"Snake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he has destroyed or brought to maturity—memorials of friendships and enmities which are now alike faded. Thus does the ring of Saturn consume itself. To-day annihilates yesterday, as the old tyrant swallowed his children, and the snake its tail. But I must say to my Gurnal as poor Byron did to Moore, "Damn it, Tom, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... longer resembled a bundle: she was a thin little brunette of twenty, as slim as a snake, with a long white face and curly hair. Her nose was long and sharp, her chin, too, was long and sharp, her eyelashes were long, the corners of her mouth were sharp, and, thanks to this general sharpness, the expression ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... say to excuse themselves. Therefore, "some say they could see no timbers of ten foot diameter, some the country is all wood; others they drained all the springs and ponds dry, yet like to famish for want of fresh water; some of the danger of the ratell-snake." To compel all the Indians to furnish them corn without using them cruelly they say is impossible. Yet this "impossible," Smith says, he accomplished in Virginia, and offers to undertake in New England, with one hundred and fifty men, to get corn, fortify the country, and "discover them ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... offerings were brought than to the temple of the Capitoline Jove; priests of Cybele, bearing in their hands golden ears of rice; and priests of nomad divinities; and dancers of the East with bright head-dresses, and dealers in amulets, and snake-tamers, and Chaldean seers; and, finally, people without any occupation whatever, who applied for grain every week at the storehouses on the Tiber, who fought for lottery-tickets to the Circus, who spent their ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... fairly involved in the general motion, and were the more amusing for their torpor. After passing the winter with King in the West Indies, he passed the summer with Hay in the Yellowstone, and found there little to study. The Geysers were an old story; the Snake River posed no vital statistics except in its fordings; even the Tetons were as calm as they were lovely; while the wapiti and bear, innocent of strikes and corners, laid no traps. In return the party treated them with affection. Never did a band less ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... on) I am no foe of thine, There is no black snake, Kama! in my hair; Blue lotus-bloom, and not the poisoned brine, Shadows my neck; what stains my bosom bare, Thou God unfair! Is sandal-dust, not ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... background is divided into four quadrants by a white cross; in the center of each rectangle is a white snake; the flag of France is used ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was not to spend the night without food and fire, he vaulted the "snake" fence, and strode to the back door. A woman was ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... had collected two snakes. He lost one, which did not turn up again until an hour before departure, when he found it in one of the spare rooms. This one he left loose, and brought the other one to Washington, there being a variety of exciting adventures on the way; the snake wriggling out of his box once, and being upset on the floor once. The first day home Quentin was allowed not to go to school but to go about and renew all his friendships. Among other places that he visited was Schmid's animal store, where he left his little snake. Schmid presented him with ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... in Eden, if it is only a garter snake. Ours was a frog in the fountain. He had a volume of sound equal to Edouard de Reske in his prime. I set the chauffeur the task of catching him, but after emptying out all the water one little half-inch frog skipped off, and ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... certainly not a handsome person. He was short, shorter than Mr. Polly, with long arms and lean big hands, a thin and wiry neck stuck out of his grey flannel shirt and supported a big head that had something of the snake in the convergent lines of its broad knotty brow, meanly proportioned face and pointed chin. His almost toothless mouth seemed a cavern in the twilight. Some accident had left him with one small and active and one large and expressionless ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... to even snore in my sleep," said one of them, "for fear I'll discharge the gun-cotton; and as for kicking in my sleep—why, I'm as quiet as a drugged snake." ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... group round him. "Any one want to take a chance? We'll snake Houck outa the willows an' make ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... had been avoided by the wise birds, but still had its inhabitants. Whole armies of soldier-crabs were marching about in every direction with their shells on their backs, as well as common crabs on the watch for lizard or snake-like creatures which ventured among them. Sometimes, when a big crab had got hold of one of these, and its attention was occupied in carrying off its prey, a frigate bird would pounce down and seize it, carrying both it and its captive off to ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... or in kilts made of reeds and straw, they struggle on singing through the heat. Grass rings temper the weight of the loads to their heads, each man carrying his forty pounds for the regulation ten miles, the prescribed day's march in the tropics. Winding snake-like along the native paths, they go chanting a weird refrain that keeps their interest and makes the miles slip by. Here are some low-browed and primitive porters from the mountains, "Shenzies," ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... very busy rebuilding all, and the air was full of the tinkling of trowels and hammers. Presently we passed the place where I had drawn Brother Thomas from the water; but thereof I said no word, for indeed my dreams were haunted by his hooded face, like that of the snake which, as travellers tell, wears a hood in Prester John's country, and is the most venomous of beasts serpentine. So concerning Brother Thomas I held my peace, and the barque, swinging round a corner of the bank, soon brought us into a country ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... as if a snake had stung him. He gave but one glance to the speaker, but that glance lived forever in the boy's remembrance, and the young Montagu turned pale and trembled, even before he heard the earl's ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... varieties which figure in the ancient books we shall find plenty of material for fetich-worship. In perusing the "Kojiki" one scarcely knows, when he begins a story, whether the character which to all appearance is a man or woman is to end as a snake, or whether the mother after delivering her child will or will not glide into the marsh or slide away into the sea, leaving behind a trail of slime. A dragon is three-fourths serpent, and both the dragon and the serpent ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... world to know he had done so. Yet that was not enough, he wanted to throttle the throat from which the words had come; the man ought to be killed; it was right to kill him just as it was right to kill a poisonous snake that somehow disguised itself as a man, and was received into the houses ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... where I could not find him to give him a guard, instead of coming out as a manly representative of the State and joining those who were preserving the peace. I have watched him since, and his conduct has been as sinuous as the mark left in the dust by the movement of a snake. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... quickness of this usually sluggish snake, when about to deal its deadly blow is well known, and, had the boy moved with twice the rapidity that he did, Ned could not have escaped that lightning-like dart of the snake, which was aimed straight at his foot, that being the part of the body which was ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... face, burned as if she had travelled much under hot suns. Her long black hair is in disorder and flies all about her in the wind. Her dress is in disorder too, and it is fastened around the waist by a girdle of snake skin, with long ends that hang down to the ground. Everything about her looks wild and terrible. She is a woman whom you would not care to meet on a lonely road after dark and on a horse like this. Yet if you looked at her face more closely you would not find anything cruel in it, but you would ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... some species of them, pass the winter in a torpid state, which has all the appearance of death; now heat, if applied to dead matter, will only produce motion, or chemical combination; but if it be applied to the snake, let us see what will be the consequence; the reptile first begins to move, and opens its eyes and mouth; when the heat has been applied for some time, it crawls about in search of food, and performs all the functions of life. Here then, ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... boat was ten feet away from the Monster. It circled once, very quietly, as if it were trying to decide which way to go, and then it drifted gently away toward the sea, with the rope trailing along like a snake swimming beside it. ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... mysterious breaths, and whispers like prophecies of peace. But to this region of romance there were sharp contrasts. Not even dreams have sharper ones! German trenches, chopped into blackened wastes that once were farmlands, and barbed wire wriggling like snake-skeletons across dreary fields. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... you! He whose might, On the King of Serpents seated, Flashes forth in dazzling light From the Great Snake's gems repeated: Hari keep you! He whose graces, Manifold in majesty,— Multiplied in heavenly places— Multiply on earth—to see Better with a hundred eyes Her bright charms who ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... only had him here," Zara cried, clawing the air with her two hands, "I would throttle the baby snake, and fling him dead in his father's face. And that father! Oh, burning alive would be far ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... that. He's used that lameness of his very effectively. It's procured him no end of sympathy, and sympathy is what Thomas likes,—from women. He will tell you all about it some time,—how his negro nurse was frightened by a snake and dropped him on a stone step when he was ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... forms and retiring habits to secure abundant prey and resent mischievous molestation. The hideous trigonocephalus has forced the introduction and acclimation of the mongoose to the cane fields of the Western tropics; the tiger snake (Heplocephalus curtus) is the terror of Australian plains; the fer de lance (Craspedocephalus lanceolatus) renders the paradise of Martinique almost uninhabitable; the tic paloonga (Daboii russelli) is the scourge of Cinghalese coffee estates; the giant ehlouhlo of Natal (unclassified) ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... the priest might get at it before me, with his garlands on. . . . The old woman, on hearing me, stretched forth her hand. But I hissed, and seized her fingers with my teeth, as if I were an Esculapian snake; then, drawing back her hand again, she lay down and wrapped herself up quickly, while I swallowed the porridge, and, when full, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... and magnolias Gloom the earth with densest shades, Where the snake and alligator Lurk in endless everglades, Where the cloud-lace-fretted sunset ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... beyond "Mariquita Nook" the right bank becomes a net- work of creeks, "obscure channels," tortuous, slimy with mud, banked with the snake-like branches of trees, and much resembling the lower course of the Benin, or any other north equatorial African river; the forest is also full of large villages, invisible like the streams till entered. A single tree, apparently growing out of the great stream-bed, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... our passage, I shot (from the quarter-boat) the largest sea-snake ever killed. It is figured and described in the Appendix, by Mr. J.E. Gray, as Hydrus major, and measured eight feet one inch in length, by three inches broad; the colour was a dark yellow: several smaller ones striped brown and ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... a cort room, with a lot of lawyers and clurks sittin round a table, and the judge in a pulpit wot over looked them. The peepel all looked like Barnum's skellyton man, ony they didnt have no skin over there bones, and there eyes was maid of fire balls and eech of em had a long tail, like a snake. Purty soon the judge sed the court was open for bisness, and the sargent at arms brot in a feller all dressed up with a gold wach and big charm wot I reckernized as one of our ded beet subskri-bers wot'd dide ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... on his hand. His high hat had rolled away. His broadcloth suit was covered with dust. But he did not note these details of his abasement. Like a craven thing fascinated by a snake he had his starting eyes fixed upon Pan, and his face was something no man ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... appearing as if they floated upon the transparent water. To the westward, and in front of them, were the clearings belonging to the fort, backed with the distant woods: a herd of cattle were grazing on a portion of the cleared land; the other was divided off by a snake-fence, as it is termed, and was under cultivation. Here and there a log building was raised as a shelter for the animals during the winter, and at half a mile's distance was a small fort, surrounded by high palisades, intended ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... goes on, seein' that Nicky was still interested, "it seems to tie his tongue loose. He gets eloquent about the poor old Elis who had to stand around and watch the snake dance without lettin' out a yip. Then he has a bright idea, which he proceeds to state. Maybe they don't know anything about the glorious product of the settin' hen down in New Haven. And who needs it more at such a time as this? Ought to have some of 'em up ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... lived over about Forrest City I seen the Ku Klux whoop Joe Saw and Bill Reed. It was at night. They was tied to trees and whooped with a leather snake whoop. I couldn't say how it come up but they sure poured it on them. There was a crowd come up during the acting. I was scared to death then. After then I had mighty little use for dressed-up folks what go around at night (Ku Klux). I can tell you no sich thing ever took place as I heard of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... silent, Gone to their final rest, Dead in their last encampment Lay the ones I loved the best. And then, when my heart was lightest, It came with a snake-like tread, And darkened the day that was brightest, Then left me ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... foretellers of the profit Lorne should draw from his spirited and conspicuous success; they stood about in knots discussing it; to some extent it eclipsed the main interest and issue of the day, at that moment driving out, free and disconsolate, between the snake fences of the South Riding to Moneida Reservation. The quick and friendly sense of opportunity was abroad on Lorne Murchison's behalf; friends and neighbours and Dr Drummond, and people who hardly knew the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... watching the red mines in the fire and the swarms of spark-serpents darting upward. They had heeded none of the priest's words, and did not notice now that he approached them, so eager were they to see which fiery snake would go highest among the oak branches. Foremost among them, and most intent on the pretty game, was a boy like a sunbeam, slender and quick, with blithe brown eyes and laughing lips. The priest's hand was laid upon his shoulder. The boy turned and ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... have that effect. With a loud oath, Blacksnake cracked his whip like a pistol shot. The whip was as strong and tough as a bull whip, with a loaded stock and a long, braided lash, thick in the middle, like a snake. The outlaw had aimed for The Kid's thigh, and he was an expert with it. The lash landed with such cutting force that it cut through the Texan's clothing and tore ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... convalescence, I amused myself by shooting alligators in the mangrove swamps at Holland Bay, which was within half an hour's ride of the bungalow. It was curious sport. The great saurians would lie motionless in the pools amidst the snake-like tangle of mangrove roots. They would float with just their eyes and noses out of water, but so still that, without a glass, (which I had not,) it was difficult to distinguish their heads from the countless roots and rotten logs around them. If one fired by mistake, the sport was ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... operating upon their victims under the friendly covert of a big drum and a bassoon. Dealers in wonderful drugs and herbs were haranguing the crowd, easily gaining the attention of the simple peasants by handling a live snake or a crocodile which they allowed to crawl ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... do? you had better ask. Make you into a horrid black snake, or a pig, or something you would not like to ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... from the south, are the Callapuyas, Shaste, Klamet, Umqua, Rogues' River, and Chinooks, between the Californian boundary and Columbia, to the west of the Cascade Mountains; the Shoshones or Snake and Nezperces tribes about the southern branch of the Columbia, and Cascade Indians on the river of that name; between the Columbia and the Strait of Fuca, the Tatouche or Classet tribe; and the Clalams about Port Discovery; the Sachet about Possession Sound; ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... to keep anything she likes in her room, from a stuffed crocodile to a snake in a bottle!" yawned Fauvette. "All I ask is that she doesn't take me up and improve my mind. I'm getting fed up with hobbies. I can't show an intelligent interest in all. My poor little brains won't hold them. What with repousse work ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... lose your temper, my boy. It's dangerous work rousing a venomous snake until its poison ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... hawthorn in flower and the crickets at their concerts, a second wish often came to me. Along the road, I light upon a dead mole, a snake killed with a stone, victims both of human folly. The mole was draining the soil and purging it of its vermin. Finding him under his spade, the laborer broke his back for him and flung him over the hedge. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Vera. "Her subconscious is still fighting us. Part of her must want the snake here. We've all got to be together to ...
— Subjectivity • Norman Spinrad
... development of any other vertebrate animal, Lizard, Snake, Frog, or Fish, tells the same story. There is always, to begin with, an egg having the same essential structure as that of the Dog:—the yelk of that egg always undergoes division, or 'segmentation' as it is often ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... schooner, when, abreast of Cape Nome, a storm struck their tiny craft and cast her up on the beach. The gale lasted for several days, and the men made use of the time prospecting in the vicinity of the Snake River, which now runs through the city. At the mouth of Anvil Creek, good colours were found at a depth of one foot, the dirt averaging from fifty cents to one dollar the pan. Satisfied that they had made an important discovery, the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... Satan. The Devil will say to a man, I would have thee to Consult thy own Interest, and I would have Trouble to be far from thee. He speaks these Fair Things, by the Mouths of our professed Friends unto us, as he did by the Tongue of a Speckled Snake unto our Deluded Parents at the first. But all this while, 'tis a Direction that has been wisely given us; When he speaks fair, Believe him not, for there are ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... were whole years gathering their forces, and when they did all meet at last, with their ships and men, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, Menelaus' brother, took the lead of them all. As they were sacrificing to Jupiter, a snake glided up a tree, where there was a sparrow's nest, and ate up all the eight young ones, and then the mother bird. On seeing this, Calchas foretold that the war would last nine years, and after the ninth Troy would ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mother brought sobering influences to bear on Pyotr Petrovitch. Intensely unpleasant as it was, he was forced little by little to accept as a fact beyond recall what had seemed to him only the day before fantastic and incredible. The black snake of wounded vanity had been gnawing at his heart all night. When he got out of bed, Pyotr Petrovitch immediately looked in the looking-glass. He was afraid that he had jaundice. However his health seemed unimpaired so far, and looking at his noble, clear-skinned ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... pointed exultantly to them and cried: "I've got him, Bupps! There is enough evidence there to send Woods up for twenty years. I wouldn't have used such underhand methods against any one else, against anything but a snake, but I had to win, I had ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... interrupting him, "I find I cannot avoid you, you have a supernatural gift of omnipresence, but be you fiend or mortal I will now grapple with you;" and accordingly snatching at that obnoxious feature which, like the tail of the rattle-snake, had twice warned me of its master's fatal presence, I grasped it with such zealous good will, that had it been of mortal manufacture it must assuredly have come off in my hands. Aroused by the laughter of my fellow passengers, the coachman—who was just preparing to mount, after having changed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... you have given up your snake-hunting; many's the strange talk I have had with our people about your snake and yourself, and how you frightened my father and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... fascinated by the glitter of his cold gray eye. A shuddering sensation passed through her frame, just as the poor warbler of the woods quivers at the approach of the rattle-snake. A dark mist gathered before her sight, and she saw no more until she awoke to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... later Israel and his company reached before dawn the snake-like ramparts of Mequinez the city of walls. And toiling in the darkness over the barren plain and the belt of carrion that lies in front of the town, through the heat and fumes of the fetid place, and amid the furious barks of the scavenger dogs which prowl in the night ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... could then record The words they spoke who kept watch by his bed, Then I might tell more of the breath so light Upon my eyelids, and the fingers warm Among my hair. Youth is confused; yet never So dull was I but, when that spirit passed, I turned to him, scarce consciously, as turns A water-snake when fairies cross ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the magic word. All through the year we go on and on in the eddying whirl of business. Money comes and goes, circulates, attracts other money, vanishes; and the fortune of the firm, like a slippery, gleaming snake, always in motion, expands, contracts, diminishes, or increases, and it is impossible to know our condition until there comes a moment of rest. Not until the inventory shall we know the truth, and whether the year, which seems to have been ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... like an enraged snake on Sard and drove him to his destruction, he would have killed and robbed the frightened diamond broker had he dared risk the shot. He had intended to do this anyway, sooner or later. But with the noise of the hunting dogs filling the forest, Quintana was afraid to fire. Yet, ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... from head to foot by me who love him than that he should come to harm through ignorance," Baloo answered very earnestly. "I am now teaching him the Master Words of the Jungle that shall protect him with the birds and the Snake People, and all that hunt on four feet, except his own pack. He can now claim protection, if he will only remember the words, from all in the jungle. Is not that ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... She talked to me about this elephant gun, and explained its mechanism. She told me the correct part of a hippopotamus to aim at, how to make a nourishing soup out of mangoes, and what to do when bitten by a Borneo wire-snake. You can imagine how she soothed my aching heart. My heart, if you recollect, was aching at the moment—quite unnecessarily if I had only known—because it was only a couple of days since my engagement to Wilhelmina Bennett had been broken off. Well, we parted at Sixty-sixth Street, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a child. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. Standing on the bare ground, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... A worm is born, that, dying noiselessly, Despoils itself to clothe fair limbs, and be In its true worth alone by death divined. Would I might die for my dear lord to find Raiment in my outworn mortality; That, changing like the snake, I might be free To cast the slough wherein I dwell confined! Nay, were it mine, that shaggy fleece that stays, Woven and wrought into a vestment fair, Around yon breast so beauteous in such bliss! All through the day thou'd have me! Would I were The shoes ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... did appear to each gallant Gorbalier Twenty castles dancing near, all around; The solid earth did shake, and the stones beneath them quake, And sinuous as a snake ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... impatiently what more could be done. I had tried my best and failed, and there was an end of it. Besides, the words of the chief rang in my ears in ominous warning: Don Felipe could not be trusted! To set him free was like giving liberty to a venomous snake; his hatred would now be all the more bitter in that he ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... they had a capital effect. But though it began to have quite a business-like air, the museum was still woefully empty. Even when spread out to their widest extent, it was impossible to make three fossils, a few birds' eggs, and one dried snake's skin look otherwise than meagre even in a small room. The boys arranged these over and over again in different positions, and wrote very large labels for them, but they were disturbed by the consciousness that it was not an interesting collection, and that ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... he transfixed the monkey and brought it down. Returning with great caution to the bush into which Disco had fired, and gliding with the noiseless motion of a snake the latter part of the way, he placed the dead monkey on the ground and ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... girl with wild huggings to my bosom; and I have touched the corrupted lip, and spat upon her face, and tossed her down, and crushed her teeth with my heel, and jumped and jumped upon her breast, like the snake-stamping zebra, mad, mad...! ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... at Plas Edwards and stayed there three weeks, which now appears to me like three months. (Chapter I./6. Plas Edwards, at Towyn, on the Welsh coast.) I remember a certain shady green road (where I saw a snake) and a waterfall, with a degree of pleasure, which must be connected with the pleasure from scenery, though not directly recognised as such. The sandy plain before the house has left a strong impression, which is obscurely connected with an indistinct ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... a time a great contest took place between every wild creature. The son of the King of Tethertown went to see the battle; but he arrived late, and saw only one fight. This was between a huge Raven and a Snake. The King's son ran to aid the Raven, and with one blow took the head off the Snake. The Raven was very grateful, and said: "Now, I will give thee a ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... where the dragon Val or Vritra (the restrainer or envelopper) had coralled the kine(i.e. without metaphor, for the act of freeing the clouds and letting loose the rain), compare I.32.2, where of Indra it is said: "He slew the snake that lay upon the mountains ... like bellowing kine the waters, swiftly flowing, descended to the sea"; and verse 11: "Watched by the snake the waters stood ... the waters' covered cave he opened wide, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... difference existed between himself and his fellows. His little body, burned brown by exposure, suddenly caused him feelings of intense shame, for he realized that it was entirely hairless, like some low snake, ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... weaker.—At the captain's next visit, the wedding-day was fixed. And after that a circumstance came about that made me uneasy. A Hindoo servant—the captain called him his NIGGER always—had been constantly in attendance upon him. I never could abide the snake-look of the fellow, nor the noiseless way he went about the house. But this time the captain had a Hindoo woman with him as well. He said that his man had fallen in with her in London; that he had known her before; that she had come home ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... difficult. A snake hidden among the roots destroys the sap. Kill the snake, transplant the tree, and the ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... computer viruses (see {virus}) — but a virus spread to computers indirectly by people and market forces, rather than directly through disks and networks. Adherents of this 'Unix virus' theory like to cite the fact that the well-known quotation "Unix is snake oil" was uttered by DEC president Kenneth Olsen shortly before DEC began actively promoting its own family of Unix workstations. (Olsen now claims to ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the path above him. It was a fair child, stretched nearly lifeless on the rock, its breast heaving with thirst, its eyes closed, and its lips parched and burning. Hans eyed it deliberately, drank, and passed on. And a dark-gray cloud came over the sun, and long, snake-like shadows crept up along the mountain sides. Hans struggled on. The sun was sinking, but its descent seemed to bring no coolness; the leaden weight of the dead air pressed upon his brow and heart, but ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... thing in the grass, instead of a thorn, happened to be a snake, and you heard it rustle, then the warning message would come through your ears to the brain, and you would jump just the same; though, as it is not so easy to tell by a hearing message exactly where the sound is coming from, you might possibly jump in the wrong direction and land on ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... America he had watched a small snake trying to swallow a frog. The snake sucked down the frog, and the frog seemed to acquiesce until the half of his body was down the snake's gullet, and then the frog bestirred himself and succeeded in escaping. The snake rested ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... Indo-Turanian Sector parable about a snake charmer who thought he was picking up his snake and found that he had hold of an elephant's tail," Vall said. "That might be a good thing to bear in mind, till we find out just ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. Hear me, O Earth; hear me, O Hills, O Caves 35 That house the cold crowned snake! O mountain brooks, I am the daughter of a River-God, Hear me, for I will speak, and build up all My sorrow with my song, as yonder walls Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed, 40 A cloud that gather'd shape: for it may be That, while I speak ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the forenoon, and killed two pariah-dogs, four green parrots, sitting, one kite by the burning-ghaut, one snake flying, one mud-turtle, and eight crows. Game was plentiful. Then we sat down to tiffin—"bull-mate an' bran-bread," Mulvaney called it—by the side of the river, and took pot shots at the crocodiles in the intervals of cutting up the food with our only pocket-knife. Then we drank ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... thought of that; and a great burden suddenly settled down upon him. He was not doing right by Marcia. It could not be himself of course that Marcia was missing, if indeed Aunt Clarinda was right and she was worried about anything. Perhaps something had occurred to trouble her. Could that snake of a Temple have turned up again? No, he felt reasonably sure he would have heard of that, besides he saw him not long ago on the street at a distance. Could it be some boy-lover at home whose memory came to trouble her? Or had she discovered what a sacrifice she had made of her young ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... hunt, sometimes performing active service with their little bows, but girls never touch them. Not infrequently the runners in the brush emerge carrying wild pigs which they have seared up and killed, and if, by chance, a big snake is encountered, that ends the hunt, for the capture of a python is an event. The snake is killed and carried in triumph to the village, where it furnishes a ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... CROWN'D SNAKE. "Cold crown'd" is not a compound epithet, meaning "with a cold head." Each adjective marks a particular quality. Crown'd has reference to the semblance of a coronet that the hoods of certain snakes, ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... made up of wonder and love; And said in courtly accents fine, Sweet maid, Lord Roland's beauteous dove, With arms more strong than harp or song, Thy sire and I will crush the snake!" He kissed her forehead as he spake, And Geraldine in maiden wise, Casting down her large bright eyes; With blushing cheek and courtesy fine, She turn'd her from Sir Leoline; Softly gathering up her train, That o'er her right arm fell again; And folded her arms across her chest, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... scanning the winter colored slope for the flicker and slide of light on a hairy flank that betrayed his enemy, or, rifle in hand, stalking a patch of choke cherry and manzanita within which the mule-deer could snake and crawl for hours by intricacies of doubling and back tracking that yielded not a square inch of target and no more than the dust of his final disappearance. Wood gatherers heard at times above their heads the discontented whine ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... panther, the fierce tiger, a pony, an ox, a sheep, a goat, a pig, a long, wriggling thing to represent a snake, and finally a most enormous cock-a-doodle-doo, who seemed to fear none of the awful forest beasts and reptiles, but sang out his lusty crow right heartily with all the ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... well: Prince Henri, with such and such corps, to maintain the Saale, and guard Saxony; Marshal Keith, with such and such, to step over into Bohemia, and raise contributions at least, and tread on the tail of the big Silesian snake: all this Friedrich settles within a week; takes certain corps of his own, effective about 13,000; and on November 13th marches from Leipzig. Round by Torgau, by Muhlberg, Grossenhayn; by Bautzen, Weissenberg, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... a grand, stupid, lovable tranquillity; the sea has a fascinating, treacherous intelligence. The mountains lie about like huge ruminants, their broad backs awful to look upon, but safe to handle. The sea smooths its silver scales until you cannot see their joints,—but their shining is that of a snake's belly, after all.—In deeper suggestiveness I find as great a difference. The mountains dwarf mankind and foreshorten the procession of its long generations. The sea drowns out humanity and time; it has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... she goes, and he sits waiting. The afternoon sunlight is making the orchids look more resplendently themselves than ever. So still, so vivid, so alive, they hang their snake-like heads in long pendulous clusters; and among them all there is not a single one which shows the slightest sign of falling-off or decay. Presently the door is softly opened, and the Nurse, entering only to retire again, ushers in the Distinguished Visitor, whose brow, venerable with intellect, ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... know the snake. Go ahead, girls. Chess and I will follow you. And one of us will be right in this passage all the time," he added, addressing the two white men. "Don't make any mistake. We'll shoot if you try to come out until ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... land covered with great trees, a land deep and rich, filled with all manner of growing and brooding things; a land of fat soil carried thither no one knows whence; a land apart and prepared. So Messasebe, having traveled many miles, came to a country inhabited by the slow snake, by the otter, and the beaver, the panther, the deer, the bear—many children whom he long ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... echoed the shout, those ahead were horrified to see a tremendous python curled about the struggling warrior, at the very edge of the reeds twenty yards away. The huge head of the snake was high—at least six feet above that of the warrior, about whom its coils were tightening slowly. The Masai, with horrible yells, was slashing away without effect, and even as they looked his arms were bound ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... inanely stupid that Maurice was disgusted. There had been a time when Chouteau, thanks to his facundity of the faubourg, had interested and almost convinced him, but now he had come to detest that apostle of falsehood, that snake in the grass, who calumniated honest effort of every kind in order to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... horrible conversation of the night before. Fired with a desire to touch her, to kiss her, to whisper into her ear, in the soft Greek speech, all the endearments and tendernesses that had won her when he wooed her, he placed his hand upon her arm. As if stung by a venomous snake, the woman recoiled from his touch. With a quick movement she sprang back and flung at his face a handful of gold ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... teach, for I loved children. But if anything excited a suspicion of my pupils, and putting on my spectacles, I saw that I was fondling a snake, or smelling at a bud with a worm in it, I sprang up in horror and ran away; or, if it seemed to me through the glasses, that a cherub smiled upon me, or a rose was blooming in my button-hole, then I felt myself imperfect and impure, not fit to be leading and training what was so essentially ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... not, King," he was bellowing over his horse's head. "We have no need of trick-bought victories. We bear the highest shields; warrior-skill will win. We need not his snake-wisdom." ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... resemblance to the rattling that is the well-known signal of the venomous serpent of this country when he would admonish the traveller to move quickly, and which certainly produces the same startling effect on the nerves of the mule as the signal of the snake is very apt to excite in man. This interruption caused the dialogue to be dropped, all riding onward, musing in their several fashions on what had just passed. In a few minutes the party turned the crag in question, and, quitting the valley, or sterile basin, in which ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... shines on eastern Massachusetts, specially on buttercups and dandelions, and providentially on potatoes, looks down on no greener fields in these days than it saw in the spring of 1775, fenced in and fenced off by the zigzag snake-fences of 'Zekiel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... sibilant burring of a rattler in the brush set his neck and back tingling. "And what snakes was made for, gets me! They ain't good to eat, nohow. And they ain't friendly like some of the bugs and things. I'm thinkin' that that there snake what clumb the tree and got Mrs. Eve interested in the apple business would 'a' been a whole lot better for folks, if he'd 'a' stayed up that tree and died, instead o' runnin' around and raisin' ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... you do not tread upon them nor disturb them. [How these Coddia's come to sting so terribly.] The reason their bite is thus terribly painful is this; Formerly these Ants went to ask a Wife of the Noya, a venomous and noble kind of Snake; and because they had such an high spirit to dare to offer to be related to such a generous creature, they had this vertue bestowed upon them, that they should sting after this manner. And if they had obtained a Wife of the Noya, they should ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... and Ned crept on with ready rifles. The snake raised its ugly head and hissed, ceasing for a moment to constrict its coils ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... much pleasure in this afternoon's reading, under the quiet roof of his great-aunt's house as formerly, where he now slept only two nights a week. But a new thing, a great hitch, had happened yesterday in the gliding and noiseless current of his life, and he felt as a snake must feel who has sloughed off its winter skin, and cannot understand the brightness and sensitiveness of its ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... of curing the lame and giving sight to the blind, by his touch, was an act praiseworthy in itself, but of which the motive was culpable. Gentlemen, distrust those false doctors, who sell the root of the bryony and the white snake, and who make washes with honey and the blood of a cock. See clearly through that which is false. It is not quite true that Orion was the result of a natural function of Jupiter. The truth is that it was ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... may mention a trifling fact, illustrating this point, and which at the time amused me. I put my face close to the thick glass-plate in front of a puff-adder in the Zoological Gardens, with the firm determination of not starting back if the snake struck at me; but, as soon as the blow was struck, my resolution went for nothing, and I jumped a yard or two backwards with astonishing rapidity. My will and reason were powerless against the imagination of a danger ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... John was intimately acquainted with the cane; therefore, when his legs refused to go steadily, but danced in spite of him, he had dropped behind Mr. Endymion, and kept well out of reach of the searching snake of polished cane. ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... in the purchase of his patent rights. He opened it in his usual slow deliberate manner, but the moment he began to read his whole manner changed. It was as if one had opened a cage door to take a pet bird in his hand suddenly to find his fingers in contact with a snake. ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... the captain of the spies, William Wells. When a boy of twelve he had been captured by the Miamis, and had grown to manhood among them, living like any other young warrior; his Indian name was Black Snake, and he married a sister of the great war-chief, Little Turtle. He fought with the rest of the Miamis, and by the side of Little Turtle, in the victories the Northwestern Indians gained over Harmar ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Cocktail Hour he ventured a second Request for any one of the standard Necessities of Life, but Mrs. Peabody read him a Passage from the Family Medicine Book to the effect that Liquor was never to be used except for Snake Bites. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... Opposite her seat was the door, upon which her eyes presently became riveted like those of a little bird upon a snake. For, on a peg at the back of the door, there hung a hat; such a hat—surely, from its peculiar make, the actual hat—that had been worn by Charles. Conviction grew to certainty when she saw a railway ticket sticking up from the band. Charles had ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... in the forest we came across a snake {205}—a beauty with a new red-brown and yellow-patterned velvety skin, about three feet six inches long and as thick as a man's thigh. Ngouta met it, hanging from a bough, and shot backwards like a lobster, Ngouta ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... boa-constrictor, lad. He's the boneless wonder. He's as gentle as a spring lamb, and not hardly as tough. Signer Anaconda, the Human Snake, that's what he's called on the bills. Ed Casey is ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... earth, 7-11; other sacred objects kept from contact with the ground, 11 sq.; sacred food not allowed to touch the earth, 13 sq.; magical implements and remedies thought to lose their virtue by contact with the ground, 14 sq.; serpents' eggs or snake stones, 15 sq.; medicinal plants, water, etc., not allowed to touch ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... if we had not remembered that the road was down hill all the way, and good walking. Still, fifteen miles is fifteen miles, and the sun was hot, and though we left at 8:30, it was two o'clock before we entered Cuicatlan. We had no adventures by the way, except the killing of a coral snake which lay in the middle of the road. At three the mozos with their burdens arrived, and felt it very hard that we kept our promise of paying ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... in the magnificent Dietz. It adjoined the luxurious suite of Mr. and Mrs. John Heron, and consisted of a small sitting-room, a bedroom, and bath. He was tying his necktie when the telephone bell rang. He grabbed the receiver as if it were a snake that had to be throttled, and gave it a ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying so, and he seems to know all about ships' charms. But I sometimes think he'll charm the ship to no good at last. I don't half like that chap, Stubb. Did you ever notice how that tusk of his is a sort of carved into a snake's head, Stubb? Sink him! I never look at him at all; but if ever I get a chance of a dark night, and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one by; look down there, Flask —pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion of both hands — Aye, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... feels like a neuro-toxin. Remember snake-bite aid? Well, the numbness is up to my groin now. No place for a tourniquet. And nothing here ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker
... clutching him tight. Down the road they fled. Mira could now see nothing save the riding Thing, apparently horsed on empty air; but now she saw it, still clutching close with its left hand, raise the right, holding what looked like a shining snake, and bring it down hissing and curling. Again, and again! and with every blow the shrieks grew more and more hideous, till now they had reached the cluster of houses at the head of the street, and every window was flung open, and lights appeared, and voices clamored in terror and ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... door of mamma's room and peeped cautiously in. It was not very light in the room for the window shades had been pulled partly down to shut out the glare of the noonday sun, but sure enough, it could be seen very plainly that there was something on the bed—a half-coiled, bluish-green snake with brown stripes. ...
— Dew Drops Vol. 37. No. 17, April 26, 1914 • Various
... power and her favorite's life. On an April morning, 1617, the King and De Luynes sent a party of chosen men to seize Concini. They met him at the gate of the Louvre. As usual he is bird-like in his utterance, snake-like in his bearing. They order him to surrender; he chirps forth his surprise, and they blow out his brains. Louis, understanding the noise, puts on his sword, appears on the balcony of the palace, is saluted with hurrahs, and becomes master of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... met at Cambridge. Mr. Allen preached. It fell out, about the midst of his sermon, there came a snake into the seat where many elders sate behind the preacher. Divers elders shifted from it, but Mr. Thomson, one of the elders of Braintree, (a man of much faith) trod upon the head of it, until it was killed. This being so remarkable, and nothing falling out but by divine providence, ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... was going to a big meetin' we heared som'in rattling in the weeds. It was a big snake, it made a track in the dust. When we got home missis asked me if I killed any snakes. I said to missis, snake like to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... the train slowed down as though reluctant to leave the country. Twice it halted and he consulted his wrist-watch with a frown. Then it crept through Battersea, wound snake-like across the gleaming Thames, and came to rest in Victoria Station. Despite his lameness, he was the first passenger to alight. He had no luggage to attend to, save the newly-purchased bag which he carried. He lost no time in hurrying down the platform; when he hurried his limp became ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... tempting you by his cunning, alluring words, as he tempted Eve, your mother. Would to God all here would make that rule,—never to look into an evil book, a filthy ballad, a nonsensical, frivolous story! Can a man take a snake into his bosom and not be bitten?—can we play with fire and not be burnt?—can we open our ears and eyes to the devil's message, whether of covetousness, or filth, or folly, and not be haunted afterwards by its wicked words, rising up in our thoughts like evil spirits, between us ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... and the African sorceress "Obi," from the serpent-deity Oub, so the old English name of a witch, "hag," bears apparent relationship to the word hak, the ancient British name of a species of snake. In Yorkshire, according to Stukeley, they call snakes "hags" and "hag-worms," (Abury, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... much as I fear you are a slippery snake, as well as a roaring lion," said Tabitha, in grim defiance of natural history. "Answer my question, or I'll ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... from Gerald's recent immersion was a sense of pain in that part of his arm which had been bitten by the rattle snake, on the day of the pic-nic to Hog Island, and it chanced that this morning especially it had a good deal annoyed him, evincing some slight predisposition to inflammation. To subdue this, Henry applied, with his own hand, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... baby!" cried Mrs. Johnson, as she ran down off the porch toward a mosquito-netting covered carriage in the front yard. "A big snake is going to sting my baby! Oh, ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... a snake, and I don't care for snakes. I picked some of that, it was so green and pretty. Thorny likes queer leaves and berries, you know," answered Bab, "spatting," down her ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... take the cards as well, and try and sell them. He looked all the rattle-snake, but eventually embraced Gerard in the Italian fashion, and took them, after first drying the last-finished ones in the sun, which was now ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... outside, And work but in the shallow upper soil. Mine deeper, and the sour and barren rock Will stop you soon enough. Who trains God's Saints, He must transform, not pet—Nature's corrupt throughout— A gaudy snake, which must be crushed, not tamed, A cage of unclean birds, deceitful ever; Born in the likeness of the fiend, which Adam Did at the Fall, the Scripture saith, put on. Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook, To make him sport for thy maidens? Scripture saith Who is the prince of ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... infidelity of Death. The adder (nieder or nether snake) saying that he is mud, ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... we entered the Museum of Natural History, which was very large and contained a splendid collection. Here I saw gorgeous stuffed birds from tropical lands, ostriches' eggs, skins of boas, the maha (a large, harmless snake), porcupines, sea bulls, flying fish, immense sword fish, jaws of enormous sharks, brilliant big butterflies from South America, and an immense sea cockroach caught by Spanish men-of-war and presented ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... Strahlberg, had leaped over an imaginary barrier and came dancing toward the company, shaking her large sleeves and settling her little snake-like head in her large quilled collar, dragging after her the Hungarian, who seemed not very willing. She presented him to Madame d'Avrigny, hoping that so fashionable a woman might want him to play at her receptions ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... animal, And happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands Thus boldly up and spake: "I see," quoth he, "the elephant Is very like a snake!" ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... mad boy, my worst!" cried the furious man, absolutely foaming at the mouth as he drew back, looking almost like a venomous snake couched for a spring. "Is that, then, thy answer — thy unchangeable answer to the only loophole I offer thee of escaping the full vengeance awaiting thee from thy two most relentless foes? Bethink thee well how thou repeatest such words. Yet once again I bid thee pause. Take ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... with wandering below, And with seeing the things in the country of woe; Seeing lost men and the fiendish race, In their very horrible prison place; Seeing that the end of the crooked track Is a flaming lake, Where dragon and snake With rage are swelling. I'd not, o'er a thousand worlds to reign, Behold again, Though safe from pain, The ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... supposing them to have been made by buffaloes, followed them some time; when suddenly the Catawbas rose from their covert, fired at and killed several of the hunters; the others fled, collected a party and went in pursuit of the Catawbas. These had brought with them, rattle snake poison corked up in a piece of cane stalk; into which they dipped small reed splinters, which they set up along their path. The Delawares in pursuit were much injured by those poisoned splinters, and commenced ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... snake with flattened and expanded head, known as the blowing viper, or puff adder, is one of the most amusing representatives of the tendency to "play dead" that could well be found. If you strike him the faintest blow with the lightest stick, he at once goes ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... do not cut our throats. To do so would imply some desire and feeling, and we have no desire and no feeling; we are only cold. We do not wish to live, and we do not wish to die. One day a snake curls itself round the waist of a Kaffer woman. We take it in our hand, swing it round and round, and fling it on the ground—dead. Every one looks at us with eyes of admiration. We almost laugh. Is it wonderful to risk that ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... called together by the beating of drums. The witch doctor, dressed in the most hellish garb imaginable with his body painted and poisonous snake bone necklaces dangling from his neck and the claws of ferocious beasts, lions, leopards and the teeth of vicious man-eating crocodiles finishing up his adornment, sat in the middle of a court surrounded by the members of the tribe. In his hand he carried a gourd which contained ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... suggest more the blood feuds of some savage tribes than the results of civilized warfare. Cumberland, flushed by a victory that was as unexpected as it was easy, was resolved to kill, and not to scotch, the snake of Jacobite insurrection. The flying rebels were hotly pursued—no quarter was given; the wounded on the field of battle were left cold in their wounds for two days, and then mercilessly butchered. There is a story, which might well be true, and {227} which tells that as Cumberland was going ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... their hearts.—But on: Dread feet are near thee, hounds of prey, Snake-handed, midnight-visaged, yea, And bitter pains their fruit! Begone! [ORESTES ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... cap'n, whenever he'd speak to her, allers said Miss Do Please. I reckon that's what she used to say to him, coaxin' like, and he kep' it up on her. Well, we was becalmed three days right out on the lake, and I had to row the blessed dingy in the bilin' sun over to Snake Island to get bread and meat ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the most recent speculations. I well know that I myself am apt to press a theory of totems too far, and in the following pages I suggest reserves, limitations, and alternative hypotheses. Il y a serpent et serpent; a snake tribe may be a local tribe named from the Snake River, not a totem kindred. The history of mythology is the history of rash, premature, and exclusive theories. We are only beginning to learn caution. Even the prevalent anthropological ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... must detect trouble under a thousand disguises. Perhaps a small boy has thrown a snake across the wires or driven a nail into a cable. Perhaps some self-reliant citizen has moved his own telephone from one room to another. Perhaps a sudden rainstorm has splashed its fatal moisture upon an unwiped joint. Or perhaps a submarine cable has been sat upon by ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... the test of ages of practice. "Against all kinds of witchcraft," says an ancient formula, "a great scarabaeus beetle; cut off his head and wings, boil him; put him in oil and lay him out; then cook his head and wings, put them in snake fat, boil, and let the patient drink the mixture." The modern Egyptian, says Erman, uses almost precisely the same recipe, except that the snake fat ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... desert edges, weathered into the semblance of the tawny hills, will tell you tales like these convincingly. After a little sojourn in that land you will believe them on their own account. It is a question whether it is not better to be bitten by the little horned snake of the desert that goes sidewise and strikes without coiling, than by the ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... reached the brow of the hill beyond the town, the white dusty road stretched like a sinuous snake over the moor before him, while on the left, the sea lay soft and grey in the twilight, and the moon rose full and bright on his right. The evening air was very still, but an occasional strain of the band he had left behind him reached his ears, and with a musical voice ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... of the Snake Goddess," Retief said. "It is a sacrilege to crawl." He brushed past the interpreter and marched ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer
... to get out and walk around, if you don't want to catch cold," said Nyoda. We walked up and down for a while, each with a hand on the other's shoulder so as not to get separated and lost in the fog. This walk soon turned into a snake dance and then a war dance around the Glow-worm. It must have been a weird sight if anyone had seen us, ghostly figures flitting about in the illumined fog around the car. I suppose they would have taken us for dancing nymphs or will-o'-the- wisps, ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... murder of a member of the race, W.H. Winford, who refused to be whipped like others. This white man had the habit of making his 'slave' submit to this sort of punishment and when Winford refused to stand for it, he was whipped to death with a 'black snake' whip. The trial of Smith is attracting very little attention. As a matter of fact, the white people here think nothing of it as the dead man is a 'nigger.' This very act, coupled with other recent outrages ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... standing outside, about to take my leave, casting my eyes on the ground, I saw beneath the bench close to the door a long brownish-grey thing lying quite still. I at once saw that it was a snake, and snatched up a billet of wood to make a blow at him; but my friend, who had more experience in such matters, held me back. "Just wait a moment," said he, "and let me get hold of him." Quick as thought he stooped down, seized firm hold of the snake by the tail, and, whirling him ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... the shield there appeared a face, and as Perseus looked on it his blood ran cold. It was the face of a beautiful woman; but her cheeks were pale as death, and her brows were knit with everlasting pain, and her lips were thin and bitter like a snake's; and instead of hair, vipers wreathed about her temples, and shot out their forked tongues; while round her head were folded wings like an eagle's, and upon her ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... at your feet, and revealed a glimpse of hell. I shall never forget it. She made me shudder to the marrow of my bones; in her some fiend has certainly taken up an incarnate home. She is not a woman; she is a snake; she is the ——. On Sunday I went to the Spanish Ambassador's Chapel, where Cardinal Wiseman, in his archiepiscopal robes and mitre, held a confirmation. The whole scene was impiously theatrical. Yesterday (Monday) I was sent for at ten to breakfast with Mr. Rogers, the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... But when, arrived, the imperial eagle spread, And pards and golden lilies he descries, With countenance as sicklied o'er by dread, He stands, as one that in unwary guise, Has chanced on fell and poisonous snake to tread, Which, in the grass, opprest with slumber lies; And, pale and startled, hastens to retire From that ill reptile, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto |
