettishly with her part. "You foolish fellow, how am I to do without you? You're Julia's jealous lover; you're always making Julia cry. Come to-night, and make me cry at tea-time. You haven't got a venomous old woman in a wig to act with now. It's my heart you're to break—and of course I shall teach ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... amphibia in Callao, the iguana and land agama are numerous. Snakes abound in the low bushes at the mouth of the Rimac, and some kinds, which are venomous, live on the arid sand-banks. All the sea tortoises have been driven out of the bay, and now inhabit the detached creeks of the uninhabited parts of ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... counter-creation of rival tendency. "'Like a fly he crept into' and infected 'the whole universe.' He rendered the world as dark at full noonday as in the darkest night. He covered the soil with vermin, with his creatures of venomous bite and poisonous sting, with serpents, scorpions, and frogs, so that there was not a space as small as a needle's point but swarmed with his vermin. He smote vegetation, and of a sudden the plants withered.... He attacked the flames, and mingled them with smoke and dimness. The ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... very numerous, for one day I killed seven. The first one I saw threw me into a curious instinctive state of fury, and I smashed it into pieces, while I trembled like a horse who has nearly stepped on a venomous snake. Those Texans who do not believe in the friendship of snake and prairie dog say that it is possible to make the rattler come out of a hole he has taken refuge in by rolling small pieces of dirt and earth down it. For they assert ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... the apostle, transforms himself at times into an angel of light. If so, then he is certainly far more dangerous than if he came as an angel of darkness and horror. If you met some venomous snake, with loathsome spots upon his scales, his eyes full of rage and cunning, his head raised to strike at you, hissing and showing his fangs, there would be no temptation to have to do with him. You would know that you had ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... done she sprang to her feet with a curious multifold undoubling motion by reason of her great height and lack of practice with it, and I lumbered heavily to mine, and she asked me again with a sharpness that seemed almost venomous, so charged with curiosity it was, though she had just expressed ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... pace, as if to give her time to collect herself, and repeatedly desired her not to be afraid. The lady who seemed the principal person had remarkably good features, though somewhat injured by the small-pox, that venomous scourge which each village Esculapius (thanks to Jenner) can now tame as easily as their tutelary deity subdued the Python. The lady's eyes were brilliant, her teeth good, and her countenance formed to express at will either majesty or courtesy. Her form, though rather embonpoint, was nevertheless ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... apart from Christianity, would make us regard this progress as fearfully uncertain. Clear it is that we are in an evil case; we have lost our way; we are like men who are bewildered in those endless forests of reeds which line some of the great American rivers; if we stay where we are, the venomous snakes may destroy us; or the deadly marsh air when night comes on will be surely fatal; it is death to remain, but yet if we move, we know not what way will lead us out, and it may be that, while seeming to advance, we shall but be going round and round, and shall at last find ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... are many venomous species, seem to be less feared than in India or the wilder parts of Australia. The python grows to twenty feet or more, but is, of course, not poisonous, and never assails man unless first molested. The black ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... most subtle and impudent malice against the Regent, and of insolence against the King. The villain trembled, nevertheless, in pronouncing it. His voice broken, his eyes constrained, his flurry and confusion, contradicted the venomous words he uttered; libations he could not abstain from offering to himself and his company. This was the moment when I relished, with delight utterly impossible to express, the sight of these haughty lawyers (who had dared to refuse us the salutation), prostrated ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Isidore, who had a venomous attachment to the Marquis, burst into tears. For many generations their respective ancestors had stood in the relation, each to the other, of tyrant and dependent. Isidore's father had robbed, cheated, deceived, and adored ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... made infamous by its venomous insect, is located one of the storage-stations of the Indo-European Telegraph Company. Its straight lines of iron poles, which we followed very closely from Tabreez to Teheran, form only a link in that great wire ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... in the house, besides which she had no great desire to affront the sneering looks of village gossips. But this evening was her opportunity. For this she had waited, and now she meant to take it, and no power on earth, force or violence would prevent her from pouring out the full phial of her venomous wrath. ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... 12.—Translator's Note.) dwelling in the prehistoric coal-forests. Her prey was some hideous Scorpion, that first-born of the Arachnida. How did the Hymenopteron master the terrible prey? Analogy tells us, by the methods of the present slayer of Tarantulae. It disarmed the adversary; it paralysed the venomous sting by a stroke administered at a point which we could determine for certain by the animal's anatomy. Unless this was the way it happened, the assailant must have perished, first stabbed and then ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... understands them, could easily prove this in so many words; and every woman who heard her—provided they were alone—would confess she was right. But if a man should join in the conversation, both women would stamp truth underfoot as though it were a venomous reptile. ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... in the House of Lords the other night on the Ecclesiastical Discipline Bill. Exeter (Phillpotts), in a most venomous speech, attacked the Archbishop, whose mildness was stimulated into an angry reply; but Exeter gained his point, for both Brougham and the Duke were for postponing the Bill. Phillpotts would have made a great bishop in the days of Bonner and Gardiner, or ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Fer-de-lance, who lies along a bough, and strikes, without provocation, at horse or man. I suspect this statement, however, to be an exaggeration. I was assured that this was not the case in St. Lucia; that the snake attacks no oftener than other venomous snakes,—that is, when trodden on, or when his retreat is cut off. At all events, it seems easy enough to kill him: so easy, that I hope yet it may be possible to catch him alive, and that the Zoological Gardens may at last possess—what they have long coveted in vain—hideous ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... unless it be decided that the natives themselves are such. The mountains and the interior present to the eye nothing but silent solitudes, unbroken by the roar of beasts of prey, and enlivened by few tokens even of minute animated existence. There are no venomous reptiles, and no snakes of any description to be found ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... The venomous animals consist, for the most part, of adders and lizards, though they are harmless or nearly so. There are snakes of different kinds, which are not dangerous and flee before men if they possibly can, else they are usually beaten to death. The rattlesnakes, however, which have a rattle ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... caused the whole world was that by deceit he caused the death of the lovely god, Balder. Then the gods took an awful revenge. They tied him to three stones, and over his head they fastened a venomous serpent, whose poison was always to drip upon his face. Loke's faithful wife, Sigyn, placed herself at his side and held a cup under the poisonous drip; but whenever the cup is full and she goes to empty it, the poison ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... easy musket-shot of where his foes were swarming about the fort and the great drowned ironclad. He hardly dared move, and until the afternoon he lay without food, and without protection from the heat or venomous insects. Then he managed to slip unobserved into the dense swamp, and began to make his way to the fleet. Toward evening he came out on a small stream, near a camp of Confederate soldiers. They had moored to the bank a skiff, and, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... An I do, let me die poisoned with some venomous hiss, and never live to look as high as ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... forth in vain. And therefore I desire that no one should sit at this Banquet whose members are so unfitly disposed that he has neither teeth, nor tongue, nor palate: nor any follower of vice; inasmuch as his stomach is full of venomous and hurtful humours, so that it will retain no food whatever. But let those come to us, whosoever they be, who, pressed by the management of civil and domestic life, have felt this human hunger, and at one ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... nearer to one than you can help, then I need scarcely tell you what you know already, that these are all alike hideous and repulsive in their aspect, being smeared from head to tail with a viscous and venomous slime, which, as your Shakespeare will tell you, leaves a trail even on fig-leaves when they have occasion to pass over such. This preparation would appear to line them inside as well as out, for there is no lack of ancient ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... always shallow, and in electric climates very excitable. We are dealing to-day no less with a huge mob, even if it is not massed and marching, than were the few sane men of the French Revolution. An exciting idea is like a venomous microbe; it bites into the brain, and if circumstances do not occur to expel it, it produces a form of mania. That is the only way I can account for Burleigh's attitude; he is one of the few exceptions. There are thousands of men in the United States whose brains could stand any strain, but ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... a wild dark ocean to be crossed. There is a dense wood where every thorn on every tree is sharp as a spear-point and is curved and clutching. There is a deep gulf to be gone through," she said, "a place of silence and terror, full of dumb, venomous monsters. There is an immense oak forest—dark, dense, thorny, a place to be strayed in, a place to be utterly bewildered and lost in. There is a vast dark wilderness, and therein is a dark house, lonely and full of echoes, and in it there are seven gloomy hags, who are warned ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... The most venomous hate was arising in Ferdinand's resentful soul. He felt that here was a rival to be dreaded indeed. He saw that Harietta was nervous; he had never seen her so before. He shut his teeth ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... border line of Palestine. The journey was remarkable for two things. First, for the sort of country it was through. It is a trackless waste of sand, that spreads over thousands of square miles. It was infested with venomous serpents and scorpions, and is described as "all that great and terrible wilderness," "a waste howling wilderness," and "a land of deserts and pits, of drought and of the shadow of death, that none passed through, and where no man dwelt." Think of taking a trip through ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... it was worse than that. Each was entirely aware of the mental and spiritual barrier, which made it absolutely impossible for them to approach each other in the sense of reality. A barrier infinitely more forbidding than any material one of stone or iron. Because it was living, poisoned, venomous as the fang of some monstrous deadly serpent. To come within its influence ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... faithfull Houskeepers, you see now the unhappy state and condition of these venomous controulers of others: And on the contrary, you may perceive how happy the bad times, like a prudent Instructor, makes you; what a quantity of understanding and delight it imparts unto you; whilest ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... impertinence; and, although they have not sufficient strength in their proboscis to penetrate a top-boot, yet they easily pierce through a summer coat and shirt, and a wee bit into the skin beneath. From the middle of July to the middle of August, they become much less venomous; and are then only annoying for an hour or so in the evening, in the woods or marshes. By the 1st of September, they finally disappear ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... you for your zeal," exclaimed Jean Debry; "you have run great risks for her sake. For a beautiful, voluptuous, and intriguing woman is even more dangerous than a venomous serpent. Like St. Anthony, you have withstood the temptress by praying to our holy mother, the great French Republic! Yes, the country will be ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... voice and action became more venomous on the part of The Panther. He unfolded his arms, so as to give facility of gesture, and with one step forward placed himself so near the white man that the two could have embraced each other with little change of position. Then he bent his hideous countenance until the gleaming eyes, the ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... be repeated. It was the women, too, who shouted the loudest; especially one, the wife of a man who made fishing-nets, was so filled with moral indignation that she tore her dress and scattered the rags over the sinner. Words of the most venomous abuse poured from this accuser's mouth in bitter complaint that such a creature should shame the sacred name of woman; she passionately declared her desire that the evil-doer should be stoned. Soon the crowd followed with "Stone her!" and a young porter who stood near the wife of the fishing-net ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... amusing to the reporters. Once they had him going they poised their pens in glee and began splashing their venomous ink. It was tragic; the great professor standing at bay to his tormentors. One and all they loved him and one and all they took delight in his torture. It was a hard task for a reporter to get in at a lecture; and yet it was often the lot of the professor ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... million people were receiving relief. Or, equally arbitrarily, betokening some unknown displeasure of the gods, plague may take hold of a district and literally take its tithe of the population. At any moment, life is liable to be terminated with appalling suddenness by cholera or the bite of a venomous serpent. ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... gallant hearts and holding them in thrall with many artful devices. They liked her Bohemianism, her wit, her geniality, her audacious slang, and her collection of droll epithets that fittingly described her venomous critics of a self-appointed nobility. When she could not reach the heights of such superior persons she proceeded to ridicule them with a tongue that rattled out vivid invective which outmatched anything they could say of her. It probably made her more enemies, but it satisfied her temper ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... oft-quoted passage from this powerful denunciation of the wrath to come, "much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. . . . You are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. . . . You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it. . . . If you cry to God to pity you he will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case that he will only tread you under foot. . . . He will crush out your blood and make it fly, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... hour of condemnation, he remained reckless as the wind—unrepenting as the flint—venomous as the blind-worm. With that deep and horrible cunning which is so often united to unprincipled ignorance, he had almost involved in his fate another vagrant with whom he had chanced to consort, and to whom he had disposed of some of the blood-bought spoils. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... coming to that, Miss Imogen," said Mr. Potts, with a drop from sonority to dryness;—"I was approaching that point when the dog interrupted me"; and Mr. Potts cast a very venomous ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... time I had no acquaintance with this snake, though he never waits for a formal introduction when he means business. I know now that he was a moccasin. I saw many of them in the woods of Florida. They are as venomous as the rattlesnake, and are even more dreaded by many people, for they give no notice of their intention to strike. In the English books of natural history this snake is called the water viper. The copperhead is one of ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... friends, and, for the most part, silenced his enemies." But, although this was generally the case, there wanted not some to exercise the invidious task of criticism, or rather of malevolent detraction. Among those, the highest name is that of Swift; the most distinguished for venomous and persevering malignity, that ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... man you are. But let me tell you there is no necessity for either. I know a woman who goes alone and unafraid through every foot of woods in this part of the country. She has climbed, crept, and waded, and she tells me she never saw but two venomous snakes this side of Michigan. Nothing ever dropped on her or sprang at her. She feels as secure in the woods as she ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... lady of the royal establishment who survived him. She had brought him twelve children, and the eldest, the dauphin Louis, after having from his very youth behaved in a factious, harebrained, turbulent way towards the king his father, had become at one time an open rebel, at another a venomous conspirator and a dangerous enemy. At his birth in 1423, he had been named Louis in remembrance of his ancestor, St. Louis, and in hopes that he would resemble him. In 1440, at seventeen years of age, he allied himself with the great lords, who were displeased with the new military system established ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... so in very shallow water, where there was a clear sandy bottom. There were three kinds of water-snakes, one of which was of a dull blue colour, and these the blacks said were "bad fellow," i.e., venomous. They seldom grew over two feet and a half in length, and on a bright day one might see several of these reptiles swimming across from one bank to the other. Of the common brown snake—the kind we most dreaded—and the black-necked tiger snake, we killed numbers with our guns and with sticks, ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... your son you too shall die, An old, old man," he said, "as sad as I." Poor, trodden snake! He used his venomous sting, Then heard the answer ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... gone, exultant, relieved, the girls turned their heads to the other side of the road, and there, very silent, very secret and venomous, leaped and glittered a little ring of flames. An hour before, it would have looked a pretty, harmless sight to the two who now sat, stricken by horror into a momentary frozen stillness. The flames licked at the dry leaves and ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... help him in a life of healthful labor. She regretted that she had not consented to flee with him to the new country. Now she was tied to a man she despised, and who had put her, so she considered, to open shame. She could not help comparing his weak, greedy, yet venomous nature, with the other's courage, clean purpose ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... about the parishes of St. Andeol de Clerguemont and St. Frazal de Vantalon, but she addressed herself principally to recent converts, to whom she preached concerning the Eucharist that in swallowing the consecrated wafer they had swallowed a poison as venomous as the head of the basilisk, that they had bent the knee to Baal, and that no penitence on their part could be great enough to save them. These doctrines inspired such profound terror that the Rev. Father Louvreloeil himself tells us that Satan by his ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... disserviceable[obs3], disadvantageous; wide-wasting. unlucky, sinister; obnoxious; untoward, disastrous. oppressive, burdensome, onerous; malign &c. (malevolent) 907. corrupting &c. (corrupt &c. 659); virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive; poisonous &c. (morbific) 657[obs3]; deadly &c. (killing) 361; destructive &c. (destroying) 162; inauspicious &c. 859. bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, dreadful; horrid, horrible; dire; rank, peccant, foul, fulsome; rotten, rotten ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... with the water baths of the sparrows. His own ablutions were performed in the clean, hopeful dust of the chaparral; and whenever he happened on their morning splatterings, he would depress his glossy crest, slant his shining tail to the level of his body, until he looked most like some bright venomous snake, daunting them with shrill abuse and feint of battle. Then suddenly he would go tilting and balancing down the gully in fine disdain, only to return in a day or two to make sure the foolish ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... of it, his certainty that it was an hallucination, a mirage. Whatever the cause might be, Julian felt somewhat like a naughty boy in the angry presence of Cuckoo. As he looked at her the greenish twilight painted a chill and menacing gleam in her eyes, and made her twisting lips venomous and acrid to his glance. Her rouge vanished in the twilight, or seemed only as a dull, darkish cloud upon her thin and worn cheeks. She sat at the table almost like a scarecrow, giving the tables of some strange law to a trembling and an ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment; it is ascribed to nothing else that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... were, steal into its cradle, and infuse their poison into its soul? The guardians of its helplessness are heedless or unconscious of its danger, and, alas! it has not the fabled strength of the infant Hercules to crush its venomous assailants. Surely such a view of the frequent origin of crime must awaken our commiseration for its miserable victims, and excite in us a desire to become ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... of it, would not be in if she could, cannot learn, and prefers jackstraws to card games of any sort, an evening of serious whist is the most aggravating. They were too well matched to even enliven matters by squabbling or casting venomous glances at each other. Evan played with Martin Cortright, whose system he was absorbed in mastering, and he never spoke a word, and barely looked up. This, too, when he had been away for several days on a business trip. It was moonlight, and I wanted him to see the new iris ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... a reward of 20 cents per foot for every venomous snake brought in, 50 cents per foot for an alligator, and 25 dollars for every tiger. Lately the police have got two specimens of an ophiophagus, a snake-eating snake over eighteen feet long, whose bite they say is certain death. They have a horrible collection of snakes ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... father," replied the smith, "I love the poor little braggadocio, and could not think of his sitting rueful and silent in the provost's hall, while all the rest of them, and in especial that venomous ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... deliberation he put his hand into his pocket and drew forth—no! not a razor-edged knife, with which to slash the region of the punctures, but a box of matches, so that the scene might temporarily be surveyed. He saw, not the expected death adder, not a deadly copper head, not the venomous black which flattens and distends the neck like a cobra when its passions are roused, not the great red pugnacious beast which has been known to kill off-hand a big horse, but a shame-faced carpet snake, which, though innocent and inoffensive, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Gonzalvo and laughed, and laid himself down again to rest on his saddle.—"Does it call for penance to kill a venomous thing?" ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... heart of Charles Hamilton did not mitigate the offense in the estimation of the bride. So strong was Cicily's feeling, indeed, and so impulsive her temperament, that the aunt was really alarmed for fear of an open rupture between the two young women, for Helen Johnson had a venomous tongue, and a liking for its employment. So, now, Mrs. Delancy hastened to break off a conversation ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... blood in my veins and thrills my frame with a paralyzing honor. I have disturbed a nest of huge serpents! They move; uncoil themselves, and join the crotalus; suddenly the room seems alive with the venomous creatures. I hear the dreaded rattle and the sibilant hiss; rushing toward the fire, I seize the tripod and dash it to the ground, scattering the glowing embers in every direction. My fright becomes terrible, and I imagine the monsters are crawling over my body. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... Streets. Boston claimed me also, and Chicago; and in Philadelphia, New Orleans, St. Louis, San Francisco, in the towns and rural districts tributary to the cities, thousands spoke of Blacklock as their trusted adviser in matters of finance. My enemies—and I had them, numerous and venomous enough to prove me a man worth while—my enemies spoke of me as the "biggest ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... box, as he imagined, though he could not conceive how it could be dropped there; and, thinking he might make good advantage of it among the Indians, claps it into his pocket; he had not gone far before he heard a hissing noise, which seemed to be very near; he immediately thought it to be some venomous snake, and endeavoured to avoid it by going out of the path he was in; but still the noise seemed to pursue him; at last looking down, he sees a little ugly black head peeping out of his pocket, which he found came out of what he had picked up for a box: he with much ado slips his ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... suit—that voice, which in a Siddons or a Braham rouses us, in a siren Catalani charms and captivates us—that the musical expressive human voice should be converted into a rival of the noises of silly geese and irrational venomous snakes? I never shall forget the sounds on my night!" He urges that the venial mistake of the poor author, "who thought to please in the act of filling his pockets, for the sum of his demerits amounts to no more than that," is too severely punished; and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Pharaohs. Of these she ordered several to be taken. From thence she resorted to a gallery, where, under the guard of fifty female negroes, mute, and blind of the right eye, were preserved the oil of the most venomous serpents, rhinoceros horns, and woods of a subtle and penetrating odor, procured from the interior of the Indies, together with a thousand other horrible rarities. This collection had been formed for a purpose like the present by Carathis ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... little, owing to the mosquitos, who are remarkably active and persevering in their attacks upon us. But with the exception of these tormenting insects, and a rather alarming variety of centipedes, scorpions, and spiders, we have no venomous creatures to disturb us. The weather is extremely hot, and the advantages of the river for bathing would be very great if it were not so full of sharks. I have much more to relate of our present cheering prospects and enviable situation, but a ship ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... holster tilted up. Pete fired twice. Staring as though hypnotized, Gary clutched at his shirt over his chest with his free hand. He gave at the knees and his body wilted and settled down—even as he threw a desperate shot at Pete in a last venomous effort to kill. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... mile, the enemy opened on us with artillery, their shells tearing by us with a most venomous whistle. Halted on the sides of the road, as we moved by, were the infantry of our brigade. Among them I recognized my old school-teacher, Alfonso Smith, who had just joined the army. I had many times quailed under his fierce eye and ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... sooner had he levelled the great bush with the ground than the cause of the death of the two unfortunate lovers appeared; for thereunder was a toad of marvellous bigness, by whose pestiferous breath they concluded the sage to have become venomous. None daring approach the beast, they made a great hedge of brushwood about it and there burnt it, together with the sage. So ended the judge's inquest upon the death of the unfortunate Pasquino, who, together with his Simona, all swollen as they were, was buried by Stramba ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... day out was in some respects the most interesting. All the forenoon we had Cuba on our right and most of the forenoon and part of the afternoon Hayti on our left; and in each case green, jungly shores and bold mountains—two great, beautiful, venomous tropic islands. These are historic seas and Mother and I have kept thinking of all that has happened in them since Columbus landed at San Salvador (which we also saw), the Spanish explorers, the ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... of war, mankind, wearied with slaughter, will take a few moments' repose, and then their venomous hatred will be displayed in petty and private bickerings. Some, indeed, will every now and then raise piles of wood and fagot, and burn those alive who disagree with them in religion; others will attempt the solution of inexplicable riddles; and those born for darkness will ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... whores, who boys, and who goats. I, more amaz'd than Circe's prisoners, when They felt themselves turn beasts, felt myself then Becoming traitor, and methought I saw One of our giant statues ope his jaw To suck me in for hearing him: I found That as burnt venomous leachers do grow sound By giving others their sores, I might grow Guilty, and be free; therefore I did show All signs of loathing; but since I am in, I must pay mine and my forefathers' sin To the last farthing: therefore to my power Toughly and stubbornly I bear this cross; ...
— English Satires • Various
... this is!" said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round admiringly. He always spoke in the same deliberate, well-chiselled, polite way, whether his words were sugary or venomous. "And you keep it so exquisitely clean, Mrs. Poyser. I like these premises, do you know, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... their venomous nature is yet far from being extinct. This, added to the ill-defined species of fascination which they are supposed to exercise, has caused them here, as elsewhere, to be held in great abhorrence. I have heard persons who ought to have known better, exclaim ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... humor and self-control intact, but it was hardly to be expected that he enjoyed venomous misrepresentation of this sort. The solidest comfort he got in these days came from Sharlee Weyland, who did not read the Chronicle, and was most beautifully confident that whatever he had done was right. But after all, the counselings ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... managed to evade the recapture that came to most of those who went out, but it was a fearful experience. Having been raised in a country where venomous snakes abounded, I had that fear and horror of them that inhabitants of those districts feel, and of which people living in sections free from such a scourge know little. I fancied that the Southern swamps were filled with all forms of loathsome and poisonous reptiles, and it required ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... has said "the snakes in this district may be divided into one species—the venomous." The same principle applies here. Postage-stamp-cases may be ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... discredited by a recent author.[69] I add but one example. "A certain Tome Paninguem, a fencing-master, says, I knew Antonio de Miranda, who was a servant of the Father Francis, and assisted him when saying Mass. He told me that when going one night on business to Combature, he was bitten by a venomous serpent. He immediately fell down as though paralyzed and became speechless. He was found thus lying unconscious. Informed of the fact, Father Francis ordered Antonio to be carried to him: and when ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... her to draw away from Chauvelin, as she would from a venomous asp, was certainly not fear. It was hate! She hated this man! Hated him for all that she had suffered because of him; for that terrible night on the cliffs of Calais! The peril to her husband who had ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... 'spect me 'nto bed full o' snakes? Never sleep 'slong as venomous reptiles waiting! Hic! You stay 'n bed an keep 'em ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... accompanied him, to the mosque. Here the first thing that was done was to take the great chair of Mahomet, with his books and other paraphernalia, and burn them. What we saw when we came to take out this throne certainly surprised us; for, before we reached the fire, two most venomous serpents came out from the feet of the chair, terrifying the soldiers greatly. And truly, nothing other than serpents and poison ought to guard the chair of the great devil of Mindanao. When the chair was burned, together with all else that savored of superstition, we consecrated the mosque to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... out, she turned round to her husband, trying to think of something that she could do, something that she could invent to wound him to the heart as she left the house, and an idea struck her, one of those venomous, deadly ideas in which all a woman's perfidy shows itself, and she said resolutely: "I am going to take my child ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... which rose far to our left in the snowy peaks of the coast range. All day the sky to the east had a brazen glow, as if a great fire were raging there, but toward night the wind changed and swept it away. The trail was dusty for the first time, and the flies venomous. Late in the afternoon we pitched camp, setting our tent securely, expecting rain. Before we went to sleep the drops began to drum on the tent roof, a pleasant sound after the burning dust of the trail. The two trampers kept abreast ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... as the garden fence and stared over, while the whole village, from the school-children to the old grey-haired men from the almshouses, gathered round in mute astonishment. The tiger, a long, lithe, venomous-looking creature, with two blazing green eyes, paced stealthily round the little cage, lashing its sides with its tail, and rubbing its muzzle against ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the great Cardinal once observed to his chief of police, "Je te verrai souffle d'abord," so I reply to those who wish me to reveal the secret of my success. Mr. J. knows it not, and no single member of the imbecile, anserous, asinine, cow-hocked, spavin-brained, venomous, hugger-mugger purveyors of puddling balderdash who follow him has the least conception of my glorious system. But I am willing to teach, though I have nothing to learn. For six halfpenny stamps those who desire to know, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... pastor. But the dwellers in some of these islands, being aliened from the faith, afterward renounced the law of God which Patrick preached unto them; and therefore unto this day are they deprived of the special gift of God which, through the prayers of Patrick, freed from all venomous animals the islands that ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... the tree and spread even on the outside there began to creep out of the cracks in the bark a great variety of creatures; scarabees, black and cherry-colored, shaggy spiders big as plums, caterpillars of the thickness of a finger, covered as though with thorns, and loathsome and at the same time venomous scolopendras whose bite may even cause death. In view of what was occurring on the outside of the trunk it was easy to surmise how many similar creatures must have perished from the fumes of the smoke on the inside. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... venomous little serpent!" he groaned aloud. "And I have been crawling in the dust to her, to be stung like this!" He walked quietly into ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... having eaten poison, and with all Force of his life turned out the crazing drug, Has only a weak and wrestled nature left That gives in foolishly to some bad desire A healthy man would laugh at; so our king Is left desiring by his venomous dream. But, being a king, the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... to be attached, imprisoned, strangled, unbowelled, and his heart in a cup of gold to be presented to his daughter:[16] she thankfully receiveth the present, filling the cup (wherein the heart was) with her tears, with a venomous potion (by her distilled for that purpose) she drank to her earl. Which her father hearing of, came too late to comfort his dying daughter, who for her last request besought him that her lover and herself might in one tomb be together buried for a perpetual memory of their faithful ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... with alligators and snakes of the most venomous description. I saw many of the latter swimming about exposed to a heavy fire of six-shooters; but the alligators were frightened away by the ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... a rod distant, he brought his gun to his shoulder, and sighted at the head of the venomous reptile, which was held almost stationary, while the crimson tongue darted in and out as if it were ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis |
