"Shell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... principal dyes used were originally invented and continuously fabricated by the Phoenicians themselves, not imported from any foreign country. Nature had placed along the Phoenician coast, or at any rate along a great portion of it, an inexhaustible supply of certain shell-fish, or molluscs, which contained as a part of their internal economy a colouring fluid possessing remarkable, and indeed unique, qualities. Some account has been already given of the species which are thought to have ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... my holiday was delightful. The island is really magnificent. Short of a stream, it has everything one could wish for in such a place. It has cliffs, a wood, a common fields under cultivation, fields used as pasture, caves, shell beaches, several empty cottages. Its bird life is wealthy in cuckoos and other magic-bringers; its flowers have extraordinary interest; dogs and cattle and horses give domestic life, and a boat or two may be used ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... extravaganza had made his own obsolete, had not one ugly turn in political affairs given so smashing a refutation to his practical conclusions, and called forth so sudden a rebound of public feeling in the very opposite direction, that a bomb- shell descending right through the whole impression of his book could not more summarily have laid a chancery "injunction" upon its further sale. This arose under the brilliant administration of the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... estimate, there were under his command one hundred field-pieces,—sixty from the guard,—and these were supported by cavalry and cuirassiers; some estimate the number of guns at four hundred, but this is manifestly a wild exaggeration. As the artillery rolled up and unlimbered, volleys of shot, shell, and grape began to follow in swift succession, and in a short time the enemy's pursuit was not only stayed, but with the approach of Macdonald's infantry to form a new flank it was turned into retreat. The Austrians ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... untaught in academic bowers, A gift to Glory from the Sylvan powers: But what keen Sage, with all the science fraught, By elder bards or later critics taught, Shall count the cords of his mellifluous shell, Span the vast fabric of his fame, and tell By what strange arts he bade the structure rise— On what deep site the strong foundation lies? This, why should scholiasts labour to reveal? We all can answer it, we all can feel, Ten thousand ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... niggers clatter their bones; a conjurer in red throws his heels in the air; several harps strum merrily different strains; fruit-sellers push baskets into folks' faces; sellers of wretched needlework and singular baskets coated with shells thrust their rubbish into people's laps. These shell baskets date from George IV. The gingerbeer men and the newsboys cease not from troubling. Such a volume of uproar, such a complete organ of discord I mean a whole organful cannot be found anywhere else on the face of the earth in so comparatively ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... to play the game," he answered tensely. "For months you've been withdrawing into your shell. You've been clanking your chains and half-heartedly wishing for some mysterious power to strike them off. It wasn't a thing you undertook lightly. It isn't a thing—marriage, I mean—that you hold lightly. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... waking Eye Can, to our judgment, never lie, And what through Sense and Sight we gain. Becometh part of Soul and Brain. Look round the World in which you dwell Nor, Snail-like, live within your Shell; And if you see His World aright The Lord shall grant you double Sight. For, though your Mind and Soul be small, If you but open them to all The great wide World, they will expand Those glorious Things to understand. When ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... certain neighbors as born enemies, to see in those who do not speak their own tongue not only a stranger but an enemy. Back of the soldiers under arms, back of the cannons with their deadly missiles, stand millions of loathing men and women shooting darts of odium that reach further than any shell and that are more poisonous than any gas. When shall we be able once again to preach the beautiful teaching of the prophet, "Have we not all one Father; hath not one God ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... touch a grain of rye if ye dare! Shell these dry bains; and if so be ye're starving, eat as many as ye can ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... content with watching those I saw during my dives in the Water Garden, but I must needs scoop out a hole in the coral rock close to it, which I filled with salt water, and stocked with sundry specimens of anemones and shell-fish, in order to watch more closely how they were in the habit of passing their time. Our burning-glass also now became a great treasure to me, as it enabled me to magnify, and so to perceive more clearly the forms and actions of these curious ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Don, and had a long walk on the beach—in the opposite direction from Graves's house, of course—and I sent Don into the water after sticks, and he seemed to enjoy it, and so I stripped and went in with him. Then I dried in the sun, and had a match with my hands to see which could find the tiniest shell. Toward dusk we returned to the schooner and had dinner, and after that I went into my cabin to see how Bo was ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... which the name of the ship could be ascertained. The wreck had evidently drifted about for many months; clusters of shell-fish had fastened about it, and long sea-weeds flaunted at its sides. But where, thought I, are the crew? Their struggle has long been over. They have gone down amidst the roar of the tempest. Their bones lie whitening among the ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... was falling. The afternoon was gone. And Robert, realizing that it was past the dinner hour at his home, decided to find his evening meal at a restaurant. One of these, with a display of shell-fish grouped about a miniature fountain in its window, confronted him ere long and he entered a rococo interior of mirrored walls. What caught his fancy more than the ornate furnishings, however, was a very pretty girl sitting within a cashier's ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... as the first, and limber as the second. We want a ship in these billows we inhabit. An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, in this storm of many elements. No, it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as a shell is the architecture of a house founded on the sea. The soul of man must be the type of our scheme, just as the body of man is the type after which a dwelling-house is built. Adaptiveness is the peculiarity of human nature. We are golden averages, volitant stabilities, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sent in its direction. Some burst in the street, putting the populace to flight on every side; and, while the women were on the point of rushing down the stair, a crash was heard above, and an enormous shell burst through the roof, carrying down shattered rafters, stones, and a cloud of dust. The batteries had found our range, and a succession of shells burst above our heads, or tore their way downwards. All was now confusion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... man, and callous and selfish. But there is truly something under his shell. I would relish putting some ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... with the advent of summer a cook is engaged for the season, and it is a matter of importance to the sojourner in Boulogne whether that cook ranks as "fair" or "good." He generally is good. Fish, of course, is always fresh at Boulogne and generally excellent in quality, and the shell-fish are above suspicion—at least I never heard of anybody suffering from eating moules,—therefore a Sole Normande or any similar dish generally forms part of a dejeuner on the pier, and this with an entrecote and an omelette au rhum makes a fine solid sea-side feast. The ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... a snuffbox of tortoise shell and gold. He opened it deliberately. "If he does, you'll admit that he will hang on the gallows that he has built himself—although intended for another. I'faith! He's not the first booby to be caught in his own springe. There is in this a measure of poetic justice. Poetry and justice! Do you ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... the hollow bole of a lightning-riven tree. Removing the arrows he turned the quiver upside down, emptying upon the ground the contents of its bottom—his few treasures. Among them was a flat bit of stone and a shell which he had picked up from the beach ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... This shell-fish is in the market all the year, but is best in May and June. If the tail, when straightened, springs back into position, it indicates that the fish is fresh. The time of boiling live lobsters depends upon the size. If boiled too much they will be tough and dry. They are generally ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... As is well known, before swords were made with shell and stool hilts, the two guards combined with the handle and blade formed a cross. Bayard, when dying, raised his sword to gaze upon this cross, and numerous instances, similar to that mentioned above by Queen Margaret, may be found in ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... love who sip it at the spring. Youth is a fragile child that plays at love, Tosses a shell, and trims a little sail, Mimics the passion of the gathered years, And is a loiterer on the shallow bank Of the great flood that ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... My poor Strephon: I pretended I was only two for your sake. I was two when you were born. I saw you break from your shell; and you were such a charming child! You ran round and talked to us all so prettily, and were so handsome and well grown, that I lost my heart to you at once. But now I seem to have lost it altogether: bigger things are taking possession of me. Still, we were very happy in our childish ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Anything that's been part of anything else or come in contact with it will interact permanently with it. I wish I had a sol for every time I've seen a Kwann pull the wad out of a shot-shell, pick up a pinch of dirt from the footprint of some animal he's tracking, put it in among the buckshot, and then crimp the wad ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper
... he said, "but there were no difficulties. I found the first herd directly north of here. The second herd, a great one, is northeast, near Shell Lake. The snow is deep. The buffalo can only follow their leader in ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... his shell-like ear And there was music carven in his face, His eyes half-closed, his lips just breaking open To catch the lulling, mazy, coralline roar Of numberless caverns filled ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... ball on the ground, and nobody but myself near it. The great chance was there to pick it up and perhaps, even with my slow speed, gain 20 to 30 yards for Yale. No such thought, however, entered my head. I wanted that ball and curled up around it and hugged it as a tortoise would close in its shell. My recollection is now that I sat there for about five minutes before anybody deigned to fall on me. At all events, I had ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... which Agnes joined, and the two, banishing the thoughts of sick babies and pale-faced women, had a gay time. In the meantime, the children had scrambled over rocks to gather lichen, and dug holes deep enough to bury a kitten in, in their efforts to get moss; they had sailed little nut-shell boats down the stream, and in the many ways that children have enjoyed themselves. Everybody was hungry of course, so by the time Agnes was ready for her ferns, there were empty baskets in which to place them. But they read and talked before that, ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... pearl may in a toad's head dwell, And may be found too in an oyster-shell; If things that promise nothing do contain What better is than gold; who will disdain, That have an inkling of it, there to look, That they may find it? Now, my little book, (Though void of all these paintings that may make It with this ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... mind can recognise the divine harmony which underlies all apparent disorder. The universe is to its perceptions like the shell whose murmur in a child's ear seems to express a mysterious union with the sea. But the mind must be rightly prepared. Everything depends upon the point of view. One man, as he says in an elaborate figure, looking upon ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... landmark, and worth the journey up here only to look at it," he answered with an enthusiasm which showed that he had a tender spot for Nature's beauties, and that even if the shell was hard, the ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... were standing together beside one of the three Maxim guns by which our position was defended, watching the preparations being made on the top of the hill for assaulting us, when suddenly there was a bright flash, and next instant a great shell fell behind us, bursting and dealing death and destruction among our ranks. The air became rent by the shrill cries of the wounded and the hoarse agonized exclamations of the dying, for this first shot from the palace had been terribly effective, and fully fifty ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... we stayed at Widow Hall's, and there met Andrews and some of our other comrades. This was on the banks of the Tennessee river, and Andrews advised us to cross there, and to take passage on the cars at Shell Mound station, as there had been a stringent order issued to let no one cross above, who could not present perfectly satisfactory credentials. Andrews had these, but we had not; it was, therefore, advisable for us to be challenged ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... space upon his recumbent body. I have heard him say that his faculty of observation at that time would not have appeared despicable to a Seminole or an Iroquois: he saw and watched everything, the bird on the wing, the snail dragging its shell up the pendulous woodbine, the bee adding to his golden treasure as he swung in the bells of the campanula, the green fly darting hither and thither like an animated seedling, the spider weaving her gossamer from twig to twig, the woodpecker heedfully scrutinising the lichen on the gnarled ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... aroused all his patriotism, all his sympathies, and, as a poet, tested his power to deal with great contemporary events and scenes. He was first drawn to the seat of war on behalf of his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel George W. Whitman, 51st New York Volunteers, who was wounded by the fragment of a shell at Fredericksburg. This was in the fall of 1862. This brought him in contact with the sick and wounded soldiers, and henceforth, as long as the war lasts and longer, he devoted his time and substance to ministering ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... posting, to the Park. Halter in hand, each vale he scour'd at loss, To spy out something like a chesnut horse; But no such animal the meadows cropt— At length beneath a tree sir Peter stopt; A branch he caught, then shook it, and down fell A fine horse chesnut in its prickly shell. There Tom, take that—Well, sir, and what beside? Why since you're booted, saddle it and ride; Ride what? a chesnut!—Ay, come, get across; I tell you, Tom, that chesnut is a horse, And all the horse you'll get—for I can show, As clear as shunshine, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... manor-house which preserved the grace of a superannuated coquette down to the grottos encrusted with shell-work, where slumbered the loves of a bygone age, everything in this antique demesne had retained the physiognomy of former days. Everything seemed to speak still of ancient customs, of the manners ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... resuming, "the passage from mortal to immortal life, cannot change our spirits, but only give to all their powers a freer and more perfect development. Love is not a quality of the body, but of the spirit, and will remain in full force, after the body is cast off like the shell of a chrysalis. Still existing, it will seek its object. And shall it seek forever and not find? God forbid! No! The love I bear my wife is not, I trust, all of the earth, earthy; but instinct with a heavenly perpetuity. And when ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... she is only a woman like the rest of us, with just the same narrow bounds to her existence, and just the same prosaic cares—that she will go by train to Victoria, and from thence home in a common vehicle instead of embarking in a great shell and being drawn by swans to some enchanted island. Her playing reminds me of myself as I was when I believed in fairyland, and indeed knew little about any ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... heavens disclosed above them. The birds are silent save the jackdaws and the robin, who still sings his recollections of the summer, or his anticipations of the spring, or perhaps his pleasure in the late autumn. The finches are in flocks, and whirl round in the air with graceful, shell-like convolutions as they descend, part separating, for no reason apparently, and forming a second flock which goes away over the copse. There is hardly any farm-work going on, excepting in the ditches, which are being cleaned in readiness for the overflow when the thirsty ground shall ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... the stone crusher, as shown by Fig. 11, B, the track below being connected directly with the tunnels. The stone bin under the screen of the crusher plant at the Hackensack end was divided into three parts, the center being filled with sand by a derrick having a clam-shell bucket, the other two with stone directly from ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis
... the opening was found, and the boat once more lowered to investigate and find that the coral-reef still spread out like a barrier, but the coral insects were dead, and as they investigated farther it was to find that there was not a single shell-fish of any kind living in the shoal water, nor any trace of life, but on the highest part of the bleached white coral there were a few blocks of blackish-grey ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... Penny's inhibitions, incased within the shell of himself, were as catalogic as Homer's list of ships. First, like Tithonus, he had no youth. Persiflage, which he secretly envied in others, on his own lips went off like damp fireworks. He loved order and his mind easily took in statistics. He had ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... to recommence his journey, the doctor received a visit in his tent from Shinti, who, as a mark of his friendship, presented him with a shell on which he set the greatest value, observing: "There, now you have ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... shell of high-carbon content to a low-carbon steel. This produces what might be termed a "dual" steel, allowing for an outer shell which when hardened would withstand wear, and a soft ductile core to produce ductility and withstand shock. The operation is carried out by packing the ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... night. And now they had themselves well served, and feasted and rioted. Early in the morning, when day was breaking, and every one was asleep, the cock awoke the hen, brought the egg, pecked it open, and they ate it together, but they threw the shell on the hearth. Then they went to the needle which was still asleep, took it by the head and stuck it into the cushion of the landlord's chair, and put the pin in his towel, and at the last without more ado they flew away over the heath. The duck ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... any climate. A curt, dry, uninteresting conversation about English horses was succeeded by some queries, which I had answered fifty times before, about English pistols: and then came a sly joke or two about English women. At length the point of the interview began to poke its horns out of this shell of tittle-tattle. ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... climb up and get the persimmons for him. The monkey got up on a limb of the tree and began to eat the persimmons. The unripe persimmons he threw at the crab, but all the ripe and good ones he put in his pouch. The crab under the tree thus got his shell badly bruised and only by good luck escaped into his hole, where he lay distressed with pain and not able to get up. Now when the relatives and household of the crab heard how matters stood they were surprised and angry, and declared war and attacked ...
— Battle of the Monkey & the Crab • Anonymous
... daring attempt with painful anxiety, and when he was out of sight, they fixed their attention on the land where their hope of safety lay, while eating some shell-fish with which the sand was strewn. It was a wretched repast, but still it was better than nothing. The opposite coast formed one vast bay, terminating on the south by a very sharp point, which was destitute of all vegetation, and was of a very wild aspect. This point abutted on ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... had a single barb of wood fixed on with gum, the other had two large barbs cut out of the solid wood, and it was as finely brought to a point as if it had been made with the sharpest instrument. The throwing-stick had a piece of hard stone fixed in gum instead of the shell which is commonly used by the natives who live on the sea coast: it is with these stones, which they bring to a very sharp edge, that the natives make ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... very streight and tall, few bigger than the calf of a mans Leg. [The Fruit.] The Nuts grow in bunches at the top, and being ripe look red and very lovely like a pleasing Fruit. When they gather them, they lay them in heaps until the shell be somewhat rotted, and then dry them in the Sun, and afterwards shell them with a sharp stick one and one at a time. These trees will yield some 500, some a 1000, some 1500 Nuts, and some but three or four hundred. They bear but once ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... bored her infinitely, and with Alex-like honesty she did not hesitate to tell him so. They hadn't a thought in common. She couldn't see the sterling worth of the man, so they drifted apart and Horringford retired more than ever into his shell." ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... sunny, with a fresh breeze blowing (else the smoke from a battle between four hundred thousand men would have obstructed the view altogether), the spectacle presented Was of unsurpassed magnificence and sublimity. The German artillery opened the battle, and while the air was filled with shot and shell from hundreds of guns along their entire line, the German centre and left, in rather open order, moved out to the attack, and as they went forward the reserves, in close column, took up positions within supporting distances, yet far enough back ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... introduction of a new armour-piercing shell of far greater efficiency than that previously in use; the initial designs for these shells were produced in the drawing office of the Department of the Director ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... perspective, with their globes of white porcelain atop, resembling a barbarous decoration of ostriches' eggs displayed in a row. The flaming sky kindled a tiny crimson spark upon the glistening surface of each glassy shell. ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... Arthur. "I'm not going in, young Simson. My governor said to me the chances were some young blackleg or other would be on to me to shell out something for a swindle of the kind; and he said, 'Don't you do it.' Besides, I've not ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... only going to land the marines," he said; "perhaps they are going to the spot they stopped at before, or to take up another position further out at sea. They will land men and then shell the town, and the land forces will march here and cooperate with the vessel, and everybody will be taken prisoner or killed. We have the centre of the stage, and we are ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... its fall had occasioned. But the rest of the time we trod a carpet to the making of which centuries of dead forest warriors had wrapped themselves in mould and soft moss and gentle dissolution. Sometimes a faint rounded shell of former fair proportion swelled above the level, to crumble to punkwood at the lightest touch of our feet. Or, again, the simulacrum of a tree trunk would bravely oppose our path, only to melt away into nothing, like ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... it to the fire then." We burned our fingers, and sticks were suggested, but we sucked the burnt fingers, and I said, "it tastes good," and the children shouted with glee "Because the meat's roasted really." Then something was supposed to drop, and the cry was "Gravy! catch it in a shell, dip your finger in and let your baby suck it." A small shell was suggested, and the boy who said "And put a stick in for a handle" was dubbed "the spoon-maker." At that time we were earning names for ourselves by suggestions; we started ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... crowded. Old men, old women, and children thronged the platforms, or clung to the poles which supported the sides and roof. Fires were raked out, and the earthen floor cleared. Two chiefs sang at the top of their voices, keeping time to their song with tortoise-shell rattles. [ 1 ] The men danced with great violence and gesticulation; the women, with a much more measured action. The former were nearly divested of clothing,—in mystical dances, sometimes wholly so; and, from a superstitious motive, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... of the dining-room and saw what I thought she would recognise as a pretty picture. It was "Stray Kit," the slender, the graceful, the sociable, the beautiful, the incomparable, the cat of cats, the tortoise-shell, curled up as round as a wheel and sound asleep on the fire-red cover of the dining-table, with a brilliant stream of sunlight falling across her. I exclaimed about it, but Susy said she could see nothing there, neither cat nor table-cloth. The distance was so slight—not more than twenty ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Peterborough), in the early part of this century, mentioned to me that, in the palace at Peterborough, she had for years known as a pet of the household a venerable tortoise, who bore some inscription on his shell indicating that, from 1638 to 1643, he had belonged to Archbishop Laud, who (if I am not mistaken) held the bishopric of Peterborough before he was translated to London, and finally to Canterbury.] centuries. I myself know ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... house; nor were the tea and coffee dispensed in the usual business-like manner, which reduces private hospitality to the level of a counter at a railway station. Instead of this, there were about fifty little tables dotted about the rooms, each provided with a gem of a teapot and egg-shell cups and saucers for three or four, so that Mr. Wooster's feminine visitors might themselves have the delight of dispensing that most feminine of all beverages. This contrivance gave scope for flirtation, and was loudly praised ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... districts there are large rivers, but their course is uncertain, and it is impossible to say that any one river empties itself into the sea. Goulburn is a fine river, and ninety miles from this on the banks of that river, are found very large lobsters, and other shell-fish. To stand on an eminence, and to cast your eye down into the valley beyond and beneath you, is to have an enjoyment which the ardent lover of nature alone can appreciate. Far as the eye can look, there is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... gateway of the enclosure came a girl hardly out of her teens. She was bareheaded, a cowboy hat in her hand. The sun, already slanting from the west, kissed her crisp, ruddy gold hair and set it sparkling. Her skin was shell pink, amber clear. She walked as might a young Greek goddess in the dawn of the world, with the free movement of one who loves the open sky ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... Suddenly we heard a voice crying, "This is the sea. This is the deep sea. This is the vast and mighty sea." And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening ...
— The Madman • Kahlil Gibran
... all in all, the German gunners had simply been beautifying London. The Albert Hall, struck by a merciful shell, had come down with a run, and was now a heap of picturesque ruins; Whitefield's Tabernacle was a charred mass; and the burning of the Royal Academy proved a great comfort to all. At a mass meeting in Trafalgar ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... shell at once. 'Oh no, thank you; you are very kind, but we have the address of some lodgings which Mrs. Monro, our minister's wife, knows, and they ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... looked more like the crater of a volcano than anything else. I brought out my opera-glass as we moved in the direction of Versailles, and reconnoitred the situation. In a field adjoining the palace I saw an object that looked like a post driven into the ground, and capped with a large-sized clam-shell. GODARD levelled his glass and examined it. His lip curled proudly with scorn as ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... slowly ascended into the evening sky a pillar of cloud so vast that all measurements sank into insignificance beside it. Its color was of softest gray just touched with the flush that deepens the inmost chamber of a shell, or blushes in the unfolded petals of a wind flower. With majestic yet almost imperceptible motion this cloud mounted the blue background of the sky. The spectre of a faded moon hung motionless above it an instant only, and then was swiftly drawn within its soft eclipse. ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... Kremlin was no more.[165] Barrels of powder had been placed in all the halls of the palaces of the Czars, and one hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds under the vaults which supported them. The marshal, with eight thousand men, had remained on this volcano, which a single Russian shell might have exploded. Here he covered the march of the army upon Kaluga, and the retreat of our different ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... well upon the scene of the disaster. Before their dazed and horrified eyes rose the incandescent shell of what had been, for eight months past, their movable home, and a crawling crisping rustle came from the pile of ashes that represented the joint property of ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... position which, so far as artillery fire was concerned, had Quebec at its mercy. The brigadier, who had fully expected to find French guns there, at once began to intrench himself on this conspicuous spot, while floating batteries now pushed out from Quebec and began throwing shot and shell up at his working-parties, till Saunders sent a frigate forward to put an end to what threatened to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... shell of night, Dear lady, a divining ear. In that soft choiring of delight What sound hath made thy heart to fear? Seemed it of rivers rushing forth From the grey deserts ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce
... had been forward, crimsoned in the dark, and retired into her shell for the rest of the evening. She was glad when with his usual tact, Mr. Belamour begged for the recitation he knew she could make with the least effort ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the world by which life forms the foundation of and minister to life. It is strange how many of the grandest monuments are wrought out of the creations of primeval molluscs. The enduring pyramids themselves are formed of the nummulitic limestone studded with its "Pharaoh's beans," the exuviae of shell-fish that perished ages before the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... morning when there was high tide, and if not then, not until the afternoon. Bye-and-bye we saw a light bobbing up and down in the swell and he said that was the pilot. He missed the ship the first round but came about to lee, and in the dim light we saw a cockle shell of a boat with two men in it. In a few minutes a line was thrown to them, the ladder was let down over the rail, the pilot grasped the rungs and began his perilous climb. He was a French sea dog and hung on like grim death ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... hard-shell is landed. That blonde hasn't been bringing him his three meals a day ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... caps; ladies in stiff and foldless brocade hoops and stomachers; artizans in striped and close-adhering hose and egg-shaped padded jerkin; soldiers in lumbering armour-plates, ill-fitted over ill-fitting leather, a shapeless shell of iron, bulging out and angular, in which the body was buried as successfully as in the robes of the magistrates. Thus we see the men and women of the Renaissance in the works of all its painters: heavy in Ghirlandajo, vulgarly jaunty in Filippino, preposterously ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... look up, however, at once noticed a large bulge on the inner shell of the vessel, high up on the right-hand side; and then, turning to me, pointed it out, saying, "I think, Professor, it is pretty clear now what ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... with religious leanings by my remarkable knowledge of the results of missionary endeavour in Central Africa. Once a dowager sought to ask me my intentions, but I flung at her astonished head an article from the Encyclopedia Brittanica. An American divorcee swooned when I poured into her shell-like ear a few facts about the McKinley Tariff. These are only my serious efforts. I need not tell you how often I have evaded a flash of the eyes by an epigram, or ignored a sigh by an apt quotation from ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... plates, 11 ft. 5 in. long and 4 ft. diameter, and the steam pressure is 140 lb.; while the tractive power per lb. of steam in the cylinders is 94 lb. The fire-box is of copper, and the roof is stayed to the outer shell by wrought iron radiating stays screwed into both; a sloping mid-feather ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... it by their studies, they would have merited, and under a king of such learning and such equity would have received in some sort, their reward. I look upon them as so many old cabinets of ivory and tortoise-shell, scratched, flawed, splintered, rotten, defective both within and without, hard to unlock, insecure to lock up again, unfit ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... castle," says the author of "Letters from the North," written previous to the year 1730, "belonging to a gentleman whose hospitality knows no bounds. It is the custom of that house, at the first visit or introduction, to take up war freedom, by cracking his nut, as he terms it; that is, a cocoa-shell, which holds a pint, filled with champagne, or such other sort of wine as you shall chuse. You may guess, by the introduction, of the contents of the volume. Few go away sober at any time; and for the greatest ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... harmless and unobjectionable things, though every observant person who has had much to do with young children will readily concede how superfluous they are as a means of amusement. The average child will treasure up a button or a shell long after it has destroyed, or maybe forgotten the existence of, the most elaborate and expensive toy. That is a commonplace of the nursery. But it does not seem to convey either meaning or moral to the majority ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... shelf runs under the roof, on which there is a Buddhist god- house, with two black idols in it, one of them being that much- worshipped divinity, Daikoku, the god of wealth. Besides a rack for kitchen utensils, there is only a stand on which are six large brown dishes with food for sale—salt shell-fish, in a black liquid, dried trout impaled on sticks, sea slugs in soy, a paste made of pounded roots, and green cakes made of the slimy river confervae, pressed and dried—all ill-favoured and unsavoury viands. This ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... to spend a week in Fife, An unco week it proved to be, For there I met a waesome wife, Lamenting her viduity. Her grief brak' out sae fierce and fell, I thought her heart wad burst the shell; And, I was sae left to mysel, I ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... this case he must use cunning, for if he is discovered it means a serious battle. On the coast also the Raven seeks to obtain possession of the Hermit-crab. This Crustacean dwells in the empty shells of Gasteropods. At the least alarm he retires within this shell and becomes invisible, but the bird advances with so much precaution that he is often able to seize the crab before he has time to hide himself. If the raven fails he turns the shell over and over until the impatient crustacean allows ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... like a dream in connexion with the timid Gilbert. His individual story was thus:—He safely rode the 'half a league' forward, but when more than half way back, his horse was struck to the ground by a splinter of the same shell that overthrew Major Ferrars, at a few paces' distance from him. Quickly disengaging himself from his horse, Gilbert ran to assist his friend, and succeeded in extricating him from his horse, and supporting him through the remainder of the terrible ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more than he ever hoped. What was the poor crumbling shell compared to the splendid soul that he builded through those horrible years? Years when he could not quite free himself from the craven thing that was his curse—the fear! ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... olive-leaf, or foliated acanthus, or curved and crested wave. Then in black or red he painted lads wrestling, or in the race: knights in full armour, with strange heraldic shields and curious visors, leaning from shell-shaped chariot over rearing steeds: the gods seated at the feast or working their miracles: the heroes in their victory or in their pain. Sometimes he would etch in thin vermilion lines upon a ground of white the languid bridegroom and his bride, with Eros hovering round them—an Eros like one ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... the Osmiae. One stacks her cells in the spiral staircase of an empty snail-shell; another, attacking the pith of a dry bit of bramble, obtains for her grubs a cylindrical lodging and divides it into floors by means of partition-walls; a third employs the natural channel of a cut reed; a fourth is a rent-free tenant of the vacant galleries of some Mason-bee. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... regarded him as their host, they did not hesitate to trespass upon his hospitality. Whenever their eyes rested upon a glittering shell among his specimens of conchology, especially if it had several brilliant colors, one would take off his coat, another his shirt, and insist that he should exchange the shell for the garment. When he declined ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Oxford with its grim buildings, and Windsor dominated by its huge pile of stone, the flag of the Empires floating from its top; and Maidenhead with its boats and launches, and lovely Cookham with its back water and quaint mill and quainter lock. You have rowed down beside them all in a shell, or have had glimpses of them from the train, or sat under the awnings of the launch or regular packet and watched the procession go by. All very charming and interesting, and, if you had but forty-eight hours in which to see all England, a profitable way of spending eight of them. And yet you ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sometimes, smooth as a mill-pond, and there had been no clamorous hissing and booming of waves against the frail planks, which I could touch with my hand. I could see nothing of the storm, but I could hear it: and the boat seemed tossed, like a mere cockle-shell, to and fro upon the rough sea. It did not alarm me so much as it distracted my thoughts, and kept them from dwelling upon possibilities far more perilous to me than the danger of death by shipwreck. A short suffering such a death ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... no want of lofty mirrors, and The tables, most of ebony inlaid With mother of pearl or ivory, stood at hand, Or were of tortoise-shell or rare woods made, Fretted with gold or silver:—by command, The greater part of these were ready spread With viands and sherbets in ice—and wine— Kept for all comers at ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... could not have her wish, for certainly had she attempted to drop down from the gateway to the marble paving, or even on to the battlements of the walls which ran up to it on either side, her bones would have been shattered like the shell of an egg and ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... had not arrived, and consequently set out on our return, but the horses soon tiring, we were obliged to bivouac on the plain. In the morning we had caught an armadillo, which although a most excellent dish when roasted in its shell, did not make a very substantial breakfast and dinner for two hungry men. The ground at the place where we stopped for the night, was incrusted with a layer of sulphate of soda, and hence, of course, was without water. Yet many of the smaller rodents managed to exist ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Brown gave to Charley, was what is called a "money-cowry." It is an elegant shaped and beautifully marked shell and takes its name from the fact, that one species of them is used as money, both in Bengal and Guinea, two places at a vast distance from each other. The value of these shells is small, in comparison with that of gold and silver, three thousand ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown
... of her mind drifting back to that crazy notion of an evil spirit wandering to seek a home; as the hermit-crab, dispossessed of one shell, goes in search of another. After a lull which had looked for a moment like coming sleep, she said with an astonishing calmness:—"But do you not see, Phoebe dear, do you not see how good his father must have been, to do no worse than ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... shell-fish, which abound in the place where we were, and which stick to the rocks ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... the Queen on a pony, amongst deer-hounds, Scotch. caps, and slain stags; beside her in a pot on the window-sill was a white and rosy fuchsia. The Victorianism of the room almost talked; and in her clinging frock Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from the shell of the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in the hall. 'Welcome, Mr. MacCarty-Mor,' (mind that, MacCarty-Mor!) said he—'welcome kindly! Sure it's delighted I am to see you—and you are just in time for dinner.' With that a sarvent began sounding a big conch-shell, a great door was flung open, and the next thing, I found myself in an ilegant room, sitting down to dinner with a mighty genteel ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... lit by the candles, and watched each varying shade thereon, and the white shell-like sinuosities of her little ear. She took out her purse and was insisting to Boldwood on paying for her tea for herself, when at this moment Pennyways entered the tent. Troy trembled: here was his scheme for respectability endangered at once. He was about to leave his hole of espial, attempt ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... new job was that of a waiter at the tables in the dining saloon. He was a very good waiter, supplying, from the wealth of a Continental experience, the deficiencies of other waiters he had known. He wore a black shell jacket and a white shirt front which remained innocent of gravy spots. The food was not very good nor very plentiful, but he served it with an air of such importance that it gained flavor and substance by the reflection ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Nothing but a dinghy, or the like of that, has ever gone in very far. Leastwise, I don't think so. The islands are just a lot of oyster-shell bars covered with sand and overgrown with red mangrove trees. I've been told the channel between 'em sometimes isn't more'n a foot deep; but in other places there may be good water. What I mean to say is that they're not charted, and I doubt if any man living could find his way through 'em ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... high lights and a touch of gold in the shade, deepening to a soft brown. Her skin was fine and clear, her brows and the long lashes were quite dark, the latter just tipped with gold that often gave the eyes a dazzling appearance. Her ear was like a bit of pinkish shell or a half crumpled rose leaf. And where her chin melted into her neck, and the neck sloped to the shoulder, there were exquisite lines. After the fashion of the day her bodice was cut square, and the sleeves had a puff at the shoulder and a pretty bow that had done duty in various ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... FIDDLE-BLOCK. A long shell, having one sheave over the other, and the lower smaller than the upper (see LONG-TACKLES), in contradistinction to double blocks, which also have two sheaves, but one abreast of the other. They lie ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... was more than good-looking, were it only by reason of a complexion such as is seldom given even to blondes. The inside of a sea- shell has the same lustre and delicacy, but it does not pale and flush as did May's cheeks in quick response to her emotions. Waves of maize- coloured hair with a sheen of its own went with the fairness of the skin, and the pretty features were redeemed from a suspicion of insipidity ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... words he made a sudden movement of his foot toward Zobeide, and Zobeide promptly drew her head into her shell. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... difficult to convince one who had gone through the prescribed course of treatment in one of these 'nurseries of humanity,' that the knowledge of the domestic habits and social and political organisations of insects and shell-fish, or even the experiments of the laboratory, though never so useful and proper in their place, are not, after all, the beginning and end of a human learning. It was no such place as that that this department of the science of nature took in the systems ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... to the girl again. She too was one with this past of the room. The straight nose with its shell-like nostrils as sensitive to her thoughts as her eyes, the sharp cut corners of her mouth, and the fine hair over her white forehead dated back to women whose features had long been refined through their souls. All that he wished to crowd into a week, they had possessed for ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... well of the car and peered into Mr. Kernan's mouth but he could not see. He struck a match and, sheltering it in the shell of his hands, peered again into the mouth which Mr. Kernan opened obediently. The swaying movement of the car brought the match to and from the opened mouth. The lower teeth and gums were covered with clotted blood and a minute piece of the tongue ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... opened on us, at 11 A. M., from batteries located on the point of Lookout mountain, and continued to favor us with cast-iron in the shape of shell and solid shot until sunset. He did little damage, however, three men only were wounded, and these but slightly. A shell entered the door of a dog tent, near which two soldiers of the Eighteenth ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... like an egg, the shell of which we remove before eating it; I would take off her mask and then ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... these weak defences a large Federal fleet appeared on August 27th, 1861, and by means of its superior armament, lay securely beyond the range of the guns mounted in Fort Hatteras, while pouring in a tremendous discharge of shot and shell. The Federals having effected a landing on the beach, and most of the caution being dismounted in the fort, it was thought best by Colonel W. F. Martin, on the 29th, to ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore |
