"Snake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when Sandy gave a wild whoop of alarm, jumping about six feet backward as he yelled, "A rattlesnake!" Sure enough, an immense snake was sliding out from under a mass of brush that the boy had disturbed as he gathered an armful of dry branches and twigs. Dropping his burden, Sandy shouted, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... when a thick, gorged snake squirmed from under her feet and scrawled like a monstrous slug into a bush. She simply must talk, or drop, she thought, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... from Squier and Davis), according to the authors, "certainly represents the rattlesnake." It certainly represents a snake, but there is no hint in it of the peculiarities of the rattlesnake; which, indeed, it would be difficult to portray in a rude carving like this without showing the rattle. This is done in ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... figure was still hunched behind the table. He was peering toward the open door. I saw in his hand a small, barrel-like weapon, with a wire dangling from it. The wire lay like a snake across the floor and terminated in a small metal cylinder ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... meant Arabs he would hev said Arabs an' not hev deceived us by callin' 'em birds uv prey. Folks is so set against allowin' anything that looks like a meracle that they'll go all the way round the barn an' creep through a snake fence if they can prove it's jest an ordinary piece of business. They do say there are some things the Lord can't do, but I'm free to confess ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... Counsellor Daly and dinner, for both came fortunately together. Taking the post of honour, Miss Riley's arm, I followed Tom, who I soon perceived ruled the whole concern, as he led the way with another ancient vestal in black stain and bugles. The long procession wound its snake-like length down the narrow stair, and into the dining-room, where at last we all got seated; and here let me briefly vindicate the motives of my friend—should any unkind person be found to impute to his selection ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... species, the Sakar, supplies tortoise-shell sold at Suez for 150 piastres per Ratl or pound; the Bisa'h, another large kind without carapace, is used only for eating: both are caught off the reefs and islets. An eel-like water-snake (Marrina Murona Ophis) showed fight when attacked. The Arabs do not eat it, yet they will not refuse the Shaggah, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... drove them on; it was his eye which watched the horizon. The hours went by, and no living thing appeared in the desert, save a small cloud of vultures, heavy from feasting on a camel dead in the waste, and a dark- brown snake flitting across their path. Nothing all day save these, and nothing all the sleepless night save a desert wolf stealing down the sands. Macnamara's eyes burned in his head with weariness, his body ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sails so that they could be able to take them down and repair the hull of their ship, yet all the time the rain fell in such torrents that they were unable to work. At another place he tells of killing a snake which was fourteen inches in circumference and eleven feet in length. On this part of the coast they saw every day whales and grampuses, which often came and dived under the ship, and although the men fired at them several times, the bullets rebounded ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... names, all connected with Schlangenwald, followed; and a large seal, bearing the snake of ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a time a prairie mouse busied herself all fall storing away a cache of beans. Every morning she was out early with her empty cast-off snake skin, which she filled with ground beans and ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... intoxication subsided, that I began to be aware of anything but the medium itself. I saw then that I was standing at what seemed to be a window, looking out over the scene I had just left But how changed it was! The river now, like a blue and golden snake, ran through a sunny champaign bright with flowers; above it hung a cloudless summer sky; and the happy souls went leaping in and out like dolphins on a calm day in the Mediterranean. On all this I gazed with ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... louder, and she's one of the close-mouthed sort, that don't make no talk, and she's been a-bearin' up and bearin' up, and comin' to me on the sly for strengthenin' things. She's took camomile and orange-peel, and snake-root and boneset, and dash-root and dandelion—and there hain't nothin' done her no good. She told me to-day she couldn't keep up no longer, and I've been a-tellin' Mis' Pennel and her grand'ther. I tell you it has been a solemn ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Mr. and Mrs. Elmer and Captain Johnson now walked, Mark and Ruth having run on ahead. The elders had gone but a few steps when they heard a loud cry from Ruth, and hurried forward fearing that the children were in trouble. They met Ruth running back towards them, screaming, "A snake! a snake! a horrid ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... area. I do know that you can keep a secretary-bird away from snakes till it grows old, but the first reptile it sees it immediately starts out to beat him up. I had the inherited hate that makes the secretary-bird rush madly at a snake that may be the first of its species that it has ever seen, and I guess that Leith had no love to spare for me from the moment ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... certifies, A charitable man, but not so wise, One day in winter found, Stretched on the snowy ground, A chill'd or frozen Snake, As torpid as a stake, And, if alive, devoid of sense. He took him up, and bore him home, And, thinking not what recompense For such a charity would come, Before the fire stretch'd him, And back to being fetch'd him. The Snake scarce felt the genial heat Before his heart ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... Passes the S. W. Cape; and S. Cape Remarks on the latter De Witt's Isles Storm Bay Passage Tasman's Head Fluted Cape Frederick Henry Bay Enter the Derwent river, first seen in the ship Duke, of Bengal Observations on the Derwent Some natives seen Particulars of one Venomous snake One destroys itself Comparison between New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land Arrive at Port Jackson Advantages of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... Joubard. "Come, Gigot, you and I must carry him in. As to you, Tobie, just keep watch on this side with your gun—that poisonous snake of a Simon is prowling about there. Don't shoot, of course, but keep him off; don't let him get ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... on our passage, I shot (from the quarter-boat) the largest sea-snake ever killed. It is figured and described in the Appendix, by Mr. J.E. Gray, as Hydrus major, and measured eight feet one inch in length, by three inches broad; the colour was a dark yellow: several smaller ones striped brown ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... One afternoon he happened upon a bush which some gipsies had set a-fire. As he stopped to watch it he heard a strange hissing, whistling sound. He went as close as he could and in the center of the bush which the flames had not yet reached he saw a snake. It was writhing and ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... when my wife came and awoke me, and I saw that she had cut off her hair and put on mourning garments. "O my cousin," said she, "do not blame me for this I have done; for I have news that my mother is dead, that my father has fallen in battle and that both my brothers are dead also, one of a snake-bite and the other of a fall from a precipice, so that I have good reason to weep and lament." When I heard this, I did not reproach her, but said to her, "Do what thou wilt: I will not baulk thee." She ceased not to mourn and lament for ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... bean-soup has guv' me a splendid woice; and instead of skeering 'em away, if the thieves were to hear me singing out, my style of doing it would almost coax 'em to come and be took up. They'd feel like a bird when a snake is after it, and would walk up, and poke their coat collars right into my fist. Then, after a while, I'd perhaps be promoted to the fancy business of pig ketching, which, though it is werry light and werry ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... met him. "A chief for a chief," he said with a cold smile, and the two locked together in a deadly embrace. When the Ricahecrian was dead, the Susquehannock turned to find Landless—one Indian dead before him, another writhing away like a wounded snake—confronting across the body at his feet the graceful figure and the amber-hued, evil, smiling face of Luiz Sebastian. So strong were the flames by now, and so dense and stifling the smoke, that of the score or more who had broken into the cabin but few remained within its walls, which were fast ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... that one! Ever see such a flower? God love it, that's Esther Deland. Her mother's playing Canada. And this is little Sidonia Vavasour—mother out in one of the highest-priced sketches in vaudeville. Know it? 'The Snake.' Every morning that God sends comes her good-morning telegram to this little mite, just as ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... which their route now wound began to absorb them. Here they crossed a bridge, spanning a purple chasm whose snake-like thread of water could be heard hissing among the sharp flints a hundred feet below; now they rattled through the street of a sleepy village that seemed to have no reason for being except its picturesqueness; now they were creeping up a tortuous steep gloomed by menacing crags; and ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... further protection against them Ra promised to impart to magicians and snake-charmers the particular word of power, hekau, with which he guarded himself against the attacks of serpents, and also to transmit it to his son Osiris. Thus those who are ready to listen to the formulae of the snake-charmers shall always be immune ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... mountaineer watching her, for her life was lonely. She had waved her bonnet at him from mere mischief. She hardly knew it herself, but she had gone across the river to find out who he was. She had shrunk from him as from a snake thereafter, and had gone no more until old Jasper had sent her because the Lewallen mill was broken, and because she was a woman, and would be safe from harm. She had met him then when she could ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... Tom got to be captain of a colored troop dat went to de Philippine Islands. Over dar de sojers kilt a big snake and et it all but de head. He had dat thing stuffed and brought it home. Atter he left de army, he got a job in de Atlanta Post Office whar he ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... passion at work to produce one condition of feeling higher than another, are yet the very ideals of the most narrow and concentrated selfishness. His face was thin, pale, and intelligent. His lips were thick, however—the eyes bright, like those of a snake, but side-looking, never direct, never upward, and always with a smiling shyness in their glance, in which a suspicious mind like my own would always find sufficient ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... warily and stept across that mighty snake, and tore the fleece from off the tree-trunk. Then the witch-maiden with Jason and Orpheus turned and rushed down to the bank where ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... in among the reeds. He knew the birds well, and stood watching the dignity in the curve of those white necks and formidable snake-like heads. 'Not dignified—what I have to do!' he thought. And yet it must be tackled, lest worse befell. Annette must be back by now from wherever she had gone, for it was nearly dinner-time, and as the moment for seeing her approached, the difficulty of knowing what ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... innately repugnant to man in the word "professor." It makes the flesh creep almost as does the thought of the toad or snake. Though when a boy of ten I had never seen a "professor," the word alone was so full of portent that the prospect of seeing one, even without being caught by him, would have frightened me. I suppose that the chill which reverberated through my spine and legs echoed ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... "he's up to some mischief, and I know it. Much as I detest him, I'd rather have him in sight than out, just now. He makes me feel like a snake in a bush; if he'd only show his ugly head, or spring his rattle, I'd be ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... the evening to Sokolniki. I've a tent pitched there. The gypsies sing, ... such goings-on.... And there's a streamer on the tent, and on the streamer, written in large letters: "The Troupe of Poltyev's Gypsies." The streamer coils like a snake, the letters are of gold, attractive for every one to read. A free entertainment—whoever likes to come! ... No refusal! I'm making the dust fly in Moscow ... to my glory! ... Eh? will you come? Ah, I've one girl there ... a serpent! Black as your boot, spiteful as a dog, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... The little man might rest a day, or oversleep, or strain a sinew, then— Locasto pictured with gloating joy the terror of the Worm as he awoke to find himself overtaken. Oh, the snake! the vermin! On! On! ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... fields and the forest Hawker once found himself near the road to Hemlock Inn. He shied away from it quickly as if it were a great snake. ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... Lionel made that innocent remark, the softness of his tone warned the artist of some snake in the grass, and he prudently remained silent. Lionel, in a voice still sweeter, repeated,—"It is I who ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 21, current volume, you referred H. K., of Wis., who had described the horse-hair snake, to page 280, No. 18 current volume, for a reply, which you considered "sufficient." With your kind permission I would like to speak a few words about the "snakes" in question. When I resided in Pennsylvania, I, in company with many other ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... though father would not credit me. I knew his halt and his eye—just like the venomous little snake that was the death, of poor Foster. He is the same with the witch woman Tibbott, ay, and with her with the beads and bracelets, who beset Cis and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... right, Gran'pa Jim," she said, kissing him fondly. "Drat that traitor, though! How I hate a snake in the grass." ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... there existed a missing link between animals which lay eggs and those which do not; this, however, is done away with in many instances—one, for example, is found in our commonest indigenous snake. The ringed snake lays eggs which require three weeks time to develop; but when it is kept in captivity, and no sand is strewn in the cage, it does not lay eggs, but retains them until the young ones are developed. This only ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... when she entered the water-house). The viduschaka has proved an unreliable sentinel; he has fallen asleep at the door of the house. The queen's maid perceives this and, to tease him, touches him with a crooked staff. He awakes crying that a snake has bitten him. The king runs out and is confronted again by Iravati. "Well, well!" she exclaims, "this couple meet in broad daylight and without hindrance to gratify their wishes!" "An unheard-of greeting is this, my dear," said the king. "You are mistaken; ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... less than this. And if it be so, what comfort for us who must die? What comfort for us who have seen others die, if death be but a new birth into some higher life; if all that it changes in us is our body—the mere shell and husk of us— such a change as comes over the snake, when he casts his old skin, and comes out fresh and gay, or even the crawling caterpillar, which breaks its prison, and spreads its wings to the sun as a fair butterfly. Where is the sting of death, then, if death can sting, and poison, and corrupt nothing of us for which ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... engaged in tranquil conversation with Dharini, and the parivrajaka, the vidushaka rushes in, exclaiming he has been beaten by a venomous snake, whilst gathering flowers to bring with him as a present on his visit to the queen, and he exhibits his thumb bound with his cord, and marked with the impressions made by the teeth of the reptile. The parivrajaka, with some humour ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... keeps dying and being born again every minute; it is seen to be alive by its responsiveness to the spirit, to the intelligence that created it and that keeps re-creating it. I have known thousands of factories; and every factory I have known that is really strong or efficient has scales like a snake, and casts off its old self. All the people in it, and all the iron and wood in it, month by month are being renewed and shedding themselves. Any live factory can always be seen moulting year after year. A live spirit goes all through the machinery, a ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the Gap call. And as though it were before him in reality, that stretch of track, fifteen miles of it, from Blind River to the Gap, unfolded itself like a grisly panorama before his mind. There wasn't a half mile of tangent at a single stretch in the whole of it. It swung like the writhings of a snake, through cuts and tunnels, hugging the canyon walls, twisting this way and that. Anywhere else there might be a chance, one in a thousand even, that they would see each other's headlights in time—here it was disaster quick ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... dreams at this juncture, as also the passing of a snake across the trail, are considered of evil import, but the evil is neutralized by the fowl-waving ceremony ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... his own behalf was gone now; and, as soon as the first shock was over, he tore himself free of the snake-like rope, and stepped to the edge of the cliff, to gaze ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... prey to the snakes, which are found here of all sizes and in great variety of species; the larger proportion harmless, but of some, and those generally small and dark-coloured, the bite is mortal. If the cobra capelo, or hooded snake, be a native of the island, as some assert, it must be extremely rare. The largest of the boa kind (ular sauh) that I had an opportunity of observing was no more than twelve feet long. This was killed in a hen-house where it was devouring the poultry. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... libations of sake, waving bowls and waving hands, without any spiritual act of deprecation or supplication. In such a sense and such alone they worship the sun and moon (but not the stars), the forest, and the sea. The wolf, the black snake, the owl, and several other beasts and birds have the word kamoi, god, attached to them, as the wolf is the "howling god," the owl "the bird of the gods," a black snake the "raven god;" but none of these things are now "worshipped," ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... congratulating himself that he was out of danger when he trod on a cobra. The reptile twisted itself about Moffat's leg, and was about to bite him when he managed to level his gun at it and kill it. The poison of this snake is so deadly that had he been bitten his death would have almost ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... going to be worsted by no redskins. So we trailed the Shawnees, us two, and come up with them one night encamped beside a salt-lick. Jim got into their camp while I was lying shivering in the cane, and blessed if he didn't snake back four of our hosses and our three best Deckards. Tha's craft for ye. By sunrise we was riding south on the Warriors' Path but the hosses was plumb tired, and afore midday them pizonous Shawnees had cotched up with us. I can tell ye, neighbours, the hair riz on my head, for I expected ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... often experienced, is a subjective illusion; in reality alcohol lowers the temperature and diminishes resistance to cold. Arctic explorers have to discard it entirely. The old idea of helping to cure snake bite, hydrophobia, etc, by whiskey was sheer mistake; the patient has actually much less of a chance if so drugged. Only for an immediate and transitory need, such as faintness or shock, is the ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... begot Penelope the stern. O, though no gift, no "prevalence of prayer," Nor lovers' paleness deep as violet, Nor husband, smit with a Pierian fair, Move you, have pity yet! O harder e'en than toughest heart of oak, Deafer than uncharm'd snake to suppliant moans! This side, I warn you, will not always brook ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... all familiar with the snake charmer, and the charming of birds by snakes. How much hypnotism there is in these performances it would be hard to say. It is probable that a bird is fascinated to some extent by the steady gaze of a serpent's ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... a filthy, snake-paved, stinking cavern he sees two horny-nebbed giants, (2) making a fire. One of the giants offers to direct him to Loke if he will say three true things in three phrases, and this done, tells him to row four days and then he would reach a Dark and Grassless ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... of my favourite weapon upon the hard rock. It was a puff adder of the most extraordinary dimensions. I then fetched my measuring-tape from the game-bag, in which it was always at hand. Although the snake was only 5 ft. 4 in. in length it was slightly above 15 inches in girth. The tail was, as usual in poisonous snakes, extremely blunt, and the head perfectly fiat, and about 2 1/2 inches broad, but unfortunately during my short absence to fetch the measure the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... dialogues. Part of him said: "Why horrible? It's ordinary light from the room." "But it moves." "So does the moon." "But it is a clenched fist." "Why not?" "But it is going to touch me." "Let it." And, seeming to gather motion, the patch ran up his blanket. Presently a blue snake appeared; then another, parallel to it. "Is there life in the moon?" "Of course." "But I thought it was uninhabited." "Not by Time, Death, Judgment, and the smaller snakes." "Smaller snakes!" said Leonard indignantly and aloud. "What a notion!" By a rending effort of the will he woke ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... entire province. The result was, between tobacco-juice, salt water, iron water, sulphur water, soda-water, and all other sorts of water that came out of the earth from Brunnens of Nassau, I got home as thin as a snake, and was forced to deny myself even the poor consolation of a Frankfort cigar. So matters went on for nearly a year. I became a morose and melancholy man. This will account for all the bitter and ill-natured things I said of the Germans in some of my sketches, every word ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... snakes; but their curiosity was so great that they could not desist from occasionally satiating their horror in a most human fashion, by lifting up the lid of the box in which the snakes were kept. I was so much surprised at his account, that I took a stuffed and coiled-up snake into the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens, and the excitement thus caused was one of the most curious spectacles which I ever beheld. Three species of Cercopithecus were the most alarmed; they dashed about their cages, and uttered sharp signal cries ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... will be pleased with the Bark. It is very good and the best I have seen this year, but I do not think any Bark in town is equal to what I have seen in former years. Thou wilt note the snake root to be very dear. The cause is the stoppage of the American trade. Opium is also much higher than I ever knew it. The insurance is raised on account ...
— Drug Supplies in the American Revolution • George B. Griffenhagen
... eager Noemi. Behind them, at a proper distance to indicate that they were spectators and not participants, came the students. Alone, and at a much greater distance, walked the carabinieri, forming the end of this winding, snake-like line of people, which slipped into a crack between the dilapidated houses, huddled together opposite the church, ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... good offices for a reconciliation with the King of Spain. And on the 7th of April, 1592, they gave a formal answer to the Emperor, containing their reasons for declining his proposal; on this occasion they struck a medal representing a Spaniard offering peace to a Zealander, who points to a snake in the grass, with these ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... of boys, some time ago, were playing games in a church basement, and the time began to lag just a little. A young man, who happened to be present, was appealed to for a new game, and he taught them to "skin the snake." It "caught on" immediately, and the group of boys grew hilarious in their enjoyment. After a while, however, they stopped to rest, and one of the boys turned to the man who had taught the game, and said, "Where did you get that dandy stunt?" The reply was, "Oh, that's one of the games that ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... girl's shoulders, fastening it at the bosom with a small skull of jade stone whose grinning teeth were pearls, and whose eye-sockets were empty with an awful blackness. The gold circlet was discarded, and in its place Dolores placed on her head a turban formed from a stuffed coiled snake, whose neck and head darted hither and thither on cunning springs with her every ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... raiment thin and spare Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, For it was just at the Christmas time; 260 So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, And sought for a shelter from cold and snow In the light and warmth of long-ago; He sees the snake-like caravan crawl O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, 265 Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, He can count the camels in the sun, As over the red-hot sands they pass To where, in its slender necklace of grass, The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 270 ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... heavy dreams which haunted me during the sleep from which I had just been roused, I had a vision of the planter of the balcony with a snake coiled round his naked arm. Who so dull as to require an interpreter for such plain speakings? Rushing down-stairs, I burst open the door of that person's room with one kick, and there, in the middle of the floor, half-dressed and bending over a censer of red-hot charcoal, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... just as well if the rattlesnake coiled in his path at that moment had ended his existence, but the snake was indeed an honorable highwayman, and sounded a gentlemanly warning in the nick of time. Collins would have killed it for its pains, but killing had upset his nerves that day. So he left the reptile to try its fangs on a better man. Besides, ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... that had the war continued ten years, we would have forgotten our proper names. John T. Tucker was called "Sneak," A. S. Horsley was called "Don Von One Horsley," W. A. Hughes was called "Apple Jack," Green Rieves was called "Devil Horse," the surgeon of our regiment was called "Old Snake," Bob Brank was called "Count," the colonel of the Fourth was called "Guide Post," E. L. Lansdown was called "Left Tenant," some were called by the name of "Greasy," some "Buzzard," others "Hog," and "Brutus," ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... and that his raving lasts but two or three days. Then nobody ventures near him; but at other times he is quite rational and harmless. He has left, however, upon me an impression more lasting perhaps than that of the old tottering staircase that threatens to close up every moment like a toy snake that ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... waited. Colebrook kept on cautiously, squirming his long body in sinuous waves like a lizard's through the grass, and was soon lost to us. No snake could have been lither. We waited, with ears intent. One minute, two minutes, many minutes passed. We could catch the voices of the Kaffirs in the bush all round. They were speaking freely, but what ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... aught, the saviour of a life Owns more the living thing than be can own Who sought to slay—the slayer spoils and wastes, The cherisher sustains, give him the bird:" Which judgment all found just; but when the King Sought out the sage for honour, he was gone; And some one saw a hooded snake glide forth,— The gods come ofttimes thus! So our Lord Buddh Began his ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... that, and some call them ichneumon," said the man. "Snake-catcher is what I call them, and Teddy is amazing quick on cobras. I have one here without the fangs, and Teddy catches it every night to please the ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... a cry, pointing to the base of the ancient altar. An ebony-hued snake, his sides dotted with red spots, was slowly and solemnly uncoiling his circles upon the stones. The sailor raised his cane, but before he could strike he felt his arm grasped by two nervous hands. Freya ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... it to throw it overboard, advanced towards it; he was evidently impelled by a supernatural power, for never shall I forget the look of horror, the faint scream of agony, which escaped him as he obeyed the summons. Like the trembling bird fascinated by the snake, he fell into the arms of the dead body; which grasping him tight, rolled over and over in convolutions like a serpent, until it gained the break of the gangway, and then tumbled into the sea with its murderer entwined in its embraces. A flash of lightning succeeded, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... moisture, and food, determining the form it shall assume. In the animal, nature makes a vertebra, or a spine of vertebrae, and helps herself still by a new spine, with a limited power of modifying its form,—spine on spine, to the end of the world. A poetic anatomist, in our own day, teaches that a snake, being a horizontal line, and man, being an erect line, constitute a right angle; and, between the lines of this mystical quadrant, all animate beings find their place; and he assumes the hair-worm, the span-worm, or the snake, as the type of prediction of the spine. Manifestly, at the end ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... appalling moment to a man of discernment when he looks into the faces of his fellows and hears only the laugh of the wolf, the hiss of the snake, the snarl of the tiger. At the moment Cavanagh despised with a measureless contempt the entire commonwealth and its long-established school of violence; but fixing his thought on his far-away chief, he lost all ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... forms, at their pleasures. [1268]Agaberta, a famous witch in Lapland, would do as much publicly to all spectators, Modo Pusilla, modo anus, modo procera ut quercus, modo vacca, avis, coluber, &c. Now young, now old, high, low, like a cow, like a bird, a snake, and what not? She could represent to others what forms they most desired to see, show them friends absent, reveal secrets, maxima omnium admiratione, &c. And yet for all this subtlety of theirs, as Lipsius well ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... breath after the blow Bruce had given her. Ready to faint with pain and terror, she rose, pale as death, and staggered up to the master, carrying the tawse with something of the same horror she would have felt had it been a snake. With a grim smile, he sent her back to her seat. The moment she reached it her self-control gave way, and she burst into despairing, though silent tears. The desk was still shaking with her sobs, and some of the girls were still laughing at her grief, when a new occurrence attracted their ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... background is divided into four quadrants by a white cross; in the center of each rectangle is a white snake; the flag of France is ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... others to do it. August 26th, at Hanover, there is signed a CONVENTION OF HANOVER between Friedrich and him: "Peace on the old Breslau-Berlin terms,—precisely the same terms, but Britannic Majesty to have them guaranteed by All the Powers, on the General Peace coming,—so that there be no snake-procedure henceforth." Silesia Friedrich's without fail, dear Hanover unmolested even by a thought of Friedrich's;—and her Hungarian Majesty to be invited, nay urged by every feasible method, to accede. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "A regular-built snake-in-the-grass!" growled the boatswain, Mr. Strand, who was taking a look at the lugger over the hammock cloths of the waist, as he stood on the heel of a spare topmast to do so; "I never fell in with a scamp that had a ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the verdant Mead [9] And Boys in flow'ry Bands the Tyger lead; The Steer and Lion at one Crib shall meet, And harmless Serpents Lick the Pilgrim's Feet. The smiling Infant in his Hand shall take The crested Basilisk and speckled Snake; Pleas'd, the green Lustre of the Scales survey, And with their forky Tongue and pointless Sting shall play. Rise, crown'd with Light, imperial Salem rise! [10] Exalt thy tow'ry Head, and lift thy Eyes! See, a long Race thy spacious Courts adorn; [11] See future Sons and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... And then commences for you a condition of affairs totally new; then you receive the first intimation which nature, that good and indulgent mother, always gives to the creatures who are exposed to any danger. Nature has put a bell on the neck of the Minotaur, as on the tail of that frightful snake which is the terror of travelers. And then appear in your wife what we will call the first symptoms, and woe to him who does not know how to contend with them. Those who in reading our book will remember that they saw those symptoms in their own domestic life can pass to the conclusion of this work, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... A thousand.—"Since I made this fatal bargain, Omens and prodigies have happen'd to me. There came a strange black dog into my house! A snake fell through the tiling! a hen crow'd! The Soothsayer forbade it! The Diviner Charg'd me to enter on no new affair Before the winter."—All sufficient reasons. ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... creatures which they had formerly worshipped as gods, and dreaded to injure or even to touch. Some daringly devoured them, others cautiously put the dreaded morsels in their mouths, while the awestruck spectators waited as did the people of Melita when Saint Paul was bitten by a snake, expecting to see them swell or fall down dead. From this the natives concluded that Jehovah was indeed the true God, and were about to cast their war-god Popo, a block covered with a piece of matting, into the sea, and had tied a stone round it to sink it, when the ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... cur, Job!" he said strongly. "A snake in the grass! An oily scoundrel! I don't know how I know it, but I know it! A square man would have punched me the ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... fishing. Chick fell of little river brige with his close on. Potter caugt a whacking snaping tirtle. he gave it to Sam Dire and he cut his head of after it was cut of it wood bite a stick. Sam says it wont die til the sun goes down. he says that if you cut a snake in 2 peaces it will come together agen and heel up and be as good as ever. me and Potter ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... but pushing me aside went round and round with his frantic cry, like a bird flying fascinated about the jaws of a snake, and made a desperate effort to warn himself by repeating: "Stand back! Stand back!! All is ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... plainly in my own defence, I must tell you once and for all that you will get nothing by kneeling to me. Listen: I would rather die than be your wife; rather than always see your face about me, I would pass my life in prison; I had sooner be touched by a snake than by you. You are quite hateful to me. Now you have your answer, and I beg that you will get up and let ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... again be subject to the control of that order. And finally began that terrible struggle which crushed the liberties, as well civil as religious, of the Bohemians. For Ferdinand, not content to scotch the snake, never rested till it had ceased to be. The Carolinum, with all its endowments, privileges, and libraries, was handed over to its rival. Protestantism was declared to be extinct; and the gibbet, and the stake, and confiscations, and banishments, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... rattlesnakes were very numerous, for one day I killed seven. The first one I saw threw me into a curious instinctive state of fury, and I smashed it into pieces, while I trembled like a horse who has nearly stepped on a venomous snake. Those Texans who do not believe in the friendship of snake and prairie dog say that it is possible to make the rattler come out of a hole he has taken refuge in by rolling small pieces of dirt and earth down it. For they assert that the prairie dogs earth up the mouth of the burrow ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... product of a later development. Moreover this membrane, when present, is usually provided with one or more minute apertures, through which the spermatozooen passes when fertilizing the ovum. It is remarkable that the spermatozoa know, so to speak, of the existence of these gate-ways,—their snake-like movements being directed towards them, presumably by a stimulus due to some emanation therefrom[12]. In the mammalian ovum, however, these apertures are exceedingly minute, and distributed all round the circumference of the pellucid envelope, as ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... over the natural field, there is no reptile merits more particular notice than the rattle-snake, which is one of the most formidable living creatures in the whole universe. Providence hath kindly furnished him with a tail which makes a rattling noise, and no doubt was intended to warn every other creature of the danger ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... 'and to Bill's pocket and took out a little green snake; then he put his 'and to Bill's trouser-pocket and took out a frog, while pore Bill's eyes looked as if they was corning ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... length on the floor, with his eyes turned towards the partition. She knows by this that the snake is there. There are large cracks in that wall opening under the floor ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... bust only of a dark-haired girl in purple and white drapery, with a snake-like ornament twisted round her arm, which is bare to the shoulder. Corinna of Tanagra is a half-length figure crowned with leaves, in coloured drapery, resting her clasped hands upon her lyre. The Frigidarium is an upright figure in semi-transparent red ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... from a little "black fellow," who had been a sort of retainer of mine in the bush, and on the plains a bright active lad, as supple as a snake, and, as he used to say, the son of a chief. He was called Jacky Fishook, and was a very useful fellow out there, for he could follow a trail like a hound, could climb trees, kill game, and in fact had a good many of the savage accomplishments, and few, if any, of the vices of civilization—rather ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... scandal. This crime is so ingenious that I believe it has a more powerful motive than mere robbery. You are now at the head of a great house of finance and society. You must guard your mother and your sister, and those yet to come. A deadly snake is writhing its slimy trail somewhere: here—there—'round about us! Who knows where it will strike next? Who knows how far that blow may reach—even unto ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... are divided by an irreconcileable hatred, Yet are blended in an indissoluble identity. Mr. Gladstone, from his tender concern for Zohak, is unsatisfied because the devil has as yet kissed only one shoulder, because there is not a snake mangling and mangled on the left to keep in countenance his brother ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... over the hearth of the girl who had seen three suns at once upon the morn of Holy Trinity from a neighbouring hill-top, or of the luck of their compere Jehan, whose boy, born on the day of the conversion of St. Paul, was safe for all his life from danger of poison or of snake-bite. All these customs and superstitions are reflected in Hercule Grisel's Latin verses, which he ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... of the Lady Ysolinde glitter like those of the snake in her belt as thus my father delivered Helene ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the planes. Came the regiment, which turned off into a field and there spread itself, like a snake uncoiling, into a double line. Came a machine, gray and battered, containing officers. Came a general with gold braid on his shoulder, and a pleasant ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... every little accident or emergency that actually overtakes or surprises us. I know from personal experience, that a great deal may be done in this way. There are those who, though they were formerly frightened half out of their senses, at the sudden sight of a harmless snake, have brought themselves, by dint of long effort, to so much presence of mind, as only to start a little at first—and to be as calm, and composed, and self-possessed, in a few seconds afterward, as if nothing had ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... is made like a great dome, with arched roof, a narrow entrance, and grilled windows or with wider lattices on all sides so that the interior may be well lighted and yet no snake or other such pest may have access. The walls and the dome within and the edges of the windows without should be smeared with light stucco to keep out rats and lizards, for nothing is so timid as a pigeon. A round nest should be provided for each pair of pigeons and these should be arranged ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... the desire of Neptune, had been her undoing: and when Athene knew of the frailty of her priestess, her vengeance was indeed appalling. Each lock of the golden hair was transformed into a venomous snake. The eyes that had been so love-inspiring were now bloodshot and ferocious. The skin, with its rose and milk-white tenderness, had changed to a loathsome greenish white. All that remained of Medusa was a horrid thing, a mere grinning mask with protruding ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... educated Indian. Its tales have provided matter for the poetry, the drama, and the folk-songs of all ages and of all languages. No Hindu will live in a house facing south, as it is there that lives Yama, the god of death. No Hindu will go to sleep without murmuring Takshaka as a preventive against snake-bite. For Takshaka rescued the snakes from the vengeance of Janamajaya, the great-grandson of the Mahabharata hero Arjuna. The independent Indian Princes conduct their administration exactly on the lines ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... four centuries, since the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, had priestesses of Ceres walked and called aloud their admonitions through this city; though of late years men had come to know that what the sacred basket held was a live snake, supposed to be the author of sin ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... the parlor snake, Famous through the city for the way he drinks his tea; Plays with it, toys with it Makes no noise with it, Balanced on a napkin on ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... yet standing; groans that ancient tree, and the Jotun Loki is loosed. The shadows groan on the ways of Hel, until the fire of Surt has consumed the tree. Hrym steers from the east, the waters rise, the mundane snake is coiled in jotun-rage. The worm heats the water, and the eagle screams; the pale of beak tears carcases; the ship Naglfar is loosed. Surt from the south comes with flickering flame; shines from his ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Sarah's wild-plum jam puffs, with a dose of medicine concealed therein, was dismissed at once. So was a snake in his bed, because there were objections to the trick. In all probability the snake would not stop there; and if it did, as it must necessarily be a harmless one, it would not frighten Pomp a bit, and might suggest the idea of playing ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... off, but no help could be given them. Not a sound was heard as they were borne into their ocean graves. Shrieks and cries arose from the unhappy blacks on the maindeck, who believed that their last moments had come. Just then another loud report was heard, the hawser flying like a huge snake in the air; and many a voice exclaimed, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... in a romance of unparalleled dramatic vividness. Or, again, beneath the vaults of the Certosa, near Pavia, a masterpiece of the serenest beauty carries our thoughts perforce back to the hideous cruelties and snake-like frauds of its despotic founder. This is the excuse for combining two such diverse subjects ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... see there is a tiny, snake-like thread that winds away from that spot, which looks as if it was ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... grounds of the war; nothing of the rights and blessings we are contending for; nor of the corruptions and cruelties of the British ministry; and are therefore just as ready to fall into their destructive jaws, as young cat-birds are to run into the mouth of a rattle-snake." ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... the sound, like a horse at the spur; but Silver had not winked an eye. He stood where he was, resting lightly on his crutch, watching his companion like a snake about to spring. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my emotions, I stared after this Juggernaut. Was it merely the sudden appearance of the thing, its look, so lean and snake-like and somber-colored, and the muffled air of its occupants that had struck me as sinister when it went flashing by? I wasn't sure, but I had formed the impression that these men were following Miss Falconer. A patently foolish ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... all sorts of trees lent their foliage to make the shade. The artu with its delicately diamonded trunk, the great bread-fruit tall as a beech, and shadowy as a cave, the aoa, and the eternal cocoa-nut palm all grew here like brothers. Great ropes of wild vine twined like the snake of the laocoon from tree to tree, and all sorts of wonderful flowers, from the orchid shaped like a butterfly to the scarlet hibiscus, made beautiful ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole |
