"Snag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their neighbour and shoving him off the pavement, and always with an eye wide open for any adventure. As to the kind of adventure, they are not particular so long as it promises excitement. Sometimes they go through their whole school career without accident. More often they run up against a snag in the shape of some serious-minded and muscular person who objects to having his toes trodden on and being shoved off the pavement, and then they usually sober down, to the mutual advantage of themselves and the ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... when a lady who was playing cards threw down her cards and rushed with a shriek to her stateroom. I perceived then that there had been a peculiar motion to the boat and that it suddenly stopped. We found that one of the paddle-wheels was caught in a snag, but there was no harm done. It made us a little nervous, but we slept ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... for so many years! Its waters flowed thin and impotent over the rapids, lying in clear pools against the base of the black cliffs, and the current that had uprooted trees like feathers was turned aside by a snag. Where before the sheep had hung upon its flank hoping at last to swim at Hidden Water, the old ewes now strayed along its sandy bed, browsing upon the willows. From the towering black buttes that walled in Hell's Hip Pocket ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... isn't it?" he said, rather boyishly. "This is all I've got. It's an Indian charm I had given me down in New Mexico, but the tree is alive and growing. It isn't a sunken snag." ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... Mormon, again setting into motion the fiendish echoes. He was naked to the waist; he had lost flesh; he was haggard, worn, dirty, wet. While he pulled on a shirt Nas Ta Bega made the rope fast to a snag of a log of driftwood embedded in the sand, and the boat swung to shore. It was perhaps thirty feet long by half as many wide, crudely built of rough-hewn boards. The steering-gear was a long pole with a plank nailed to the end. The craft was empty save for another pole and plank, Joe's coat, ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... Rebels contested the passage; each step forward finds new and greater obstacles. The channel is as narrow as Harlem River and as crooked as a walk in the ramble of Central Park. Each elbow of the stream is muscular with snag and snare wherever the swift stream swoops around abruptly. Jagged abatis, driven piles, and artificial lumber, bar the way before us. To the right of us, to the left of us, behind us, stand up the bare parapets, crowned with airy lookout towers, where, at the coming ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the corps have struck a snag out here west of Benton. It's a bad place. You an' Henney were west in the hills when this survey was made. It's a deep wash—bad grade an' curves. The gang's stuck. An' Baxter swore, 'We've got to have Neale back ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... not, to my knowledge, written one novel in which his hero is represented as having achieved complacency. Mr. Merrick's heroes all undergo the very human experience of "hitting a snag." They are none of them represented as enjoying this experience; but none of them whimper and none ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... all he said, for Dick never liked to boast in advance of what he expected to accomplish, having learned from sad experience that very often a snag is apt to sink the craft freighted with hopes, and when ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... dipping about in the margin shallows, he either sets off with a rapid whir to some other feeding-ground up or down the stream, or alights on some half-submerged rock or snag out in the current, and immediately begins to nod and courtesy like a wren, turning his head from side to side with many other odd dainty movements that never fail to fix ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... Little Abby used to scout for her maw. "Yere comes another!" little Abby would cry, as she stampedes up all breathless, her childish face aglow. With that, my wife would take her hands outen the wash-tub, snag onto that savage with her little old Winchester, and quit winner ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... had figured it out that the city was a mirror reflecting himself, he grew excited. That was the kind of idea he had always been looking for. But at night in his bedroom when he started to write he hit a snag. He had thought he held in his mind the secret of the city. Yet when he came to write about it the secret slipped away and left him with nothing. He sat looking out of his bedroom window, noticing that the telephone poles in the ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... contemptuously. The idea was indeed absurd of finding a snag in the River Rhone; for a snag is formed by a floating tree, which is washed into the river by the undermining of the banks, and is then carried down until it gets lodged. There are millions of such trees in the Mississippi, but ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... and as soon as he was thrown into the deep river he sank below the surface; so his enemies went away believing that they had seen the last of him. But, in reality, he was carried down, half drowned, below the next bend in the river, where he fortunately came across a 'snag' floating in the water (a snag is, you know, a part of a tree or bush which floats very nearly under the surface of the water); and he held on to this snag, and by great good luck eventually came ashore ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... turn affects the rudder. (If we run down those fishermen the damages may be heavy.) But you see I have this advantage,—I know beforehand your system of navigation—you don't know mine. Let me inform your unpractised eyes, Miss Derrick, that the dark object just ahead of us is a snag." ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... the practice call it by the former name, the enemies by the latter. We were engaged at extra-illustrating Boswell's life of Johnson, and had already got together somewhat more than eleven thousand prints when we ran against a snag, an obstacle we never could surmount. We agreed that our work would be incomplete, and therefore vain, unless we secured a picture of the book with which the great lexicographer knocked down Osborne, the bookseller at ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... compensating castles near it; and the castles seemed as good as those of the theatre. Here and there some of them had been restored and were occupied, probably by robber barons who had gone into trade. Others were still ruinous, and there was now and then such a mere gray snag that March, at sight of it, involuntarily put his tongue to the broken tooth which he was keeping for the skill of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... leathers, and threw their hats at him, and shouted, and "hooshed" him round the yard, expecting he would buck with the saddle. But Callaghan only trotted into a corner and snorted. Usually, a horse that won't buck with a saddle is a "snag." Dave knew it. The chestnut he tackled for Brown did nothing with the saddle. HE was a snag. Dave remembered him and reflected. Callaghan walked boldly up to Dave, with his head high in the air, and snorted at him. He was a sorry-looking ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... and nonsense," I told him, "is the bait that will snag our fish. A trap for Pepe and ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... of comparatively smooth water that ran from top to bottom of the rapid. It often curved sharply, so that it made a very irregular line. Quick action would be necessary in many instances, so as to avoid contact with some snag that lay in ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... didn't exactly forget it. I was wondering how we could account for that if we accepted the shock theory. I guess we can't. I'm still up against it. I've struck a snag—maybe a stone ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... "Right, sonny," and "Better and better" commented his instructor, for the child took to it as a duck to water. In twenty minutes or so he had learnt to turn his paddle slantwise after the stroke, and to drag it so as to assist the steering; which was not always easy, for here and there a snag blocked the main channel, or a pebbly shallow where the eye had to search for the smooth V that signals the best water. Tilda watched him, marvelling at his strange aptitude, and once, catching her eye, he nodded; but still, as he mastered the knack, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a try-on all right," he added. "Evidence was against you, but they struck an unexpected snag. You'll have to keep it up, though"; and deciding "there was nothing in the yarn," the Dandy slept in the Quarters, and I in the House, leaving the doors and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... evidently did not intend that any boy, with a mind that turned to practical joking, should have a chance to exercise his evil propensities unchecked. Should such a thing be attempted the joker would find himself up against a snag immediately; and, as those posters announced, he was going to be harshly dealt with up to the ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... of Feliu's boats had yet come in;—doubtless they had been driven into some far-away bayous by the storm. The only boat at the settlement, the Carmencita, had been almost wrecked by running upon a snag three days before;—there was at least a fortnight's work for the ship-carpenter of Dead Cypress Point. And Feliu was sleeping as if nothing unusual had happened—the heavy sleep of a sailor, heedless of commotions and voices. And his men, Miguel ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... long hill, and with a short, thunder-like rumble crossed the bridge between the Sliver Place and Appledale. Perhaps the writer may be called to account for this romantic name: he will therefore give it here. Appledale was once called Snag-Orchard, on account of the old trees whose fugitive roots often found their way into the road, making great trouble, and causing great complaint from the citizens, who yearly ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... confusion. As fast as we cleared ourselves of one tree, the current bore us down upon another; as soon as we were clear above water, we were foul and entangled below. It was a pretty general average; but, what was worse than all a snag had intercepted and unshipped our rudder, and we were floating away from it, as it still remained fixed upon the sunken tree. We had no boat with us, not oven a dug-out—(a canoe made out of the trunk of a tree)—so one of the men climbed on shore by the limbs of an oak, and went ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... came and found the Red Un in agony, holding his jaw. Owing to the fact that he lay far back in an upper bunk, it took time to drag him into the light. It took more time to get his mouth open; once open, the Red Un pointed to a snag that should have given him trouble if it didn't, and ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... side with him. Major Holt had promised to send a first-class man to meet Joe at this place, with orders to take instructions from Joe. Joe said curtly: "You're to snag as many Security men as you can, place them more or less out of sight under the Platform here, and tell them to turn off their walkie-talkies and wait. No matter what happens, they're to wait right here until ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... days after that adventure, the Caroline, the largest and finest steam-boat upon the Mississippi, struck a snag in coming down the stream, and sank immediately. The river, however, being very low, the upper decks remained above water, and help coming down from the neighbouring plantations, all the passengers were soon brought on shore without ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... will hold up mine feeble hands for mine oldt friendt Custos (Arne's name was Augustine), for I know not who I wouldt waidt for, over andt above mine oldt rival, Master Dom (meaning Pepusch). Only by your bermission, I vill dake a snag of your ham, andt a slice of French roll, or a modicum of chicken; for to dell you the honest fagd, I am all pote famished, for I laid me down on mine billow in bed the lastd nightd widout mine supper, at the instance of mine physician, for ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... not respond to her merry mood; his anxiety was to steer the conversation away from Simeon, and he had run against a snag ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... of enthusiasm for the betterment of young lives, but she had a humanly selfish regard for the immaculateness of her new automobile, and she feared that the roads on the mountain might be very dusty and rough, and that overhanging branches might snag the top. Jack had to promise that he would be very ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... the ceaseless continuity of forest; had first admired, and then wearied of the festooned drapery of Spanish moss; when we had learned to distinguish the different masses of timber that passed us, or that we passed, as a "snag," a "log" or a "sawyer;" when we had finally made up our minds that the gentlemen of the Kentucky and Ohio military establishments, were not of the same genus as those of the Tuilleries and St. James's, we began to wish that we could sleep more hours away. As we advanced to the ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... things—except, down below, there were snakes and mosquitoes, and a few wading and swimming fowl; and up above, those big woodpeckers that the country people called logcocks—larger than pigeons, with flaming crests and spiky tails—swooping in their long, loping flight from snag to snag, always just out of gunshot of the chance invader, and uttering a strident cry which matched those surroundings so fitly that it might well have been the voice of the ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... so much interest Marguerite. She skipped two or three pages which seemed to go unnecessarily into the subject of derelicts and snags. "I am not quite sure as to what a derelict is: I do not think I am one; out certainly I am not a snag." ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... the bunch!" he began complainingly and without preface, waving a dirty hand contemptuously at the despised tackle when the two came slowly up. "That's the way it goes when you take a lot of girls along! They've got to have the best rods and tackle, and all they'll do will be to snag lines and lose leaders and hooks, and ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... you would have been today if Noah had run his ark into such a fog as this, and there had been no fog-horn on Mount Ararat, and he had passed by with his excursion and not made a landing, and had floated around on the freshet until all the animals starved, and the ark had struck a snag and burst a hole in their bottom. I tell you, we can all congratulate ourselves that Noah happened to blunder on that high ground. If that ark had been lost, either by being foundered, or being blowed up by Fenians because Noah was an Englishman, it would have been ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... price for their indolence, as the neglect of their craft and their loose ideas of navigation seldom fail to bring them to grief before they even reach the Mississippi at Cairo. Their heavy, flat-bottomed boat gets impaled upon a snag or the sharp top of a sawyer; and as the luckless craft spins round with the current, a hole is punched through the bottom, the water rushes in and takes possession, driving the inexperienced crew to the little boat usually carried in tow ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... innumerable unseen mouths. But there was no wind astir; and the brown-black, glistening current beneath the white folds was glassy smooth save where the occasional big swirls boiled up with a swishing gurgle, or the running wave broke musically around an upthrust shoulder of rock or a weedy snag. The river was not wide—not more than fifty yards from bank to bank; but from the birch canoe slipping quietly down along one shore, just outside the fringe of alder branches, the opposite shore was absolutely ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I'm telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it. It's a thing you don't want to go wrong over, because one false step and you're sunk. I mean, if you fool about too long at the start, trying ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... not particular about what deed shall be the noble one, won't you just give me a hand, and help me save this heel of mine from a blistering shoe? The shoe was all right in school, but just now it has picked up a snag, somehow, and between the shoe and the snag, my ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... the Mississippi and its tributaries, the pilot is the man of greatest importance. He is supposed to be thoroughly familiar with the channel of the river in all its windings, and to know the exact location of every snag or other obstruction. He can generally judge of the depth of water by the appearance of the surface, and he is acquainted with every headland, forest, house, or tree-top, that marks the horizon and tells him how to keep his course at night. Professional ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... that shows that one's life is looked out for, when he ain't looking out for it himself. In fact, any of these stools here will float you, sir, should the boat hit a snag, and go down in the dark. But, since you want one in your room, pray take this one," handing it to him. "I think I can recommend this one; the tin part," rapping it with his knuckles, "seems so perfect—sounds ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... thought there should be a trout, and to that little place the grasshopper was cast, when snap! went my leader. I put on another hook and another grasshopper, but the result was precisely the same, so I concluded there must be a snag there, although I had supposed that I knew a fish from a snag! I tried one or two other places, but there was no variation—and each time I lost a leader ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Evansville, Indiana, about seven hundred miles below Pittsburgh, a great shock was felt on the fleet, and a shower of coal was sent flying into the air. The cry "Snag! Snag!" was heard on all sides, the big engines of the "Red Lion" were stopped and reversed and the headway of the fleet was checked, as it slowly swung to the shore. All hands rushed to the damaged barge and found that a snag, a sunken log, had penetrated the bottom. Fearing that she would go ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... "I feel guilty, as though it were cowardly not to have lived where I was put. But—have you ever seen a straw, caught on a snag, try to stop a river? To your sentimentalist that straw looks heroic; to anybody that knows the difference between bathos and pathos it simply looks silly. The river of life is bigger than that of any nation. We can't stop it, but ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... the sweet bye and bye, honey!" His tone had become offensively familiar. "It's for his good, you know. If it's the last word I ever speak I'm trying to save him from the biggest snag he ever met ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a look-out for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for next day's steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Take the wheel and see what you can do with a steamboat. Keep her as she is—toward that lower cottonwood snag." ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in costume that every one of the ensemble makes during the performance. The same thing with the principals. Always figure the time you have allowed each person to change costume, otherwise you will strike a snag which ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... temporarily at least, in favor of the machinations of lumber trust tools in the law making bodies. Big Business can make laws as easily as it can break them—and with as little impunity. So the notorious Washington "Criminal Syndicalism" law was devised. This law, however, struck a snag. The honest-minded governor of the state, recognizing its transparent character and far-reaching effects, promptly vetoed the measure. After the death of Governor Lister the criminal syndicalism law was ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... "And I'm a snag," replied Douglas, as he pitched into him; and before the fellow had time to reflect, he lay ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Drift chips, lodged in the goose grass, kindled fire for kettle, but oilcloth had to be spread before you could get footing ashore. I began to wonder what happened as to repairs when canoes ripped over a snag in this kind of region, and that brought up the story of a furtrader's wife in another muskeg region north of Lac La Ronge up toward Churchill River, who was in a canoe that ripped a hole clean the size of a man's fist. Quick as a flash, the head man was into the tin grub box ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... after day along the bank, chanting the voyageurs' songs. Now we were light-manned, two half-breeds and two Canadians to handle the oars in time of peril, and Captain Xavier, who stood aft on the cabin roof, leaning against the heavy beam of the long, curved tiller, watching hawklike for snag and eddy and bar. Within the cabin was a great fireplace of stones, where our cooking was done, and bunks set round for the men in cold weather and rainy. But in these fair nights we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mudder?" "But look here, Billy! 'Spose you was in de boat, in de middle of de river, wid yo' wife and yo' mudder-in-law?" "Oh, what a cinch!"—said Billy. "And de boat," continued Johnson, "was to strike a snag and smash to pieces, and eberybody go into de water, who would you save?" "My wife, dar! my mudder-in-law dar! and de boat strike a snag?" "Yes!" "I would save de snag," said Billy. "I could get anudder wife, I might den have anudder ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... even half opened his mouth as if to indignantly protest against giving up the most cherished plan of his life for a little snag, such as the desertion of Anthony proved. Then he suddenly closed his lips firmly. He had remembered an important fact, which was that after all he should not be the one to make such a suggestion. Let one of these good chums, who were ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... driver to hurry up, but first one thing happened, then another. I want to see what the little chap 'll do with this rattler; these blamed little bells set up a jinglin' noise every time the hack struck a snag." ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... nothing blessed about the persecution you undergo on that account. Your position is not heroic; at best, it is only pitiable; at worst, it is detestable. Athanasius contra mundum is grand only in cases where the snag is right, and the mundus wrong. Then persecution becomes the second-highest form of blessedness—the highest form, of course, being the ability to turn round and flatten-out the persecutor. Now, if Alf could open the windows ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... me. I didn't want to seem to make trouble for her. So, while I was wondering what to do about it, she headed right in, leaving me with the valise and the umberella, and a kind of qualmy feeling that the old lady might strike a snag. ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... could be easily learned, but the third promised to afford appalling difficulties to a man unfamiliar with foreign methods and utterly lacking in trade acquaintances. He went at them systematically, however, only to run against a snag within the hour. Not only did he fail to find the answer to question number one, but he could find no market quotations whatever on structural steel shapes such as entered into ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... passed her she looked up at me. She had but one tooth in the front of her head. I had become so nervous and easily affected in the last few days that the woman's face made a loathsome impression upon me. The long yellow snag looked like a little finger pointing out of her gum, and her gaze was still full of sausage as she turned it upon me. I immediately lost all appetite, and a feeling of nausea came over me. When I reached the market-place I went to the fountain and drank a little. I looked up; ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... resort to circumlocution for the purpose of "padding," that is, filling space, or when they strike a snag in writing upon subjects of which they know little or nothing. The young writer should steer clear of it and learn to express his thoughts and ideas as briefly as possible commensurate with lucidity ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... but all of a sudden we found ourselves whirled onwards by an unseen power. Though we got the paddles out, we had lost all control over our canoe. The next instant, her bow striking a rock, she was whirled round, when her stern came in contact with a snag also fixed in the crevices ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... was not slackened. The young Onondaga devoted most of his time to watching. Much wreckage from storms or the suction of flood water often floated on the surface of these wild rivers, and his keen eyes searched for trunk or bough or snag. They also scanned at intervals the green walls speeding by on either side, lest they might pass some camp fire and not notice it, but finding no lighter note in the darkness he felt sure that no ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... piloting was not a thing of the dead and pathetic past," and wonderful accounts were written of the autocrats of the wheel and the characteristics of the ever-changing, ever-capricious river. "Accidents!" says an early steamboat captain. "Oh, sometimes we run foul of a snag or sawyer, occasionally collapse a boiler and blow up sky-high. We get used to these little matters and don't ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... impaled themselves, and this often to the destruction of the ship and great loss of life. We ran against one of these trees, somewhat sideways luckily for us, but it stood up on end, and amid a frightful noise, and a little momentary consternation, carried away one paddle box and wheel. A snag is only one of the numerous sources of accident in American river navigation. But one soon gets accustomed to the carelessness of danger which characterises the Americans, and on the whole travelling on their river steamers ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... what I should do in this landless region if my frail shell, in its rapid flight to the sea, happened to be pierced by a snag, was, to say the least, not a comforting one. On what could I stand to repair it? To climb a tree seemed, in such a case, the only resource; and then what anxious waiting there would be for some cypress-shingle ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... his hook had caught in a snag, but he was greatly surprised after carefully pulling in his line, to find on the end of it a sluggish fish four feet long, and as large around as a stovepipe. We were to wait here till the 3d of September for Powell, but on the 29th ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Vicksburg, the party in the Sachem was again called for. The vessel got under way on the 8th of June, in charge of Acting Assistant Joseph E. Harris, to whom Mr. Gerdes had transferred the command, but unfortunately a few hours after starting she broke her shaft by striking a snag, and was entirely disabled, until extensively repaired. She was towed from Baton Rouge, where the accident happened, to New Orleans, and there turned over to Captain Morris, of the U. S. Navy, commanding the sloop of war ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a snag," he repeated, "and now your mate's run against another." He gave the butt of his ready pistol a significant tap. "But I'm the worst snag that ever either of you struck," he went on in his vainglory. "Make no mistake about that. And the ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... "You know, there's only one big snag in this sort of talk. I've sorted the whole thing out before, and you always come up against this brick wall. Where are they, these observers, or scholars, or spies or whatever they are? Sooner ...
— I'm a Stranger Here Myself • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... was that the loud speaker in Remington Solander's tomb would not carry that far; it was not strong enough. So we went to the executors of his estate and ran up against another snag—nothing in the radio outfit in the tomb could be altered in any way whatever. That was in the will. The same loud speaker had to be maintained, the same wave-length had to be kept, the same makes of batteries had to be used, the same style of tubes had to be used. ...
— Solander's Radio Tomb • Ellis Parker Butler
... pasture, and through the wood Where the old gray snag of the poplar stood, Where the hammering "red-heads" hopped awry, And the buzzard "raised" in the "clearing" sky And lolled and circled, as we went by ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... great hands for talking of House of Assembly, political Unions, and what not. Like all folks who wade so deep, they can't always tell the natur' of the ford. Sometimes they strike their shins agin a snag of a rock; at other times they go whap into a quicksand, and if they don't take special care they are apt to go souse over head and ears into deep water. I guess if they'd talk more of ROTATION, and less of ELECTIONS, more of them 'ere DYKES, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... sharp words of command, and the burning top of a tall pine snag threw its light upon bayonets in the highway. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... of the crowd have nicer manners than our dear Eleanor and are better students," Mary Brooks had said to Betty. "Otherwise I'm afraid your ship of state will run into a snag of faculty prejudices ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... a snag, for your grandmother said that perhaps I could get yours without your being there, for my little sister could be your proxy. 'Oh, but,' I said, 'Patty is short and chubby while Marian is tall and slender. I am afraid I could never select the proper garment unless she were ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... grass, and I got an idea. 'Suppose,' I says, 'my man took his shoes off and went around in his stockinged feet!' I couldn't understand, though, why he hadn't thought of that before. I went back to Robert Blackburn's room and got one of his shoes, and ran into a snag again. The sole of the shoe was a trifle larger than the footprints. Every one of his shoes I tried was the same way. I argued that the handkerchief was enough, but I wanted this other evidence. I simply had to clear up ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... indeed, that the harsh grating of their oars in the rowlocks apprised Captain Emil Bechtel of their approach some seconds before the boat was visible. At his brisk command the men on deck stepped down to the low pipe railing on the port side of the deck, prepared to snag the boat the instant she drew alongside. When he could hear the sound of the commander's voice, Mike Murphy chanced a quick look over his shoulder, noted the position of the submarine, and ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... we strike a snag somewhere," said Bob. "After we get everything assembled, we've still got to run our leading-in wire down to my bedroom. But I don't think that will take ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... will be suspected. Fall in line, I say! Dog's name is Ginger. Animals like to be tagged, more human-like. Act as if you always had been, or had come back. If there's one thing Polly can't abide, it's hitting a snag." ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... little way, Bo," said Horatio, getting interested, "and throw your line over there by that cypress snag. That looks ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... pressed tight against the hard, snag-studded gums, and in the narrow, lashless black eyes glowed the spark of ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... George, and let me tell you somepin funny," continued the Captain. "Old Ahab Wright has taken to smoking in public to get the liberal vote! Let me tell you somepin else. They've decided to put the skids under Grant Adams and his gang down in the Valley, and the other day they ran into a snag. You know Calvin & Calvin are representing the owners since Tom's got this life job, though he's got all his money invested down there and still advises 'em. Well, anyway, they decided to put a barbed-wire trocha around all the mines and the factories. Well, four carloads of wire and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... which a dentist would have been proud to exhibit as specimens of his art, and with a vigorous thrust of the boat-hook, forced the light craft far out into the stream, thus disturbing the repose of a young alligator which was sunning himself upon a snag. Cyd was fond of the water, and had no taste for the various labors that were required of him about the house and stable. He was delighted with the prospect of a sail on the river; and being a slave, and not permitted to express his views in ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... it would be strange if the tomtits did not display acuteness in the selection of nesting sites. A cosy hollow in a dead snag or stump is especially acceptable. Sometimes it is a deserted woodpecker's cavity made trig and clean, while quite often, when the wood is soft enough, the tits themselves chisel out a little hole in a tree or stump or fence post. I recall having once watched a pair of chickadees hollowing ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... be carried in the original sacks; they wet through or absorb moisture from the air, snag easily, and burst under the strain of a lashrope. Pack your flour, cereals, vegetables, dried fruits, etc., in the round-bottomed paraffined bags sold by outfitters (various sizes, from 10 lbs. down), which are damp-proof ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames; By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born, Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagg'd out at their waists, The snag-tooth'd hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come, Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery; What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square rod then, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... under the blanket's rim I raised and showed him the other, A snag as ugly and grim As ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... ever, I made another hickory clock, shaped like a scythe to symbolize the scythe of Father Time. The pendulum is a bunch of arrows symbolizing the flight of time. It hangs on a leafless mossy oak snag showing the effect of time, and on the snath is written, "All flesh is grass." This, especially the inscription, rather pleased father, and, of course, mother and all my sisters and brothers admired ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... stone, a file, or a piece of emery cloth are all good for this purpose. It takes a sharp point to penetrate the bony jaw of a fish. Always inspect your hook after you have caught it on a rock or snag. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... arching moss and vines that trailed from the trees on the bank. Now and then a snag would be struck, and on such occasions Ruth would start nervously, and ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... at Cairo, they found one of the old snag-boat fleet, called the "Benton." Mr. Eads knew the boat well, as he had formerly owned her, and proposed to purchase and arm her, but Captain Rodgers did not approve the plan for converting her into a gunboat. Mr. Eads then proposed to purchase and arm several of the strong, swift boats ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... in the cedars when someone grasped her from behind. She felt the hands as the coils of a snake. Then she was ready to faint, but she must not faint. She struggled away, stood free. It was the man Bill who had caught her. He said something that was unintelligible. She reached for the snag of a dead cedar and, leaning there, fought her weakness, that cold black horror which seemed a physical thing in her mind, her ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... through the state proclaiming that there was a log-jam on the river and that it behoved all loyal subjects to remove it. The people poured down from their villages to the moist warm valley of poppy-fields; and the King and I went with them. Hundreds of dressed deodar-logs had caught on a snag of rock, and the river was bringing down more logs every minute to complete the blockade. The water snarled and wrenched and worried at the timber, and the population of the state began prodding the nearest logs with a pole in the hope of starting a general movement. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... instant every one on the boat was on his feet and running to the side. I joined the rush to the bows, and leaning over, saw that we were hard aground at the lower end of a sand bar. Imbedded in this bar was a long white snag, a tree trunk whose naked arms, thrusting far down stream, had literally impaled us. The upper woodwork of the boat was pierced quite through; and for all that one could tell at the moment, the hull below the line was in all likelihood similarly crushed. ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... nest of the Grey-cheeked Flycatcher-Warbler, taken on the 8th May in large forest at 6000 feet, contained three hard-set eggs. It was suspended to a snag among the moss growing on the stem of a small tree at five feet up. The moss supported it more than did the snag. It is a solid cup-shaped structure, made of green moss and lined with very fine roots. Externally it measures 31/2 ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... wild ride somewhere in Jones's wake, and of sundry knocks and bruises he had sustained, of pieces of corduroy he had left decorating the cedars and of a most humiliating event, where a gaunt and bare pinyon snag had penetrated under his belt and lifted him, mad ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... with an impatience bred of his reading through Tresler's lame objection, "you jest notion to rile Jake some. Wal, you're a fool, Tresler—a dog-gone fool! Guess you'll strike a snag, an' snags mostly hurts. Howsum, I ain't no wet-nurse, an' ef you think to bluff Jake Harnach, get right ahead an' bluff. An' when you bluff, bluff hard, an' back it, or you'll drop your wad sudden. Guess ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... was turning a bend in the road, I caught sight of a mountain chickadee flitting to a dead snag on the slope at the right, the next moment slipping into a small hole leading inside. I climbed up to the shelf, a small level nook among the tall pines on the mountain side, to inspect her retreat, for it was the first nest of this interesting species that I found. The chickadee flashed in ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... open, and here we had a grand and ringing run. I received two hard knocks, was unseated once, but held on, and I got a stinging crack in the face from a branch. R.C. added several more black-and-blue spots to his already spotted anatomy, and he missed, just by an inch, a solid snag that would have broken him in two. The pack stretched out in wild staccato chorus, the little Airedales literally screeching. Jim got out of our sight and then Sampson. Still it was ever more thrilling to follow ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... I see my mother. The old snag I was riding give out and they was leading so they changed me. I cried two or three days. They didn't pay my crying no 'tention. They had a string of nigger men and boys, no women, far as from me 'cross to that bank. I judge it is ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... had hesitated and her father's pistol hadn't been hard by, she would have recovered her poise and deceived her husband. I believe that if Emma Bovary had escaped that snag of debt she would have continued to fool Charles. And I believe Mildred Lawson married at last and fooled herself into the belief that she had a superior soul, misunderstood by the world and her husband. There is no telling how vermicular are ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... the larger gunboats were sent down as fast as possible to Alexandria, whither Porter followed them on the 16th, leaving the Osage and Lexington at Grand Ecore, and the big Eastport eight miles below, where, on the 15th, she had been sunk to her gun-deck either by a torpedo or by a snag. The admiral brought up his pump boats and after removing the guns got the Eastport afloat ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... probably stuck on a sandbar or a snag, anywhere from five to twenty-five miles down. Don't go along, ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... the least warning when the shock came. The boat suddenly brought up with a bang on some hidden snag, and as Frank involuntarily shut off the power he had a rapid view of poor Jerry taking a header over the rail. Immediately after, a tremendous splash announced that he had struck the water all right; indeed, as he sprawled with hands and ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... in the end of a bamboo pole, and close to this a minnow was attached to a short line, to act as a lure. When the other fish approached the captive, the pole was jerked sharply, in an attempt to snag them. On one occasion the writer saw fifty fish taken by this method in ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... boats grated against a snag, which reminded them of the danger which they would have to encounter when returning. The rocks and snags could not, as they were then steering, do them much injury, but it would be a very different matter when ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston |
