"Claw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stood next to her. It seemed minutes to Betty that the car was falling, and she watched the others' behavior with a curious, semi-detached interest that was oddly impersonal. One of the men passengers began to claw at the gate frantically and the other kept muttering under his breath, softly and steadily, biting off his words crisply and quite unconscious of what he was saying. The woman who had clutched Louise was silent at first, but her companion instantly screamed, and in a fraction of a ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... has got to be learned; there isn't any getting around it. A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows that, if you didn't know the shape of a shore perfectly, you would claw away from every bunch of timber, because you would take the black shadow of it for a solid cape; and, you see, you would be getting scared to death every fifteen minutes by the watch. You would be fifty yards from shore all the time when you ought to be within fifty feet of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... his eye fell on a package lying on an empty box, and he sprang towards it, tearing it open with claw-like fingers. ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... siphon of charged water from the icebox. But by the time he was back a staggering amount of whiskey had disappeared from the decanter, a moist but empty glass stood beside it, and Mr. Iff was stroking smiling lips with his delicate, claw-like fingers. He discontinued this occupation long enough to wave ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... t' work an' git mad about it," remonstrated the Countess, dropping her thread in her perturbation at his excitement. The spool rolled under the bed and she was obliged to get down upon her knees and claw it back, and she jarred the bed and set Chip's foot ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... happy here, that I could be sentimental, if Leonard were not tete-a-tete with me, and on the verge of that predicament. "Never so happy in his life," quoth he, "and never will be again—wonders when he shall gee this white cliff again." But, happily, in tumbles Aubrey with the big claw of a crab, which he insists on Leonard's wearing next his heart as a souvenir of Mrs. Gisborne; he is requited with an attempt to pinch ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... here it is, and here we are, and we must make the most of it. If the ways of the Eternal as revealed in his works are past finding out, we must still unflinchingly face what our reason reveals to us. "Red in tooth and claw." Nature does not preach; she enforces, she executes. All her answers are yea, yea, or nay, nay. Of the virtues and beatitudes of which the gospel of Christ makes so much—meekness, forgiveness, self-denial, charity, love, holiness—she ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... "Continue—" But the seconds, coming between them, would not have it so. It was understood that their principals had met before, and upon the same count. Blood had been drawn. It was France—and mere ugly tooth-and-claw business not in favor. Blood had ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... grave, calm, and deliberate, every motion being made in the most solemn fashion, one of them the root of whose beak itched scratching it with a claw ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... held sacred? Ordinarily she would pass it in contempt, but such impertinence must not remain unpunished. With a snarl of rage she dashed through the entrance and struck the wretched creature a terrible blow with one claw-armed paw that tore it into shreds and turning, with a second quick thrust tossed it out where it fell among the trumpet-vines, ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... her own vernacular, "making, culture hum." Mr. Fuller, I understand, reproached her with her stockyards—an injustice which even Mr. Bernard Shaw would scarcely have committed. Is it the fault of Chicago that the world is carnivorous? Was not "Nature red in tooth and claw" several aeons before Chicago was thought of? I do not understand that any unnecessary cruelty is practised in the stockyards; and apart from that, I fail to see that systematic slaughter of animals for food is any more disgusting than sporadic butchery. But of the stockyards ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... known to the jurors, several of whom were skilled machinists. The wound was an inch and three quarters in length and very deep at the extremities; in the middle in scarcely penetrated to the cranium. So peculiar a cut could not have been produced with the claw part of a hammer, because the claw is always curved, and the incision was straight. A flat claw, such as is used in opening packing-cases, was suggested. A collection of the several sizes manufactured was procured, but none corresponded with the wound; they were ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... observed that the men who do this kind of work are always the second-rate men: first come the inventors, the pioneers, and then the perfecters; it is always at the close of a school that the tip-top men arise. They claw in their material from everywhere around, and use it up so thoroughly as to leave nothing for the later comers to do with it that was not done before, and done better, done when the stuff was fresh and the impulse full of its ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... struggles for the eagle feathers of distinction, but his greatest longing is to become a Medicine Man and know the Great Mystery. All medicine people of the tribes carry on their necks, or in a pouch at the belt, some sacred thing used in their magic practices—the claw of a bear, the rattle of a snake, a bird's wing, the tooth of an elk, a bit of tobacco. Every Indian carries his individual medicine, and his medicine is good or bad according to his success. If he finds a feather at wrong ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... (of course fancy cutlets are meant, not the French chops, so called), only they are shaped to imitate a real cutlet, with a little bone inserted; or, in the case of lobster cutlets, a small claw is used to simulate the chop bone. Many only stick a sprig of parsley where the bone should be, to keep up ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... together, their wings held in place by a strip of thin paper. They must all be mounted—the insects quivering upon brass wire, the humming-birds with their feathers ruffled; they must be cleansed and polished, the beak in a bright red, claw repaired with a silk thread, dead eyes replaced with sparkling pearls, and the insect or the bird restored to an appearance of life and grace. The mother prepared the work under her daughter's direction; for Desiree, though she was still a mere girl, ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... strange reflections must that spectacle inspire him! The outstretched arms lying helpless along the earth—the claw-like fingers now stiff and nerveless—he may be thinking how they once clutched a cowhide, vigorously laying it on his own ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... to this powwow about pickin' out a squaw for Bill. Besides Crooked Claw, thar's Bill's widow aunt, the Wild Cat—she's plumb cunnin', the Wild Cat is, an' jest then bein' cel'brated among the Osages for smokin' ponies with Black B'ar, a old buck, an' smokin' Black B'ar out of his two best cayouses. Besides ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... an ingenious turn, who could make something of pretty nigh anything in his line. But he got hold of a bit of iron one day that he attempted to make into a corn-knife, but the stuff would not hold an edge, so he reasoned it would be a claw-hammer; but that would be a loss of overplus, and he tried to make an ax-head. That did not come out to a five-pounder; and, getting disgusted, he blew up the fire to a white heat around the metal mass, when, yanking it out with his ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... fresher, began to inspect the corpses and to pay them the last honours. They dug graves with swords and spears, brought earth in their caps and the skirts of their garments, laid the Cossacks' bodies out decently, and covered them up in order that the ravens and eagles might not claw out their eyes. But binding the bodies of the Lyakhs, as they came to hand, to the tails of horses, they let these loose on the plain, pursuing them and beating them for some time. The infuriated horses flew over hill and hollow, through ditch ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and winged bristling hogs, a devil's flock who crept down from the stone-work at night and hunted the souls of sinful children through the town. With the growth of the picture the bright mailed angels thronged so close about the boy's bed that between their interwoven wings not a snout or a claw could force itself; and he would turn over sighing on his pillow, which felt as soft and warm as if it had been lined with down from those ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... on searching the carriage, that the jug had capsized, and one of the lobsters had extracted the cork, which he still grasped tightly in his claw. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... been directed by your father to keep everything as the Colonel had it, I just laughed at him. You see, sir, they have the three feathers, and are beautifully carved, otherwise. And, here, is a lowboy, with the shell and the fluted columns, and the cabriole legs, carved on the knees, and the claw and ball feet. He offered two hundred dollars for it. And this sofa, with the lion's claw and the eagle's wing, he wanted to buy it, too. In fact, sir, he wanted to buy about everything in the house—including the portraits. There are two by Peale ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... to see in France that dissolution of all authority, whether of State or Church, for which Rousseau had pined. He saw it result in the return of a portion of mankind to what we now believe to have been their primitive state, a state in which they were 'red in tooth and claw.' It was not that paradisaic state of love and innocence, which, curiously enough, both Rousseau and the theologians seem to have imagined ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause, and smile at no man's jests; eat when I have stomach, and wait for no man's leisure; sleep when I am drowsy, and tend on no man's business; laugh when I am merry, and claw no man ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... and almost at the same moment he recognized me; uttering an oath of rage, he rose up as if to spring at my throat. But either because I did not recoil—being too deep-set in the hay to move—or for some other reason, he only shook his claw-like fingers at me, and held off. "Where is it, you dog?" he cried, finding his voice with an effort. "Speak, or I will have your throat slit. Speak; do you hear? What have you done ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... phrase in heraldry to signify that the armorial bearings are marked with some sign of disgrace. Thus John de Aveones having reviled his mother in the King's presence, he ordered that the tongue and claw of the lion which he bore in his arms should be defaced. In many cases a baton is inserted as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... swete strife, forgetting where I stood. I trod so hard in straining of my voice That with my claw I rent her tender skin; Which as she felt and saw vermillion follow Stayning the cullor of Adonis bleeding In Venus lap, with indignation She cast ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... long, claw-like hand upon the top of the First Gate, was bending over the trap, but his brilliant green eyes were turned in the same direction as my ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... however. The foolish dog had found a huge crab in the sand and, barking loudly, had pushed his muzzle against the creature, with the result that the crab seized his black nose in a gripping claw and pinched as hard as it was able. Mumbles tried to back away, madly howling the while; but the crab, although the smaller antagonist, gripped a rock with its other claw and held on, anchoring the terrified dog ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... all men, in such trance, Plague-stricken? Had the very Gods, that saw Thy glory lighten on us for a law, Thy gospel go before us for a guide, Had these waxed envious of our love and awe, Or was it less their envy than thy pride That bared thy breast for the obscene vulture-claw, High priestess, by whose mouth Love prophesied That fate should yet mean freedom? Howsoever, That hour, the helper of men's hearts, we praise, Which blots out of man's book of after days The name above all names abhorred for ever. And ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and the starlings running to and fro on the surface that did not sink now stood high above it and were larger. The dust that drifted along blessed it and it grew. Day by day a change; always a note to make. The moss drying on the tree trunks, dog's-mercury stirring under the ash-poles, bird's-claw buds of beech lengthening; books upon books to be filled with these things. I cannot think how ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... the land, and bind all its children's hearts in a close-knit fellowship;—yet, when I see its people betrayed, and their jawbone broken by a stroke from the hand of gold; when I see freedom passing from us, and the whole land being grasped by the golden claw, so that the generation after us shall be born without freedom, to labour for the men who have grasped all, shall I hold my peace? The Boer and the Englishman who have been in this land, have not always loved mercy, nor have they always sought after justice; but the ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... folk-lore both of the West and East. Even in this century Hedenstroem, the otherwise sagacious traveller on the Siberian Polar Sea, believed that the fossil rhinoceros' horns were actual, "grip-claws." For he mentions in his oft-quoted work, that he had seen such a claw 20 verschoks (0.9 metre) in length, and when he visited St. Petersburg in 1830, the scientific men there did not succeed in convincing him that his ideas on ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... with your hand. This was differently shaped; fatter; and the middle finger was stunted, and shorter than the rest, looking as if it had once been broken, and the nail was crooked like a claw. I called out 'Who's there?' and the light and the hand were withdrawn, and I saw and heard no ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... go down to Leslie's and tell him to send me a good claw hammer and three pounds of eightpenny nails. ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... ordered a carriage to be ready in half an hour, adding that he was about to dress for some visits he was to make in St. George's. They went to their rooms, and each of them changed his dress, coming out in black suits. The master wore a frock coat, but the servant was dressed in a "claw-hammer," and ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... the cartridges which I had put in to announce the fire was still intact, and the charge caught the fugitive right in the back,—throwing him forward on the ground, bleeding profusely. He immediately began to claw the earth with his hands and with his knees, as though trying to run on all fours like a rabbit who has been mortally wounded, and sees ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... on political and historical philosophy had been well-received, and he had also written a novel, "But Some Are More Equal," which, for a few weeks after publication, had managed to claw its way to the bottom of the ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... scales, which towards the end form six rows, so as to render it obscurely six-sided; the end is blunt: the toes long, very unequal, varying in joints, as stated in the generic character (which includes also the claw joint) compressed, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... sekreta. Clank resoni. Clap manfrapi. Clarify klarigi. Clarion milita trumpeto. Clarionet klarneto. Clasp (buckle) buko. Clasp preno. Clasp preni. Class klaso. Class ordigi. Classify ordigi. Clatter bruegado. Claw ungego. Clay argilo. Clean purigi. Clean pura. Clean (boots, etc.) senkotigi. Cleanliness pureco. Cleanse purigi. Clear klara. Clear (mental) malkonfuza. Clearness klareco. Cleave (split) fendi. Cleaver fendilo. Cleft fendo. Clemency malsevereco. Clement ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... awfulness of the Roman power was in the sureness of its conquests. It did not fly onward without touching the earth, like the great eastern conquerors; but let it set one claw on a nation, and the doom of that nation was fixed. First the help of the Romans was asked and readily given; then in return a tribute was demanded and paid; then the Romans would meddle with the government, till their interference became ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... with a trill of laughter. "Here is one that talketh very loud and fool-like and flourisheth iron claw to no purpose, since I heed one no more ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... or three switches and tightly sewn up in burlap.—One big fellow is selected for the bear. He has a school bag tightly strapped on his back, and in that a toy balloon fully blown up. This is his heart. On his neck is a bear-claw necklace of wooden beads and claws. ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... retiring again my attention centred a second time upon the bearskin before my bed and, forgetting that I had already inquired about it, I demanded of him if he had killed the animal. "Sure," said he; "killed it with one shot just as it was going to claw me. It was ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... had long been hoping for his advent, gave him a questioning look. The other understood, and shook his head sadly to answer him No. And then he busied himself with the stricken man, as he growled out to my uncle: "I crossed the pond to Alexandria, but of your man—you know who—not a claw nor a feather. As to the Schopper brothers on the other hand. . . . But first let us try to get between this poor fellow and the grave. Hold on, Uhlwurm!" And he was about to lift the sick man in doors. Howbeit, I went up to the Brunswicker, who in his rough wise ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... heels, rubbing dirt from gold and debating in just what manner he should rise up. He might rise up with a rush and claw his way out of the hole to meet whatever threatened on the even footing above ground. Or he might rise up slowly and carelessly, and feign casually to discover the thing that breathed at his back. His instinct and every fighting fibre of his body favored the mad, clawing rush to ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... for existence, in which the life and well-being of some can be secured only through the suffering and final extinction of others; and even in its higher stages, cunning and unscrupulous strength frequently overcomes humane wisdom fettered by weakness. "Nature, red in tooth and claw, with ravin shrieks against the creed" of the Theist. If God is working through evolution, we must admit that he has marvellously hidden himself, and agree with the poet that he does "move in a mysterious way his wonders ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... live wood came at Guthrum, On foot and claw and wing, The nests were noisy overhead, For Alfred and the star of red, All life went forth, and the forest fled Before the face ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... story of Ki Ki's promised treason on the day of battle, when he heard that the weasel had betrayed the secret of the spring, which did not freeze in winter, he lifted up his claw and opened his eyes still wider in amazement and terror. "Wretched creature!" he said, "what is this you have been saying." But the hawk, quite mad with agony, did not know him, but mistook him for Ki Ki, and poured out such terrible denunciations that the owl, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... and large, open, rounded ears. His back and head were of a reddish-brown colour, his cheeks red, his feet white, and he had three odd white spots on each side of his chest. But the funniest thing which I noticed about him, (I was always an observant rat,) was that he had a claw on his forefeet in addition to four toes, which I had never before seen in the tribes ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... there's plenty of time! (Bows to the ground before his father.) Father, dear father, forgive me too,—fiend that I am! You told me from the first, when I took to bad ways, you said then, "If a claw is caught, the bird is lost!" I would not listen to your words, dog that I was, and it has turned out as you said! Forgive ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... the aid of the tablet, and Morgan with many queer gestures to help out his faltering tongue, so long without the guide of hearing, contrived to despatch the business relating to a claw-footed sofa. When it was finished, Rosalind was missing, and was discovered in the little garden, making friends with the black poodle, while the striped cat looked on from ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... Winter, much encouraged, and taking Barton's hand in his own battered claw; "thank you. But why should we run only to modern authorities? All great inventions, all great ideas, have been present to men's minds and hopes from the beginning of civilization. Did not Empedocles forestall ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... from very little. And yet was he? His instinct told him he was not. Yet there might no doubt be some ordinary cause for the change in Mr. Harding. Some vice, such as love of drink, or morphia, something that disintegrates a man, might have laid its claw upon him. That was possible. What seemed to Malling much more unaccountable was the extraordinary change in the direction of strength in Chichester. And the relations between the two men, if indeed the curate had once ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the side of the vessel, but now the fascination of the scene had all faded out. The restless billows were dreary, savage, hungry and dizzying; they seemed to claw at, and tear, and wrench the struggling ship as a group of huge lions would tease and worry a captive dog. They distressed her and all on board by dealing a blow which would send her reeling in ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... same as its neighbor, blunt and round at the end, (where every forest leaf is sharp, except that of the fig-tree,) tied together by the roots, and so fastened on to the demoniacal claws above described, one bunch to each claw. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were lying on the smoking dung-hill; some of them were scratching with one claw in search of worms, while the cock stood up proudly among them. Every moment he selected one of them, and walked round her with a slight cluck of amorous invitation. The hen got up in a careless way as she received his attentions, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... This claw of the beast was rapped, this hair of the devil was pulled by Nathan with extreme cleverness. The marquise began to ask herself seriously if, up to the present time, she had not been the dupe of her head, and whether her education was complete. Vice—what ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... chicken, pickles, sweet preserves, doughnuts, jellies, fine and red, cold claw, beets, hot mince pie, pound cake, layer cake, apples, tea, coffee ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... mastered it. In those days to Maria, who had a ready imagination, her unhappiness seemed sometimes to assume a material shape like the fabulous dragon. She seemed to be fighting something with tooth and claw, a monstrous verity; but she fought, and she kept the upper hand. Maria did not lose flesh. She ate as usual, she retained her interest in her work, and all the time whenever a moment of solitude came she renewed the conflict. She thought as little as possible of Wollaston; she ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... especially near Graham's Town and in the Oudtshorn district, one may see great numbers; nor is there a prettier sight than that of two parent birds running along, with a numerous progeny of little ones around them. Though in a sense domesticated, they are often dangerous, for they kick forward and claw downward with great violence, and the person whom they knock down and begin to trample on has little chance of escape with his life. Fortunately, it is easy to drive them off with a stick or even an umbrella; and we were warned not to cross an ostrich-farm without ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... leave a few in bloom for the sake of the general appearance of the garden. Paths should be kept clean, and all rubbish, weeds, dead plants, etc., removed to the compost heap, which should be in the least conspicuous part of the garden. Hoes, rakes, and claw-hand weeders should be used in cleaning up and cultivating the plots. The soil should be kept fine and loose on top ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... forms are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone, the wheat-ear, the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the lion's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many trees, as ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... remembered every detail of Gillier's powerful, almost brutal libretto. In the reading it had transported her into a wild life, in a land where there is still romance, still strangeness—a land upon which civilization has not yet fastened its padded claw. And she had imagined the impression which this glimpse of an ardent and bold life might produce upon highly civilized people, like herself, if it were ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... trouble, but only enough off the end where the three eyelets are, to enable it to get at the inside. Having pierced the proper eye with one of its legs it rotates the nut round it until the hole is large enough to admit the point of its great claw, with which it continues the work. This remarkable creature also climbs the palm-trees, but not to gather nuts; that is certain, for its habits have been closely watched and it has been ascertained that it feeds only on fallen nuts. Possibly it climbs for exercise, or to obtain a more extended view ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... remarked to me, "There isn't much of that in the Infantry Manual. But the corporal knows his job. When you're in a scrap you haven't time to think about the rules of the game; the automatic movements come all right, but in a clinch you've got to fight like a cat with tooth and claw, use your boots, your knee, or anything that comes handy. Perhaps that's why your lithe little Cockney is such a useful man with the bayonet. Now the Hun is a hefty beggar, and he isn't hampered by any ideas of playing the game, but he's as mechanical as a vacuum ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... of me, And sing. O God, what death, in eyes so bound, They see Life's beauty in her draining wound! Lay thou the blind thing down With saurian tusk and bone, With dust of sworded maw And peril's fossil claw, Lest sexton Earth even Man inter, nor trover Of after-law untomb for Love ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... the old silver coffee-pot. Things come to have a distinct individuality, almost a personality, and we unconsciously impute to them a response to our feeling for them. It seemed to me that the old claw-foot sofa was as glad to get me back as the cat herself, and the door swung wide with a squeak of welcome. My desk too stood open with friendly invitation, and on it lay a couple of letters. The first was from Ben Bradford. It was so long since ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... an open trunk overflowing with costumes: these features one might notice anywhere. But, besides, there was a bookcase with an unusual number of books in it, and there was an open colonial writing-desk, claw-footed, brass-handled, and scutcheoned, with foreign periodicals—French and English—littering its leaf, and some pages of manuscript scattered among them. Above all, there was a sculptor's revolving stand, supporting ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had arrived, but were not in the least prepared for use. A large basket showed a quantity of live crabs, which lay quietly enough, but a twitching claw here and there ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... either of them could stir a step the savage alligator, who had escaped from the circus again, grabbed them, one in each claw, and then, holding them so that they couldn't get away, he sat up on the end of his big tail, and looked first at Susie and ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... useless, Master, Heavier for my team their load, And my eyes with snow o'er plastered Can no longer see the road! Lost all trace of our direction, Sir, what now? The goblins draw Us already round in circles, Pull the sledge with evil claw! ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... longest point or angle, was a black thread-like point, from a sixteenth to an eighth of an inch in length; on this stem was either hooks, barbs, or a glutinous matter, that firmly adhered to each foot or claw of the bee, rendering it useless as far as climbing the sides of the hive was concerned. I found also among bees clustered outside of full hives, this ornament attached, but to them it appeared no inconvenience. Among the scales of wax and waste ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... worried and scuffled and clutched and tore at each other more like savage brutes than men. The defence was not broken or driven out—it was killed out; and lunging bayonet or smashing butt caught and finished the few that tried to struggle and claw a way out up the slippery trench-sides. Hard on the heels of the victorious attackers came a swarm of men running and staggering to the trench with filled sandbags over their shoulders. As the front of the attack passed on over the ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... long morning they endeavored to claw off the lee shore. Morgan luffed the ship through the heavy squalls which rose to the violence of a hurricane, with consummate skill. Absolutely fearless, a master of his profession, he did all with that ship that mortal man ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... pretty badly, of course, now you mention it," interrupted the Lady Goose, "you and the little one. But this one's feathers seem in nice condition." As she spoke she laid a long claw lovingly on Ann's head. "How much would you say a ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... snow. Here, however, arose another mystery. On counting the toes, I found that in some of the tracks there were five—as there should have been,—while in others there were only four! This led me to examine the print of the toes more carefully; and I now saw that each of them was armed with a claw, which, on account of some hairy covering, had made but a very indefinite impression in the snow. The tracks, then, were not the footmarks of children, but those of some animal ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... south wall of the college—one bearing the legs of Man, and the other the eagle's claw of the House of Stanley—are not ancient, and were merely put up to heraldically mark the site ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... a formal dinner: their concealed harness hampers them, they are laced tightly, and they are in the presence of women whose eyes and whose tongues are equally to be dreaded. They prefer fancy eating to good eating, then: they will suck a lobster's claw, swallow a quail or two, punish a woodcock's wing, beginning with a bit of fresh fish, flavored by one of those sauces which are the glory of French cooking. France is everywhere sovereign in matters of taste: in painting, fashions, and the like. Gravy is the triumph of taste, in cookery. ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... ye gat him i' your thrall, An' brak him out o' house an' hall, While scabs an' botches did him gall, Wi' bitter claw, An' lows'd his ill tongu'd, wicked scawl, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... The claw of a hammer can be used for removing the insulation on copper wire, if not more than 1 in. is taken off ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... his eyes sparkling, while he wildly clutched my arm with his skinny, claw-like hands, "did I not know—have I not said it? Did I not fight for a hundred years, wading through blood every day, and then at last send you forth to finish the battle? And every day our enemies came ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... come along and, catching hold of the chunk of meat in one claw, had tried to swim away with it to eat it in some hole on the ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... in bread crumbs, being sure to have every part covered. Place in the frying-basket and plunge into boiling fat. Cook till a rich brown. It will take about two minutes. Drain for a moment in the basket; then arrange on a hot dish, and put part of a small claw in each one, to represent the bone in a cutlet. Put the parsley in the basket and plunge for a moment into the boiling fat. Garnish with this, or, pour a white or Bechamel sauce around the dish, and garnish with fresh parsley. ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... her, she means, poor soul!" soliliquized the dame. "It is but little you know my gay master if you think he values a promise made to any woman, except to deceive her! I have seen too many birds of that feather not to know a hawk, from beak to claw. When I was the Charming Josephine I took the measure of men's professions, and never was deceived but once. Men's promises are big as clouds, and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... collision with Romola; no persuasive blandness could cushion him against the shock towards which he was being driven like a timid animal urged to a desperate leap by the terror of the tooth and the claw ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... book was soon filled, like the hive of some insect, with a network of variously slanting lines and the thick and thin strokes of letters. The eager pressure of the boy writer soon crumpled its leaves; and then the edges got frayed, and twisted up claw-like as if to hold fast the writing within, till at last, down what river Baitarani[17] I know not, its pages were swept away by merciful oblivion. Anyhow they escaped the pangs of a passage through the printing press and need fear no birth ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living the life of shame, When unto them in the Long, Long Night came the man-who-had-no-name; Bearing his prize of a black fox pelt, out of ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... was frightened before, now he was terrified almost out of his wits. And he began to claw frantically at Timothy ...
— The Tale of Timothy Turtle • Arthur Scott Bailey
... case she must claw well to windward to escape us! What's your name, my lad—Tom Davis, if I'm ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... night went black. He tore off his overcoat and coat, dodging a blow, and flung the garments over Dawes. The latter swore savagely. Morel, in his shirt-sleeves, was now alert and furious. He felt his whole body unsheath itself like a claw. He could not fight, so he would use his wits. The other man became more distinct to him; he could see particularly the shirt-breast. Dawes stumbled over Paul's coats, then came rushing forward. The young man's mouth was bleeding. It was the other man's mouth he was dying ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... you to the general. He'll let you off if there isn't any war, and he may, anyway. But he sure won't if you resist arrest." The soldiers seized his arms firmly. "Come along!" they said, and he went. Any one must go when a steel claw of the demon ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... of the royal waistcoat, flew to the king's ear, twittered, pointed out of the window with one claw, and, lying down on his back, pretended to be dead. Then he got up again, twittered afresh, pointed to the Wishing Cap, and, finally, convinced the king that this ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... Gods! how the sponges open and take in, And shut again! look, look! is not he blest That gets a seat in eye-reach of him? more, That comes in ear, or tongue-reach? O but most, Can claw his subtle elbow, or with a buz Fly-blow ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... saw on the hard palate, and the separation continued to the full extent backwards. A comparatively slight force exerted on the tumour either by the hand, or (when the tumour is small) by a pair of strong claw forceps, will suffice to break down the posterior attachments of the bone and remove it entire. The necessary laceration of the soft parts behind is so far an advantage, as it lessens the risk of haemorrhage from ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... I was, and Vineyard I am. I was loved and no longer am. I know not for what reason the Vineyard has lost its season." Her husband, who heard this, replied, "Vineyard thou wast, and Vineyard thou art: the Vineyard lost its season, for the lion's claw." The king, who understood what he meant, answered, "I entered the Vineyard; I touched the leaves; but I swear by my crown that I have not tasted the fruit." Then the steward understood that his wife was innocent, and the two made peace, and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... this has got to be learned.... A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows that if you didn't know the shape of a shore perfectly you would claw away from every bunch of timber because you would take the black shadow of it for a solid cape; and you see you would be getting scared to death every fifteen minutes by the watch. You would be fifty yards from shore all the time when you ought to be within fifty feet of it. You ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... woman; her cheeks were tight drawn into thinness, her lips were bloodlessly hard, there was an unknown furrow along her forehead, and she glared like the animal that defends itself with tooth and claw. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... back, and holding him by both shoulders with her small claw-like hands, she stood up face to face with him, and began to gaze at him with a ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... flea-biting M. Livret and his countrymen of late; and, to conclude, over in old England you may fly out against what you will, and there is little beyond a motherly smile, a nurse's rebuke, or a fool's rudeness to answer you. In quick-blooded France you have whip for whip, sneer, sarcasm, claw, fang, tussle, in a trice; and if you choose to comport yourself according to your insular notion of freedom, you are bound to march out to the measured ground at an invitation. To begin by saying that your principles are opposed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... this point speechless with astonishment, had not been able to interrupt her, and the dwarf had climbed to the table, where, perched at his elbow, she had poured her confidences into his ear; but as she drew his face to hers with her small claw-like hands he forgot all considerations of policy in an unconquerable repulsion, and ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... being closed, a pin on the under edge of lid goes into the hole, L, Fig. 3, and presses the end of the lever down in such a way as to raise the claw end of it from D. The thick dotted lines, F, F, F, Fig. 2, show position of lever when ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... alighted on our rigging, and was eventually captured as a prize for the zoological collection at San Francisco. He is a most interesting animal, something like an exaggerated bat. His wings are formed of a jet black membrane, and have a highly polished claw at the extremity of each, and his feet consist of five beautifully polished long black claws, with which he hangs on head downwards. His body is about twice the size of that of a very large rat, black and furry underneath, and with red foxy fur on his head and back. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... growing bluer and bluer to where the sky, even bluer than they, rests on the last ones! But he troubles himself as little about the mountains as the clouds trouble themselves about him. Day after day he works on with iron and claw-hammer, day after day he hammers slates and drives in nails, till he is done with hammering and nailing. One day man, tackle, ladder and scaffolding have disappeared. The removal of the ladder is just as dangerous as its setting up; but no one ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... and men to kiss and fondle them (as one woman has said, "to paw and claw them") and in turn they exert themselves to live up to what they imagine is expected of them, believing it to be a fair exchange ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... faithfully, indeed, that he was hailed by Tyndall in, the sixties as "the poet of science". Loving truth, "by which no man yet was ever harmed," he does not hesitate to portray nature "red in tooth and claw with ravine shrieking against the creed" of a moral and beneficent power. And when no reconciliation is obvious he can but "faintly trust the larger hope" and point hence where possibly the discords of life will be ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... blushed like the Orient, and gazed down to the gold-fish and silver-hued flying-fish, that wove the woof and warp of their wakes in bright, scaly tartans and plaids underneath where the Lady reclined; this charming balcony—exquisite retreat—has been cut away by Vandalic innovations. Ay, that claw-footed old gallery is no longer in fashion; in Commodore's ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... has some winter fruit that in December grew; My mither has a silk mantil the waft gaed never through; A sparrow's horn ye soon may find, there's ane on ev'ry claw, And twa upo' the gab o' it, and ye shall ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... weight of two men struggling violently. Patrick extricated himself somehow and rolled out into the grey dawn to find the sunken road filled with grey figures, in among the bivouacs and shell holes, stabbing at the sleeping Antrims. Here and there men were locked together, struggling tooth and claw; the air was vibrant with a ghastly pandemonium of grunts and shrieks; the sunken road ran like a slaughter-house gutter. There was only one thing to do, and that was to get out, so Patrick did so, driving before him ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... Grace's drawing-room. To-night Poppy made short work of Propriety. She waited with admirable patience while the large lady (whom she addressed affectionately as Tiny) followed up the last thin trail of mayonnaise; but when Tiny showed a disposition to toy with the intricacies of an empty claw, Poppy protested. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... I cannot discern the origin of the pseudo-Oriental legend which declares that the "crow of the wilderness" (raven) taught Cain to bury his brother by slaying a brother crow, and scraping a grave for it with beak and claw. The murderous bird then perched upon a palm-tree, whose branches, before erect, have ever drooped, and croaked the truth into Adam's ear: hence it has ever been of evil augury to mankind. The hoopoe, which the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... produced probably by exuberance of nourishment supplied to the foetus, as in monstrous births with additional limbs; many of these enormities are propagated and continued as a variety at least, if not as a new species of animal. I have seen a breed of cats with an additional claw on every foot; of poultry also with an additional claw and with wings to their feet; and of others without rumps. Mr. Buffon" (who, by the way, surely, was no more "Mr. Buffon" than Lord Salisbury is "Mr. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... stone, which is harder than clunch and so more suitable for bearing a weight. The Norman stonework was cut with an axe, the Transition with a chisel. The Early English is bolster-tooled; the Decorated ashlar (including the bays on the south side of the nave) is claw-tooled, the mouldings being scraped; the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins |
