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More "Tortoise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some animals have acquired wings instead of legs, as the smaller birds, for the purpose of escape. Others great length of fin, or of membrane, as the flying fish, and the bat. Others great swiftness of foot, as the hare. Others have acquired hard or armed shells, as the tortoise ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... southward of the shore, to a place called Cape Gracias a Dios, where there was a large lagoon or lake, which received the emptying of two or three very fine large rivers, and abounded much in fish and land tortoise. Some of the native Indians came on board of us here; and we used them well, and told them we were come to dwell amongst them, which they seemed pleased at. So the Doctor and I, with some others, went with them ashore; and they took us to different places to view the land, in order ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... age goes my shipping parish cannot compare with a cathedral city; but antiquity is not the same as richness of experience. One remembers the historic and venerable tortoise. He is old enough, compared with us. But he has had nothing so varied and lively as the least of us can show. Most of his reputed three hundred years is sleep, no doubt, and the rest vegetables. In the experience of Wapping, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... forms of sea-life moved among the marine growths,—some beautiful in form and color, others hideous. Once, while he watched a school of smaller fish playing around a huge sea-turtle, they disappeared as if by signal and the tortoise drew in his scaled head and sank to rest on the bottom as a swordfish swam majestically over the spot, then darted into deeper waters. There were clams as ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... seemed to strike our host. He shot his head out of the mist with a queer tortoise-like motion he sometimes had, and blinked ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... usually Nester or Little Fellow. It was the old story of the tortoise and the hare. The Little Fellow was from the first destined to win. His steady advance, now on this flank, now on that, just back of the vanguard pushing westward, had marked the end of all our earlier frontiers. ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... appreciate his altruism and he never enlightened them. He took his punishment, loyally refusing to peach on his chums. That was one reason Donald was such a favorite with his classmates. There was not a fellow in the school who had more friends. To be sure they called him "slow coach", "old tortoise", "fatty", and bestowed upon him many another gibing epithet, frankly telling him to his face that he was a big idiot. Nevertheless they did not conceal from him that he was the sort of idiot they ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... Pau in Bearn, where the old Commandant had failed, the new one (a Grammont, native to them) is met by a Procession of townsmen with the Cradle of Henri Quatre, the Palladium of their Town; is conjured as he venerates this old Tortoise-shell, in which the great Henri was rocked, not to trample on Bearnese liberty; is informed, withal, that his Majesty's cannon are all safe—in the keeping of his Majesty's faithful Burghers of Pau, and do now lie pointed on ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... and in the month of August, September, or later, it is probable some might be taken by landing a party of men, who should silently watch for their coming on shore at dusk. I do not know the kind of turtle most common in the Strait; at Booby Isle they were hawkes-bill, which furnish the finest tortoise shell, but are small and not ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... are unreal, and that all movement and change is a mere "seeming"—not a reality. What men call motion is only a name given to a series of conditions, each of which, considered separately, is rest. "Rest is force resistant; motion is force triumphant."[457] The famous puzzle of "Achilles and the Tortoise," by which he endeavored to prove the unreality of motion, has been rendered familiar ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... their heavy rounded helmets fitting closely to the head and neck, and surmounted by crests of waving plumes, they were, in truth, men of brass, invulnerable to any Oriental weapon. Drawn up in close array beneath their "tortoise," they received almost unhurt the hail of arrows and stones hurled against them by the lightly armed infantry, and then, when their own trumpet sounded the signal for attack, and they let themselves fall with their whole weight ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Salabat we went to another, where I furnished myself with cloves, cinnamon, and other spices. As we sailed from this island we saw a tortoise twenty cubits in length and breadth. We observed also an amphibious animal like a cow, which gave milk; its skin is so hard that they usually make bucklers of it. I saw another, which had the shape and ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... She might have gone from it ten minutes before. It was redolent of her presence. The little intimate details were as she had left them. A bowl of bronze chrysanthemums stood on the dressing table where lay the tortoise-shell toilet articles given her by Miss Craven. A tiny clock ticked companionably on the mantelpiece. The pain in his eyes deepened as they swept the room with hungry eagerness to take in every particular. Her room! The room from which his unworthiness had barred ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... they were so. In the twenty-fourth chapter there is a ridiculous descent from the sublimity of the two preceding. We are told that the possessor of entire sincerity is like a spirit and can foreknow, but the foreknowledge is only a judging by the milfoil and tortoise and other auguries! But the author recovers himself, and resumes his theme about sincerity as conducting to self-completion and the completion of other men and things, describing it also as possessing ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... pen over the lines with inconceivable rapidity, the writer occasionally glancing over his left arm at the document he was copying. The tortoise-shell cat sat at her master's feet with an air of self-importance and a look which seemed to say, "woe be to him who ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... disgust, we found that the column was attached to the main army, and that we had to move step by step to the will of the chief. I knew very little about military tactics, but it was a strange kind of pursuit, and made me think of a tortoise chasing ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... cousin for the descendant of so many Emperors of the West! The mistress was completely gained over, and easily carried her point with Louis, who had, indeed, wrongs of his own to resent. His feelings were not quick; but contempt, says the Eastern proverb, pierces even through the shell of the tortoise; and neither prudence nor decorum had ever restrained Frederic from expressing his measureless contempt for the sloth, the imbecility, and the baseness of Louis. France was thus induced to join the coalition; and the example of France determined ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not be alarmed if in the evening, when the fire is burning brightly and you are chatting gayly beside it, he should take off one of your shoes and stockings, put your foot on his lap, and in a moment of forgetfulness carry irreverence so far as to kiss it; if he likes to pass your large tortoise-shell comb through your hair, if he selects your perfumes, arranges your plaits, and suddenly exclaims, striking his forehead: "Sit down there, darling; I have an idea how to arrange ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... fossil species which were extinct before man was created, and hence "indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence." The Hindoos dreamed that the earth rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent; and though it may be an unimportant coincidence, it will not be out of place here to state, that a fossil tortoise has lately been discovered in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I confess that I am partial to these wild fancies, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... to consider the fact of a few species having survived{332} amidst a number of extinct forms (as is the case with a tortoise and a crocodile out of the vast number of extinct sub-Himalayan fossils) as strongly opposed to the view of species being mutable. No doubt this would be the case, if it were presupposed with Lamarck ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... patient who has confidence in him, than the most learned and experienced whom he is not so acquainted with. Nay, even the very choice of most of their drugs is in some sort mysterious and divine; the left foot of a tortoise, the urine of a lizard, the dung of an elephant, the liver of a mole, blood drawn from under the right wing of a white pigeon; and for us who have the stone (so scornfully they use us in our miseries) the excrement of rats beaten to powder, and such like trash and fooleries which rather carry ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... tell Mulligan's dog to his face what he thought of him. He had hardly set a paw in it when an infuriated ball of fur lit somewhere out of space on to his back, cursing and spitting and tearing the hair out in slathers. This new enemy was my wife's tortoise-shell kitten Emmeline, whose existence I had for the moment forgotten, but who owns that backyard and whose permission ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... pathway of the river—should just now be closed, and while Mr. Yerkes looks out on it from his offices in the Hotel Cecil, Londoners have to look to him to see if he or Pierpont Morgan will not open it to them again. What a pleasant alternative from the asphyxiating Underground or the tortoise-moving omnibus would not a fast, comfortably fitted line of river steamers be! It seems inconceivable that, with such a waterway and such primitive and inadequate alternative means of travel, the people should stand its being closed. What a great, stimulating, ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... feet that crept like those of a tortoise, as the sullen minutes dragged by, leaden-clogged and tardy. But the evening came at last. And with it, knocking at the door of the Bishop's quadrangle and interrupting my long talk with Dessauer, lo! a messenger, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the Great Lizard to be summoned, and when he arrived, the King inquired, "Was it you, Lizard, wearing your sword?" The Great Lizard replied, "Assuredly it was, your Majesty." "And why were you wearing your sword?" The Great Lizard replied, "Your slave wore it forasmuch as your slave saw that the Tortoise had donned his coat of mail." So the Tortoise was summoned likewise. "Why did you, Tortoise, don your coat of mail?" The Tortoise replied, "Your slave donned it forasmuch as your slave saw the King-crab trailing his three-edged pike." Then the King-crab was sent for. "Why were you, King-crab, trailing ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... raising the water over the banks, they can cut down saplings for bark to feed upon, without going out much upon the land; and when they are obliged to go out upon land for this food they frequently are caught by the wolves. As the beaver can run upon land but little faster than a water tortoise, and is no fighting animal, if they are any distance from the water they become an ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... into an unused tower dimly lighted, hung with cobwebs, and filled with old red velvet furniture. I sat down on a sofa, and before long became conscious that I was being gazed upon by a haughty young woman, with an aristocratic nose, large dark eyes, hair caught back by tortoise-shell combs under a peculiar head-dress, having a gleam of gold directly on the top. Her gown was of dark green, with white puffs let into the sleeves below the elbows; around her tapering waist was a narrow belt of jewels; the front ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... she saw a grave Chinaman standing on a stage-like platform. He wore a long coat, beautifully flowered, and a hat with a turned up brim. Balanced on his nose were enormous tortoise-shell spectacles. A ragged gray moustache drooped from the corners of his mouth and a ragged wisp of whisker hung from his chin. She was informed by Ah Cum that the Chinaman was one of the literati and that he was expounding the deathless philosophy of ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... stung him as they rushed by, and it seemed to him that millions of fish were darting here and there, snapping at something. It was rice. Gradually it dawned on Piang that he had reached his goal; the tortoise had reached it first, and the secret lay hidden in that dark thing at ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... the neat, shining, dimpling little Advocate turned his bright eyes from one to the other of us, and tapped his tortoise-shell snuffbox with a kind of elvish joy. It was clear that we were better ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... must do! There is the kurage (jellyfish). He is certainly ugly to look at, but he is proud of being able to walk on land with his four legs like a tortoise. Let us send him to the Island of ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... difference between our disorders. Mr. M—e has been long afflicted with violent spasms, colliquative sweats, prostration of appetite, and a disorder in his bowels. He is likewise jaundiced all over, and I am confident his liver is unsound. He tried the tortoise soup, which he said in a fortnight stuffed him up with phlegm. This gentleman has got a smattering of physic, and I am afraid tampers with his own constitution, by means of Brookes's Practice of Physic, and some dispensatories, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... June is hotter than any other hot day. It finds us cruelly unguarded. After we have been gently baked awhile, the crust thus acquired makes us somewhat tortoise-like and quiescent. If we were condemned to suffer thirty-nine stripes, or even only as many as belong to our flag, would it or would it not be a privilege to take them by degrees, say one on the first ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... that decidedly uncomplimentary penwiper, where the ass's head declares "There are two of us;" while every child had some absurdity to show; and Miss Moy's shrieks of delight were already audible at a tortoise-shell pen-holder ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (Salt-woman) was in the west, and her house was of the substance of a mirage; the youth Co'nen[)i]li (Water-sprinkler) danced before her door. In the north Cqaltlaqale[1] made a house of green duckweed, and S[)i]stel' (Tortoise) lay at that door. ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... the tiger, the animal most cherished by the Coreans is the tortoise. To it are applied all the good qualities that the tiger wants; for example, thoughtfulness, a retiring nature, humility, gentleness, steadiness, and patience; these being all symbolised by this shelled amphibious animal, which, in the minds of many Eastern ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... to be had for money. I wonder where Chalkpit's, the milkman's arms, came from? I suppose you can buy 'em at the same place. He used to drive a green cart; and now he's got a close yellow carriage, with two large tortoise-shell cats, with their whiskers as if dipped in cream, standing on their hind legs upon each door, with a heap of Latin underneath. You may buy the carriage if you please, Mr. Caudle; but unless your arms are ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... the chicks, the ducks and the drakes and the geese and the ganders proudly waddling back and forth, among and around the fluffy ducklings and goslings, and the bull-pup sound asleep by the side of the tortoise-shell cat. Probably he will think of some particular milking-time when the calm, contented serenity of the barn-yard was suddenly disturbed by the unexpected descent in its midst of a neighboring peacock, who, apparently unconscious of the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... countenance nor made one fearful to set foot upon it. It was a jolly, chummy sort of carpet that seemed to say, "Walk on me all you want to, and don't be afraid to spill your crumbs; I like crumbs." A very large tortoise-shell cat lay stretched along the arm of the couch, half asleep, and purred as Eve dipped her fingers in the long fur. The windows on the side of the room were open and the draperies swayed gently with the little breeze. Wade, seated at the other end of the couch from his hostess, ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... had effected all the necessary repairs, and then steered westward for Admiralty Island, calling at various islands on our way, trading with the wild natives for coco-nut oil, copra, ivory nuts, pearl-shell and tortoise-shell, and doing very poorly; for a large American schooner, engaged in the same business, had been ahead of us, and at most of the islands we touched at we secured nothing more than a few hundredweight of ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip and gigglegiggled. Miss Douce, bending over the teatray, ruffled again her nose and rolled droll fattened eyes. Again Kennygiggles, stooping, her fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, her tortoise napecomb showed, spluttered out of her mouth her tea, choking in tea and laughter, coughing with ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... perhaps better than the repast: still they had turtle-soup (Shell and Tortoise, to be sure, but still turtle-soup); while the wines were supplied by the well-known firm of 'Wintle & Co.' Jawleyford sank where he got it, and pretended that it had been 'ages' in his cellar: 'he really had such a stock that he thought he should never ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... is there to display the praises of industry, and to extol its advantages, in the acquisition of power and riches, or in raising what we call a FORTUNE in the world? The tortoise, according to the fable, by his perseverance, gained the race of the hare, though possessed of much superior swiftness. A man's time, when well husbanded, is like a cultivated field, of which a few acres produce more of what is useful to life, than extensive ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... row of bullets on the rude shelf near the window will give a dull gleam, whilst our old acquaintance, the axe, will wink as if a dozen eyes were strewn along its sharp, bright edge. And then the brown and tortoise-shell cat belonging to the "old woman" will partake of the lustre; and the old woman herself—a little, active, bustling body, will be seated in one corner of the fire-place, after having swept clean the hearth; and "Sport" will have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... entertained by the mind which induces us to act, this tells us nothing. It is like the case of the Indian philosopher(23), who, being asked what it was that kept the earth in its place, answered, that it was supported by an elephant, and that elephant again rested on a tortoise. He must be endowed with a slender portion of curiosity, who, being told that uneasiness is that which spurs on the mind to act, shall rest satisfied with this explanation, and does not proceed to ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... own the roost cultivated people accepted the remains of a gigantic batrachian[4] as those of a man who had witnessed the flood, and it was the same with a tortoise found in Italy scarcely thirty years ago. Dr. Carl, in a work published at Frankfort[5] in 1709, took up another theory, and, such was the general ignorance at the time, he used long arguments to prove that the fossil bones were the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... kept in the great medicine lodge are four sacks of water, called Eeh-teeh-ka, sewed together, each of them in the form of a tortoise lying on its back, with a bunch of eagle feathers attached to its tail. "These four tortoises," they told me, "contained the waters from the four quarters of the world—that those waters had been contained therein ever ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... Part of it, by indulging himself in all Manner of expensive Pleasures. It was but seldom that an Inferior was suffer'd to speak to him; but not a Soul durst contradict him: No Peacock was more gay; no Turtle more amorous; and no Tortoise more indolent and inactive. He made false Glory and false Pleasures his ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... and of a Canienga mother. That he was not of pure Canienga blood is shown by the fact, which is remembered, that his father had had successively three wives, one belonging to each of the three clans, Bear, Wolf, and Tortoise, which composed the Canienga nation. If the father had been of that nation (Canienga), he would have belonged to one of the Canienga clans, and could not then (according to the Indian law) have married into it. He had seven sons, including Dekanawidah, who, with their families, dwelt ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... Chaudhri. The section names are very mixed, some being those of eponymous Brahman gotras, as Sandilya, Kaushik and Bharadwaj; others those of Rajput septs, as Karchhul; while others are the names of animals and plants, as Barah (pig), Baram (the pipal tree), Nag (cobra), Kachhapa (tortoise), and a number of other local terms the meaning of which has been forgotten. Each of these sections, however, uses a different mark for branding cows, which it is the religious duty of an Agharia to rear, and though the marks now ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... voyages: Aina, Dolores, and Sjermanna! They wore heavy beads of red coral round their necks and in their ears. And about the garden lay gigantic conch-shells, in which one could hear the surging of the ocean, and tortoise-shells as big as a fifteen-pound loaf, and whole great ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... bar, full to overflowing with honest British yeomen—many of them in a similar condition—that Baxter sought. His goal was the genteel dining-room on the first floor, where a bald and shuffling waiter, own cousin to a tortoise, served luncheon to those desiring it. Lack of sleep had reduced Baxter to a condition where the presence and chatter of the house party were insupportable. It was his purpose to lunch at the Emsworth Arms and take a nap in ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... life to old people, I think their friends should endeavor to accommodate them in that as well as anything else. When they have long lived in a house, it becomes natural to them; they are almost as closely connected with it as the tortoise with his shell; they die if you tear them out. Old folks and old trees, if you remove them, 'tis ten to one that you kill them, so let our good old sister be no more importuned on that head; we are growing old fast ourselves, and shall expect the same kind of indulgences; if we ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... rain, the snow, the hail, the lightning and the tempest. A vast giant, turned to stone by his magic, lies asleep at his feet. The island called by the Ojibways the Mak-i-nak (the turtle) from its tortoise-like shape, lifts its huge form in the distance. Some "down-east" Yankee, called it "Pie-Island," from its (to his hungry imagination) fancied resemblance to a pumpkin pie, and the name, like all bad names, sticks. ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... old friend Moreno, at Havana," said Captain Brand, as he sat down on the settee, and with a pretty tortoise-shell knife cut round the seals. "Ah! what says he? 'Happy to inform you,' is he? 'Packages of French silks seized by custom-house on account of informal invoice and clearance.' Why didn't the fool forge others, then? Well, what next? 'Schooner "Reel," from Barbadoes, with cargo of rum and ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... but every two persons, a man and a woman, or two men, face each other, the one moving forward, the other backward, and all keeping step to the music of the singers, who are now, however, aided by a a couple of tortoise or turtle shell rattlers, or an aboriginal drum. At regular intervals there is a sort of cadence in the music, during which a change of position by all the couples takes place, the one who had been moving backward taking the place of the one ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... fresh-water tortoise in the West Indies; it has a long neck and flat feet, and weighs 10 to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of so wise a savour, and gilded surrounding objects seemed inevitably to need to be when Miss Barrace—which was the lady's name—looked at them with convex Parisian eyes and through a glass with a remarkably long tortoise-shell handle. Why Miss Barrace, mature meagre erect and eminently gay, highly adorned, perfectly familiar, freely contradictions and reminding him of some last-century portrait of a clever head without powder—why Miss Barrace should have been ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the good fortune to bring up, altogether, four more small jars of olives, another ham, a carboy containing nearly three gallons of excellent Cape Madeira wine, and, what gave us still more delight, a small tortoise of the Gallipago breed, several of which had been taken on board by Captain Barnard, as the Grampus was leaving port, from the schooner Mary Pitts, just returned from a sealing voyage in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... have not yet even touch'd on all the Advantages that our Country has received, from the Dublin Society's Premiums; which was one of my chief Reasons, for having consider'd Ireland as upon the Recovery, when I went under-ground like a Tortoise, to be raised again when the Summer comes, after a long Sleep. I need not be very particular on so known and confest a Fact, as the extraordinary Improvements they have made amongst us, in a vast Variety of Articles. We are told Solomon's Writings were so extensive, that he wrote from the ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... at least not to the extent I did now when I was saying good-bye to it for ever. Unless indeed there should prove to be still lovelier sunrises beyond the dark of death! Then I went into our hut, and as Stephen, who had the nerves of a rhinoceros, was still sleeping like a tortoise in winter, I said my prayers earnestly enough, mourned over my sins which proved to be so many that at last I gave up the job in despair, and then tried to occupy myself by reading the Old Testament, a book to which I ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... which Avila renders "en dicha cueva," seems a compound of y, actun, zabin. The last is the name of the weasel; actun means both a cave and a stone house. By some it is supposed to be a compound of ac, tortoise, and tun, stone, a cave resembling a hollow ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... strings in hollow shells. The first stringed instruments were said to be made of tortoise-shells with strings ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... the tail, the flat head of which was furnished with numerous suckers, by which it attached itself so firmly to any object as to be torn to pieces rather than abandon its hold. In this way the Spaniards witnessed the taking of a tortoise of enormous size. The same mode of fishing is said to be employed on the eastern coast of Africa. The natives led the Admiral to suppose that the sea was full of islands south and west, and that Cuba ran to the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... parts, then linger over the melody; there were movements that she would play with tenderness and others with little bursts of passion. She bent over the piano, then rose again, the light playing on the top of her tortoise-shell comb one moment, while the next moment it could scarcely be seen in her black hair. The two candles on the piano flickered to the noise, throwing a light over her profile or sending their flame over her forehead, her cheeks, and her chin. The shadow from her ear-rings—two coral balls—trembled ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... amulets, necklaces, and bracelets of bones, shells, and beads of mother-of-pearl, tortoise-shell, &c. which are worn by both sexes. The women also wear on their fingers neat rings made of tortoise-shell, and pieces in their ears about the size of a small quill; but ear ornaments are not commonly worn, though ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... tortoise is perhaps the most remarkable of all the animals of the desert. It is rare, and little is known of its habits except that it lives in the most arid valleys of southeastern California, far removed from any water. This tortoise has a ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... presaging the future, and the practice derives interest from the fact that a precisely similar custom has prevailed in Mongolia from time immemorial. Subsequently this device was abandoned in favour of the Chinese method, heating a tortoise-shell; and ultimately the latter, in turn, gave way to the Eight Trigrams of Fuhi. The use of auguries seems to have come at a later date. They were obtained by playing a stringed instrument called koto, by standing at a cross-street ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... ferocious zest, like a warrior attacking the enemy, flashing his tortoise snuff-box as if it were his sword. When away from his books or when reading some of the fantastic tales in them he was meek and gentle as a little bird. No sooner did he come across a fine bit of reasoning than he would ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... then, moving toward the dresser, drawing the large tortoise-shell pins from the smooth coil of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... embellished by the unwonted addition of pound cake and sweet pickles, the dress-maker's sharp swarthy person stood out vividly between the neutral-tinted sisters. Miss Mellins was a small woman with a glossy yellow face and a frizz of black hair bristling with imitation tortoise-shell pins. Her sleeves had a fashionable cut, and half a dozen metal bangles rattled on her wrists. Her voice rattled like her bangles as she poured forth a stream of anecdote and ejaculation; and her round black eyes jumped with acrobatic velocity from one face to another. Miss ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... all beings! more than all, The Gods on thee for aid may call. Ward off, O mighty-armed! our fate, And bear up Mandar's threatening weight." Then Vishnu, as their need was sore, The semblance of a tortoise wore, And in the bed of Ocean lay The mountain on his back to stay. Then he, the soul pervading all, Whose locks in radiant tresses fall, One mighty arm extended still, And grasped the summit of the hill. So ranged among the Immortals, he Joined in ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... fairy godmother like Miss Stella leading the fun, it was a party to be remembered. There were marches and games, there was blind man's buff through the jewel-lit maze, there was a Virginia reel to music gay enough to make a hundred-year-old tortoise dance. There was the Jack Horner pie, fully six feet round, and fringed with gay ribbons to pull out the plums. Wonderful plums they were. Minna Foster drew a silver belt buckle; her little sister, a blue locket; Dud, a scarf-pin; Jim, a pocketknife ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... each side with ten large stone animals. The path was much shorter than that visited in Nankow, and the carving of the animals was less perfect. The avenue ended with a gateway of three arches, which we did not pass through, but which contained a memorial tablet mounted on a huge tortoise; beyond this there was a long oblong building with an effective terrace roof; doors were placed in each corner of the walled enclosure. At the back rose an immense mound which covers the tomb. From a high tower overlooking the mound, we had a view ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... good clock for a better one, till at last he possessed a timepiece in Boule's first and best manner, for Boule had two manners, as Raphael had three. In the first he combined ebony and copper; in the second—contrary to his convictions—he sacrificed to tortoise-shell inlaid work. In spite of Pons' learned dissertations, Schmucke never could see the slightest difference between the magnificent clock in Boule's first manner and its six predecessors; but, for Pons' sake, Schmucke was even more careful among ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... you were willing! if you were only willing! ... I have a pavilion on a promontory, in the midst of an isthmus between two oceans. It is wainscotted with plates of glass, floored with tortoise-shells, and is open to the four winds of Heaven. From above, I watch the return of my fleets and the people who ascend the hill with loads on their shoulders. We should sleep on down softer than clouds; we should drink cool draughts out of the rinds of fruit, and we gaze at the sun through a canopy ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... mystery to all but the fraternity. He sold that negro for two thousand dollars, and then put him for ever out of the reach of all pursuers; and they can never graze him unless they can find the negro; and that they cannot do, for his carcass has fed many a tortoise and cat-fish before this time, and the frogs have sung this many a long day to the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... suspended, and all hands turned out for the day to hunt and fish, in which they were often unsuccessful, for although there was plenty of game in the forest, it was too widely scattered to be available. Ricardo, and Alberto occasionally brought in a tortoise or anteater, which served us for one day's consumption. We made acquaintance here with many strange dishes, amongst them Iguana eggs; these are of oblong form, about an inch in length, and covered with a flexible shell. The lizard lays about two score of them in ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... of his solicitude, though, as the habit of taking snuff had but just come into vogue, there were no collections of them, and no beau had ever dreamed of criticizing a box, as did Lord Petersham, as, 'a nice Summer box.' ... Those of the middle classes were chiefly of silver, or tortoise-shell, or mother-of-pearl; sometimes of 'aggat' or with a 'Moco Stone' in the lid. A beau would sometimes either have a looking-glass, or the portrait of a lady inside ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... dinner frock, she put on a white silk gown which turned her into a pale spirit flitting hither and thither in the silver dusk. Still Knight had not come. She pulled out the four great tortoise-shell pins which held up her hair, and let it tumble over her shoulders. As she began to twist it into one heavy plait, she walked to the window and stood ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... inevitably upon a series of partly discordant and partly harmonious stimuli—the will no longer "acts," or "moves."... Formerly it was thought that man's consciousness, his "spirit," offered evidence of his high origin, his divinity. That he might be perfected, he was advised, tortoise-like, to draw his senses in, to have no traffic with earthly things, to shuffle off his mortal coil—then only the important part of him, the "pure spirit," would remain. Here again we have thought out the thing better: to us consciousness, or "the spirit," appears as a symptom ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... Bristol. Servant Brompy. Alert, gentle, smiling, winning young brown creature as ever was. Beautiful shining black hair combed back like a woman's, and knotted at the back of his head —tortoise-shell comb in it, sign that he is a Singhalese; slender, shapely form; jacket; under it is a beltless and flowing white cotton gown—from neck straight to heel; he and his outfit quite unmasculine. It was an ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and the water is as clear as it was the day it was put in. If, spite of everything, the seawater fail, then try a fresh-water aquarium. Use your tank for the pond instead of the ocean; and in the spotted newt, the tortoise, the tadpole, the caddis-worm, and the thousand other inhabitants of our inland ponds and brooks, with the weeds among which they live, you will find as much entertainment as in watching the wonders of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... the Garuda is Gajakurmasin, "elephant-cum-tortoise-devourer," because said to have swallowed both when engaged in a contest with ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in her chair. A sham tortoise-shell hairpin dropped from her untidy hair on to the floor with a little clatter. Her veil parted at the top from her hat. Little Alfred, terrified by an angry frown from the cornet player, was hastily returning fragments of partially ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spoken which could only have come to them—through you! Celestino Rey has been outgeneraled by a clever American girl, but he has also been betrayed by a South American cat—the tortoise-shell ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... forty miles a day. There is not a horse in the world that would have the endurance to go half the distance in the same time and keep it up day after day. For the first week or ten days the horse would be far ahead but, like the fable of the hare and the tortoise, after a while the tortoise would pass the hare and get ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... dining parties come thick, and interfere with work extremely. I am, however, beforehand very far. Yet, as James B. says—the tortoise comes up with the hare. So Puss must make a new start; but not this week. Went to see the exhibition—certainly a good one for Scotland—and less trash than I have seen at Somerset-House (begging pardon of the pockpuddings). There is a beautiful thing ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... hill, and decked with chains of gold, and capable of shaking the saintship of anchorites, being decked with thin attire, appeared highly graceful. And her feet with fair suppressed ankles, and possessing flat soles and straight toes of the colour of burnished copper and high and curved like tortoise back and marked by the wearing of ornaments furnished with rows of little bells, looked exceedingly handsome. And exhilarated with a little liquor which she had taken, and excited by desire, and moving in diverse attitudes ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... bones, with eyes small but keen and penetrating, and an expression of countenance resembling at once the polecat and the fox. His head, supported by a long and flexible neck, issued from his large black robe, balancing itself with a motion very much like that of the tortoise thrusting his head out of his shell. He began by asking M. Bonacieux his name, age, condition, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to make a point of absolutely ignoring Pritchard's presence. Elizabeth was the one exception. She was carrying a tiny Chinese spaniel under one arm; with the fingers of her other hand she held a tortoise-shell mounted monocle to her eye, and stared directly at the two men. Presently she came languidly ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rested on thy spacious nape; Upon thy neck, like a mere mole, it stood: O thou that took'st for us the Tortoise-shape, Hail, Keshav, hail! Ruler of ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... 16-17). Hence deemed an island. A basking whale would readily suggest the Krakan and Cetus of Olaus Magnus (xxi. 25). Al-Kazwini's famous treatise on the "Wonders of the World" (Ajaib al-Makhlukat) tells the same tale of the "Sulahfah" tortoise, the colossochelys, for ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... was, in the time of the old Roman station here, I became aware that I have never known till now, what it is to be lazy. A dormouse must surely be in very much the same condition before he retires under the wool in his cage; or a tortoise before he ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... shatter'd beech sublime He stood, Still'd with his waving arm the babbling flood; "To Man's dull ear," He cry'd, "I call in vain, "Hear me, ye scaly tenants of the main!"— 250 Misshapen Seals approach in circling flocks, In dusky mail the Tortoise climbs the rocks, Torpedoes, Sharks, Rays, Porpus, Dolphins, pour Their twinkling squadrons round the glittering shore; 255 With tangled fins, behind, huge Phocae glide, And Whales and Grampi swell the distant tide. Then kneel'd the hoary Seer, to heaven address'd ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... that came in his way. Two half-grown llamas, which are naturally as quiet and timid as sheep, bit each other very furiously, until they foamed at the mouth. And, lastly, a large mastiff made his appearance, walking in a slow, measured gait, with a sleek tortoise-shell cat on his back; and she, in turn, was surmounted by a mouse, which formed the ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... strength and power in your limbs! Now, I am going to send the Heavy-Weight-White-Hope Brigade for a four-mile run, and you go with them. Oh, don't protest; they are all shot-putters and hammer-throwers, but Butch, and they can't run fast enough to give a tortoise a fast heat. Take 'em out two miles and back, Butch, and jog all the way; don't let 'em loaf! ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... in front, on which there was a two- spouted kettle full of sake, some sake bottles, and some cups, and on another there were some small figures representing a fir-tree, a plum-tree in blossom, and a stork standing on a tortoise, the last representing length of days, and the former the beauty of women and the strength of men. Shortly a zen, loaded with eatables, was placed before each person, and the feast began, accompanied by the ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... said old Mrs Durby, taking off her tortoise-shell spectacles and laying down her work, "I thought of going next week, if it ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... reaching the earth. Here we find depicted with childlike simplicity and directness the Vedic conception of Indra overcoming the demon Vritra. Stempell describes this scene as "the elephant-headed god B standing upon the head of a serpent";[141] while Seler, who claims that god B is a tortoise, explains it as the serpent forming a footstool for the rain-god.[142] In the Codex Cortes the same theme is depicted in another way, which is truer to the Indian conception of Vritra, as ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Close to this was a little round deal table, on which would be set the miller's single glass of gin and water, which would be made to last out the process of his evening smoking, and the candle, by the light of which, and with the aid of a huge pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, his wife would sit and darn her husband's stockings. She also had her own peculiar chair in this corner, but she had never accustomed herself to the luxury of arms to lean on, and ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... the purple peaks Of deep Parnassus, at the mournful moon. Beside her lay a lyre. She snatched the shell, And waked wild music from its silver strings; Then tossed it sadly by,—'Ah, hush!' she cries, 'Dead offspring of the tortoise and the mine! Why mock my discords with thine harmonies? 'Although a thrice-Olympian lot be thine, Only to echo back in every tone, The moods of ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... is. Besancon, Dijon, Rouen, Bourdeaux, are not what they should be! At Pau in Bearn, where the old Commandant had failed, the new one (a Grammont, native to them) is met by a Procession of townsmen with the Cradle of Henri Quatre, the Palladium of their Town; is conjured as he venerates this old Tortoise-shell, in which the great Henri was rocked, not to trample on Bearnese liberty; is informed, withal, that his Majesty's cannon are all safe—in the keeping of his Majesty's faithful Burghers of Pau, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... without passion. The mind is to be entirely independent of external objects; to preserve its undisturbed serenity it should have the conscious power of withdrawing all its senses within itself, as the tortoise draws all its limbs beneath in shell." Action is necessary, but action must produce no emotion—no sensation on the calm spirit within; whatever may be their consequences, however important, however awful, ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... I don't know; there are quadrupeds that can trot faster over the measured mile than a Tortoise, and that's my animal. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... time. Do not be alarmed if in the evening, when the fire is burning brightly and you are chatting gayly beside it, he should take off one of your shoes and stockings, put your foot on his lap, and in a moment of forgetfulness carry irreverence so far as to kiss it; if he likes to pass your large tortoise-shell comb through your hair, if he selects your perfumes, arranges your plaits, and suddenly exclaims, striking his forehead: "Sit down there, darling; I have an idea how to arrange ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her hair and the blood which courses through her youthful veins; or, what is there in common between the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seen pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere films in the hand which raises them out ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... nearer they could see that the rock was very large—as large as a big field. No trees grew on it, no grass—nothing. The great rock was as smooth and as bare as the back of a tortoise. ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... conscious tail her joy declared: The fair round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws, Her coat that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes— ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the hare in the fable for the race (that is, her swiftness) secured her; the defects of the tortoise (her slowness) ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... the great inland sea was white with sails. Great fleets brought corn from Gaul, Spain, Sardinia, Africa, Sicily, and Egypt. This was the most important trade. But a considerable commerce was carried on in ivory, tortoise-shell, cotton and silk fabrics, pearls and precious stones, gums, spices, wines, wool, oil. Greek and Asiatic wines, especially the Chian and Lesbian, were in great demand at Rome. The transport of ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... different times to preserve the world, nine mortal forms of animals; how first, in shape of a fish, he saved from the universal deluge a family who repeopled the earth; how afterwards, in the form of a tortoise,** he drew from the sea of milk the mountain Mandreguiri (the pole); then, becoming a boar, he tore the belly of the giant Ereuniachessen, who was drowning the earth in the abyss of Djole, from whence he drew it out with his tusks; how, becoming incarnate in a black shepherd, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... not play any of the tricks on her that they had played on other dairymaids who were rough and rude. And when she had done, and was going to get up from her stool, she found sitting round her a whole circle of cats, black and white, tabby and tortoise- shell, who all cried with ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... not chew, but he knew the herbs and weeds that were good to eat, and he sucked on these. He found plenty of green gooseberries; they upset his stomach, and he relieved himself with wild ginger. He ate three fledgling black-birds, from a nest; and he ate the soft parts of a land tortoise, torn apart with his fingers and sticks, because he ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... less anxious and excited than any of the others. During the evening he speculated in a cool matter-of-fact manner, upon our chances of reaching an island, or meeting a ship, before being reduced to the last extremity. He spoke of the number of traders that frequent the islands, for tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, sandal-wood, beche de mer, etcetera; the whalers that come in pursuit of the cachelot, or sperm-whale; the vessels that resort there for fruit, or supplies of wood and water; the vast number of islands scattered through ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... if you were only willing! ... I have a pavilion on a promontory, in the midst of an isthmus between two oceans. It is wainscotted with plates of glass, floored with tortoise-shells, and is open to the four winds of Heaven. From above, I watch the return of my fleets and the people who ascend the hill with loads on their shoulders. We should sleep on down softer than clouds; we should drink cool draughts out of the rinds of fruit, and we gaze at the sun through a canopy ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... that the higher sand hills were lacking, the country consisting of rolling slopes of no great elevation well spotted with scrub. It boasted a fine breed of chameleon, and we also found a number of little tortoises, which were pressed into the service to give a bit of sport! Tortoise racing was a slow business, but eminently sporting, because the tortoise is so splendidly unreliable. On one occasion one of the competitors in a big sweepstake was discovered to consist of a shell only—the tortoise who had once dwelt therein having died and turned ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... were not only exquisitely appointed, but stood prepared for use at a moment's notice; the bed itself was beautifully dressed; the dressing-table was decked with all manner of scent-bottles, mirrors, and trays, together with every conceivable toilet implement in tortoise-shell with a silver-inlay monogram—apparently A-M-S; the rugs were silken, princely, priceless; elusive wraiths of seductive perfumes haunted the air like memories of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... and fair display The golden fringe; his round and slender wand, Of sleep-procuring, sleep-repelling power, His right hand bears; and on his comely feet His plumed sandals shine. Within the house Three separate chambers were secluded form'd, With tortoise and with ivory rich adorn'd. Thou, Pandrosos, within the right repos'd; And on the left hand thou Aglauros, slept; Fair Herse in the midst. Aglauros first The god's approach descry'd, and daring ask'd Who he?—and what he sought?—To whom the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the chains and around the hawse-holes. She might be mistaken for a whaler coming off a four years' cruise. And nearly that length of time has she been cruising, but not after whales. Her cargo, a full one, consists of sandal-wood, spices, tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, and real pearls also—in short, a miscellaneous assortment of the commodities obtained by traffic in the islands and around the coasts of the ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... worth; without the former the latter is a burden; and, indeed, I am very weary of it. I think I have got some benefit by drinking these waters, and by bathing, for my old stiff, rheumatic limbs; for, I believe, I could now outcrawl a snail, or perhaps even a tortoise. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... biggest and handsomest emeu here is my particular friend. When he talks to you or walks by your side he is very fine; but when he walks about a little way off, with his head to the ground, foraging, he looks rather like a tortoise on stilts, which is not imposing. Sometimes, when he thinks nobody is looking, he rushes madly up and down his territory by way of relieving his pent-up feelings, stopping very suddenly and looking cautiously about to assure himself that nobody ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in its construction. He imagined a perpetual circulation of combustible materials, alternately surrendering and regaining chemical energy, the round being kept going by the motive force of the sun's rotation.[1160] This, however, was merely to perch the globe upon a tortoise, while leaving the tortoise in the air. The sun's rotation contains a certain definite amount of mechanical power—enough, according to Lord Kelvin, if directly converted into heat, to keep up the sun's emission during 116 years ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... bobbed solemnly, and Peace, excited and not understanding, cried imperiously, "Tell me quick. I'm half dead with curiosity. Has old Tortoise-shell got some more kittens or—Say, you haven't put Glen in ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... chance was there to pick it up and perhaps, even with my slow speed, gain 20 to 30 yards for Yale. No such thought, however, entered my head. I wanted that ball and curled up around it and hugged it as a tortoise would close in its shell. My recollection is now that I sat there for about five minutes before anybody deigned to fall on me. At all events, I ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... spring that plumped him into the middle of the pool. And on the neighboring banks the maiden-hair spread its flat disk of embroidered fronds on the wire-like stem that glistened polished and brown as the darkest tortoise-shell, and pale violets, cheated by the cold skies of their hues and perfume, sunned themselves like white-cheeked invalids. Over these rose the old forest-trees,—the maple, scarred with the wounds which had drained ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a strip off the shell, from two to three inches long, and rub it smooth on a stone, so as to resemble a small fish. On the under side, or what may be called the belly, of this little mock fish, they fasten a hook made of tortoise-shell, or, it may be, nowadays, an English steel one. Alongside of the hook, concealing its point, and in imitation of the fins of a little fish, they fasten two small white feathers. Without any bait, this pearl-shell contrivance ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... limbs 185, Crocodiles Their power of burying themselves in the mud Tortoises—Curious parasite Land tortoises Edible turtle Huge Indian tortoises (note) Hawk's-bill turtle, barbarous mode of stripping it of the tortoise-shell Serpents.—Venomous species rare Cobra de capello Instance of land snakes found at sea Tame snakes (note) Singular tradition regarding the cobra de capello Uropeltidae.—New species discovered in Ceylon Buddhist ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the art of standing began with birds. Frogs sit, and, as far as I know, every reptile, be it lizard, crocodile, alligator, or tortoise, lays its body on the ground when not actually carrying it. And these have each four fat legs. Contrast the flamingo, which, having only two, and those like willow wands, tucks up one of them and sleeps poised high on the other, like a tulip ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... you'd shame To boast your weakness or your baseness name. Appraise the things you have, but measure not The things denied to your unhappy lot. He values manners lighter than a cork Who combs his beard at table with a fork. Hare to seek sin and tortoise to forsake, The laws of taste condemn you to the stake To expiate, where all the world may see, The crime of growing ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... seated in chairs beside these dainty pets, with ivory-handled brushes and tortoise-shell combs, to arrange their curls; for many of them wore each a little top-knot curl, tied with a scarlet, pink, or blue ribbon, as best became the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... settled in Alexey's study," she said in answer to Stepan Arkadyevitch's question whether he might smoke, "just so as to be able to smoke"—and glancing at Levin, instead of asking whether he would smoke, she pulled closer a tortoise-shell cigar-case ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... visit. Every one shrieked compliments as the clothing of the Agha's daughter was delicately removed by the beaming negresses; and gifts of gold-spangled bonbons, wonderfully iced cakes, crystallized fruit, flowers, gilded bottles of concentrated perfume, mother-o'-pearl and tortoise boxes, gaudy silk handkerchiefs made in Paris for Algerian markets, and little silver fetiches were presented to the bride. She thanked the givers charmingly, though in a manner so subdued and with a face so grave that the visitors would have been astonished ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... three curious little puppies looking at a tortoise reminds me of a story told of a countryman who saw some land-tortoises for the first time at a fair held in a market-place of his native village. Very much surprised at their queer look, he asked the man who was selling them how ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... their velocity to one half or less, and the same has been found for the influence of temperature on the velocity of physiological processes. Thus Snyder and T.B. Robertson found that the rate of heartbeat in the tortoise and in Daphnia is reduced to about one-half if the temperature is lowered 10 deg C., and Maxwell, Keith Lucas, and Snyder found the same influence of temperature for the rate with which an impulse travels in the nerve. Peter observed that the rate of development ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... him to desist from the sacrilege. Close to this was a little round deal table, on which would be set the miller's single glass of gin and water, which would be made to last out the process of his evening smoking, and the candle, by the light of which, and with the aid of a huge pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, his wife would sit and darn her husband's stockings. She also had her own peculiar chair in this corner, but she had never accustomed herself to the luxury of arms to lean on, and had no cushion for her own comfort. There were various dressers, tables, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... upon the ocean's shore What once a tortoise served to cover. A year and more, with rush and roar, The surf had rolled it over, Had played with it, and flung it by, As wind and weather might decide it, Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry Cheap burial might ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... Campbell, turning to look at Aunt Mary, who was beginning to show signs of embarrassment under so much scrutiny. He took off his eye-glasses, but immediately replaced them by a pair of large round tortoise-shell spectacles through which he ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... of interest in Henry IV.'s room, in which he is said to have been born 13th December, 1553, including the magnificently carved bedstead; but the chief attraction is the tortoise-shell cradle, which as a rule Frenchmen come only to see. Why they should come is quite a different matter, seeing that although a tortoise's shell might make a very comfortable cradle for even such an illustrious infant as was Henry IV., yet as he never had anything to do with the ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... half an hour, it will be a wonder," muttered Mr. Belknap, as he came back into the sitting-room. "I wish I knew what to do with him. There is no respect or obedience in him. I never saw such a boy. He knows that I'm in a hurry; and yet he goes creeping along like a tortoise, and ten chances to one, if he does n't forget his errand altogether before he is halfway to Leslie's. What is to be done with ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... village. She belongs to the man we saw yesterday—the man that cobbles the commune's boots. Hasn't she lovely eyes? She's got a tortoise in her pocket, ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... motionless, his small black eyes seemed to be ever keenly watchful. His formidable bill, very sharp, three or three and a half inches long, and shaped like a pickaxe, was held perfectly level. But the wonder was that he did not struggle or make the slightest movement. We had a tortoise-shell cat, an old Tom of great experience, who was so fond of lying under the stove in frosty weather that it was difficult even to poke him out with a broom; but when he saw and smelled that strange big fishy, black and white, speckledy bird, the like ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... the hand, and if placed on it directly after capture, he will not attempt to get away. It is very easy to catch him in the first place, for his movements over the loose sand of his haunts are scarcely faster than those of a land tortoise. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... young ward, come home with me; and try to stop that crying soon, for I haven't much patience with brats." In fact, after a few seconds he gave me such hard cuts with his whip that I stopped crying, and, withdrawing myself like a tortoise into my shell, completed the journey without daring ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... surface was covered with water, in which huge monsters careered, uncontrolled and wild. From the upper there descended to the lower a creating spirit, in the form of a beautiful woman. She alighted on the back of a huge tortoise, gave birth to a pair of male twins and expired. Thereupon the shell of the tortoise began to enlarge, and grew until it became a "big island" ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... when Jacques entered; and this embroidery was designed for a fire-screen. It represented a parroquet intensely crimson, on a background uniformly emerald; and the eyes of the melancholy lover dwelt wistfully upon the snowy hands selecting the different colors from a tortoise-shell work-box filled ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... away disappointed and fiercely determined to do good somewhere or know the reason why! She's a stout, wildly untidy woman whose mouse-coloured hair is always coming down, though it's freely dotted with irrelevant tortoise-shell combs; and whose elaborate clothes look somehow insecure, the way scree does on the side of a mountain. Her ideas leap out of her brain like rabbits out of holes, and then go scuttling away again, to be followed ineffectively by others: ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... me by the arm, and said, "Come, and see such an unearthly sight." This startled me, and I hesitated; but, at long and last, I went in with her, a thought alarmed at what had happened, and—my gracious!! there, on the easy-chair, was our bonny tortoise-shell cat, Tommy, with the red morocco collar about its neck, bruised as flat as a flounder, and as dead ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... he drew out four tortoise-shell pins that upheld the silken lightness of her hair, so that it fell in a fair soft cloud ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... were in the white dresses brought them by Cousin Ann, and Mrs. Carey wore her new black silk, made with a sweeping little train. Her wedding necklace of seed pearls was around her neck, and a tall comb of tortoise shell and pearls rose from the low-coiled ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... smoke. The child was crying, and the poor invalid was sitting up in bed nearly suffocated by her cough. The great four-post bed blocked up the little window. The remains of a meal were still on the big round table. Some clothes were drying by the hearth; a thin tortoise-shell cat was licking up a stream of milk that was filtering slowly across the floor, in the midst of jugs, cans, a broken broom, some children's toys, and two or three boots. The bed looked as though it had not been made for days; the quilt and valance were deplorably dirty; ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "Combing the peruke, at the time when men of fashion wore large wigs, was even at public places an act of gallantry. The combs, for this purpose, were of a very large size, of ivory or tortoise-shell, curiously chased and ornamented, and were carried in the pocket as constantly as the snuff-box. At Court, on the Mall, and in the boxes, gentlemen conversed and combed their perukes "(Sir John Hawkins' "Hist, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... man, more ordinarily but still very ill-dressed, walked beside him. He carried on his shoulders a bass-viol, and as he stooped a little in walking, one might, at a distance, have taken him for a large tortoise walking on its hind legs. Some critic may perhaps murmur at this comparison; but I am speaking of the big tortoises they have in the Indies, and besides I use it at my own risk. Let ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... cats at the farm here now. Papa's favorite is a little tortoise-shell kitten he has named "Sour Mash," and a little spotted one "Fannie." It is very pretty to see what papa calls the cat procession; it was formed in this way. Old Minniecat headed, (the mother of all the cats) next to her ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... their kind care of her and kind attention to her wants. And when the supper was at length over, Mrs. Van Brunt declared a little colour had come back to the pale cheeks. The colour came back in good earnest a few minutes after, when a great tortoise-shell cat walked into the room. Ellen jumped down from her chair, and presently was bestowing the tenderest caresses upon pussy, who stretched out her head and purred as if she liked ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... feet from the window. On it was a large brass lamp which cast a brilliant circle of light upon the broad flat top of the desk with its orderly array of letter-trays, its handsome silver-edged blotter and silver and tortoise-shell writing appurtenances. By the light of this lamp Dr. Romain, looking from the doorway, saw that Hartley Parrish's chair was vacant, pushed back a little way from the desk. The rest of the room was ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... what it is; do not let us employ for cutting it the hand of a Being, who then immediately becomes in turn a new knot for us, and a knot harder to untie than the first. An Indian tells you that our globe is suspended in the air on the back of an elephant. And the elephant! It stands on a tortoise. And the tortoise? what sustains that?... You pity the Indian: and yet one might very well say to you as to him—Mr. Holmes, my good friend, confess your ignorance, and spare me ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... just as much excited over nothing as he was, but were exceedingly friendly, treating us with an exaggerated "comrades-in-arms" and "brother-officers" sort of manner. The young man who entertained me was quite a swell, with a tortoise-shell visor to his cap and a Malacca sword-cane which swung from a gold cord. He was as much pleased over it as a boy with his first watch, and informed me that it had been used to assassinate his uncle, ex- President ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... the canoe to outdistance him three to one. He was missing nothing along the shore. Three times during the forenoon he saw where the canoe had landed, and he chuckled each time, thinking of the old story of the tortoise and the hare. He stopped for not more than two or three minutes at each of these places, and was then on his ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... the very first thing Steve asked on the following morning, when he poked his head out of his "hole in the wall" like a shrewd old tortoise looking around to learn ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... I were he I wouldn't make such a glittering show of myself in that Milan carriage—all gold and silver and tortoise shell, and an angel at every corner—while there are so many hearts breaking in ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... she with a little laugh. "I'd imagined you a horrid elderly person with a white cravat and tortoise-shell spectacles. It is ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... my guilt. There was another, and even more fatal circumstance still,—the discovery of the knife with which George Conway had been slain. That knife was my own; it was one of peculiar shape, with a handle of tortoise-shell, and I had often used it in presence of my friends and others. A dozen persons could make oath to it as my property; but it was not needed; the scene at the grave made that useless. I evidently did not deny the ownership of the weapon which had been used in the commission ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... at least during summer months but a study of the mountain soil convinced her that in winter there would be another story to tell. Anyway, she and her beautiful freight animals must take their chance against these modern machines. It would be a race between the tortoise and the hare; and every one knows that the hare has gained no little reputation from the outcome of ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... about to marry a wife, and determined to celebrate the event by inviting all the animals to a banquet. They all came except the Tortoise, who did not put in an appearance, much to Jupiter's surprise. So when he next saw the Tortoise he asked him why he had not been at the banquet. "I don't care for going out," said the Tortoise; "there's no place like home." Jupiter was so much annoyed by this reply that ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... difficult to be understood, especially when one thinks and lives gangasrotogati [Footnote: Like the river Ganges: presto.] among those only who think and live otherwise—namely, kurmagati [Footnote: Like the tortoise: lento.], or at best "froglike," mandeikagati [Footnote: Like the frog: staccato.] (I do everything to be "difficultly understood" myself!)—and one should be heartily grateful for the good will to some refinement of interpretation. As regards "the good friends," however, who are always ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... chances and contingencies. If they had protected their country by their courage or adorned it by their studies, they would have merited, and under a king of such learning and such equity would have received in some sort, their reward. I look upon them as so many old cabinets of ivory and tortoise-shell, scratched, flawed, splintered, rotten, defective both within and without, hard to unlock, insecure to lock up again, unfit ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... that the tortoise is referred to. Such enigmas, moreover, were not wanting even among the Attic tragedians, who on that account were often and sharply taken to task by the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... wearily, and began to shake out the masses of her black hair, that was as the thickness of night spun fine. And as she drew out the thick tortoise-shell pins that bore it up, it rolled down heavily in a soft dark flood and covered her as with a garment. Then she leaned back and sighed again, and her eyes fell on a book that lay at the corner ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... I went with a tortoise, there would be only one hare to meet: but if I went with the hare—you know there were ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... buccaneers put to sea without provisions, they generally steered to the feeding grounds of the sea-turtles, or to some place where the sea-cows, or manatees, were found.[13] Here the Indians were sent out in small canoas, with their spears and tortoise irons. The spears were not unlike our modern harpoons. The tortoise irons were short, heavy arrow heads, which penetrated the turtle's shell when rightly thrown. The heads were attached to a stick, and to ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... Agnes put her handkerchief to her face, and her neck shake a minute convulsively. Duff Salter here sneezed loudly: "Jericho! Jerichew! Je-ry-cho-o!" He produced a tortoise-shell snuff-box, and Podge took a pinch, for fun, and sneezed until the tears came to her eyes and her hair was shaken down. She wrote ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... tomatoes lay along the ledges of the windows, and a tortoise-shell cat snoozed on one of the broad sills. The tall clock in the corner ticked peacefully. Priscilla Hollis never tired of looking at the jolly red-cheeked moon, the group of stars on a blue ground, the trig little ship, the old house, and the jolly moon again, creeping one ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... more strength and power in your limbs! Now, I am going to send the Heavy-Weight-White-Hope Brigade for a four-mile run, and you go with them. Oh, don't protest; they are all shot-putters and hammer-throwers, but Butch, and they can't run fast enough to give a tortoise a fast heat. Take 'em out two miles and back, Butch, and jog all the way; don't let ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... saw a grave Chinaman standing on a stage-like platform. He wore a long coat, beautifully flowered, and a hat with a turned up brim. Balanced on his nose were enormous tortoise-shell spectacles. A ragged gray moustache drooped from the corners of his mouth and a ragged wisp of whisker hung from his chin. She was informed by Ah Cum that the Chinaman was one of the literati and that he was expounding the deathless ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... these persecutors was to guess what they had dreamed of. On one day of the festival the ceremony of driving away evil spirits from the village took place. Men clothed in the skins of wild beasts, their faces covered with hideous masks, and their hands with the shell of the tortoise, went from hut to hut making frightful noises; in every hut they took the fuel from the fire and scattered the embers and ashes about the floor with their hands. The general confession of sins which preceded the festival ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... and looked at Tom with amused curiosity through her tortoise-shell spectacles, which had slid rather farther down her nose than usual. "I forget. Didn't you use to see a good deal of Nancy at one ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... a hawk might fly from St. Luke's head (on the Duomo) to the stone on San Primo over Como, while the signorina held on her note! You listened, you gasped—you thought of a poet in his dungeon, and suddenly, behold, his chains are struck off!—you thought of a gold-shelled tortoise making his pilgrimage to a beatific shrine!—you thought—you knew not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... describes a tramp and vagrant world, adrift in space, with neither elephant nor tortoise to plant the sole of its foot upon. It is a set of stars hurled into heaven without even a centre of gravity to pull against. In other spheres of life it is true that we have got used to living in a state of relative insecurity. The authority of 'the State,' and that of an absolute 'moral law,' ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... him through her tortoise-shell lorgnette, hanging from a gold chain, the gray amber of her eyes took on an insolent stare through the glasses, a strange expression, half ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... is hotter than any other hot day. It finds us cruelly unguarded. After we have been gently baked awhile, the crust thus acquired makes us somewhat tortoise-like and quiescent. If we were condemned to suffer thirty-nine stripes, or even only as many as belong to our flag, would it or would it not be a privilege to take them by degrees, say one on the first day, two on the second, four on the third, etc., ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... and that others rarely, coexist without our being able to assign any reason. What can be more singular than the relation in cats between complete whiteness and blue eyes with deafness, or between the tortoise-shell colour and the female sex; or in pigeons, between their feathered feet and skin betwixt the outer toes, or between the presence of more or less down on the young pigeon when first hatched, with the future colour of its plumage; or, again, the relation ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... these promises, the poor Countess behaved herself very well, though she looked as if she might burst an important blood-vessel, as Terry carefully turned his car on the slippery surface of the road's tortoise-back. I was not happy myself, for it would have been as "easy as falling off a log" for the automobile to leap gracefully into the Roya; but the brakes held nobly, and as Terry had said, there was better going ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... on the coast of New Guinea. He belonged to a small trading vessel from Ceram, or one of the neighbouring islands, which are accustomed to visit that coast to barter fire-arms, calico, and ironwork, for slaves, nutmegs, trepang, tortoise-shell, and edible birds' nests. She had been driven out of her course by a gale, and found herself on a part of the coast with which no one on board was acquainted. Before she could make good her retreat, she ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... and kissed me. Of course she could say no more, since Louise was in the room; but glancing at the dressing-table, which was now stripped of its pretty things in silver and tortoise-shell, a letter addressed in my grandmother's handwriting caught my eye. It must have come since I went out; and there must be something in it to ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... Indian Ocean stretching 550 m. southward from a point 300 m. SW. of Cape Comorin, 200 of which are inhabited; Male is the residence of the sultan, who is a tributary of the governor of Ceylon; the natives are akin to the Singhalese, and occupy themselves gathering cowries, cocoa-nuts, and tortoise-shell for exportation. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... savages: mere huts, with domed kitchens behind them. In the dwelling-house the whole family pigged together, with raw flesh drying on the rafters, stinking skins in a corner, parasitical vermin of all sorts blackening the floor, and particularly a small, biting, and odoriferous tortoise, compared with which the insect a London washerwoman brings into your house in her basket, is a stroke with a feather—and all this without the excuse of penury; for many of these were shepherd kings, sheared four thousand ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... is decidedly a thievish place. The shops are all shut at dark, after the Oracion, for fear of thieves. Ladies used to wear immense tortoise-shell combs at the back of their heads, where the mantilla is fastened on; but, when it became a regular trade for thieves to ride on horseback through the streets, and pull out the combs as they went, the ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... believe in those wing'd purposes, And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me, And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional, And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else, And the in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me, And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Was, upon its face, absurd; Yet the hare, with expedition, Took the tortoise at his word, Ran until the final lap, Then, supposing he'd outclassed him, Laid him down and took a nap And the patient turtle ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... popped in with a newspaper in his hand, to read me a curious account of a mermaid, that was seen singing a Gaelic song, and combing its hair with a tortoise-shell comb, someway terrible far north about Shetland, by a respectable minister of the district, riding home in the gloaming after a presbytery dinner. So, as he was just taking off his spectacles cannily, and saying to me—"And ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... girls did not wear them, save of the "circular" variety, designed to hold back "shingled" tresses. But from underneath a box of faded gum-drops and the store's one carton of cigars, came some of imitation tortoise-shell, gilt ornamented, of the sort old ladies sometimes stuck into their hirsute knots for mountain "doings" of great elegance, and the best of these Madge bought. Also she bought lace—great quantities of it, although, even after she had made the purchase, ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... silk coat of the loveliest hue; a wide white lace tucker caught across her round bosom with a bunch of cinnamon roses; and straw-coloured kid gloves, reaching far up her snow-white arms. Her hair was coiled high on the crown of her head and airily overtopped by a great curiously carved silver-and-tortoise-shell comb; and under her dress played the white mice of her feet. The tints of her skin were pearl and rose; her red lips parted in smiles. She was radiant with excitement, happiness, youth. She culled admiration, visiting all eyes with hers as a bee all flowers. It was not ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... soothe the savage breast was the soughing of the wind through the trees. Then strings were stretched across a crevice for the wind to play upon and there was the AEolian harp. The second stage was entered when Hermes strung the tortoise shell and plucked it with his fingers and when Athena, raising the wind from her own lungs, forced it through a hollow reed. From these beginnings we have the organ and the orchestra, producing such sounds as nothing in ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... to her own cabin. At another time he comes back and visits her, blowing upon her and singing in company with several others, who have been summoned for this purpose, and who hold in the hand a dry tortoise-shell filled with little pebbles, which they cause to resound in the ears of the sick woman. They direct her to make at once three or four banquets with singing and dancing, when all the girls appear ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... made of the holly-wood, Their combs of the tortoise's shell, Three basins of silver in corners there stood, And three little ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... how similar are the mental habits of uncivilized men, is the myth of the tortoise. The Hindu notion of a great tortoise that lies beneath the earth and keeps it from falling is familiar to every reader. According to one account, this tortoise, swimming in the primeval ocean, bears the earth on his back; but by and by, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... having ridiculed the slow movements of a Tortoise, was challenged by the latter to run a race, a Fox to go to the goal and be the judge. They got off well together, the hare at the top of her speed, the Tortoise, who had no other intention than making ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... roof, had been made into a sort of Chinese temple. All round the walls were hung curtains of black and yellow, decorated with dragons in gold, and above, suspended by cords at the four corners, was a rug or banner of white ornamented with a great tortoise—the sacred animal of Chinese religion—with gold eyes and claws. All round the side of the room were set coloured lights, shaded and dim. Coming from the bright outer sunlight, the place in its shadowed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... avoided, never wash combs, as the water often makes the teeth split, and the tortoise-shell or horn of which they are made, rough. Small brushes, manufactured purposely for cleaning combs, may be purchased at a trifling cost; the comb should be well brushed, and afterwards wiped with a cloth ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... abominable' (that is, tabooed or forbidden) 'Rat of Ra.' If the unclean animals of Israel were originally the totems of each clan, then the mouse was a totem, {115b} for the chosen people were forbidden to eat 'the weasel, and the mouse, and the tortoise after his kind.' That unclean beasts, beasts not to be eaten, were originally totems, Prof. Robertson Smith infers from Ezekiel (viii. 10, 11), where 'we find seventy of the elders of Israel—that is, the heads of houses—worshipping in a chamber which had on its walls the figures of all manner ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... hay. The local cattle industry makes possible the shipment of some $2,500,000 worth of hides and skins annually. Other lines of industry worthy of mention, but not possible of detailed description here, include sponges, tortoise shell, honey, wax, molasses, and henequen or sisal. All these represent their individual thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and their employment of scores or hundreds of wage-earners. Those ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... found that the column was attached to the main army, and that we had to move step by step to the will of the chief. I knew very little about military tactics, but it was a strange kind of pursuit, and made me think of a tortoise chasing ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... is with your trained editor. A miraculous sixth sense guides him. A mysterious something warns him of danger lurking within the seemingly innocent oblong white envelope. Without slitting the flap, without pausing to adjust his tortoise-rimmed glasses, without clearing his throat, without ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... not going to repeat here the well-known fable of the 'Hare and the Tortoise,' but something of the character of those animals may be found in the cousins. At their first dame's school, as well as at the more advanced grammar school of their little town. Howel was always able to beat Rowland in swiftness, whilst Rowland effectually distanced Howel ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... sighed and went over to where the bookstall stood and began turning over some of the parchments that lay on the board. As he did so the bookseller popped his head out at him from the booth, as a tortoise from his shell, and I never beheld tortoise yet so crisp and withered as this human. Messer Cecco Bartolo was his name. And Dante addressed him. "Gaffer Bookman, Gaffer Bookman, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... - Going down to the seaside, I found a large tortoise or turtle. This was the first I had seen, which, it seems, was only my misfortune, not any defect of the place, or scarcity; for had I happened to be on the other side of the island, I might have had hundreds of them every day, as I found ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... dark black buttons, and a great breastpin of twisted gold. Her hair was looped down over her ears in two folds like shiny drab satin. It scarcely looked like hair, the surface was so smooth and unbroken; and a great tortoise-shell comb topped it ...
— Comfort Pease and her Gold Ring • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... at a pace which gave the captain every opportunity of overtaking them. The feat would not have been beyond the powers of an athletic tortoise, but the most careful scrutiny failed to ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... laugh. She laughed herself into helplessness, and encouraged by her wild merriment, and Lella M'Barka's smiles and exclamations punctuated with fits of coughing, they set to work at pulling out hairpins, and the tortoise-shell combs that kept the Roumia's red gold waves in place. At last down tumbled the thick curly locks which Stephen Knight had thought so beautiful when they flowed round her shoulders in the Dance of ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... by the moralist of to-day as a virtue has its worth by no means in its abstinence. It is not, in St. Theresa's words, the virtue of the tortoise which withdraws its limbs under its carapace. It is a virtue because it is a discipline in self-control, because it helps to fortify the character and will, and because it is directly favorable to the cultivation ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... dangerous, and I am mending every day; if it were warmer I should get on faster, but I cannot stir into the air without bringing on cough. Tell Ulick O'More that we entertained his brother at tea last evening, we were obliged to desire him to bring his own cup, and he produced the shell of a land tortoise; it was very like the fox and the crane. Poor fellow, it was the first good meal he had for weeks, and I was glad he came in for some famous bread that the General had sent us in. He made us much more merry than was convenient to either ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... author actually knows these "snotties," with their high courage, animal spirits and elementary humour. It is in fact history spiced with fiction. Of all the characters my vote goes to Kaiser Bill, for although, being a tortoise, he performed no deeds of actual gallantry, he carried good luck with him wherever he went. Besides, his name might annoy the ALL-HIGHEST. Mr. JEANS made an extremely good shot when he drew his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... of human life and occupation. A little tea-table had been set in one window, though the tea was cold. The greyhounds came and laid their slender noses on her gown, and one small Italian one coiled himself up on her lap. Miss Mewlstone's work-basket stood open, and a tortoise shell kitten had helped itself to a ball of wool and was busily unwinding it. The dogs were evidently frightened at the storm, for they all gathered round Phillis, shivering and whining, as though missing their mistress; and she had much ado to comfort them, though she loved animals and ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... according to the general account, is an inexplicable manifestation of the gods of war. At one end of the rainbow there is thought to be a huge tortoise, one fathom broad. The appearance of the rainbow is an indication that the gods of war, with their associate war chiefs and warriors from the land of death, have gone forth in search of blood. If red predominates among the colors of the rainbow it is thought that the mightier war spirits are ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... points, we see four figures, one a sitting figure similar to the middle one with black head, on the left side of the Cortesian plate; one a spotted dog sitting on what is apparently part of the carapace of a tortoise; one a monkey, and the other a bird with a hooked bill. Is it not possible that we have here an indication of the four days—Dragon, Death, Monkey, Vulture, with which ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... finely crossed or barred sun, or a circle with human legs. Rain is figured by a dot or semicircle filled with water and placed on the head. The heaven with three disks of the sun is understood to mean three days' journey, and a landing after a voyage is represented by a tortoise. Short sentences, too, can be pictured in this manner. A prescription ordering abstinence from food for two, and rest for four, days is written by drawing a man with two bars on the stomach and ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... country place at Passy, had made his way to the Duc de Grandlieu's, in the costume of a retainer of a superior class. He wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole. He had made up a withered old face with powdered hair, deep wrinkles, and a colorless skin. His eyes were hidden by tortoise-shell spectacles. He looked like a retired office-clerk. On giving his name as Monsieur de Saint-Denis, he was led to the Duke's private room, where he found Derville reading a letter, which he himself had dictated to one of his ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... that doorway. Acihi Estsan (Salt-woman) was in the west, and her house was of the substance of a mirage; the youth Co'nen[)i]li (Water-sprinkler) danced before her door. In the north Cqaltlaqale[1] made a house of green duckweed, and S[)i]stel' (Tortoise) ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... bee-hives outside the windows. In the middle of the courtyard a woodpile in the form of a cupola. A well beside it. The top of a walnut tree is seen above the central facade of the house. In the corner, right, a garden gate. By the well a large tortoise. On right, entrance below to a wine-cellar. An ice-chest and dust-bin. The DOCTOR'S SISTER enters from the verandah with ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... not even quibble. If he spoke, he should simply make himself a fool. He preferred to listen, and to watch the tobacco-smoke stealing out past the window-seat into the tranquil October air. He could see the court too, and the college cat teasing the college tortoise, and the kitchen-men with supper-trays upon their heads. Hot food for one—that must be for the geographical don, who never came in for Hall; cold food for three, apparently at half-a-crown a head, for some one he did not know; hot food, a la carte—obviously ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... be skinned out, by having the skin of the legs, tail, and head, cut away all round from their attachments to the under shell or plastron. The joints of the limbs should then be cut away from the inside, and the tortoise or turtle laid on its back, in which position the separated limbs hang down, remaining only attached by their top skin (now underneath), to the upper part of the shell or carapace. This exposes the whole of the remaining skin and flesh, which must be cut and scraped out with ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... be formed—Testudine acta. The soldiers placed their shields over their heads, and joined them close together, forming a defense like the shell of a tortoise. ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... artificially tied in a bow knot with wide and floating ends, and he purchased a French silk hat with a broad and curving brim. Having satisfied himself that the effect was good, he laid in a stock of similar articles, and further adorned his appearance with a pair of tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles, and a green umbrella. For possibly cool or rainy weather he provided himself with a coffee-coloured overcoat that had a velvet collar and tails reaching almost to ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... from having done, that I have not yet even touch'd on all the Advantages that our Country has received, from the Dublin Society's Premiums; which was one of my chief Reasons, for having consider'd Ireland as upon the Recovery, when I went under-ground like a Tortoise, to be raised again when the Summer comes, after a long Sleep. I need not be very particular on so known and confest a Fact, as the extraordinary Improvements they have made amongst us, in a vast Variety of Articles. We are told Solomon's Writings were so extensive, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
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