"Spider" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bench near the door, Randalin watched him as a fly caught in a web watches the approaching spider. She had forgotten her errand; she had forgotten her disguise; she had forgotten where she was; her one conscious emotion was fear. Her eyes followed his roving glance from spear to banner, from floor to ceiling, in terrible anticipation. It ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... surprise the unwary in the dark. Surely this book will infect no man: out of the wicked treasure of a mans own wicked heart, he drawes his malice and mischief. From the same flower the Bee sucks honey, from whence the Spider hath his poyson. And he that means well, shall be here warnd, where the deceitfull man learnes to set his snares. A judge who hath often used to examine theeves, becomes the more expert to sift out their tricks. If mischief come hereupon, blame not me, nor blame my Author: lay the saddle ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the crazed orgie leaped the Toad-woman like a gigantic scarlet spider, screaming prophecy and performing the inconceivable and nameless rites of Ak-e, Ne-ke, and Ge-zis, until, in her frenzy, she went stark mad, and the devil worship began with the awful sacrifice of Leshee ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... outward dramatically. "Isn't that what I'm saying? You knew something. You knew it and you let us go ahead. You not only let us go ahead, but you led us on. You could see already that Archie was spinning his web like a spider, and that he'd catch us as flies. Now didn't you? Tell the truth, Ena. Wasn't it in your mind from the first? Long before it was in his? I'll say that for Archie, that I don't suppose he really meant to ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... be made very clear to the girl who comes up to the city, and that is that the ordinary ice cream parlor is very likely to be a spider's web for her entanglement. This is perhaps especially true of those ice cream saloons and fruit stores kept by foreigners. Scores of cases are on record where young girls have taken their first ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... spider, to serve his ends, By a sudden thread, Arms and legs outspread, On the table's midst descends, Comes to find, God knows ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... surprised, I stretched forth my hand and seized the cap to replace it upon my head, when I found that it strongly resisted my efforts, and, looking closely to discover the reason, I saw that it had become entangled in a spider's web! Yes, a spider's web! but such a web as I venture to say very few men save myself have ever seen. It hung suspended from a branch quite ten feet above the ground, it was tightly strained between the trunks of two trees at least eight feet apart, and it reached right down to the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... your ability." Behind his bland, cordial mask I saw the spider eyes gleaming and the spider claws twitching as he felt his net quiver under hovering wings. "We want you—we need you, Sayler. We expect ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... Bagpipe comes! fall back! Soap-bubble's name he owneth. How the Schnecke-schnicke-schnack Through his snub-nose droneth! Spirit that is just shaping itself. Spider-foot, toad's-belly, too, Give the child, and winglet! 'Tis no animalcule, true, ...
— Faust • Goethe
... beggar, And Jenny Wren's a bride, And larks hang singing, singing, singing, Over the wheat-fields wide, And anchored lilies ride, And the pendulum spider Swings from ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... the Saxon, ye blind bastard bunch! Whelps weak and unstable, I only am able The Celt-hating Sassenach wholly to s-c-rr-unch! Yet for me ye won't work, But sneak homeward and shirk, Ye've an eye on the ould spider, GLADSTONE, a Saxon! He'll sell ye, no doubt. Sure, a pig with ring'd snout Is a far boulder baste Than such mongrels! The taste Of the triple-plied thong BULL will lay your base backs on Will soon make ye moan That ye ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... clear, transparent water He could see the fishes swimming Far down in the depths below him; See the yellow perch, the Sahwa, Like a sunbeam in the water, See the Shawgashee, the craw-fish, Like a spider on the bottom, On the ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... more to accomplish the purpose of its existence. Even when propagation commences to take place by means of individual male and female parents, the same principle of egoism largely obtains. The spiders are typical instances of this: in their case the carrying out of the natural functions of the male spider is attended with much danger for him, owing to the fact that if he does not exercise the greatest care, he is apt to be devoured immediately afterward by his female partner, in order that no useful food matter may be lost. Yet even in the ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... fell in on his back. Tricksey-Wee and Buffy-Bob ran to his assistance, and laying hold each of one of his legs, succeeded, with the help of the other legs, which struggled spiderfully, in getting him out upon dry land. As soon as he had shaken himself, and dried himself a little, the spider turned ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... purvapakshin says, understand by the source of all beings the non-intelligent pradhana because (in the passage immediately subsequent to the one quoted) only non-intelligent beings are mentioned as parallel instances. 'As the spider sends forth and draws in its thread, as plants grow on the earth, as from the living man hairs spring forth on the head and the body, thus everything arises here from the Indestructible.'—But, it may be objected, men and spiders which are here quoted as parallel instances are of intelligent ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... habitual temper of my mind to give up. "The spider," it is said, "taketh hold with her hands, and is in king's palaces;" and should a man have less ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... fastened round his neck and thrown back from his shoulders, floats behind him. He wears an enormous sword, whose heavily weighted hilt keeps the point always raised and standing out prominently behind him, whilst from it dangles a clever imitation of a spider's web—a convincing proof of how much he is in the habit of making use of this formidable weapon. Closely followed by his valet, Scapin, who is in imminent danger of having an eye put out by the end of his master's big sword, he marches several times around the stage, taking preternaturally ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Mary Esther sat upon a tester, Eating curds and whey; There came a big spider, and sat down beside her, And frightened little Mary ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... words, Curdie let go his hold of his companion, and rushed at the thing in the road as if he would trample it under his feet. It gave a great spring, and ran straight up one of the rocks like a huge spider. Curdie turned back laughing, and took Irene's hand again. She grasped his very tight, but said nothing till they had passed the rocks. A few yards more and she found herself on a part of the road she knew, and was able ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... an iron hook, with a handle, to lift pots from the crane; a large and small gridiron, with grooved bars, and a trench to catch the grease; a Dutch oven, called also a bake-pan; two skillets, of different sizes, and a spider, or flat skillet, for frying; a griddle, a waffle-iron, tin and iron bake and bread pans; two ladles, of different sizes; a skimmer; iron skewers; a toasting-iron; two teakettles, one small and one large one; two brass kettles, of different ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... she do but murmur an invitation. As they reached the old stone house and Sibyl greeted them with a bright smile, poor Aunt Faith felt very much like the spider in the old song of the ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... of curious ways are discoverable by the mere wood-lounger. At one time your way is barred by the great portcullis of the strong threaded web of the field spider, who sits like a porter in king's livery of black and gold at his gate. Then you have a peep into the winding maelstroem-funnel of another of the spider family. Poe must have suffered metempsychosis into the body of a blue-bottle, when he wrote his "Descent into the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... it was! It had the form of a spider, and it leaped like one. If it had been armored I could never have killed it. I think the shock of its impact against the air ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... not this young angel up to hell! Me Thou hast at least armed with strength to endure the dizzying throng of thoughts, passions, longings, yearnings—but him! Thou hast given him a frame fragile as the frailest web of the spider, and every great thought rends and frays it. O Lord! my ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... settle this matter, and that is when she plays Hamlet. Let the stage manager put a large spider in the skull of Yorick, and when Hamlet takes up the skull and says, "Alas, poor Yorick, I was pretty solid with him," let the spider crawl out of one of the eye holes onto Hamlet's hand, and proceed ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... me in the fields the sun Soaks in the grass and hath his will; I count the marguerites one by one; Even the buttercups are still. On the brook yonder not a breath Disturbs the spider or the midge. The water-bugs draw close beneath The cool ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... was altogether at my mercy, body and soul. She was hemmed in. I tell you frankly, that thought, that venomous thought, so possessed my heart that it almost swooned with suspense. It seemed as if there could be no resisting it; as though I should act like a bug, like a venomous spider, without a spark of pity. I could scarcely breathe. Understand, I should have gone next day to ask for her hand, so that it might end honorably, so to speak, and that nobody would or could know. For though I'm a man of base desires, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... trod of none Where through the woods they went astray. The spider's traceries are spun Across the darkling forest way. There come no knights that ride to slay, No pilgrims through the grasses wet, No shepherd lads that sang their say With Aucassin ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... Sprinkle out of flower bells Mortal sense entrapping spells; Make no sound On the ground; Strew and lap and lay around. Gnat nor snail Here assail, Beetle, slug, nor spider here, Now descend, Nor depend, Off from any ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... species of hawk, and the rabbit, the squirrel, and the dog are the principal animal gods. The importance of the god bears no relation to the size of the animal, and in fact the larger animals are but seldom invoked. The spider also occupies a prominent place in the love and life-destroying formulas, his duty being to entangle the soul of his victim in the meshes of his web or to pluck it from the body of the doomed man and drag it way to the black coffin ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... female calling to her mate at intervals, love-e, love-e, with a cadence and tenderness in the tone that rang in the ear long afterward. The nest was suspended to the fork of a small branch, as is usual with the vireos, plentifully lined with lichens, and bound and rebound with masses of coarse spider-webs. There was no attempt at concealment except in the neutral tints, which made it look like a natural growth of the dim, ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... And now that he had discovered that he could touch the nerves of Pope, he throws out one of the most ludicrous analogies to the figure of our bard:—"When crawling in thy dangerous deed of darkness, I gently, with a finger and a thumb, picked off thy small round body by thy long legs, like a spider making love ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... oblique rays of the newly risen moon slanted a light that was weird and ghostly because it fell across a ruin. Kenkenes climbed over a chaos of prostrate columns, fallen architraves and broken colossi, and the sounds of his advance stirred the rat, the huge spider, the snake and the hiding beast from the dark debris. Here and there were solitary walls standing out of heaps of wreckage, which had been palaces, and frequent arid open spaces marked the site of groves. In complex ramifications ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the fly: "'Tis the prettiest little parlour ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... spark of sense," said he, leading her along to the green-house. "I'll bring her up not to scream at a spider." ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... This takes the place of one card. The place of the other is filled by what are called "flats," or narrow bars of iron covered with card clothing. The cylinders move rapidly, the flats slowly, and the cotton passes between them. It comes out in a dainty white film not so very much heavier than a spider's web, and so beautifully white and shining that it does not seem as if the big, oily, noisy machines could ever have produced it. In a moment, however, it is gone somewhere into the depths of the machine. ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... been already arranged that the two little girls should spend the evening together, and as they entered the garden before the house a rude voice exclaimed, "Holloa! London Nan whimpering. Has my fine lady met a spider or a cow?" and a big rough lad of twelve, in a college gown, spread out his arms, and danced up and down in the doorway to bar ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stark tragedy upon which Wanda had come at the edge of Echo Creek. Not forgotten, never to be wiped clean from the memory, still the keen horror was dulled, the harsh details blurred, the whole dreadful picture softened under the web which the spider of time ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... sides of the road crooked trees were tottering to their fall. They had been stripped bare by the devastating army of caterpillars, and instead of their beautiful green leaves they were clothed with the rags of dusty spider-webs; further away the fruitless orchards looked as if they had been burnt with fire, and, stretching to the horizon, as far as the eye could reach, the arid corn-fields had the appearance of being covered with nothing but ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... his time was more usefully spent, he might say, In chasing the vagrants and spectres away. Every member of reptile society knew That of insects and grubs he destroy'd not a few: His wife had just miss'd a huge pioneer spider, Who fled to his home, and then rudely defied her, And e'en bang'd his door in her ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... differing voices, and read one never quite expressed fact in endless picture-language? Yet, whether it be that these things will not be intellectually learned, or, that many centuries must elaborate and compose so rare and opulent a soul,—there is no comet, rock-stratum, fossil, fish, quadruped, spider, or fungus, that, for itself, does not interest more scholars and classifiers than the meaning and upshot of the ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... turn an envious eye. He cannot but acquaint himself with the whole horrid list of chicanery, since its items are rungs of the ladder on which he himself may hereafter seek to mount. If he aims to be a great Wall Street spider he must perforce fully acquaint himself with what material will go toward the spinning of that baleful tissue, his proprietary web. It must be woven, this web, out of perjuries and robberies. Its fibres must mean the heart-strings torn from many a deluded stockholder's breast, and the morning ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... was a little man, with long wristbands. Miss Tayleure described him as all eye-glass and shirt-front. Comic artists have often drawn the moon capering on spider-legs; a little filling out would make the Vicomte very like the caricature. He was profound—in his salutations, learned—in lace, witty—thanks to the Figaro. His attentions to Miss Theodosia Cockayne, and to Madame her mother, were of the most splendid ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... faded chambers, some rudely shuttered, some receiving their full charge of daylight, all empty and unhomely. It was a rich house, on which Time had breathed its tarnish and dust had scattered disillusion. The spider swung there; the bloated tarantula scampered on the cornices; ants had their crowded highways on the floor of halls of audience; the big and foul fly, that lives on carrion and is often the messenger of death, had set up ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... repeated. "The poor little spider to help the mighty Phipps! You're not finding difficulties in the way of your suit, ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... arachne, a spider, and eidos, like). The thin covering of the brain and spinal cord, between the dura mater and the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... dances are the polka, which means Polish woman, mazurka, woman of Mazuria, and the obsolete polonaise, lit. Polish, cracovienne, from Cracow, and varsovienne, from Warsaw. The tarantella, like the tarantula spider, takes its name from Taranto, in Italy. The tune of the dance is said to have been originally employed as a cure for the lethargy caused by the bite of the spider. Florio has tarantola, "a serpent called an ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Miss POTTS abruptly ended her beautiful bronchial noise with violent distortion of countenance, as though there were a spider in her mouth, and sank upon a chair in a condition ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... finger, a little shift made of the fine white skin of the inside of an eggshell. The boots of the little one had soles cut out of the inside husks of the corn; a poppy leaf made her an ample bonnet. The spider's web which the dew whitens, and the wind winds up in balls, seemed too coarse too weave her sheets with, and the cup of an acorn was big enough for Piccolissima. Her parents obtained all her wardrobe, ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... rather than Slavery! Well might you wish to be quit of that ill, But you were sold by political knavery, Meshed in diplomacy's spider-like skill: And you rejoice to see Slavery banished, While the free servant works well as before, Confident, though many fortunes have vanished, Soon to recover ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... screen of ironwork—a marvel of arabesques and intricate traceries, with baskets of flowers, sea-monsters, Cherubim, tying the filigree-work and looping it together in knots and centres. One panel had for subject a spider midmost in a web, to visit which smiths came hundreds of miles, from all over the country, and wondered. For it was impossible to guess how iron had ever been beaten to such thinness or drawn so ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it could be call'd a face or not; At end of it, howe'er, unbless'd with beard, Some twenty fathom length of chin appear'd; With legs, which we might well conceive that Fate Meant only to support a spider's weight, 130 Firmly he strove to tread, and with a stride, Which show'd at once his weakness and his pride, Shaking himself to pieces, seem'd to cry, 'Observe, good people, how I shake the sky.' In his right hand a paper did he hold, On which, at large, in characters of ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... under that tree after all. First, Sahwah discovered that she was sitting next to a convention hall of gigantic red ants and a number of the delegates had gone on sight-seeing excursions up her sleeves and into her low shoes, which naturally caused some commotion. Then a spider let himself down on a web directly in front of Margery's face and threw her into hysterics. And then the mosquitoes descended, the way the Latin book says the Roman soldiers did, "as many thousands as ever came down from old Mycaenae", and after that there was no peace. We slapped ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... sash, of which she raised to its full height. Outside the row of geranium beds glowed scarlet and crimson in the calm light. Beyond them the turf of the lawn was overspread by trailing gossamers, and delicate cart-wheel spider's webs upon which the dew still glittered. In the shrubberies robins sang; and above the river great companies of swallows swept to and fro, with sharp twitterings, restlessly gathering for their ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... tarantula fight. These bouts were carefully arranged by the cowboys, the scene being set in a deep washbowl. Two females were the combatants, and the one who first amputated all the legs of the other was declared the winner. Occasionally a particularly vicious spider would forsake his natural enemy and leap high at one of the spectators, inflicting a painful, though not necessarily dangerous, bite. Hence these contests were not ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot', Pope has spoken of his life as one long disease. He was in fact a humpbacked dwarf, not over four feet six inches in height, with long, spider-like legs and arms. He was subject to violent headaches, and his face was lined and contracted with the marks of suffering. In youth he so completely ruined his health by perpetual studies that his life was despaired of, and only ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... behind the hogshead, where The watchful spider spied and span; They sighed to see the wine that ran A ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... Well, what is the result? The Inevitable,—simply the unconquerable Inevitable. Denzil is in love, Gervase is in love, everybody is in love, except me and one other! It is a whole network of mischief, and I am the unhappy fly that has unconsciously fallen into the very middle of it. But the spider, my dear,—the spider who wove the web in the first instance,—is the Princess Ziska, and she is NOT in love! She is the other one. She is not in love with anybody any more than I am. She's got something ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... The ivy, like the spider, takes hold with her hands in king's palaces, as every twig is furnished with innumerable little fingers, by which it draws itself close, as it were, to the very heart of the old rough stone. Its clinging and beautiful tenacity has given rise to an abundance ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... the ropes looked thicker, and we could see the devices on the flags. And suddenly, straining his eyes at the yards of a vessel in the thick of the ship-forest, on which was something black, like a spider with only four legs, Fred ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... and silvery head; the brilliant azurors, whose name alone defies description; some banded spares, with variegated fins of blue and yellow; the woodcocks of the seas, some specimens of which attain a yard in length; Japanese salamanders, spider lampreys, serpents six feet long, with eyes small and lively, and a huge mouth bristling with teeth; with ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... A spider once wove a right marvellous net, Whose equal no human hand ever wove yet, So complete in design was each beautiful fret, And finished in every particular. And the wily old architect, proud of his craft, Ensconced in a snug little sanctum abaft, Laid wait for the flies; ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... cobwebs of interpretation and sophism from this Work of the heart," he cries; "every spider's web in the Mosque, I would sweep away. The garments of your religion, I would have you clean, O my Brothers. Ay, even the threadbare adventitious wrappages, I would throw away. From the religiosity and cant of to-day I call you back ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... obtain evidence of another scandal to vary the monotony. Mrs. Croix, being Queen of the Jacobins, was safe, so press and pamphlet indulged in wild generalities of debauchery and rapine. It must be confessed that Jefferson fared no better in the Federalist sheets. He was a huge and hideous spider, spinning in a web full of seduced citizens; he meditated a resort to arms, did he lose the election. As to his private vices, they saddled him with an entire harem, and ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... "Often, as the spider said to the fly," grinned Banneker the shameless. "Take a thousand words or more and let ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... first, that some insect during certain seasons might cross the plants, but I have almost given up this; nevertheless, pray have a look at the flowers next season. Secondly, I conjectured that the Spider and Bee-orchis might be a crossing and self-fertile form of the same species. Accordingly I wrote some years ago to an acquaintance, asking him to mark some Spider-orchids, and observe whether they retained the same character; ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... whilst they go on only caballing and toasting, only fill us with disgust; if they get above their natural size, and increase the quantity, whilst they keep the quality, of their venom, they become objects of the greatest terror. A spider in his natural size is only a spider, ugly and loathsome; and his flimsy net is only fit for catching flies. But, good God! suppose a spider as large as an ox, and that he spread cables about us, all the wilds of Africa would ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Oh dear, no! There is no man I've hated so. But, since he turned a fierce derider Of him he calls the "Grand Old Spider;" Since he has "blown" the Home-Rule "gaff," And whelmed the Gladstone gang with chaff; Since he has almost wiped out PIGOTT, Half justified the Orange bigot; Proved part of the Times' charge at least, And won the "Hill-men," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... couldn't quite remember where we'd heard that phrase before, As the great grey-bearded ogre stood beside his open door; But an echo seemed to answer from a land beyond the sky— Won't you walk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly! ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... thither. To what end should he? No more now can he build castles in the air, basing them on the power of creditor over debtor. That bubble has burst, leaving him only the reflection, how illusory it has been. Although, for his nefarious purpose, it has proved weak as a spider's web, it is not likely Colonel Armstrong will ever again submit himself to be so ensnared. Broken men become cautious, and shun taking credit a ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... green country, the curly-haired cadet found this passage through the wildest jungle in the solar system new and fascinating. He had seen flowers of every color in the spectrum, some as large as himself; giant shrubs with leaves so fine that they looked like spider webs; Venusian teakwood trees fifty to a hundred feet thick at the base with some twisted into strange spirals as their trunks, shaded by another larger tree, sought a clear avenue to the sun. There were bushes ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... abovementioned flying-bug. Saucy crickets, too, swarm, and spring up at one's face, whilst mosquitos maintain a constant guerilla warfare, trying to the patience no less than to the nerves. Thick webs of the gossamer spider float across the river during the heat of the day, as coarse as fine thread, and being inhaled keep tickling the nose ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... why it was called Palm Tree Inn cause there wasn't a palm in sight, but when we showed the color of our coin, then everybody in the joint showed us a palm. The people here move slowly, and believe you me Julie a spider slower than a fifth avenoo handsome cab would have a cinch spinnin a web around all of 'em. Skinny says most of 'em has a long line of ancestors; but let me slip you the "info" derie, that some of 'em must be sinkers on the end of the line. I wish that I knowed as much ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... the still, dark night before Christmas Day, the dear Christ-child came, to bless the tree for the children. But when he looked at it—what do you suppose?—it was covered with cobwebs! Everywhere the little spiders had been they had left a spider-web; and you know they had been everywhere. So the tree was covered from its trunk to its tip with spider-webs, all hanging from the branches and looped round the twigs; it was a ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... will not for ever sit patient with mere wheels and pinions, bobbins, straps, and billy-rollers whirring in the head of it. The inventive genius of England is not a beaver's, or a spinner's, or a spider's genius: it is a man's genius, I hope, with a God ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... red, lustreless ball, in the dull grey sky. A light snow had fallen in the night and the landscape, crossed by spider-like trails of fences, was as white and lifeless as if ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... night, he took the path that led to the old sunken garden. Nocturnal birds were chirruping; his way was barred with spider-webs, heavy with dew and gleaming in the moonlight like tiny ropes of jewels; the odor of gardenias was overpowering. He passed close by the well, and its gaping black mouth, only half protected by the broken coping, reminded ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... surface of the earth. But, even so, the vegetable organism must stand ever ready and waiting for its supplies. Its molecular parts must be ready to seize the prey offered to it, somewhat as the waiting spider the fly. Hence, the plant stands ready; and every cloud with moving shadow crossing the fields handicaps the shaded to the benefit of the unshaded plant in the adjoining field. The ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... gold-striped pear-tree wood. A head of a Merovingian style, resting against a bowl, a bearded man, at once resembling a Buddhist priest and an orator at a public reunion, touching the ball of a gigantic cannon with his fingers; a frightful spider revealing a human face in its body. The charcoal drawings went even farther into dream terrors. Here, an enormous die in which a sad eye winked; there, dry and arid landscapes, dusty plains, shifting ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Minerva to a contest of skill in her art. The Goddess accepts the challenge, and, being enraged to see herself outdone, strikes her rival with her shuttle; upon which, Arachne, in her distress, hangs herself. Minerva, touched with compassion, transforms her into a spider. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... been known from a period as early as the time of Abraham and Jacob; its inventor is not known, but it is possible that men took a lesson from the ingenious spider, which weaves its web after the same manner. The ancient Egyptians appear to have brought it to great perfection, and were even acquainted with the art of interweaving colors after the manner ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... appropriate poetical material immorality and obscenity as well as virtue, because these things are in life. If the copy is good, the poem is artistic and praiseworthy, just as a painting of a venomous spider, if a faithful representation of its loathsome subject, is praised ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... how all of us are generally cumbered up with the thousand and one hindrances and duties which are not such, but which nevertheless wind us about with their spider threads and fetter the movement of our wings. It is the lack of order which makes us slaves; the confusion of to-day discounts the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... flowers that flourish in the deep woods, and around the window is the ivy, running from two boxes; and, in case the window has some sun, a Nasturtium may spread its bright blossoms among the leaves. Then, in the winter, when there is less sun, the Striped Spider-wort, the Smilax and the Saxifraga. Samantosa (or Wandering Jew) may be substituted. Pretty brackets can be made of common pine, ornamented with odd-growing twigs or mosses or roots, scraped and varnished, or ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... descriptions; from some, butter, yarn, a piece of frieze, a pig, a cow, or a heifer. In fact, nothing that possessed value came wrong to him, so that it is impossible to describe adequately the web of mischief which this blood-sucking old spider contrived to spread around him, especially for those whom he knew to be too poor to avail themselves of a remedy against ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... behold, Whose backe was arm'd against the dint of speare With shields of brasse that shone like burnisht golde, And forkhed sting that death in it did beare, Strove with a Spider, his unequall peare, And bad defiance to his enemie. The subtill vermin, creeping closely* neare, Did in his drinke shed poyson privilie; Which, through his entrailes spredding diversly, Made him to swell, that nigh his bowells brust, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... reassured. One angle of light fell upon the gallery. In passing, she caught a fly on the wing, and presented it delicately to a spider established in a corner of the roof. This spider was so bloated that, notwithstanding the distance, I saw it descend from round to round, then glide along a fine web, like a drop of venom, seize its prey from the hands of the old shrew, and remount rapidly. Fledermausse looked at it very ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... suddenly, and I saw a gentleman go in. She had caught him like a fisherman hooks a gudgeon. Then I looked at my watch, and I found that they stopped from twelve to twenty minutes, never longer. In the end she really infatuated me, the spider! And then the creature ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... centuries excited the astonishment of contemporaries. The Netherlands and France were equally affected; in Italy the disease became known as tarantism, it being supposed to proceed from the bite of the tarantula, a venomous spider. Like the St. Vitus' dance in Germany, tarantism spread by sympathy, increasing in severity as it took a wider range; the chief cure was music, which seemed to furnish magical means for exorcising the malady of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... all animal nature, human or inhuman—what a lie does that word carry—except, perhaps, in monsters, insects, and fish. I never yet heard of the parental tenderness of a trout, eating up his little baby, nor of the filial gratitude of a spider, nipping the life out of his gray-headed father, and usurping ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the spider's web back in its place, that once has been swept away? Can you put the apple again on the bough, which fell at our feet to-day? Can you put the lily-cup back on the stem, and cause it to live and grow? Can you mend the butterfly's broken wing, ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... it is very hard to enter—nearly impenetrable and full of insects, which make fresh-coming people to get cracked and mad. I have from the wrist down not a place to put in a shilling piece which is not a wound, through the very small red spider and other insects. Also my people are the same. Of the five men I took out, two have got fever already, and one ran back. To-morrow I expect other peons, but not a single one from Mengobamba. It is a trouble to get men who will come into the woods, and I cannot have more than eight or ten ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... she declared. The gentleman lodger had gone away, and she had only just been enabled to rise after lying for three months in bed; yes, the old pain still remained, it now gripped her everywhere; a neighbor had told her that a spider must have got in through her mouth while she was asleep. If she had only had a little fire, she could have warmed her stomach; that was the only thing that could relieve her now. But nothing could be had for nothing—not even a match. Perhaps she was right in thinking that madame had been travelling? ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... adjoining room, commenced knocking at the door, asking what was the matter, but received no answer until Ida saw that the young men were coming toward the house. Then she threw open the door, and told Mrs. Mayhew that she had seen something that looked like a large spider, and that nothing was the matter. Without waiting for further questioning she flitted hastily down-stairs and from one concealed post of observation to another until she saw the angry party enter Mr. Burleigh's private office. A small parlor ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... I had not seen before—little yellow things, no bigger than a small-type comma, yet they could jump several thousand times their own length. Think of the strength of such a body in proportion to its size! There is a tiny spider here with its hinder part like a pale yellow pearl. And the pearl is so heavy that the creature has to clamber up a stalk of grass back downwards. When it comes upon an obstacle the pearl cannot pass, it simply drops straight down and starts to climb another. Now, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... roar. Then, O monarch, Madhava, inflamed with rage, soon made Duhsasana's car and driver and standard and Duhsasana himself invisible by means of his straight arrows. Indeed, Satyaki entirely shrouded the brave Duhsasana with arrows. Like a spider entangling a gnat within reach by means of its threads, that vanquisher of foes quickly covered Duhsasana with his shafts. Then King Duryodhana, seeing Duhsasana thus covered with arrows, urged a body of Trigartas towards the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... domed and shining, and they seemed to tower straight up into the sky. There were streets, too, weaving in and out between the domes like rainbow-colored spider webs ...
— The Mississippi Saucer • Frank Belknap Long
... circle; his immediate neighborhood relations describe a wider circle; his business career describes one larger still; then come his relations to the community in general, while beyond the horizon is a circle of influence that includes the world at large. When the tiny spider standing at the center of its wide-stretching and intricate web, woven for destruction, chances to touch any thread of the web, immediately that thread vibrates to the uttermost extremity. And man stands at the center of a vast web of wide-reaching influence, woven ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... moon hath shed, Spider's web is dyed with red; Ere to-morrow's sun hath died Death will wed another bride. Ere the moon her course has run Deeds of darkness ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of the great Creator embraced the whole earth; in the fields the grain bowed to Him with a golden wave, rustled the heavy heads of the wheat, and the delicate tasseled oats trembled like a cluster of tiny bells. In the air, filled with brightness here and there, floated the spring thread of the spider's web, blue from the azure of the sky and golden from the sun, as if a veritable thread from the loom of the Mother ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... lost sheep. He rode slowly, for he had been in the saddle since sunrise and was somewhat weary, and the heat of the afternoon made his horse sleepy as it picked its way slowly along the sandy road. Every now and then a great red spider would start out of the karoo on one side of the path and run across to the other, but nothing else broke the still monotony. Presently, behind one of the highest of the milk-bushes that dotted the roadside, the German caught sight ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... Pin," said Laura snappily. "I told you yesterday you could say Laura, and ... and you're more like a spider ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... Spider Hagerty warned him. Spider was his chief second. "Make it last as long as you can—them's my instructions from Kelly. If you don't, the papers'll call it another bum fight and give the game a bigger black ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... asked one of the foot-men, who said that he would like to see the experiment tried before he made up his mind. I remember a case in which a peasant was accused of having committed arson for the sake of the insurance. He asserted that he had gone into a room with a candle and that a long spider's web which was hanging down had caught fire from it accidentally and had inflamed the straw which hung from the roof. So the catastrophe had occurred. Only in the second examination did it occur to anybody to ask whether spider's web can burn at all, and the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... off electricity in cases of high tension is well known, and I have already mentioned some instances of the kind in the use of the inductive apparatus (1201.). The general operation is very well shown by large light objects, as the toy called the electrical spider; or, if smaller ones are wanted for philosophical investigation, by the smoke of a glowing green wax taper, which, presenting a successive stream of such particles, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... convenience as an image, the theory may liken man to a spider in its web, watching for chance prey. Forces of nature dance like flies before the net, and the spider pounces on them when it can; but it makes many fatal mistakes, though its theory of force is sound. The spider-mind ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... had only one gun, and it appeared rusty and neglected, but their poisoned weapons were in fine order. Their blow-pipes hung from the roof of the hut, carefully suspended by a silk-grass cord, and on taking a nearer view of them no dust seemed to have collected there, nor had the spider spun the smallest web on them, which showed that they were in constant use. The quivers were close by them, with the jaw-bone of the fish pirai tied by a string to their brim and a small wicker-basket of wild cotton, which ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... This is the Brennan torpedo. The Sims-Edison torpedo is both propelled and steered by electricity from the shore, transmitted to a motor and steering relay in the torpedo by an insulated cable. This cable has two cores and is paid out by the torpedo as it travels through the water just as a spider pays out its web. The cable is about half an inch in diameter and two miles long, and the torpedo can be driven at about eighteen miles per hour with a current of thirty amperes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... to attain in this business is to decoy the victim to the advertiser's den or office. Once there, he is impressed with the multifarious engagements of the human decoy-spider who is probably appraising his prey through a peep-hole. By and by, the patient's anxiety is dissipated by the appearance of the pretended Medicus, and he proceeds to give all the painful details of his case, while the listener, by looks and ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little—a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it—you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily—until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... unfortunate maiden on the forehead with the shuttle which she held in her hand; and Arachne, being of a sensitive nature, was so hurt by this indignity that she hung herself in despair, and was changed by Athene into a spider. This goddess is said to have invented the flute,[21] upon {46} which she played with considerable talent, until one day, being laughed at by the assembled gods and goddesses for the contortions which her countenance assumed during these musical efforts, she hastily ran to a fountain in ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... might tell you, Bunny, but the figures must keep until I have them in black and white. I've promised to see if there really isn't a forlorn hope of getting these poor Garlands out of the spider's web. But there isn't, Bunny, I don't ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... It manifestly carries the Trojan scission into Olympus and drives out in disgrace the Trojan deities. Vulcan, the wronged husband, is the divine artificer; he makes a network of chains which could not be broken, "like a spider's web, so fine that no one could see it, not even a God;" in this snare the guilty deities are caught, exposed, punished. These invisible, yet unbreakable chains have an ethical suggestion, and ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... not much consequence, because the child is young and the wrong is very slight. You do not know the power of habit, and how one wrong, howsoever slight, leads to a greater one. Habit has been likened to a spider's web, which at first can be easily broken, but after continued indulgence binds its victim as with a strong cable, making reformation almost impossible. The same is true of good and right conduct. At first it may require an effort to perform a certain right act, but ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... morning paper presented infinite possibilities. Often it was only the smallest trace, Watson, the faintest indication, and yet it was enough to tell me that the great malignant brain was there, as the gentlest tremors of the edges of the web remind one of the foul spider which lurks in the centre. Petty thefts, wanton assaults, purposeless outrage—to the man who held the clue all could be worked into one connected whole. To the scientific student of the higher criminal world, no capital in Europe offered the advantages which London then possessed. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Ward," said Aunt Olivia softly. "Here is her point lace handkerchief. She made it herself. It is like a spider's web. Here are the letters Will Montague wrote her. And here," she added, taking up a crimson velvet case with a tarnished gilt clasp, "are their photographs—his ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... monarch anointed with the holy oils of superiority, coroneted with success's glittering diadem. Look at his Woman of a Million Sins! Look at his Satan's Stepchild, or How Human Souls are Dragged Down to Hell, in six reels! Look at A Daughter of Darkness! Look at The Wrecker of Lives! Look at The Spider Lady, or The Net Where Men Were the Flies! Look at Fair of Face Yet Black of Heart! All of them his, all box-office best bets and all ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... towards evening, Ginevra heard the accustomed signal. Luigi scratched with a pin on the woodwork in a manner that produced no more noise than a spider might make as he fastened his thread. The signal meant that he wished to come out of ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... bridge towards the portico of the Chamber of Deputies with its high pediment and its grey columns. Down the river they could see faintly the Eiffel Tower with a drift of mist athwart it, like a section of spider web spun between the city ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... read—some musty folios there were On shelf—but even in brave Froissart's page, Where, God knows, there be wounds enough, no herb Nor potion found he to purge sadness with. The gray dust gathered on the leaf unturned, And then the spider drew his thread across. Certain bright coins that he was used to count With thrill at fingers' ends uncounted lay, Suddenly worthless, like the conjurer's gold That midst the jeers and laughter of the crowd Turns into ashes in the rustic's hand. ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... their bedclothes, or cowered together like cats behind the stoves. There was such shrieking and lamentation; and then the old beldame of an abbess—you know, brother, there is nothing in the world I hate so much as a spider and an old woman—so you may just fancy that wrinkled old hag standing naked before me, conjuring me by her maiden modesty forsooth! Well, I was determined to make short work of it; either, said I, out with your plate and your convent jewels and all your shining dollars, or—my fellows knew what ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... willing mourner here Attends to tell the tale of woe: Why is yon statue prostrate thrown? Why has the grass green'd o'er the stone? Why, 'gainst the spider'd casement drear, So sullen seems the ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... a man of letters and a wit of the age of Louis XIV.; spent some five years in the Bastille, but after his release was appointed historiographer-royal; in his captivity he made a companion of a spider, who was accustomed to eat ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... guess, if it comes to that. Parker, or whoever fixed this thing up, would go to the main boss of the gang. If it was the Three Points, he'd go to Spider Reilly. If it was the Table Hill lot, he'd look up ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... rules the body, wisdom is the pilot, law is its light. Might is the lion's, burdens are the ox's, wisdom is man's; spinning the spider's, building the bee's, making stores the ant's. In three cases lying is permissible: in war, in reconciling man to man, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... despise the rich products of field, and forest, and garden, and hasten to seize the axe or the knife, and, ere the blood had ceased to flow, or the muscles to quiver, give orders to his fair but affrighted companion within to prepare the fire, and make ready the gridiron or the spider? Or, without the knowledge even of this, or the patience to wait for the tedious process of cooking to be completed, would he eat raw the precious morsel? Does any one believe this? Can any one—I repeat the question—can any ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... my float by heart; so must that skating spider which had skimmed up to it, running over the top of the water as easily as if it were so much ice. I was growing drowsy and tired. Certainly I leaned my back up against the wall, but it was quite upright, and there was no recompense. Whatever is the use ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... the Red Sea "Spider shell," Pterocera,[303] was the link between the cowry and the octopus. This shell was used, like the cowry, for funerary purposes in Egypt and as a trumpet in India.[304] But it was also depicted upon a series of remarkable primitive statues of the god Min, which were found at Coptos during ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... nothing mysterious about his work, but he liked to follow it out alone. Things that were honest and wise came to him to be carried out with judgment; and he knew that the best way to carry them out is to act with discreet candor. For the slug shall be known by his slime; and the spider who shams ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... which the old Greek philosopher found the highest good for man. And month by month the mere material side of life grew of less moment; the body fretted the spirit less, but often seemed a tissue of gossamer lightness through which it could pass at will, as the breeze through the gleaming spider-webs upon the bushes at dawn. There were times when the ideal of the mystic seemed well-nigh accomplished, when my body might almost have been abandoned by the soul for hours upon end. The words of Emerson seemed ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... lay thinking, he saw a spider over his head, making ready to weave her web. He watched her as she toiled slowly and with great care. Six times she tried to throw her frail thread from one beam to another, and six times it ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... metallic substance as a breast-and back-plate, not unlike the very ancient body armor of Raf's own world. The rest of his body was covered by the bandage strips, but they were of a dead black, which, because of the natural thinness of his limbs, gave him a rather unpleasant resemblance to a spider. Various sheaths and pockets hung from a belt pulled tight about his wasp middle, and a helmet of the metal covered his head. Soldier? Raf was sure that his ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... a room so littered and uncared for. There were books around the walls and books upon the floor, covered with dust; there was dust and dirt and debris everywhere, and spider-webs along the walls and ceiling. The impression of the whole place was that ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... asks what is the cause of that appearance so often met with in the autumn, resembling spider-webs. He says, if it be the production of that insect, how do you account for their hanging apparently unsuspended in the air, as it is seen fifty or sixty feet high, without a tree or any other object near to ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... unreasoning hate for the thing, whatever it was, a hate so strong that he forgot to feel fear. It seemed to him to combine the repulsive qualities of a spider and a toad. The body, fat and repugnant, was covered by a loose skin, dull and leathery, and the fatness seemed to be pulled downward below the lower tentacles like an insect's body, until it was wider at the bottom than at ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... heart of Prague, in that dim quarter which is one of the strongholds of the Israelite, whence he directs great enterprises and sets in motion huge financial schemes, in which Israel sits, as a great spider in the midst of a dark web, dominating the whole capital with his eagle's glance and weaving the destiny of the Bohemian people to suit his intricate speculations. For throughout the length and breadth of Slavonic and German Austria the Jew rules, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... I would have scoffed at any one who said that a handful of Chinese could tear aside our cloak of civilized security as though it were a spider's web," was the serious reply. "But I have interrupted my own story. I began to think that I would be taken to some awful den in the East End, and held there till some huge sum of money was paid by way of ransom, when ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... from Cabul to Shah Bagh; cloudy weather, occasionally a very slight shower during the last few days, depending probably on the Punjab rains. To-day, observed a small green caterpillar, climbing up a fine thread, like a spider's web, which hung from the fly of the tent; its motions were precisely those of climbing, the thread over which it had passed was accumulated between its third pairs of legs; it did ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... with the brocaded Hotel de Ville on one side, with its impossible spire rising some three hundred and seventy feet into the air and embroidered to the top with the delicacy of needle- work, sugarwork, spider-work, or what you will. I haunt this place because it is my scene, my theatre. Here were enacted so many deep tragedies, so many stately dramas, and even so many farces, which have been familiar to me so long that I have got to imagine myself invested with a kind of property in the place, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... spider-webs cannot outlast the suns and snows. Personal passion disgusts one with brain-spun systems of the universe, and may even lead to a mistrust of mathematics! One feels the overwhelming power of other than intellectual interests; and discovers ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne |
