"Crab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Clerambault resisted feebly, for he knew that nothing can be done to convince a young man who has made himself part of a system. Discussion is hopeless at that age. Earlier there is some chance to act on him, when, as it were, the hermit-crab is looking for his shell; and later something may be done when the shell begins to wear and be uncomfortable; but when the coat is new, the only thing is to let him wear it while it fits him. If he grows, or shrinks, he will get another. We will force no one, but let no one try ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... her shoulder. "I can't, either," he said, and laughed a little, as if incapable of understanding the reason. "I think late eating doesn't agree with me. It must have been the deviled crab." ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... old. He was small, thin, a little crooked, with long hands resembling the claws of a crab. His faded hair, scanty and slight, like the down on a young duck, allowed his scalp to be plainly seen. The brown, crimpled skin of his neck showed the big veins which sank under his jaws and reappeared at his temples. He was regarded in the district ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... thought I had seen you before. I see how it is; this great girl is like Jack Ranger; she wants to get you into a scrape, that you may be marked as well as herself! But I'll defend you, never fear! It is not a crab-stick that can frighten me! Come with me, and see who dares to hinder us!" He now caught her hand, and tried to ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... twang of the mother; but I love to graff on such a crab-tree; she may bear good fruit ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... Crab. [Cuneiform] Lion. [Cuneiform] Virgin. [Cuneiform] Scales. [Cuneiform] Scorpion. [Cuneiform] Bow. [Cuneiform] Capricornus [Cuneiform] ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... muff at rowing, though, and kept "catching a crab," which disaster he accounted for by declaring that the fishes would keep holding on to his oar when he dipped it into the water; but the Palaeotherium, who was in the bow of the boat, and consequently ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... before he came up with Cad Sills again. Then he spied her at nightfall, reclining under the crab-apple tree at Hannan's Landing. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... barbarian tides have been charging them for twenty years, and gradually torn away the soil above and beneath their roots. The sand around,—soft beneath and thinly crusted upon the surface,—is everywhere pierced with holes made by a beautifully mottled and semi-diaphanous crab, with hairy legs, big staring eyes, and milk-white claws;—while in the green sedges beyond there is a perpetual rustling, as of some strong wind beating among reeds: a marvellous creeping of "fiddlers," ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... back, {like} a horseman, {first} in this direction and {then} in that, thou didst guide his easy mouth with the purple bridle. 'Twas summer and the middle of the day, and the bending arms of the Crab, that loves the sea-shore, were glowing with the heat of the sun; the stag, fatigued, was reclining his body on the grassy earth, and was enjoying the coolness from the shade of a tree. By inadvertence the boy Cyparissus ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... history into poetry. For it is perfectly possible to add any number of details to a historical statement, and to make it more prosaic with every added word. As, for instance, "The lake was sounded out of a flat-bottomed boat, near the crab-tree at the corner of the kitchen-garden, and was found to be a thousand feet nine inches deep, with a muddy bottom." It thus appears that it is not the multiplication of details which constitutes poetry; nor their subtraction which constitutes ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... whenever their drunkenness permitted the freedom, and he had no better gifts for the women who were kind to him than cruelty and neglect. One of his many imprisonments was the result of a monstrous ferocity. 'Unluckily in a quarrel,' he tells you gravely, 'I ran a crab-stick into a woman's eye'; and well did he deserve his sojourn in the New Prison. At another time he rewarded the keeper of a coffee-house, who supported him for six months, by stealing her watch; and, when she grumbled at his insolence, he reflected, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... (He goes to the window and gives a low whistle. A stranger in knickerbockers jumps in and advances with a crab-like movement.) Good! here you are. Allow me to present you to Mr. ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... flute and ranked Rossini above Wagner, Arthur Schopenhauer said some notable things about music. "Art is ever on the quest," is a wise observation of his, "a quest, and a divine adventure"; though this restless search for the new often ends in plain reaction, progress may be crab-wise and still be progress. I fear that "progress" as usually understood is a glittering "general idea" that blinds us to the truth. Reform in art is not like reform in politics; you can't reform the St. Matthew ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i' the mesh, And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh; I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws, Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws! He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow, For he carries the taint of a musky ship — the reek of the slaver's dhow!" The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and cold, And the Captains Three full courteously peered down at the ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... with nothing worse than car dust on my tailor-built khaki. Why, even them bold Liberty bond patriots who commute on the 8:03 are tired of asking me when I'm going to be sent over to tell Pershing how it ought to be done. But when it comes to an old crab of a swivel chair major chuckin' 'bomb-proofer' in my teeth—well, I guess that'll be about all. Here's where I get a revise or quit. ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... the other doorway. Once he froze as the officer strode by, Lablet in attendance. But what the painted warrior was looking for was a crystal box on a shelf to Raf's left. When he had pointed that out to an underling he was off again, and Raf was free to continue his crab's progress. ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... contrivance to this of Flies shall we find in most other Animals, such as all kinds of Flies and case-wing'd creatures; nay, in a Flea, an Animal abundantly smaller then this Fly. Other creatures, as Mites, the Land-Crab, &c. have onely one small very sharp Tallon at the end of each of their legs, which all drawing towards the center or middle of their body, inable these exceeding light bodies to suspend and fasten themselves to almost ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... Delicates of the like Nature; That our Climate of itself, and without the Assistances of Art, can make no further Advances towards a Plumb than to a Sloe, and carries an Apple to no greater a Perfection than a Crab: That [our [2]] Melons, our Peaches, our Figs, our Apricots, and Cherries, are Strangers among us, imported in different Ages, and naturalized in our English Gardens; and that they would all degenerate and fall away into the Trash of our own Country, if they were wholly neglected by the Planter, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and did truly kick maybe a dozen, before that they were content to be gone. And by this thing shall you know of their calm and foolish assurance; but yet were they seemingly without courage; for they made not to attack me. Yet a true crab of this day been wishful to pinch me, had I put ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... spinning seeds, Called to his appleseeds in the ground, Vast chestnut-trees, with their butterfly nations, Called to his seeds without a sound. And the chipmunk turned a "summer-set," And the foxes danced the Virginia reel; Hawthorne and crab-thorn bent, rain-wet, And dropped their flowers in his night-black hair; And the soft fawns stopped for his perorations; And his black eyes shone through the forest-gleam, And he plunged young hands into new-turned earth, And prayed ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... though the latter endures and even likes it for his amusement, he gives him to understand that he looks on his fidelity as only securable by the bastinado, and makes him the subject of his practical jokes. The respectable giant Morgante dies of the bite of a crab, as if to spew on what trivial chances depends the life of the strongest. Margutte laughs himself to death at sight of a monkey putting his boots on and off; as though the good-natured poet meant at once to express his contempt ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... is!" said Phillis, in an awe-struck voice. "When we are tired we must come here to rest ourselves. How prettily those baby waves seem to babble! it is just like the gurgle of baby laughter. And look at Laddie splashing in that pool: he is after that poor little crab. Come here, you rogue!" But Laddie, intent upon his sport, only cocked his ear restlessly and refused ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... sketched out as a simple furrow in the embryo to its mature condition. So complete is the sequence, that the plate on which their embryonic changes are illustrated contains more than thirty figures, all representing different phases of their growth. There is not a living Crab represented so fully in any of our scientific works as is that one species of Trilobite whose whole story Barrande has traced from the egg to its adult size. Such facts should make those who rest their fanciful theories of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... sat down at the end of the table and began to butter a hot biscuit, "and let the crab-grass and pussley weeds literally choke out the best stand of cotton I ever laid my eyes on. No, siree, not me. I'd hire hands, but all the niggers have gone to town where there are more back-doors to live at; no, there is nothing for me to do but to look out ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... looked they saw one of the nuts roll down a little mound of sand. Then they noticed that a big land crab was on the tiny hill and it was evident that the nut ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... shoulder I noted to my dismay an enormous land-crab towing our dory seaward. It was a harrowing moment. As agreed upon, we waited for Triplett to take the initiative and in the interim I took a hasty inventory of our reception committee. The general impression was that of great beauty and physique entirely unadorned except for a narrow, ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... delightfully confused coup-d'oeil. The small area of the island had compelled some of the buildings to be perched, as it were, on the piles, which were entangled in the rough currents of the river. The huge beams, blackened by time, and worn by the water, seemed like the claws of an enormous crab, and presented a fantastic appearance. The little yellow streams, which were like cobwebs stretched amid this ancient foundation, quivered in the darkness, as if they had been the leaves of some old oak forest, while the river engulfed ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... of the stuff brushed ship side. One of the boys cried, "Ho, there is a crab!" It sat indeed on a criss-cross of broken reeds, and it seemed to stare at us solemnly. "Do not all see that it came from land, and land ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... Owenia acidula, F. v. M.; called also Native Nectarine and Native Quince. Petalostigma quadriloculare, F. v. M.; called also Crab-tree, Native Quince, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... he said pleasantly, grabbing a vicious crab by its flippers, and smiling at its wild attempts to bite. "You see I am busy, but ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... smoke without fire") he had lived a very queer life. Indeed, he was held in such universal awe and abhorrence that we used to fly at his approach, and never spoke of him amongst ourselves saving in such terms as "Auld dour crab," or "The ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... and plaice lay cold at his heart, As cold as his marble slab; And he thought he felt, in every part, The pincers of scalded crab. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... suggestion is on me again; I was mesmerised once and behold, since that time, I have yielded myself to suggestions of crime: I have compassed the death of an innocent "dab," And attempted to poison an elderly crab. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... in the Horticultural Palace was comprehensive enough to include about all of the fruits produced in the State. Eighty-nine varieties of Wisconsin apples were shown. There were shown 18 kinds of Wisconsin grown strawberries; 5 varieties of crab apples; 47 kinds of plums; 4 kinds of pears; 5 kinds of gooseberries, and 4 kinds ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... the world" (498. 90). With these people also the first woman was chan.a.e.lewadi (Mother E-lewadi), the ancestress of the present race of natives. She was drowned, while canoeing, and "became a small crab of a description still named after ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... to her audience there was nothing amusing about this prescription. Stranger remedies than that had been ordered by the wise doctors of the day: a broth of beetle's legs, crab's eyes, the heads of mice, bruised flies to cure the sting ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... was, as you know, sanguis, in blood, ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra, the soil, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... first eminence, in whose day (fortunately perhaps for me) I was not destined to appear before the public, or to abide the Herculean crab-tree of his criticism, Dr. Johnson, has said, in his preface to Shakspeare, that—"Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature." My representations of nature, whatever may be said of their justness, are not general, unless we ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... in no greater danger of becoming effeminate than Achilles when he wore girl's clothes. She was seventeen, an age bewitching for boys to look up to and men to look down on. The puzzle of the school was how to account for her close relationship to old Rippenger. Such an apple on such a crab-tree seemed monstrous. Heriot said that he hoped Boddy would marry old Rippenger's real daughter, and, said he, that's birch-twigs. I related his sparkling speech to Julia, who laughed, accusing him, however, of impudence. She let me see a portrait of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... after another hermit-crab!" cried Leslie. "I was wondering where he could be." They both raced up to him and reached him just as he had apparently attained the end of his quest and backed out of ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... hear the song of the catbird wake I' the boughs o' the gnarled wild-crab, Or there where the snows of the dogwood shake, That the silvery sunbeams stab: And it seems to me that a magic lies In the crystal sweet of its notes, That a myriad blossoms open their eyes As ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... call'd the Beard, and also particular care must be taken to examine whether there are any Crabs in them, for they are very poisonous, and as they lie in the Mouth of the Mussel, may easily be discover'd; they are commonly as large as a Pea, and of the shape of a Sea-Crab, but are properly Sea-Spiders: the Mussels however where you find them, are not unwholesome, and it is only the eating of this little Animal, which has been the occasion of People's swelling after they had eaten Mussels, but the goodness of the Fish is well enough worth the Care of ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... flannel suit had strangled her as her bosom heaved with exertion, and it had given way before the fierce clutch she made at it. The bow oar was a staunch and steady rower, but he was human. The blade of his oar lingered in the water; a little more and he would have caught a crab, and perhaps lost the race by his ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Lady-Fingers. In the course of time they got around to the Topic of Modern Music. All agreed that the Music which seemed to catch on with the low-browed Public was exceedingly punk. They rather fancied "Parsifal" and were willing to concede that Vogner made good in Spots, but Mascagni they branded as a Crab. As for Victor Herbert and J.P. Sousa—back to ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... droopy that morning—more green crab-apples probably. Aunt Elsie's gout. Oliver's marriage—she had been so relieved about Nancy ever since she had met her, though it had been hard to reconcile domestic virtues with Nancy's bobbed hair. She would ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... upon the shore of a broad bay which communicates with Lake Champlain by an opening a mile and a half wide, bounded upon the north by Cumberland Head, and on the south by Crab Island. In this bay, about two miles from the western shore, Macdonough's fleet lay anchored in double line, stretching north and south. The four large vessels were in the front rank, prepared to meet the brunt of the conflict; while the galleys formed a second line in the rear. The morning of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... of turning upon them ferociously. The elder braves lay before their lodges, many of them idling in the sunshine, others busied themselves making arrows, fitting handles to stone knives or knotting crab nets. Two slaves, brought home prisoners by a war party, were hollowing out a dugout, which the Powhatans used instead of the birchbark canoes preferred by other tribes. They had cut down an oak tree that, judging from its rings, must have been an acorn when Powhatan was a papoose, ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... confirmed Mr. Rennie's views to a large extent, more especially with reference to the construction of an entirely new outfall, by making an artificial channel from Kindersleys Cut to Crab-Hole Eye anchorage, by which a level lower by nearly twelve feet would be secured for the outfall waters; but he preferred leaving the river open to the tide as high as Wisbeach, rather than place a lock with draw-doors at Lutton Leam Sluice, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... the arches. The piers, arches, reeds and columns bear legendary decorative motifs of the transitional plant to animal life in the forms of tortoise and other shell motifs - kelp and its analogy to prehistoric lobster, skate, crab and sea urchin. The water-bubble motif is carried through all vertical members which symbolize the Crustacean Period, which is the second ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... are found are almost always confined to four forms—'Oldhamia', whose precise nature is not known, whether plant or animal; 'Lingula', a kind of mollusc; 'Trilobites', a crustacean animal, having the same essential plan of construction, though differing in many details from a lobster or crab; and Hymenocaris, which is also a crustacean. So that you have all the 'Fauna' reduced, at this period, to four forms: one a kind of animal or plant that we know nothing about, and three undoubted ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... went, climbing the waves insanely now, sometimes bow on, sometimes crab-wise—but ever on. Each wave that was topped gave a better view of the yacht, also enabling those on that wallowing craft to see the tug, as evidence of which the continuous blasts of the whistle were borne to ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... if you had seen that eminent scholar when he got outside his library by accident and wanted to get back, you wouldn't have thought he was the anybody, and would probably have likened him to a disestablished hermit-crab—in respect, that is, of such a one's desire to disappear into his shell, and that respect only. For no hermit-crab would ever cause an acquaintance to wonder why he should shave at all if he could do it no better than that; nor what he was talking to himself ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... tremble all over. A reg'lar old miser he was, with lots of money, and a bully apple orchard. 'Let's go there some night and help ourselves,' says Billy Evans, one day. 'Dogs,' says I. 'Only one,' says he; 'I know him, and so do you—old Snaggletooth; I gave him almost all the meat we took for crab bait the day we didn't catch ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... has seen him catching crabs there in a very novel way. Finding a quiet bit of water where the crabs are swimming about, he trails his brush over the surface till one rises and seizes it with his claw (a most natural thing for a crab to do), whereupon the fox springs away, jerking the crab to land. Though a fox ordinarily is careful as a cat about wetting his tail or feet, I shall not be surprised to find some day for myself that the fisherman ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... have discovered how to enjoy a good meal, and yet keep the cost of living within reasonable limits. Here is my method. I order and eat, a lobster, two pounds of pork chops, a large-sized pot of pate de foies gras, a dressed crab, and three plates of toasted cheese. Having finished this dainty little dinner, I find that I can eat nothing more for at least a week! That the pleasing fare does not make me ill, is proved by my friends declaring that I look like a picture of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... Jacques saw—this scene; and then the wedding in the spring, and the tour through the parishes for days together, lads and lasses journeying with them; and afterward the new home with a bigger stoop than any other in the village, with some old, gnarled crab-apple-trees and lilac bushes, and four years of happiness, and a little child that died; and all the time Jacques rising in the esteem of Michelin the lumber-king, and sent on inspections, and to organize camps; ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... Maids heard the goblins cry: "Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy: Apples and quinces, Lemons and oranges, Plump unpecked cherries, Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheeked peaches, Swart-headed mulberries, Wild free-born cranberries, Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries, Apricots, strawberries;— All ripe together In summer weather,— Morns that pass by, Fair eves that fly; Come buy, come buy: Our grapes fresh from the vine, Pomegranates full and fine, Dates and sharp bullaces, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... who had expended a large fortune, summoned his heir to his death-bed, and told him that he had a secret of great importance to impart to him, which might be some compensation for the injury he had done him. The secret was that crab sauce was better ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... chanced that these things were said in the hour which, when it passes over the world, all the wishes uttered by men are granted. And so it was with these Indians. For the first became a Leech, the second a Spotted Frog, the third a Crab, which is washed up and down with the tide, and the fourth a Fish. Ere this there had been in all the world none of the creatures which dwell in the water, and now they were there, and of all kinds. And the river came ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... 'The plucking office: the crab and nick nest: the pip and bone quarry: the rafflearium: the trumpery: the blaspheming box: the elbow shaking shop: the wholesale ague ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the land, and a landsman was rowing it. He could tell by the uneven splash of the oars, the slish along the surface as a crab was caught, and the muffled curse as ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... inquire what kind of patties were inviting the passer-by on Mr Altham's counter. They were a very large variety: oyster, crab, lobster, anchovy, and all kinds of fish; sausage-rolls, jelly, liver, galantine, and every sort of meat; ginger, honey, cream, fruit; cheese-cakes, almond and lemon; little open tarts called bry ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... replied they were absent but the Bidford sippers were at home, and, I suppose, continued the sheepkeeper, they will be sufficient for you; and so, indeed, they were; he was forced to take up his lodging under that tree [the crab-tree, long ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... from narrating precisely what ensued. You understand that there was a great deal of strong language, mingled with soothing "who-ho's" while the leg was examined; that John stood by with quite as much emotion as if he had been a cunningly carved crab-tree walking-stick, and that Arthur Donnithorne presently repassed the iron gates of the pleasure-ground ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... "with her hopping and trotting. She travels sideways like a crab, so she does. She has a squint in her walk. Her boots have a bias outwards. I'm getting bow-legged, so I am, slewing round corners after her. I'll have to put my foot ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... phenomenon is to be observed in the blind crab (Cambaras pellucidus), which is also found in the Mammoth Cave, for in this being, according to Professor Von Leydig, the little warts on the interior feelers, which constitute the organ of smell, have also received ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... plainly on the apples. While some had normal size and form, many of them were below size, gnarled, cracked or undeveloped and abnormal. Most all of them had rough blotches or rings about the calix or around the body. Malformed apples were picked not larger than a crab, with rough, cracked, leather-like skin, which looked more like a black walnut than ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... about this," admonished Frank. "The wonderful phenomenon you see before you, my friend, is not a horse at all. It is merely a crab shell from which the ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... out of the eight, one hundred and thirty miles of sun-baked, crab-holed, practically trackless plains, no sign of human habitation anywhere, cracks that would swallow a man—"hardly enough wood to boil a quart pot," the Fizzer says, and a sun-temperature hovering about 160 degrees (there ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... new-fangled iron pots are sunk or blowed to atoms. Why, look at the Great Eastern herself, the biggest kettle of 'em all, what a precious mess she made of herself! At first she wouldn't move at all, when they tried to launch her; then they had to shove her off sidewise like a crab; then she lost her rudder in a gale, an' smashed all her cabin furniture like a bad boy with his toys. Bah! I only hope I may be there when she bu'sts, for it'll be a ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... be last an' the last shall be first," Gibney quoted piously. "Don't be a crab, Scraggs. Pray ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... mitigating circumstances." Youth is just when it is right; it is cruel when it is wrong; and it is inexorable in any case. If we are ever to be tried for our crimes let us have juries of white whiskered old boys who like tobacco, crab flakes, light wines ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... (always, cunning fellow, close to the hinge, where the fish is), and then sucks out their life. Now, if the anemone stuck to him, it would be carried under the sand daily, to its own disgust. It prefers, therefore, the dead whelk, inhabited by a soldier crab, Pagurus Bernhardi (Pl. II. Fig. 2), of which you may find a dozen anywhere as the tide goes out; and travels about at the crab's expense, sharing with him the offal which is his food. Note, moreover, that the soldier crab is the most hasty ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... probably the best fish that swims—better even than the pompano of the Gulf—and when you say that you are saying about all there is to be said for a fish. And the big crabs of the Pacific side are the hereditary princes of the crab family. They look like spread-eagles; and properly prepared they taste like Heaven. I often wonder what the crabsters buy one-half so precious as the stuff they sell—which is a quotation from Omar, with original interpolations by me. The domestic cheese ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... before this book is published. Here again I find interesting records of imitative dancing. One dance imitates the swimming movements of the large lizard (Varanus), another is an imitation of the movements of a crab, another imitates those of a pigeon, and another those of a pelican. At a dance which I witnessed in the Roro village of Seria a party from Delena danced the "Cassowary" dance; and Father Egedi says it is certainly so called because its movements ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... red as a crab, was standing in the middle of the room, rolling her eyes and prodding the air with her fingers. The bank clerks were standing round red in the face too, and, evidently harassed, were looking at ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Taterleg did not appear so bow-legged, but he waddled like a crab as they went toward the house to join the companion of their ride. The Duke stopped on the high ground near the house, turned, looked off over the great pasture that had been Philbrook's battle ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... guided by its grunts and croaks. Then off it went again, its tremendous leap carrying it far into the fog. Suddenly, Cap'n Bill tripped and would have fallen flat had not Trot and Button-Bright held him up. Then he saw that he had stumbled over the claw of a gigantic land-crab, which lay sprawled out upon ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... had a bedroom facing the sea. He led Malling to it, shut the door, gave Malling a cane chair, sat down himself, in a peculiar, crab-like posture, upon ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... make jokes about that most succulent edible, the crab, when the poet Crabbe is mentioned in their presence—and who can resist an obvious pun—are not really far astray. There can be little doubt but that a remote ancestor of George Crabbe took his name from the "shellfish," as we all persist, in spite ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... This said, his visage shone with beams divine, And more than mortal was his voice's sound, Godfredo's thought to other acts incline, His working brain was never idle found. But in the Crab now did bright Titan shine, And scorched with scalding beams the parched ground, And made unfit for toil or warlike feat His soldiers, weak with labor, faint ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... well in the Doctor's prospectus, and Miss Zoe Birch—(a pretty blossom it is, fifty-five years old, during two score of which she has dosed herself with pills; with a nose as red and a face as sour as a crab-apple)—this is all mighty well in a prospectus. But I should like to know who would take Miss Zoe for a mother, or would have ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... off a dresser." He is now leading in a girl, handsome no doubt, but who, nevertheless, does not possess sixpence, or sixpence worth for her portion. Not so the sword-fish we have pointed out to you a while ago, the tail of whose short coat lay as closely to him as that of a crab. The cassoway has secured a girl who, in point of wealth and dower, will be the making of him. However, you know the secret, Solomon says that a soft answer turneth away wrath; but what will not a soft question do, when put to a pretty girl, ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Dove," or "The Crab," as the collegians called it when it skidded sideways, perched precariously that well-known, beloved youth, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. He clutched his pestersome banjo and was vigorously strumming the strings and apparently howling a ballad, lost in the unearthly turmoil. ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... Oo; copra making; marvels of the cocoanut-groves; the sagacity of pigs; and a crab that ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... must remain in that stall and get fat; when he is fat enough I shall, eat him." Grethel began to cry, but it was all useless, for the old witch made her do as she wished. So a nice meal was cooked for Hansel, but Grethel got nothing else but a crab's claw. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... bracken fern was gathered from every cotil, and dried for apple-storing, for bedding for the cherished cow, for back-rests for the veilles, and seats round the winter fire; when peaches, apricots, and nectarines made the walls sumptuous red and gold; when the wild plum and crab-apple flourished in secluded roadways, and the tamarisk dropped its brown pods upon the earth. And all this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The Crab said: "Would you like to run a race with a stupid creature like me? I will try to run as fast as you. I know I am small, so suppose we go to the scales and see how much heavier you are. As you are ten times larger than I, of course ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... to her original, Mrs. Behn has dealt with the somewhat rude material in a very apt and masterly way: she has, to advantage, omitted the old King, Emanuel, King of Portugal, Alvero, father to Maria (Florella), and the two farcical friars, Crab and Cole; she adds Elvira, and whereas in Lust's Dominion the Queen at the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... mother, so that even the poorest may make a good figure; and many come to school without any hats, as though they had run away from home. Some wear the white gymnasium suit. There is one of Schoolmistress Delcati's boys who is red from head to foot, like a boiled crab. Several are dressed ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... you on and on!" she cried reproachfully. "I was so anxious to find this particular crab. Isn't he a pretty fellow?" and she lifted the box that her father might watch the tiny creature's play. "I shall go at once and make you ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... crab," said De Sylva. "There are jumping crabs all around here. It will not hurt you. It is ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... said, reflectively, "I don't know as I've ever heard anybody come right out and call him names. Anybody but Esther Tidditt, that is; she's down on him like a sheet anchor on a crab. Sometimes Elviry snaps out somethin' spiteful, but most of that's jealousy, I cal'late. You see, Elviry had her cap all set for this Egbert widower—that is, all hands seems to cal'late she had—and then she began to find her nose was bein' put out ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... superior-to-others trick. Most of his qualities were likable, and he was likable, though a queer fellow in some ways, said his best friends—the ones who called him "Petro." When the ship played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, Peter ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... can hunt up the men that carry the light. Maybe they are the ones that are killing off the horses. Any way, you can wash your own dishes from now on. It will do you good. If I had of known you were the crab you are I'll say I would never have come. You are welcome to my share of the outfit. I hope some one shoots me and puts me out of my misery quick if I ever show symptoms of wanting to camp out again. I am going ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... that, with this awful mystery always about us, we can go on on our little lives as cheerfully as we do; that on the edge of that mystical shore we yet can think so much about the crab in the lobster-pot, the eel in the sand, the sail in the distance, the child's ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... bunting who sits on the bare branches at the top of a tall red oak, throwing back his little head and pouring out sweet rills of melody. Near him is the dickcissel, incessantly singing from the twig of a crab-apple; these three make a tireless trio, singing each hour of the day. The bunting's nest is in a low elm bush close to the fence where a wee brown bird sits listening to the strains of the bright little bird above and the little dickcissels have ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... till we are not more than twenty or thirty feet above sea level, and notice that a spur of land hooks out into the sea, forming quite a little bay, very rugged, and very rocky, but still very convenient as a haven in light weather. Here I keep my crab and lobster pots, as it is easily accessible from the house. I call it Baie ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... tell, child,—he might talk Sam Deacon into letting us keep the house, at least. We've got to live somewhere, you know, Faith. It's no sort of use for me to talk to him,—he's as stiff as a crab tree—and I ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... the Bear's[185] head have the Twins their seat, Under his chest the Crab, beneath his feet The mighty Lion darts a ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... above her head. Up from the darkness flew an incredible shape—like a monstrous, armored flat-backed crab; angled spikes protruded from it; its huge body was ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... our host as before, and, if anything, more irritably. "Say, you work like a crab! What a motion! If you had more head and less guts you could do this better. A fine specimen you are! This is what comes of riding about in taxis and eating midnight suppers instead of exercising. Wake up! Wake up! A belt would have kept your stomach in long ago. A little less food and less sleep, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... if the servant maids had not pleased the farm boys they used to get a branch of the crab apple and put ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... attempt appears to have been made to connect the novelist with the controversy which presently arose out of Cibber's well-known letter to Pope. In August 1742, the month following its publication, among the pamphlets to which it gave rise, was announced The Cudgel; or, a Crab-tree Lecture, To the Author of the Dunciad. "By Hercules Vinegar, Esq." This very mediocre satire in verse is still to be found at the British Museum; but even if it were not included in Fielding's general ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... all singing with great variety of fine shrill notes; and we saw some of their nests with young ones in them. The water-fowls are ducks (which had young ones now, this being the beginning of the spring in these parts), curlews, galdens, crab-catchers, cormorants, gulls, pelicans, and some water-fowl, such as I have not ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... a former servant of Hans Sloane, lived in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. "His house, a barber-shop, was known as 'Don Saltero's Coffee-House.' The curiosities were in glass cases and constituted an amazing and motley collection—a petrified crab from China, a 'lignified hog,' Job's tears, Madagascar lances, William the Conqueror's flaming sword, and Henry the Eighth's coat ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Sacrament He had, in his words of institution, superadded the offer of His Body for the strengthening of faith and that these words were not useless or unmeaning, but of potent efficacy through the Word of God. 'I would eat even crab-apples,' said Luther, without asking why, if the Lord put them before me, and said "Take and eat."' He fired up when Zwingli answered that the passage in St. John 'broke Luther's neck,' the expression not being as familiar to him ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... the pack-train went into camp, and Churchill, slinging the grip on his back, started the steep climb for the summit. For the first time, on that precipitous wall, he realized how tired he was. He crept and crawled like a crab, burdened by the weight of his limbs. A distinct and painful effort of will was required each time he lifted a foot. An hallucination came to him that he was shod with lead, like a deep-sea diver, and it was all he could do to resist the desire to ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... more timid than otherwise, though essentially amiable. I knew a tragedian once who, after killing seventeen Indians, a road-agent, and a gross of cowboys between eight and ten P.M. every night for sixteen weeks, working six nights a week, was afraid of a mild little soft-shell crab that lay defenceless on a plate before him on the evening of the seventh night of the last week. Tragedians make agreeable companions, I can tell you; and if J. Brutus Davenport is a tragedian, I think Mrs. Pedagog would do well to let him have the suite, provided, of course, ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... and picturesque things Ireland possesses some others altogether detestable. The car of the country, for instance, is the most abominable of all civilised vehicles. Why the numskull who invented the crab-like machine turned it round sidewise is as absolutely inconceivable as that since dog-carts have been introduced into the West the car should survive. But it does survive to the discomfort and fatigue ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... f. A Creuice, or Crayfish [see l.618]; (By some Authors, but not so properly, the Crab-fish is also tearmed so.) Escrevisse de mer. A Lobster; or, (more properly) aSea-Creuice. Cotgrave. ACrevice, or a Crefish, or as some write it, aCrevis Fish, are in all respects the same in form, and are a Species of the Lobster, but of ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... is blind also) had given the Blind Man a Dog, who led him out in the morning to a seat in the sun under the crab-tree, and held his hat for wayside alms, and brought him ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and the Natives know nothing of Cultivation. There are, indeed, growing wild in the wood a few sorts of Fruit (the most of them unknown to us), which when ripe do not eat amiss, one sort especially, which we called Apples, being about the size of a Crab Apple it is black and pulpey when ripe, and tastes like a Damson; it hath a large hard stone or Kernel, and grows on Trees or Shrubs.* (* The ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... there was a beautiful little garden north of the old house tended and loved by a beautiful lady. The lady died, and the garden did not long outlive her. Its place was taken by a crab-apple orchard, which flourished, bore blossom and fruit, until in its turn it grew old, while the garden had faded to a dim tradition. But one day in August, a few years ago, I discovered under the shade of an ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... the seasons prophetic of decline. So now we are in 226; look well around you; note your whereabouts;—for there is no resting here. You have seen? you have noted? On again then, I beseech you; and speedily. And, please, backwards: playing as it were the crab in time; and not content till the whole pralaya is skipped, and you stand on the far shore, in the sunset of an elder day: looking now forward, into futurity, from 390, perhaps 394 B.C.; over first a half-cycle ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... conscious silences of brooding woods, Centurial shadows, cloisters of the elk:, Yet here was sense of undefined regret, Irreparable loss, uncertain what: Was all this grandeur but anachronism, A shell divorced of its informing life, Where the priest housed him like a hermit-crab, An alien to that faith of elder days That gathered round it this fair shape of stone? 330 Is old Religion but a spectre now, Haunting the solitude of darkened minds, Mocked out of memory by the sceptic day? Is there no corner safe from peeping Doubt, Since Gutenberg ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... up that feather?" But the horse added, "Come! weep not! after all 'tis not a task, but a trifle." Then they went along by the sea, and the horse said to him, "Let me out to graze, and then keep watch till thou seest a crab come forth from the sea, and then say to him, 'I'll catch thee.'"—So Tremsin let his horse out to graze, and he himself stood by the sea-shore, and watched and watched till he saw a crab come swimming along. Then he said to the crab, "I'll catch thee."—"Oh! ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... creation. Some think him cut out from the poisonous yew, Beneath whose ill shade no plant ever grew. Some say he's a birch, a thought very odd; For none but a dunce would come under his rod. But I'll tell the secret; and pray do not blab: He is an old stump, cut out of a crab; And England has put this crab to a hard use, To cudgel our bones, and for drink give us ver-juice; And therefore his witnesses justly may boast, That none are more properly knights of the post, But here Mr. Wood complains that we mock, Though he may be a ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Baltimore be excepted," said Hervey, "but yours are, in truth, most excellent. Perhaps you can't expect to equal us in a specialty of ours. You'll recall old Tom Cotton's inn, out by the East River, and how unapproachably he serves oyster, crab, lobster and ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... prairie dog some crackers and cheese. "You see, dad told me I could pick up some pet animals while I was in Texas, and I got quite a collection while dad was in the hospital. Here is one in my pocket," and the boy took a horned toad out of his pocket, about as big as a soft-shelled crab, and put it in the old ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... the least, since the Reformation, whose chief propagators were professors in the universities,—Luther, Reuchlin, Melancthon,—every permanent and pervading conquest of the new and good over the old and worn-out, has issued from the lecture-room. Whatever sticklers for old forms and crab-like progress may be found, there is always an overbalancing power. The unity of Germany as one nation has never stood a better chance of being realized than now, when the very men who were students and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... every branch, as though shaken by some invisible hand, dead foliage dropped to earth in a continuous shower; softly pattering from beech to maple, or with the heavier fall of ash-leaves, while at long intervals sounded the thud of apples tumbling from a crab-tree. Thick-clustered berries arrayed the hawthorns, the briar was rich in scarlet fruit; everywhere the frost had left the adornment of its subtle artistry. Each leaf upon the hedge shone silver-outlined; spiders' webs, woven from stein to stem, glistened in the morning radiance; ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... undoubtedly, evolution has won the day. Nevertheless, in religious circles, old time prejudices and slow conservatism, clinging to its creeds, as the hermit crab clings to the cast-off shell of oyster or clam, still resist it. The great body of the Christian laity looks askance on it. And even in progressive America, one of the largest and most liberal of American denominations has recently formally tried and condemned one of its clergy for heresy, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... necessarily remain useless. Where Nature simply creates a genus, cultivation extends the species, and from an insignificant parent stock we propagate our finest varieties of both animals and vegetables. Witness the wild kale, parsnip, carrot, crab-apple, sloe, etc., all utterly worthless, but nevertheless the first parents of their ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker |
