"Boa" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... V. But mind this—if he comes, you've got to care for him the whole length of your boa—you won't persuade him to run in couples with anybody else. That's why he broke away the first time—and you were ever so mad with me because you thought I was at the bottom of it. But it was all his pride. He's too real independent to share ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... and both ends bent down —then they had been seized, broken, twisted; in a wild spirit of sport the men had borne some of the heated rails to trees near the road; twisted them three or four times around the trunks; and there, as I passed, were the unfortunate trees with their iron boa-constrictors around them—monuments of the playful humor of the blue ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... dogs any more than she liked the horses. She was fond of cats and had a favourite smoke-blue Persian, between whom and the Poms there was an armed neutrality. The cat's name was Cleopatra, and she deserved it. Her green eyes shone like emeralds when she curled boa-fashion about her mistress's white neck and looked ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... probably macerated to a pulp long before he has reached the opposite extremity of his cave of doom. Once safe down, the black murderer slowly contracts again into a knotted heap, and lies, like a boa with a stag inside ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... towns and their vicinities are also important centers of German population: Riberao Pires, Sao Bernardo, Rocinha, Vallinhos, Helvetia, Nova Friburgo, Salto de Ytu, Sorocaba, Botucatu, Riberao Preto, Sao Joao da Boa Vista, Villa Americana, Pires, Araras, Leme, Rio Claro, Sao Carlos do Pinhal, Santa Rita do Passo Quatro, Santa Cruz das Palmeiras, Brotas, Dous Corregos, Jahu, Villa Raffard, ...
— The German Element in Brazil - Colonies and Dialect • Benjamin Franklin Schappelle
... passe en fouettant de son aile L'air epais, ou circule un immense soleil. Parfois quelque boa, chauffe dans son sommeil, Fait onduler son ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... the evening's banquet, he had gone back on both sides of the road to his boarding-house, and, with his boots upon the pillow, sunk into an instantaneous sleep of unfathomable depth. Dreaming, towards morning, that he was engaging a large boa-constrictor in single combat, and struggling energetically to restrain the ferocious reptile from getting into his boots, he had suddenly awakened, with a crash, upon the floor—to miss his umbrella and nephew, to forget where he had put them, and to fly to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... boa, moving lazily toward the water course as if conscious that its own wonderful strength was sufficient to enable it to ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... this large family; some, like the rattlesnake, cannot climb or swim, but crawl along the ground, the terror of unwary travellers who may tread upon them in the dim forest-paths; others are Water-snakes; some, like the Boa and Python, are dreaded, although not venomous, because, of their enormous strength, and power of crushing their victims in their close embrace; others, like the Cobra, for their deadly bite; while many—we might almost say most—snakes are quite harmless, for it has been reckoned that not more ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... accompanied her, carrying her smart bags, and, even with so much assistance, she was draped with extra garments, which hung from her arms in varying and seductive shades of green. She herself was in green of a subtle olive shade, and her plumes and boa, her chains and chatelaine, her hand-bags and camera, marked her as the traveler triumphant and expectant. Like an Arabian princess, borne across the desert to the home of her future lord, she came panoplied with splendor. The consciousness of being a personage, by the mere right conferred by ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... they tear the meat into long shreds, which they place in their mouths; then each one, cutting off at his lips what his mouth cannot hold, passes it over to his companion; or else the gluttons, letting the shreds hang down to the ground, swallow them gradually, as a boa-constrictor swallows an animal, and like it stretched out at full length on ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... the bank, no huts roofed with palm leaves or grass, no smoke indicated the vicinity of Indians. In a thicket by a brook lay a boa constrictor, a snake allied to the python of the Old World, in easy, elegant coils, digesting a small rodent somewhat like a hare and called an agouti. At the margin of the bank some water-hogs wallowed in the sodden earth full of roots, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... understood Italian, besides being clearly in the servants' eyes the one of the party marked down by age and appearance to pay the bills; and to her, while Mrs. Fisher put the final touches to her toilette, for she was preparing, by means of putting on a hat and veil and feather boa and gloves, to go for her first stroll in the lower garden—positively her first since her arrival—she explained that unless she was given money to pay the last week's bills the shops of Castagneto would refuse credit for the current ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... of men, have passed through this man as bread into his body, and become no longer bread, but body: so all this mammoth morsel has become Plato. He has clapped copyright on the world. This is the ambition of individualism. But the mouthful proves too large. Boa constrictor has good will to eat it, but he is foiled. He falls abroad in the attempt; and biting, gets strangled: the bitten world holds the biter fast by his own teeth. There he perishes: unconquered nature lives on, and forgets him. So it fares with ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... my own, sah. Oh, I libs at home an' boa'ds at de same place, I does. An' my name's Nimbus, jes' straight along, widout any tail ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... to obtain, this Chimaera was nearly, if not quite, the ugliest and most poisonous creature, and the strangest and unaccountablest, and the hardest to fight with, and the most difficult to run away from, that ever came out of the earth's inside. It had a tail like a boa-constrictor; its body was like I do not care what; and it had three separate heads, one of which was a lion's, the second a goat's, and the third an abominably great snake's. And a hot blast of fire came flaming out of each of its three ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Rey por embaixadores a el rey dom Duarte de Inglaterra Ruy de Sousa pessoa principal e de muyto bon saber e credito, de que el Rey muyto confiaua, e ho doutor Ioam d'Eluas, e Fernam de Pina por secretario. E foram por mar muy honradamente com muy boa companhia: hos quaes foram en nome del Rey confirmar as ligas antiquas com Inglaterra, que polla condisan dellas ho nouo Rey de hum reyno e do outro era obrigado a mandar confirmar: e tambien pera mostrarem ho titolo que el rey tinha no senhorio de Guinee, pera ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... enough," I said, sick with rage and disgust. "Let them look out for their own country now. I pity the Empress; I pity the Emperor. I don't know what Mornac means to do, but I know that the Internationale boa-constrictor is big enough to swallow government, dynasty, and Empire, and it is going ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... beautiful sea anemone, half animal, half vegetable, with its colors as variegated as a rose garden. Seaweed and kelp wave to us as we pass, long-stemmed sea grasses moving by the action of the waves, like a feather boa worn by some sea nymph, twist and turn like a thing alive; tall, feathery plumes, as white as snow, or as green as emerald, toss to and fro, and make obeisance to old Neptune. Sea onions, with stems thirty feet long, and bulbous air-filled sacks, reach out their long snaky arms, ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... it to helplessness—the monster ate it! The lipless jaws gaped widely. The shapeless hands forced in the head of the animal. The throat muscles expanded hugely: and in less than a minute it had swallowed its living prey as a boa-constrictor swallows a monkey. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... Josephine watched it. When it came to mother's photograph, the enlargement over the piano, it lingered as though puzzled to find so little remained of mother, except the earrings shaped like tiny pagodas and a black feather boa. Why did the photographs of dead people always fade so? wondered Josephine. As soon as a person was dead their photograph died too. But, of course, this one of mother was very old. It was thirty-five ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... heavy flabby bust, and her ungainly knees seemed to come straight out of her groin. She looked like a seated cow. Her companion was like a terrapin, with her little black evil-looking head at the end of a neck which was too long and very stringy. She kept shooting it out of her boa and drawing it back with the most incredible rapidity. The rest of her body bulged out flat. These two delightful persons were the dressmakers sent for by the Custom-house to value my costumes. They glanced at me in a furtive way, and gave a little bow ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... were forced, and the army of Wallace was enveloped in the embrace of a hideous boa-constrictor—tightening, closing, crushing every semblance of life from the victim enclosed in his toils. The flanking parties of horse were forced in upon the centre, and though, as even Turner grants, they fought with desperation, a general flight ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great boa!" gasped Tom. "It has him in its coils. But it is wound around the trees, too. That alone prevents it from crushing ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... blindfolded by a leathern mask and not allowed to see his prey until quite close to it. He stood up in the cart lashing his tail, and now and then curling it round the neck of the driver like a huge boa. When at last he was set free he darted forward and, after crouching behind a hillock waiting his opportunity, made a tremendous spring right on to the back of a buck, striking the poor animal such a blow on the side of the head ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... broken at recent intervals by stealthy, unaccountable rustlings, or sudden, violent commotions beginning close at hand and gradually dying away in the distance. These strange, sudden, unaccountable sounds, caused in all probability by a boa-constrictor, a buck, or some other creature startled into quick movement by the scent of a human being, wafted to their nostrils by an errant draught of air, were even more startling to the nerves than the distant roar ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... his eyes. "You don't have to be such a boa-constrictor," she suggested. "You are not a cave-man, after all, you know, if you are taking a lady without asking her." Then she contentedly whispered: "I'm going ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... either to kill, or, if possible, recapture it at the very earliest opportunity. Though the Advertiser has succeeded in temporarily securing three lions, a chimpanzee, a couple of hyaenas, and a young hippopotamus in the Vicarage drawing-room, and has managed to envelope a boa-constrictor in a lawn-tennis net, yet, as five full-grown Bengal tigers, and about thirty other wild beasts of a miscellaneous character are at large in the village, and have, to his knowledge, already devoured ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... he had been bitten by mosquitos as big as jackdaws—at least as jack-snipes; he had sat down to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree, and it whisked him over on his face, and turned out to he a rattle-snake—at least, a boa- constrictor! Nay, Henry discoursed on the ponies he had himself tamed, the rabbits he had shot, the trees he had climbed, the nests he had found, the rats he had killed, in terms he durst not use when his brother was by; or if he did, and Sam brought him to book, he always said "it was all ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... issued on the Boulevard, and a few steps brought us in view of the stately white shrine on Claremont Heights. But I looked instead at her brilliant face against the velvety background of black hat and feather boa. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... helpless monarch in his grizzly bear grip Mr. Gibney backed up against the nearest bungalow. A fringe of spears threatened him in front, but for the moment he was safe behind, and the king's body protected him. Whenever one of the savages made a jab at Mr. Gibney, Mr. Gibney gave the king a boa-constrictor squeeze, ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... said wyding, walking in the water. Mr. Bulky was wyding, one morning, with rod in hand, when, all of a sudden, he felt something on his leg. Looking down, he sawr a big black water-snyke coiled round his boot, and jabbing awy at his leg. It hung on to him like a boa-constrictor, and squeezed his leg so tight that it gyve him a bad attack of gout. He had to get on shore and sawr it in two with his knife before the snyke would leave go. Fortunately, the brutes are not venomous, but that beggar's teeth ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... to the semicircular cage where the condors, in evening dress and white boa around the neck, surveyed the garden with the aloof manner of the higher aristocracy. Gertie waited for an advance; this did not come. Miss Loriner, at the command of Lady Douglass, furnished the hour, and a scream of dismay ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... herself for Keith and insisted that they should be worn whenever he went outdoors during autumn and winter. The muffler was long and white, with blue rings two inches apart, and in shape more like a boa. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... "my own invention," that phrase! The bodily wants of a reptile are elastic. If an alligator or a boa-constrictor catches a dog he can swallow him whole and enjoy that one meal in unriotous bliss for weeks. Thereafter if he must put up with no more than a minnow or a mouse he can do that for weeks in unriotous ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... Charles and Lemon, who stood prepared to drive it up to the goal, if, as they hoped, they could elude the vigilance of the stout gentleman. He, however, was not asleep, and watching their movements, as Tom Bouldon observed, as keenly as a boa-constrictor, glided swiftly up to the spot where they had driven the ball, and sent it spinning back, till once more Frank and Ernest got it within their power. Thus the game continued fluctuating; but finally, after many a bandy here and there, and many a tussle between the opposing ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... great python[1] (the "boa," as it is commonly designated by Europeans, the "anaconda" of Eastern story), which is supposed to crush the bones of an elephant, and to swallow the tiger, is found, though not of so portentous dimensions, in the cinnamon gardens within a mile ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... four-and-a-half ounces would have recoiled in affright from the monster, even as he lay dead in the entrance hall of the Greville Arms. Old women stand at the street corners with silver eels like boa-constrictors, for which they wish to smite the Saxon to the tune of sixpence each. I vouch for the pike and eels, but confess to some dubiety re the story of a fat old English gentleman, who said, "I ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... stopped at every house in Leith, and searched them with characteristic vigour and lack of ceremony, sometimes entering by the side door, and sometimes by the front, and caring very little whether the owners were at home or not. Mr. Humphrey Crewe discovered her in a boa-stall at Wedderburn,—as his place was called,—for it made little difference to Victoria that Mr. Crewe was a bachelor of marriageable age and millions. Full, as ever, of practical suggestions, Mr. Crewe proposed to telephone to Ripton and put an advertisement ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... exist, and in most cases have no special function in the animal economy, is admitted by the first authorities in comparative anatomy. The minute limbs hidden beneath the skin in many of the snake-like lizards, the anal hooks of the boa constrictor, the complete series of jointed finger-bones in the paddle of the manatee and the whale, are a few of the most familiar instances. In botany a similar class of facts has been long recognised. Abortive stamens, rudimentary floral envelope ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... bit of dessert had been disposed of, and Dicky had gone to sleep in his mother's lap, like an infant boa-constrictor after a hearty meal, the presentation of gifts and reading of poems took place; and Polly had to be on the alert to answer all the nonsensical jokes that were aimed ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... quay, in the dusk of early evening, her mind full of the next day's journey over the mountains to Milan. The wind was cold; about her neck there was a boa of white ostrich feathers, one end of which fluttered gaily over her shoulder. She was continually turning half-way about against the wind to reclaim the truant end of the boa. It was in the act of doing so on one occasion that her attention was drawn to two ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... "I shouldn't call that rope. Cable, yes—frankly, when she came into the dining-room the other night I thought it was a feather-boa she had on." ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... quite well,' she replies, removing her boa and settling herself comfortably before the fire, her ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... his heart sank. They stepped out of the lift and looked around them. Ellen's hat seemed larger than ever, and was ornate with violent-colored flowers. Her face was hidden behind a violet veil, and she wore a white feather boa, fragments of which reposed upon the lift man's shoulder and little Alfred's knickerbockers. Her dress was of black velveteen, fitting a little tightly over her corsets, and showing several imperfectly ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their mongrel dogs for the possession of the offal thrown away by the butcher. If successful in gaining this prize they were not long in disposing of it, cooking evidently being considered a waste of time. A famished "black-fellow" after a heavy meal used to remind me of pictures of the boa-constrictor who has swallowed an ox, and is resting in ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... smile. All the pride of the family seemed to be monopolized by his daughter Miriam, a girl whose very nose Heaven had fashioned scornful. Miriam had accompanied him out of contemptuous curiosity. She wore a stylish feather in her hat, and a boa round her throat, and earned thirty shillings a week, all told, as a school teacher. (Esther Ansell was in her class just now.) Probably her toilette had made old Hyams unpunctual. His arrival was the signal for the commencement of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... seeing several of the most curious. An ugly cobra laid and blinked at me through the glass, looking quite as dangerous as he was. There were big and little snakes,—black, brown, and speckled, lively and lazy, pretty and plain ones,—but I liked the great boa best. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... waist. Landless felt the motion and intercepted it. Then the figure, with an angry guttural sound, began to put forth its full strength. The arms encircled Landless with a slowly tightening iron band; the great dark shoulder came forward with the force of a battering-ram; the limbs twined like boa-constrictors around the limbs of the other. Locked together, the two reeled into a little fairy glade, where the short grass, pearled with dew, lay open to the moon. Here, borne backwards by the overwhelming force of his assailant, Landless fell ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... eyes beaming from among her tumbled curls, at once turned happy and expectant, and when her hat had been straightened and her boa removed so that her necklace could gleam resplendently about her fair, round throat, she was seated against a tree-trunk and listened with all her ears to the titles ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... the river, which was so broad and deep that it would easily bear a ship of one hundred and fifty tons burden and a full bowshot would not carry across it. Then, naming their first discovered island Boa Vista, and the largest of the group St. James, because it was on the feast of the Apostle they found it, they sailed on along the coast of the mainland, till they came to the Place of the Two Palms, between the ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... scrupulously devoted to paying, and at length to paying off, his father's creditors; a dutiful enterprise in which he was assisted by his brother Henry, [Henry married in 1841 a daughter of his brother's old political ally, Lord Denman. He died at Boa Vista, in 1846, leaving two sons, Henry, and Joseph, Macaulay.] a young man of high spirit and excellent abilities, who had recently been appointed one of the Commissioners of Arbitration in the Prize ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... out the summer long on the stand of the old flower woman at the corner, had given place to dahlias and purple asters. First glimpses of autumn toilettes flashed from the carriages; wonderful little bonnets nodded at one along the Champs-Elysees; and in the Quarter an occasional feather boa, red or black or white, brushed one's coat sleeve in the gay twilight of the early evening. The crisp, sunny autumn air was all day full of the stir of people and carriages and of the cheer of salutations; greetings of the students, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... with her, and for a week afterwards he was in bliss. He had saved money and lent it but not on interest. "I can't lend you any, your son-in-law would gamble it away. No, I can't." The son-in-law is the husband of the daughter who once sat in a box in a boa; he lost at cards and embezzled Government money. The official, who was accustomed to herring and vodka, and who had never before drunk chocolate, felt sick after the chocolate. The expression on the lady's face: "Aren't I a darling?"; she spent any amount of money on dresses and looked forward ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... saying to myself, 'If I win, it must be a triumph of race and mind over matter;' but, Jack, that was mighty lively matter. We both had been rowing and practicing in the gymnasium; we were both as hard as iron. Deering was as supple as a boa-constrictor, and had a fist like a twelve-pound hammer. Later, the boys told me the fight lasted twenty minutes. The last I saw was Deering knocked out on the ground, and then my eyes closed, and the ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... child by the hand, which compels her to look out for the vehicles; she is a mother in public, and talks to her daughter; she carries money in her bag, and has open-work stockings on her feet; in winter, she wears a boa over her fur cloak; in summer, a shawl and a scarf; she is accomplished in ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... He flung money around with the greatest unconcern; then he said good-bye and left. A moment afterward they saw him bow to a lady outside. He spoke a few words and they walked away through a side-street. The lady wore a long boa which billowed ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... who was in her attitude, holding up the end of her boa as a visionary tambourine, and Mr. Walker, who was looking at her, and in his amusement at the mother's performances had almost forgotten the charms of the daughter—both turned round at once, and looked at her with many expressions of sympathy, while Eglantine, in a ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cast-off clothing, including old shoes and sheepskins. Wide or narrow, straight or crooked, to suit the sinuosities of the different cabins into which it forms the entrance, it seems to have been originally located upon the track of a blind boa-constrictor, though Bishop Hatton denies the existence of snakes in Iceland. The best room, or rather house—for every room is a house—is set apart for the accommodation of travelers. Another cabin ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... by Winston Spencer Churchill, vol. ii., p. 394. "It is the habit of the boa-constrictor to besmear the body of its victim with a foul slime before he devours it; and there are many people in England, and perhaps elsewhere, who seem to be unable to contemplate military operations for ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... a gallop alongside, and sat, upright as a waxwork, in his shallopy chariot, his chin settled pompously on a red handkerchief, like Swithin's on his full cravat; while his girl, with the ends of a fly-blown boa floating out behind, aped a woman of fashion. Her swain moved a stick with a ragged bit of string dangling from the end, reproducing with strange fidelity the circular flourish of Swithin's whip, and rolled ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... singular—concelho); Boa Vista, Brava, Fogo, Maio, Paul, Praia, Porto Novo, Ribeira Grande, Sal, Santa Catarina, Santa Cruz, Sao Nicolau, Sao Vicente, Tarrafal note: there may be a new administrative structure of 16 districts (Boa Vista, Brava, Maio, ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... window-blind before we could go on); and in a year when Wombwell came to Cranford, because Miss Matty had wanted to see an elephant in order that she might the better imagine Peter riding on one; and had seen a boa-constrictor too, which was more than she wished to imagine in her fancy-pictures of Peter's locality; and in a year when Miss Jenkyns had learnt some piece of poetry off by heart, and used to say, at all the Cranford parties, how Peter was "surveying mankind from ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was afraid to love me, and I told her that she needn't have any fear and that she might let herself out at once. And after a good deal of talk she did. I put her arms around my neck and made her squeeze me, and I called her a divine boa constrictor. She didn't exactly know what I meant, but it tickled her all the same. Then I went over into the field to consult the old man about the time I'd have to wait, and when I mentioned day after tomorrow he snorted. 'Young fellow,' said he, 'I like your pushing ways, but ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... see we never wanted to go back there to live, any of us, and I went up to pass the papers and close the thing out. Well, I did have an offer for it from a feller that wanted to open a boa'din'-house there and get the advantage of Jeff's improvements, and I couldn't seem to make up my mind till I'd looked the ground over. Fust off, you know, I thought I'd sell to the other feller, because I could see in a minute what a thorn it 'd be in Jeff's flesh. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... assistance of her family. The choicest possessions of several members, in assorted sizes, seemed to have been commandeered, and she was finally turned out in a red serge dress, a black jacket much too large, a feather boa, and a pair of woollen gloves, which, considering that it was quite a hot day, was rank cruelty, though—true daughter of Eve as she was—she seemed so pleased with her appearance that nothing would induce her to pull off her suffocating grandeur. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... physiognomy, his strong, crooked claws, his long and sharp teeth, darkly dyed with the coloring matter of the trees and shrubs which constituted his diet, was thrust in our faces in every street; and the variegated venomous serpent, with his prehensile fangs, and the huge boa constrictor, writhing in captivity, were encountered as desirable articles ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... first put me up to the idea. I asked him a simple question about the habits of the Sigalion Boa, a certain worm in whose ways I was taking an interest at the time, and he at once replied that he himself was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... is rather nice," he said stiffly, and then went on: "We shall have to go down now to this fearful lunch, but you had better take your sable boa with you. The great hall is so enormous and all of stone, it may be cold. I will get it for you," and he went back and found it lying by her coat on the chair, and brought it, and wrapped it round her casually, as if she had been a stone, and then held the door ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... them. "I think the squirrels are the prettiest things that live in the woods. They have tails just like mamma's feather boa and they walk sitting up ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... the library. In fancy he could see the forest and jungles of South America. He saw a sluggish river flowing along between rank green banks, while, from the overhanging trees, long festoons of moss hung down, writhing now and then as the big water anacondas or boa constrictors looped their sinuous folds ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... singularly grand and impressive in the sound of a tree falling in a perfectly calm night like this, as if the agencies which overthrow it did not need to be excited, but worked with a subtle, deliberate, and conscious force, like a boa-constrictor, and more effectively then than even in a windy day. If there is any such difference, perhaps it is because trees with the dews of the night on them are heavier than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... address not half-a-mile from the gates of the Zoological Gardens a gentleman wrote to the World about a snake he found in his garden. A London and North-Western guard found a boa-constrictor, 22 feet long, in his van! "The son of a well-known Member of Parliament" found a huge snake in one of the rooms of his father's London house. In fact, snake-finding became an epidemic, and if I had come across any ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... fireplace, as in a witch's cauldron, their fluffy laces burnt and blackened. Chiffon fichus torn in ribbons strewed the carpet. An ivory fan had been trampled into fragments on the hearth-rug, and a snow-storm of feathers from a white boa had drifted over the furniture. On the wash-stand a spangled white tulle hat lay drowning in a ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... all so lonely, forms and instincts in her which claimed kinship with his own. With her natural elegance stamped on her as by a die, with her dim and disinherited individual refinement of grace, which would have made any one wonder who she was anywhere—hat and veil and feather-boa and smart umbrella-knob and all—with her regular God-given distinction of type, in fine, she couldn't abide vulgarity much ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... go there often? How ever do you find the time for such things?" asked Kitty, busily cutting from a big sheet the touching picture of a parent bird with a red head and a blue tail offering what looked like a small boa constrictor to one of its nestlings, a fat young squab with a green head, yellow body, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... first—very large, submerged in a feather boa and a feathered hat! salmon pink as to the bust, cream silk as to the skirt. The kids came next, two of the sweetest, merriest girls I know. Miss Fifteen simply tumbled with brown curls and smiles; she was of The Gay Glowworms, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... in there in the garden, with the round hat and the bit of boa round her neck over her jacket, was no ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... unfortunate young man to vex people with a lighter satire, yet still characterized by somewhat of snake-like virulence. One day he encountered an ambitious statesman, and gravely inquired after the welfare of his boa constrictor; for of that species, Roderick affirmed, this gentleman's serpent must needs be, since its appetite was enormous enough to devour the whole country and constitution. At another time, he stopped a close-fisted ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and made grimaces like the fiendish spirits of these solitudes; while hideous reptiles, engendered in the slimy depths of the pools, gathered round the footsteps of the wanderers. Here was seen the gigantic boa, coiling his unwieldy folds about the trees, so as hardly to be distinguished from their trunks, till he was ready to dart upon his prey; and alligators lay basking on the borders of the streams, or, gliding under the waters, seized their incautious victim before he was ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... to me since that if the scale of things had been enlarged—if Stoffles, for example, had been a Bengal tiger, and the Dryad a boa-constrictor or crocodile,—the tragedy which followed would have been worthy of the pen of any sporting and dramatic historian. I can only say that, being transacted in such objectionable proximity to myself, the thing was as impressive as any combat of mastodon ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... light step in the passage, and the room door opened. A girl entered. She was wearing a large black hat and a black boa round her neck. Between them her face shone unnaturally white. She carried a small cloth bag. She started, on seeing Joan, and ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... falling upon him caused him to look up. Mrs. Devereux, grey and tall, boa'd, gloved, umbrella'd, stood regarding him and his companion from the bank. Instinct prompted him immediately to screen Sanchia by dragging her into the party. He held up the net and plunged. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Cardinal?" They shook hands, Miss Avies standing over Aunt Elizabeth like the boa constrictor raised above ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... to the serpents of the genus Python, allied to the boa-constrictor. They attain enormous size in the forests, some specimens having been obtained over twenty-two feet long. Young ones are often kept by the natives in their houses to kill the rats; these ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... Heart The Christmas Pudding Apple Pie Lobster Salad Stewed Steak Green Pea Soup Trifle Mutton Chops Barley Water Boiled Chicken Stewed Duck and Peas Curry The Railway Gilpin Punch Elegy Punch The Boa and the Blanket Punch The Dilly and the D's Punch A Book in a Bustle Punch Stanzas for the Sentimental. Punch 1. On a Tear which Angelina observed trickling down my nose at Dinner-time 2. On my refusing Angelina a kiss under the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... blaspheme : blasfemi. bless : beni. blind : blinda. "window"-, rulkurteno. blond : blonda. blood : sango. blot : makulo. blow : blovi; bato, frapo. blouse : bluzo. blue : blua; -"bell", hiacinto, kampanoleto. boa-constrictor : boao. boast : fanfaroni. boat : boato. bobbin : bobeno. body : korpo. bog : marcxo. boil : boli; absceso. bold : kuragxa, sentima. bolt : rigl'i, -ilo; bolto. bomb : bombo. bombard : bombardi. bond : obligacio, garantiajxo bondage : servuto, sklaveco. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... thing," replied Frank. "Down here they call them anacondas, and in other parts of the world they're boa-constrictors. I guess the whole bunch belongs to the same family of squeezers. But that ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... for you to talk about the grandeur of the governments of BOADICEA, and ELIZABETH and CATHERINE, but I don't believe that BOA, or LIZZY, or KATE would have been very nice as a companion, if she and you were sitting before the fire, and she wanted stamps and was going for them as a matter of business. Besides, there was only one of them at a time, and they didn't trouble common people much, but in this ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... public eye ever since. He was Liberal candidate for a London constitooency and he has decorated the board of every institootion formed for the amelioration of mankind. He's got enough alibis to choke a boa constrictor, and they're water-tight and copper-bottomed, and they're mostly damned lies ... But you can't beat him at that stunt. The man's the superbest actor that ever walked the earth. You can see it in his face. It isn't a face, it's a mask. He could make himself look like Shakespeare or ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... my own, and other people's individ- uality, health, and morals; whereas, the opposite image of man, a sinner, kept constantly in mind, can no more improve health or morals, than holding in thought the [5] form of a boa-constrictor can aid an artist in ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... a lovely lady, with a dress of soft gray cloth and a great chinchilla muff and boa. Not at all. Mrs. Chinchilla was a beautiful cat, with sleek fur like silver-gray satin, and a very handsome tail to match, quite long enough to brush the ground when she walked. She didn't live in a house, but she had a very comfortable home in a fine drug-store, ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... From far Morocco to Cathay, and from the Poles unto the Nile, From Boston unto Goa, on the track Of flying Fortune, emulously panting, The empires, kingdoms, dukedoms of the earth I saw, now clinging to her waving locks, Now to the end of her encircling boa. Beholding this, and o'er the ample sheets Profoundly meditating, I became Of my sad blunder, and ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... eikona sou proskynoumen}, 25 {deute agalliasometha to kyrio}—(Stichera Idiomela), 26 {Christos gennatai}, 28 {ti soi prosenenkomen, Christe}, 30 {ho ouranos kai he ge semeron prophetikos euphrainesthosan}—(Stichera Idiomela), 32 {doxa en hypsistois theo}, 33 {semeron ho Hades stenon boa}—(Stichera Idiomela), 35 {kai ten phloginen rhomphaian}—(Contakion), 37 {ho monogenes Hyios kai Logos tou theou}, 38 {kyrie, anabainontos sou en to stauro}, 39 {dia Lazarou ten egersin Kyrie}—(Antiphon), 40 ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... of the head, and a little, low, plaintive whistle, is the only reply, but they speak in thunder of boa-constrictors, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... through the drawing-room window—the figure of a girl in a tumbled muslin dress, with a large hat, and a profusion of feathers and streamers fluttering about her. In her descent upon the terrace she dropped her gloves; stooping to pick them up, she dropped her boa; in her struggle to recapture that, she trod ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... descending. A short lady, in a black bonnet and short black skirts, had let herself out on the opposite side, and had come round to assist somebody out on this. Was it a ghost, or was it a man? His cheeks were hollow and hectic, his eyes were glistening as with fever, his chest heaved. He had a fur boa wrapped round his neck, and his overcoat hung loosely on his tall, attenuated form, which seemed too weak to support itself, or to get down the fly steps ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... usually sleep on the ground, with the exception of those who are Mahants, and they sometimes have no metal vessels, but use bags made of strong cloth for holding food and water. Men's names have the suffix Boa, as Datto Boa, Kesho Boa, while those of boys end in da, as Manoda, Raojida, and those of women in Bai, as Gopa Bai, Som Bai. The dead are buried, not in the common burial-grounds, but in some waste place. The corpse is laid on its side, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... big bunch of umbrellas and parasols, golf sticks, tennis racquets and all sorts of queer things, and was dressed in a most conspicuous and elaborate manner. She was represented as striding up and down a railway platform covered with diamonds, boa, flashy hat and fancy finery, while the English girl, in a close fitting ulster and an Alpine hat, leaned quietly upon her umbrella near a small "box," as they call a trunk, and a modest traveling bag. But that ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... stride, while stumps and tree-trunks on which it stepped were pressed out of sight in the ground. A general exodus of the other inhabitants from his line of march began; the moccasins slid into the water with a low splash, while the boa-constrictors and the tree-snakes moved off along the ground when they felt it tremble, and a number of night birds retreated into the denser woods with loud cries at being so rudely disturbed. The huge beast did not stop till he reached the bank, where lie ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... self-command. His face was only a bit paler, a bit tighter than usual; he was only a trifle slower and more fastidious in his speech. It was midnight when he left Clifford peacefully slumbering in somebody's arm-chair, with a long suede glove dangling in his hand and a plumy boa twisted about his neck to protect his throat from drafts. He walked through the hall and down the stairs, and found himself on the sidewalk in a quarter he did not know. Mechanically he looked up at the name of the street. The name was not familiar. He ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... he usually cures himself. Besides these there were the omnipresent garter snakes, and the grey or silver coach-whip, both harmless. The bull snake is said to grow to an enormous size, and is a kind of North American python or boa. About five miles from our camp was an old hut, which was occupied by a sheep-herder whom I knew. One night he heard a noise, and looking out of his bunk saw by the dim light of the fire an enormous snake crawling ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... towards the edge, and had just reached it and were pulling themselves out when a hideous shape rose out of the water behind them. It was like the head of an octopus joined to the body of a boa-constrictor, but head and neck were both of the same ghastly, livid grey as the other two creatures. It was evidently blind, too, for it took no notice of the brilliant glare of the searchlight, but it moved rapidly towards the two scrambling ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... how I remember the evening when it came! What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame, When the wondrous boa was opened that had come from over seas, With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Bandy-legs, "I'm real glad it wasn't a snake, because they always give me the creeps, you remember, I hate 'em so. Just think what a fine pickle we'd be in now if a monster anaconda or a big boa constrictor or python, broke loose from a show, should climb up on our bridge boat, and start to chasin' us all overboard. Things look bad enough as they are without our takin' on a bunch of new trouble. So, Toby, please ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... magical powers. When I lived on the coast of Florida I had a tame tarpon, which could swallow anything—croquet balls, door scrapers—and once ate an entire cottage pianoforte in half-an-hour. Here I may add that in my travels in Turkestan I was attacked by a boa-constrictor, and, though I escaped with my life, it proceeded to swallow the Bactrian camel on which I was riding. On the following day, however, when the boa was still in a comatose condition, I killed it with a boomerang, ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... above the water to be dry, and slightly sloping, so that the head of the bed may be higher than the foot. Above all, it must be free from big stones and serpentine roots of trees. A root that looks no bigger that an inch-worm in the daytime assumes the proportions of a boa-constrictor at midnight—when you find it under your hip-bone. There should also be plenty of evergreens near at hand for the beds. Spruce will answer at a pinch; it has an aromatic smell; but it is too stiff and humpy. Hemlock ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... was published she should give Minna a new sofa for the drawing-room, and Fraeulein a fur boa and muff, and Miss Brown a type-writer for her G.F.S. work, and Abel a barometer, and each of the servants a new gown, and James those four enormous volumes of Pusey for which his soul yearned. And what should she give Rachel—dear ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... door of the chateau will be opened for me at this hour; and as for spending the night upon this branch, I possibly might not object to do so, but I declare it is impossible for any other animal than a boa-constrictor to do it." ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... continued to whirl about faster and faster in the swirling waters. Five times each minute now it made the circuit, and, like the coils of a boa constrictor that is enfolding its victim, the circles continually ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... powerful young man of the Colusa sort, and would see his money's worth. Blandly and with conscious pride the Professor directs the young man's attention to his fine collection of living snakes. Lithely the blacksnake uncoils in his sight. Voluminously the bloated boa convolves before him. All horrent the cobra exalts his hooded head, and the spanning jaws fly open. Quivers and chitters the tail of the cheerful rattlesnake; silently slips out the forked tongue, and is as silently absorbed. The fangless adder warps up the leg of the Professor, lays clammy coils ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... woman of all the purchase money to the Colonel's slender bank account: a transaction which, to quote his own words as he gallantly drank her health in acknowledgment of the gift, "enabled him to provide for one of the loveliest of her sex—she who graces our boa'd—and to enrich her declining days not only with all the comforts, but with many of the luxuries she was ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the gigantic form of the celebrated watch-dog of Hell. It completely filled their wide expanse. Who but Pluto could have viewed without horror that enormous body covered with shaggy spikes, those frightful paws clothed with claws of steel, that tail like a boa constrictor, those fiery eyes that blazed like the blood-red lamps in a pharos, and those three forky tongues, round each of which were entwined a vigorous family ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... triumphantly. Mr. Chalk, sitting open-mouthed, was regarding him with the fascinated gaze of a rabbit before a boa-constrictor. Captain Bowers was listening with an appearance of interest which in more favourable circumstances would have been ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... She sat upon cushions and leaned against an empty box and barrel, robe bespread, which formed a defence from the invading draughts. She extended her feet, delectably shod, to the cordial heat. She ungloved her hands, but retained about her neck her long fur boa. The unstable flames half revealed, while the warding boa half submerged, her face— a youthful face, altogether feminine, clearly moulded and calm with beauty's unchallenged confidence. Chivalry and manhood were here vying to please and comfort her. She seemed to accept their devoirs—not ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... opened the door and saw what appeared to be an animated feather-boa dashing about the kitchen, with the bulk of the family ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... in Piccadilly, in a pause of the thin rain, I met a solitary apparition in the diaphanous silks and the snowy plumes of hat and boa which the sylphs of the church parade wore in life through those halcyon days when the tide of fashion was highest. The apparition put on a bold front of not being strange and sad, but upon the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... and the superstitions of the peasantry in many parts of England to this day assert them to have been—"mighty worms," huge snakes? All will agree that the Python, the representative in the old world of the Boa-constrictor of the new, lingered in the Homeric age, if not later, both in Greece and in Italy. It existed on the opposite coast of Africa (where it is now extinct) in the time of Regulus; we believe, from the traditions of all nations, that it existed to a far later date in more ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... old blackbird badly molted; result perfectly hideous, but the sugar-bowl, clothing, and sundry fund are out of debt and doing well. Had my faded gray dress dyed black, and trimmed the jacket with pieces of my moth-eaten cock's-feather boa; perfectly elegant, almost too gorgeous for my humble circumstances. Mamma looks at me sadly when I don these ancient garments, and almost wishes I had n't such "a wealthy look." I tell her I expect the girls to say, when I walk into the school-yard on Monday, "Who is this that cometh with ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... anything of great importance ever can be accomplished through those channels. The adoption of the Monitor principle was not due to the skill and intelligence found in official quarters; it was forced upon the Navy Department from the outside. And like the boa constrictor, after having swallowed its prey, the Department must sluggishly repose until that meal is digested before another can be taken. One idea, of the magnitude of this, is enough for the present crisis. We shall not have another, if the stubborn ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... twenty-one or two years of age—tall, but slenderly built, with a sweet oval face, bright brown hair, and the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my life. She was dressed in some dark green material, wore a fawn jacket, and, because the afternoon was cold, had a boa of marten fur round her neck. I can remember also that her hat was of some flimsy make, with lace and glittering spear points in it, and that the whole structure was surmounted by two bows, one of black ribbon, the other of ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... waited not (as ghosts oft use) To be 'dearheaven'd!' and 'oh'd!' But briskly said: "Good-evenin'; what's the news? Consumption? After boa'd? ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... isn't"—and Charlotte smiled as she looked about for a feather boa that she had laid down on descending from her room—"if it isn't it will have had ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... snakes of many varieties. Snakes, both the poisonous and non-poisonous kinds, find here conditions precisely to their liking. The bush-master is met with in the more open places, and there are many that are venomous, but the most terrifying, though not a biting reptile is the water-boa, the sucuruju (Eunectes murinus) or anaconda. It lives to a great age and reaches a size almost beyond belief. Feeding, as generally it does at night, it escapes common observation, and white men, heretofore, ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... answered, twisting the hanging end of her long-haired boa about her wrist. "I feel as if I oughtn't to, but daddy told me. Daddy went, you know, to try to persuade her to give it up. I was so angry with him for doing it. He might have known Elfrida better. And it was ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... could look into Richmond, count the forts encircling it, and note the number and position of the camps that intervened. The balloon was named the "Constitution," and looked like a semi-distended boa-constrictor, as it flapped with a jerking sound, and shook its oiled and painted folds. It was anchored to the ground by stout ropes affixed to stakes, and also by sand-bags which hooked to its netting. The basket lay alongside; the generators were contained in blue wooden ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... She put on her neat black hat and jacket and went out. She had scarcely gone a hundred yards before she came straight up against Louisa Clay. Louisa looked very stylish in a large mauve-colored felt hat, and a fur boa round her neck; her black hair was much befrizzed and becurled. Alison shrank from the sight of her, and was about to go quickly by when the other girl ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... and snoring loud enough to bring the plaster off the ceiling. Why, you must have been gorging yourself like a boa-constrictor, and been sleeping it off. Come, wake up, ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... as I buttered his toast, piping hot from the range. "Well, Lady Bird, you're not the kind that'll need paprika, anyway!" he announced as he fell to. And he ate like a boa-constrictor and patted his pajama-front and stentoriously announced that he'd picked a queen—only he pronounced it kaveen, after the manner of our poor old ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... together. But those of them who wear skirts, generally have delicate white hands, flowing curls, flashing black eyes, and the gift of oratory—and a desire to exhibit them all; while those in pantaloons have their hair combed smoothly back, as if preparing to be swallowed by a boa-constrictor, wear white cravats, talk softly, and show a good deal of the whites of their eyes, from a chronic habit of looking up towards the moon and stars. As a general thing, these latter are of no practical use in the world, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... it very much, but sat by the fire and said I didn't want anything. This did not save me from more jokes, either; for a husky-voiced gentleman with a rough face, who had been eating out of a sandwich-box nearly all the way, except when he had been drinking out of a bottle, said I was like a boa-constrictor who took enough at one meal to last him a long time; after which, he actually brought a rash out upon ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... any other. The squirrel also sits up and uses his forepaws for hands, but the squirrel is a sybarite who lies abed in cold weather, and it is every way characteristic of him that he has sent his tail to the furrier and had it done up into a boa, or comforter, at once warm and becoming. See, too, how daintily he lifts it over his back to keep it clean. The rat is a near relation of the squirrel zoologically, but personally he is a gutter-snipe, and you may know that by one look at the ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... are as clever at the demi-toilette as the Parisian, and the extreme neatness and smartness of their walking gowns is very refreshing after the floppy, blowsy, trailing dresses, accompanied by the inevitable feather boa, of which English girls, who used to be so tidy and "tailor-made," now seem so fond. The universal white "waist" is so pretty and trim on the American girl. It is one of the distinguishing marks of a land of the free, a land where "class" hardly exists. The girl in the store wears the white waist; ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Rivers companionship on a cross-town street. He saw that the costly hat that he had selected for her in the display of a shop-window after all was not the equal of the plain model with a fetching turn to the brim and a single militant feather, which she wore that evening. The light feather boa around her neck on account of the cool night air seemed particularly becoming. He was near, very near, her, so near that their elbows touched; but the nearness was like that of a picture out of a frame which has come to life and may step back into cold canvas at any moment. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... had always felt that the imagination, what is called, for want of a better term, the "creative faculty," was there, but it was lethargic; it sometimes roused itself to spurts and flashes during wakeful nights, but slept like a boa-constrictor that had swallowed a pig when he tried to invoke it. No doubt, as Gora had told him, his life had been too easy and agreeable; he made a good deal of money with no particular effort, he ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... was enlivened by all sorts of horrible accounts of adventures with caymans, till we neared the spot where we expected to find some buffaloes. As we rode along we heard an extraordinary cry. "It is a wild boar," exclaimed our friend; "but I suspect a boa has got hold of him—a great bore for him, I suspect." We rode to the spot whence the sound came. There, sure enough, suspended from the low branch of a tree was a huge boa-constrictor, some twenty feet long, perhaps, which had just enclosed a wild pig in its monstrous folds. While we looked ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... for aught he knew to the contrary, or cared, might have been his own son; and his confidence in his capacity being ably supported by his appetite, he undertook a contract to which he was unequal in the matter of expansion. He couldn't disgorge, being in the predicament of the boa-constrictor who swallows a hen head first, and finds her go against the grain when he would fain reconsider the subject. The head of the inside fish was partially digested, but that process had imparted no gratification to either party, and both were defunct, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... to begin with—"the picter of the giant who was himself the heighth of the house," being run up with a line and pulley to a pole on the roof till "his 'ed was coeval with the parapet;" the picter of the child of the British Planter seized by two Boa Constrictors, "not that we never had no child, nor no Constrictors either;" similarly, the picter of the Wild Ass of the Prairies, "not that we never had no wild asses, nor wouldn't have had 'em ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... proprietor of the Express that I be either muzzled or fired. And all this time the Catholic priests said never a word—and San Antonio is a Catholic city. But the Baptist ministers were running a sneaking boycott! Yet the Church of Rome is the boa-constrictor that's trying to throttle the American right of ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... under waistcoat; jock [for men], athletic supporter, jockstrap. sweater, jersey; cardigan; turtleneck, pullover; sweater vest. neckerchief, neckcloth^; tie, ruff, collar, cravat, stock, handkerchief, scarf; bib, tucker; boa; cummerbund, rumal^, rabat^. shoe, pump, boot, slipper, sandal, galoche^, galoshes, patten, clog; sneakers, running shoes, hiking boots; high-low; Blucher boot, wellington boot, Hessian boot, jack boot, top boot; Balmoral^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Then you left each of us a book. Elvira got the best one, which was 'The Garland of Frien'ship,' and had poems in it about the bleeding of hearts, and so forth. Father was n't expectin' anything, but you left him a new pair of mittens, and mother got a new fur boa to wear ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... that Mr. Temple being too poor to take Todd with him, had left him behind to shift for himself until he could send for him. All the neighborhood knew, to quote Todd's own hilarious chuckle, was that "Miss Jemima Johnsing had two mo' boa'ders; one a sick man dat had los' his job an' de udder a yaller nigger who sot up nights watchin' de hosses ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the first day until now can find full justification for itself on the simple ground that it exists! Under such an argument a howitzer is as good as a plough, a sword is as good as a sickle, a pillory is as good as a baby-wagon. By such reasoning a shark is as useful as a horse. By this logic a boa-constrictor is as good as a reindeer, a tiger is as useful and salutary in his office as an ox or a St. Bernard, and a cancer is as beautiful as a blush. That is, everything is good, not because it is useful and just, but ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... action. Fly had become a Butterfly by the help of a battered pair of fairy wings, stretched on wire, which were part of the theatrical stock. 'The shy little Dormouse' was creeping about on all fours under a fur jacket, with a dilapidated boa for a long tail, but her 'blind brother the Mole' had escaped from her, and had been transformed into the Frog, by means of a spotted handkerchief over his back, and tremendous leap-frog jumps. Primrose, in another pair of fairy wings, was personating the Dragon-fly and all his relations, 'green, ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the coils of the boa-constrictor is a wonderful picture. A boy must be hard to please if he wishes for anything more exciting."—Pall ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... man and snake known to me is the case of Tyrrell, the Zoo snake keeper, and his "laidly worms." But, then, the friendship is mostly on Tyrrell's side, and, moreover, Tyrrell is rather more than human, as anyone will admit who sees him hang boa constrictors round his neck. Of course one often hears of boys making pets of common English snakes, but a boy is not a human creature at all; he is a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... be beautiful and admired. I want two new dresses; a hat with plumes, and a silk petticoat that rustles. I want some new kid gloves and a feather boa (a long one made of ostrich feathers). I wish——" The small, blunt pencil had been lifted in air for the space of three minutes before it again descended; then, with cheeks that burned, Miss Philura ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... wear your white flannel? And, if you don't mind, I'll lend you a white feather hat and boa. I have never worn them, and I have heaps of other things to wear; mother has a mania for buying me clothes, and I ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... was dressed in a pearl grey and pink sports coat, with a large black hat, and carried a silver chain handbag. Around her throat was a white feather boa, while her features were half concealed by ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... latest stroke of good luck. It appears that in a recent pilgrimage to Selborne he met the only surviving great-granddaughter of Sarah Timmins (charwoman at Chawton in the years 1810 to 1815), and purchased from her a pair of bedroom slippers, a pink flannel dressing-gown and a boa which had belonged to the great novelist. A full description of these priceless relics will shortly appear in The Penman, together with a life and portrait of Sarah Timmins, who married a pork butcher in Liphook and died in 1848. One of her letters establishes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... that each tree formed a grove of its own, we recognized as banyan trees. In one part of the garden, winding paths led through a tangled tropical growth so dense and wild that one felt as if in the midst of an African jungle where a tiger might spring forth or a boa constrictor drop down ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, keep-down the smaller sort of vermin; but what, except perhaps some such Universal Association, can protect us against whole meat-devouring and man-devouring hosts of Boa-constrictors? If, therefore, the more sequestered Thinker have wondered, in his privacy, from what hand that perhaps not ill-written Program in the Public Journals, with its high Prize-Questions and so liberal Prizes, could have proceeded,—let him now ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... vegetation that nothing less than an army of men with axes could penetrate them. The land is one great, wild, untidy, luxuriant hot-house, "built by nature for herself." The puma, jaguar and wildcat are here at home, besides the anaconda and boa constrictor, which grow to enormous lengths. The Yaci Ret, or Island of the Moon, is the ideal haunt of the jaguar, and as we passed it a pair of those royal beasts were playing on the shore like two enormous cats. As they caught sight of us, one leapt into ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... that? what does she say to it? Just that her father's wishes are sacred to her, and that she shall always look up to me as her guardian whether I care to face the responsibility or not. Refuse! You might as well refuse to accept the embraces of a boa constrictor when once it ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... form of a young woman lay on a couch. Horror was depicted upon her countenance, and she was frantically but vainly struggling to free herself from the great boa-constrictor which had coiled his ugly thick body about her. Standing beside her and looking on with a dreadful expression of devilish satisfaction was a representation of Satan, whilst coming in at the open door reeled a young man in a woeful state ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... bought up cheaply the small and dubious claims, or the claims of those persons who preferred a little ready money to a deferred and somewhat hazy repayment by the Republic. Gobseck was the insatiable boa constrictor of the great business. Every morning he received his tribute, eyeing it like a Nabob's prime minister, as he considers whether he will sign a pardon. Gobseck would take anything, from the present of game sent him by some poor devil or the pound's weight ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... also warm in a long pink boa of curled chicken feathers which she kept wound closely about ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... refusal, he carefully twirled round a very uninviting specimen of some fabulous havanna, moistened it all over, as a boa-constrictor may do the ox he prepares for deglutition, bit off one end, and lighting the other from a little machine for that purpose which he drew from his pocket, he was soon absorbed in a vigorous effort (which the damp inherent in the weed long resisted) to poison the surrounding ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field. extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa. This done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so as almost to double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the .. rigging, to dry. Ere long, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... boa impatiently. How complicated the whole thing was getting! What difference did it make to Dorothy for what the five dollars had been expended? It was ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... speak at all. She just stood still, looking at Jimsy until it seemed as if she were all eyes. "It comes so suddenly,"—Carter had told her—"like the boa constrictor's hunger ... and then he was ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... which a moment before wore scales, now wore a skin—such is the nature of that dragon. It was no longer a crocodile: it was a boa. The skin, lead-coloured and dirty, looked thick, and was crossed by heavy wrinkles. Here and there, on its surface, bubbles of surge, like pustules, gathered and then burst. The foam was like a leprosy. It was at this moment ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... embarrassment; then she went on to find Catherine. The two left behind exchanged a few banal questions and answers. Langham had only allowed himself one look at the dazzling face and eyes framed in fur cap and boa. Afterwards he stood making a study of the ground, and answering her remarks in his usual stumbling fashion. What was it had gone out of her voice—simply the soft callow sounds of first youth? And what a personage she had grown in these twelve months—how formidably, consciously ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
