"Crawling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Kitty, speaking up from the hammock, where she swung, half in, half out, watching a colony of ants crawling along the ground underneath. "But I traded my turn to Elise, for her biggest paper ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and a half we crept cautiously along, sometimes crawling on all fours where the country was open, and frequently stopping, while Lizzie went noiselessly forward and reconnoitred, before beckoning to us to advance again. The direction in which she led us lay at the base of the hills, which on one side bounded the little plain and its bay, and ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... fibrous matter, it clutches with its feet at the supporting plane. Then, contracting itself, it draws the scabbard towards it, half-raising it and sometimes even making it assume a vertical position. Even so do the Bulimi move along, lifting their shell as they complete each crawling step. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... keep company with Pedro," he said. "I'm not as young as I once was, and crawling along that limb some twenty feet above the ground looks some dangerous to legs as old as mine. But I'd like to have one of you, if you find the cave all right, come and let me know," and the sparkle in his eyes told how great was his ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... who had been a prize-fighter before he enlisted in the Second Life Guards, killed no less than seven Frenchmen with his own hand, receiving, however, so many wounds, that on the return of the regiment from its charge he could no longer sit his horse, and crawling behind a house died there ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... ridge; dogs bark; and even the sounds of human life rise up to us: children's voices and the murmurs of the market-place ascending faintly from the many villages hidden among the chestnut-trees beneath our feet; while the creaking of a cart we can but just see slowly crawling along the straight road by the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... more, his splendid will still forcing his broken body to do its bidding. Half crawling up the bank, once more he stood erect and staggered back across the yard, into the room. The woman heard him there again. Pity arose in her breast; once more she mastered her terror ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... Glaucias, sitting with his queen. Putting the child on the ground, they began to tell their story. At first the king was unwilling to grant him shelter, being afraid of Cassander; but the little fellow, crawling about, presently came near, and, laying hold of his leg, pulled himself upon his feet, and looked up in his face. The pretty, unconscious action of a suppliant so moved Glaucias that he took him up in his arms, and gave him into those of the queen, ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... driving in. It went at full gallop— out and in, out and in. The men stood up in the carts and thrashed away at the horses with the end of the reins, and the swaying loads were hurried along the field-roads, looking like little bristling, crawling things, that have been startled and are darting to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... trooper, bearing the name of John Thomas Drew, was crawling along under fire of the batteries. Out pops old Nevil, tries to get the man on his back. It won't do. Nevil insists that it's exactly one of the cases that ought to be, and they remain arguing about it like a pair of nine-pins while the Muscovites are at work with the bowls. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fisherman and the shrimp-catcher in their canoes come gliding up the glassy stream, riding down the water-lilies, that rose again behind and shook the drops from their crowns, like water-sprites. Here and there, farther out, she saw the little cat-boats of the neighboring village crawling along the edge of the lake, taking their timid morning cruises. And far away she saw the titanic clouds; but ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... through the air. But fearful as we were we dared essay no vantage-point to survey the crater. For long we saw nothing of the beings whose sounds were so abundant and insistent. But for the faintness of our hunger and the drying of our throats that crawling would have had the quality of a very vivid dream. It was so absolutely unreal. The only element with any touch ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... then without finishing his half begun sentence he dashed madly from the pilot house and flung himself into the bow of the yacht now gaining headway under the impetus of the engines. Flat on deck he fell and crawling to the rail peered eagerly over the side. His friends saw him turn an agonized and pleading glance in their direction and then reach far over the rail of the vessel. In an instant Tom and Harry were by his side eager to be of any ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Royal Irish and two of the Wiltshires under Colonel Guinness to make a flanking movement along the crest of the heights. These six companies completely surprised the enemy, and caused them to hurriedly evacuate the position. Their night march was performed under great difficulties, the men crawling on hands and knees along a rocky path with a drop of 400 feet upon one side. But their exertions were greatly rewarded. Upon the success of their turning movement depended the fall of Slabbert's Nek. Retief's ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sunshine-day, The house and the yard couldn't hold me; A meadow I found, on my back I lay, And sang what my spirit told me; Then snakes came crawling, a fathom long, To bask in the ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... flew, the fire grew still faster, and presently I saw the flames climbing aloft by way of the well-tarred shrouds until they reached the sails, when there arose a sudden blaze of flame among the spars, and in two or three minutes every shred of canvas had been consumed, and the crawling tongues of fire were circling about the masts and yards, feebly at first, but steadily increasing until they were all ablaze. Meanwhile the ship, deprived of her canvas, gradually fell broadside-on to the wind, and from that position as gradually drifted round until ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... come back from a long journey. I don't even know now where I started from. I had fever, I know, a fever that raced through my veins like a wild beast. That was it—now I remember. The whole time I had a nightmare, in which I seemed to be crawling along an endless underground passage; and every now and then I had an attack of intolerable pain, and then the passage would be suddenly walled up. A shower of stones fell from overhead, the side walls closed in, and there ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... aspiration. It is never inclosed, or warded off. You walk down the main street of a large town; and, slap-dash, headlong, pell-mell, down the middle of the street, with pigs burrowing, and boys flying kites and playing marbles, and men smoking, and women talking, and children crawling, close to the very rails, there comes tearing along a mad locomotive with its train of cars, scattering a red-hot shower of sparks (from its wood fire) in all directions; screeching, hissing, yelling, and panting; and nobody one atom more concerned ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... she is? I'll have every drop of yellow blood out of your veins if you come questioning me. Your blood is yellow ... in your purse ... running out of your purse ... What! you're changing it into toads, are you? They're crawling ... they're flying ... they're flying about my head ... the toads are flying about. Ostler! ostler! bring out my gig ... bring it out, you lazy beast . . . ha! you'll follow me, will you? ... you'll fly about my head ... you've got fiery tongues ... Ostler! curse you! why don't you come? ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Goncalez Figheredo, both his legs, for a long time, had been covered with ulcers, and were become so rotten, that worms were continually crawling out of them. The physicians, to divert the humours, put in practice all the secrets of their art, but without effect; on the contrary, the sinews were so shrunk up on one side, that one leg was shorter than the other. And for the last addition of misfortunes, Figheredo was seized with so terrible ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... his feet up on the desk in front, and gave me the option of climbing over or crawling under. He was about three-quarters my size; but he had such an air of authority about him, that I hardly liked to suggest a third alternative, namely, that he should put down his feet and let me pass. So I climbed over, much to his indignation (which he ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... tentacles downwards—and you will have before you the grotesque reality that first suggested the fancy of the Umi-B[o]zu, or Priest of the Sea. For the great bald body in this position, with the staring eyes below, bears a distorted resemblance to the shaven head of a priest; while the crawling tentacles underneath (which are in some species united by a dark web) suggests the wavering motion of the priest's upper robe.... The Umi-B[o]zu figures a good deal in the literature of Japanese goblinry, and in the old-fashioned picture-books. ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... clean-up. At the same time it did not dissipate a sort of come-and-go confidence I had that the old terrapin around whom so many of Wall Street's eddies have swirled would cause the 26-Broadway crowd many a broken knife-blade before crawling or being pushed into his shell. Turtles are not much good as sprinters, but they're blue-ribbon winners when it comes ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... In the wood above the gardens, reached by several flights of fine, but now moss-grown, steps, there stood a pavilion, once clearly very beautiful. It was now damp and ruinous-its walls covered with greenness and crawling insects. It was a great lurking-place of Sir Roger when on the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... exists. Patiently it spins its strength, but not its life, away, folds itself up decently, that its body may rest in quiet till the new body is formed within it; and at length when the appointed hour has arrived, out of the body of this crawling thing breaks forth the winged splendour of the butterfly—not the same body—a new one built out of the ruins of the old—even as St. Paul tells us that it is not the same body we have in the resurrection, but a nobler body like ourselves, with all the imperfect and evil thing taken away. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... said Bell to me, one morning, "this trip's giving me the creeps. I believe the damned ship's haunted! Three bells in the middle watch last night, I'll swear I saw some black animal crawling along the deck, in the direction of the ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... desert-hills That to assuage their own delicious drought Had set each tawny sun-kissed slope ablaze With peach and orange orchards. Up and up, Along the thin white trail that wound and climbed And zig-zagged through the grey-green mountain sage, The car went crawling, till the shining plain Below it, like an airman's map, unrolled. Houses and orchards dwindled to white specks In midget cubes and squares of tufted green. Once, as we rounded one steep curve, that made The head swim ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... great service in telling us to remember that we have within ourselves a means of detecting fallacy and demonstrating truth. What is it that assures us of the unreality of the fiery circle, the rainbow, the spectre, the voices, the crawling of insects upon the skin? Is it not reason? To reason may ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... fork Closing unites. That done the smoke was laid. The soul, transform'd into the brute, glides off, Hissing along the vale, and after him The other talking sputters; but soon turn'd His new-grown shoulders on him, and in few Thus to another spake: "Along this path Crawling, as I have ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... found a stalk that grew high above all the rest. Crawling to the very top of it Mrs. Ladybug was able to look far out over the face ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the pebbly bottom, now whirling in tiny eddies and dashing down steep falls, or sweeping rapidly along with the current, or else swaying to and fro at the end of some grass-blade or root. Anon they will leave their sunken habitations, and, crawling up the stems of plants, or to the surface, like gnats, as perfect insects henceforth, flutter over the surface of the water, or sacrifice their short lives in the flame of our candles at evening. Down yonder little glen the shrubs are drooping under their burden, and the red ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... which appeared to take no account of the pelting rain. It was hard riding and dangerous, but he pushed on manfully, while the streams of water trickled down his neck and along the bridge of his nose. As he reached the crest of the hill, he saw before him, just crawling over the crest of the opposite hill, a figure on a bicycle coming swiftly towards him. Even at that distance, he could make out a bedraggled white suit, a limp sailor hat and a vast pulpy bundle lashed ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... beside you. Pick them clean." Mary looked rather frightened at the size of the task, but she set to work. She stemmed and stemmed until her hands were sticky and her fingers ached. A thick yellow sunbeam came crawling to her feet; the flies buzzed, diving through the air as though it were heavy; the cat beside her slept and woke. It seemed to the child that she had always been in that spot and that there would never be anything ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... and Auvergnat at a distance, he gnawed the cord with his teeth. The Boulevard Monceau, where he had had his dance, was very near Little Poland; the ape knew the road as well as he did his prayers. He slowly went off then, crawling along, and arrived at his master's, who swore and foamed to see his pet ape thus served out. But this is not all; from that moment Gargousse had preserved such furious spite against all children in general, that Cut-in-half, though not very tender-hearted, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... killed our brothers first. Blood-debts must be paid. It is man's way upon the earth. But more, O brother! We follow the sunset sun, and the way before us is red with war. The way behind us is white with peace. Ever, before us, we make room for life. Ever we slay the squalling crawling things of the wild. Ever we clear the land and destroy the weeds that block the way of life for the seeds we plant. We are many, and many are our brothers that come after along the way of peace we blaze. ...
— The Acorn-Planter - A California Forest Play (1916) • Jack London
... of rage that announced the discovery of the silent one lying by the little stream, and knew that a desire for vengeance would add swiftness to the feet of his pursuers. His own seemed weighted with lead, and he felt that he was crawling; but though he could not realize it he was still running splendidly, and ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... was the first place I made for when, as a lad, I started from home with my gun. The dew of September lies long on the grass, and by the gateway I often noticed wasps that had spent the night in the bunches, numbed and chilled, crawling up the blades bent into an arch by the weight of the drops. Thence they got on the gate, where, too, the flies congregated at that time in the morning; for while it was still cool at the surface on the ground, the dry wood soon absorbed ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... While crawling down the rough portion which formed the elevated floor of the chamber Harry slipped, and broke off a portion of the stalagmite overlaying the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... regard as in itself a symbol of servility. In Sparta, on the contrary, the stronger a man is the more readily does he bow before constituted authority. And indeed, they magnify themselves on their humility, and on a prompt obedience, running, or at any rate not crawling with laggard step, at the word of command. Such an example of eager discipline, they are persuaded, set by themselves, will not fail to be followed by the rest. And this is precisely what has taken place. It (4) is reasonable ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... and commenced crawling together. But where was the fifth of the bears? Four only had escaped ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... the right, looking around them. It was a fairly populous neighborhood, with a row of villas on the other side of the road, and a few shops lower down. They stood there, having carefully chosen a place remote from the gas lamps, until at last a taxicab came crawling by. They hailed it, and Isaac engaged the driver's attention apparently with some complicated direction, while the others lifted their burden into the taxicab. One man got in with him. Isaac and the other, with ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... high walls of our winding way, reverberating in hollow claps the ponderous beat of the stern-wheel. Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on—which was just what you wanted it to do. Where ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... started grinding. Half-numbed sounds came trickling into the chill street from under the organ-cloth: a sad—once, perhaps, dance-provoking—tune, which now, false, dragging and twisted out of shape, was like a muddled crawling of sounds all jumbled up together; some came too soon, the others too late, as in a weariful dream; and, in between, a sighing and creaking which came from very deep down, at each third or fourth ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... a fit?" exclaimed Miss Sophonisba; and she put out her hand to push the cat off, but it turned to Miss Faithful, who was sitting up in bed, and crawling under the bed-clothes, lay there trembling and mewing in ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... language which he who sleepeth not, but will wake, and watch, may haply learn. Strange organs of speech hath the invisible world; strange language doth it talk; strange communion hold with him who would pry into its mysteries. It talks by bat and owl—by the grave-worm, and by each crawling thing—by the dust of graves, as well as by those that rot therein—but ever doth it discourse by night, and specially when the moon is at the full. 'Tis the lore I have then learned that makes that season dear to me. Like your cat, mine eye expands ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... than ten or twelve figures, occupies the foreground only, behind them a vacant plain extends to the foot of a cindery volcano, about whose mouth several little black devils like spiders are skipping and crawling. The judgment of quick and dead is thus expressed as taking place in about a rood square, and on a dozen of people at a time; the whole of the space and horizon of the sky and land being left vacant, and the presence of the Judge of all the earth made more ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... these words? They seethed in Judas' soul. Here is my God—Messias, King of kings, Christus, the Lord—the Saviour of us all. How long shall he be taunted and reviled, And threatened by this crawling scum of men? Oh, who shall urge the coming of that day When he in majesty shall clothe himself And stand before the astounded world its King?' Long brooding over this inflamed his soul, And, ever rash in schemes as wild in thought, At last he said, 'No longer will I bear This ignominy heaped upon ...
— A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem - First Century • W. W. Story
... crawling on his sleeve. In his vague manner he picked it tenderly off and laid it on the leaf of an aloe that grew in the terrace ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... cycle complete: egg laid in early spring, mostly on the leaves; larva hatched in about one week, crawling to the young apple to feed, where it lives for perhaps a month; larva departed from the fruit to form a cocoon and to remain quiescent till it pupates the following spring (if there is no second brood) ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... minute they came out on an open platform, and what a sight they saw! The whole city was spread out before them. They could see gray roofs, and green trees, and roadways with people on them. The people looked about as big as ants crawling along. They could see rivers, and blue ponds, and canals. It seemed to the Twins that they could see ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... one striking instance of an unfair charge of hypocrisy. It is always urged against the religious in the past, as a point of inconsistency and duplicity, that they combined a profession of almost crawling humility with a keen struggle for earthly success and considerable triumph in attaining it. It is felt as a piece of humbug, that a man should be very punctilious in calling himself a miserable sinner, and also ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil beings. Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them; invisible hands touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold soft fingers at my throat. I was still equally conscious that if I ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... reply, and the other busied himself in attempting to unlock a large and much-dented cash-box. From on deck came falsetto cries and the creak and rattle of blocks as the black crew swung up mainsail and driver. Grief watched a large cockroach crawling over the greasy paintwork. Griffiths, with an oath of irritation, carried the cash-box to the companion-steps for better light. Here, on his feet, and bending over the box, his back to his visitor, his hands shot out to the rifle that stood beside ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... lay down, wrapped in our cloaks, in different parts of the vessel—on the top of the cargo, or wherever we could find room to stretch our legs—leaving the little cabin to the judge and his family. But what with cockroaches crawling over us, and the mosquitoes buzzing round our ears and running their sharp stings into our flesh, sleep appeared out of the question. However, I at length ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... whichever way they looked, there were barracks the color of the dust, and long stark roads, new and rough, the color of the barracks, with jitneys and trucks and men like ants crawling furiously back and forth upon them all animated by the same great necessity that had brought the men here. Even the sky seemed yellow like the dust. The trees were gone except at the edges of the camp, cut down to make way for more barracks, in even ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... first met. Old Rogers went to his work, and I lingered upon the bridge. I leaned upon the low parapet, and looked up the stream as far as the mists creeping about the banks, and hovering in thinnest veils over the surface of the water, would permit. Then I turned and looked down the river crawling on to the sweep it made out of sight just where Mr Brownrigg's farm began to come down to its banks. Then I looked to the left, and there stood my old church, as quiet in the dreary day, though not so bright, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... hotel he spent a long while in my room, searching, as he said, for 'traces.' Rashid, the host and all his family, and nearly all the servants, thronged the doorway. After looking into every drawer, and crawling underneath the bed, which he unmade completely, he spent some minutes in debating whether the thief had entered by the window or the door. Having at last decided for the door, he turned to me and asked if there was anybody I suspected. When I ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... my dear," he whispered. "It's just too wonderful to be true. The peace of it, and the glory, and you. . . . I'll be waking up in a minute, my lady, and find myself crawling round the outpost line." ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... Young's moral personality on a colossal scale, we must turn to those passages where his rhetoric is at its utmost stretch of inflation—where he addresses the Deity, discourses of the Divine operations, or describes the last judgment. As a compound of vulgar pomp, crawling adulation, and hard selfishness, presented under the guise of piety, there are few things in literature to surpass the Ninth Night, entitled "Consolation," especially in the pages where he describes the last judgment—a subject to which, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... past. Something had to be done at once to provide water for the morrow's siege. They heard the exultant whoops of the savages, who, under cover of the darkness, had crept out and succeeded in scalping the two dead soldiers. They knew that very soon the Indians would be crawling out to the wagons in an attempt to run them away or fire them. Hatton himself ventured down to examine the water-barrels, and found not more than half a barrel of dirty, brackish, ill-flavored fluid in all. The darkness grew black and impenetrable. Heavy clouds overspread the heavens, and ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... Sailly. Meanwhile the preliminaries for the Somme offensive became increasingly significant. The forward villages such as Sailly and Bayencourt were cleared of the civil population, and handed over entirely to the Army. Still more monstrous guns came crawling up, and in place of the old battery of 60-pounders, the orchard at the western outskirts of Sailly, in the angle of the Bayencourt road, harboured two 15-inch howitzers. Gun-pits and enormous new dugouts were constructed in Hebuterne. ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... saw a big spider crawling over the floor toward the little girl, who was still on her tuffet, having finished her curds ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... the two guns, looked to their locks, and, fishing in his pockets, drew forth a powder-horn and a bag of bullets. These he laid with the guns on the granite ledge before him, and, crawling forward ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Go!" cried Ned. "There goes the turtle!" and he pointed to where the animal was crawling along at a rapid rate. "Hurry up, Jim, or he'll ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... automaton John put down his brushes, and walked slowly to the gate. The grey car was crawling up the hill, and the face of the driver was half enveloped in a big rubber mask. Through the two great goggles John could see little to help him identify the man. As the machine came up to the gate, he leapt into the tonneau and sank instantly to the bottom. As he ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... same objective. The foot of the hill was reached by the attacking force with two casualties. One company was then directed to the left to attack round the flank, and the ascent of the precipitous side of the hill was commenced. Crawling up a goat's track in single file, on hands and knees, through dense bush, the first portion of the ascent was accomplished, and the little force formed up under a spur to get breath before debouching into the open for the final rush to the top. After a short ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... infamous head of the monopolizers." "Isnard is a juggler, Buzot a Tartuffe, Vergniaud a police spy."[3130]—When a madman sees everywhere around him, on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling, toads, scorpions, spiders, swarms of crawling, loathsome vermin, he thinks only of crushing them, and the disease enters on its last stage: after the ambitious delirium, the mania for persecution and the settled nightmare, comes the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... rotten wood, on which I believe they feed. In general form they resemble little slugs, but are very much narrower in proportion, and several of the species are beautifully coloured with longitudinal stripes. Their structure is very simple: near the middle of the under or crawling surface there are two small transverse slits, from the anterior one of which a funnel-shaped and highly irritable mouth can be protruded. For some time after the rest of the animal was completely dead from the effects ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... his head and looked at her. At those words of hers he had once again the sensation of being pushed down by strong heavy hands into some deep mire where he must have company with filthy crawling animals—Hogg, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... sighed over on that day by the three sisters as they sat endeavouring to be cool, and looking out at the glowing street where the few passengers seemed to be crawling like flies ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wrath, "I rather should have hewn your limbs away, And left you crawling on your stumps, I say,— But ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... the poison of them entered her soul, corroded her sentiments towards him, dissolved the love she had borne him, and transformed it into venom. She would not have him now if he did penitence for his disaffection by going in sackcloth and crawling after her on his knees for a full twelvemonth. But neither should he have Ruth if she could thwart his purpose. On that she ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... as the sea, and all along the farther side a line of kopjes and hills rising like reefs and detached islands out of it. You might think the plain was empty at first glance, but, if you look hard, you will see it crawling with little khaki-clad figures, dotted all over it; not packed anywhere, but sprinkled over the whole surface. They are steadily but very leisurely converging on the largest end hill of the opposite range. Meantime, from three or four spots along the sides of ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... on the point of crawling away with a few napoleons!" said Durkin in a whisper. He began to succumb to the intoxication of this rapidity of movement which life was once more taking on. He was speed-mad, like a motorist on a white and lonely road. Yet ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... die for all, males and females? What sort of foolish stuff are you trying to inject into this tariff debate?... There are trusts and monopolies of every kind, and these little feminine fellows are crawling around here talking about woman suffrage. I have seen them here in this Capitol. The suffragette and a little henpecked fellow crawling along beside her; that is her husband. She is a suffragette, and he is ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... those on deck rushed towards the bows, and stood eyeing the boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the midst of this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and crawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... looked up in his face, as if he understood what his new friend said; and, crawling off from the officer's body, he came to Fritz and licked his hand, holding up the while one paw, which was bleeding as if from ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... more than its own weight; hence equipment is of the simplest. At that, the sledge rope galls one's neck with a continual, endless, yielding drag, resulting in back pains peculiar to itself. It is this eternal maddening pull, with the pitiful crawling gait that tells; horse's labour and a snail's pace. The toil begets a perspiration which the cold solidifies midway through the garments. At every pause the clammy clothes grow chill, forcing one ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... another look at the approaching Fogers. Their carts were slowly crawling up the trail, and as Tom could plainly see them, he made no doubt but that his caravan was also observed ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... could walk head in air along the most precarious rafter; her hand feared neither the grossness nor the harshness of life's web, but was thrust cheerfully, if need were, into the briar bush, and could take hold of any crawling horror. Ruin was mining the walls of her cottage, as already it had mined and subverted Mr. Archer's palace. Well, she faced it with a bright countenance and a busy hand. She had got some washing, some rough seamstress work from the "Green Dragon," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were the lintels of the windows; but the stone was so stained and darkened with smoky years of rains and river fogs, that its only beauty lay in the noble lines that grime and time had not been able to destroy. A gnarled and twisted old wistaria roped the doorway, and, crawling almost to the roof, looped along the eaves, in May it broke into a froth of exquisite purple and faint green, and for a week the garland of blossoms, murmurous with bees, lay clean and lovely against the narrow, old bricks which had once been painted yellow. Outside, the house had a distinction ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... has fled, and his captor, determined to secure its prey, has betaken its crawling body after him. If only we had a light! I saw something like a black shadow moving onwards; get your pistol ready and follow." I just distinguished Denviers as he passed on in front of me, Hassan coming last. When we reached the hut of the Maw-Sayah we stopped at once, for, from the cry which came ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... floor, which my own ears had heard. They also had seen the large, ill-conditioned cat I have mentioned, frequently steal in and out of the stranger's room; and observed that when our little girl was in greatest danger, the hateful animal was constantly writhing, fawning, and crawling about the door of the sick room after nightfall. They were thoroughly persuaded that this ill-omened beast was the foul fiend himself, and I confess I could not—sceptic as I was—bring myself absolutely to the belief ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... themselves from the clutching hooks of the wire. Both sides withdrew, panting and nursing their dripping wounds, to the shelter of their trenches, and both left their dead sprawled in the trampled ooze or stayed to help their wounded crawling painfully back to cover. Immediately the British set about rebuilding their shattered trench and parapet; but before they had well begun the spades had to be flung down again and the rifles snatched to repel another fierce assault. This ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... were crawling out of the carriages now, and suddenly there seemed to be scores of spectators, and much shouting and running about. The engine lay on its side, partly overhanging a wrecked wagon. Immense clouds of steam issued from it, hissing above the roar of the wind. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... lay motionless three men dropped in quick succession from the top of the city wall and hid among the low bushes, crawling noiselessly from one to another and so approaching, by degrees, the ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... done. Maud and Elsie went down on their knees, and travelled slowly across the floor, pushing infinitesimal creases before them, while the others pulled and strained to make the most of the advantage thus given. It was a lengthy business, and the crawling operation was repeated several times over before the first ring could be induced to catch over its nail; but when this was done hope began to revive, and the pushing and tugging was carried on with such vigour that presently the last fastening was secured, and ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... affectionate man loves one who stands between him and solitude. To cut short a long story: my friend, one dark night, committed an outrage against discipline, of the most unpardonable character. There was a sanctimonious, grave old fellow of the College, crawling home from a tea-party; my friend and another of his set seized, blindfolded, and handcuffed this poor wretch, carried him, vi et armis, back to the house of an old maid whom he had been courting for the last ten years, fastened his pigtail (he wore a long one) to the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that screened the window, trickled cold shafts of moonlight that fell upon something evil that wriggled across the white and black slabs of marble from beneath the door curtain. The moonlight glistened the bronze skin of the silent, crawling thing that was a huge snake, or a giant centipede; it was even like a square-snouted, shovel-headed mugger that had crept up out of the slimy river that circled sluggishly the ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... henhouse, and Sally and Kaetheli beside her full of expectation, for they had sought Ritz for a long time in vain. But Auntie had experience in such things. Ritz actually came crawling out of the henhouse and stood now in a lamentable ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... slid the palms of his hands together, producing a shrill, screeching noise. He lifted his feet from the water, and clambered onto the bank. In a minute or two a curious little beast came crawling up to his feet, turning its face and eyes up affectionately, like a dog. It was about two feet long, and somewhat resembled a small seal, but had six legs, ending ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... received the half-servile, half-insolent screed which Mr. Yardley has addressed to him. Let Mr. Yardley cease from crawling on his knees and shaking his fist. Neither this posture nor this gesture can wring one bent farthing from the pockets of Mr. Davenant, who was a minor at the time when that series of ill-made suits was supplied to him and will hereafter, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... trailing line of communications is unnoticed. The fierce glory that plays on red, triumphant bayonets dazzles the observer; nor does he care to look behind to where, along a thousand miles of rail, road, and river, the convoys are crawling to the front in uninterrupted succession. Victory is the beautiful, bright-coloured flower. Transport is the stem without which it could never have blossomed. Yet even the military student, in his zeal to master the fascinating combinations of the actual conflict, often forgets ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... passion in his heart, the boy began to ascend. With a shifting foundation under his feet, a stiff wind flattening him against the shrouds, and a deathly swaying to and fro that increased as he went higher, he managed to reach the foretop. Crawling through the lubber hole he rested and ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... Earth-and-Autumn of the Setting Sun, She is not by, to know my task is done!) The corn-shocks westward on the stubble plain Show like an Indian village of dead days; The long smoke trails behind the crawling train, And floats atop the distant woods ablaze With orange, crimson, purple. The low haze Dims the scarped bluffs above the inland sea, Whose wide and slaty waters in cold glaze Await yon full-moon of the night-to-be, (. . . far . . . and ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... river bed. Claire had a quaking feeling that this rock pulpit was going to slide. She thrust out her hand, seized Milt's paw, and in its firm warmth found comfort. Clinging to its security she followed him by the crawling path to the river below. She looked up at columns of crimson and saffron and burning brown, up at the matronly falls, up at lone pines clinging to jutting rocks that must be already crashing toward her, and in the splendor she knew the Panic fear that is ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... worn straw hat, as they bent over the hive, but he liked the slow, drawling voice that answered his innumerable questions and he found the chuckling laugh irresistibly infectious. The stranger's brown hands moved with steady skill among the horde of crawling insects, until the last frame was set in place, the last puff of smoke blown, and the ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... she had finished practising, she took an empty cardboard box, and went down to the end of the garden. She was quite sure that in the vegetable garden she would find ever so many caterpillars, and there they were,—great brown ones, crawling lazily about in the sun, smaller green ones, that travelled about more actively, and upon the tomato-plants Ruby found some that she was quite sure Miss Ketchum would like, because they were so ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... At midnight, when her stalwart champions were sleeping in their beds, the police, crawling over the roofs of the houses in Prince Michael Street, and descending into the Queen's courtyard, found it a very simple matter to complete their dastardly work. The Queen was again bundled unceremoniously into a carriage, and before Belgrade was well awake, she was far on her ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... servile, crawling knave!' said Martin. 'Listen, you shallow dog. What! When I was seeking him, you had already spread your nets; you were already fishing for him, were ye? When I lay ill in this good woman's house and your meek spirit pleaded for my grandson, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... on the gibbet, among the reeking, gaping, swinish crowd with whom—O God, that I were one of them even! that I were the most loathsome beggar that ever crept forth to taint the air with sores! that I were a toad immured in a stone, sweltering in the atmosphere of its own venom! a snail crawling on these very walls, and tracking his painful path in slime!—anything, anything, but death! And such death! The gallows, the scaffold, the halter, the fingers of the hangman paddling round the neck where the softest caresses have clung and sated. To die, die, die! What, I whose pulse now beats so ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... As for Tiger, they knew not whether he had perished in the landslip, or whether he had escaped. There existed in the right side of the hill, as well as in the left, on either side of the fissure, certain winding passages, and it was by crawling along these in the darkness that William Guy, Patterson, and the others reached a cavity which let in light and air in abundance. From this shelter they beheld the attack on the Jane by sixty pirogues, the defence made by the six men on ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... His face was ashy, his teeth chattering, his limbs shaking. Before Staines could ask him what was the matter, he pointed through an aperture of the acacias into the wood hard by the elands. Staines looked, and saw what seemed to him like a very long dog, or some such animal, crawling from tree to tree. He did not at all share the terror of his companion, nor understand it. But a terrible explanation followed. This creature, having got to the skirt of the wood, expanded, by ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... the beauty benefits of plenty of restful, refreshing sleep, all femininity would be crawling into bed at sunset. I've often wondered why the great sisterhood that is praying and working and fretting for physical loveliness does not understand that more real help comes from rational, hygienic living than can be squeezed out of all ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... produced so little effect at its delivery that the ministers against whom it was directed did not even think necessary to answer it. One of Burke's contemporaries has recorded that he left the Parliament house (crawling under the benches to avoid Burke's notice) in order to escape hearing one of his speeches which when it was published he read with the most intense interest. In the latter part of his life Burke was even called 'the dinner-bell of the House' because his rising to speak was a ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... until two o'clock; half our officers were killed or wounded; the colonel, Lorain, was among the first, and the commandant, Gemeau, the latter; all along the river side were heaps of dead, or wounded men crawling away from the struggle. Some, furious, would rise to their knees to fire a last shot or deliver a final bayonet-thrust. Never was anything seen like it. In the river floated long lines of corpses, some showing their faces, others their backs, others their feet. They followed each other ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... come to our house a lot. First I was very glad he did, then I began to see they were falling in love with each other, and then—an odd thing began to happen to me at night. Do you know when she lay there asleep beside me (he laughs shrilly) I would hear him, pushing open the door, crawling into the room, coming to me on his hands and knees, grovelling, whining, begging me (he is almost shouting) for her, for her, imagine it! And I, I had to get up and give my place to him. (He covers his eyes with his hands in ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... rest, indescribably filthy and dishevelled, his hair and beard matted with endless sweat, unwashed save by the rains which in that season were all too rare, choked almost by the stench of his miserable comrades and infested by filthy crawling things begotten of decaying sheepskins and Heaven alone knows what other foulnesses of that floating hell. He was sparingly fed upon weevilled biscuit and vile messes of tallowy rice, and to drink he was given luke-warm water that was often stale, saving that ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... around them. I can see, too, where trenches were levelled, just as I have seen pits which children make on the seashore levelled by the incoming tide. Now and then there come back to my mind dim, weird pictures of Germans crawling out of their dug-outs, holding up their hands, and piteously ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... seen crawling on his hand, And clinging bats, but dimly scanned, Full in his face their wings expand. A paleness took the poet's cheek; "Must I drink here?" He seemed to seek The lady's will with utterance meek: "Ay, ay," she said, "it so must be:" (And this time she spoke cheerfully) Behooves thee ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... faced the open door; neither one of them saw the crawling, slinking figure, the pale, fear-stricken face, and the staring eyes which appeared in the doorway, clung there for a moment and then vanished again as noiselessly as they had come. Neither of them, had ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... Almost all the many-formed and strange-shaped inhabitants of the pool were hunting or being hunted, preying or being preyed upon,—from the goggle-eyed, green-throated bullfrog under the willow root, down to the swarming animalculae which it required a microscope to see. Small crawling things everywhere dotted the mud or tried to hide under the sticks and stones. Curled fresh-water snails moved up and down the stems of the lilies. Shining little black water-bugs scurried swiftly in all directions. In sheltered places near the surface, under the ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... to the end of our fuel, and as the fire died down, so did the noises in the valley recommence. And there we stood in the growing dark, each one keeping a very ready weapon, and a more ready glance. And at times the island would be mightily quiet, and then again the sounds of things crawling in the valley. Yet, I think the ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... harnished with leaden chaines, hauing the outside guilt, or at least saffrond in stead of guilt, to decypher a holie or golden pretence of a couetous purpose, the sentence Cani capilli mei compedes, on his target he had a number of crawling wormes kept vnder by a blocke, the faburthen, Speramus lucent. The fift was the forsaken knight, whose helmet was crowned with nothing but cipresse and willow garlands, ouer his armor he had on Himens ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... willows, he slipped sideways between them and made fast time. There were narrow aisles and washes and holes low down and paths brushed by animals, all of which he took advantage of, running, walking, crawling, stooping any way to get along. To keep in a straight line was not easy—he did it by marking some bright sunlit stem or tree ahead, and when he reached it looked straight on to mark another. His progress necessarily grew slower, for as he advanced the brake became wilder, ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... his comrade, who was crawling along, looking back every little while as though fearful lest he had ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... stretched himself and yawned, cast one more glance across the moonlit plain, and then stood suddenly still, stiffened into an attitude of breathless interest. Yonder, between two lines of shrubs, were moving bodies—men, footsore and weary, crawling along with slow, painful movements; one at least of them was a European, and even at that distance Trent could tell that they were in grievous straits. He felt for his revolver, and, finding that it was in his belt, descended the ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Possibly two or three of the Malays may come down to the village before morning, either to fetch valuables they may have left behind, or to see whether we are still here. They may come tonight, or they may come some time tomorrow, crawling through the plantations behind the houses. At any rate, I will wait here a day ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... After a time he got up and fetched an evening paper. The great push between Cambrai and St. Quentin was going well; behind Ypres the Boche was everywhere on the run. But to Vane gigantic captures in men and guns meant a very different picture. He saw just the one man crawling on his belly through the mouldering bricks and stinking shell-holes of some death-haunted village. He saw the sudden pause—the tense silence as the man stopped motionless, listening with every nerve alert. He felt once again the hideous certainty ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... tall bird of the Heron or Pelican kind stands watching by the water's edge. In the Miocene the vegetation looks still more familiar, though the Elephants roaming about in regions of the Temperate Zone, and the huge Salamanders crawling out of the water, remind us that we are still far removed from present times. Lastly, we have the ice period, with the glaciers coming down to the borders of a river where large troops of Buffalo are drinking, while on the shore some Bears are feasting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... knees, crawling from under the table, followed closely by her faithful shadow. She came cautiously up to Sunny's side and ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... channel of the river, they did another wise thing. They crossed it, instead of keeping on down; and crawling, they stuck to the high ground, even the tops of the bare ridges, instead of taking to the ravines ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... must see disgusting slugs or snails crawling lazily across the ripening apples in the orchard and leaving behind them the filthy streak of slime with which they made the way easy for their ugly bodies, but in so doing defiled the fruit for human use. So much is the basis in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... of some tree, with the slight inconvenience of a hungry stomach. But how very different was my prospect then, with the fearful thoughts that were pressing upon me! The poison was fast inoculating my blood. I fancied I already felt it crawling through ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... a fly wipe his feet before he came into the house? No, indeed; and he goes anywhere he pleases, over the bread and into the cream. Yet he was born in dirt and bred in dirt, and he lives in dirty places all the time he is not crawling over your clean ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... obvious. There is no need for continued progression in women, and Nature, like the grand old economist she is, or can be when she likes, matures the mind quickly in one case and slowly in the other; so slowly that he, the young male, goes crawling on all fours as it were, a long distance after his little flying sister—slowly because he has very far to go and must keep on for a ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... pleases him, and won't if it doesn't. And Shatushka (he's my dear, my darling!) slapped you on the cheeks, my Lebyadkin told me. And what were you afraid of then, when you came in? Who had frightened you then? When I saw your mean face after I'd fallen down and you picked me up—it was like a worm crawling into my heart. It's not he, I thought, not he! My falcon would never have been ashamed of me before a fashionable young lady. Oh heavens! That alone kept me happy for those five years that my falcon ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... close to the ground, and has only a small part of the body unsupported at once. This economizes force at each step, but on the other hand multiplies the number of steps so greatly, since the smallest irregularity of the surface is a hill to a crawling creature, that the total loss of force is perhaps greater, since it has to slightly raise its body a thousand times or so to clear a space spanned by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... destroy vegetable seed and at the same time kill all forms of parasites. The results have been gratifying, and with considerable pleasure I viewed a garden of the various odd-shaped vegetables that are grown, without being repulsed at the sight of such crawling specimens as tomato and ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... it seems only seven days instead of seven years since I was last driven through London streets," resumed Janet, as they were crawling up Fleet Street. "The same shops, the same houses, and even, as it seems to me, the same people crowding the pathways; and, to complete the illusion, the same kind travelling companion now ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... leave the churn, for there was their little babe crawling about the floor, and, "If I leave it," he thought, "the child ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... postures the soldiers met the gale, with every answering sound. Then falling, rising, crawling, the remnant went back. It was not pain nor death nor wounds that mattered—but the hurtling concussions in the air, ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... rest of that day there was no other adventure to mar the peace of their journey. Once, indeed, the Tin Woodman stepped upon a beetle that was crawling along the road, and killed the poor little thing. This made the Tin Woodman very unhappy, for he was always careful not to hurt any living creature; and as he walked along he wept several tears of sorrow and regret. These tears ran slowly down his face and over the ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... before twelve o'clock, but their progress was so slow, crawling, as they had to do, up the steep side of the mountain, under cover of bushes and trees, that it was well after three when they came to the waterfall, which they crossed, as best they could, on stones ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... Crawling back into the log, he tested the heart of the tree and to his joy, it crumbled under his touch. With a smothered cry, he began to cut his way through the pithy, dust-like wood, and as he gradually worked quantities of the soft fiber loose, he tossed it behind him. If he could ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... appeared to tower to an even greater height,—his eyes flashed, and the intellectual pride and force of his character became apparent in every feature of his face. "If humanity in the mass asked us for Christ only; if men and women would deny themselves the petty personal aim, the low vice, the crawling desire to ingratiate themselves with Heaven, the Pharisaical affectation of virtue—if they would themselves stand clear of 'vain repetition' and obstinate egoism, and would of themselves live purely, the Church would ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... at the thought of Huitzilopochtli dropping children from his fingers into the flames, but we have to remember that our own most Christian Saint Augustine was content to describe unbaptized infants as crawling for ever about the floor of Hell! What sort of god, we may ask, did Augustine worship? The Being who could condemn children to such a fate was certainly no better ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... nothing else the matter with him. It was just this: "You haven't given me what I want; now I'll kill you." For months after each presidential inauguration the hotels of Washington are roosts for these buzzards. They are the crawling vermin of this nation. Guiteau was no rarity. There were hundreds of Guiteaus in Washington after the inauguration, except that they had not the courage to shoot. I saw them some two months or six weeks after. They were mad enough to do it. I ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... the albatross following, until one day the Ancient Mariner, in a mad moment, shot the beautiful bird. In punishment for this deed terrible disasters fell upon that ship and its crew. Under a blazing sun, in a hot and slimy sea filled with creeping, crawling things, they were becalmed— ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... from her, and I feel that any day harm may come to her, and she 'll melt, and be as if the devils of hell were mocking me. Who's to keep harm from her when I'm away? What can I do but drink and forget? Only now, when I wake up from it, I'm a crawling wretch at her feet. If I had her feet to kiss! I've never kissed her—never! And no man has kissed her. Damn my head! here's the ache coming on. That's my last oath, mother. I wish there was a Bible handy, but I'll try and stick ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sleeping soundly on his cot below, breathed heavily. After starting a strip with his teeth, Neranya, by the same means, would attach it to the railing of his cage and then wriggle away, much after the manner of a caterpillar's crawling, and this would cause the strip to be torn out the full length of his garment. He repeated this operation with incredible patience and skill until his entire garment had been torn into strips. Two or three of these he tied end to end with his teeth, lips, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... the vines looked as if they were crawling, and that the yellow blossoms were shaped like huge bugs. The longer she looked at it the more it seemed as if those vines did really move upon the wall. While she watched them she dropped to sleep and ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... been very kind. I am thrice the man I was, though I limp wofully, which grieves me since it shortens the day's journey, lad. We have been already these many days and yet, as I compute, we have fully eighty miles yet to go. Alas, dear lad, how my crawling must fret you." ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... know its nature. At a distance it looked like one of those horrible antediluvian monsters one reads of, with a lank body, about thirty feet long. It was reddish-yellow in colour, and came on at a slow, crawling pace, its back appearing occasionally above the underwood. Presently its outline became more defined, and it turned out to be a canoe instead of an antediluvian monster, with Big Waller and Bounce ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne |
