"Snail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... associated with old recollections or habits. Habit will make a Frenchman like his melon with salt, while an Englishman prefers it with sugar. An old association of ideas will make an Englishman shrink from eating a frog or a snail, though he would probably like each if he ate it without knowing it, and he could easily learn to do so. The kind of cookery which one age or one nation generally likes, another age or another nation finds distasteful. The eye often governs the taste, and ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... in town he sends men out on the roads leading to the country, himself taking one. In a very short time he overtakes the noted horse-thief. Gus was sitting in the buggy sound asleep; the lines were hanging down over the dashboard, and the old horse was marching along at a snail's pace. He was out some two miles from town, and, no doubt, had traveled at this gait all the way. He was faced about, and, assisted by the sheriff, drove back to town. He was then placed under arrest and sent to jail, subsequently had his trial, and for this little ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... excited her imagination without object or result, had aged her prematurely, and although she was still young she did not seem so. It might be said of her that with her habits and manner of life she had wrought a sort of rind, a stony, insensible covering within which she shut herself, like the snail within his portable house. Dona Perfecta rarely came out of ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... to go on. She was deeply interested. I could hear her breath coming fast, though we were walking at a snail's pace. I longed to confide in her ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... one with the other, they had insensibly relaxed their pace, becoming mere strollers on the outside edge of the throng. The sense of being watched came to both of them at once, and, looking up at the same moment, they saw, approaching at a snail's pace, an open Victoria, in which were two ladies, to whom they were objects of plainly expressed interest. The elder was an insignificant little woman, who looked as though she were being taken out by her costly furs, while ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... and pure, Like snail, should keep within her door; But not, like snail, with silver track, Place all her wealth upon her back. Good ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... taut, she opened the throttle. The rope trembled. Her car seemed to draw sullenly back. Then it came out—out—really out, which is the most joyous sensation any motorist shall ever know. In excitement over actually moving again, as fast as any healthy young snail, she drove on, on, the young man ahead grinning back at her. Nor did she stop, nor he, till both cars were safe on merely thick mud, a quarter ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... Now I knew our current fate, and felt as if I heard again the gas gong going continuously. I had the feeling in April, unknown to any snail on the thorn, that the park was deafening with the clangour of pallid, tense, and contending lunatics. The Serpentine had receded from this tumult. Its tranquil shimmering was now fatuous and unbelievable. It was but half seen; its glittering was a distant grimacing and mockery at my troubled ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... an inch, and you'll take an ell; I will not put my finger in a hole, I warrant ye: what, man! ne'er crow so fast, for a blind man may kill a hare; I have known when a plain fellow hath hurt a fencer, so I have: what! a man may be as slow as a snail, but as fierce as a lion, and he be moved; indeed, I am patient, I must needs say, for patience in adversity brings a man to the Three ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... work-boxes grander both in appearance and size; but, nevertheless, whether from habit or from choice, her custom was, in her daily needlework, to use this old friend. Often and often had Charley played with it many wicked pranks. Once, while Katie had as yet no pretension to be grown up, he had put a snail into it, and had incurred her severe displeasure. He had stuffed it full of acorns, and been rewarded by being pelted with them round the lawn; and had filled it with nuts, for which he had not found it so difficult to obtain pardon. He knew every ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... get along, but at snail's pace. There followed five years of economy so rigid as to make the past seem profligate. Etta, the acid-tongued, the ferret-faced, was not the sort to go off without the impetus of a dowry. The man for Etta, ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... Snail, Miss, among ourselves," said the Porter. "She's oftener be'ind'and nor any ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... once,—and how, had it not been for him, their bones, too, might be lying there now, whitening in the heat. Oh, Harry, Harry King! She who had once crossed those very plains behind a jaded team now felt that the rushing train was crawling like a snail. ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... patches, with a flicker of sickly sun from time to time that made patches of olive-green water. Then a stump-foremast lifted, ducked, and disappeared, to be followed on the next wave by a high stern with old-fashioned wooden snail's-horn davits. The ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... enough," Wilton responded. "We shall never view things in the same light. You are not the man of the world you should be, Walter. Men of half your merit will eclipse you, winning opulence and distinction—while you, with your common sense notions, will be plodding on at a snail's pace. You are behind the age, and a stranger to ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... The progress was snail-like. The rough rock of the floor cut into her knees cruelly, but she disregarded the pain, and went forward. She tested each inch of the way by feeling over the stones with her hands, on either side and along the floor. The narrowness of the passage, which was hardly more than its height, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... to unbraid her tresses, coiled in the shape of a snail-shell and rolled round her ears, and two plaits fell upon her shoulders like weighty serpents. She drew them up into a crown on the top of her head—this was comfortable for sleeping—so that, by reason of her straight profile, she looked like a ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... spectacle of the rapidly moving legs and the flailing arms, with the actor's face turned toward the audience, as he declaims sonorously of his haste to perform his vital errand, while making but a snail's progress. Truly then his plea of exhaustion would not be without excuse! This is an explanation at once simpler, more potentially comic, more in accord with what we predicate as the spirit of Plautus, and furthermore we have seen roars of laughter created by the similar ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... Seine would have procured him a rough reception, if he had offered to equip the whole of the Boulogne flotilla with an invention which had sunk its first receptacle and propelled the second boat at a snail's pace. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Ground, where they drove a snug little business, and fought a great many small pitched battles for a great many contending parties. Though it could hardly be said of these conflicts that they were running fights - for in truth they generally proceeded at a snail's pace - the part the Firm had in them came so far within the general denomination, that now they took a shot at this Plaintiff, and now aimed a chop at that Defendant, now made a heavy charge at an estate in Chancery, and now had some light skirmishing among an irregular ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... the hotel. Early in the fall he had rented a small one-story house situated just off Main Street, set well back from the sidewalk among clumps of oleanders. Into this he retired as a snail into its shell. At first he took his meals at the hotel, but later he imported an impassive, secretive man-servant, who took charge of him completely. Neither master nor man made any friends, and in fact rebuffed all advances. One Sunday, Carroll and Orde, out for a walk, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... snail, and confident the others would do their part, Keith thrust his knife blade deep into the narrow crack, and began probing after the latch. In spite of all caution this effort caused a slight noise, and suddenly he started back, at the ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... and soul, to Freedom, sir—to Freedom, blessed solace to the snail upon the cellar-door, the oyster in his pearly bed, the still mite in his home of cheese, the very winkle of your country in his shelly lair—in her unsullied name, we offer you our sympathy. Oh, sir, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Marco Polo; and by using the Italian term "the star transmontane," at once betrays the source of his plagiarism. His descriptions seem disguised extracts from Polo, with ridiculous exaggerations and additions; as of snail shells so large as to hold many persons. His account of the pretended varieties of the human race, as of nations of Hermaphrodites, and others equally ridiculous, which he places in separate islands of the Indian ocean, are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... very desk SHAKSPEARE used, after creeping unwillingly to school with a shining face like a snail's. I was pained to see evidence of the mischievousness of the juvenile genius, for it was slashed and hacked to such a doleful degree as to be totally ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... that this one was in all probability a drunkard, and that it would be useless, worse than useless, to help him. But he was cold and hungry and penniless, and I knew it. I went as swiftly as I could to overtake him. He had not traveled far, lurching along at a snail's pace, and he was startled when I came up to him. One of his legs was longer than the other; it had been crushed in an accident. They were not pairs, his legs, and neither were his eyes pairs; one was big and blind, with a fixed ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... and I looking for my way home. It was nut-time. I had a pouch of them in my jacket, and I cracked and ate them as I went. Not a star pricked the sky; the dark was the dark of a pot in a cave and a snail boiling under the lid of it. I had cracked a nut and the kernel of it fell on the ground, so I bent and felt about my feet, though my pouch was so full of nuts that they fell showering in the fin dust. I swept every one with a shell aside, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the lady, 'Frank Kennedy would let Dirk Hatteraick alane. What needs he make himself mair busy than other folk? Cannot he sing his sang, and take his drink, and draw his salary, like Collector Snail, honest man, that never fashes ony body? And I wonder at you, Laird, for meddling and making. Did we ever want to send for tea or brandy frae the borough-town when Dirk Hatteraick used to come quietly into ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Ottoman kingdom, he avoided their camp, dexterously inclined to the left, occupied Caesarea, traversed the salt desert and the river Halys, and invested Angora; while the Sultan, immovable and ignorant in his post, compared the Tartar swiftness to the crawling of a snail. He returned on the wings of indignation to the relief of Angora; and as both generals were alike impatient for action, the plains round that city were the scene of a memorable battle, which has immortalized the glory of Timur ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... sn which may perhaps be derived from the Latin sinuo, as snake, sneak, snail, snare; so likewise snap and snatch, snib, snub. Bl imply a blast; as blow, blast, to blast, to blight, and, metaphorically, to blast one's reputation; bleat, bleak, a bleak place, to look bleak, or weather-beaten, black, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... ceremonial of a lady if she were shipwrecked on a desert island—and my father awaiting dinner. Dear father is never the pleasantest company at these seasons, when 'time stands still withal,' or rather, to him, keeps a snail's fretting pace. Well, I left them both and went down to the lake, a short walk, to greet the 'Old Man of the Mountain,' as they prosaically call the wonderful head at the very summit of the Headland Cliff, upreared on high over the beautiful bit of water named 'The Old Man's Punch-bowl.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... enveloped in long robes, in which there is no indication of folds, though fringes and tassels are elaborately rendered. The faces are of a strongly marked Semitic cast, but without any attempt at portraiture. The hair of the head ends in several rows of snail-shell curls, and the king's beard has rows of these curls alternating with more natural-looking portions. Little is displayed of the body except the fore-arms, whose anatomy, though intelligible, is coarse ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... from different countries or localities; the circle formation a representation of customs prevailing in one village, town, or tribe, and so on, with the arch form or tug of war, the winding-up games (as in Snail), etc. ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... delay of the train, and the snail's pace of the taxicab through the traffic, it would be quite six o'clock before she reached Mrs. Hetty Hills' house in Washington Square; he would be absolutely certain to ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... in all these years. There is never a year goes by without his doing something dreadful; and he has made everybody miserable at one time or other by killing their friends or relations, from the snail to the partridge. He is quite merciless, and spares no one; why, his own children are afraid of him, and it is believed that he has pecked several of them to death, though it is hushed up; but people talk about it all the same, sometimes. As for the ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... movement, the man's hands stole along the rope at a snail's pace. Never hurrying never stopping, they did on, the colt watching them as though mesmerised. When within reach of the dilated nostrils, they paused and waited, and slowly the sensitive head came forward snuffing, more in bewilderment ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... the usual peculiarities of figure ascribed to the jolly god rather exaggerated, and an owl sitting on his head between two huge horns, which support stands for lamps. Another represents a flower-stalk growing out of a circular plinth, with snail-shells hanging from it by small chains, which held the oil and wick; the trunk of a tree, with lamps suspended from the branches; another, a naked boy, beautifully wrought, with a lamp hanging from one ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... expedient to sow it, for some lands are best suited for hay, some for corn, some for wine and some for oil. So also should be considered the forage crops like basil, mixed fodder, vetch, alfalfa, snail clover and lupines. All things should not be sown in rich land, nor should thin land be left unsown, for it is better to sow in light soil those things which do not require much nourishment, such as snail clover and the legumes, except always chick peas ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... 'curses not loud, but deep.' Deep or loud, no purpose would they have answered; the waggoner's temper was proof against curse in or out of the English language; and from their snail's pace neither DICKENS nor devil, nor any postillion in England, could make him put his horses. Lord Colambre jumped out of the chaise, and, walking beside him, began to talk to him; and spoke of his horses, their bells, their trappings; the beauty and strength of the thill-horse—the value of ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... us are tall and others short, some straight and others crooked, some strong, others feeble; some of us run, others walk, others snail it. But all, all have their feet upon the same level of the common earth. And America's worst enemy is he—or she—who by word or look encourages another to think otherwise. Head as high as you please; but feet always ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... equally conchological. He found that the social action in every part of the island was regulated and assisted by this process. Oyster-shells were first introduced; muscle-shells speedily followed; and, as commerce became more complicate, they had even been obliged to have recourse to snail-shells. Popanilla retired to rest with admiration of the people who thus converted to the most useful purposes things apparently so useless. There was no saying now what might not be done even with a nutshell. It was evident ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... of nightly adventure coaxed him down. He realised that he swung in space between the two. The room and house were a speck in the universe above him, his brain the mere outlet of a tunnel up which he climbed every morning to put his horns out like a snail, and sniff the outer world. Here, in the depths, was the workroom where his life was fashioned. Here glowed the mighty, hidden furnaces that shaped his tools. Drifting, glimmering figures streamed up round him from the vast under-world of sleep, called unconscious. 'I am ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... conscience smite him at my naming the insects? I hope not. I hope you have not been tempted by Satan to do any harm to the little harmless, and often useful, creatures that cross your path. A butterfly, a cockchaffer, a house-fly, a snail, a caterpillar, a worm—these, and all others, are God's handy-work; and if you could see them through a glass that magnifies very much indeed, you would be more astonished than I can tell you. The small powder, ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... trail, packed down fully a foot by the traffic, was like a gutter. On either side spread the blanket of soft snow crystals. If a man turned into this in an endeavor to pass, his dogs would wallow perforce to their bellies and slow down to a snail's pace. So the men lay close to their leaping sleds and waited. No alteration in position occurred down the fifteen miles of Bonanza and Klondike to Dawson, where the Yukon was encountered. Here the first relays waited. But here, intent to kill their first teams, if necessary, Harrington and ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven— ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... understand. I have my own views in the matter.— Besides, there's something else. You have been exceedingly indelicate. You took advantage of my ignorance. You let me think you were a rose-beetle and yesterday the snail told me you are a tumble-bug. A considerable difference! He saw you engaged in—well, doing something I don't care to mention. I'm sure you will now admit that I must ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... ice blockade from the 9th of December to the 13th, the slopes in front of the lines were a continuous glare of ice, so that movements away from the roads and broken paths could be made only with the greatest difficulty and at a snail's pace. Men and horses were seen falling whenever they attempted to move across country. A man slipping on the hillside had no choice but to sit down and slide to the bottom, and groups of men in the forts and lines found constant entertainment in watching these mishaps. There had been a mingling ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... sweet responsive sympathy of tones; So the fair flower expands it's lucid form To meet the sun, and shuts it to the storm;— 15 For thee my borders nurse the fragrant wreath, My fountains murmur, and my zephyrs breathe; Slow slides the painted snail, the gilded fly Smooths his fine down, to charm thy curious eye; On twinkling fins my pearly nations play, 20 Or win with sinuous train their trackless way; My plumy pairs in gay embroidery dress'd Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest, To Love's sweet notes attune the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... &c adj.; languor &c (inactivity) 683; drawl; creeping &c v., lentor^. retardation; slackening &c v.; delay &c (lateness) 133; claudication^. jog trot, dog trot; mincing steps; slow march, slow time. slow goer^, slow coach, slow back; lingerer, loiterer, sluggard, tortoise, snail; poke [U.S.]; dawdle &c (inactive) 683. V. move slowly &c adv.; creep, crawl, lag, slug, drawl, linger, loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c (be inactive) 683; grovel, worm one's way, steal along; job on, rub on, bundle on; toddle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... thy own sweet smile, and tuneful tongue, Delighted BELLIS calls her infant throng. 145 Each on his reed astride, the Cherub-train Watch her kind looks, and circle o'er the plain; Now with young wonder touch the siding snail, Admire his eye-tipp'd horns, and painted mail; Chase with quick step, and eager arms outspread, 150 The pausing Butterfly from ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... the journey's end, we met almost every day long trains of government wagons, laden with stores for the troops and crawling at a snail's ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... good deal like us in a lot of ways. But worse. Much worse! And the Old Galactics were just slow. They thought slow; they moved slow—they did almost everything slow. At full gallop, old Repulsive couldn't have kept up with a healthy snail. Besides, they just liked to grow things and tinker with things and so on. They didn't go in for fighting, and they never got to be at all good at it. So they just got wiped ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... steed was slower than he. After a while, however, he pushed his way out of the woods into the open, and there stood the castle, only a little way ahead! All its windows were ablaze with lights. A ray from them fell on the lazy man's beast, and he saw what he was riding: it was a gigantic snail! a snail as large as ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... it make to me who he belongs to? I don't care if he belongs to Vanderbilt, or Aster'ses family. Principle—that is what I am a workin' on; and the same principle that would hender me from buyin' a feller that was poor as a snail, would hender me from buyin' one that had the riches of Creshus; it wouldn't make a ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... the Hudson until the 4th of December, moving snail-like, although he knew that Washington's army was ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven— All's ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... in this. "I've done some science myself. I did my Biology at University College,—getting out the ovary of the earthworm and the radula of the snail, and all that. Lord! It's ten years ago. But go on! go on! tell ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... the limbs of animals are made for their needs with incomprehensible art, and you are not so bold as to deny it. You say no more about it. You feel that you have nothing to answer to this great argument which nature brings against you. The disposition of a fly's wing, a snail's organs suffices to bring ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Only a weak swirl of current from the far-off Gulf Stream pushed my hulk onward; and this, I suppose, was helped a little by that attraction of floating bodies for each other which brings chips and leaves together on the surface of even the stillest pool. But a snail goes faster than I was going; and it was only at the end of a full hour of watching that I could see—yet even then could not be quite certain about it—that my position ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... waited and waited. Finally, after a full half hour, a top-floor window (the house had four stories) opened and Pinocchio saw a large Snail look out. A tiny light glowed on top of her head. "Who knocks at ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... He went a snail's pace, and at last dismounted, and groped his way. He got more than one fall in the snow, and thought himself very fortunate, when, at last, something black towered before him, and it ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... word she turned her head away, and slowly, slowly the carriage moved and began its snail's-pace ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... and surveyed the scene around. Not a soul was anywhere visible. The garden path stretched downward from his feet, gleaming like the track of a snail; the roof of the little well (mostly dry), the well-cover, the top rail of the garden gate, were varnished with the same dull liquid glaze; while, far away in the vale, a faint whiteness of more than usual extent showed that the rivers were high in the ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... with the thought, a gust of a kind of angry courage came into my heart. My uncle had sent me here, certainly to run great risks, perhaps to die. I swore I would settle that "perhaps," if I should break my neck for it; got me down upon my hands and knees; and as slowly as a snail, feeling before me every inch, and testing the solidity of every stone, I continued to ascend the stair. The darkness, by contrast with the flash, appeared to have redoubled; nor was that all, for my ears were now troubled and my mind ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fruit,—some of it, perhaps, collected at squirrel-holes, with the marks of their teeth by which they carried them,—some containing a cricket or two silently feeding within, and some, especially in damp days, a shelless snail. The very sticks and stones lodged in the tree-top might have convinced you of the savoriness of the fruit which has been so eagerly ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... gray slug and snail have trailed Their slimy silver up and down The beds where once the moss-rose veiled Rich beauty; and the mushroom brown Swells where the lily ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... flying at a snail's pace but a few feet above the ground—literally feeling our way along through the darkness, for both moons had set, and the night was black with the clouds that are to be found only at ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on his head, like a muffin-man carries his tray. It was a great thing, you never would have thought he could have carried it, and it was easy to see that it was as much as he could manage; it bent him nearly double, and he went crawling along like a snail,—it took him quite a time to get to the end of ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... They are the winged wardens of your farms, Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, And from your harvests keep a hundred harms; Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, And crying havoc on the slug and snail. ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... on Treasury Bench affecting the virtue of a smile though he has it not. Wriggles like a snail under dispensation of salt. When HARCOURT finished, HENRY FOWLER stepped in, and with fresh array of figures and new marshalling of argument, completed the demolition of JOKIM'S system of finance. Mr. G. looked smilingly on, delighting in the energy and aptitude of his Young Men. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... to me that the Benevolent Despot, the Peter Grievous, and the Martyred Snail, are people to avoid ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... Beulah! It sounds like the title of a novel, but the hero would have to be a snail or he'd pass Beulah in the first chapter!—Yes, father's hale and ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... say. Well, then, a hundred thousand francs, or even eight thousand francs a year, is nothing at all towards buying Roguin's practice. Little Xandrot, as we call him, thinks, like all the rest of the world, that we are richer than we are. If his father, that big farmer who is as close as a snail, won't sell a hundred thousand francs worth of land Xandrot can't be a notary, for Roguin's practice is worth four or five hundred thousand. If Crottat does not pay half down, how could he negotiate the affair? Cesarine must ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... a drove of wild, shaggy buffaloes, or a travelling carriage rattling and jilting along, or a stray priest or so, trudging homewards from some outlying chapel. That red-bodied funereal- looking two-horse-coach, crawling at a snail's pace, belongs to his Excellency the Cardinal, whom Papal etiquette forbids to walk on foot within the city, and whom you can see a little further on pottering feebly along the road in his violet stockings, supported ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... after the tank has been established several weeks, the inner sides of the glass will show a green tinge, which soon increases and interferes with the view. This is owing to the growth of a minute confervoid vegetation, which must be kept down. For this purpose the Snail is the natural remedy, being the ready scavenger of all such nuisances. Snails cling to the sides, and clean away and consume all this vegetable growth. The Lymnea is among the most efficient, but unfortunately is destructive, by eating holes in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... to slacken their steps to a snail's pace as they approached the great shop. They had a full view of the interior, though it was a little dark, unless to the most modern taste. There was an air of old-fashioned substantiality, comfort, and something like modest ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... his head thrown back, and was continually in the act of wriggling his long chin into his ample neckerchief. He could not ask you how do you do, or say in answer to that question, "I thank you, sare, very well," without stamping prettily with his foot, as if cracking a snail, and tossing his chin into the air as if he were going to balance a ladder upon it. Then, though his features were compressed into a small, monkeyfied compass, they were themselves, individually, upon a magnificent scale. It was as if there had been crowded half a dozen gigantic ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... It did not know how far the Republicans were prepared to go in their drive for action, so on the day of this flurry in the House the snail-like Rules Committee suddenly met in answer to the call of its chairman, Mr. Pou, and by a vote of 6 to 5 decided to report favorably on the resolution providing for a Woman Suffrage Committee in the House "after all pending war measures ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... coasts of any of these islands are found many small white snail shells, called siguei. The natives gather them and sell them by measure to the Siamese, Cambodians, Pantanes, and other peoples of the mainland. It serves there as money, and those nations trade with it, as they do with cacao-beans ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... may be owing to my ignorance of some of the facts of the case. There are, on the other hand, two acts of destruction in Nature which leave me unprotesting and pleased. One of these occurs when a thrush eats a snail, banging the shell repeatedly against a stone. I have never thought of the incident from the snail's point of view. I find myself listening to the tap-tap of the shell on the stone as though it were music. I felt the same sort of mild thrill of pleasure the other day when I found a beautiful ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... face, spoke but seldom, but what she did say was more intelligible. Now and then a peculiar smile flitted across her features; it almost seemed as if she were highly amused at my good uncle, who had withdrawn into his silken dressing-gown like a snail into its shell, and was vainly endeavouring to push out of sight a treacherous yellow string, with which he fastened his night-jacket together, and which would keep tumbling out of his bosom yards and ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... strive, as to have God's approbation. What, do you think that every heavy-heeled professor will have heaven? What, every lazy one? every wanton and foolish professor, that will be stopt by anything, kept back by anything, that scarce runneth so fast heavenward as a snail creepeth on the ground? Nay, there are some professors that do not go on so fast in the way of God as a snail doth go on the wall; and yet these think that heaven and happiness is for them. But stay, there are many more that run ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... knew how to be even more brutal, for that was Dennis Kavanagh's style of attack. He came out upon the porch, a broad, stocky chunk of a man, with eyebrows sticking up like the horns on a snail, and the eyes beneath them keen with humor of the grim and ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... crowded with shoppers and loiterers. The shop windows were as full as ever, the toilettes of the women as wonderful. Mankind, though khaki-clad, was plentiful. The narrow thoroughfare was so crowded that his taxicab went only at a snail's crawl, and occasionally he heard scraps of conversation. Two pretty girls were talking to ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... me—the swift year's flight I count like miser's gold; I keep the "watches of the night," I wait until the morning light Its glories snail unfold. ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... upon details of adult structure, young crabs pass through a stage when to all intents and purposes they are counterparts of lobsters. Even the twisted hermit crab, which has a soft-skinned hinder part coiled to fit the curve of the snail shell used as a protection, is symmetrical and lobster-like when it is ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... economy continued to falter in 1994, as remittances and tourist earnings remained low. Production of taro, the primary food export crop, has dropped 97% since a fungal disease struck the crop in 1993. The rapid growth in 1994 of the giant African snail population in Western Samoa is also threatening the country's basic food crops, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... have ascertained that certain descriptions of snails possess peculiar properties or sympathies, which cause them to feel the same sensation, no matter at what distance they may be, when acted on in a particular way by galvanic and magnetic influences. A snail placed in a box, suitably provided with the requisite apparatus, in France, thus responds to the motions of a snail, placed in a similar box, in America; and by providing a snail for each letter, a conversation may thus be carried on. The correspondent of the London ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... horn, etc. For colic, powdered horse's teeth, dung of swine, asses' kidneys, mice excretion made into a plaster, and other equally vile and unsavory compounds. Colds in the head were cured by kissing the nose of a mule. For sore throat, snail slime was a favorite prescription, and mouse flesh was considered excellent for disease of the lungs. Boiled snails and powdered bats ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... Within the concave of a nut, Brown as his tooth. A little moth Late fatten'd in a piece of cloth: With withered cherries, mandrakes' ears, Moles' eyes; to these the slain stag's tears The unctuous dewlaps of a snail, The broke-heart of a nightingale O'ercome in music; with a wine Ne'er ravish'd from the flattering vine, But gently press'd from the soft side Of the most sweet and dainty bride, Brought in a dainty daisy, which He fully quaffs up to bewitch His blood to height; ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... was a case of pure willing with him. The nature of his experiences so far disinclined him for any further experiments, at least until he had reconsidered them. But he lifted a sheet of paper, and turned a glass of water pink and then green, and he created a snail, which he miraculously annihilated, and got himself a miraculous new tooth-brush. Somewhere in the small hours he had reached the fact that his will-power must be of a particularly rare and pungent quality, a fact ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... little snail! Hurry—can't you?" said Susy, impatiently; "Norah'll be gone! What's the use of our waking up in the night if we can't say ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... a moment's introspection, that thought makes language for itself to live in, just as a snail makes its own shell or a soul makes its own body. Who has not felt the anguish of not being able to find a word to hit off his thought exactly?—which surely means that the thought was already there unclothed, awaiting its embodiment. ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Bruyeres—and such a horse! a miserable, old, broken-down hack, whose ribs were so prominent that he looked as if he lived upon barrel-hoops instead of oats and hay; his lack-lustre eyes, drooping head, halting gait, and panting breath combined to make him a most pitiable object, and he plodded on at a snail's pace, looking as if he might drop down dead on the road at any moment. Only the three women were in the chariot—the men all walking, so as to relieve their poor, jaded beast as much as possible. The weather ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail. "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... solar system the sun could not appear to it larger than the blaze of a tallow candle. To us it was wholly incredible how, in that dim remoteness, it could still hold true to the central force and follow at a snail-pace, yet with unvarying exactitude, its stupendous orbit. Clemens said that heretofore Neptune, the planetary outpost of our system, had been called the tortoise of the skies, but that comparatively it was rapid in its ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... had been kind and gracious to him in the first part of the evening; nay, almost more than gracious. Why had she been so cold when he went up to her on that last occasion? why had she gathered herself like a snail into its shell for the ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... even if it were possible to obtain the superior Burgundian, fat and juicy and cooked even as our own Oscar used to prepare them for certain Waldorf guests, would ever appeal to the American taste, as even the common hedgerow sort of snail does ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... ridden quite fast, or perchance these two had gone at a snail's pace, but when half-way home they looked about them and found that ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Scotch, both Teutonic, in Ulster.[887] Barred by Great Britain from direct contact with the Continent and all its stimulating influences, suffering from unfavorable conditions of climate and topography, Ireland's political evolution progressed at a snail's pace. It tarried in the tribal stage till after the English conquest, presenting a primitive social organization such as existed nowhere in continental Europe. Property was communal till the time of the Tudors, and all law was customary.[888] Over-protected by excessive ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... instant taking his eagle eye from the tracks which formed his compass. Think not that such tracks are easily traced. None but a practised and ready eye can follow them to any advantageous end. To trace them even at a snail's pace, for an unpractised eye, is like the child putting pen and ink to paper through his first copy-book of penmanship. Many and many an awful blot and horribly crooked line will doubtless carry the simile fully and strikingly to the mind. But the result which crowned Kit's effort ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... half-tone," Glen assured her. "What's all this business, anyway? Put me wise, Sis, I'm groping like a blind snail in the mulligatawny." ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... I intend sending this letter by the packet of the 24th inst., and am in hopes of sending with it some intelligence from those from whom I have been so long expecting something. Everything moves at a snail's pace here. I find delay in all things; at least, so it appears to me, who have too strong a development of the American organ of 'go-ahead-ativeness' to feel easy under its tantalizing effects. A Frenchman ought to have as many lives as a cat to bring to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... by having recourse to lime, in the preparation of the land for such crops. They conceal themselves in the holes and crevices, only making their appearance early in mornings and late in the evenings. The white slug or snail is likewise very destructive to young turnip crops, by rising out of the holes of the soils, on wet and dewy mornings and evenings. Rolling the ground with a heavy implement, before the sun rises, has been advised as a means of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... by anticipation, a cuckold in embryo! Sure I was born with budding antlers like a young satyr, or a citizen's child, 'sdeath, to be out-witted, to be out-jilted, out-matrimonied. If I had kept my speed like a stag, 'twere somewhat, but to crawl after, with my horns like a snail, and be outstripped by my ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... scarcely wider than a path, and was only divided from the grounds of the villa by a ditch and a slight railing. I was intently occupied in examining an ant's nest, and the various evolutions performed by its black citizens on the sudden fall of a snail among them, which had dropt off a branch of dog-roses while I was gathering it, when all at once a sound as of many people running, joined to loud cries and vociferations, caught my ear. There was something ominous in the noise, and my heart beat quick as I looked with a mixture of fear ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... quick enough. The girl, though not nearly as active under the increased pull of gravity as a person of Earth might be, was yet more agile than the Rogans. And she was the faster mover in this tortuous, snail-like race. While the Rogan leader was still several feet ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... Dryad: Sprinkle out of flower bells Mortal sense entrapping spells; Make no sound On the ground; Strew and lap and lay around. Gnat nor snail Here assail, Beetle, slug, nor spider here, Now descend, Nor depend, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... and in the meantime Arnold Bennett probably wrote three novels of several hundred thousand words each, gained an international reputation, and passed me on the road to fame like an airplane passing a snail. George Ade kept pegging away at his "Fables" with the regularity of a day laborer, and Peter Finley Dunne ground out his "Mister Dooley" like ...
— Goat-Feathers • Ellis Parker Butler
... of the sentries, Xodar said, was very slow, requiring nearly ten minutes to make a single round. This meant that for practically five minutes at a time each side of the prison was unguarded as the sentry pursued his snail like pace upon the ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... return, escorting an old mail-coach drawn by post-horses, which the weariness of his soldiers, after their forced march, was compelling to advance at a snail's pace. The company of Blues from the garrison at Mortagne, who had escorted the rickety vehicle to the limits of their district, where Hulot and his men had met them, could be seen in the distance, on their way back to their quarters, like so many black specks. One of Hulot's companies was in ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... great life-tree." (Clodd, "Story of Creation," p. 103.) There is an exact gradation from the lowest life forms to the highest. First such simple forms as the sponges and corals, then, through the worms, crabs, oysters, and snail to the fish, and thence through amphibia, reptiles, beasts of prey, ungulates (hoofed animals) and apes to man. Evolutionists say that in this gradation of life we see illustrated the evolution of complex ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... vexed about it. She told me you panted at the door, and she was a deal fitter to carry the pail than you, that is just off a sick-bed, like. But lawk, sir, ye can't go by the likes of that. The bachelors here they'd see their sweethearts carry the roof into next parish on their backs, like a snail, and never put out a hand; 't is not the custom hereaway. But, as I was saying, Paul and our Mercy kept company, after a manner: he never had the wit to flatter her as should he, nor the stomach to bid her name the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... he had always accompanied the Mistress and the Master. Unknown to the old dog, these walks had been shortened, mercifully, and slowed down, to accommodate themselves to Lad's waning strength: But the time came when even a half-mile, at snail-pace, over a smooth road, was too much ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... enters into the catch, and fastens a door." The eyes of the mole are protected by being very small, and buried deep in a cushion of skin, so that the apertures leading to them are like pin-holes in a piece of velvet, scarcely pervious to loose particles of earth. The snail without wings, feet, or thread, adheres to a stalk by a provision of sticking-plaster. The lobster, as he grows, is furnished with a way of uncasing himself of his buckler, and drawing his legs out of his boots when they become too ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... it—yes," said Uncle Felix without enthusiasm. "It's a snail shell—er—I believe?" The shade of disappointment in his voice was reflected in the children's faces too, as they all straightened up and gazed expectantly at the panting soldier. "Is that all?" was the sentence no one ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... a snail! And page 230 is blank," said the journalist. "Then there are two more blank pages before we come to the word it is such a joy to write when one is unhappily so happy as to be ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... States. the black or dark brown lizzard we saw at the rock fort Camp at the commencement of the woody country below the great narrows and falls of the Columbia; they are also the same with those of the United States. The snail is numerous in the woody country on this coast; they are in shape like those of the United States, but are at least five times their bulk. There is a speceis of water lizzard of which I saw one only just ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... to anticipate his ring. A vague foreboding drove the blood from her lips as she stood waiting at the open hall-door. Seeing the streaming light, the boy managed to accelerate his snail's pace. ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... large a toll of American soldiers at that point in the line. The four night raiders left the American trench at one o'clock in the morning. They crawled on their bellies through snow for one hour before reaching the sniper's post. Seven yards per minute is a snail's pace, but pretty good time in No Man's Land, where you must remain motionless each time a star-shell lights up the darkness around you and ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... baseless vision. Man is sui generis, sole and exclusive in organization, without pre-existing type or affinity to other species; and his alleged recent metamorphosis from a monkey, and his first and far more distant one from a snail or a tadpole, are paradoxes only worthy of idle ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... and, discussing the time for the fullest meal, Cardan remarks that established habits as to this point are not to be lightly considered. His directions as to diet are many, reasonable, and careful. His patient, once stout, had become perilously thin. Turtle-soup and snail-broth would help him. Cardan insisted also on the sternest rules as to hours of work, need for complete rest, daily exercise, and was lucky enough to restore his patient to health and vigor. The great churchman was grateful, and seems to ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts: His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms: And then, the whining school-boy with his satchel, And shining morning-face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then, the lover; Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eye-brow. Then, a soldier; Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... saw far off the gray Pacific bearing A broad white disk of flame, And on the garden-walk a snail beside me Tracing in crystal ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... road for a hard-drinking man to travel and, now and then, Grafton shrank back, with a startled laugh, from the hideous things crawling across the road and rustling into the cactus—spiders with snail-houses over them; lizards with green bodies and yellow legs, and green legs and yellow bodies; hairy tarantulas, scorpions, and hideous mottled land-crabs, standing three inches from the sand, and watching ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... quit of the primitive maternal responsibility, she gave no more thought to them than a thrush gives to its fledglings when she has educated them to their first flights, and to the useful knack of cracking a snail on a stone. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... Betty replied wearily. "You see how we've been traveling—not more than a snail's pace, and it won't be very long before we shall have to stop altogether. I'm surprised that Mollie has been able to keep going so long. You will have to keep your eye on her all the time, now, Grace, since it is getting so dark. We don't want to ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... standards of desert warfare it must have seemed that Kitchener and his English made war as slowly as grass grows or orchards bear fruit. The horsemen of Araby, darting to and fro like swallows, must have felt as if they were menaced by the advance of a giant snail. But it was a snail that left a shining track unknown to those sands; for the first time since Rome decayed something was being made there that could remain. The effect of this growing road, one might almost ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... of arrows from a new tribe, the Pipis, fell amongst them. The trappers killed six of them at one volley, and the rest ran away, leaving twenty-three beautiful longbows behind. The only clothing the dead men had on was snail-shells fastened to the ends of their long locks of hair. The trappers now began to seek more anxiously for the mythical settlements. "A great many times each day," says Pattie, "we bring our crafts to the shore and go out ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the same. It curls through the bottom like the tail o' a cur-dog; an' nigher the Massissippy, it don't move faster than a snail 'ud crawl. I reck'n the run o' the river 'll not help 'em much. The'll hev a good spell o' paddlin' afore they git down to Massissippy; an' I hope that durned Mormon 'll blister ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... to Dr. Todd, who told him he had aneurism of the heart. On Tuesday, went to Dr. Walsh, who told him he hadn't. On Wednesday I met him in a cab in the Square here, and he got out to talk to me. I walked about with him a little while at a snail's pace, cheering him up; but when I came home, I told them that I thought him much changed, and in danger. Yesterday at 2 o'clock he died of spasm of the heart. I am going up to Highgate to look for a ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... The girl's fainting. Never mind. Here, landlady, bring a light! Lead the way. She's not too heavy to carry. Upstairs with you. What a snail you are, old woman! ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... survey The fowls as destined for his prey? And do not Caesars, and such things, Deem men were born to slave for kings? The crab, amidst the golden sands Of Tagus, or on pearl-strewn strands, Or in the coral-grove marine, Thinks hers each gem of ray serene. The snail, 'midst bordering pinks and roses, Where zephyrs fly and love reposes, Where Laura's cheek vies with the peaches, When Corydon one glance beseeches,— The snail regards both fruit and flower, And thanks God for ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... said the Bailie—"indifferent weel, I thank ye; and for accommodations, ane canna expect to carry about the Saut Market at his tail, as a snail does his caup;—and I am blythe that ye hae gotten out o' the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and there at the tip of his finger and sliding down the air with wings flapping slowly and at the speed of an exceptionally languid snail—was ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... for big figures, and positively liked to believe that the progress made by the child in the womb in a month was represented in prehistoric time by ages and ages. We insisted that Evolution advanced more slowly than any snail ever crawled, and that Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds. This was all very well as long as we were dealing with such acquired habits as breathing or digestion. It was possible to believe that dozens of epochs had gone to the slow ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... archery. To challenge at the flight is, I believe, to wager who shall shoot the arrow furthest without any particular mark. To challenge at the bird-bolt, seems to mean the same as to challenge at children's archery, with snail arrows such as are discharged at birds. In Twelfth Night Lady Olivia opposes a bird-bolt to a cannon-bullet, the lightest to ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... rising in front of them, and the buildings of Saint Swithun's Abbey extending far to their right. The hour was nearly noon, and the space was deserted, except for an old woman sitting at the great western doorway with a basket of rosaries made of nuts and of snail shells, and a workman or two employed on the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... frugal snail, with fore-cast of repose, Carries his house with him, where'er he goes; Peeps out—and if there comes a shower of rain, Retreats to his small domicile amain. Touch but a tip of him, a horn—'tis well— He curls up in his sanctuary shell. He's his ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... job than either of them anticipated. The axle was slightly bent, and a blacksmith had to bring clamps and a jackscrew before the new wheel could be adjusted. Even then it had an air of uncertainty that rendered speed impossible. The concluding five miles of the journey were taken at a snail's pace, and Helen reflected ruefully that it was possible to "bruk ze leg" on the level high road as well as on the ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... does so, as do certainly the people of the coast near which it is found. He told me that possibly this idea had arisen because the shell, when empty, swims on the surface. The creature, when at the bottom, crawls along like any other snail. Sometimes it dies and falls out, when the shell rises to the surface by means of the gases generated in its chambers; and thus they are seen floating on the waves. Others say, however, that the animal itself with the shell, putting out ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... put on still more speed, but the aeroplane was doing its best. But fast as it was going, it seemed to crawl up on the train at a snail pace. The tail lights still kept ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... accordingly, murmuring at the cowardice of the servants; but at such a snail's pace, that it seemed he would most willingly have been anticipated by any one whom his reproaches had roused to exertion. "Cowardly blockheads!" he said at last, seizing hold of the handle of the door, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... a newsboy named "Charley," who slept at Captain Kingwalt's every second night, and who returned my beast to his owner in Washington. The aphorism that a Yankee can do anything, was exemplified by this lad; for he worked my snail into a gallop. He was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and appeared to have taken to speculation at the age when most children are learning A B C. He was now in his fourteenth year, owned two horses, and employed another ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... baggage. When we started in the dark we had the train to ourselves, but as I awoke three hours later from an uneasy sleep and looked out of the van, the rest of the train already swarmed with Italian soldiers who had clambered upon it as it crept along at a snail's pace. And when dawn came we saw ahead of us a long vista of trains stretching out of sight, while behind stood another queue of them, whistling impatiently like human beings at a ticket office; sometimes one of them would back ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... said he, in answer to some close inquiries of Markland. "There has been a most vigorous prosecution of the works, and a more rapid absorption of capital, in consequence, than was anticipated; but, as you have clearly seen, this is far better than the snail-like progress at which affairs were moving when Mr. Lyon reached the ground. Results which will now crown our efforts in a few months, would scarcely have been ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... list, ye braves, who love to roam! A snail was chasing a tailor home. And if Old Shears hadn't run so fast, The snail would surely have caught him ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... thrusts his muzzle forward, And backward draws the ears into his head, In the same manner as the snail ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... placed on the table and opened with great ceremony. I can hear the bursts of laughter and the shouts of the merry party when, instead of the looked-for sweets, he finds, neatly arranged on moss or cotton-wool, a beetle, a snail, a bit of coal, a few acorns, a turnip, or some such thing. Another time in a newly whitewashed room, a toy or some small article of furniture would be hung on the wall and the children would have to fetch it without touching the wall. When the child who fetches ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... weary little mount plodded slowly along the dusty road. For hours the man had not been able to urge the beast out of a walk. The loss of time consequent upon his having followed wrong roads during the night and the exhaustion of the pony which retarded his speed to what seemed little better than a snail's pace seemed to assure the failure of his mission, for at best he could not reach ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his masters. In his former existence very far had been from him this glorious career, though honors lay in wait for an Endicott who took to statecraft. Shallow Horace, sprung from statesman, had found public life a bore. This feeling had saved him perhaps from the fate of Livingstone, who in his snail-shell could see no other America than a ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... close behind him. There was no resisting the invitation upon such favourable ground, and immediately dismounting, we followed him. I now found that my leg was nearly useless, and I could only move at a snail's pace, and even then with great pain. Upon reaching the forest, we found that the rogue had decamped, not wishing to meet us in such advantageous ground. We followed his tracks for a few hundred yards through the wood, till we suddenly ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... die any day like a rat on a housetop, with only a bundle of musty papers, the tags of broken conversations, and one or two dead, distorted nerves. That is our common risk. But I shall accomplish as much of the road as God permits the snail, and I shall have moulded something; life will have justified itself to me, or I to life. But that is not ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... of an affected snail, and they spoke at the longest intervals, dropping a sentence ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton |
