"Centipede" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Syrtis. However, we have forgotten all about the sea thoroughly enough since that time. I well remember my first astonishment at the side of a galley in Alexandria, and the roar of laughter with which my fellow-students greeted my not unreasonable remark, that it looked very like a centipede.' ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... a centipede bite is a plaster of garlic mashed until the juice flows. The plaster must ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... power—he is the primitive, the wild wolf, the striking rattlesnake, the stinging centipede," ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... of the West are now being cut up into small farms. The nester has come, and come to stay. Gone is the buffalo, the Indian warwhoop, the free grass of the open plain;—even the stinging lizard, the horned frog, the centipede, the prairie dog, the rattlesnake, are fast disappearing. Save in some of the secluded valleys of southern New Mexico, the old-time round-up is no more; the trails to Kansas and to Montana have become grass-grown or lost in fields of waving grain; the maverick steer, the regal longhorn, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... sheltered whiteness and the desert brown of his face.... Milky pale they gleamed at him from the glass.... Bony hard, they flaunted their angles at every move.... He was grateful that he was not a centipede. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... continued Benson's father, "so much better than the dray-horse, that knew enough to lift his feet until he lifted the right one. I believe if that horse had the feet of a centipede, he would have gone on lifting them until the dog was released. I tell you, boys, if I could get anyone to help me, I'd start ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... both live, and know that we live. Moreover, such is the essential unity of our natures that our living must now express our knowing, and our knowing guide and illuminate our living. Consider the allegory of the centipede. From the beginning of time he had manipulated his countless legs with exquisite precision. Men had regarded him with wonder and amazement. But he was innocent of his own art, being a contrivance of nature, perfectly constructed ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... centipede has a hundred feet. It may have; and it does seem that superstition, or the belief in supernatural things of a trivial nature has quite as many; and, like the fabled animal of ancient times, has also a ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... imagination, my course would be settled, not, in the first place, by questions of climate or scenery or the larger inhabitants, but by consideration of those smaller natives—the Tarantula, the Scorpion, and the Centipede. If I were told that in such-and-such a country one often found a lion in one's bath, I might be prepared to risk it. I should feel that there was always a chance that the lion might not object to me. But if I heard that one might find a tarantula in one's hotel, then ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... at least during the period through which the insect continues to grow, the cuticle must be periodically shed. Thus in the life-story of an insect or other arthropod, such as a lobster, a spider, or a centipede, there must be a succession of cuticle-castings—'moults' or ecdyses ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... grasp of fire is laid On bark and slabs that rot, and breed Squat ugly things of deadly shade, The scorpion, and the spiteful seed Of centipede. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... had your way," she observed, "I should have been knitting so many socks for Charlie Sands that he'd have had to be a centipede to ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dressed in sheepskins and warm materials, had sheepskin caps on their heads; there was he with his bare arms, in well-worn grey trousers, his shirt fastened together at the neck with a piece of wood. Sitting among them, defenceless as a centipede, without anyone belonging to him, puffing clouds of smoke, he inwardly blessed this adventure, in which everything had turned out so well. The Cossacks looked at the fire, and they too said: 'This is ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... has a bewildering iridescence of aspect. Each present impulse is reformatory. Correction, like a centipede, shows a hundred legs and wants to run upon them all. Much of the so-called philanthropy is not well balanced and is run by cranks. Cranks attach themselves to any social movement, as a shaggy gown will gather burrs. It is not all of philanthropy to classify degenerates, titter at ignorance, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... centipede he had killed, and then looked among the waste paper for more, standing with his bare foot raised, and with ready slipper, for the bite of this insect, which grows to a large size in Porto Rico, is anything but pleasant, though it ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... tongue, Scip," said the Doctor. "I'm the talking man here. Yes! gentlemen," addressing the attentive cowboys, "I can cure anything that touches the ground—biped, quadruped, or centipede—glanders, botts, greased hoofs, heaves, blind staggers, it makes no odds. My universal, self-acting, double compound elixir of equestrian ointment will perform a cure in each and every case. It is cheap! It is sure! It is patented! It is the best, ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... and lighted on an old tree stump. There it burrowed down through dark passage-ways and mysterious galleries, until at last it reached the bottom of a perpendicular shaft. In its unknown depths, where neither ant nor centipede ever had ventured, it spread out the green leaf roll and covered the uneven floor with the most beautiful carpet. And when the floor was covered, the bee came back for new leaves to cover the walls ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... was repeated. It seemed to come from outside her flesh. She shivered a little, thinking it might be a centipede. When she reached for her shoulder her hand came in contact with a slender stick that had been thrust through a crack between the boards. Jim was trying to rouse her. This had been his method on several occasions when she had fallen asleep ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... nearness of the mountain with its Mediterranean flora, so rich that it recalled the Corsican maquis; full of beautiful fungi and varied insects, where, under the flat stones exposed to the burning sun, the centipede burrowed and the scorpion slept; where a special fauna abounded—of curious dung-beetles, scarabaei, the Copris, the Minotaur, etc.—which only a little farther north grow rapidly scarcer and then ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... undahstan' Each piece he'ps maik de ban', But dey all mus' be led, Sum one mus' be de head: No doubt, de centipede Has all de laigs he need, But take erway de head, Po' centipede am dead; So ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.—Stand round me, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab—his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half-stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I break, ye'll hear me crack; and till ye hear that, know that Ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in the ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... bearers. They were divided into sections, to every one of which a pair of men was attached, illumined from within, and covered with a rich scaled brocade, in which the bearers themselves were also enveloped, their legs and feet appearing from underneath like the legs of a huge centipede. ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... not night birds, it is evident that they are evil spirits abroad in bird form, hence the precautions. As soon as a baby begins to crawl, the mother finds a centipede, half cooks it, takes it from the fire, and catching hold of her child's hands beats them with it, crooning ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... of danger. For the same purpose he make a serpent pass in front of the prahu, or a rusa cry in the middle of the day. At night this cry is immaterial. The most inauspicious of all omens is the appearance of a centipede. If a man in a ladang is confronted with such an animal he at once stops work there and takes ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... man be the model of beings in distant worlds? Be the man in the moon a biped or quadruped; see he through two eyes as we do, or a hundred like Argus; hold he with two hands as we do, or a hundred like Briarius; walk he with two feet as we do, or a hundred like the centipede, "the mind's the standard of the man" everywhere. If he have but a wise head and a warm heart; if he be not shut up, Diogenes—like, within his own little tub of a world, but take an interest in the inhabitants ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... young lady, and the manners and customs of the place and people, particularly those of the coloured servant, Chunga, astonished her immensely. The white lady had a great horror of creeping things of all kinds; she could hardly bear to get into her bath, for she sometimes found a centipede, as long as ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Centipede went out to take a walk; The Centipede said frankly, "I will listen while you talk, But I may appear distracted, or assume a vacant stare, Because to keep my feet in step requires ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... centipede runs across my head, The vinegaroon crawls in my bed, Tarantulas jump and scorpions play, The broncs are grazing far away, The rattlesnake gives his warning cry, And the coyotes sing their lullaby, While I sleep soundly beneath ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... such a smile of self-satisfaction upon her face as would have been quite startling to her, if she had ever been startled at any thing; for through that smile she could see lying at the root of it the worm that made it. For some smiles are like the ruddiness of certain apples, which is owing to a centipede, or other creeping thing, coiled up at the heart of them. Only her worm had a face and shape the very image of her own; and she looked so simpering, and mawkish, and self-conscious, and silly, that she made the ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... his directions but instead of my faery a number of confusing images presented themselves. I saw in the hearts of those who were about me faery gardens and infernos, deserts and turnip fields; I saw a comically hopping rainworm who was nibbling at a graceful centipede; I saw a world in which darkness was lord. I saw much else and was ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... which an accidental pressure or unguarded touch is resented and retorted by a bite, makes the centipede, when it has taken up its temporary abode, within a sleeve or the fold of a dress, by far the most unwelcome of all the Singhalese assailants. The great size, too (little short of a foot in length), to which it sometimes attains, renders it formidable, and, apart from ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... went to dress for dinner, I found on my table a nasty-looking black beast about six inches long. It looked very formidable in the half-light, like a scorpion or centipede. It turned out, however, to be quite harmless, and a sort of millipede, and rather handsome, with jet-black rings, and hundreds of orange-coloured legs. There are a great many venomous snakes in Ceylon, but they always get out of ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Rambler. The Tale of a Tub and the History of John Bull swarm with similar errors, if the name of error can be properly applied to that which is unavoidable. It is not easy to make a simile go on all-fours. But we believe that no human ingenuity could produce such a centipede as a long allegory in which the correspondence between the outward sign and the thing signified should be exactly preserved. Certainly no writer, ancient or modern, has yet achieved the adventure. The best thing, on the whole, that an allegorist can do, is to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... soul-harden'd scheming; A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal, And without feeling mock at all who feel; With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown,— A cheek of parchment and an eye of stone. Mark how the channels of her yellow blood Ooze to her skin and stagnate there to mud, Cased like the centipede in saffron mail, Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale,— (For drawn from reptiles only may we trace Congenial colours in that soul or face,) Look on her features! and behold her mind As in a mirror of itself defined: Look on the picture! ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "there are a few subjects for conversation which do not include the centipede and the polka-dotted dickey-bird. These subjects Kathleen and I furtively indulge in when we can ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... stay," I cried, casting down my pen. "It is so seldom that he cuddles that I'll sacrifice myself upon the altar of aunthood. Well, once upon a time, Billy, there was a dear little blue hen who stole away—sit still now! You've more legs than a centipede!—who stole away every day and went under the barn where it was so cool and shady, and laid a lovely little smooth, cream-coloured egg. Then when she had laid it, she was so proud that she could never help ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... with as many pairs of legs as a centipede, Jerusalem would not have differed materially from either of his race; but it was odd to see such a wealth of dog wedded to such a poverty of leg. He was so long that the most precocious pupil of the public schools could not have committed him ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... to play a trick on Charles Darwin. They took the body of a centipede, the wings of a butterfly, the legs of a grasshopper and the head of a beetle, and glued these together to form a weird monster. With the composite creature in a box, they ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... gale or storm; the thunder-imp or hairy, cat-like creature that on the cloud-edges beats his drums in crash, roll, or rattle; the earthquake-fish or subterranean bull-head or cat-fish that wriggles and writhes, causing the earth to shiver, shudder and open; the ja or dragon centipede; the tengu or long-nosed and winged mountain sprite, which acts as the messenger of the gods, pulling out the tongues of fibbing, lying children; besides the colossal spiders and mythical creatures of the old story-books; ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... the kindly, winning personality that all his world knew and loved. "Sure then, you're not afraid of me?" he said, as though he softly cajoled a child. "It wouldn't be yourself at all if you were, you that could tread me underfoot like a centipede and not be a ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... the thing. Its pale jointed body was some twenty feet in length, and had apparently been developed from that of a centipede, with scores of racing legs that carried it with startling speed over ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... the ears that fingers cannot stop, or to confess that it cried out against a double injustice, that of life and that of death: she had crossed the border of the region of horror, and went about with a worm coiled in her heart, like a centipede in the stone ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... "The centipede was happy, quite, Until the toad for fun Said, 'Pray which leg comes after which?' This worked her mind to such a pitch She lay distracted in a ditch, ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... which there is no going. Words can end with no consonant but the most rounded of all, the nasal liquids n and ng. There is about as much likeness to the Aryan and Semitic languages—you can trace about as much analogy between them—as you can between a centipede and a billiard-ball. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... that alcohol bottle. That centipede mayn't be as dead as he looks! The horrid leg-gy thing! How in the world did I ever fancy it? Take care!" warned Dorothy, as Leslie dropped an uncouth Indian ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... you've come here to do us a service—an' Molly likewise. So fur's I sabe there's been some remahks passed concernin' her stayin' here 'thout a chaperon, so to speak. Any one that 'ud staht that sort of talk is a blood relation to a centipede an' mebbe I can give a guess as to who it is. I reckon I can ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... like a fairy dream. I listened t' th' orchestra of the birds—the woodthrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager an' the rest of the thrillin' songsters—and the music was more delicious 'n any opera I've heard in London an' Paris. I wasted a full hour watchin' a fool centipede that had gotten himself tangled in a spider's web—watched th' manoeuvres of that spider for ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... like paper and were trodden under. The thing came toward the shore. It slithered through the shallow sea, with waves breaking against its bulging sides. It came out upon the beach, its wet sides glittering. It was two hundred feet long, and it looked somehow like a gigantic centipede. ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... creatures still existing, (nereidina and serpulina,) and which may often be found beneath stones on a sea-beach. One of these, figured by Mr. Murchison, is furnished with feet in vast numbers all along its body, like a centipede. The occurrence of annelids is important, on account of their character and status in the animal kingdom. They are red-blooded and hermaphrodite, and form a link of connexion between the annulosa (white-blooded ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... of lathered lightening Billy went for his clothes. A centipede could have been no more active. He jerked up his suspenders; he jerked on a shirt; he jerked on a coat; he was wiping his face as he darted through the halls and down the stairs. No lift had speed ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Bitter had been thy punishment Tied to the hornet's shardy wings, Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings, Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell; Or every night to writhe and bleed Beneath the tread of the centipede; Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim, Your jailer a spider huge and grim, Amid the carrion bodies to lie Of the worm, and the bug and the murdered fly: These it had been your lot to bear, Had a stain been found on the earthly ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... aloft with mad and feeble gesturings on the shoulders of two staggering young men, and after him came the aged morris dancers, only upheld from collapse in the mire by mutual upholdings, until they seemed like some monstrous animal moving with uncouth sprawls of legs as multifold as a centipede, and wavering drunkenly from one side of the road to the other, lurching into the dewy bushes, then recovering by the joint ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... given a third trial, but with no better results than before. Things went on in the usual way until a centipede was discovered in another boy's desk. Although in this case Tommy was innocent of any knowledge of the intruder, he was found guilty, whipped, and sent home with the message, "Go and tell your father to get you ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... in feet between a biped, a quadruped, and a centipede, and say whether the foot of Mr. Joseph Hume, being just as broad as it is long, may not be considered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... put me and Fergus up at the Centipede Club, a frame building built on posts sunk in the surf. The tide's only nine inches. The Little Big High Low Jack-in-the-game of the town came around and kowtowed. Oh, it wasn't to Herr Mees. They ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... and semitropical regions, and lurk in dark corners and out-of-the-way places, crawling into the boots and clothing during the night. Scorpions sting with their tails, which are brought over the head and back for the purpose, while holding on to the victim with their lobsterlike claws. The poisonous centipede has a flattened brownish-yellow body, with a single pair of short legs for each body segment, and long, ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... before the long-house of a peaceful river tribe. The chest he hid in the underbrush close by his boat, and with the girl ascended the notched log that led to the verandah of the structure, which, stretching away for three hundred yards upon its tall piles, resembled a huge centipede. ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... roof overhead, all cut from island timber—another proof of what the wood-carver may effect in the island hereafter. Certainly distractions were frequent and troublesome, at least to a newcomer. A large centipede would come out and take a hurried turn round the Governor's seat; or a bat would settle in broad daylight in the curate's hood; or one had to turn away one's eyes lest they should behold—not vanity, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the short man said, with insolent familiarity. (Among the bayfarers he had gained the nickname of "The Centipede" on account of his long arms.) "Hello, Taft," he repeated, with the same touch of insolence. "Wot 'r ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... long candles protected from draughts and insects by curving glass chimneys. Mosquitoes tormented him and cockroaches as long as his hand ran over the table; occasionally a land-crab rattled across the room, or a centipede appeared on the open page. But he was accustomed to these embellishments of tropic life, and although he anathematized them and the heat, he went on with his studies. It was about this time that he began to indulge in literary ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... "if you continue to dwell upon the philosophical implications of your actions you will end up as helpless and confused as the leg-counting centipede. Better not think. Warriors are not supposed to. They lose their keen fighting edge when they think. And you need all of ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... of the slow machinery by which he had been hoisted from the saddle to the professorial chair had slipped. As he lay there on his back in the shallow ripple of the Arkansas River, the long centipede railroad bridge dark-lined across the broad stream, he turned it in his mind and ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the worn stones of the paepae stole a vei, a centipede, upon which a bare foot quickly stamped. The chief said casually, "If he bite you, you no die; you have hell of a time." They were not natives of the Marquesas originally, he said; they came in the coal of ships. His patriotism outran his knowledge, for the first discoverers ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... think," went on Molly, in a reflective tone, "that you can make a catch; but you can try. There is the chaplain—horrid old centipede! And there's old Walford"—Molly never favoured any man with a Mr to his name—"an ugly, spiteful old bear that nobody'll have: he's rich enough; and he might look your way if you play your cards well. Any way, you'll not have much chance else; so you'd better keep ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... for skin disease, a form of herpes, with which a great many are afflicted. They probably do not regard it as a disease. (See Pls. LVI et seq.) In case of centipede bites, if on a finger, the affected member is thrust in the anus of a chicken, where, the Negrito affirms, the poison is absorbed, resulting in the death ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... food, as is believed to be the case with the colors of certain brilliantly-colored caterpillars; it may be in other ways. In Kirby and Spence one case is recorded in which the phosphorescence of the common phosphorescent centipede (Geophilus electricus) was actually seen apparently to serve as a means of defence against an enemy. "Mr. Shepherd," says that authority, "once noticed a scarabeus running round the last-mentioned insect when shining, as if wishing, but afraid to attack it." In the case of the jelly-fishes, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... He sat upright. He grabbed for a cigarette and inhaled it tremendously. "It's going like cutting butter with a hot knife. I started cross-examining today. I gave him three and a half hours of it, straight off the ice, and I'm not through with him yet. Not half. If he had as many legs as a centipede he'd still not have one left to stand on when I'm through with him. I doubt he'll have his marrow bones to crawl out on, the way he's crumpling up. Even old Hounslow at his worst can't possibly misdirect the jury, the way I've ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... Sierra, with spreading ridge and foothill, like some huge, sprawling centipede, its granite back unbroken for a thousand miles. Frost-torn peaks, of every height and bearing, pierce the blue wastes above. Their slopes are dark with forests of sugar pines and giant sequoias, the mightiest of trees, in whose silent aisles one may wander all day long ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... dislike of things that creep and crawl was, it is true, inborn, and persisted; but nowadays if one of the many "triantelopes" that infested the roof showed its hairy legs, she had only to call Hempel, and out the latter would pop with a broomstick, to do away with the creature. If a scorpion or a centipede wriggled from under a log, the cry of "Tom!" would bring the idle lad next door double-quick over the fence. Polly had learnt not to summon her husband on these occasions; for Richard held to the maxim: "Live and let live." If at night a tarantula appeared on the bedroom-wall, he ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... want to look at. This comparison of life to a mountain stream, the rocks brought down by it being the actions, is too much worked out. When we speak of similes not going on four legs, it implies, I think, that a simile is at best but a four-legged animal. Now this is almost a centipede of a simile. I think I have had the same thought as yours here, and I have compared the life of an individual to a curve. You both smile. Now I thought that Dunsford at any rate would be pleased with this reminiscence of college days. But to proceed with my curve. You ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... facts; he only smiled grimly, with a look which meant—"Would we were safe back again!" Poor Wilson! he would have gone only half way with Bacon in his famous Apothegm; he would willingly "commit the Beginnings of all actions to Argus with his hundred eyes, and the Ends"—to Centipede, with his hundred legs. "First to watch, and then to speed"—away! would ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... observation many weeks, and invariably found that when one was interfered with in any way it used its snake-like aft end as a bogey, curving it round towards the molesting hand. A fowl that will attack an 8-inch centipede without hesitation, makes a sensational fuss and clatter when it detects a stick insect, especially when the stick insect feints, however ineffectually, with its perfectly harmless tail. If it is capable of imposing upon a sagacious fowl, the effect of its terrifying aspect ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... they smouldered still within their breasts. They would go with him, they said. But let him look to himself, they swore threateningly. If he betrayed them again, there were men among them who would kill him as remorselessly as they would stamp on a centipede. If he behaved himself and the expedition on which he was to lead them proved successful, they might forgive him—all but old Hornigold. Truth to tell, there was no one among them who felt himself so wronged or so badly treated as the ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to have more legs than a centipede when you try to drag it through a narrow space, and they all stick out in different directions. Of course, this one stuck and then there was more trouble, for when I took an axe to dismember it, a cop threatened ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... recollecting all he had once learned. For my part, I quite agree with Harry. There are a great many things that I have no desire to know. I do not want to know in what words the King of Ashantee says, "Cut off the heads of those women." I do not want to know whether a centipede really has ninety-six legs or one hundred and four. I never did know. I never shall. I have no occasion to know. And I am glad not to have my mind lumbered up with the unnecessary information. On the other hand, that which I have once learned or read ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... "'Twas not in my country's service that I lost my leg—'twas but a runaway accident with two fiery little ponies in Philadelphia! But, indeed," he goes on, still laughing, "I do not miss it greatly, and can get around as easily as though I were a centipede and had a hundred good ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... the Martian official before them had uttered a hissing call, and in answer to it a long shape of shining metal raced into the vast hall and halted beside them. It was like a fifty-foot centipede of metal, its scores of supporting short legs actuated by some mechanism inside the cylindrical body. There was a transparent-walled control room at the front end of that body, and in it a Martian at the controls who snapped open a door from which a ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... the master word of the cult. The rattlesnake is "deadly." The copperhead and moccasin are "deadly." So is the wholly mythical puff adder. In hardly less degree is the tarantula "deadly," while varying lethal capacities are ascribed to the centipede, the scorpion, the kissing-bug, and sundry other forms of insect life. The whole matter is based upon the slenderest foundations. I don't mean, by this, that these ill-famed species are wholly innocuous. It would be highly inadvisable ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... dribbling. He is lost in contemplation of a crack between the tiles. The lines of the tiles grimace like faces. The imperceptible hole grows larger, and becomes a valley; there are mountains about it. A centipede moves: it is as large as an elephant. Thunder might crash, the child ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... incarnations of deities,[1603] or from phenomena that are held to be produced immediately by deities. The flight of owls, bats, or rails, according to its direction, indicates the result of a battle or a war; the howling of a dog is a sign of coming misfortune; if a centipede crawls on the top of a mat it is a good omen, if on the bottom of a mat it is bad; it is unfortunate when a lizard crosses one's path; if a basket be found turned upside down in a road, this is a sign of evil; the way in which sacred stones fall to the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... of Der-al-Bahari, part of it ornamented in fine gold. Hattie smote her pocketbook for the count on this structure—like as not she had to mortgage her Luxor villa to meet the final pay-roll. Den Mut was her architect and he grew rich as the buildings increased. He owned a centipede barge on the Nile, which was the badge of big money ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... me you're running them 'Desert Glimpses' into the ground," her mother grumbled comfortably. "You've got a stack higher than your head, now. And some of these days you'll get bit with a snake or a centipede or—" ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... not be amiss here to ask—What is the meaning of these integrations? The evidence seems to show that they are in some way dependent on community of function. The eight segments which coalesce to make the head of a centipede, jointly protect the cephalic ganglion, and afford a solid fulcrum for the jaws, &c. The many bones which unite to form a vertebral skull have like uses. In the consolidation of the several pieces which constitute a mammalian pelvis, and in the anchylosis of from ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... enter my ears as outstanding losses or amounts brought forward. Going into those woods we were just the same as Damon and Pythias; but coming out his bite would have been instant death, and I felt toward him exactly as the tarantula does toward the centipede. We ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... was at his post; and though all were quick, there was no time to spare, for by this time the black column of the enemy was distinctly visible curling along the valley like a great centipede; and, with the daring enterprise so common among the troops of Napoleon, had begun in silence to mount the breach. It was an awful and eventful moment; but the coolness and determination of the little garrison was equal to ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... manoeuvre, they perceive that their teacher not only aimed at having them learn how to turn to the left at each corner, but also at giving himself an opportunity to make remarks about their feet and the position thereof, and at the end of five minutes each girl feels as if she were a centipede, and you, Esmeralda, secretly wonder whether something in the way of mucilage of thumb-tacks might not be used to keep your own riding boots close to the saddle. "And don't let your left foot swing," says the teacher in closing his exhortations; "hold it perfectly steady! Now change hands ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... this name, which properly belongs only to a kind of wingless beetle, found along the hedgerows and moist banks during the summer. The other insect which shares the name is also known as the electric centipede; it is seen about gardens or fields, and has the peculiarity of leaving upon the path it has trodden a ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... were as fresh as if they had been new laid. Fresh! Carrying them down to the boat one of my nigger chaps dropped one on a rock and it smashed. How I lammed into the beggar! But sweet it was, as if it was new laid, not even smelly, and its mother dead these four hundred years, perhaps. Said a centipede had bit him. However, I'm getting off the straight with the story. It had taken us all day to dig into the slush and get these eggs out unbroken, and we were all covered with beastly black mud, and naturally I was cross. So far as I knew they were the only ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... words, without moss we could not have had Mary; without an ape we could not have had Abraham; and—shocking blasphemy—without a centipede we could not have had Christ! Praise God, we may turn from this to the words of God; "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... They are the largest and the most ferocious ant we know anything about. In an incredibly short space of time they can kill any goat, chicken, duck, hog or dog on the place. In a few hours there is not a rat, mouse, snake, centipede, spider, or scorpion in your house, as they are chased, killed and carried away. We built a fire and slept inside of the circle ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... a few rounds of ammunition left, and still more of the giant reptiles appeared. A centipede with its creeping, horrible legs topped the mass of squirming matter; they could see the terrific sting of the creature, so deadly when but a fraction of an inch long, and which was now at least ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... about you comparing them to ants, and it is curious to notice the involuntary feeling of contempt that possesses you as you watch them. I believe one has a half-defined illusion that we are growing greater as they are growing smaller. Ants and flies! ants and flies! with here and there a fiery centipede in the shape of a District train dashing in and out amongst them. We lose the power of understanding their motions, and their throngs and movements do indeed seem as purposeless at this height as the hurry-scurrying about an anthill. At this height, indeed, ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... yes!" said Irene. "I'm sure Gwen's description sounds exactly like this old lady becoming a ... There!—I've forgotten the word! Something between a centipede ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of having forty-four feet," he cried, "if the centipede can not get on faster than a carabus, which ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... about it. They crawled into all kinds of places, and backed out of all kinds of others, and tapped the walls to see if any was hollow, and turned over sacks of pearl shell and copra, and sneezed and swore and burrowed and choked, till at last Mr. Phelps really found something, and that was a centipede that bit him. This brought them all out on the front veranda again, where I had to pretend I was sorry, which I ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne |
