"Snail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moosahernee is a black and white bird, I fancy a sort of ibis, and is good eating. The dokahur is another fine big bird, black body and white wings, and as its name (derived from dokha, a shell) implies, it is the shell-gatherer, or snail-eater, and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... mariner to the wedding guest." Holmes snapped his fingers at Satan, who contemptuously ignored him. "Or am I thinking of the Whiting who talked to the Snail?" ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... eloquently, but action is a little trying.... However, I am no hand at talking; I came here with communications, and so I beg all the honourable company not to vote, but simply and directly to state which you prefer: walking at a snail's pace in the marsh, or putting on full steam ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... devoted himself utterly to Jim. The days now were busy ones in the valley as well as on the dam. Jim's eighteen hours a day often stretched into twenty, though he sometimes dozed in his office chair or in the automobile with Oscar, reveling in his new-learned accomplishment, driving at a snail's pace. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Wretch!—A Flower, Fairest of all flowers, was she once, but now They have snapped her from the stem—Poh! let her lie Besoiled with mire, and let the houseless snail Feed on her leaves. You knew her well—ay, there, Old Man! you were a very Lynx, you knew The worm was ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... Russell led his half Company 500 yards straight across the front, with two scouts on either side, checking. At every five yards a man dropped and was placed, facing his proper front. They moved slowly, snail pace, but only three times in the 500 yards had the line to drop flat, until the last man was placed. The next thing was to get in touch with "A" Company, who were putting out the platoon to guard "B" Company's left flank. Rather jumpy work, this joining ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... the death of a warrior. Go back to thy people, and tell them what return the Sagamore of the Pequots makes for thy breach of hospitality. His promise to his brother saves thy life this time. But, beware! A Sagamore does not forget. Be a snail that keeps its head within its shell. If the snail puts it out, Sassacus will ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... obtain the superior Burgundian, fat and juicy and cooked even as our own Oscar used to prepare them for certain Waldorf guests, would ever appeal to the American taste, as even the common hedgerow sort of snail does to ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... came out looking grave. More: they looked tombstones and Tennessee-papers-please-copy. They wrote out a diet list to which I was to be restricted. It had everything that I had ever heard of to eat on it, except snails. And I never eat a snail unless it overtakes me and ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... farms, Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, And from your harvests keep a hundred harms; Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, And crying havoc on the slug and snail. ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... same that is between a Snail and a Cockle, or, if you like the Comparison better, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... country encountered in our long overland cruise. Besides the splendid watercourses which marked that section, numerous wagontrails, leading into the hills, were peopled with freighters. Long ox trains, moving at a snail's pace, crept over hill and plain, the common carrier between the mines and the outside world. The fascination of the primal land was there; the buttes stood like sentinels, guarding a king's domain, while the palisaded cliffs frowned down, as if erected by the hand Omnipotent to ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... found it afterwards to appear to the naked eye an exceeding small white spot, no bigger than the point of a Pin. Afterwards I view'd it every way with a better Microscope and found it on both sides, and edge-ways, to resemble the Shell of a small Water-Snail with a flat spiral Shell: it had twelve wreathings, a, b, c, d, e, &c. all very proportionably growing one less than another toward the middle or center of the Shell, where there was a very small round white spot. I could not certainly discover whether the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... ugly monster lives, eats, breathes and fights, we must know something of the way he is made. In the first place, it may surprise you to know that the Octopus's body is made on the same plan as that of the snail. The ogre of the ocean and the Garden Snail are second cousins! ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... cried the authoritative voice; and the would-be naturalist shrank into his shell, like a snail in the "Sohological Gardens." ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... And now, as she watched the thin streak of dust, at that distance moving with snail pace, she reproached herself. She trusted Stevens; she had never known so skilful, daring, and iron-nerved a driver as he was. If she had been in the car herself she would have had no anxiety. But, imagining what Stevens ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... frugal snail, with fore-cast of repose, Carries his house with him, where'er he goes; Peeps out—and if there comes a shower of rain, Retreats to his small domicile amain. Touch but a tip of him, a horn—'tis well— He curls up in his sanctuary shell. He's his own landlord, his own tenant; ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... responded. "We shall never view things in the same light. You are not the man of the world you should be, Walter. Men of half your merit will eclipse you, winning opulence and distinction—while you, with your common sense notions, will be plodding on at a snail's pace. You are behind the age, and a stranger ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... content to take your liking me, without examining too curiously into the materials it is made of. Only we need not walk at a snail's' pace.' ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and his cassock were Made of the tinsel gossamer; Down by its seam there went a lace Drawn by an urchin snail's slow pace. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... going at a snail's pace while Frank was still a short distance in the rear and Mr. Temple and Tom Barnum were not yet in sight. It was an open touring car with the top folded back. There were three men in it, one on the seat beside the driver and ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... the papers. Now I knew our current fate, and felt as if I heard again the gas gong going continuously. I had the feeling in April, unknown to any snail on the thorn, that the park was deafening with the clangour of pallid, tense, and contending lunatics. The Serpentine had receded from this tumult. Its tranquil shimmering was now fatuous and unbelievable. It was but half seen; ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... tall and others short, some straight and others crooked, some strong, others feeble; some of us run, others walk, others snail it. But all, all have their feet upon the same level of the common earth. And America's worst enemy is he—or she—who by word or look encourages another to think otherwise. Head as high as you please; but feet always upon the common ground, never ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... admit that I, too, felt worried, for our progress was indeed snail-like, and our ammunition could not last forever. In discussing the problem, finally we came to the decision to burn our bridges behind us and make one last supreme effort ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... year's flight I count like miser's gold; I keep the "watches of the night," I wait until the morning light Its glories snail unfold. ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... the turtle with the summer solstice and the snail as the animal associated with the winter solstice. There does not seem to be any one animal used in connection with any one of the cardinal points. In Tro-Cortesianus 88c the dog seems to be associated with the ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... tell you what it is? Your head is turned right around! When royalty speaks to me, do I swell out? No! I know my place! I take no notice! But you—you are nosing but a crawling—snail! ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... a snail's pace when he approached the dredged channel, and at last the leadsman found suitable bottom. Both ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... penetrates into the body of certain snails and encysts. The sporocyst, as it is now called, develops into a third generation known as redia which escape from the cyst. The daughter redia or cercaria, as they are now termed, leave the body of the snail and finally become encysted on the stems of grass, cresses and weeds. When taken into the digestive tract of the animal grazing over infested ground, the immature flukes are freed by the digestive juices. ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... be made at a snail's pace, the precipitous slopes close under our horses' hoofs being frightful to contemplate. This drive is an excellent preparation for an exploration of the Lozere. We are always, metaphorically, going up or coming ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... as he looked up—they were more than vertical—they were actually concave. The Almighty had not only stored riches immeasurable in the hills behind him—He had driven this passage Himself to help puny man to reach them, and yet the wretched road was going toward them like a snail. On the fifth night, thereafter he was back there at the tunnel again from New York—with a grim mouth and a happy eye. He had brought success with him this time and there was no sleep for him that night. He had been delayed by a wreck, it was two o'clock in ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... snails are the pond snail (Lymnaea; see Fig. 3); the Physa (see Fig. 6), which is remarkable for having the coil turned to the left instead of the right; and the orb-snail, (Planorbis: see Fig. 4) which has its coil flat. All of {96} these lay minute ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... a snail! And page 230 is blank," said the journalist. "Then there are two more blank pages before we come to the word it is such a joy to write when one is unhappily so happy as to be ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... seed of the Corn-violet, as also of Tyme, Poppy and Purslane. He continues to describe Hair, the scales of a Soal, the sting of a Bee, Feathers in general, and in particular those of Peacocks; the feet of Flies; and other Insects; the Wings and Head of a Fly; the Teeth of a Snail; the Eggs of Silk-worms; the Blue Fly; a water Insect; the Tufted Gnat; a White Moth; the Shepheards-spider; the Hunting Spider, the Ant; the wandring Mite; the Crab-like insect, the Book-worm, the Flea, the Louse, Mites, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... it crawl, snail-like, over the virgin sky. We panted in its heat. We saw it drop again behind the mountain wall, leaving the sky gorgeously barred with colour from a tawny orange glow to an ice-pale green—a regular pousse cafe ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... men and women merely players.[69-1] They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard; Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... The passion ebbed out of the face, the paper fluttered out of the loosened fingers, the red-rimmed eyes took on another look. Snail-slow the trembling hand was ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... to that which constitutes the growth of the body to maturity. Thus the granulations of new flesh to repair the injuries of wounds are visible to the eye; as well as the callous matter, which cements broken bones; the calcareous matter, which repairs injured snail-shells; and the threads, which are formed by silk-worms and spiders; which are all secreted in a softer state, and harden by exsiccation, or by the contact of the air, or by absorption of their ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the epithets of an animal trailing with its slime over the herbage, without blood or bones, and carrying its house upon its back, meaning simply a snail."—Coste] ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... one. In a very short time he overtakes the noted horse-thief. Gus was sitting in the buggy sound asleep; the lines were hanging down over the dashboard, and the old horse was marching along at a snail's pace. He was out some two miles from town, and, no doubt, had traveled at this gait all the way. He was faced about, and, assisted by the sheriff, drove back to town. He was then placed under arrest and sent to jail, subsequently had his trial, and for this ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... Battle Ground, where they drove a snug little business, and fought a great many small pitched battles for a great many contending parties. Though it could hardly be said of these conflicts that they were running fights - for in truth they generally proceeded at a snail's pace - the part the Firm had in them came so far within the general denomination, that now they took a shot at this Plaintiff, and now aimed a chop at that Defendant, now made a heavy charge at an estate in Chancery, and now had some light skirmishing among an irregular ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... tonneau of the car, where he lay curled up on the floor. Two of the Germans sat in the cushioned seat while the two linemen, the one who had been hit still unconscious, were pitched in beside him. The other two Germans were in front, and the car began to move at a snail's pace. The man beside the driver began speaking in German, his companion replied. But one of the two behind ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... way for you and me to throw this fellow down. Simple enough, if you are on your guard. Did you notice how Jesus handled him? He quoted Scripture to him. Scripture to the devil is just like salt on a snail. He ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... heard the groan of a gravelled grouse, Or the snarl of a snaffled snail (Husband or mother, like me, or spouse), Have you lain a-creep in the darkened house Where the ...
— Reginald • Saki
... of down, And the Hornet in jacket of yellow and brown; Who with him the Wasp, his companion, did bring, But they promised that evening to lay by their sting. And the sly little Dormouse crept out of his hole, And brought to the Feast his blind Brother, the Mole; And the Snail, with his horns peeping out of his shell, Came from a great distance, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... greatest spectacular night the American knows. The noisy, good-natured crowds in the streets, the jostling, snail-moving crowds; the illuminated canvas-sheets in front of the newspaper offices; the blare of tin horns, the cries, the yells, the hoots and hurrahs; the petty street fights; the stalled surface cars; ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... into my heart. My uncle had sent me here, certainly to run great risks, perhaps to die. I swore I would settle that "perhaps," if I should break my neck for it; got me down upon my hands and knees; and as slowly as a snail, feeling before me every inch, and testing the solidity of every stone, I continued to ascend the stair. The darkness, by contrast with the flash, appeared to have redoubled; nor was that all, for my ears were now troubled and my mind confounded by a great stir of bats in the top part of ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flying along, like a hunt. I'd rather be on Pixie at home; I could always make him go when I tickled his ears. If we don't hurry up a little more I shall try it on this horse, and see if he won't break into something more interesting than a snail's pace." ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... It was scented by a great beau-pot filled with roses; and, besides, the casement was open to the fragrant court. Mr. Buxton was so large, and the parlor so small, that when he was once in, Maggie thought when he went away, he could carry the room on his back, as a snail does its house. ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... not fear to examine thoroughly the famous, and as it hitherto appeared, invulnerable, "parade-horse," so neither does he hesitate to demolish the other reputed proof for the doctrine of Descent, e.g., the fresh-water snail of Steinheim, the remains of which Hilzendorf and Neumayr examined and were said to have arranged in lines of descent that "would actually stagger one." It is important to call especial attention to this because the adversaries of the ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... arroyo—rose-quartz arrow heads, notched like saws; an old, rusted Colt's revolver, bearing the date 1858, and a picture of the holding up of a stagecoach engraved around the chamber; queer, tiny shells of some long gone fresh-water snail; bits of yellow pottery, their edges worn smooth and round by the water; to say nothing of birds' nests, villages of ugly water-white scorpions; and lizards, from the tiny ones that change their color, chameleonlike, to "racers" ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... over. One of the door-posts snapped, the other sloped inwards, the roof collapsed, the sides went in, the ice passed over all, and the hut of Peegwish was finally obliterated from off the face of the earth. So, a giant with his foot might slowly and effectually crush the mansion of a snail! ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... and so strive, as to have God's approbation (2 Tim 2:5). What, do you think that every heavy-heeled professor will have heaven? What, every lazy one; every wanton and foolish professor, that will be stopped by anything, kept back by anything, that scarce runneth so fast heaven-ward as a snail creepeth on the ground? Nay, there are some professors do not go on so fast in the way of God as a snail doth go on the wall; and yet these think, that heaven and happiness is for them. But stay, there are many more that run than there be that obtain; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... another have I found, And yet mo can I find. I can mow[198] on a man, And make a lesing[199] well I can, And maintain it right well then. This cunning came me of kind, Yea, sirs, I can well geld a snail, And catch a cow by the tail: This is a fair cunning, I can dance and also skip, I can play at the cherry-pit,[200] And I can whistle you a fit,[201] Sires, in a willow rine: Yea, sirs, and every day, When I to school shall take the way Some good man's garden ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... nations of the earth creep on at snail's pace: the Republic thunders past with the rush of an express," says a recent American writer. "Think of it!" he continues; "a Great Britain and Ireland called forth from the wilderness, as if by magic, in less than the span of a man's ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... at slug and snail And their kindred look askance. Pay your footing on the nail: Fate's a ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... but the trail, packed down fully a foot by the traffic, was like a gutter. On either side spread the blanket of soft snow crystals. If a man turned into this in an endeavor to pass, his dogs would wallow perforce to their bellies and slow down to a snail's pace. So the men lay close to their leaping sleds and waited. No alteration in position occurred down the fifteen miles of Bonanza and Klondike to Dawson, where the Yukon was encountered. Here the first relays waited. But here, intent to kill their first ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... we have been speaking so much of sea-creatures, I think we will now leave the oysters, cockles, mussels, and razor-fish, and choose the familiar garden-snail as our specimen of the Mollusca, or Soft-bodied Family. I fancy you need no introduction to that snug little householder. Often, however, as you have touched his soft horns, you possibly do not ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... is used here for carrying light loads, but with heavy burdens the ox finds preference. Along the Chinese shore I frequently saw clumsy carts moving at a snail-like pace between the villages. Each cart had its wheels fixed on an axle that generally turned with them. Frequently there was a lack of grease, and the screeching of the vehicle was ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... ablutions. How the skin of his head, face, and neck stood the towelling it received is incomprehensible! When he walked he went like an express train; when he sauntered he relapsed into the slowest possible snail's-pace, but he did not graduate the changes from one to the other. When he sat down he did so with a crash. The number of chairs which Mr Sudberry broke in the course of his life would have filled a goodly-sized concert-room; and the number of tea-cups which he had swept ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... all. Dying is simple enough, and indeed easy, for most of us. But I expect that something very precise and definite happens to us, the moment we die. It is probable, I think, that we shall set about building up a new body to inhabit at once, as a snail builds its shell. We are very definite creatures, all of us, with clearly apportioned tastes and energies, preferences and dislikes. The only puzzling thing is that we do not all of us seem to ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... be idle. I know a man to-day who always looks so lazy it really rests me to look at him. A boy working for a farmer was asked by his employer if he ever saw a snail. The boy answered that he had. "You must have met it, for you surely did not overtake it," said the farmer. I know an old man who seems to take pride in saying he never worked. The first time I saw this man was in my youth. While his father was husking corn in a field, he was seated ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance? Will you, ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... proceeded slowly, slowly, at a snail's pace. The wheels sank into the snow; the entire body of the carriage groaned with creaks; the animals were slipping, puffing, steaming, and the driver's gigantic whip was cracking continuously, flying in every direction, coiling up and unrolling itself ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... choice of food there is a wide difference in taste. One people will regard as a luxury a viand or condiment which is repugnant to another. Locusts have been used from time immemorial for food by different tribes of Arabs. Snail soup was once regarded in Europe as a delicious dish. In the West Indies and South America the guano, a species of lizard, is devoured with gusto. Bird's nests command enormous prices as an edible in China, where also dogs and cats are ordinary food. At Rome camels' ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... repose. This glance, full of amorous intelligence, awoke the lady's fantasy, who, half laughing and half smitten, repeated "To-morrow," and dismissed him with a gesture which the Pope Jehan himself would have obeyed, especially as he was like a snail without a shell, since the Council had just deprived him of the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... one's horns; to retract an assertion through fear: metaphor borrowed from a snail, who on the apprehension of danger, draws in his horns, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Protococcus, a common mould, a Chara, a fern, and some flowering plant; among animals we examine such things as an Amoeba, a Vorticella, and a fresh-water polyp. We dissect a starfish, an earthworm, a snail, a squid, and a fresh-water mussel. We examine a lobster and a crayfish, and a black beetle. We go on to a common skate, a codfish, a frog, a tortoise, a pigeon, and a rabbit, and that takes us about all the time we have to give. The purpose ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... and its little yard was made cavernous by thick-planted paper-mulberry and maple trees, while a line of cherry-trees and an old pole-well rose along the road and hedge. As they rode to the rear of the house a little dormer window, like a snail, crawled low along the roof, and a ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... that Peter might go away from Riverton. Yet now he was going, and it had been taken for granted that she, Emma, who, as she said, had "raised 'im from a puppy up'ards," wouldn't mind staying on here after his departure. Fetching a cold sigh from the depths of an afflicted bosom, Emma moved snail-like toward the work in hand; and as she worked she howled dismally that nobody knew the trouble she saw, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... and the horses like dogs. There is no confusion, however. The eye readily masses into one line all going in the same direction. Each one is hurrying on at the top of his speed, but from this lofty perch they all seem to be crawling at a snail's pace. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... grain found how treat dead staid ground town beast stead waif hound growl bleat tread rail mound clown preach dread flail pound frown speak thread quail round crown streak sweat snail sound drown feast death ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... fare, cousin, as AEsop telleth in a fable that the snail did. For when Jupiter (whom the poets feign for the great god) invited all the poor worms of the earth unto a great solemn feast that it pleased him upon a time—I have forgotten upon what occasion—to prepare for them, the snail kept her at home ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... the surgeon and Williams the colonel chafed at the incessant delays. "The expedition goes on very much as a snail runs," writes the former to his wife; "it seems we may possibly see Crown Point this time twelve months." The Colonel was vexed because everything was out of joint in the department of transportation: wagoners mutinous for want of pay; ordnance stores, camp-kettles, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... more intelligible. Now and then a peculiar smile flitted across her features; it almost seemed as if she were highly amused at my good uncle, who had withdrawn into his silken dressing-gown like a snail into its shell, and was vainly endeavouring to push out of sight a treacherous yellow string, with which he fastened his night-jacket together, and which would keep tumbling out of his bosom yards and yards long. At length they rose to depart; my uncle promised to arrange everything ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... 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 forward, onward, with sweating body and freezing face. In extreme cold, snow pulverizes dryly till steel runners drag as though slid through ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... assured her. "What's all this business, anyway? Put me wise, Sis, I'm groping like a blind snail in ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven— All's ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... steps: here shalt thou rest Upon this holy bank, no deadly Snake Upon this turf her self in folds doth make. Here is no poyson for the Toad to feed; Here boldly spread thy hands, no venom'd Weed Dares blister them, no slimy Snail dare creep Over thy face when thou art fast asleep; Here never durst the babling Cuckow spit, No slough of falling Star did ever hit Upon this bank: let this thy Cabin be, This other set with ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... long walks on which, from puppyhood, he had always accompanied the Mistress and the Master. Unknown to the old dog, these walks had been shortened, mercifully, and slowed down, to accommodate themselves to Lad's waning strength: But the time came when even a half-mile, at snail-pace, over a smooth road, was too much for ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... to tell you all the shameful things he has done in all these years. There is never a year goes by without his doing something dreadful; and he has made everybody miserable at one time or other by killing their friends or relations, from the snail to the partridge. He is quite merciless, and spares no one; why, his own children are afraid of him, and it is believed that he has pecked several of them to death, though it is hushed up; but people talk about it all the same, sometimes. As for the way he has ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... how old they were, but they could very well remember that there had been a great many more of them; that they had descended from a large family. They led a very retired and happy life and, as they had no children, they had adopted a little common snail which they brought up as their own child. But the little thing would not grow, for he was only a common snail, although the mother declared that he was getting too large for his shell. And when the father ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... western front rising in front of them, and the buildings of St. Swithun's Abbey extending far to their right. The hour was nearly noon, and the space was deserted, except for an old woman sitting at the great western doorway with a basket of rosaries made of nuts and of snail shells, and a workman or two employed on the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of sea and land warfare appealed the more vividly to one fresh from the front in France. What infinite labour for an army to get one big gun into position! How heralded the snail-like travels of the big German howitzer! Here was ship after ship, whose guns seemed innumerable. One found it hard to realize the resisting power of their armour, painted to look as liquid as the sea, and the stability of their construction, which was able to ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... for a hard-drinking man to travel and, now and then, Grafton shrank back, with a startled laugh, from the hideous things crawling across the road and rustling into the cactus—spiders with snail-houses over them; lizards with green bodies and yellow legs, and green legs and yellow bodies; hairy tarantulas, scorpions, and hideous mottled land-crabs, standing three inches from the sand, and watching him with hideous little eyes as they shuffled sidewise into the bushes. Moreover, he was ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... end? How touching the devotion of all these small satellites so anxiously forming escort? Onwards, at snail's pace, moved our cortege which might at any moment be transformed into a funeral affair, but slow as we went we yet went fast enough to give the go-by to the French battleship Gaulois, also creeping out towards Tenedos in a lamentable ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... ascending the opposite side of the gorge—an operation rendered the less agreeable from the consideration that in these perpendicular episodes we did not progress a hundred yards on our journey. But, ungrateful as the task was, we set about it with exemplary patience, and after a snail-like progress of an hour or more, had scaled perhaps one half of the distance, when the fever which had left me for a while returned with such violence, and accompanied by so raging a thirst, that it required ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... of directors, consisting of five members, to serve without compensation, which shall have the management of the State Library, and the appointment of a librarian and other employees thereof, subject to such rules and regulations as the General Assembly snail prescribe; but the Supreme Court of Appeals shall have the management of the law library and the appointment of the librarian ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... in comparison to which lightning is snail-like the tower reached twice for the peaches-and-cream cheeks of the prone victim; who set up a tragic bellowing of his own, writhed upon his somewhat dislocated paillasse, raised his elbows shieldingly, and started to get to his feet by way of his trembling ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... turned them out in the night; a couple of long loaves, a good-sized piece of raw bacon, and another of boiled pork which he thought he recognized, some butter in a cloth, a bottle which looked as if it might contain spirits, the powder-flask, and a small linen bag containing bullets, snail-shot, and percussion caps. These, with Bernel's gun and the blanket, and the old woollen cloak, which he recognized as Mr. Hamon's roquelaure, and his pipe, and the tobacco he happened to have in his pouch, constituted, for the time being, ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... and the fringe of dead horsemen that had charged them, and above on the slope the dead gunners, who lay round their broken piece. The Guards' column had left a streak right up the field like the trail of a snail, and at the head of it the blue coats were lying heaped upon the red ones where that fierce tug had been before ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Percivale: 'All men, to one so bound by such a vow, And women were as phantoms. O, my brother, Why wilt thou shame me to confess to thee How far I faltered from my quest and vow? For after I had lain so many nights A bedmate of the snail and eft and snake, In grass and burdock, I was changed to wan And meagre, and the vision had not come; And then I chanced upon a goodly town With one great dwelling in the middle of it; Thither I made, and there ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... obvious that it is often overlooked, the tendency to link lives together in vital inter-relations. Thus flowers and their insect visitors are often vitally interlinked in mutual dependence. Many birds feed on berries and distribute the seeds. The tiny freshwater snail is the host of the juvenile stages of the liver-fluke of the sheep. The mosquito is the vehicle of malaria from man to man, and the tse-tse fly spreads sleeping sickness. The freshwater mussel cannot continue its race without the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... ruffled by even the faintest breeze. Only a weak swirl of current from the far-off Gulf Stream pushed my hulk onward; and this, I suppose, was helped a little by that attraction of floating bodies for each other which brings chips and leaves together on the surface of even the stillest pool. But a snail goes faster than I was going; and it was only at the end of a full hour of watching that I could see—yet even then could not be quite certain about it—that my position a very ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... along the flat land, flashing colours livelier than the spring-meadows bordering their line of passage. Guy, with a nod for all, and a greeting for the best-disposed, pushed on toward the van, till the gathering block compelled him to adopt the snail's pace of the advance party, and gave him work enough to keep his two horses from being jammed with the mass. Now and then he cast a weather-eye on the heavens, and was soon confirmed in an opinion he had repeatedly ejaculated, that 'the first night's camping ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... journey from the Red River, and the Ka[']-ka still lived, as it does now, at Ko-thlu-el-lon-ne, when the wonderful Snail People (not snails, as may be inferred, but a tribe of that name), who lived in the "Place of the Snails" (K'ia-ma-k'ia-kwin), far south of where Zuni now is, caused, by means of their magic power, all the game animals in the whole world ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... "A very good snail-water for a consumption. Take half a peck of Shell-snails, wipe them and bruise them Shells and all in a Mortar; put to them a gallon of New Milk; as also Balm, Mint, Carduus, unset Hyssop, and Burrage, of each ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... closed van with the baggage. When we started in the dark we had the train to ourselves, but as I awoke three hours later from an uneasy sleep and looked out of the van, the rest of the train already swarmed with Italian soldiers who had clambered upon it as it crept along at a snail's pace. And when dawn came we saw ahead of us a long vista of trains stretching out of sight, while behind stood another queue of them, whistling impatiently like human beings at a ticket office; sometimes one of them would back a little and make the others behind it back too, all ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... them more than once,—and how, had it not been for him, their bones, too, might be lying there now, whitening in the heat. Oh, Harry, Harry King! She who had once crossed those very plains behind a jaded team now felt that the rushing train was crawling like a snail. ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... slightly bent, and a blacksmith had to bring clamps and a jackscrew before the new wheel could be adjusted. Even then it had an air of uncertainty that rendered speed impossible. The concluding five miles of the journey were taken at a snail's pace, and Helen reflected ruefully that it was possible to "bruk ze leg" on the level high road as well as on ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... sir, come in!" said the little Black Ant, "The more, sir, the merrier we! And here, I declare, is my friend Mrs. Snail, As busy as ever, ...
— Mouser Cats' Story • Amy Prentice
... owing to my ignorance of some of the facts of the case. There are, on the other hand, two acts of destruction in Nature which leave me unprotesting and pleased. One of these occurs when a thrush eats a snail, banging the shell repeatedly against a stone. I have never thought of the incident from the snail's point of view. I find myself listening to the tap-tap of the shell on the stone as though it were music. I felt the same sort of mild thrill of pleasure the other day when I found ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... of how one deception leads to another. This was no fresh snail; often before Mr. Marrapit had seen it. To lend motive to his concealment Mr. Fletcher carried always with him this same snail; needing peace he would draw it from his pocket; plunge to consolation; upon discovery exhibit it ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... struck the watchers, and passed: they each ran a few steps towards the sight that pleased them most. And then they stood so long that Mr. Russell's Hound had time to make himself acquainted with every smell within twenty yards. He turned over a snail that sat—round and striped like a peppermint bull's-eye—on the short grass, he patted a little beetle that pushed its way across a world of disproportionate size, and then, by peevishly pulling the end of his whip which hung from Mr. Russell's pensive ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... as 'the mighty ocean' or 'the beauteous land' to which they contribute. A balloon is no more wonderful than an air-bubble, and were you to build an Atlantic liner as big as the Isle of Wight it would really be no more remarkable than an average steam-launch. Nobody marvels at the speed of a snail, yet, given a snail's pace to start with, an express train follows as a matter of course. Movement, not the rate of movement, is the mystery. Precisely the same materials, the same forces, the same methods, are employed in the ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... the same. It curls through the bottom like the tail o' a cur-dog; an' nigher the Massissippy, it don't move faster than a snail 'ud crawl. I reck'n the run o' the river 'll not help 'em much. The'll hev a good spell o' paddlin' afore they git down to Massissippy; an' I hope that durned Mormon 'll blister his ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... when we sailed over the bridge and up Moorabool-street. We cleared a stationary tram by inches, twisted in an S curve to avoid a farmer's waggon and then, with a heart-rending grind, Bryce threw over his clutch and slowed down to a snail-like crawl of ten miles ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... Pepsy. "If people have something the matter with their hips you can't fix them. Because, anyway, if they're going to die on a Friday even snail water ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... at a snail pace the howling of the wintry gale continued unabated, with the roar of the wind through the tree-tops ashore, the dash of the waves on the point above, and the constant wabbling motion of the shanty-boat to remind them ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... therefore manufactured all the colors he could, from the resources at hand. To make blue, he pounded up a piece of an old stone he had brought from Canterbury. Gilding was done by making gold-leaf out of real gold. The Tyrian purple was made from a gastropod of the seas near Byzantium, and a little snail-like mollusk of Ireland would serve to make a crimson like it. Thinning it, the painter could make pink. There was no vermilion to be had, and red lead must be used for that color and made by roasting white lead. The white lead was prepared by putting sheets of lead in vats ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... be imagined. The very material for the task seemed wanting. The Cervonis, if not handsome men, were good sturdy flesh and blood. But this extraordinarily lean and livid youth seemed to have no more blood in him than a snail. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... out what animal would suit best,—what one that could be easily observed was most susceptible, most sympathetic. 'T was a long labor, Monsieur; I shall not tire you with the details. Enough that I found in the snail the instrument I needed,—and in the snail of the Rocky Mountains the most perfect of his kind. You smile, Monsieur. Eh, bien! 't is not philosophic to laugh at the means by which one achieves something. Smile how you will, 't is a fact that in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... so disposed as not to fecundate the ova of the same body, but require the co-operation of two individuals, notwithstanding the co-existence in each of the organs of both sexes. Each in turn impregnates the other. The common leech, earth-worm, and snail, propagate in ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... capitalists yourselves for a while, you hard-working farmers. Money is easy and credit long, now. Take your chance at it and make five hundred per cent on your investments. I'm ready to take subscriptions for stock in this new town right now. Why not stop this snail's pace of earnin' and go to livin' like gentlemen—like some Careyville men I know who own hundreds of acres they never earned and they won't improve so's ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... hundred horsemen moved out of Lafayette that forenoon amidst the greatest excitement and enthusiasm. Most of them swam their horses across the river, too eager to wait for the snail-like ferry to transport them to the opposite bank. They were fearfully and wonderfully armed and equipped for the expedition. Guns of all descriptions and ages; pistols, axes, knives and diligently scoured swords; pots and pans and kettles; blankets, knapsacks and parcels of ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... brazen, burnished sky, the cry hurls itself. The zigzagging cry of hoarse throats, it floats against the hard winds, and binds the head of the serpent to its tail, the long snail-slow serpent of marching men. Men weighed down with rifles and knapsacks, and parching with war. The cry jars and splits against the brazen, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... life of the snail is a fight against odds, Though fought without fever or flummox; You see, he is one of those gasteropods Which have to proceed on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... lagged behind. Unskilled and desperately in earnest, he could not lead up to his moment. He was laboriously framing the essential words when Tara scattered them with a light remark, rallying him on his snail's pace. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... "crow-bait" of a horse, the only four-footed transportation possibly obtainable, and started for Fredericksburg to find my regiment. The only directions I had about disposing of this frame of a horse was to "turn the bones loose when you get through with him." He could go only at a snail's pace, and when I reached Fredericksburg it must have been nine o'clock. I crossed the pontoon bridge, which had been laid the morning before under circumstances of the greatest gallantry by Howard's division of ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... stronger and soon they could make out the conformation of the rock walls they were passing at such a snail's pace. Layers of vari-colored rock showed here and there, and, at one point there was a stratum of gold-bearing or mica-filled rock that glistened with a million reflections and re-reflections. The air grew warmer and more humid ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... and arbutus for us! We make a clean sweep down the hillside "jumping" a rabbit from its form under a brush-pile, discovering where a partridge roosts in a low-spreading hemlock; coming upon a snail cemetery in a hollow hickory stump; turning up a yellow-jackets' nest built two thirds underground; tracing the tunnel of a bobtailed mouse in its purposeless windings in the leaf-mould, ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... plants. As, for example, among the plants, we take a yeast plant, a Protococcus, a common mould, a Chara, a fern, and some flowering plant; among animals we examine such things as an Amoeba, a Vorticella, and a fresh-water polype. We dissect a star-fish, an earth-worm, a snail, a squid, and a fresh-water mussel. We examine a lobster and a cray-fish, and a black beetle. We go on to a common skate, a cod-fish, a frog, a tortoise, a pigeon, and a rabbit, and that takes us about all the time we have to give. The ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... "I'm something like a snail; I carry my home, if not my house, around with me. A music-teacher can afford neither a palace ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... snail grown paralytic, Concerning whom your victims daily speak In florid language, fearsome and mephitic, Enough to redden any trooper's cheek: Let them, I say, hold forth till all is blue; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... dashed, never for an instant taking his eagle eye from the tracks which formed his compass. Think not that such tracks are easily traced. None but a practised and ready eye can follow them to any advantageous end. To trace them even at a snail's pace, for an unpractised eye, is like the child putting pen and ink to paper through his first copy-book of penmanship. Many and many an awful blot and horribly crooked line will doubtless carry the simile fully and strikingly to the mind. But the result which ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... slower than he. After a while, however, he pushed his way out of the woods into the open, and there stood the castle, only a little way ahead! All its windows were ablaze with lights. A ray from them fell on the lazy man's beast, and he saw what he was riding: it was a gigantic snail! a snail ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven— All's right ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... rutted lanes by weeds o'ergrown, Round-eyed they watch a thrush That breaks the noonday hush Dashing with zest a snail against a stone; ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... purplish mass Like growths on stalks of corn. Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow, With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter, Whom you tormented and drove to death. So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days Of my life. No more you hear my footsteps in the morning, Resounding on the hollow sidewalk Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal And a nickel's worth ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... even bones, acquire new sensations; and the parts of mutilated animals, as of wounded snails, and polypi, and crabs, are reproduced; and at the same time acquire sensations adapted to their situations. Thus when the head of a snail is reproduced after decollation with a sharp rasor, those curious telescopic eyes are also reproduced, and acquire their sensibility to light, as well as their adapted muscles for retraction on ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... and pools of water, and mud up to the knees, in the direction opposite Gloucester Point, and near a point opposite to the enemy's fleet of gunboats. Through mud and water we floundered and fell, the night being dark. Mile after mile we marched at a snail's gait until we came to a large opening, surrounded by a rail fence. This was about midnight. Here we were ordered to build great fires of the rails near by. This was done, and soon the heavens were lit up by ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... with his head thrown back, and was continually in the act of wriggling his long chin into his ample neckerchief. He could not ask you how do you do, or say in answer to that question, "I thank you, sare, very well," without stamping prettily with his foot, as if cracking a snail, and tossing his chin into the air as if he were going to balance a ladder upon it. Then, though his features were compressed into a small, monkeyfied compass, they were themselves, individually, upon a magnificent ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... a snail's pace but a few feet above the ground—literally feeling our way along through the darkness, for both moons had set, and the night was black with the clouds that are to be found ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path; But he that has humanity, forewarned, Will tread aside, and let the reptile live. The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight, And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes A visitor unwelcome into scenes Sacred to neatness ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... although she was still young she did not seem so. It might be said of her that with her habits and manner of life she had wrought a sort of rind, a stony, insensible covering within which she shut herself, like the snail within his portable house. Dona Perfecta rarely came ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... Your snail is your only right house-builder; for he builds his house out of the stuff of his own vitals, and therefore wherever he travel he carries his own roof above him. But I have known men, spacious in the possession of bricks and mortar, who have not so much made their houses ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... group of low willows, scarcely six feet high; now a bed of osiers, barely three feet above the surface. There was scarcely a spot which offered any promise of ground sufficiently hard to enable the travellers to move out of the snail's pace at which they had hitherto been ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... fearful mass of whiteness piled itself in huge billows about them. The snow-ploughs were unavailing; as fast as they cleared a space the wind surged down and filled it up in a trice. The mighty engine struggled in vain to press forward, but only crept at snail's pace and finally came to a dead halt. There they were fast shut out from the world. They could do nothing but wait for morning. Most of the passengers might not have resigned themselves to sleep so contentedly had they known that they were in the midst of the woods many ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... rocky or sandy bed of the grottos startle one by moving about, and thus discovering themselves as living creatures, simulating their environment for purposes of protection. Or perhaps what seems to be a giant snail suddenly unfurls wings from its seeming shell, and goes waving through the water, to the utter bewilderment of the beholder. Such freaks as this are quite the rule among the strange tribes of the deep, for the crowding of population there makes the struggle for existence keen, and necessitates ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... the simplicity of their structure is wont to be involved by many obscurities, it is necessary that we should approach the subject by the observation of the lower, imperfect animals."[19] So he wrote in the De viscerum structura, and accordingly he studied the liver first in the snail, then in fishes, reptiles, mammals, and finally man. In the introduction to his Anatome plantarum (1675), in which he laid the foundations of plant histology, he vindicates the comparative method in the following words:—"In the enthusiasm of youth ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... zenith, crossed the levels of the upper sky, went down in the west; a long bar of dusky gray outlined a cloud low upon the horizon in the northeast. She was on the verge of collapse. Her skin, the inside of her mouth, were hot and dry. She had to walk along at snail's pace or her heart would begin to beat as if it were about to burst and the blood would choke up into the veins of her throat to suffocate her. A terrible pain came in her side—came and went—came and stayed. She had passed turning ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... of meaning. Does it not betoken a preserved epitome of the long history of slowly rising existence? What unplummeted abysses of time and distance intervene from the primary rock to the Victoria Regia! and again from the first crawling spine to the fetterless mind of a Schelling! But, snail pace by snail pace, those immeasurable separations have been bridged over; and so every thing that now lies at the dark basis of dust shall finally reach the transplendent apex of intellect. The objection of theological prejudice to this developing succession of ascents that it is degrading ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... driver throttled his car to a snail's pace or brought it to a full stop to avoid running over one of those children who, so far as self-preservation goes, appear to be deaf, dumb, blind, and without powers of locomotion; and during one of these halts a little ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... perceptible movement, the man's hands stole along the rope at a snail's pace. Never hurrying never stopping, they did on, the colt watching them as though mesmerised. When within reach of the dilated nostrils, they paused and waited, and slowly the sensitive head came forward snuffing, more in bewilderment than fear at this new wonder, and as the dark twitching ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn |
