"Snaky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its snaky length, and his trained horse braced himself skillfully to the black's weight on the rope. For a few minutes the animal at the loop end of the riata struggled desperately—plunging, tugging, throwing ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the world below the earth, to which all we mortals must one day come, grant me to tell a simple tale and declare unto you the truth. Not to look upon the blackness of Tartarus have I come hither, nor yet to bind in chains the snaky heads on Cerberus. It is my wife I seek. A viper's sting has robbed her of the years that were her due. I should have borne my loss, indeed I tried to bear it, but I was overcome by Love, a god well known in the world above, and I think not without honor in your ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... baby trees sprang up, growing to a rank prosperity and dying suddenly beneath the sun. Along the river's edge little shreds of watercress took root and threw out sprouts and blossoms; the clean water brought forth snaky eel-grass and scum which fed a multitude of fishes; in the shadows of deep rocks the great bony-tails and Colorado River salmon lay in contented shoals, like hogs in wallows, but all the time the water grew less and less. At every shower the Indian wheat sprang ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Stratford, or the young Dickens when he first lost himself among the lights of London. It is not for nothing that the very roads are crooked and capricious, so that a man looking down on a map like a snaky labyrinth, could tell that he was looking on the home of a wandering people. A spirit at once wild and familiar rested upon its wood-lands like a wind at rest. If that spirit be indeed departed, it matters little that it has been driven ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... passed like an arrowy bolt around the circle. Then something like a light ring of smoke up-curved from the saddle before him, and, slowly uncoiling itself in mid air, dropped gently to the ground as he passed. Again, and once again, the shadowy coil sped upward and onward, slowly detaching its snaky rings with a weird deliberation that was in strange contrast to the impetuous onset of the rider, and yet seemed a part of his fury. And then turning, Pereo trotted gently to the centre of ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... fine, here as everywhere along our history, when the sensations are spirited up to drown the mind, we become drift-matter of tides, metal to magnets. And if we are women, who commonly allow the lead to men, getting it for themselves only by snaky cunning or desperate adventure, credulity—the continued trust in the man—is the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rule her circle and hold her place beside the proudest of the Ormonts. She bore well the small shuffle with her jewel-box—held herself gallantly. There had been no female feignings either, affected misapprehensions, gapy ignorances, and snaky subterfuges, and the like, familiar to men who have the gentle twister in grip. Straight on the line of the thing to be seen she flew, and struck on it; and that is a woman's martial action. He would right heartily have called ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to be Enipeus,[21] didst beget the Aloidae; as a ram, thou didst delude {Theophane}, the daughter of Bisaltis.[22] Thee too the most bounteous mother of corn, with her yellow hair, experienced[23] as a steed; thee, the mother[24] of the winged horse, with her snaky locks, received as a bird; Melantho,[25] as a dolphin. To all these did she give their own likeness, and the {real} appearance of the {various} localities. There was Phoebus, under the form of a rustic; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... thinking of her as a regicide. It was settled—it was ordained. At Spantz's right lounged Peter Brutus, a lawyer—formerly secretary to the Iron Count and now his sole representative among these people. He was a dark-faced, snaky-eyed young man, with a mop of coarse black hair that hung ominously low over his high, receding forehead. This man was the chosen villain among all the henchmen who came at the beck and call of ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... could have done it, I felt humbly. I only wished he would not smile in such a detestable fashion and suddenly assault me with 'How are you now? All right, eh?' I suppose he was practising his English. And as the finishing touch was put on the washer with a thin, snaky file, he asked suddenly if I had ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... three into a black no-thoroughfare of a hall, whose further end was closed by a locked door. The girl here rubbed a brimstone abomination of a match into a mal-odorous green glow, and by its help the old man got a tortuous key into the snaky opening in the great lock, creakily shot back its bolt, swung open the door, and motioned ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... streamed the same way, whipped about their limbs as close as wet muslin. They were bare-footed, bare-armed, and bare-headed. They all had beauty, but it was not of earthly cast. He saw one with hair like pale silk, and one, ruddy and fierce in the face, with snaky black hair which, he thought, flew out beyond her for a full yard's measure. Another had hazel-brown hair and a sharp little peering face; another's was colour of ripe corn, and another's like a thunder-cloud, copper-tinged. About and about they went, skimming the ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... batter a snaky curve, which he lashed at savagely but vainly. The next was a slow one and resulted in a chop to the infield which Larry would have ordinarily gobbled up without trouble. But the ball took an ugly bound just as he was all set for it and went over his head toward right. ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... waterway of this region, must not be written after the Jonesian or modern mode, 'Ankobra' and 'Ankober,' nor with Bosman 'Rio Cobre' (River of Copper). It has evidently no connection with Abyssinian Ankober. To the native name, 'Anku' or 'Manku,' the Portuguese added Cobra, expressing its snaky course. Bowdich, followed by many moderns, calls it Seenna, for Sanma or Sanuma, meaning 'unless a gale (of wind).' The legend is that a savage and murderous old king of the Apollonians, whose capital was Atabo, built a ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... characteristic was her devotion to Dinkey. She worshiped Dinkey, and seconded her enthusiastically. Without near the originality of Dinkey, she was yet a very good and sure pack-horse. The deceiving part about Jenny was her eye. It was baleful with the spirit of evil,—snaky and black, and with green sideways gleams in it. Catching the flash of it, you would forever after avoid getting in range of her heels or teeth. But it was all a delusion. Jenny's ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... the main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate's squire. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... that millions is the crest of the groundlings.' And, Jim, I thought my friends looked at me with reproachful eyes, as they said, 'You are well on the road, Bob Brownley, and in time your heart and soul will bear the hall-mark of the snaky S on the two upright bars, and you will be but a frenzied fellow in the Dirty Dollar army.' Jim, Jim Randolph, as I listened to that agonising tale of the changing of that girl's heaven to hell, I did not see that halo you and I have thought surrounded the sign ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... Essex' sudden and accomplish'd fall. The trampled corse of all his envy'd greatness, Lies prostrate now beneath thy savage feet; But still th' exalted spirit moves above thee. Go, tell the queen thy own detested story: Full in her sight disclose the snaky labyrinths, And lurking snares, you plant in virtue's path, To catch ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north and west, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... her father would let her come home again sometime. She read the letter slowly over, then tearing it in long strips she cross tore them and sifted the handful of small bits on the water, where they started a dashing journey toward the river. Mrs. Holt, narrowly watching her, turned with snaky gleaming eyes to her son and whispered: "A-ha! Miss Smart ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... bronze, stationed beneath the high light loggia, which opposes the free and elegant span of its arches to the dead masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely and graceful; gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out with his light nervous arm the snaky head of the slaughtered Gorgon. His name is Perseus, and you may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but in the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of these fine fellows to the other, I probably uttered some irrepressible commonplace of praise, for, ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... snakes were seen this year (1845), mounting upon and twining round the broken shafts of pillars still standing, as if at the command of some invisible jinn; but they were all perfectly harmless. The jugglers were catching them, to exhibit their forky tongues and snaky folds, as venomous and deadly, to the marvel-loving crowd. The lion of The Desert is a myth. The king of beasts never leaves his rich domain, the thick forest and pouring cascade, where water and animals of prey abound, for the naked, arid, sandy, and rocky wastes of The Sahara. The ancients ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... lumber-room which had been selected by Baldwin for the stowing away of his diving apparatus and stores while these were not in use at the new pier which was in process of erection in the neighbouring harbour. Its floor was littered with snaky coils of india-rubber tubing; enormous boots with leaden soles upwards of an inch thick; several diving helmets, two of which were of brightly polished metal, while the others were more or less battered, dulled, and dinted by hard service in the deep. The walls were ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... reason, considering the sex of the Veiled Lady,—that the face was the most hideous and horrible, and that this was her sole motive for hiding it. It was the face of a corpse; it was the head of a skeleton; it was a monstrous visage, with snaky locks, like Medusa's, and one great red eye in the centre of the forehead. Again, it was affirmed that there was no single and unchangeable set of features beneath the veil; but that whosoever should be bold enough to lift ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was speeding up at a dizzying rate. The German artillery had sprung to sudden and wholesale activity. Far to the right of the Here-We-Come regiment's trenches a haze had begun to crawl along the ground and to send snaky tendrils high in air-tendrils that blended into a single grayish-green wall as they moved forward. The hazewall's gray-green was shot by yellow and purple tinges as the sun's weak rays touched it. To the left of the Here-We-Comes, and ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... because the amateurs had so much insisted on his merit as the supreme of artists for grandeur of design and breadth of style; and because, apart from this momentary connection with my paper, the man himself merited a record for his matchless audacity, combined with so much of snaky subtlety, and even insinuating amiableness, in his demeanor; but also because, apart from the man himself, the works of the man (those two of them especially which so profoundly impressed the nation in 1812) were in themselves, for dramatic effect, the most impressive on record. Southey pronounced ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... top, though, it wasn't so bad. We went a couple of hundred yards through a narrow gorge, and then we came out onto the old lake bottom Abe had spoken about. As far as our lights would shine in the snow, we could see stubby trees with snaky branches growing ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... the girl's shrill voice. She walked over to the bed and pulled the coverlet round Andrews with an awkward gesture. Looking up at her, he had a glimpse of the bulge of her breasts and her large teeth that glinted in the lamplight, and very vague in the shadow, a mop of snaky, disordered hair. ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... funny mistake," he said. "I wonder how long we have been moving parallel with the creek instead of toward it? Some of those snaky ravines we passed through must have turned us around without ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... pagan influence of the sun. For, say what you will, the sun is pagan. It says "Yea" to life. In its glorious rays it is ridiculously easy to forget the alleged beauties of another world. Under its scorching heat the snaky sinuousness of a basking cat seems more seductive than the image of a winged angel, and amid the gold it lavishes, nothing looks more loathsome, more repulsive, than the pale cheek of pious ill-health. In short it urges man and woman to a wanton enjoyment of life and their fellows; ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Then he flew up from the book with a hissing sound, like a radiant streak. Once more he turned around toward the scholar, and his head had already grown to the size of a barrel, while his body must have been a full fathom in length. He gave one more snaky twist, and then there was a terrible crash of thunder and the dragon went sailing ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... so they turned, and he ran on alone. The Iroquois guns seemed to flash in his face. It was like throwing himself among furious wolves. Snarling lips and snaky eyes and twisting sinuous bodies made nightmares around him. He felt himself seized; a young warrior stabbed him in the side. The knife glanced on a rib, but blood ran down his ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of Jerusalem, with their sweeping trains flowing after them, appear to have adopted a sort of measured tread, by way of impressing a regular cadence upon the music of their feet. The chains of gold were exchanged, as luxury advanced, for strings of pearls and jewels, which swept in snaky folds about the feet ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... absolutely calm. A red and green beacon marked the entrance to the basin. The city climbed a hill in the background, the houses shining white even in the dark, from the millions of lights that suggested a festival. What a waste of gas! Long snaky stripes of color came out over the surface of the water, flecked here with the harbor lights of a merchant vessel, there with the distinguishing marks of a man-o'-war. Off in this direction was the European city—the brightest section, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... stubby mustache and looked the bunch over. "You know that country?" he asked, still doubtfully. "Them Navvies are plumb snaky, lemme tell yuh. Ain't like the Pueblos—you're taking a risk when yuh ride into the Navvy country. They'll get yuh if they get a chancet; run off your horses, head yuh away from water—they're ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... mistress," returned Jennie, who admired John greatly from her lowly sphere, and who for her own sake as well as Dorothy's was jealous of Queen Mary. "They do walk together a great deal on the ramparts, and the white snaky lady do look up into Sir John's face like this"—here Jennie assumed a lovelorn expression. "And—and ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... audience), and goes into the temple to seat herself on the tripod. She returns full of consternation, and describes what she has seen in the temple: a man, stained with blood, supplicating protection, surrounded by sleeping women with snaky hair; she then makes her exit by the same entrance as she came in by. Apollo now appears with Orestes, who is in a traveller's garb, and carries a sword and olive-branch in his hands. He promises him his farther ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... it up in his mouth and gave it a tiny pinch, just as a warning. At least, he thought it was a tiny pinch. The ball retaliated with unexpected ferocity. It twisted and turned. It emitted long, snaky spirals of some elastic substance, which clogged his teeth and tickled his throat and wound themselves round his tongue and nearly choked him. Panic-stricken, he ran to his mistress, who, with weeping and with laughter, removed the writhing horror from his jaws and comforted ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... world seemed just sunshine and a sky. There would have been hours as long, when existence passed like a shade among shadows, in the multitudinous tappings of rain that dripped from leaf to leaf in the wood, and slipped so to the ground. He would have known little snaky paths, narrow enough to be filled by his own small feet, or a goat's; and he would have wondered where they went, and have marvelled again to find that, wherever they went, they came at last, through loops and twists of the branchy wood, to his own door. He may have thought of his own door as ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... silvery sides of the fish were seen flopping about, the water parted and a long, lithe, snaky-looking creature flashed out like lightning, seized the hooked fish, and flung itself round it in a complete knot, making Rogers cease hauling, and watch what was going on ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the door opened, and a couple of old and rather snaky-looking Hindus, folded up in a profusion of cloths, rather than garments, entered the apartment. Sir Modava conducted them to a proper distance from the audience, who could not help distrusting the good intentions of ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... had the old frazzled-out rope all hammered in tight, the other man came and brought him something that looked all snaky, and it was shiny like the lead of a pencil, and it waved about as if it were heavy and it seemed to ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... howling mix-up of "mug" booky, dog-owner and rough, A-watching of snaky-shaped hounds pelting 'ard 'after bits o' brown fluff, I see—and the Sportsman within me began for to bubble and burn, And I yelled, "O my hazure-horbed Mistress, can't you and me 'ave jest ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... from his hole on the morning of this story. He had lain all night coiled up like a rope among the rocks, and his tail felt very cold. But the glad sun warmed the cockles of his heart, and in an hour or two he became limber, and this made him happy in his snaky fashion. But, being warm, he began to be hungry, for it had been a whole month since he had eaten anything. When the first new moon of August came, his skin loosened everywhere and slipped down over his eyes like ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... only a question of sturdy fighting and squirming one's way through the meshes of a gigantic basketwork of every variety of fantastic branch and stem and stout strangling thorn-set vine, made the denser with snaky roots—not merely twisting about one's feet, but dropping from the boughs in nooses and festoons for one's neck; air-plants too, like birds' nests, further choking up the meshes, and hanging moss, ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... evaporate At leisure from his drowsy pate. When he awoke, he found His body wrapp'd around With grave-clothes, chill and damp, Beneath a dim sepulchral lamp. 'How's this? My wife a widow sad?' He cried, 'and I a ghost? Dead? dead?' Thereat his spouse, with snaky hair, And robes like those the Furies wear, With voice to fit the realms below, Brought boiling caudle to his bier— For Lucifer the proper cheer; By which her husband came to know— For he had heard of those three ladies— Himself a citizen of Hades. 'What ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... only the guides and the hotel clerks and porters but even the simple gondolier has a secret understanding with all branches of the retail trade. You get into a long, snaky, black gondola and fee the beggar who pushes you off, and all the other beggars who have assisted in the pushing off or have merely contributed to the success of the operation by being present, and you tell your gondolier in your best Italian or your worst pidgin English ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... which were coarse and thin, displayed an imperfect set of teeth, much discolored with tobacco. The eyes were light green, with the space which should have been white suffused with yellow and red. It was one of those gifted countenances which could change in a moment from a dog-like fawning to a snaky venomousness. ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... has failed,' he said; and walking across quite suddenly to the train he got into it just as it was steaming away at last. And as I saw the long snaky tail of it disappear ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... had all the appearance of an original character. He was tall and thin as the blade of a rapier, with a cynical expression of countenance, and long snaky tresses of hair hanging down over his shoulders, ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... The Egyptian Medusa is represented on antient gems with wings on her head, snaky hair, and a beautiful countenance, which appears intensely thinking; and was supposed to represent divine wisdom. The Grecian Medusa, on Minerva's shield, as appears on other gems, has a countenance distorted ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... like the looks of things hereabouts! There's always some pigtailed Chink watchin' this house from the street. I woke up last night an' saw a snaky-eyed Celestial peering in at this window. I guess they've got rid of the man ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of chastity? Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow Fair silver-shafted queen for ever chaste, Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought The frivolous bolt of Cupid; gods and men Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods. What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin, Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, But rigid looks of chaste austerity, And noble grace that dashed brute violence With sudden adoration and blank awe? So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity That, when a ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... appear'd, And with soft words his drooping spirits cheer'd: His hat, adorn'd with wings, disclosed the god, And in his hand he bore the sleep-compelling rod: 550 Such as he seem'd, when, at his sire's command, On Argus' head he laid the snaky wand. Arise, he said, to conquering Athens go, There fate appoints an end to all thy woe. The fright awaken'd Arcite with a start, Against his bosom bounced his heaving heart; But soon he said, with scarce-recover'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... received its death-blow on that occasion. Its possibility had been demonstrated. The very next year (1851) Mr T.R. Crampton, with Messrs. Wollaston, Kuper, and others, made and laid an improved cable between Dover and Calais, and ere long many other parts of the world were connected by means of snaky ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... maid-servants, when I hears the Egyptian say, 'It's gwine beautiful.' 'How?' says t'other. 'He'll nibble like hanything,' was the answer, and then I hearn a nasty sort o' laugh. Soon after, I see you with a bootiful young lady, and I see that hinfidel a-watchin' yer, with a snaky look in his eyes. And so I kep on watchin', and scuse me, yer honour, but I can guess as 'ow things be, and I'm fear'd as 'ow this waccination dodge is a trick ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... they have lain; blessed spirits adoring, float upward to God, while the abyss seizes its victims. Here one of the ascending spirits seeks to save his condemned brother, whom the abyss already embraces in its snaky folds. The children of despair strike their clenched fists upon their brows, and sink into the depths! In bold foreshortenings, float and tumble whole legions between heaven and earth. The sympathy of the angels, the expression ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... its effect, for the lad rose from his knees, stepped to the hole, and picked up something which Tom saw at once to be a long, reddish, writhing ferret. This snaky animal the lad thrust into his breast, stuffed the little piece of net into his pocket, picked up three more scraps from the mouths of other holes, and finally took the rabbit from the ground to pack inside his jacket ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... life. He hesitated for an instant, as if in doubt which of the two to follow, then decided in favor of Alcatrante, who was moving in leisurely fashion toward the park entrance, his head bowed in thought. Orme found himself wondering what snaky plots were winding through that ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... must know first if Mr. Engelman has really set his heart on the woman with the snaky movements and the sleepy eyes. Can ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... hear his hoarse, strong voice above the roar of wind and waters. For the sea was rising like the gable of a house, but the yacht was in no trouble; she had held her own in far worse seas. In the morning the sky was of snaky tints of yellow and gray, but the wind had settled and the waves were flatting; but John saw bits of trailing wreckage floating about their black depths, making ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... But see, I hold a magnet to it,—it looks to you like just such a bit of iron as the other,—and lo! it leaves them all,—the tugging of the mighty earth; of the ghostly moon that walks in white, trailing the snaky waves of the ocean after her; of the awful sun, twice as large as a sphere that the whole orbit of the moon would but just girdle,—it leaves the wrestling of all their forces, which are at a dead lock with each other, all fighting for it, and springs straight ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... The Waif was buried in a boiling turmoil from which she would leap and shake herself, only to be pulled down again when the next sea fell upon us. When she sprang out of the lather, those devilish, snarling, snaky waves sprang after her, slapping at her flanks, tearing and biting at her like a pack of wolves. There's an awful likeness to a wolf pack about storm waves. When you see them all foam-lathered stretching out like ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... the three-headed mastiff, and stood at the door of the palace in an inconceivably short time. The servants knew him both by his face and garb; for his short cloak, and his winged cap and shoes, and his snaky staff had often been seen thereabouts in times gone by. He requested to be shown immediately into the king's presence; and Pluto, who heard his voice from the top of the stairs, and who loved to recreate himself with ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bodily; and he was now too weak to extricate himself. He lifted his head and glared. His face was grimy, his hair matted with mud. Alice, although brave enough and quite accustomed to startling experiences, uttered a cry when she saw those snaky eyes glistening so savagely amid the shadows. But Jean was quick to recognize Long-Hair; he had often seen him about town, a figure ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... been delivered by Mrs. Lebours, who meanwhile flourished the reward-book; Miss Rader approached Adele, and tapping her unkindly on the shoulder, she whispered to her in a whistling tone, her snaky eyes expressing the kindliness of a tiger: "You see what you gain through wanting to leave my school; you lose a ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... with my spear, or take you by the foot and drop you into Tartarus, or tear you in pieces with my own hands'— and more such dreadful things. And she has such a sour look; and then on her breast she wears that horrid face with the snaky hair; that frightens me worst of all; the nasty bogy—I run away directly I ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the nameless words that slip From darkening soul to whitening lip. The snaky usurer,—him that crawls, And cheats beneath the golden balls, The hook-nosed kite of carrion clothes— I stabbed them deep with muttered oaths: Spawn of the rebel wandering horde That stoned the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... Setebos! 'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon. 'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match, But not the stars; the stars came otherwise; Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that: Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon, And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same. 'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold, Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine O' the lazy sea ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... absolutely undeviating and uncompromising that it admits of no complexity, no turning, no qualification. Self is ingenious, crooked, and, governed by subtle and snaky desire, admits of endless turnings and qualifications, and the deluded worshipers of self vainly imagine that they can gratify every worldly desire, and at the same time possess the Truth. But the lovers of Truth worship Truth with the sacrifice of self, and ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... claws unsheathed, until a young fellow came up with a gun and shot him dead. They went through and through the swamp at Musquash Hollow; but found nothing better than a wicked old snapping-turtle, evil to behold, with his snaky head and alligator tail, but worse to meddle with, if his horny jaws were near enough to spring their man-trap on the curious experimenter. At Wood-End there were some Indians, ill-conditioned savages in a dirty tent, making baskets, the miracle of which was that they were so clean. ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... transform you into monsters. The noblest king among men folk shall feel its curse. Such is gold, and such it shall ever be to its worshippers. And the ring which you have gotten shall impart to its possessor its own nature. Grasping, snaky, cold, unfeeling, shall he live; and death through treachery shall ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... along, thick and solid, five hundred thousand angels abreast, and every angel carrying a torch and singing—the whirring thunder of the wings made a body's head ache. You could follow the line of the procession back, and slanting upward into the sky, far away in a glittering snaky rope, till it was only a faint streak in the distance. The rush went on and on, for a long time, and at last, sure enough, along comes the barkeeper, and then everybody rose, and a cheer went up that made the heavens shake, I tell you! He was all smiles, ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... "There's nothing so snaky about her that I could see," defended Rowdy. He did not particularly relish having his own mental argument against Miss Conroy thrown back at him from another. "She seemed to be all right; and if you'd seen how plucky she was ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... down deeper and deeper into the water. It became inky black about me, not a ray from above came down into that darkness, and the phosphorescent things grew brighter and brighter. The snaky branches of the deeper weeds flickered like the flames of spirit-lamps; but, after a time, there were no more weeds. The fishes came staring and gaping towards me, and into me and through me. I never imagined such fishes before. They had lines of fire ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... be wondered that such sturdy sons of Ham as Ambrose disliked the snaky Mr. Raffin. Disliked him the more when his various musical and cultural accomplishments made him a general favourite with the ladies. And then, when he absolutely cut Mr. Travis from the affections of Miss Tate, the wrath ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... different from the ground they had traversed in coming to the fort. This was boggy; here and there the foot sank with a sough into the pulp of morass and rotten leaves; the lianas were thinner and more snaky, the greenery, if possible, greener, and the air close and moist as the ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... morass. They were hideous. They were things out of nightmares, made into flabby flesh. There were lizards and what might have been gigantic frogs, save that frogs possess no tails. And there were long and snaky necks terminating in infinitesimal heads, and vast palpitating bodies following those impossible small brain-cases, and long tapering tails that thrashed mightily as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... only acknowledged his offence and begged her pardon she might perhaps have forgiven. A moment later, however, the grim outlook before her presented itself again. There were two things for her to choose from; one was that fitly named Roaring River along whose bank the road wound its snaky trail and the other consisted in the cheap little pistol in her bag. Well, there might be comfort after all in this wild land, upon the scented fallen needles of the pines or under that pure white ice. Her ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... sweet Lady! cast aside, With a gentle, noble pride, All to sin or pain allied! Let the wild-eyed conqueror wear The bloody laurel in his hair! Let the black and snaky vine Round the drinker's temples twine! Let the slave-begotten gold Weigh on bosoms hard and cold! But be THOU forever known By ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... those snaky-looking, black-haired peons, with a wisp of jetty mustache, who serve as the type of Mexican villains in lurid melodrama—and he had the heart ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... Hannibal, still a common name in Cornwall, is held—and not unlikely—to have been introduced there by the ancient Phoenician colonists.] blood flushed up in his cheeks, and his thin Punic lips curved into a snaky smile. Perhaps the old Punic treachery in his heart; for all that he was heard to reply was, "We must not disturb the ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... been run up and the schooner was filling away for her northward beat, a single shout from the crosstrees caused every man to turn his gaze shoreward into the gathering dark. A faint glow seemed to hang in the air above the pirate sloop. A little snaky flame wriggled its way along a piece of sagging cordage, licked at the edges of a torn sail, and flared outward in a burst of red fire. A moment later, and the whole schooner was ablaze, from waterline to ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... the woods for comfort; he loved to watch the wild things going about. Not far off, he saw a herd of mammoths feeding. He never tired of looking at the big hairy elephants with their turned-up tusks and long snaky trunks. They were reaching up for the tender leaves of the birch, or needles of the hemlock, and would carry the green stuff to their mouths with their trunks. Young ones with shaggy coats of woolly hair, were playing ...
— The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone • Margaret A. McIntyre
... was getting a lead color, streaked with foam, and the hissing of the whitecaps had a curiously snaky sound, as they spit water into the boat. The rocking had opened a seam in the bottom, and Lincoln ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... a snaky, dusky fellow, with huge rings of gold in his ears and a smile that showed altogether too many teeth to be pleasant—a regular alligator smile. As far as I could see, I would just as lief have Pedro's ill feeling as his friendship. ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... New York City, is the home of the Standard Oil. Its countless miles of railroads may zigzag in and out of every State and city in America, and its never-ending twistings of snaky pipe-lines burrow into all parts of the North American continent which are lubricated by nature; its mines may be in the West, its manufactories in the East, its colleges in the South, and its churches in the North; its head-quarters may be in the centre ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... from Judah's land The dreaded infant's hand, The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne; Nor all the gods beside Longer dare abide, Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine; Our babe, to show his Godhead true, Can in his swaddling bands ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... glance that the snaky neck, perched atop the lofty shoulder structure, would raise the head with its gaping jaws to his level on the wall! Brand ran. And after him thudded the gigantic lizard, its neck arching up and along the wall to ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... quiet places with mighty splashing sounds, as though a horse had fallen into the water. On every stranded log the huge snapping turtles lie on sunny days in groups of four and six, baking their shells black in the sun, with their little snaky heads raised watchfully, ready to slip noiselessly off at the first sound of oars ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... truth,— Acrisius grieves he e'er so rashly brav'd The god; his grandson driving from his court, Disown'd. Now one in heaven is glorious plac'd; The other, laden with the well-known spoil Of the fierce snaky monster, cleaves the air, On sounding pinions. High the victor sails O'er Lybia's desarts, and the gory drops Fall from the gorgon's head; the Ground receives The blood, and warms it into writhing snakes. Hence does the country with the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... we were half-way to Paris, and the student, satisfied with his success, packed up his folio, brought out a great meerschaum with a snaky tube, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... with the lightning's glare; Its laughter is the cry of myriad cranes; Its voice, the bolts that whistle through the air; Its dance, that bow whose arrows are the rains. It staggers at the winds, and seems to smoke With clouds, which form its black and snaky ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... these are always short. In a grizzly they are always long—they get them up to four and one-half inches, and I believe some of your Kadiaks have even longer claws. Colors grade, but claws don't. I even think the polar bear is a grizzly of the North—white because he lives on snow and ice, and with a snaky head because he has to swim. But his claws he ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... fierce Repentance rears Her snaky crest; a quick-returning pang Shoots through the conscious heart. The Seasons: Spring. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... out altogether," said he, "as there are snakes that will climb posts, but ordinarily serpents do not attempt that performance. When I first came to Australia, I lived in a house which stood right on the ground. The region was a snaky one, and every little while we would find a snake in the house, and have a lively time driving him out or killing him. None of the family was ever bitten by a snake, but we certainly had some narrow escapes. When I came ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... spirits to help me,' she said, and started a little sing-song, then shouldered the post herself and carried it in. These posts are painted red, black, and white, with a snaky pattern, the Kurreah sign, on them. She also planted in my garden two other witch-poles, one painted red and having a cross-bar about midway down it from which raddled strings were attached to the top; this was ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... anything else. She set them at variance, and whether she meant to do it or not is all the same to me. I own I took a dislike to her when I first saw her. She was one of the light-haired, blue-eyed sort, with an innocent look and a snaky waist—not at all to be depended on, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... feels from Juda's land The dreaded infant's hand; The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside Longer dare abide, Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our Babe, to shew his Godhead true, Can in his swaddling bands control ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... He was a tall, raw-boned, loose-jointed young man, with a dirty, buttonless flannel shirt which revealed a hairy breast; upon his trousers hung a variety of patches, in many stages of grease and decrepitude; a gray slouch hat shaded his little fishy eyes and hollow, yellow cheeks; and the snaky ends of his yellow mustache were stiff with accumulations of dried tobacco juice. His fat, waddling wife, in a greasy black gown, followed with bare feet, and, arms akimbo, listened in ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... him Eely, because he's such a lanky, thin, snaky chap. I say, his father's a tailor in Cork Street, he's got such lots of clothes in his box. He has a bob-tail coat and black kersey sit-upon-'ems, and a vesky with glass buttons, and all covered with embroidery. Such a dandy!—What's ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... not play harps, but horns When I chased the unicorns— Magic tubes with pistons greasy, Slides that pushed and pulled out easy, Cylinders of snaky brass Where the fingers like to fuss, Polished like a looking-glass, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... knew that the Jew was a man who would not hesitate at murder, and that his expression about getting his knife into Fraser was meant in a very literal sense. "I mean to get even with my man if I come across him again. But I won't be such a fool as to attempt it here. Take a look outside and see if Snaky is about." ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... attempt to snatch it from her, or to destroy the fatal paper. I gazed upon it till the characters swelled out like black chords, and writhed in snaky convolutions. ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... looking eye, that I ever saw lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights it must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any rate, I would defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye, half so cold, and snaky, and deadly. It was a horrible thing; and I would give much to forget that I have ever seen it; for it haunts ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... was the forest, within two bowshots. It stretched full thirty leagues in length and in breadth, and had wild beasts in it and snaky things. She was afraid that if she went into it, these would kill her; and on the other hand she bethought her that if she were found there she would be taken back to the town ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... Trafalgar Square fountains and tried to swim there. And they swam most beautifully, with that perfect ease and absence of effort or tiredness which you must have noticed about your own swimming in dreams. And it was the most lovely place to swim in; the water-lilies, whose long, snaky stalks are so inconvenient to ordinary swimmers, did not in the least interfere with the movements of marble arms and legs. The moon was high in the clear sky-dome. The weeping willows, cypresses, temples, terraces, banks of trees ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... the high seas, be easily mistaken for pirates; here they are understood to belong to some one of the many snaky schooners lying here, hailing from Havannah and the various ports along the Mexican Gulf, and whose calling may be honest enough, but which certainly look as though the necessity of stowing a cargo had been quite ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... between us twain," said High, and laid his hot palm against the cold, snaky palm of the other. "And he to whom the honour falls ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... walking straight forward with open front, he undulated along the pavement in a curved line. It may be too fanciful to say that something, either in his moral or material aspect, suggested the idea that a miracle had been wrought by transforming a serpent into a man, but so imperfectly that the snaky nature was yet hidden, and scarcely hidden, under the mere outward guise of humanity. Herkimer remarked that his complexion had a greenish tinge over its sickly white, reminding him of a species of marble out of which he had once wrought a head ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hillslope like a picture on a screen stretched for a moment the flat reed-bed of Two Rivers, with great herds of silly, elephant-looking creatures feeding there, with huge incurving trunks and backs that sloped absurdly from a high fore-hump. They rootled in the tall grass or shouldered in long, snaky lines through ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... was the island of Bimini, with its fountain of youth. Juan and Luis Ponce de Leon sought it vainly among the Bahamas, then crossed to Florida and kept up the search among the pine barrens, the moss-bearded cypresses, the snaky swamps, and alligator infested rivers. The Indians, strong, active, healthy with their simple, outdoor life, their ignorance of wine and European diseases, seemed so favored that the Spaniards believed ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight in coined silver—seven and one-half pounds weight of rupees, or sixteen pounds sterling reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at night by snaky-haired thieves who crawled on their stomachs under the nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and in the hot weather, when all the barrack doors and windows were open, they vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... with clinging sea-weed and the long, snaky, undulating stems of the sea-turnip; and fixed between two crossing roots was a bamboo orange crate, almost intact. As he walked toward it he heard a strange cry, unlike anything the barren sands had borne before. Thinking it might be some strange sea bird caught ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... about over pots and stew-pans, getting supper; old Peter stood at the table peeling potatoes. In an arm-chair before the fire sat another old woman with snaky-black eyes, hooked nose, and ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... chaste, Wherwith she tam'd the brinded lioness And spotted mountain pard, but set at nought The frivolous bolt of Cupid, gods and men Fear'd her stern frown, and she was queen oth' Woods. What was that snaky-headed Gorgon sheild That wise Minerva wore, unconquer'd Virgin, Wherwith she freez'd her foes to congeal'd stone? But rigid looks of Chast austerity, 450 And noble grace that dash't brute violence With sudden adoration, and blank aw. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... flatter me. I liked it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and fork-tongued; and when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop (who said very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I rather envied them for being on the opposite side ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the delight of solitariness! O how much do I like your solitariness! Here nor reason is hid, vailed in innocence, Nor envy's snaky eye, finds any harbour here. Nor flatterer's venomous insinuations. Nor coming humourist's puddled opinions, Nor courteous ruin of proffer'd usury, Nor time prattled away, cradle of ignorance, Nor causeless duty, nor cumber of arrogance, Nor trifling titles of vanity dazzleth us, Nor golden ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... uncanny night and this was an uncanny place to be in. She could hear the coyotes howling hungrily a little way from the cabin, and more terrible still were all the unknown noises of the storm. She remembered the tales they told of the big log overhead and she was afraid of those snaky things on the windowsills. She remembered the man who had been killed in the draw, and she wondered what she would do if she saw crazy Lou's white face glaring into the window. The rattling of the door became unbearable, she thought the latch must be loose and took the lamp to look at it. Then ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... coil, roll; wrinkle, curl, crisp, twill; frizzle; crimp, crape, indent, scollop^, scallop, wring, intort^; contort; wreathe &c (cross) 219. Adj. convoluted; winding, twisted &c v.; tortile^, tortive^; wavy; undated, undulatory; circling, snaky, snake-like, serpentine; serpent, anguill^, vermiform; vermicular; mazy, tortuous, sinuous, flexuous, anfractuous^, reclivate^, rivulose^, scolecoid^; sigmoid, sigmoidal [Geom.]; spiriferous^, spiroid^; involved, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... snaky knife against my stick; he, too, was a big strong man, well skilled in self-defence! Down he went, and I struck him again and again. "O my God! ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... of tapirs that humped at the sky, beetles big as camels, and crocodiles with wings. Wicked creatures snarled crepitantly, and their crackling noises were echoed by lizard and dragon, ululating snouted birds and hissing leagues of snaky lengths. Stannum fled from these disturbing dreams seeking safety in the mountains. The tone pursued him, but he felt that it had a less bestial quality. Casting his eyes upon the vague plateau ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... giraffes, elephants, and rhinoceroses, and dropping them at the door of the ark. One has crossed the Atlantic with rattlesnakes, copperheads, and boas twined around him, almost crippling his wings with their snaky folds; and another with a brace of skunks, one under each wing, that the renewed world may not lack the fragrance of the old. What a subject for the pencil of a Raphael or Dore! Had the "hardened spectators" beheld such ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... Ovid, by Whom fair Corinna sits, and doth comply With ivory wrists his laureate head, and steeps His eye in dew of kisses while he sleeps; Then soft Catullus, sharp-fang'd Martial, And towering Lucan, Horace, Juvenal, And snaky Persius, these, and those, whom rage (Dropt for the jars of heaven) fill'd t' engage All times unto their frenzies,—thou shalt there Behold them in a spacious theatre. Among which glories, crowned with sacred bays And flatt'ring ivy, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... the writhing serpentine creature close to the surface. Then, quick as thought, Josh had the great snaky fish by the head with his short sharp gaff-hook, drew it over the gunwale, and before Arthur could realise what was done the axe had descended with a dull thud, and Josh dragged the quivering half inert conger over the side and forward, clear of the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... with a turbulent floor, where the white mouths of other two streams foamed into it through rock-rifts, loud-throated on either hand. Thenceforward the water which had threaded the large boulders in heavy strands coiled like monstrous braids of snaky locks, rose up and drew together above their tallest heads into a single obliterating fold, as it slid on smoothly with only now and then a quiver puckering its surface, as if it had rolled over some live creature that writhed. Its mounded ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... his ivory neck must trace, Moulded with soft but manly grace; Fair as the neck of Paphia's boy, Where Paphia's arms have hung in joy. Give him the winged Hermes' hand, With which he waves his snaky wand; Let Bacchus the broad chest supply, And Leda's son the sinewy thigh; While, through his whole transparent frame, Thou show'st the stirrings of that flame, Which kindles, when the first love-sigh Steals ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... which began to wriggle both with head and tail, as she held it about the middle in her closed fist. This made her laugh. She let it go, then seized another and another, scouring the basin and stirring up the whole heap of snaky-looking creatures ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... centre an inspired-looking creature whirled about on his axis, the black ringlets standing out in snaky spirals from his haggard head, his cheek-muscles convulsively twitching. Around him, but a long way off, the dancers rocked and circled with long raucous cries dominated by the sobbing booming music, ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... exquisite control; both were extraordinarily graceful. "Snaky" was Belle's thought of the woman; "sinuous" was Garlock's of the man. Both were completely hairless, of body and of head—not by nature, but via electric-shaver clipping. Both wore sandals. The man wore shorts and a shirt-like garment of nylon ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... gamblin' an' meetin' all kinds an' conditions o' men ain't made me as fly as a road-runner, then that there artesian well is spoutin' mint juleps. Say, Miss Donnie, if ever I see a cold-blooded, fishy, snaky, ornery man, it's this T. Morgan Carey—an' at that he's a dead ringer for a church deacon. That Carey man would steal a hot stove without burnin' himself. Now, this young Bob is an impulsive cuss, an' ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... it. But it was not wise of him to pay it quite such close attention, and for the moment fail to keep ears or eyes alert to other things. Even as it was, however, a sound caught his attention—an odd, hissing, whistling noise,—and he raised his long, snaky neck and head, now dyed a brilliant red, and dripping frightfully. Yes, he was not mistaken. Something was coming, and he stirred uneasily. Not that he was afraid,—of what living creature in those days was a Rider of the Berg ever afraid?—but he ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... round the quaint castellated building, battering the gates and moving their heavy iron hinges to a most dolorous groaning; it flung rattling hailstones at the narrow windows, and raged and howled at every corner and through every crevice; while snaky twists of lightning played threateningly over the tall iron Cross that surmounted the roof, as though bent on striking it down and splitting open the firm old walls it guarded. All was war and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... back upon him. Her beautiful face wore an expression like that of the stony countenance with the snaky locks. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... was as withered and wrinkled and brown as an old frosted punkin-vine; and her little snaky eyes sparkled and snapped, and it made yer head kind o' dizzy to look at 'em; and folks used to say that anybody that Ketury got mad at was sure to get the worst of it fust or last. And so, no matter what day or hour Ketury had a mind to ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... white countenance looked vicious. Thrackles' heavy, bulldog expression was threatening, Perdosa's Mexican cast fit for knife work in the back. And Handy Solomon, stretched out, leaning on his elbow, with his red headgear, his snaky hair, his hook nose, his restless eye and his glittering steel claw—the glow wrote across his aura the names of Kid, Morgan, Blackbeard. They sat smoking, staring into the fire with mesmerised eyes. The silence got on my nerves I arose impatiently ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... underworld—half shadow and half dream. No, Lord Mallow could never forget it; nor yet the way that flying figure in Lincoln green led them by bog and swamp, over clay and gravel—through as many varieties of soil as if she had been trying to give them a practical lesson in geology; across snaky ditches and pebbly fords; through furze-bushes and thickets of holly; through everything likely to prove aggravating to the temper of a wellbred horse; and finally, before giving them breathing-time, she led them up the clayey side of a hill, as steep as a house, on the top of which ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... "Snaky cakies!" said Will Jaquith. "Oh, Direxia! give me a cake and I'll give you a kiss! Is that right, you dear ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... patriotism and religion become one—and feel, too, the exquisite dramatic effect of the innocent, the weak, the unwarlike, welcoming among them, without fear, because without guilt, those ancient snaky-haired sisters, emblems of all that is most terrible and most inscrutable, in the destiny of nations, of families, and ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... uncoiled its snaky twine from around the hill, and came to its rock in the river. When it perceived the Childe waiting for it, it lashed the waters in its fury and wound its coils round the Childe, and then attempted to crush him to death. But ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... is represented on an old medallion with a teraph, or a head, on his breast; and the same writer adds: "We know, from the Hamartigenea of Prudentius, that Nimrod, with a snaky-haired head, was the object of adoration of the heretical followers of Marcion; and the same head was the palladium set up by Antiochus Epiphanes over the gates of Antioch, though it has been called ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... dress. The girls wear pretty print frocks, made in the English style, and several of them wore the hibiscus in their shining hair. Some of the older girls were beautiful in face as well as graceful in figure, but there was a snaky undulation about their movements which I never saw among Europeans. All looked bubbling over with fun and frolic, and there was a refinement and intelligence about their expression which contrasted favourably with that of the ordinary female face ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... let herself starve for four days, though she wore around her neck a chain that she admitted represented a month's support. And this fellow, Herbert Ransome Shaw—where the devil did he come in? A fellow with a name like that and with snaky eyes like his was capable of ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... on the snaky fire, Crushes the curling heads till smoke is thickened And the ash sinks beneath the billet's weight, And then again the hissing heads are quickened: Just as this wood, by fretful fangs new stung, Glows angrily, then whitens ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... gradual unfolding and appropriating of the results which are already secured. The 'strong man' is bound; what remains is but the 'spoiling of his house.' The head is bruised; what remains is but the dying lashing of the snaky horror's powerless coils. 'I send you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour.' The tearful sowing in the stormy winter's day has been done by the Son of Man. For us there remains the joy of harvest—hot and hard work, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... falsehood, and I don't believe a word of it; and in the second place I know the reason she did it, and, what's more, she KNOWS I know it! I won't SAY what it is—not yet—because papa and all of you would think I'm as crazy as she is snaky; and Roscoe's such a fool he'd probably quit speaking to me. But it's true! Just you watch her; that's all I ask. Just you watch that ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... or serpent kind it something looked, But monstrous, with a thousand snaky heads."—Pollok, B. i, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... presence of soap-weed, the dark lines that betrayed the mesquite, the saccatone belts that marked the little guillies. Then there were the barrancas, the arid stretches where the sage-brush and the cactus grew. Snaky octilla dotted the space; the crabbed yucca had ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... laughed horribly, while the snaky moustache on his upper lip writhed as if it had truly a serpent's power and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... varmint looks considerable snaky." Then, without removing his glass, he let drop a word at a time, as if the facts were trickling into his telescope at the lens, and out at ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... goblet flows. The Syren views them with exulting eyes, And laughs at bashful Virtue as she flies. 50 But see behind, where Scorn and Want appear, The grave remonstrance and the witty sneer; See fell Remorse in action, prompt to dart Her snaky poison through the conscious heart; And Sloth to cancel, with oblivious shame, The fair memorial of ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... circles afloat, Of a beam in the eye, or diminutive mote, But vortex-like that tube of tin Sucked the censorious particle in; And, truth to tell, for as willing an organ As ever listened to serpent's hiss, Nor took the viperous sound amiss, On the snaky head of ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... front with the speed of light and attacked with horse, foot and guns. She failed to see, she had declared, where this poor, lone girt was in great fault. Of course it was probable that she had listened to this snaky. tongued Rufus Coleman, but that was ever the mistake that women made. Oh, certainly ; the professor would like to let Rufus Coleman off scot-free. That was the way with men. They defended each other in all cases. If wrong were done ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... than we expected." He was different from what we had expected. Perhaps that annoyed us. Instead of being able to laugh at him, we found something oppressive, chilling, to me frightful, in the cold, sneering smile which seemed perpetually hovering about his thin lips—in the fixed, snaky glitter of his still, intent gray eyes. His face was pale, his manners were polished, but to meet his eye was a thing I hated, and the touch of his hand made me shudder. While speaking in the politest possible manner, he had eyed over Adelaide and ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... from Juda's Land The dredded Infants hand, The rayes of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside, Longer dare abide, Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our Babe to shew his Godhead true, Can in his swadling bands controul the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... wade through a brook, like this one, and the brooks were as they were now, all running spang full to the very edge with snow-water, the way this one did? Oo . . . Ooh . . . Ooh! how queer it did feel, to be standing most up to your knees this way, with the current curling by, all cold and snaky, feeling the fast-going water making your boot-legs shake like Aunt Hetty's old cheeks when she laughed, and yet your feet as dry inside! How could they feel as cold as that, without being wet, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... him—nothing could be plainer. His best policy now is to act promptly and liberally toward me, for I pledge you my word that if I see any disposition to evade my requirements I will blow out the bottom of everything," and a snaky glitter in his small black eyes showed how remorselessly he could scuttle the ship ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... to look up that snaky lodger of Captain Boomsby's," answered Washburn. "There was certainly a lodger there, who furnished his own room, ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... may be looked at, or any localities where one can enjoy such charming spectacles as the blossoming of cherry-trees in spring, the flickering of fireflies in summer nights, the flushing of maple-leaves in autumn, or even that long snaky motion of moonlight upon water to which Chinese poets have given the delightful name of Kinryo, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the blue vault of heaven; the sun served for footlights and for the lights above the heads of those who acted. The three Furies—the Eumenides—with their hard and cruel faces and snaky locks, and with blood dripping from their eyes, were represented by actors so great that the hearts of their beholders trembled within them. In their dread hands lay the punishment of murder, of inhospitality, of ingratitude, and of all the cruellest and basest of crimes. Theirs was ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... interest, attorney's fees, detective bills, and remuneration for my own time and trouble. That's the reason that I'm so glad to meet him. Judge, I've gone to the trouble and expense to get his record for the last ten years. He's so snaky he sheds his name yearly, shifting for a nickname from Honest John to The Quaker. In '80 he and his associates did business under the name of The Army & Sutler Supply Company, and I know of two judgments that can be bought very reasonable against that corporation. His record would convince ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... all the ills of it, The axe of sharp Detachment ye would whet, And cleave the clinging snaky roots, and lay This Aswattha ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold |
