"Snail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in embryo! Sure I was born with budding antlers like a young satyr, or a citizen's child, 'sdeath, to be out-witted, to be out-jilted, out-matrimonied. If I had kept my speed like a stag, 'twere somewhat, but to crawl after, with my horns like a snail, and be outstripped ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... get the rascals, did you, Mr. Narkom?" Cleek was saying. "I feared as much; but I couldn't get word to you sooner. We injured the machine in that mad race to the mill, and of course we had to come at a snail's pace afterwards. I'm sorry we didn't get Margot—sorrier still that that hound Merode got away. They are bound to make more trouble before the race is run. Not for her ladyship, however, and not for this dear little chap. Their troubles ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the wind,' said Wych Hazel. 'I remember one good canter—but all the rest made one think of the snail that went forward three feet and ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... that rock a hermit crab has taken possession of a sea snail's shell, and set up housekeeping; with body partly hidden he waves his long bony tentacles, while his beady eyes stare at us from the ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... may thread his way out, under cloud of night, by the opposite or Daun side," calculates Finck. And Wunsch sets out accordingly: a very questionable, winding, subterranean march; difficult in the extreme,—the wearied SLIPshod horses going at a snail's pace; and, in the difficult passes, needing to be dragged through with bridle and even to be left altogether:—in which, withal, it will prove of no use for Wunsch to succeed! Finck's Generals endeavoring to rank and rearrange through the night, find that their ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... over it does not seem so bad. I am like a snail—once back in my shell, I do not care what happens. I have given up trying to write The Captive, and so nothing bothers me any more.—I have forgotten all about it now, it is years ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... weaknesses do not strike you. You may not be on the spot when he flies across Piccadilly Circus, pursued, as he fancies, by a Brompton omnibus which has not yet reached St. James's Church, and is moving at a snail's pace; you may not have been with him on that occasion when, in his eagerness to be in time for the 'Flying Dutchman,' he arrives at Paddington an hour before it starts, and is put into the parliamentary train ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... in brown paper, mostly. Cows free in woods. Alligator tail good. Snail built up just like a conch (whelk). They eat good. Worms like a conch. Bile conch. Git it out shell. Grind it sausage grinder. Little onion. Black pepper. Rather eat conch than any kind of ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... Robert Burns The Grasshopper Abraham Cowley On the Grasshopper and Cricket John Keats To the Grasshopper and the Cricket Leigh Hunt The Cricket William Cowper To a Cricket William Cox Bennett To an Insect Oliver Wendell Holmes The Snail William Cowper The Housekeeper Charles Lamb The Humble-Bee Ralph Waldo Emerson To a Butterfly William Wordsworth Ode to a Butterfly Thomas Wentworth Higginson The Butterfly Alice Freeman Palmer Fireflies Edgar ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the frequent attacks, the rifle fire in the streets was becoming very unpleasant. Intelligence was also to hand of the Boers bringing up one of the Pretoria siege guns, capable of firing a 94-pound shell. This was to be dragged across the Transvaal at a snail's pace by a team of twenty oxen, so secure were they against any interruption from the South. Against these depressing items, he gave intelligence of an incident that had greatly alarmed the Boers. It seemed that, to get rid of two trucks of dynamite ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... by our own estimates. But we must remember that everything is relative; that is to say, there is really no such thing as fast or slow; it is all by comparison. A spider runs fast compared with a snail, but either is terribly slow compared with an express train; and the speed of an express train itself is nothing to the velocity ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... 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 like a thin ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... a resurrection to his feelings, inferring that if the snail reached the ark and was saved, he too, "faint yet pursuing," might gain admission ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... builders, Pueblo tribes, middle Americans and Peruvians, were potters of many schools; gorgeous colour fascinated the Amazonians, the Patagonians delighted in skins, and even the Fuegians saw beauty in the pretty snail shells of their desolate island shores. Of the Mexican and Central American sculpture and architecture a competent judge says that Yucatan and the southern states of Mexico are not rich in sculptures, apart from architecture; but in the valley of Mexico the human figure, animal forms, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a peacock with a fiery tail, I saw a blazing comet drop down hail, I saw a cloud wrapped with ivy round, I saw an oak creep on the ground, I saw a snail swallow up a whale, I saw the sea brimful of ale, I saw a Venice glass full fifteen feet deep, I saw a well full of men's tears that weep, I saw red eyes all of a flaming fire, I saw a house bigger than the moon and higher, I saw the sun at twelve o'clock ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... of the Metropolis was thronged with eager thousands. Handsome men and beautifully dressed women passed each other in endless procession on its crowded pavements. The cabs and automobiles, two abreast on either side, moved at a snail's pace, so dense were the throngs at each crossing. Her fancy was busy weaving about each throbbing tonneau and limousine a story of love. Not a wheel was turning in all that long line of shining vehicles that didn't carry a woman or was hurrying to ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... snail's pace, and at last dismounted, and groped his way. He got more than one fall in the snow, and thought himself very fortunate, when, at last, something black towered before him, and it was the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... youth in early manhood—riding at a snail's pace over the great plains, or karroo, of South Africa. His chin on his breast; his hands in the pockets of an old shooting-coat; his legs in ragged trousers, and his feet in worn-out boots. Regardless of stirrups, the last are dangling. The reins hang on the neck of his steed, whose head may ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... lazar-hags, Crying for mercy where no mercy is, Hewed down in heaps by bloody ax and pike. From their grim battlements the imps of hell Indignant hissed and damped their fires with tears; And Manhood from the watch-towers of the world Cried in the name of Human Nature—"Hold!" As well the drifting snail might strive to still The volcan-heaved, storm-struck, moon-maddened sea. Blood-frenzied beasts demand their feast of blood. "Liberty—Equality—Fraternity!"—the cry Of blood-hounds baying on the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... the roof was deeply weather-stained, and, nigh the turfy eaves-trough, all velvet-napped; no doubt the snail-monks founded mossy priories there. The other slope was newly shingled. On the north side, doorless and windowless, the clap-boards, innocent of paint, were yet green as the north side of lichened pines or copperless hulls of Japanese junks, becalmed. The whole base, like those of ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... the streets swarm with cabs, in which for the small sum of thirty cents one can pass at will from any given point to any other far distant one within its limits. There are carriage-stands on every side and in every principal street, and unoccupied vehicles may be seen driven at a snail's pace, with their drivers keenly on the lookout for a possible fare. Yet, with all this provision, it is occasionally very difficult to secure a carriage in Paris. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, on the day ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... and female organs of reproduction is called an hermaphrodite. Such a combination is very rare among higher animals; but it is by no means uncommon among plants and the lower forms of animal life. The snail, the oyster, the earth-worm, and the common tape-worm, are examples of true hermaphrodites. So-called human hermaphrodites are usually individuals in whom the sexual organs are abnormally developed so that they resemble ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... in which the male organs are 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
... conveyed him to Bayswater at a snail's pace, and with more stoppages than ever mortal omnibus was subjected to before, as it seemed to that one eager passenger. At last the fading foliage of the Park appeared between the hats and bonnets of Valentine's opposite neighbours. Even those orange tawny trees reminded him of Charlotte. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... of earth we know, Sneered Europe's wise men, in their snail shells curled; No! said one man in Genoa, and that No Out of the ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... set up in its proper position, facing the harbour. Great, as may be supposed, was the consternation of the 'Relief' when it arrived at the post, to find sentry-box and sentry gone. The soldier could not have walked off with it as a snail does its shell on its back. A rigid search was instituted, but no sign of sentry or box could be discovered, and the sentry at the Dockyard gates, having also been snoozing at the time, had neither seen nor heard anything unusual. The captain of the guard, unable, even by a conjecture, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... an army upon the land, A navy upon the seas, Creeping along, a snail-like band, Or waiting the wayward breeze; When I saw the peasant faintly reel, With the toil which he faintly bore, As constant he turned at the tardy wheel, Or tugged ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... state of doubt about the countess's daughter. Clara had been kind and gracious to him in the first part of the evening; nay, almost more than gracious. Why had she been so cold when he went up to her on that last occasion? why had she gathered herself like a snail into its shell for the ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... been crucified more than fifteen hundred years before the audience had been created; and although "Old Neb" of Babylon had destroyed a million of Hebrews several hundred years previous to the birth of the Bethlehem "Savior of Mankind," the "frog" and "snail" eaters of France were still breaking their lungs and throats in cheering for the destruction ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... shone down with comfortable warmth, and I stretched my legs. My pipe was out and I refilled it. A meditative snail crawled up and observed me ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... them, however, Blue-Cap pointed the Red Feather at him, and said, "I wish you to become a snail!" and Tom Tiddler turned at ...
— The Story of the Three Goblins • Mabel G. Taggart
... undertaking could 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
... household, with whom he had caroused and made war for so many long years, now bidding him farewell and riding off to the ends of the earth—that the old man might be moved and show me at least a trace of a human soul, as a snail ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... a snail's pace, and got in at four o'clock, and then there was tea at half-past, with the nicest bread-and-butter you ever tasted. And after that I said I must write to you, and so here I am, and I feel that if it goes on much longer ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... understand. I have my own views in the matter.— Besides, there's something else. You have been exceedingly indelicate. You took advantage of my ignorance. You let me think you were a rose-beetle and yesterday the snail told me you are a tumble-bug. A considerable difference! He saw you engaged in—well, doing something I don't care to mention. I'm sure you will now admit that I must take back ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... had ridden quite fast, or perchance these two had gone at a snail's pace, but when half-way home they looked about them and ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... (snail), another old friend of Ferragut's, was the ship's cook, and, although he did not dare to talk as familiarly to the captain as in former times, the tone of his voice made it understood that mentally he was ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... leisurely along, making very frequent halts. The firing in front indicated a hardly contested battle, and our men, knowing that Pope must be in need of reinforcements, were anxious to push forward rapidly. Every hour the corps halted for at least twenty minutes, and sometimes even longer. At this snail pace we passed Fairfax Court House, the roar of musketry and artillery becoming constantly louder in front, and arrived at Centreville. Orders immediately came for the corps to proceed to Cub Run, about two miles beyond Centreville. Here, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... 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 Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... laughter for this same mount, likening the spectacle of it, with its castle and cottages, now to a senile monarch with moth-eaten ermine about his toes and a lop-sided crown on his head, now to a monstrous sea-snail creeping shoreward. ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... was the apprentice boy, Horatio. His employer said, "Horatio, did you ever see a snail?" "I—think—I—have," he drawled out. "You must have met him then, for I am sure you never overtook one," said the "boss." Your creditor will meet you or overtake you and say, "Now, my young friend, you agreed to pay me; you have not done it, you must give me your ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... open book, for I read like a snail and cannot write at all.... 'Tis you must bear him the glad tidings—you alone—with your bright hair the color of the old sideboards in the dining-room. Take the front page of a newspaper and run to him. 'Tis ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... entering a cave, never again comes to the day. In the season of floods such streams are turbid at their entrance, but clear as a mountain-spring where they issue again; so that they must be slowly filling up cavities in the interior with mud, sand, pebbles, snail-shells, and the bones of animals which may ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... upon a rounded hillock, on which are a snail and spray of possible foxglove, and out of which grow a red carnation and another flower. In the upper right-hand corner is a gabled cottage with a tree, and under it a moth, flower, and caterpillar. Towards the upper left-hand corner is a bank of cloud with red and yellow rays issuing therefrom, ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... 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 was I disarmed By maidens each as fair ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... indecision he turned and surveyed the scene around. Not a soul was anywhere visible. The garden path stretched downward from his feet, gleaming like the track of a snail; the roof of the little well (mostly dry), the well-cover, the top rail of the garden gate, were varnished with the same dull liquid glaze; while, far away in the vale, a faint whiteness of more than usual extent showed that the rivers were high in the meads. Beyond all this winked a few ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... spread upon the floor, the head raised by means of a turned-down chair, and here I was reposing comfortably when the brother arrived. It was late in the forenoon when the minister reached home, his rickety wagon creaking through the snow, and drawn at a snail's pace by a long-furred, knock-kneed horse. The tall but not very clerical figure was wrapped in a shawl and swathed round the throat with many turns of a woolen tippet. The daughter ran out with eagerness to greet her father and tell of the wonderful arrival. I was received ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... letters, to which he hints that I am to answer. In his last, of 31 closely written sides of note-paper, he informs me, with reference to my obstinate silence, that though I think myself and am thought by others to be a mathematical Goliath, I have resolved to play the mathematical snail, and keep within my shell. A mathematical snail! This cannot be the thing so called which regulates the striking of a clock; for it would mean that I am to make Mr. Smith sound the true time of day, which I would by no means ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... whom my duty compelled me to reprove, and how often have I jeered myself for a fraud as the doughty platform combatant, when shrinking from blaming some lad or lass for doing their work badly. An unkind look or word has availed to make me shrink into myself as a snail into its shell, while, on the platform, opposition makes me ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... travellers have not self-respect enough to do this simply, and make objects and events stand around them as the centre, but still imagine more favorable positions and relations than the actual ones, and so we get no valuable report from them at all. In his Italian Travels Goethe jogs along at a snail's pace, but always mindful that the earth is beneath and the heavens are above him. His Italy is not merely the fatherland of lazzaroni and virtuosi, and scene of splendid ruins, but a solid turf-clad soil, daily shined on by the sun, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... with a sea so smooth that the barrier reefs for once were silent, and one could hear, far across the hushed and shining water, the coo of pigeons in the forest. Under bare steerage way, with the leadsman droning in the fore chains, the ship hugged the shore and steamed at a snail's pace round the island. On the lofty bridge, high above the wondering faces of his command, the white-haired captain, impassive, supreme, and solitary, gave no sign of those inner emotions that were devouring him. Along the shore the sight ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... racing motor turned out to be a light ambulance of a popular Detroit make. Its speeding engine was pure camouflage for its slow progress. It bubbled and steamed at the radiator cap as it pushed along at almost a snail's pace. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... 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
... 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 to its ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... east from the pile of mussel shells, at a slightly lower level, was nearly half a gallon of snail shells which had been boiled, probably in soup. With them were a few ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... roots of the hedge-row made a thinness. We should not have cared about this if it were not that we could look, unseen ourselves, at the infrequent passer-by, for the hedge grew luxuriantly. Further down it became partly a clay bank, and there on the coarse grass used to hang snail-shells of all sizes, and, as I remember them, of shining gold and silver. The inhabitant was the drawback to all that beauty, yet when we found an empty house, it was cold, dull, and with ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... friend had gone Dirk sat for a while, till the guttering tallow lights overhead burned to the sockets indeed. Then, taking the candle from the snail-adorned holder, he lit it, and, having extinguished those in the chandeliers, went into his bedroom and undressed himself. The Bible he returned to its hiding-place and closed the panel, after which he blew out the light and climbed into ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... moving as fast as it was possible it seemed but a snail's pace to Elizabeth. She could realize nothing but that her father was in danger. After hearing Nora's reasons for this sudden journey, she spoke no word but sat rigid, her hands clasped tightly ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... dilatations, called ampullae, at the anterior base of the anterior, and at the posterior base of the posterior and horizontal canals. Indirectly connected with the main sac is a spirally-twisted portion, resembling a snail shell in form, the cochlea. This last part is distinctive of the mammalia, but the rest of the internal ear is represented in all vertebrata, with one or two exceptions. The whole of the labyrinth is membranous, and contains a fluid, the endolymph; between the membranous ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... restored the old gentleman, he said "Thank God!" and went firmly over to the depot, where he took the next train for home, leaving no word behind in case his friends should return—which they did that afternoon and searched mournfully at a snail's pace for over twenty miles on both sides of ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... send a note to Senator Dilworthy, telling him what he had found, and that he should go at once to New York, and then hastened to the railway station. He had to wait an hour for a train, and when it did start it seemed to go at a snail's pace. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Became a clock, and still adher'd; And, now, in love to household cares, By a shrill voice the hour declares, Warning the housemaid not to burn The roast-meat which it cannot turn. The easy chair began to crawl, Like a huge snail along the wall; There, stuck aloft in public view, And, with small change, a pulpit grew. A bed-stead of the antique mode, Made up of timber many a load, Such as our ancestors did use, Was metamorphos'd into pews: Which still their ancient nature keep, By lodging folks dispos'd ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... a long sigh. "O Monsieur, it is wonderful that people can talk this way on paper. I have tried, but the master could not help laughing and I laughed, too. It was like a snail crawling about and the pen would go twenty ways as if there was an evil sprite in my fingers. But I shall keep on although it is very tiresome and I have such a longing to be out in the fields and woods, chasing ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... what was that to me Who in that summer darkness furled, With but an owl and snail to see, Had blessed ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... standing very nearly still, and you will realise that you and your canoe are standing very nearly still too; and that all your exertions are only enabling you to creep on at the pace of a crushed snail, and that it's the water that is going the pace. It's a most ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... ejaculated Mr. Brown, who at the word "scheme" had advanced one step from his retreat, but who now at the last words of the intruder drew back as gently as a snail into his shell; and although his person was far too much enveloped in shade to run the least chance of detection, yet the honest broker began to feel a little tremor vibrate along the chords of his thrilling frame, and a new anathema against the fatal ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... train-boy—he has the word "Boy" on his collar in English—brings fans and bedroom slippers. The fans, which on one side advertised "Hotels in European style, directly managed by the Imperial Government Railway[114]," offered on the other a poem and a drawing. A poem addressed to a snail played with the idea of its giving its life to climbing Fuji. The poem was composed by a poet who wrote many delightful hokku (seventeen-syllable poems), showing a humorous sympathy with the humblest ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Baron de Goldburg, Leading the Dowager Duchess of Snail; Feathers and fringe on the top of her bonnet, Roses and rings on the end ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... Tedesco (1386-1402), who carved the second south door of the Duomo about 1398, where amid so many lovely natural things, the fig leaf and the oak leaf and the vine, you may see the lion and the ox, the dog and the snail, and man too; little fantastic children peeping out from the foliage, or blowing through musical reeds, or playing with a kitten, tiny naked creatures full of life ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... the serpula of the conchylia. In the mollusca the separation of organs becomes more observable; in the higher species there are rudiments of nerves, and an exponent, though scarcely distinguishable, of sensibility. In the snail, and muscle, the separation of the fluid from the solid is more marked, yet the prevalence of the carbonic principle connects these and the preceding classes, in a certain degree, with the vegetable creation. "But the insect world, taken at large (says Mr. Coleridge) appears ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... hoodoo like you with it. I feel it in my bones that something is going to happen tonight, and just as soon as I can get through my act I'm going to run—run, mind you, not walk—back to the train as fast as my legs will carry me. That won't be any snail's pace, either." ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... presence, and which our Scottish Episcopalians have so recently adopted as the characteristic vignette of their service-book. The toad and the newt had crept over it, and it had borrowed a new tint of brilliancy from the slime of the snail. Destruction had run riot along the walls of this parish church. There were carvings chipped and mutilated, as if in sport, less apparently with the intention of defacing, than rendering them contemptible and grotesque. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... the house to the station had been a long and tedious one. The way back was surprisingly short, even though they walked at snail's pace. There never was a courting such as Tarling's, and it seemed unreal as a dream. The girl had a key of the outer gate and they passed ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... between two handsome modern buildings. It was a remnant of old Ballarat which had survived the rage for new houses and highly ornamented terraces. Slivers had been offered money for that ricketty little shanty, but he declined to sell it, averring that as a snail grew to fit his house his house ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... very lonely and happy life; and as they had no children themselves, they had adopted a little common snail, which they brought up as their own; but the little one would not grow, for he was of a common family; but the old ones, especially Dame Mother Snail, thought they could observe how he increased in size, and she begged ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the corner. "As I was running up stairs with Colonel Leson's shoes, I see'd the coachman bring in his portmanteau." "Well, Jack-a-napes, what of that?" cried Jenkins; "is a nobleman always to carry his equipage about him, like a snail with its shell on its back? To be sure, this foreign lord, or prince, is only come to stay here till his own house is fit for him. I ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... fish repose within the watery deeps, The snail draws in his head; The dog beneath the table calmly sleeps, My wife is slumbering in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... fired to sing The snail's discreet degrees, A rhapsody of sauntering, A gloria of ease; Proclaiming their's the baser part Who consciously forswear The delicate and gentle art ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... that they were gone, he crept back out of the subterranean passage. "It is so dangerous to walk on the ground in the dark," said he; "how easily a neck or a leg is broken!" Fortunately he knocked against an empty snail-shell. "Thank God!" said he. "In that I can pass the night in safety," and got into it. Not long afterwards, when he was just going to sleep, he heard two men go by, and one of them was saying, "How shall we contrive to get hold of the rich pastor's silver and gold?" ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... too a Man born for Intrigue, full of Invention, intrepid, remorseless, able patiently to watch for the Opportunity, not flurried, as most Men, by Gusts of violent Passion, which often nip a Project in the Bud, and make the Snail, which was just putting out its Horns to meet the Inviter, withdraw into ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... Ampullaria, and other fresh-water molluscs, into the mud of the tank, has its parallel in the conduct of the Bulimi and Helices on land. The European snail, in the beginning of winter, either buries itself in the earth or withdraws to some crevice or overarching stone to await the returning vegetation of spring. So, in the season of intense heat, the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the common. This lane was scarcely wider than a path, and was only divided from the grounds of the villa by a ditch and a slight railing. I was intently occupied in examining an ant's nest, and the various evolutions performed by its black citizens on the sudden fall of a snail among them, which had dropt off a branch of dog-roses while I was gathering it, when all at once a sound as of many people running, joined to loud cries and vociferations, caught my ear. There was something ominous in the noise, and my heart beat quick as I looked with a mixture ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... bits of twigs or leaves cut to a suitable length and laid side by side in a long spirally-coiled band, forming the wall of a subcylindrical cavity. The cavity of the tube of Helicopsyche, composed of grains of sand, is itself spirally coiled, so that the case exactly resembles a small snail-shell in shape. One species of Limnophilus uses small but entire leaves; another, the shells of the pond-snail Planorbis; another, pieces of stick arranged transversely with reference to the long axis of the tube. To admit ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... in hate. My fourth in luck, but not in fate. My fifth in ship, but not in boat. My sixth in atom, not in mote. My seventh in man, but not in boy. My eighth in trouble, not in joy. My ninth in head, but not in tail. My tenth in turtle, not in snail. My eleventh in cake, but not in bread. My twelfth in yellow, not in red. My thirteenth in wrong, but not in right. My fourteenth in squire, not in knight. My fifteenth in run, but not in walk. ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... that. Percy Darrow had two hundred feet of ascent to make. He could go just so fast; must consume just so much time in his snail-like progress up the face of the hill. During that time he furnished an excellent target, and the loose sandstone showed where ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... daughter, suh?" he thundered. "By thunder, suh, I've a good mind to make you smart right proper for your lack of manners, suh! How dare you, suh? You—you contemptible little—little snail, suh! Snail, suh!" And quite satisfied at thus selecting the most fitting word, glaring fiercely and twisting his white mustache and imperial with a very martial air, he seated himself majestically ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... but by the light of the lamp which the masked figure raised for the purpose, he could perceive nothing but the damp walls which glistened here and there with the slimy traces of the snail. "Oh! oh! a dungeon," ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the Roman Catholic Church to its centre, had no terrors for the church of Russia. Intellectual advancement, scientific research, inventive progress left her untouched and uninfluenced. Her theology remained precisely as it was in the days of Constantine and, like the self-sufficient snail, she withdrew into her shell, her convents, and allowed the world to wag as ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... 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, and provisions left behind. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... . . . The sun is baking hot. The shadows begin to grow shorter and to draw in on themselves, like the horns of a snail. . . . The high grass warmed by the sun begins to give out a strong, heavy smell of honey. It will soon be midday, and Gerassim and Lubim are still floundering under the willow tree. The husky bass and the shrill, frozen tenor persistently disturb the stillness ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... work, Robert," said the older of the boys as they were poling up the river to a new fishing place. "The old boat creeps over the water no faster than a snail." ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... passed the Pillar Rocks at the entrance two hours before and crept up the harbour to the whispering flutters of a breeze that could not make up its mind to blow. It was a cool, starlight evening, and they lolled about the poop waiting till their snail's pace would bring them to the anchorage. Willie Smee, the supercargo, emerged from the cabin, conspicuous in his shore clothes. The mate glanced at his shirt, of the finest and ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... easily enticed out; he had his home where he hid himself like a snail in its shell. He had the responsibility for this little world of five people, and he had not even succeeded in securing it. His strength and industry were not enough even to keep one little home above water; ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... priests clasped her robe to draw her back, but she turned on him with the spear, whereon he shrank back into his litter like a snail into his shell and left her alone. So following the steep path they marched on, and after them came the two litters with the priests, carried by all the bearers who could still stand, for these old men weighed no more than children. From far below them rose a mighty ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... wet, but still laughing, when he crawled out, like a snail from under his shell, and got upon his feet, clutching the tub to hurl it at ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... point was one on which Stevenson himself felt strongly. In a letter of instructions to his wife found among his posthumous papers he writes: "It is never worth while to inflict pain upon a snail for any literary purpose; and where events may appear to be favourable to me and contrary to others, I would rather be misunderstood than cause a pang to any one whom I have known, far less whom I have loved." Whether an editor or biographer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... It is the 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; the swearing ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... by placing snail shells in a fire, from which they are taken while hot and dropped into cold water. They can then be crushed into ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... silent and was very glad he had done so, for, after an hour of snail-like pace through the streets they came in sight of a gigantic structure, in which Rollo could see thousands and ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... path along the water, and the warm dusk came swiftly out of the east. At snail's pace, now with heads bent to knees, now standing erect to draw themselves up by the arms or to leap a wicked-looking crevice, the four took their way up the black side of the rock. Birds of the cliffs, disturbed from long rest, wheeled and screamed ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... 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 teams, if necessary, Harrington and ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... pass a roadside ditch or pool in springtime, take from it any bit of stick or straw which has lain undisturbed for a time. Some little worm-shaped masses of clear jelly containing specks are fastened to the stick: eggs of a small snail-like shell-fish. One of these specks magnified proves to be a crystalline sphere with an opaque mass in its centre. And while you are looking, the opaque mass begins to stir, and by-and-by slowly to turn upon its axis like a forming planet,—life beginning in the microcosm, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... bed was the inner nest, composed of strips of soft bark. Assembling this latter material I found that when compressed with the hands its bulk was about the size of a baseball. Among the decaying leaves near the base of the nest three beetles and a small snail ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... eyes shifting occasionally from the gray thread of road ahead of him under the glare of the dancing lamps, to the road map spread out at his feet, upon which, from time to time, he focused his pocket flashlight. And then, finally, he slowed the car to a snail's pace—he should be very near his destination—that very ultra-exclusive subdivision of Charleton ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... mysterious light became 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 ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... the gray Pacific bearing A broad white disk of flame, And on the garden-walk a snail beside me Tracing in crystal ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... They were arranged one behind the other, with their bows and arrows, clubs, and round shields with which they provide for fighting. They went leaping one after the other, making various gestures with their bodies, and many snail-like turns. Afterwards they proceeded to dance in the customary manner, as I have before described; then they had their tabagie, after which the women stripped themselves stark naked, adorned with ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... by Lamarck in his Animaux sans Vertebres, which has been pronounced as absurd and ridiculous, and has aided in throwing his whole theory into disfavor, is his way of accounting for the development of the tentacles of the snail, which is quoted on ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... However, he confessed that many naturalists assert that it does so, as do certainly the people of the coast near which it is found. He told me that possibly this idea had arisen because the shell, when empty, swims on the surface. The creature, when at the bottom, crawls along like any other snail. Sometimes it dies and falls out, when the shell rises to the surface by means of the gases generated in its chambers; and thus they are seen floating on the waves. Others say, however, that the animal itself with the shell, putting ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... halted to apply the brakes, at the top of the precipitous hill that led down to the railway township. In a two-wheeled buggy this was an exciting descent; but the coach jammed on both its brakes, moved like a snail, and seemed hardly able ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... 100,000 times faster, all events in nature would appear to us 100,000 times slower. This would then be a stationary and immovable world. The only motion which we could see with our eyes would be that of the cannon ball, which would crawl slowly along, at less than a snail's pace. The express train going at sixty miles per hour would appear to stand still, and deliberate experiment be required to discover its motion. By noting its position on the track, and noting ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... given him back his friend, and that in the time of his sore need. So true was his heart in its love, that, giving thanks for his friend, he forgot that friend was the Marquis of Lossie, before whom his enemy was but as a snail in the sun. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... ready—least ways, I hope I'm ready, you unnerstand. My house ain't much for to see, sir, but it's hearty at your service if ever you should come along with Mas'r Davy to see it. I'm a reg'lar Dodman, I am,' said Mr. Peggotty, by which he meant snail, and this was in allusion to his being slow to go, for he had attempted to go after every sentence, and had somehow or other come back again; 'but I wish you both well, and I wish ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... her assent. 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
... 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
... from the direction of the river, and were slowly grazing past the wood, I resolved to wait for them to pass on before leaving my concealment. I sat down and tried to be patient, but the brutes were in no hurry, and went on skirting the wood at a snail's pace. It was about six o'clock before the last stragglers had left, and then I ventured out from my hiding-place, hungry as a wolf and afraid of being overtaken by night before finding any human habitation. I had left the trees half ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... ex-and concentric movement. If two circles are drawn and painted respectively yellow and blue, brief concentration will reveal in the yellow a spreading movement out from the centre, and a noticeable approach to the spectator. The blue, on the other hand, moves in upon itself, like a snail retreating into its shell, and draws away from the spectator. [Footnote: These statements have no scientific basis, but are founded purely on ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... of our first parents. In one we see the newly created and lovely Eve standing by the side of the sleeping Adam, and regarding him with pleasurable anticipation. Another shows us the animals marching in line to be inspected and named. The snail heads the procession and sets the pace. The lion and the tiger stroll gossiping together. The unicorn walks alone, very stiff and proud. Two rats and two mice are closely followed by two sleek cats, who keep them well covered, and plainly await the time when Eve's amiable indiscretion ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... day's work and MARY'S stupidity, from now on absolutely brutish]. You've had time to cook a dozen meals. You're as slow as a snail. What did you do all the time ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... the 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
... like?" she said, with a suddenly lowered tone, after a moment's bewildered glance round the room. "The jugs are bewitched, I think. It's them nasty glazed handles—they slip o'er the finger like a snail." ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... 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 little ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... 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 ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... man had nothing on that Forette. And yet the next day, when he came to take the car away, after we'd charged the storage battery, he drove like a snail. One of my men went with him a little way, to see that everything was all right, for Mr. Carwell is very particular—I mean he was—and Forette didn't let her out for a cent My man was disappointed, for he's a fast devil, too, and he asked the Frenchman why he ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... the car ahead the train had entered a wild gorge circle by one of those astonishing hairpin curves with which engineers defeat Nature. The panting engine slowed almost to a snail's pace, having only a scant fuel ration with which to negotiate curve and grade combined. To our right there was a nearly sheer drop of four hundred feet, with a stream at the bottom ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... the Snail, Miss, among ourselves," said the Porter. "She's oftener be'ind'and nor ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... 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 ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... war is at an end. I believe it has just begun. It will be carried on fiercely in every house, in every family; many hearts will break, many wounds be given, and many tears be shed before we snail have household peace. All those fond ties which united men and women, parents and children, have been shaken, or torn apart; all contracts are destroyed or undermined. In order to endure, to live through these fearful seven years, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... There is the red palace seen from the Fondamenta dell'Osmarin next the Ponte del Diavolo. There is in the little calle leading from the Campo Daniele Manin to the lovely piece of architecture known as the staircase dal Bovolo—a bovolo being a snail—from its convolutions. This staircase, which is a remnant of the Contarini palace and might be a distant relative of the tower of Pisa, is a shining reproach to the adjacent architecture, some of which is quite new. It is a miracle of delicacy and charm, and should certainly be sought ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... gait of an affected snail, and they spoke at the longest intervals, dropping a sentence ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... fundamental resemblances which they present. But a man and a fish are members of the same sub-kingdom Vertebrata, because they are much more like one another than either of them is to a worm, or a snail, or any member of the other sub-kingdoms. For similar reasons men and horses are arranged as members of the same Class, Mammalia; men and apes as members of the same Order, Primates; and if there were any animals more like men than they were like any of the apes, and yet different from men ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and land shells is exceedingly easy, the greater number of specimens requiring only to be plunged into boiling water, and the contents removed—an easy operation in the case of the bivalves, and the contents of univalves or snail-like shells being also easily wormed out with a pin or crooked awl. [Footnote: Mr. R. B. Woodward, F.G.S, etc. in one of the very best and most practical of those wonderful little penny "Handbooks" for young collectors, advises a large spoonful of salt being ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... but seldom, but what she did say was 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 ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... 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 have the bodies which suit us here on earth: fiery spirits ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wonderful, but at the same time, we think, a universal and important fact, that love permeates the universe. Even a female snail, if we could only put the question, would undoubtedly admit that ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 purpose of this course is not to make skilled dissectors, ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... the engines needing to be just started, and then stopped again for a few minutes in order to keep the speed down to this very low limit. But they were all as yet so new to Arctic scenery—everything was so entirely novel to them—that even this snail's pace failed to prove wearisome, especially as the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the land of fire," he said, "Frame me a soul like thine: Swift as the snail's soft horn to feel, Yet hard and keen as the tempered steel, And be there a fire in heart ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... First came Lulu, white-clad, serious, pale, walking with Honey. The others, crowned with flowers and carrying garlands, followed, serious and silent, the women clinging with both hands to the men, who supported their snail-like, tottering progress with one arm about their waists. On the point of the northern reef, a cabin made of round beach-stones fronted the ocean. It fronted the rising sun now and a world, all ocean and sky, over which lay a rose dawnlight. Still silent, the procession paused and grouped about ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... little snail Came crawling, with his shiny tail, Upon a cabbage-stalk; But two more little snails were there, Both feasting on this dainty fare, ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... of earth we know, Sneered Europe's wise men, in their snail-shells curled; No! said one man in Genoa, and that No Out of the darkness ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the ground strewn with spirited fruit,—some of it, perhaps, collected at squirrel-holes, with the marks of their teeth by which they carried them,—some containing a cricket or two silently feeding within, and some, especially in damp days, a shelless snail. The very sticks and stones lodged in the tree-top might have convinced you of the savoriness of the fruit which has been so eagerly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... of her last speech, Sir Thomas had begun to swell, until now he looked as if he were in imminent danger of bursting. His face was purple. To Molly's lively imagination, his eyes appeared to move slowly out of his head, like a snail's. From the back of his throat ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... continually advanced, sometimes ridiculously. The sentimentalists are ahead of us, not by weight of brain, but through delicacy of nerve, and, like all creatures in the front, they are open to be victims. I pray you to observe again the shrinking life that afflicts the adventurous horns of the snail, for example. Such are the sentimentalists to us—the fat body of mankind. We owe them much, and though they scorn us, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... focused a strained vision on the canyon deeps. I looked along the slope to the notch where the wall curved and followed the base line of the yellow cliff. Quite suddenly I saw a very small black object moving with snail-like slowness. Although it seemed impossible for Sounder to be so small, I knew it was he. Having something now to judge distance from, I conceived it to be a mile, without the drop. If I could hear Sounder, he could hear me, so I yelled encouragement. The echoes ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... Bath House below the landlord was standing in the back doorway and called to Moni: "Come in with them. They are wet enough! Why, you are crawling down the mountain like a snail! I wonder what is the ...
— Moni the Goat-Boy • Johanna Spyri et al
... Roman snail (Helix pomatia) is still known to continental cuisines—and gipsy camps. It was introduced into England as an epicure's dish ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... was an overwhelming incubus. I was like a miserable snail, forever lugging my house round on my back—unable to shake it off. A change in our mode of life would not necessarily in itself bring my children any nearer to me; it would, on the contrary, probably antagonize them. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... so strive, as to have God's approbation. What, do you think that every heavy-heeled professor will have heaven? What, every lazy one? every wanton and foolish professor, that will be stopt by anything, kept back by anything, that scarce runneth so fast heavenward as a snail creepeth on the ground? Nay, there are some professors that 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; therefore he that will have ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... Barbara Dudoky became the headsman's bride. If old Dame Anna became mad, her daughter was partly the cause of it. This also they put down to the account of the Hetfalusies. Since then Dame Anna has frequently sought opportunities for revenging herself on the Hetfalusy family—'the snail-brood,' as Barbara is wont to call them. The old night-owl loves to torment the souls of those who anger her; she loves to fill the inner rooms of the splendid Hetfalusy castle with tears and groaning; ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... kneeling down, so it was impossible to form an opinion of his legs, but his arms and shoulders certainly did not look like those of a "snail." ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... "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 one handful; Raisons of the Sun stoned, Figs, and Dates, of each ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... for which I could find no cause. He would answer my questions at random, pause in his work to gaze long and intently on the ceiling, and altogether behave in ways unaccountable and strange. The play had been written at white-hot speed: the corrections proceeded at a snail's pace. The author had also fallen into a habit of bolting his meals in silence, and, when rebuked, of slowly bringing his eyes to bear upon me as a person whose presence was until the moment unsuspected. All this I saw in mild wonder, but I reflected on certain moods ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... industry. The economy continued to falter in 1994, as remittances and tourist earnings remained low. Production of taro, the primary food export crop, has dropped 97% since a fungal disease struck the crop in 1993. The rapid growth in 1994 of the giant African snail population in Western Samoa is also threatening the country's basic food crops, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... parcel. Another mode of transferring warts is to touch each wart with a pebble, and place the pebbles in a bag, which should be lost on the way to church; whoever finds the bag gets the warts." A common Warwickshire custom was to rub the warts with a black snail, stick the snail on a thorn bush, and then, say the folks, as the snail dies so ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... great respect for ants; but we do not go the length of some of their historians, or believe them to be, any more than ourselves, infallible. We have seen a laborious ant (magni Formica laboris) tugging a snail-shell (for some reason only known to himself) up a hill, stopping to take breath, and going cheerily to work again till he had nearly accomplished his ascent, and found himself on the very edge of its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various |
