"Maw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there was some truth in this. The huge slaughter-houses that fed a good part of the world were silent and empty, for lack of animal material. The stock yards had nothing to fill their bloody maw, while trains of cars of hogs and steers stood unswitched on the hundreds of sidings about the city. The world would shortly feel this stoppage of its Chicago beef and Armour pork, and the world would grumble and know for once that Chicago fed it. Inside the city there was talk of a famine. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... it oft, but now I feel a wonder, In what grievous pain they die, that die for hunger. O my greedy stomach, how it doth bite and gnaw? If I were at a rack, I could eat hay or straw. Mine empty guts do fret, my maw doth even tear, Would God I had a piece of some horsebread here. Yet is master Esau in worse case than I. If he have not some meat, the sooner he will die: He hath sunk for faintness twice or thrice by the way, And not one seely bit we got since yesterday. All that ever he hath, he would ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... of its back was black and the belly yellow; the only quadruped seen was a small opossum. A seal of the hair species, like those of Rottnest Island, was seen on the rocks, probably of the same description that Dampier found in the maw of the shark;* and also what was found by the French on Faure Island, which M. Peron supposed to be an herbivorous animal and described as ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... a little observed the boy, he concluded that he was sick of the gripes. Then he said to his mother, What diet has Matthew of late fed upon? Diet, said Christiana, nothing but that which is wholesome. The physician answered, This boy has been tampering with something that lies in his maw undigested, and that will not away without means. And I tell you, he must he purged, or else he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... great natural Wen or Pouch under his Throat, in which he keeps his Prey of Fish, which is what he lives on. He is Web-footed, like a Goose, and shap'd like a Duck, but is a very large Fowl, bigger than a Goose. He is never eaten as Food; They make Tobacco-pouches of his Maw. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... on that," she said with a laugh. "I've been living in Paris till maw—who's lying down upstairs—came over and brought me across to England for a look around. And I reckon Malcolm's got to keep touch with you on ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, and snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky oillamp rams her last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone makes back for her lair, swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the doorstep with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... on this subject, remarks that in the "Memoirs of the Royal Society of Paris," 1751, there is related an account of a butcher who, opening a diseased beef, was burned by a flame which issued from the maw of the animal; there was first an explosion which rose to a height of five feet and continued to blaze several minutes with a highly offensive odor. Morton saw a flame emanate from beneath the skin of a hog at the instant of making an incision through it. Ruysch, the famous ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... in a wood shop, the other type of machine uses sharpened blades that slice thin chips from whatever is pushed into its maw. The chipper is designed to grind woody materials like small tree limbs, prunings, and berry canes. Proper functioning depends on having sharp blades. But edges easily become dulled and require maintenance. Care must be taken to avoid passing soil and small stones through a chipper. Soft, dry, brittle ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... philosophy and the political and social paths of human endeavor HAD been found absolutely correct and universally applicable—so that every human being would be compelled to pass through its machine-like maw, every personality to be crushed under its Juggernath wheels! No, thank Heaven! there is no theory or creed or system; and yet there is something—as Jefferies prophetically felt and with a great longing desired—that CAN satisfy; and that, the root of all religion, has been hinted ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... to procreate, To feed and to sleep, among Mere mouths, voracities boundless, Blind lusts, desires without tongue, And ferocities vast, fulfilling Their being's malignant law, While nature was one hunger, And one hate, all fangs and maw. ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Maw to herself, says she. Things ain't like what they used to be. Time was when I worked from sunup to sundown, and we didn't have no daylight-saving contraptions on the old clock, neither. The girls was too little then, and I done all the work myself—cooking, sweeping, washing and ironing, suchlike. ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... is usual in such emergencies, everything I "could think of" and everything my neighbors could think of, besides some fearful prescriptions which I obtained from a German veterinary surgeon, but to no purpose. I imagined her poor maw distended and inflamed with the baking sodden mass which no physic ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... it, and burst out crying. The two men looked at each other—one amused, the other shrinking with disgust at his own moral squalor. Then from the floor above came a whimpering cry, and Lily, calling passionately, "Yes, Sweety! Maw's coming!" ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... squall of rage, the monster abandoned its futile efforts and leaped away. Feigning indifference, the allosaurus picked up a half-gnawed skull with its tiny forelegs; and, while the prisoners watched, it stuffed the head into a maw twice the size of an elephant's and crunched the gruesome tidbit as easily as a boy would a walnut. Presently it shuffled off to rejoin the hideous herd in the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... detected some years ago by Herr Hackel of Stuttgart, are arranged in the form of a horse-shoe. There are two small contiguous craters on the S.E. wall, one of which, a difficult object, was recently detected by Mr. W.H. Maw, F.R.A.S. The well-known wedge-shaped protuberance on the S. wall is due to a large irregular depression. On the bright inner slope of the N. wall are ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... it came from the fathers and mothers whose sons had fallen like autumn leaves from the Rapidan to the Appomattox. The cries and wails of the thousands of orphans went up to high Heaven pleading for those fathers who had left them to fill the unsatiate maw of cruel, relentless war. The tears of thousands and thousands of widows throughout the length and breadth of the Union fell like scalding waters upon the souls of the men who were responsible for this holocaust. Their voices and murmuring, though like Rachael's "weeping for her ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... you go to the bacon-flick, cut me a good bit; Cut, cut and low, beware of your maw; Cut, cut and round, beware of your thumb, That me and my merry men may have some. Sing, ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... him. And maybe of thee too, Bozrah, Eliab returned. A hard life ours is, even for the young ones. Hard bread by day and at night a bed of stones, a hard life from the beginning one that doesn't grow softer, and to end in a lion's maw at fifty is the best we can hope for. For us, perhaps, Bozrah answered; but Jesus will go up to the cenoby among the rocks and die amongst the brethren reading the Scriptures. If the autumn rains don't make an end of him, Eliab interjected testily, as ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... "The Man of Feeling" would be made to feel his insignificance. "Thinks I to Myself" might think in vain; and the "Cottagers of Glenburnie" retain their rural obscurity. So much for the measure of the maw of the circulating library. Of its taste and palate it is difficult to speak with moderation; for those of Caffraria or Otaheite might ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... of Tarascon with sovereign disdain, yawning in their faces, seemed to feel a stirring of anger. First it sniffed and uttered a rumbling growl, it stretched out its forefeet and unsheathed its claws, then it got up, raised its head, shook its mane, opened its huge maw and directed at Tartarin ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... the wild dog's maw, The hair was tangled round his jaw. Close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf, There sate a vulture flapping a wolf, Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away, Scared by the dogs, from the human prey; But he seized on his share of a steed that lay, Pick'd by ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... day Mrs. Talboys clambered up to the top of a tomb, and made a little speech, holding a parasol over her head. Beneath her feet, she said, reposed the ashes of some bloated senator, some glutton of the empire, who had swallowed into his maw the provision necessary for a tribe. Old Rome had fallen through such selfishness as that; but new Rome would not forget the lesson. All this was very well, and then O'Brien helped her down; but after this there was no separating them. ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... now, dearie," and she smoothed the hand that lay idly on the red and white quilt, as Dorothy stood beside the bed. "You'll be all right. Don't you go and get bothered. We've sent fer the doctor, and when he comes, he'll fetch you right home to your maw. But you have got to keep quiet, or else the fever will set in, and then there's no tellin'. I told Josiah that we would do fer you like as if you was our'n, but you must not talk, dearie. You must be ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... bloodhound has made out the fault: this letter, that so sticks in thy maw, is counterfeit; only a trick of Sylvia in revenge, contrived ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... "Seest thou not how my meat be mean and my maw be lean; nor verily can I stand thee in stead of cate nor thy hunger satiate: so fear Allah and set me at liberty then shall the Almighty requite thee with an abundant requital." But the Fowler, far from heeding his words, made him over to his son saying, "O my child, take ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... now," I observed to him, and was about to stand up before taking a plunge into the tempting water, when I saw the surface disturbed, and presently the huge head and formidable jaws of an enormous alligator rose above it, his wicked eyes turned towards me as if he longed to have me in his maw! I shuddered as I gazed at him, for in another minute I might have been within that fearful mouth, and carried down beneath the surface, as has been the fate of many people in this part of the country. ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... brute that doth not flee Lambs of Christ, white-robed and clean? 'Midst the flock from fear set free, Slinks the drear wolf sullenly, Checked his maw and tamed ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... plantation. And he had a plantation! Dese niggers here in Carlisle—and niggers is all dey is too—dey don't know what no plantation is. When I got big enough fer to step around, from de very fus, my maw took me in de big house. It still dat, cep it done bout fell down now, to what it wuz then. But some of Marse's folks, dey libs down dar still. Den you see, dey is like dese white folks up 'round here now. ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... snow in the Cumberland Gap. He's stopped off thaw to shoot the—ahem!—the wild torkey—a great passion with the Jedge. His half-uncle, Gineral Johnson, of Awkinso, was a torkey-killer of high celebrity. He was a Deshay on his Maw's side. I s'pose you haven't the torkey in the Dutch ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... nobody else! Ast Mammy, ast Uncle Jed! He's got to sleep somewheres when his maw fergits to come home! Ever'body goes an' picks on Danny 'cause he ain't got nobody to take up fer him. 'T ain't fair!" Nance ended her tirade in ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... knew, including Hibernia, have come under the eagles, nay the vultures, of imperial Britain. But the lion's maw is full. ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... topped by its never-failing feather of black smoke. On near approach one heard the prolonged thunder of the stamp-mill, the crusher, the insatiable monster, gnashing the rocks to powder with its long iron teeth, vomiting them out again in a thin stream of wet gray mud. Its enormous maw, fed night and day with the car-boys' loads, gorged itself with gravel, and spat out the gold, grinding the rocks between its jaws, glutted, as it were, with the very entrails of the earth, and growling over its endless meal, like ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... both equally Remote and tempting, first a man might die Of hunger, ere he one could freely choose. E'en so would stand a lamb between the maw Of two fierce wolves, in dread of both alike: E'en so between two deer a dog would stand, Wherefore, if I was silent, fault nor praise I to myself impute, by equal doubts Held in suspense, since of necessity It happen'd. Silent was I, yet desire Was painted in my ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... bodies slide over the rim of the cliff. "Eat, Numa!" he cried. "It may be that I shall need you again." He saw the lion, quickened to new life at the sight of food, spring upon the body of the deer and then he left him rending and tearing the flesh as he bolted great pieces into his empty maw. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... prove it by yer maw, but her wus sich a little gal when it happened, her's fawgot. I 'members we all didn't hab no geese ter pick arter dat barb'cue, 'cept one ole gander; an' I 'members goin' to de hen-house, an' seein' not a sol'tary human critter ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... they had a certain stock clerk at that place at that time. They were awakened out of deep slumber by the threshing of an evil looking creature which had become entangled among the sharpened spikes. Its tremendous maw, splitting it almost in half, was opened in roars of pain that showed great yellow fangs eight inches in length. Its heavy flippers battered the stout roots and lacerated themselves in the beast's insensate rage. It was quickly dispatched with a flash pistol and Gunga cooked ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... her accomplishments as manager full play. She never put her hand in dirty water any more than Mrs. Cleveland sittin' up in the White House parlor. Johnnie done the fancy cookin'; he could make a pie like any one's maw, and while you was lost to the world in the delights of masticatin' it, he'd have all his greasy dishes ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... firm was. Field and Company. A private bank. Well, the days of private banks were drawing in. These huge joint-stock leviathans swallowing them up like pike among the troutlings. But not swallowing up Field and Company! Not much! If the old private houses were tumbling into the joint-stock maw, the greater the chances for those that stood out and remained. The private banks were tumbling in because they stood rooted in the old, solid, stolid banking business and the leviathans came along and pounced while they dozed. There was no dozing at Field's. ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... the business of his office. "Here's Sallie Rhodes done writ her maw a card from th' Corners. Sallie's been a visitin' her paw's folks. Says she'll be home on th' hack next mail, an' wants her maw t' meet her here. You can take th' hack next time, Zeke. An' ba thundas! Here's 'nother letter from that dummed Ollie Stewart. Sammy ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... Salve."[FN83] Cried the Lieutenant, "What may be that?" and said the youth in reply, "A bittock of hard bread eaten[FN84] upon the spittle, for indeed such food consumeth the phlegm and similar humours which be at the mouth of the maw.[FN85] And let not the blood in the hot bath for it enfeebleth man's force, and gaze not upon the metal pots of the Balnea because such sight breedeth dimness of vision. Also have no connection with woman in the Hammam for its consequence is the palsy; nor ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... below with his foot; and the water gushed out in full flow. And he, leaning both his hands and chest upon the ground, drank a huge draught from the rifted rock, until, stooping like a beast of the field, he had satisfied his mighty maw." ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... recess, nook; crypt, stall, pigeonhole, cove, oriel; cave &c (concavity) 252. capsule, vesicle, cyst, pod, calyx, cancelli, utricle, bladder; pericarp, udder. stomach, paunch, venter, ventricle, crop, craw, maw, gizzard, breadbasket; mouth. pocket, pouch, fob, sheath, scabbard, socket, bag, sac, sack, saccule, wallet, cardcase, scrip, poke, knit, knapsack, haversack, sachel, satchel, reticule, budget, net; ditty bag, ditty box; housewife, hussif; saddlebags; portfolio; quiver &c (magazine) 636. chest, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... paddle like a madman to keep from being sucked into the largest whirlpool along the course; which seemed to reach out eager fingers, and strive to the utmost to engulf him in its gluttonous maw. ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... which had slipped out of Anton's grasp, not five yards from where they lay, move restlessly, then, touched by an unseen hand, rise up. While two heart-beats lasted, the crutch stood still and perfectly upright, and then flew straight upwards into the all-devouring maw. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... own peculiar noise. The explosions became merged into a continual roaring crash, without pause or break. Then our Stokes guns joined in, and, if there ever was an infernal machine, that is it. Vomiting out shells as fast as they can be fed into its hungry maw; so fast, indeed, that it is possible for seven of them to be in the air at one time, from one gun, at a range of less than four hundred yards, it is the ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... revelation of the struggle of human souls caught in the maw of machine-made science, I found the picture screen a dull dead thing, and I left the hall and wandered for miles, it seemed, past endless confusion of meaningless revelry. Everywhere was music and gaming and laughter. Men and girls lounged and danced, or spun the wheels of fortune or ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... demon, began to read the Book of the Law in his presence, whereupon he flew away and cast the signet into the sea. In the meantime Solomon hired himself to some fishermen in a distant country, his wages being two fishes each day. He finds his signet in the maw of one of the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... made several such treaties, each of which established boundaries that were immediately broken, and that indeed it had been their experience that after a treaty the whites settled even faster on their lands than before. [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 56. Address of Corn Tassel and Hanging Maw, Sept. 5, 1786.] Just before this complaint was sent to Congress the same chiefs had been engaged in negotiations with the settlers themselves, who advanced radically different claims. The fact was that in this unsettled ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... injurious, furious brute; He's ready to rend you with tooth and with claw. Tho' 'tis incredible, Anything edible Disappears suddenly into his maw: Into his cavernous inner interior Vanishes ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... Arbaces, in a low and hissing tone; 'there is but one choice—thy confession and thy signature, or the amphitheatre and the lion's maw!' ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... their visitor, wisely. "And what about your Paw and Maw?" he inquired of Cis, who knew names and dates and facts about her parents, but was completely in the dark as to the whereabouts of any living kinspeople. She had lived in a flat in the next block till her father died. When her mother married Tom Barber, she had moved out of her birthplace ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... line; if near, you hear the rush of his wings; his shadow hurtles across the fields, and in an instant you see him quietly perched upon some low tree or decayed stub in a swamp or meadow, with reminiscences of frogs and mice stirring in his maw. ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... "We are twin brothers; we became separated from you in former days, but soon we must be united again." The linguistic map of Germany, widespread wherever German is spoken, reveals very clearly what are the ambitions of "Alt-Deutschland." The lion's maw of the "Slav-eaters" is always wide open. Sometimes the devouring beast walks delicately, at others he hurls himself savagely on ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... done, and it was done; but how to be undone at a time when the craving maw of the noose dangled from the post, in obedience to the Procrustes ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... Montgomery County and I's the mudder of eleven chillen, four gals and seven boys. My grandma come from Alabama and my daddy was Strawder Green and he belong to Col. Hughes. My maw named Phyllis and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... being over, Jack, breathing hard, now allowed himself to pay some attention to what was going on in other quarters. At the same time he proceeded to introduce a fresh belt of cartridges into the hungry maw of the machine gun, in case they were forced into ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... which is by nature lank and hollow, and must be made almost insupportably heavy before it shows any signs of repletion. The shirt and pair of everyday pantaloons which Lemuel had dropped that morning into its voracious maw made no apparent effect there, as the clerk held it up and twirled it on the crook of ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... a long sharp spear into his neck, and drove it home till it reached his heart. Whether or not he was the monster who had killed the woman we could not tell. Certainly he had not swallowed her, for on being cut open, his maw was found to contain only some tortoises, and a quantity of gravel, and stones, and broken bricks. Those hard substances he had swallowed to assist his digestion. The opinion of the natives was that he certainly was not the monster ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... The church, as she knew it, was chiefly the social center of various fashionable activities which differed from ordinary fashionable enterprises only in being used to bring in money, which money, handed over to the rector, disappeared into the maw of some unknown, voracious, charitable institution. And beyond the church there had been no element in the life she knew, that was not frankly materialistic. But now, as the miracle of awakening consciousness took place daily in her very sight, and as ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... cry, weak as his own, came from the other side of the wreck and he saw two heads just above the line of the keel. Bert and Mason had also been fortunate enough to reach the upturned half of the boat, and for a time at least all were saved from the maw ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... indeed, Were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast: Such feasting ended, then As sure an end to men; Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast? ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Phillotson," murmured Jude. "You are dear, free Sue Bridehead, only you don't know it! Wifedom has not yet squashed up and digested you in its vast maw as an atom which has ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... other islands, putting them under contribution, and in this manner raised some eight thousand ducats; from a pen of guinea-fowl to a king's ransom, nothing escaped the maw of this most rapacious of corsairs. Candia and some other islands yielded up some small spoil, but the sufferings of such insignificant folk as the wretched islanders were soon lost to the sight of the Christian world in the magnitude of the events ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... look favourably on the independence of religious non-democratic associations, and the fact that Leviathan had become democratic was thought to have transformed him into a monster within whose capacious maw any number of Jonahs might live at ease or liberty. Association against a tyrant might be a sacred duty; against the people it could only be a suspicious superfluity. In a very different way the Prussian state, centralized, efficient, and ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... the length of the great room, did not raise their eyes to the new-comers, as is the rule in less strenuous workrooms. Every pair of eyes seemed to be held in fascination upon the flying and endless strip of white that raced through a pair of hands to feed itself into the insatiable maw of the electric sewing-machine. Every face, tense and stony, bespoke a superb effort to concentrate mind and body, and soul itself, literally upon the point of a needle. Every form was crouched in the effort to guide the seam through the presser-foot. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... "Maw, you speak amazing reckless," said Laddie, "if I thought there was anything in THAT feature of the case, I'd attempt a Highland fling on the ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... the anlace, "that have I." Therewith he drew from his pouch a ram's horn rimmed with silver, and held it up, and said as if he were speaking to it: "Now, Thirly, rejoice! for ye shall have lord's wine poured into thy maw." ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... his flat tail—which acts on the principle of a stern-oar to a boat, and a rudder as well—can pass through the water as swiftly as most of the finny tribe. It is not by hunting it down, however, but by stratagem, that the alligator secures a fish for his maw." ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... San Joaquin, reeking with fruitfulness, and the millions of Asia crowding toward the verge of starvation, lay the iron-hearted monster of steel and steam, implacable, insatiable, huge—its entrails gorged with the life blood that it sucked from an entire commonwealth, its ever hungry maw glutted with the harvests that should have fed the famished bellies of the whole world of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... from the depths. The Dragon started from his den, spitting fire on his path. He cast a look at his victim there on the spot which his blood-thirsty maw knew so well. He raised his scaly body, thus letting his sharp claws be more visible, moved his snaky tail in a circle, and showed his gaping mouth. Snorting the monster crawled along, shooting flames ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... Their silent headstones, gilded by the moon, Half-full and near her setting—midnight. Hark! Through the white mists of this portentous night (Which throng in moving shapes about my way, As they were ghosts of candidates I've slain, To fray their murderer) my open ear, Spacious to maw the noises of the world, Engulfs a footstep. (Enter Estee from his tomb.) Ah, 'tis he, my foe, True to appointment; and so here we fight— Though truly 'twas my firm belief that he Would send regrets, or I had ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... maw," he will call in to his wife. "Wonder where they're headed fer?" His wife will come to the door and look apathetically at the receding dust cloud, and go back somewhere,—perhaps to put fresh soap in the tents to melt. Toward evening the cars are very likely to slow down and stop ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... of the snapping jaws, Brand reached his goal, the dome, and clambered over its curved, metal roof away from the monster's maw. ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... prefer pork to man," he answered; "and as we have the same taste, we may as well get piggy out of his maw." ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the big sister as she stood in the doorway and looked down the street toward the group of small boys: "Chakey, come in alreaty and eat youseself. Maw she's on the table and Paw ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the duke his invitation send To princes, or to those that on them tend, But pays his kindness to a hungry maw; His charity, his reason, and his law. For, to say truth, Hunger hath hundreds brought To dine with him, and all ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... man received the money, not as a gudgeon doth a bait, but as a pike receives a poor gudgeon into his maw. To say the truth, such fellows as these may well be likened to that voracious fish, who fattens himself by devouring all the little inhabitants of the river. As soon as the great man had pocketed the cash, he shook Booth by the hand, and told him he ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... to whom every fawn and satyr flies For willing service; whether to surprise The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit; Or upward ragged precipices flit To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw; Or by mysterious enticement draw Bewildered shepherds to their path again; Or to tread breathless round the frothy main, 270 And gather up all fancifullest shells For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells, And, being ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... the hold continually rose in huge blocks from the wharf, with a loud clucking of the tackle, and sank into the open maw of the ship, momently gathering herself for her long race seaward, with harsh hissings and rattlings and gurglings. There was no apparent reason why it should all or any of it end, but there came a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... stripped his skull all naked and bare, And here's his skull with a tuft of hair! His heart is in the eagle's maw, His bloody bones the wolf ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... blinding and choking him; and he liked the steady, rhythmic tramps of hooves and the roaring whir of the great complicated machine. It fascinated him to see the wide swath of nodding wheat tremble and sway and fall, and go sliding up into the inside of that grinding maw, and come out, straw and dust and chaff, and a slender stream of gold filling ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... kill. Then, with right foot advanced, and right arm uplifted, they pause to shout their gage of battle, and tell to each how they would maim and tear, and kill, and give each other's flesh for food to some beastly maw. ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... was just as good as Marse Bob. My maw was a puny little woman that wasn't able to do work in the fields, and she puttered round the house for the Missus, doin' little odd jobs. I played round with little Miss Sallie and little Mr. Bob, and I ate with them and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... It is terrible how little everybody writes, and how much of that little disappears in the capacious maw of the Post Office. Many letters, both from and to me, I now know to have been lost in transit: my eye is on the Sydney Post Office, a large ungainly structure with a tower, as being not a hundred miles from the scene of disappearance; but then I have no proof. THE TRAGIC ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... security. In less than ten minutes from that time the sailor was within six feet of the "hammer-head's" open mouth,—in imminent danger of being craunched between those quadruple tiers of terrible teeth, and taken into the monster's capacious maw. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... him at once; he is to finish his educational cramming before then,' said Bounderby. 'By the Lord Harry, he'll have enough of it, first and last! He'd open his eyes, that boy would, if he knew how empty of learning my young maw was, at his time of life.' Which, by the by, he probably did know, for he had heard of it often enough. 'But it's extraordinary the difficulty I have on scores of such subjects, in speaking to any one on equal terms. Here, for ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... party had only one leg of mutton in store, and were too hungry to risk their dinner in the fountain's maw." ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... Into its maw it sucks a town. A town with all its hundreds of men and women and children, with its marts of business, its homes, its factories and houses of worship. Then, insatiate still, with a blast like the chaos ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... the baronet, "fifteen and ten are twenty-five, and ten are thirty, and ten are forty-five—it is just thirty years since the Jacobites were up before! It would seem that half a human life is not sufficient to fill the cravings of a Scotchman's maw, for English gold." ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... like a jelly, collapses under the least pressure, and retains no imprint of it? All thought and energy and everything disappeared in the slough. When a stone fell there were hardly more than a few ripples quivering on the surface of the gulf: the monster opened and shut its maw, and there was left no trace of what ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... strength of character and intellect, and he succeeded in demonstrating to the Duke the dishonourable nature of his intentions. Also he induced his Highness to comprehend that the Pope, though ready to gather all men, and especially princes, into the maw of Rome, could not make a double marriage legal where there was no feasible plea for annulment of the first union. To be politically hostile to Austria was one thing, to enter into open combat with her another. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... below, black and sooty, their jagged outlines like the stumps of rotten teeth. And they stretched off in all directions, as far as the eye could attain; row after row of rotten teeth grinning up from the smog-choked throat of the streets. From the maw of the city far below came this faint but endless howling, this screaming of traffic and toil. And you couldn't help it, you breathed that in too, along with the fresh air, and it poisoned you and it did more than make your head ache. ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... great minister to the enraptured eyes of his sovereign; that treasure in the Bastille on which Henry relied for payment of the armies with which he was to transform the world, all disappeared in a few weeks to feed the voracious maw of courtiers, paramours, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... handsome girl appeared on the threshold of the next room, and with a hand on each door-post slowly swung herself backwards and forwards, without entering. "Well, Maw?" ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... behind him to pass in front of him, and, when Tiamat opened her mouth to swallow him, he thrust the hurricane into it so that the monster could not close her jaws again. The mighty wind filled her paunch, her breast swelled, her maw was split. Marduk gave a straight thrust with his lance, burst open the paunch, pierced the interior, tore the breast, then bound the monster and deprived her of life. When he had vanquished Tiamat, who had been their ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... ruth? Are we the eagle nation Milton saw Mewing its mighty youth, Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth, And be a swift familiar of the sun Where aye before God's face his trumpets run? Or have we but the talons and the maw, And for the abject likeness of our heart Shall some less lordly bird be set apart?— Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat? Some gorger in the sun? ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... who supplied the ravenous maw of death, it would be impertinence in me to make any comment on it; but when the whole globe lends its aid to supply this destructive settlement, and its baneful effects arising more from the letch a Dutchman has for stagnant mud than ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... returning a verdict of guilty? Is it not possible—nay, is it not extremely probable, that Gubbins was the actual thief? Was it not his interest, far more than M'Wilkin's, to abstract those poor unhappy sheep, because it is avowedly his trade to fill the insatiable maw of the Southron? And in that case, who should be at the bar? Gubbins! Gubbins, I say, who this day has the unparalleled audacity to appear before an enlightened Scottish jury, and to give evidence which, in former times, might have led to the awful consequence of the execution of an innocent man! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Maiesty? Ioh. Poyson'd, ill fare: dead, forsooke, cast off, And none of you will bid the winter come To thrust his ycie fingers in my maw; Nor let my kingdomes Riuers take their course Through my burn'd bosome: nor intreat the North To make his bleake windes kisse my parched lips, And comfort me with cold. I do not aske you much, I begge cold comfort: and you are so straight And so ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... food for goldfinches, and whether hemp-seed is injurious to them.—[A very little hemp-seed occasionally is good, and much is very bad, for nearly all birds. The best food is a mixture of canary, millet, oat-grits, and rape or maw-seed, putting about a dozen grains of hemp-seed on the top every day. The bird soon learns the plan, and leaves off scattering the other seed to get at the hemp, as he ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... seemed to have been swept clear of ice and snow. They were shorn of their winter shroud. They stood up like black, unsightly, broken teeth, against a cavernous background of fire burning in the maw of some Moloch colossus. They stood out bared to the bone ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... joined the Marine corps, Of course he will do what he's told, And Johnny will be at home on the sea The day he is eighteen years old. Just what they expect of my baby Ain't clear to his maw; my, oh, my! But Johnny's a-wearin' the blue—and ain't carin'— He's gone! Is ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... in time for the gold diggings, but all, unless they had disappeared into the hot insatiable maw of the wicked little city, had succeeded in one field or another; and these, in their dandified clothes, made a fine appearance at fashionable gatherings. If they took up less room than the women they certainly were ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... butcheries, the thinker begins to dream of a state of affairs which would free us from the horrors of the maw. This ideal of innocence, as our poor nature vaguely sees it, is not an impossibility; it is partly realized for all of us, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... one continuous cataract, which it very nearly is. On the same day another boat containing the cooking outfit struck a rock and went to pieces. The provisions she carried were, most of them, contributed to the maw of the dragon to follow those of the unfortunate raft. Sometimes the boats got away from the men altogether, running wild, finally lodging somewhere below to be found again with the contents missing. Soon they had so many large holes in them that one, No. 3, had to be broken ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Philosophers will say, Best Things grow worst when they decay. And many facts they have at hand To prove it, shou'd you proofs demand. As if Corruption shut her jaw, And scorn'd to cram her filthy maw, With aught but dainties rich and rare, And morsels of the choicest fare; As garden Birds are led to bite, Where'er the fairest fruits invite. If Phoebus' rays too fiercely burn, The richest Wines to sourest turn: And they who living highly fed, Will breed a Pestilence ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... to say about the matter, and of course she took her father's side of the question; and the captain concluded the debate by assuring Noddy, if his daughter had to die, he would give more than a hundred dollars to save her from the maw of a shark, that she might die less horribly by drowning. On the whole, the cabin-boy was pretty well satisfied that he had won the money honestly, and he carefully bestowed it with ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... thus hiding their infamous behavior. But there is no deception about that which we hold up to your observation to-day. A monster such as never ranged African thicket or Hindustan jungle hath tracked this land, and with bloody maw hath strewn the continent with the mangled carcasses of whole generations; and there are tens of thousands of fathers and mothers who could hold up the garment of their slain boy, truthfully exclaiming, "It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... moving, though slowly, on and on till their owners slid from the stacks and seizing the ends of the sweeps, held them. Even then, after the power was still, the cylinder kept its hum, till David throwing a last sheaf into its open maw, choked it into silence. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... enchanted stones: and each was sprinkled from the liquid contents in its course. One, however, being unable to walk, 'was by force drawin out at the byre dure; and the said Johnne with Nikclerith smelling the nois thereof said it wald not leive, caused are hoill to be maid in Maw Greane, quhilk was put quick in the hole and maid all the rest of the cattell theireftir to go over that place: and in that devillische maner, be charmeing,' they were cured."[791] Again, during the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... her white fingers fumble inside the dog's open maw. She pulled what seemed to be a white rubber cap from one of his grinders. Quickly and skilfully, with a fine knitting needle, the countess ripped from this rubber casing what the girl thought looked like a ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... squeezed in, caged, compressed, by a score of tough, encircling tentacles, and his whole body was drawn toward a wide, flexible, black-lipped mouth yawning in the center of the monster he had thought a stump. Moving with loathsome life, its sinewy root-tentacles sucking him whole into the maw, the thing hunched ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... Oriental sounds, he had fallen back on penny numbers to while away the hungry minutes. The quartering and burning of these tales in an avenging fireplace was not the least of the reasons why the whipped youth wept, and it needed several pieces of cake, maternally smuggled into his maw while the father's back was turned, to ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... thought not of the storm that beat about their ears nor wondered at the stopping of the fast express at a place where it had never stopped before. Far ahead the panting engine shed from its open fire-box an aureole of glaring red as the stoker fed coal into its rapacious maw. The unblinking head-light threw its rays into the thick of the blinding snow storm, fruitlessly searching for the rails through drifts denser than fog and ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... this death, and only fought on their way to the caves. Sometimes two, often four or more, would launch themselves together into a hollow, but to no avail; their united strength could not prevent the closing in of the mechanical maw, and they were crushed and flung out, to drift ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... foot within and on thy head, aye, though it wear a crown, shall fall the curse of Rome." Shall the crown of gold on the distiller's and brewer's brow hush into silence the lion-hearted manhood of our republic when its sons and daughters are demanded to feed the maw ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... has proved sufficiently strong to save it from the hungry maw of a famishing government, and to stand unaffected by the revolutions that surround it; and now and then, when too bitterly assailed by some political reformer, it finds relief in the assassination of the assailant, as in the case of the eloquent member of the last Congress, who, after ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson |
