"Crab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chest which might have served as a model for a Hercules. He had a flattish, perhaps, it should be called, a flattened nose, and a brown, leathern-looking hide, that seemed as if it had not unfrequently undergone the process of tanning. Under his arm he carried a thick, knotted crab-stick. The ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... One thinks one beholds a frightful, living, and bristling thicket which quivers, rustles, wavers, returns to shadow, threatens and glares. One word resembles a claw, another an extinguished and bleeding eye, such and such a phrase seems to move like the claw of a crab. All this is alive with the hideous vitality of things which have been ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... walked out of the door with slipshod shoes. Under the pretence of admiring the flowers, he glanced, now towards the east; now towards the west. But upon raising his head, he descried, in the southwest corner, some one or other leaning by the side of the railing under the covered passage. A crab-apple tree, however, obstructed the view and he could not see distinctly who it was, so advancing a step further in, he stared with intent gaze. It was, in point of fact, the waiting-maid of the day before, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and profusion had a merit in itself, independent of the intrinsic value of the composition. Talking of Churchill, I believe, who had little merit in his prejudiced eyes, he allowed him that of fertility, with some such qualification as this, "A Crab-apple can bear but crabs after all; but there is a great difference in favour of that which bears a large quantity of fruit, however indifferent, and that which ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Soldier loves the laurel bright, The Bard the myrtle bough, And smooth shillalas yield delight To many an Irish brow. The Fisher trims the hazel wand, The Crab may tame a shrew, The Birch becomes the pedant's hand, But Bows are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... teaches us that ugly Christianity is not Christ's Christianity. Some of us older people remember that it used to be a favourite phrase to describe unattractive saints that they had 'grace grafted on a crab stick.' There are a great many Christian people whom one would compare to any other plant rather than a lily. Thorns and thistles and briers are a good deal more like what some of them appear to the world. But ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... largest of this kind hitherto known, and is found in South America, particularly in Guiana, about the rivers Surinam and Oroonoko. It is of a black colour, and the whole body is covered with a shell, full as thick and as strong as that of a small crab. There is one preserved in the museum that ...
— The History of Insects • Unknown
... trees and many poplars. There were on that knoll three snowy, bridal birches, the rough trunks of horse-chestnuts and a few solemn pines. As if that were not enough, in the very heart of this woody temple were two shaggy old crab-apple trees ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... house Cancer. This sculpture, which is turned towards the Piazzetta, is the most picturesque of the series. The moon is represented as a woman in a boat, upon the sea, who raises the crescent in her right hand, and with her left draws a crab out of the waves, up the boat's side. The moon was, I believe, represented in Egyptian sculptures as in a boat; but I rather think the Venetian was not aware of this, and that he meant to express the peculiar sweetness of the moonlight at Venice, as seen ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... Lured by the twinkling prey 'twas born to reach In its own pool, by many an elfin beach Of jewels, adventuring far Through the last mirrored cloud and sunset-tinge And past the rainbow-dripping cave where lies The dark green pirate-crab at watch ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... friends. One's never seen without the other.... It's a fact, indeed—where the horse puts its hoof, there the crab ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... all very well in the Doctor's prospectus, and Miss Zoe Birch—(a pretty blossom it is, fifty-five years old, during two score of which she has dosed herself with pills; with a nose as red and a face as sour as a crab-apple)—this is all mighty well in a prospectus. But I should like to know who would take Miss Zoe for a mother, or ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... those pies. They were generally similar in appearance, size, and thickness to a pale specimen of "Old Virginia" buckwheat cakes, and had a taste which resembled a combination of rancid lard and crab apples. It was generally supposed that they contained dried apples, and the sellers were careful to state that they had "sugar in 'em" and were "mighty nice." It was rarely the case that any "trace" of sugar was found, but they filled up a hungry ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... now rushed forward and endeavoured to crush her heads by means of well-directed blows from his tremendous club; but no sooner was one head destroyed than it was immediately replaced by two others. He next seized the monster in his powerful grasp; but at this juncture a giant crab came to the assistance of the Hydra and commenced biting the feet of her assailant. Heracles destroyed this new adversary with his club, and now called upon his nephew to come to his aid. At his command Iolaus set ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... no rost, but a nut browne toste And a crab laid in the fire; A little bread shall do me stead Moche bread I noght desire. No frost, no snow, no wind I trowe Can hurt me if I wolde. I am so wrapt and throwly lapt Of ioly good ale and olde. Backe and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... untrodden by any but the fisher going down at the ebb to seek king-crab for bait, or by his children, gathering driftwood on the stones, one little bird stays ever faithful to the same short range of shore. This is the rock-pipit—the "sea-lark" of Browning's verse. But that is a summer song. It is not only when ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... they look like a big red wave; but as they are approached, quickly disappear into holes in the sand, and on looking back, they are seen in countless thousands in the rear. Their habits are similar to the hermit crab. They are small and not edible, quick as rats and difficult ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... of this suitor, presumptive if not apparent, did not particularly please Xanthippe. Socrates was an ill-favored young man. He was tall, raw-boned, and gangling. When he walked, he slouched; and when he sat down, he sprawled like a crab upon its back. His coarse hair rebelled upon his head and chin; and he had a broad, flat nose, that had been broken in two places by the kick of an Assyrian mule. Withal, Socrates talked delightfully; and it is not hard to imagine that Xanthippe's pretty face, plump figure, and vivacious ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... talking with the lobsterman," explained Amy. "He is called Tin-Back because he never sells that sort of crab, and he hopes he can find a lump of ambergris in a dead whale ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... years old. He was small, thin, a little crooked, with long hands resembling the claws of a crab. His faded hair, scanty and slight, like the down on a young duck, allowed his scalp to be plainly seen. The brown, crimpled skin of his neck showed the big veins which sank under his jaws and reappeared at his temples. He was regarded in the district as a miser ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... Great-grace visibly "tumbles hills about with his words." Adam the First has his condemnation written visibly on his forehead, so that Faithful reads it. At the very instant the net closes round the pilgrims, "the white robe falls from the black man's body." Despair "getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel"; it was in "sunshiny weather" that he had his fits; and the birds in the grove about the House Beautiful, "our country birds," only sing their little pious verses "at the spring, when the flowers appear and the sun shines warm." "I often," says Piety, "go out to hear them; we also ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... together with most weak hams: All of which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for yourself, sir, shall be as old as I am, if, like a crab, you ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... that make a righteous man; nor be they evil actions that make a wicked man: for a tree must be a sweeting tree before it yield sweetings;23 and a crab tree before it bring ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... said he, "with her hopping and trotting. She travels sideways like a crab, so she does. She has a squint in her walk. Her boots have a bias outwards. I'm getting bow-legged, so I am, slewing round corners after her. I'll have to put my ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... made to connect the novelist with the controversy which presently arose out of Cibber's well-known letter to Pope. In August 1742, the month following its publication, among the pamphlets to which it gave rise, was announced The Cudgel; or, a Crab-tree Lecture, To the Author of the Dunciad. "By Hercules Vinegar, Esq." This very mediocre satire in verse is still to be found at the British Museum; but even if it were not included in Fielding's general disclaimer as to unsigned work, it would be difficult to connect it with him. To give ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... protection is especially needful, because certain big fishes, like the cod, are in the habit of swallowing crabs whole. In this case the armour is of no use, while the protective resemblance saves the crab. ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... expense of panelling. She reached out her hand and, to George's extreme astonishment, a little door swung open, revealing the foot of a winding staircase. Turning sideways in order to get her tray through the narrow opening, the little maid darted in with a rapid crab-like motion. The door closed behind her with a click. A minute later it opened again and the maid, without her tray, hurried back across the hall and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. George tried to recompose his thoughts, but ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... Axle; they with labour push'd 670 Oblique the Centric Globe: Som say the Sun Was bid turn Reines from th' Equinoctial Rode Like distant breadth to Taurus with the Seav'n Atlantick Sisters, and the Spartan Twins Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amaine By Leo and the Virgin and the Scales, As deep as Capricorne, to bring in change Of Seasons to each Clime; else had the Spring Perpetual smil'd on Earth with vernant Flours, Equal in Days and Nights, except to those 680 Beyond the Polar Circles; to them ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... to see Drusilla, as you call her," said Mrs. Reynolds, "and take her some of my crab jelly. I've seen her many's the time sitting out in the yard with naught but a trained maid by her. Poor, poor old soul, with a ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... kitchen of Mrs. Owen's house on Waupegan. The August afternoon sun struck goldenly upon battalions of glasses and jars in the broad, screened veranda, an extension of the kitchen itself. The newly affixed labels announced peach, crab-apple, plum, and watermelon preserves (if the mention of this last item gives you no thrill, so much the worse for you!); jellies of many tints and flavors, and tiny cucumber pickles showing dark green amid the gayer colors. Only the most jaded appetite could linger without sharp impingements before ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... concealed in the crowd even when the field of honour appeared to ripen' before him; and his nephew says of him: 'Whowbeit he was verie hat in all questiones, yet when it twitched his particular,[29] no man could crab him, contrare to the common custome.' No one of braver spirit or truer mould has been among us, and we need to allow but little for the colouring of affection to accept James Melville's judgment: 'Scottland never receavit a graitter benefit at the hands ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... bursting fat, which had been grown in a hot-house, wrapped in paper bags. There were nectarines and plums, and pomegranates and persimmons from Japan, and later on, little dishes of plump strawberries-raised in pots. There were quail which had come from Egypt, and a wonderful thing called "crab-flake a la Dewey," cooked in a chafing-dish, and served with mushrooms that had been grown in the tunnels of abandoned mines in Michigan. There was lettuce raised by electric light, and lima beans that had come from Porto Rico, and artichokes brought ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... "Surely, man, the tide's slack enough by this time!" he interrupted, his irritation again overcoming him. "You needn't be fetching across sideways, like a crab." ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... It was not by a little pruning or weeding that France, according to his original proposition, had bettered our native literature—it was by genial incubation, by acts of vital creation. She, upon our crab-tree cudgel of Agincourt, had engrafted her own peaches and apricots—our sterile thorn France had inoculated with roses. English literature was the Eve that, in the shape of a rib, had been abstracted from the side of the slumbering Pompey—of unconscious ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... CARAP or CRAB OIL (Carapa guianensis).—This is a sort of vegetable butter, being sometimes solid and sometimes half fluid, which is obtained from the seed of a large tree abundant in the forests of Guiana, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... under obligation. His chapter on Wild Apples is a most delicious piece of writing. It has a "tang and smack" like the fruit it celebrates, and is dashed and streaked with color in the same manner. It has the hue and perfume of the crab, and the richness and raciness of the pippin. But Thoreau loved other apples than the wild sorts, and was obliged to confess that his favorites could not be eaten indoors. Late in November he found a blue-pearmain tree growing within the edge of a swamp, almost as good ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... find he's from Devon, the sailor I mean, Look at his whaler now, shipping it green. O, Fritz and his "U" boat must crab it and crawl When old Cap'n Storm-along sails to ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... CHORUS: Soon a crab the throat will seize Of him who feeds upon his guest, Fire will burn his lamp-like eyes 615 In revenge of such a feast! A great oak stump now is lying In the ashes yet undying. Come, Maron, come! Raging ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... riding with them toward Springfield. There was quite a party of these lawyers, riding two by two along a country lane. Lincoln and John J. Hardin brought up the rear of the cavalcade. "We had passed through a thicket of wild plum and crab-apple trees," says Mr. Speed, "and stopped to water our horses. Hardin came up alone. 'Where is Lincoln?' we inquired. 'Oh,' replied he, 'when I saw him last he had caught two young birds which the wind had blown out of their nests, and he was hunting the nest to put them ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... from narrating precisely what ensued. You understand that there was a great deal of strong language, mingled with soothing "who-ho's" while the leg was examined; that John stood by with quite as much emotion as if he had been a cunningly carved crab-tree walking-stick, and that Arthur Donnithorne presently repassed the iron gates of the pleasure-ground without singing as ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... before them, however. The foolish dog had found a huge crab in the sand and, barking loudly, had pushed his muzzle against the creature, with the result that the crab seized his black nose in a gripping claw and pinched as hard as it was able. Mumbles tried to back away, madly howling the while; but the crab, although the smaller antagonist, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... of each earth, What fruits from each most properly take birth: And with what arts to enrich every mould, The dry to moisten, and to warm the cold. 590 But when we graft, or buds inoculate, Nature by art we nobly meliorate; As Orpheus' music wildest beasts did tame, From the sour crab the sweetest apple came: The mother to the daughter goes to school, The species changed, doth her law overrule; Nature herself doth from herself depart, (Strange transmigration!) by the power of art. How little things give law to great! we see The ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... than can be formed, with the utmost attention, where these particulars are not found."—Kames cor. "I hope you will consider that what is spoken comes from my love."—Shak. cor. "We shall then perceive how the designs of emphasis may be marred."—Rush cor. "I knew it was Crab, and went to the fellow that whips the dogs."—Shak. cor. "The youth was consuming by a slow malady."—Murray's Gram., p. 64; Ingersoll's, 45; Fisk, 82. "If all men thought, spoke, and wrote alike, something resembling ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... peer, who had expended a large fortune, summoned his heir to his death-bed, and told him that he had a secret of great importance to impart to him, which might be some compensation for the injury he had done him. The secret was that crab sauce was better ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... daylight, a red vision of the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, passing up the nave, turning from side to side a horse-like head, in front of it a big spectacled nose, bending his tall form all on one side, blessing the congregation with a long twisted hand, like a crab's claw. ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... looked over his shoulder, caught a crab, recovered himself, and steered the boat in under the shade of ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... a crabbed reason, for it {329} goes backward like a crab. The day makes not the Sun to shine, but the Sun shining makes the day. And so the length of the day makes not the Sun to shine long, neither the shortness of the day causes not [sic] the Sun to shine the lesser time, but contrariwise the long ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... do not imply that they must necessarily remain useless. Where Nature simply creates a genus, cultivation extends the species, and from an insignificant parent stock we propagate our finest varieties of both animals and vegetables. Witness the wild kale, parsnip, carrot, crab-apple, sloe, etc., all utterly worthless, but nevertheless the first parents of their ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... from the extraordinary capacity of its mouth and maw, could have swallowed one of them with the greatest ease. On opening the animal, we fully expected to discover the limbs of some of the natives, who we assured ourselves had crossed over to our side the water; but we only found a crab that had been so recently swallowed that some of our people made no hesitation in eating it for their supper. The night passed without our being disturbed by or ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... until they came to an opening. Kit thought this was the spot he had been told about and turned the boat. She would not float to the bank and he and his four men got out and lifted the coffin. They sank in treacherous mud, but reached a belt of sand riddled by land-crab's holes. All was very quiet except for the ripple of the tide and the noise made by the scuttling crabs. The sand, however, was dry and warm and they sat down to wait for morning ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... Jerry; "you don't understand. There's more in this than meets the eye, Chris. I didn't get on to this crab salad business ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... whose armour would sometimes keep me awake. But they were well watched by my dog; and if any one ventured to approach, he was sure to be suddenly siezed, and thrown to a more respectful distance; or if a crab of more tremendous appearance deterred the dog from exposing his nose to its claws, he would bark and frighten it away, by which, however, I was often more seriously alarmed than the occasion required. Many a comfortable ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... we approached, something would take fright. Perhaps it would be a little shore crab that betrayed itself by scuffling down amongst the corallite or sea-weed, perhaps a little fierce-looking bristly fish, which shot under a ledge of the rock all amongst the limpets, acorn barnacles, or ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... said, his visage shone with beams divine, And more than mortal was his voice's sound, Godfredo's thought to other acts incline, His working brain was never idle found. But in the Crab now did bright Titan shine, And scorched with scalding beams the parched ground, And made unfit for toil or warlike feat His soldiers, weak ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... he actually gained on Fred, who continued to breast the water with all the strength at his command. Terry was hopeful, and now that he was fully roused, he did not waste his strength in shouting to his companion. As he advanced in his crab-like fashion, he frequently flirted his face around so as to look in front, and thus to keep aware of ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... lady crab, And kissed her lovely face. "Upon my sole," the crabbess cried, "I wish ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... razor-bills, widgeons, willocks, daws, starlings, and pigeons. Their breeding-season is in the months of May, June, and July, and towards the end of August the greater part of them migrate with their new generations. Their flesh is too rank and fishy to be eaten, and is used only for baiting crab and lobster pots; the feathers are valuable, and the eggs are bought chiefly ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... and disbanded, but the tidings announced in Lilienthal's epistle did not prove to be good. In one of the fables of Kryloff, the Russian AEsop, we are told that once a swan, a pike, and a crab, decided to make a trip together. No sooner had they started than, in accordance with their nature, the swan began to fly, the pike to shuffle along, the crab to crawl backward. It was so with the delegation of 1843. Rabbi ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... stay!" sighed the Lory, as soon as it was quite out of sight. And an old Crab took the opportunity of saying to her daughter, "Ah, my dear! Let this be a lesson to you never to lose your temper!" "Hold your tongue, Ma!" said the young Crab, a little snappishly. "You're enough to try the patience of ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... Church of the Sacred Heart. Then on the first floor there are three men, not a woman amongst them. One is a bill-sticker, another a fisherman, and the third a waiter in the Cafe du Midi. I do not know their proper names. We call the bill-sticker 'Paste-pot,' and the fisherman 'Crab.' The waiter is called 'Thomas' in the cafe, but when a letter comes for him it is in another name. Then, on the second floor—by the way, Marie, who is it that lives ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... was little more than ten miles away, was only a name to them. Many of them had not been as far as Leyland for months. They spent their days catching eels in the marsh canals, or in setting lobster and crab traps outside the breakwater. The agricultural labourers tilled the same patch of ground year after year. They had no recreations except an occasional night at the inn; their existence was a lifelong struggle ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... with cynicism from the overladen table, with its shoulder of stewed wild boar in the centre; with its chocolate, coffee, tea, spruce-beer, cassava-cakes, pigeon-pies, tongues, round of beef, barbecued hog, fried conchs, black crab pepper-pod, mountain mullet, and acid fruits. It was so unlike what his past had known, so "damnable luxurious!" Now his eyes wandered over the space where were the grandilla, with its blossom ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... laughed outright with joy. "Yes, yes, that would just do; and he could put on his father's old mantle, and bring a stout crab-stick along with him." ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... jelly-fish was floating about, and just beyond lay a star-fish clinging to a bunch of seaweed. She found other treasures scattered about by the largess of the tide—tiny spiral shells, stones of all colors, and a horseshoe crab, besides seaweed with pretty little pods which popped delightfully when she squeezed them with her fingers. Then she heard the cries of gulls overhead and watched them as they wheeled and circled between her and the sky. When they flew ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... likely to pitch upon me here in broad daylight, so I paid them little heed at the moment. I found old Crab Bolster and his skiff to lighter my cargo across the inlet, and when the boy came down from the store with the barrow, Crab and I loaded the provisions and spring water into his boat. Paul and his companions looked on, whispering together now ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... Bravo, sickness attacked the fleet. It was aggravated through the protraction of the voyage by contrary winds from the customary fortnight or three weeks to six. Forty-two men in the flagship died. Among them were Fowler, the principal refiner, Ralegh's cook Francis, his servant Crab, the master surgeon, the provost martial, Captain Piggot, his best land-general, and Mr. John Talbot, 'who,' records Ralegh, 'had lived with me eleven years in the Tower, an excellent general scholar, and a faithful true man as lived.' The ship left Bravo on October ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... his crew went ashore into 'Frisco Town uheralded and unsung, the second following morning's lucubrations of the sea reporters being varied disportations upon the attack on an Italian crab fisherman by an enormous jellyfish. Big John promptly sank out of sight in a sailors' boarding-house, and, within the week, joined the Sailors' Union and shipped on a steam schooner to load redwood ties at Bandon, Oregon. Ah Moy got ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... a crab that landed him in a graceful parabola in the bow, where he lay biting at the air to recover his breath. Then his boat's nose plowed into the sandy neck of land; he clambered to his feet, jumped out, and ran headlong into ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... maximum of three inches; these are in season until the middle of June, after which they become light and empty. When alive they are a brownish green, but when boiled they are the colour of the ordinary crab, and are exceedingly full in flesh, and delicate. The shell is extremely hard compared to the small size, and the claws must be broken by a sharp blow with the back of a ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... spine as he went back to the stove to drink the chocolate. Of course he mustn't crab. He was in the war now. If the sergeant had heard him crabbing, it might have spoiled his chances for a corporalship. He must be careful. If he just watched out and kept on his toes, he'd be ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Gibbie nearly as welcome as an apple. A fishwife from Finstone with a creel on her back, had given him all his hands could hold of the sea-weed called dulse, presumably not from its sweetness, although it is good eating. She had added to the gift a small crab, but that he had carried to the seashore and set free, because it was alive. These, the half-cookie, the turnip, and the dulse, with the smell of the baker's bread, was all he had had. It had been rather one of his meagre days. But it is wonderful upon how little ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... lately bin deliuered of a sonne, against her going to church, prepared great cheare; at what time Simon's wife of Southhampton came thither, and so did diuers others of the clothiers' wiues, onely to make merry at this churching feast: and whilest these dames sate at the table, Crab, Weasell and Wren waited on the board, and as the old Prouerbe speaketh, Many women, many words, so tell it out at that time; for there was such prattling that it passed: some talkt of their husbands' frowardnes, some shewed their maids' ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... a bully apple orchard. 'Let's go there some night and help ourselves,' says Billy Evans, one day. 'Dogs,' says I. 'Only one,' says he; 'I know him, and so do you—old Snaggletooth; I gave him almost all the meat we took for crab bait the day we didn't catch any.' ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... any time or in any weather, which was his one disagreeable, superior-to-others trick. Most of his qualities were likable, and he was likable, though a queer fellow in some ways, said his best friends—the ones who called him "Petro." When the ship played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, Peter Rolls ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... and I have to ask them out to supper. Then I am always greatly alarmed, for you never can tell what will happen, sir, with two ladies at supper and only twenty dollars in your pocket, and both ladies fond of game and crab-meat. It's really very trying. I sit and tremble as I watch them, and go home with only a feeble remnant of my salary, and next day I have to pawn ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... a valorous sea farer, after a party had returned with a portion of the buried treasure, which was divided equally between the French and the English. Much of that left in the sand crab holes had been discovered by the Spaniards—but not all. Thirteen bars of silver and a few quoits of gold had rewarded the search of the ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... snake wrapped itself around one of his feet. Then he began with his sword to cut off its heads. But this looked like an endless task, for no sooner had he cut off one head than two grew in its place. At the same time an enormous crab came to the help of the hydra and began biting the hero's foot. Killing this with his club, he called to ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... perch, and clinging to it as he drew in his line was a large, hard-shelled, long-clawed crab. Tom put the crab in the basket, knowing well what delicious white meat was in the ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... laughter as the sledge overturned and the crabs took to fighting and scratching in the tangled harness, just like the husky dogs in winter. Mooka was trying to untangle them, dancing about to keep her bare toes and fingers away from the nipping claws, when she jumped up with a yell, the biggest crab hanging to the ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... house, twice as big as this, with the roof bent like an elefin's back, an' three windows in it—rale dormant windows, that looks like three eyes outen a crab, and a gabil end three rows of windows high, and four high chimneys. The rope-walker said it was fit to be a rueyal palace. Then thar's the kitchen an' colonnade built on to it. It's the biggest house, I reckon, about Sinepuxin. That ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... of "The Dove," or "The Crab," as the collegians called it when it skidded sideways, perched precariously that well-known, beloved youth, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. He clutched his pestersome banjo and was vigorously strumming the strings and apparently howling a ballad, lost in the unearthly turmoil. ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... capitata and nepalensis. The grasses chiefly Andropogons; Mussaenda, Bucklandia, Saurauja, Hiraea, Dipsacus rare, Camellia oleifolia, and C. axillaris, Begonia laciniata, Ficus, Vitis, Sonerila, Plectranthus azureus, Randia, Mephitidia, Psychotria, Galium, Clerodendrum infortunatum, Pyrus or crab, Fragaria, Potentilla, Urena lobata. The diversified nature of the vegetation, both tropical and temperate, is at ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... unnecessary parasitic post altogether, was absolutely beyond his powers. When Andrey Yefimitch was deceived or flattered, or accounts he knew to be cooked were brought him to sign, he would turn as red as a crab and feel guilty, but yet he would sign the accounts. When the patients complained to him of being hungry or of the roughness of the nurses, he would be confused and mutter guiltily: "Very well, very well, I will go into it later . . . . Most ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of waters, rolling, tumbling, pitching, buried almost in the breaking seas, into the bay came rushing three yawls, manned by crab-fishers from St. Abb's, past the Hurcar Rock, and round safely into the harbour; then a large Eyemouth fishing-boat, and another, and another, and then a pause of sickening suspense, and two more large boats from ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... composer, who carried the art of canonic imitation to a much finer point than had been reached before his time. He is generally credited with having composed a motette in thirty-six parts having almost all the devices later known as augmentation, diminution, inversion, retrograde, crab, etc. The thirty-six parts here mentioned, however, were not fully written out. Only six parts were written, the remainder being developed from these on the principle of a round, the successive choruses following each other at certain intervals, according to Latin directions ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... moon is full opens itself wide, and when the crab looks in he throws in a piece of rock or seaweed and the oyster cannot close again, whereby it serves for food to that crab. This is what happens to him who opens his mouth to tell his secret. He becomes the prey ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... a little secret. It was the boss who sent you out of town. He was afraid you'd do something like this. When you are ready to go home you'll find Tony Bernini downstairs. Sore as a crab, too, ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... the tender nursery-maid, While in her ear her love his tale doth pour; Meantime her infant doth her charge evade, And rambleth sagely on the sandy shore, Till the sly sea-crab, low in ambush laid, Seizeth his leg and biteth him full sore. Ah me! what sounds the shuddering echoes bore When his small treble mixed ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... realm for a nation, and one on which nature had lavished her richest treasures. Here in spring the wild crab-apple filled the air with the sweetest of perfumes, here the clear mountain-streams flowed abundantly, the fertile soil was full of promise of rich harvests, the climate was freshly invigorating, and the west ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of the Serpent and his Cast Skin.—New Britain and Annamite story of immortality, the serpent, and death, 69 sq.; Vuatom story of immortality, the lizard, the serpent, and death, 70; Nias story of immortality, the crab, and death, 70; Arawak and Tamanchier stories of immortality, the serpent, the lizard, the beetle, and death, 70 sq.; Melanesian story of the old woman and her cast skin, 71 sq.; Samoan story of the shellfish, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... poor peasant, named Crab, who once drove two oxen, with a load of wood, into the city, and there sold it for two dollars to a doctor. The doctor counted out the money to him as he sat at dinner, and the peasant, seeing how well ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... knew, and ordered that the north should be again observed at dawn. They then found that the needles were true. The cause was that the star makes the movement, and not the needles. At dawn, on that Monday, they saw much more weed appearing, like herbs from rivers, in which they found a live crab, which the Admiral kept. He says that these crabs are certain signs of land. The sea-water was found to be less salt than it had been since leaving the Canaries. The breezes were always soft. Every one was pleased, and ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... forth in all directions, like a star-fish, or like the scattering fire-sparks of some pyrotechnic wheel revolving; a third resembles a great wisp of straw, or twist or coil of ropes; a fourth, a cork-screw, or other spiral, seen on end; a fifth, a crab; a sixth, a dumb-bell—many of them scroll or scrolls of some thin texture seen edgewise; and so on. It is even a suggestion of the author's, that some of the spiral and armed wheels may be revolving yet in the vast ocean of space in which they are engulfed. Thus ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... be thankful, you poor starving beings! Here, Mrs. Griggs! Accept, and do all you can! Here are eggs, and some milk and fresh water, four poulets, such as they are, and a huge monster of a crab; but all the bread is leavened, and you little guess what Ivy and I had to go through before we were allowed to buy anything. We were had up to the Mayor, and had to constater all manner of things about our ship, to prove ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... take this initiative that, in the early hours of a July morning, two of the Syndicate's armoured vessels, each accompanied by a crab, steamed out of a New England port, and headed for the point on the Canadian coast where it had been ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... the Beard, and also particular care must be taken to examine whether there are any Crabs in them, for they are very poisonous, and as they lie in the Mouth of the Mussel, may easily be discover'd; they are commonly as large as a Pea, and of the shape of a Sea-Crab, but are properly Sea-Spiders: the Mussels however where you find them, are not unwholesome, and it is only the eating of this little Animal, which has been the occasion of People's swelling after they had eaten Mussels, but the goodness of the Fish is well enough ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... the supremacy when the river is low, and then the farmer suffers. In this manner much bhull crop was destroyed in the monsoons of 1851 and 1852, during the heavy gales which prevailed in those seasons. The rice is subject to attacks also of a small black sea crab, called by the natives Kookaee, and which, without any apparent cause, cuts down the growing grain in large quantities, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... find the same law. No two marine faunas are more distinct, with hardly a fish, shell, or crab in common, than those of the eastern and western shores of South and Central America; yet these great faunas are separated only by the narrow, but impassable, isthmus of Panama. Westward of the shores of America, a wide space of open ocean extends, with not an island as a halting-place for emigrants; ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... When the Crab's fierce constellation Burns with the beams of the bright sun, Then he that will go out to sow, Shall never reap, where he did plough, But instead of corn may rather The old world's diet, acorns, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... hands pointing toward his own body, as if to be sure of the identity of the person; and that there might not be the possibility of any mistake, he again shouts, screams, yells, shrieks: 'To me? What, that to ME! to ME!' hands and arms working like a crab's. ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... those of the common oak, and their cups and outer rind had been removed, so that they had evidently been prepared to serve as food for, man; the apples were small and coriaceous, resembling the modern crab-apple; the Indian poppy cannot have grown without cultivation; but this was perhaps but an example of the same species already recognized in the Lake dwellings of Switzerland. It is difficult to say whether it was used for food or whether oil ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... of rain and hail, the wind at north. Shot several sea-gulls, geese, hawks, and other birds: The carpenter had this day given him by one of the people, a fine large rock crab, it being the first of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... myself on his steps. I will stand there," said he, as if deprecating the baron's refusal to let him sit. "I will wait till five o'clock. The baron need not inconvenience himself on my account." And Veitel bowed himself out, and retired from the room backward like a crab. The baron recalled him, and he stood still in that bent and ridiculous attitude. At that moment he looked the weakest and oddest of men. The warning letter must have confounded the poor book-keeper with his master. At all events, it was easier ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... you girls stop me sooner—call to me to go round the other way? I was in a hurry and didn't see or hear you up there." Then she sat down on the crust beside Betty. "Forgive me for laughing," she said, "but you did look so exactly like a giant crab sidling along on that ridiculous dust-pan. Have you sprained your wrist? Then you must come straight over to my room and ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... a plate in the other. Her little house was a miracle of cleanliness. It was no uncommon sight to see her down on her knees on the kitchen floor, wielding her brush and rag like the rest of us. In canning and preserving time there floated out from her kitchen the pungent scent of pickled crab apples; the mouth-watering, nostril-pricking smell that meant sweet pickles; or the cloying, tantalising, divinely sticky odour that meant raspberry jam. Snooky, from her side of the fence, often used to peer through the pickets, gazing in the direction of the enticing smells next door. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the best use of this opportunity for escape, he commenced a sort of prying adventure on his own account—a temptation he could not resist—by walking, or rather shuffling, into the guard-room, where his own peculiar crab-like sinuosities were particularly available. A number of soldiers were jabbering some unintelligible jargon, too much occupied with their own clamour to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Graeco-Italian and miscellaneous German, English aristocratic and English plebeian. Here certainly was a striking admission of human equality. The white bejewelled fingers of an English countess were very near touching a bony, yellow, crab-like hand stretching a bared wrist to clutch a heap of coin—a hand easy to sort with the square, gaunt face, deep-set eyes, grizzled eyebrows, and ill-combed scanty hair which seemed a slight metamorphosis of the vulture. And where else would her ladyship have graciously consented ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... a charming and delightful time in the Isle of Wight. We stayed at a queer little Inn, known as the "Crab and Lobster," kept by Miss Cass, with the aid of her sister and niece. We made excursions about the island. I saw two graves side by side which had a good deal of romance about them. One was the grave of a woman. The stone said that she had died at the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... black eyes to charm me—I felt how my wings beat the air only to drag me down—I was in the water, with my feet tied together, and the harder I worked with my arms, the further down I went—down, down, till I sank to the bottom, where you lay in wait like a monster crab to catch me with your claws—and now I'm there! Shame on you! How I hate you, hate you, hate you! But you, you just sit there, silent and calm and indifferent, whether the moon is new or full; whether it's Christmas or mid-summer; whether other people are happy or unhappy. You are incapable ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... weep: And yet they only murmur in their sleep. In contrast with their fathers—as the slime, The dull green ooze of the receding deep, Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam, 10 That drives the sailor shipless to his home, Are they to those that were; and thus they creep, Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets. Oh! agony—that centuries should reap No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years[235] Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears; And every monument the stranger meets, Church, palace, pillar, as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the fishes. He set them afloat in the water, and taught them to swim. He made the lion and gave it courage. He gave wings to the bird and showed it how to fly swiftly through the air. He covered the crab with its shell and ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... in demeanour! If ever lady wrong'd her lord so much, Thy mother took into her blameful bed Some stern untutor'd churl, and noble stock Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art, And never ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... Mr. Palmer made some bread yesterday. Then generally a walk to meet people at different villages, and talk to them, trying to get them to ask me questions, and I try to question them. Then at 6 P.M., a tea-ation, viz., yam and coffee, and perhaps a crab or two, or a bit of bacon, or some good thing or other. But I forgot! this morning we ate a bit of our first full-grown and fully ripe Mota pine-apple (I brought some two years ago) as large and fine as any specimens I remember ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tiny living creatures attached to it never lost their fascination for me. One day Miss Sullivan attracted my attention to a strange object which she had captured basking in the shallow water. It was a great horseshoe crab—the first one I had ever seen. I felt of him and thought it very strange that he should carry his house on his back. It suddenly occurred to me that he might make a delightful pet; so I seized him by the tail with both hands and carried him home. This feat ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... There is a tradition that Shakespeare as a very young man was one of the Stratfordians selected to drink against "the Bidford topers," and with his defeated friends lay all night senseless under a crab tree, that was long ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... with their great pink flowers, "the pretty Thomisus, the little crab-spider, clad in satin," watches for the domestic bee, and suddenly kills it, seizing the back of the head, while the Philanthus, also seizing it by the head, plunges its sting under the chin, neither too high nor too low, but "exactly in the narrow joint of the neck," for both insects ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... sailing low over the deep bay formed by the two huge tentacles that run south and south-east from the crab-like body of the island, when suddenly, above the noise of the engine, they heard the sharp crack of a shot, then two or three more. Glancing up the bay to his left, Smith saw a large junk, its ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... the stuff brushed ship side. One of the boys cried, "Ho, there is a crab!" It sat indeed on a criss-cross of broken reeds, and it seemed to stare at us solemnly. "Do not all see that it came from land, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... beach, he found innumerable fruits, and many of them such as no plants which he had discovered in this country produced: Among others were some cocoa-nuts, which Tupia said had been opened by a kind of crab, which from his description we judged to be the same that the Dutch call Beurs Krabbe, and which we had not seen in these seas. All the vegetable substances which he found in this place were encrusted with marine productions, and covered with barnacles; a sure ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... other kind of food, it is the direct gift of God to man in fully-developed state. Other fruits of the earth are given to man in a wild state, and he must improve them by care and cultivation, till the wild vine is turned into the rich wine-producing plant of the vineyard, and the sour crab into the delicious apple. It is not the case with corn. No one, says a writer, whose thoughts I am following, has ever discovered wild corn. Ages ago, when the Pharaohs reigned in Egypt, and the Pyramids were a'building, men sowed just the same corn that ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... an' the last shall be first," Gibney quoted piously. "Don't be a crab, Scraggs. Pray that the fog ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... the last graine, oates, it being the latest harvest, they doe (without mercy in hotte bloud) steale, robbe orchards, gardens, hop-yards, and crab trees; so what with leazing and stealing, they doe poorly maintaine themselves November, December, and almost all January, with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... quinces on pear and apple stocks; also he grafted "Spanish pairs," "Butter pears," "Bergamy Pears," "Newtown Pippins," "43 of the Maryland Red Strick," etc., and transplanted thirty-five young crab scions. These scions he obtained by planting the pumice of wild crab apples from which cider had been made. They were supposed to make hardier stocks than ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... days after the fall of the chimney at Rossmore Castle, as Mary and her sisters were sitting at their work, there came hobbling in an old woman, leaning on a crab stick, that seemed to have been newly cut. She had a broken tobacco-pipe in her mouth; her head was wrapped up in two large red and blue handkerchiefs, with their crooked corners hanging far down over the back of her neck, no shoes on her ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Mr. M'Crab departed; and Mr. Henry Augustus Constantine Stubbs prepared to go through the soliloquy of "To be—or not to be," before a mirror which reflected ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... insects: some species make their cells under stones, others form artistical tunnels in the earth, and some build their dens in the thatch of houses. The natives call them Aranhas carangueijeiras, or crab-spiders. The hairs with which they are clothed come off when touched, and cause a peculiar and almost maddening irritation. The first specimen that I killed and prepared was handled incautiously, and ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various |
