"Rattlesnake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very good rule to be sure that your rattlesnake is dead before placing yourself in a position to be bitten. The reform Senators neglected this rule, with the result that after they had the machine element whipped on the direct primary issue, they placed themselves in a position ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... the season progressed, coastwise operations in this quarter became increasingly hazardous for both parties. On October 22, Hull wrote that neither the "Enterprise" nor the "Rattlesnake" could cruise much longer. The enemy still maintained his grip, in virtue of greater size and numbers. Ten days later comes the report of a convoy, with one of the brigs, driven into port by a frigate; that the enemy appear almost ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... San Gregorio," he cried passionately. "I love every rock and cactus and rattlesnake in it. Valgame Dios!" And the maimed right hand twisted and clutched as, subconsciously, he strove to clench his fist. "Ah, who was the coward—who was the traitor that betrayed us for ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... you skinned to death. I've reconstructed every cell in my body since I hit the beach at Dyea. My flesh is as stringy as whipcords, and as bitter and mean as the bite of a rattlesnake. A few months ago I'd have patted myself on the back to write such words, but I couldn't have written them. I had to live them first, and now that I'm living them there's no need to write them. I'm the real, bitter, stinging ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... was that the Indians, about whom he had been dreaming, were upon him; his next that a rattlesnake clung to his finger; and finally, finding it to be the kitten bestowing some scratches on the hand that sought to bereave it of its prize, he uttered the latter exclamation, first in rage; but pleased ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... years before, while Harcourt, we believe, was keeping a frontier doggery in Sidon, and dispensing 'tanglefoot' and salt junk to the hayfooted Pike Countians of his precinct. This would make him as much of the 'pioneer discoverer' as the rattlesnake who first takes up board and lodgings and then possession in a prairie dog's burrow. And if the traveler's tale is true that the rattlesnake sometimes makes a meal of his landlord, the story told at Sidon ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... in connection with his printing office, where he sold a strange variety of goods: legal blanks, ink, pens, paper, books, maps, pictures, chocolate, coffee, cheese, codfish, soap, linseed oil, broadcloth, Godfrey's cordial, tea, spectacles, rattlesnake root, lottery tickets, and stoves—to mention only a few of the many articles he advertised. Deborah Read, who became his wife in 1730, looked after his house, tended shop, folded and stitched pamphlets, bought rags, and helped him to live economically. "We kept no ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... time after. I remember a story, which is, I believe, well authenticated, of a man who had been bitten through his boot by a rattlesnake in America. The man died, and shortly afterward his two sons died one after the other, with just the same symptoms as their father, although they had not been bitten by snakes. It was afterward discovered ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... it, but we dislodged and caught the owner. After digging down another of the holes for six feet, we found, on running a pole into it, that we had not yet dug half-way to the bottom: we discovered, however, two frogs in the hole, and near it we killed a dark rattlesnake, which had swallowed a small prairie dog. We were also informed, though we never witnessed the fact, that a sort of lizard and a snake live habitually with these animals. The petit chien are justly named, as they resemble a small dog in some particulars, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... deceived—however enraptured of wild nature you may be, you do and must require of her some subserviency close about your own dwelling. You cannot there persistently enjoy the wolf and the panther, the muskrat, buzzard, gopher, rattlesnake, poison-ivy and skunk in full swing, as it were. How much, then, of nature's subserviency does the range of your tastes demand? Also, how much will your purse allow? For it is as true in gardening as in statecraft that, your ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... Brazilian vulture of Buffon. I cannot reconcile myself to the adoption of names, which designate, as belonging to a single country, animals common to a whole continent.) the crocodile, the viper, and the rattlesnake. The gaseous emanations, which are the vehicles of this aroma, seem to be evolved in proportion only as the mould, containing the spoils of an innumerable quantity of reptiles, worms, and insects, begins to be impregnated with water. I have seen Indian ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... alone betrayed to the ears of the young lady. The sage-fowl's inherent weaknesses were paraded before her; the hoot of the owl was imitated with ludicrous solemnity; other fowl were described with wonderful attention to detail; and the inevitable rattlesnake was pointed out to her as a serpent whose chief occupation in life was that of posing in the shadow of the sage-brush as a target for the revolver of ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... onion stew by its local name), I will proceed to business, and we will talk about California. By the way, I shall only conduct the exercises, for I feel rather embarrassed by the fact that I've never killed, or been killed by, a bear, never been bitten by a tarantula, poisoned by a rattlesnake, assaulted by a stage- robber, nor anything of that sort. You have all read my story of crossing the plains. I even did that in a comparatively easy and unheroic fashion. I only wish, my dear girls and boys, that we had with us some one of the brave ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... privilege of meeting her unprepossessing brother-in-law; nor had she dreamed what peril she was preparing for Davidge in planning to secure for him and his shipyard the services of this same Jake, as lazy and as amiable as any side-winder rattlesnake that ever basked in ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... blacksnake uncoils in his sight. Voluminously the bloated boa convolves before him. All horrent the cobra exalts his hooded head, and the spanning jaws fly open. Quivers and chitters the tail of the cheerful rattlesnake; silently slips out the forked tongue, and is as silently absorbed. The fangless adder warps up the leg of the Professor, lays clammy coils about his neck, and pokes a flattened head curiously into his open mouth. The young man of Colusa is interested; his ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... flocks of grouse now and then rocked by at morning or evening. On the sand bars along the infrequent streams thousands of geese gathered, pausing in their flight to warmer lands. On the flats of the Rattlesnake, a pond-lined stream, myriads of ducks, cranes, swans, and all manner of wild fowl daily made mingled and discordant chorus. Obviously all the earth was preparing for the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... was dead. A rattlesnake had given her its fatal sting, and the outcast, dreading all men and the coroner not the least, had, silently and alone, buried ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Bill with the trained eyes of a horseman. The animal was an ugly brute as to the head. Its eyes were set too close, and the shape of the nose was deformed from the effects of the rattlesnake's sting. But in legs and body it had the fine lines of a racer. The horse was built for speed. The cowpuncher's heart sank. His bronco was fast, willing, and very intelligent, but the little range pony had not been designed to show its ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... warm day. Rather would she have cast her body into the tides that wash the shores of Manhattan Island. Even to save her father from prison—if it came to that—she could not make this sacrifice. She now felt for Hannibal a horrible detestation, a feeling akin to that she might entertain for a rattlesnake. Whatever good she had seen in him in other days had vanished under the revelations of ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... naturally thought of a mouse, and not being afraid of them, I went on in and closed the door. I doubt if Mrs. Hunt saw me, she was so intently watching the man, who kept on upsetting things. He stopped finally, and then held up on the wood a snake—a dead rattlesnake! We measured it, and it was over ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... scrofulous and cutaneous affections. It has also the property of destroying living microscopical matter in or on the human body. The Negro Casta, who discovered this herb, afterwards, as a remedy against the deadly bite of the rattlesnake, received a considerable reward from the Assembly of South Carolina. It is a native of most parts of Europe and Asia, as also of Japan. Plantain stands in the forefront of all ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope
... good breeze, and in five minutes the sails had filled and they were drawing away from the island, when they heard a loud hissing sound. Looking towards the castle they saw coiled on the dock they had just left a monstrous rattlesnake. ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... rather short-legged gray squirrel, with a funny little yelp and a troglodyte habitation, lives in villages or cities of from five hundred to five thousand dens, each (or most of them) tenanted in common with him by a harmless little Owl and a Rattlesnake of questionable amiability. The Owl sits by the mouth of the hole till driven away by your approach, when he follows his confrere's example by diving; the Rattlesnake stays usually below, to give any prowling, thieving prairie-wolf, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of certain animals, and above all of a man, particularly of a "blue-gum nigger," is regarded as so dangerous is on account of the swarms of germs that breed in any remnants of food left between the teeth or in the pockets of ulcerating gums. Many a human bite is almost as dangerous as a rattlesnake's. The devoted hero who sucks the poison of the dagger out of the wound may be conferring a doubtful benefit, if he happens to ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... Philadelphia, from which city, one morning in January, 1776, a fleet of eight vessels set sail. As they were about to weigh anchor, John Paul Jones, a lieutenant on the flagship, flung to the breeze a yellow silk flag on which were a pine tree and a coiled rattlesnake, with this motto: "Don't tread on me." This was the first flag ever hoisted ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... was of the same date, 1775. It was a yellow flag with the representation of a rattlesnake coiled, ready to strike, in green, and the motto below ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... search. It might have been ludicrous if I had had any desire to laugh, for the chief wore the gingerly air of a man looking for a rattlesnake which has to be got somehow. And my client assisted at the inspection with all the graces of a dancing-master. McCann poked into the forward lockers where we kept the stores,—dropping the iron lid within an inch ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of a region may thus be read without resorting to a book. Count the fauna: Eagle River, Bald Eagle, Buffalo Lake, Great Bear Lake, Salmon Falls, Snake River, Wolf Creek, White Fish River, Leech Lake, Beaver Bay, Carp River, Pigeon Falls, Elkhorn, Wolverine, Crane Hill, Rabbit Butte, Owl, Rattlesnake, Curlew, Little Crow, Mullet Lake, Clam Lake, Turtle Creek, Deerfield, Porcupine Tail, Pelican Lake, Kingfisher, Ravens' Spring, Deer Ears, Bee Hill, Fox Creek, White Rabbit—can any one mistake the animals haunting these places in earlier days? Trapper's Grove tells ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... is that, as with Bunthorne, a "tendency to soliloquy" is growing upon him which will need watching. But he clothes his reflections pleasantly enough. Already known as what the old lady called "an agreeable rattlesnake," he has now proved himself a story-teller ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... guiltless, there would be a deal less sin and misery in this world. As for me, Hannah, I feel it to be my solemn duty to Nora, to womankind, and to the world, to seek out the wretch as wronged her and kill him where I find him, just as I would a rattlesnake as had bit ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... alone, men," said Jack Chase. "Only keep off the tail of a rattlesnake, and he'll ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... curiously enough, was a quarter of a mile from the house, and the way to it led up a shallow draw past the cattle corral. Grandmother called my attention to a stout hickory cane, tipped with copper, which hung by a leather thong from her belt. This, she said, was her rattlesnake cane. I must never go to the garden without a heavy stick or a corn-knife; she had killed a good many rattlers on her way back and forth. A little girl who lived on the Black Hawk road was bitten on the ankle and had been ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... until they had buried themselves, head and ears, in the marshes on the other side, where they all miserably perished to a man; and their bones being collected and decently covered by the Tammany Society of that day, formed that singular mound called Rattlesnake Hill, which rises out of the center of the salt marshes a little to the east ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... inside of the basin, one of which represents a woman, the other, judging from the character of the posterior extremity of the body, a reptilian conception in which a single foreleg is depicted, and the tail is articulated at the end, recalling a rattlesnake. Upon the head is a single feather;[128] the two eyes are represented on one side of the head, and the line of the alimentary tract is roughly drawn. The figure is represented as standing before that of ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... hordes, such as the Jersey coast provides, but we do sometimes come home and hear what sounds like a cosy tea-kettle in the courtyard, whereupon the defender of the family reaches for his gun and there is one rattlesnake less to dread. ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... presence, all the more quieting because it seemed to be so deadly sure and cool, Jean felt the uplift of his dark spirit, the acceptance of fatality, the mounting control of faculties that must wait. The little gunman seemed to have about his inert presence something that suggested a rattlesnake's inherent knowledge of its destructiveness. Jean sat down ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... Greece, and most of all in Arcadia. If on foot, he can pick up a stone, at sight of which the enemy will beat a hasty retreat. Greece seems to have been bountifully supplied with loose stones of the right size for this very purpose, just as the rattlesnake-plant is said to grow wherever the rattlesnake itself is found. If on horseback, he can easily escape, although the animal will not scruple to hang to the horse's tail or bite his heels. Such was Arcadia in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... as I was stretching out my hand to gather some of the delicious produce of that paradise of fruit and flowers, I heard the sound of a rattlesnake, that was preparing to make a spring, and immediately I saw the glistening eyes of a copper-head, which I had disturbed ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... the questions he asked me. Well, I'm willing to leave it to Paul. He always thinks of the whole shooting match when trying to give the troop a bully good time. Just remember what we went through with when we camped out up on Rattlesnake Mountain, will you?" ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... cigar and coffee, in which he found immense comfort after a hearty meal. To be disturbed at this most luxurious moment of the day was, to a man of his temperament, about as pleasant a sensation as being stung by a rattlesnake. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... Pleasant Valley Rancho. The trail again lost. Camping out for the night. Growling bears. Arrive at Pleasant Valley Rancho. Flea-haunted shanty. Beauty of the wilderness. Quail and deer. The chaparrals, and their difficulty of penetration by the mules. Escape from a rattlesnake. Descending precipitous hill on muleback. Saddle-girth breaks. Harmless fall from the saddle. Triumphant entry into Rich Bar. Tribute to mulekind. The Empire Hotel. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... New Year's Day, 1776, occurred an event of importance in the hoisting of the flag with the thirteen stripes. Previously the colonies had used different devices, in the South a rattlesnake flag with the motto, "Don't tread on me," and for the Connecticut troops the colony arms and the motto Qui transtulit sustinet, "which we construe thus: 'God, who transplanted us hither, will support us.'"[142] Massachusetts had used the pinetree flag and the motto "Appeal to Heaven," ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... sometimes have dreams but usually they don't pay no attention to them. But when you get older and keep having dreams you begin to pay attention. Maybe you see a bear or a rattlesnake or Water Baby or anything. It tell you that you are going to be a doctor. The next morning you go out and bathe and pray. This thing keeps coming [in your dreams]. It may take any form, a skeleton or an animal ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... for a tan vest which buttoned close around his throat; his boots were of the very best quality, and fitted the calf of his leg snugly, and on his head was an expensive Stetson, with the skin of a rattlesnake for ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... commissary supplied was no easy problem in the new settlement. Sometimes they ate boiled rattlesnake in default of anything better. On one occasion, while the little band of settlers was assembled in prayer in one of the log cabins, someone espied a bear swimming across the Cuyahoga River. The coming of the bear was looked upon as providential, ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... friend and a bad enemy," Harry said as he tossed off his portion. "As a rule there ain't no doubt that one is better without it; but there is no better medicine to carry about with you. I have seen many a life saved by a bottle of whisky. Taken after the bite of a rattlesnake, it is as good a thing as there is. In case of fever, and when a man is just tired out after a twenty-four hours' tramp, a drop of it will put new life into him for a bit. But I don't say as it hasn't killed a sight more than ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... half-grown young lying together in a nest of dry grass, and, wonderful to tell, a large venomous snake coiled up amongst them. The snake was the dreaded vivora de la cruz, as the gauchos call it, a pit-viper of the same family as the fer-de-lance, the bush-master, and the rattlesnake. It was about three feet long, very thick in proportion, and with broad head and blunt tail. It came forth hissing and striking blindly right and left when the dogs pulled the opossums out, but was killed with a blow of the ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... Camembert, would have found the cloudy brown liquor virulently repulsive. It contained in solution, with other things, the vital element of surprise, for it was comparatively odourless, and, unlike the chivalrous rattlesnake, gave no warning of what it was about to do. In the case of Penrod, the surprise was complete and its ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... found a bed of that exceptionally poisonous mushroom named Pallida something or other ... the book said its poison was kin to that of the poison in the rattlesnake's bite. My eyes met with Hildreth's ... we needed say no word, both thinking the same thought that frightened us!... "how easy ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... firmly. "When I want to follow up Cleopatra's fashion, and commit suicide, I am goin' to hire a rattlesnake, and take my poison as ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... egotism, and a family pride which mainly, if not entirely, sprang from it. Such a heart as Garcia's, what a place to nestle in! Such a creature as Coronado seeking comfort in such a breast as his uncle's was very much like a rattlesnake warming himself in a ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... exhibiting its bloody claws to the view of mourning relatives and sympathizing friends. How such a black-hearted misanthrope as Bryant should possess an imagination teeming with beautiful poetical images astonishes me; one would as soon expect to extract drops of honey from the fangs of the rattlesnake." ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... public in next week's illustrated paper. The feathered end of his shaft titillates harmlessly enough, but too often the arrowhead is crusted with a poison worse than the Indian gets by mingling the wolf's gall with the rattlesnake's venom. No man is safe whose unguarded threshold the mischief-making questioner has crossed. The more unsuspecting, the more frank, the more courageous, the more social is the subject of his vivisection, the more easily does he get at his vital secrets, if he has any to be extracted. ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... strange adventures were destined to befall them during this eventful outing, together with the fun that William and Bobolink afforded the troop, will be recounted in the next volume, to be called: "The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour; or, The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain." ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... tasted much like venison; and besides these profitable beasts we have also in this country lions, bears, wolves, foxes, and particularly very many snakes, which are large and as long as eight, ten, and twelve feet. Among others, there is a sort of snake, which we call rattlesnake, from a certain object which it has back upon its tail, two or three fingers' breadth long, and has ten or twelve joints, and with this it makes a noise like the crickets. Its color is variegated much like our large brindled bulls. These snakes have very sharp teeth in ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various
... not a rattlesnake, nor was it any kind of a snake such as are usually found in this part of our country, of that I ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... famed for his cure for poison, which was a decoction of plantain, hoar-hound and golden rod roots compounded with rum and lye, together with an application of tobacco leaves soaked in rum in case of rattlesnake bite. In 1750 the legislature ordered his prescription published for the benefit of the public, and the Charleston journal which printed it found its copies exhausted by the demand.[11] An example of more common episodes appears in a letter from William Dawson, a Potomac planter, to Robert ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... sir. I understand perfectly. A flagon of ale, Bob, for me." He leaned closer to Barnes and said, in what was supposed to be a confidential aside: "Don't tackle the whiskey. It would kill a rattlesnake." ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... the head of a sea-turtle," "carried ten to twelve inches above the water," "larger than the head of any dog," "like the head of a rattlesnake, but nearly as large as the head of a horse," "head two feet above the surface of the water," "top of his head flat," "a prong or spear about twelve inches long which might have been his tongue," "as large as a man's head," "large as a four-gallon keg," "about a foot above the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... Bishop-General proves that the rod Which lashes women is blest of God. There's a rod to come, ere the red leaves fall, Which will swallow your rattlesnake, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... three-card monte. His right name was Jackson McGee. He was born and raised in the mountains of Virginia, and spent much of his early life catching snakes, which he would sell to showmen, who gave him the name of "Rattlesnake Jack." He was over fifty years of age, and weighed about 160 pounds, at the time he and I worked together. He was a good talker, and had but few equals at throwing the three cards. He looked like ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... aside though now, you all remember that rattlesnake I killed last year was almost as ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... Reminiscence Sonnet Lines An Easter Hymn A Christmas Hymn When I Go Home Odessa Trifles Sunburnt Boys Gray Days An Invalid A Caged Mocking-Bird Dawn Harvest Two Pictures October The Old Clock Tear Stains A Prayer She Being Young Paul Jones The Drudge The Wife Vision September Barefooted Pardon Time The Rattlesnake The Prisoner Sonnet Folk Song "97": The Fast ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... Chief, surprised, "to the Buffalo roads, of course. We must be changing pasture." As he pawed contempt upon the short, dry grass, the rattlesnake, that had been sunning himself at the foot of the hummock, slid away under the bleached buffalo skull, and the small, furry things dived everywhere into ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... when persecution had almost destroyed them. He was in America, too, and had his life saved by a rattlesnake. The Indians were going to kill him, when they saw him sleeping with the snake by his side, and thought it ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... For Unk Wunk has a weapon that no prowler of the woods ever calculates upon. His broad, heavy tail is armed with hundreds of barbs, smaller but more deadly than those on his back; and he swings this weapon with the vicious sweep of a rattlesnake. It is probably this power of driving his barbs home by a lightning blow of his tail that has given rise to the curious delusion that Unk Wunk can shoot his quills at a distance, as if he were filled with compressed air—which is, of course, a harmless absurdity that keeps people ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... an Indian woman at Olancha who made bottle-neck trinket baskets in the rattlesnake pattern, and could accommodate the design to the swelling bowl and flat shoulder of the basket without sensible disproportion, and so cleverly that you might own one a year without thinking how it was done; but Seyavi's baskets had a touch beyond cleverness. ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... don't care to talk about with you," Grant said, very quietly, "but since you have mentioned this one you must listen to me. Just as it is one's duty to give no needless pain to anything, so there is an obligation on him to stop any other man who would do it. Is it wrong to kill a grizzly or a rattlesnake, or merciful to leave them with their meanness to destroy whatever they want? Now, if you had known a quiet American who did a tolerably dangerous thing because he fancied it was right, and found him shot in the back, and the trail of the man who crept up behind him ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... and surveyors who took everything for granted, and spared each other the most wearisome bore of English and Scotch life, the stories of the big game they killed. A bear was an occasional amusement; a wapiti was a constant necessity; but the only wild animal dangerous to man was a rattlesnake or a skunk. One shot for amusement, but one had other matters to ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... a blessing that a rattlesnake has to coil before it can spring. No one has ever written up life from a rattler's point of view, although it has been unfeelingly stated that fear of snakes is an inheritance from our ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... so he heard a vicious, locust-like whir, whose meaning he recognized. An immense rattlesnake was in the bushes, and Fred had descended almost upon it. But for the tremendous effort of Jack he would have dropped squarely upon the velvety body, with consequences too frightful to be thought of; but his great leap carried ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... bank of the Gila to White's Ranch; thence to the celebrated ruins of the Casa Blanca, so graphically described by Mr. John R. Bartlett in his "Personal Narratives" of the Boundary Commission; thence to Rattlesnake Spring; thence to old Fort Breckenridge, which had been so cowardly deserted the year before by our regular troops; thence to Canon de Oro. As we now approached Tucson, everything was in fighting trim. A short halt was made near the town, and the cavalry company, in two divisions, approached ...
— Frontier service during the rebellion - or, A history of Company K, First Infantry, California Volunteers • George H. Pettis
... and, leaping in the air, threw the ice on the floor and dared any one to touch it. From the "personal" boys who had travelled to Matadi the Mission boys had heard of ice. But none had ever seen it. They approached it as we would a rattlesnake. Each touched it and then sprang away. Finally one, his eyes starting from his head, cautiously stroked the inoffensive brick and then licked his fingers. The effect was instantaneous. He assured the others it was "good chop," and each of them sat hunched ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... got no time ter fool with ye now, old rattlesnake," she called back, as she went. "Ef I wasn't in sech a hurry, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... the dogs sometimes made prizes of rabbits and hares, which are very plentiful here, and great numbers of which we often shot for our dinners. There was another animal that I was not so much disposed to find amusement from, and that was the rattlesnake. These are very abundant here, especially during the spring of the year. The latter part of the time that I was on shore, I did not meet with so many, but for the first two months we seldom went into ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... rain this morning, attended by high wind; but generally speaking, have remarked that thunder storms are less frequent than in the Atlantic states, at this season. Snakes too are less frequent, though we killed one to-day of the shape and size of the rattlesnake, but of a lighter colour. We fixed our camp on the north side. In the evening, captain Clarke, in pursuing some game, in an eastern direction, found himself at the distance of three hundred and seventy yards from the camp, at a point of the river whence ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... of us a diamond-back rattlesnake must have awaited the attack he sensed, though we could not yet see him. Time after time the king snake swept by in front of us, decreasing the circles and, I thought, increasing his speed. After each revolution we stepped in a little nearer, being careful not ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... whose attention had first been attracted by a watch-chain from which hung a pound of jingling gew-gaws, and by a green coat with a collar whimsically cocked up, which gave the old man the semblance of a rattlesnake. The banker approached the usurer to find out how and why he had thus ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... louder than before. They issued from the mouth of Marie, whom Jake Rule, Kansas Casey, and four other men were taking to the calaboose. They were doing their duty as gently as possible, and Marie was making it as difficult for them as possible. She was as mad as a teased rattlesnake, and not a man of her six captors but bore the marks of fingernails, or ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... used in this dance are treated from first to last with the utmost kindness and respect, especially the rattlesnakes, a dozen of which will frequently be squirming on the ground at once. It is noticeable that the Indians never pick up a rattlesnake when coiled, but always wait until it straightens itself out under the feather stroking, for it is claimed that the rattlesnake cannot strike uncoiled. At all events, when one is at its full length, the Indians not only catch ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... flanks in the gulch, and Rattlesnake Creek just a-bilin', Not a plank left in the dam, and nary a bridge on the river. I had the gray, and the Jedge had his roan, and his nevey, Chiquita; And after us trundled the rocks jest loosed from the top of ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... by a rattlesnake, Myrtle Olson's| |leg was slashed with a table knife, | |washed the wound with kerosene, then | |covered the incision with salt by her | ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... 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 ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... child was rolling his "bushee," and with true frontier woman's pluck, ran and snatched up the bare-footed Fernando, when only within two feet of the deadly serpent, carried him to the house, and with the stout staff assailed and killed the rattlesnake. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... spite—the cencoatl, which has five feet, and shines in the dark; so that fortunately a warning is given of the vicinity of these animals in different ways; in some by the odour they exhale, in some by the light they emit, and in others, like the rattlesnake, by the sound ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... and welcome, if that is the best thing for society; hate him, in a certain sense, as you hate a rattlesnake, but, if you pretend to be a philosopher, recognize the fact that what you hate in him is chiefly misfortune, and that if you had been born with his villanous low forehead and poisoned instincts, and bred among creatures of the Races Maudites ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... crotalin," he announced, "the venom of the rattlesnake— crotalus horridus. It has been noticed that persons suffering from certain diseases of which epilepsy is one, after having been bitten by a rattlesnake, if they recover from the snake bite, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the extension phone went off like an annoyed rattlesnake. Walters scooped it up, spoke into it, listened for a moment, and handed ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... away to the council and found it already assembled and impatiently waiting his coming. A ferocious-looking Indian was standing by a table on which lay a rattlesnake's skin filled with arrows; this was the Indians' signal of warfare. The council was debating whether it would be better to reply to the challenge or try peaceful measures, but Miles Standish settled the matter without more ado. Advancing to the table, he picked up the rattlesnake's skin, and with ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... or die with him. But first they had disclosed the situation to Melton, who had sworn in his rage to follow after them and aid them in the rescue. How faithfully he had kept his word, how skillfully and daringly he had led them on and rushed the camp just as Dick was steeling himself to undergo the rattlesnake torture that the bandit chief had planned for him, was engraven indelibly on the memories of the boys. Until the day of their death they could never forget how the old war horse, with everything to lose and nothing to gain, had come to their assistance simply because they were Americans and ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... as May, although October is not too late to find this generous bloomer in pine woodlands, dry thickets, and sandy soil. Purplish-veined oval leaves, more or less hairy, that spread in a tuft next the ground, are probably as efficacious in curing shake bites as those of the Rattlesnake Plantain. When a credulous generation believed that the Creator had indicated with some sign on each plant the special use for which each was intended, many leaves were found to have veinings suggesting the marks on a snake's body; therefore, by simple reasoning, they must extract venom. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... said "We like everything to do its office, whether it be a milch-cow or a rattlesnake," he assumed, perhaps somewhat too hastily in the latter case, that all the world understands the functions which a milch-cow or a rattlesnake is called upon to perform. No one can doubt that the office of a ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... with a stiff back, black beard, short hair, loud voice, and buff waistcoat, people of fashion, on the contrary, stand in continual awe; his tongue is to them a rattlesnake's tail wagging only as a signal for them to get out of his way; they quiver like an aspen at the sound of his voice, and for their own particular, would rather hear the sharpening of a saw: if such a one courts their acquaintance, they are hopelessly, despairingly polite; if, as is usual, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... peculiar form of twisted English and at odd moments given to the consumption of a delicacy of strictly Germanic origin, known in the language of the Teutons as a rollmops. A rollmops consists of a large dilled cucumber, with a pickled herring coiled round it ready to strike, in the design of the rattlesnake-and-pinetree flag of the Revolution, the motto in both instances being in effect: "Don't monkey with the buzz saw!" He carried his rollmops in his pocket and frequently, in art galleries or elsewhere, would draw it out and nibble it, while ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Villa Nova I saw a rattlesnake for the first time. I was returning home one day through a narrow alley, when I heard a pattering noise close to me. Hard by was a tall palm tree, whose head was heavily weighted with parasitic plants, and I thought the noise was a warning that it was about to fall. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... right dropped to his hip. With a motion too quick for the eye to follow the free arm straightened and the mountain echoed wildly to the loud report of a forty-five. By the side of the road in the rear of the wagon a rattlesnake uncoiled its length and writhed ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... Colored folks could get land through Andy Flemming (colored man). Mr. Henry Edmondson and whole family died with the yellow fever. He had several children—Miss Emma, Henry, and Will I knowed. It is probably his father buried at far side of this town. A rattlesnake bit him. Lake Rest or Scantlin was a boat landing and that was where the nearest white folks lived to the Edmondsons. I worked for Mr. Henry Edmondson, the one died with yellow fever. He was easy to work for. Land wasn't cleared out much. He was here before ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... tarnal, pisoned, alligator of a ring-tailed, roaring, pestiferous, rattlesnake, that critter 'the Old Country,' would jist about give up one half its skin, and wriggle itself slick out of the other, rayther than go for to put our dander up at this present identical out-and-out important critical crisis! I conceit their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... for an excuse. "A rattlesnake. It struck at me and missed. It almost struck me. I'll be ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... been ignorantly believed for ages. A prominent physician told me the other day that many a condition of nervous prostration now could be directly traced to selfishness. We know that hatred and anger produce fatal poisons. The rattlesnake is a splendid example of that. I am told that its poison and the white of an egg are formed of exactly the same amounts of the same elements. The difference in effect is the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... me "Sir"?' cried Mantalini. 'Me who dote upon her with the demdest ardour! She, who coils her fascinations round me like a pure angelic rattlesnake! It will be all up with my feelings; she will throw ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... I climb'd some tall maize plants, and ate up the ears, And enjoy'd the repast, notwithstanding my fears; For great is my awe of the red Indian's gun, And I thought I had caught a slight glimpse of one. I saw, too, a rattlesnake creeping hard by, And heard his tail clatter, and mark'd his red eye. He coil'd himself up, for he spied me right soon, And was wishing, no doubt, for a bit of raccoon; Then, thinking the risk of a rifle in truth, Was better by far than ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... these words, when, turning suddenly my head round, my attention was attracted by an object before me, and a gleam of hope irradiated my gloomy mind: close to my feet I beheld five or six stems of the rattlesnake master weed. I well knew the plant, but I had been incredulous as to its properties. Often had I heard the Indians speaking of its virtues, but I had never believed them. "A drowning man will seize ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... grow, to frighten away storms, and to drive off witches; prayers for long life, for safety among strangers, for acquiring influence in council and success in the ball play. There were prayers to the Long Man, the Ancient White, the Great Whirlwind, the Yellow Rattlesnake, and to a hundred other gods of the Cherokee pantheon. It was in fact an ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... animals in this region were very tame, for they had not learned to fear men. Yet among them the explorers found some dangerous enemies. One was the grizzly bear, and another the rattlesnake. But the greatest scourges of all were the tiny, buzzing mosquitoes, which beset them in ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... absolutely graceful as a rattlesnake, and none more gentle in intention. It is only against imposition that he protests. Our forefathers had learned a not unworthy lesson from their contact with nature in the New World when they put upon the first flag of the colonies a rattlesnake, with the Latin legend, Nemo ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... years later he was M.B. and the possessor of the gold medal for anatomy and physiology. An appointment as surgeon in the navy proved to be the entry to Huxley's great scientific career, for he was gazetted to the "Rattlesnake", commissioned for surveying work in Torres Straits. He was attracted by the teeming surface life of tropical seas and his study of it was the commencement of that revolution in scientific knowledge ultimately ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... San Diego, three miles from the present city. He had offended Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, by his irreverent wit, and was punished by exile to this then almost unknown region, which he called "Sandy Ague," chiefly inhabited by the flea, the horned toad, and the rattlesnake. Mr. Ames, of the Herald, a democratic paper, asked Derby, a stanch whig, to occupy the editorial chair during a brief absence. He did so, changing its politics at once, and furnishing funny articles ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... the chronicles of that sun-blistered land, home of the scorpion and rattlesnake, the Apache and tarantula, had that sun shone on scene so dramatic as that the Exiles long referred to as "'Tonio's Trial," and never, perhaps, was trial held with less of the panoply and observance of the law and ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... ridge, some two hundred feet in length, irregular in formation and height, resembling a huge molehill, extending down from the Rocky Mountain heights and being across the river's course; the "Gate" being a vertical section, the width of the stream, cut out of a spur of Rattlesnake Mountain. If his Satanic majesty, whose name it bears, had charge of the construction, apparently he intended it only as a passage-way for the river, the cut being the exact width of the river as it flows through. The greater ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... me snow or sweat or smoke de reason. Dat ain't de reason. Dey a old, old, slowfooted somethin' from Louisiana and dey say he de conjure man, one dem old hoodoo niggers. He git mad at me de last plum-ripenin' time and he make up powdered rattlesnake dust and pass dat through my hair and I sho' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... a baby rattlesnake of mine," said Field, whose watch had not been accepted by the foundling. "In fact, there ain't but a few of us here into camp which knows the ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... reforming! You see, he did actually think of me, for once. Oh, yes. I snapped him three times. I rather think he didn't like the sound, for he darted his head at me wickedly. I suspected it might be a rattlesnake, though," ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... "tomahawk claim"—that is by cutting his name into the bark of a deadened tree, usually beside a spring—supported a forest of tall trunks and interlacing leafage. The long grass and weeds which covered the ground in a wealth of natural pasturage harbored the poisonous copperhead and the rattlesnake and, being shaded by the overhead foliage, they held the heavy dews and bred swarms of mosquitoes, gnats, and big flies which tortured both men and cattle. To protect the cattle and horses from ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... necessitates the employment of a particular species of spider known to the learned as NEPHILA MACULATA PISCATORUM. This spider was discovered on Dunk Island by Macgillivray, the naturalist of the expedition of H.M.S. RATTLESNAKE in 1848. It has a large ovate abdomen of olive-green bespangled with golden dust; black thorax, with coral-red mandibles; and long, slender legs, glossy black, and tricked out at the joints with golden touches. A fine creature, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... most horses. He was ambling along at his easy little fox-trot that would carry Starr many a mile in a day, and he had his eyes half shut against the sun glare, and his nose almost at a level with his knees. I suppose he was dreaming of cool pastures or something like that, when a rattlesnake, coiled in the scant shade of a weed, lifted his tail and buzzed as stridently, as abruptly as thirteen rattles and a ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... birds were rare, the place abounded with rattlesnakes—the rattlesnake's nest, it might have been named. Wherever we brushed among the bushes, our passage woke their angry buzz. One dwelt habitually in the wood-pile, and sometimes, when we came for firewood, thrust up his small head between two logs, and hissed at the ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... assistant surgeon on the "Rattlesnake," and above him was a naturalist who much of his time lay in his bunk and read treatises on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... One of the most essential things to be done in a prison is the classification of the inmates. This is not done in the Missouri penitentiary. Here the mere youth often cells with a hardened old criminal of the worst description. I would rather a child of mine would be boxed up with a rattlesnake. In this institution there are nearly 2,000 criminals huddled up together—an indiscriminate mass. The officials are not to blame for this. They realize the terrible condition of things at the prison. They have not sufficient room ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... remarkably skilled in curing the bite of venomous serpents, and have found a medicine peculiarly adapted to the bite of each species. For example, the leaf of the Rattlesnake-root (Polygala senega) is the most efficacious remedy against the bite of this dreadful animal. God has mercifully granted it to grow in the greatest plenty in all parts most infested by the rattlesnake. It is very remarkable ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... He says to a man wearing alligator boots there is little danger, for the fang of the reptile cannot go through the leather, and the snake rarely strikes as high as one's knee. But he had at least one experience with a rattlesnake not ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... Sirrah, I will ruin and annihilate you!"—and "tossed me about the room with his fist on my throat," says Hirsch; "offering to have pity nevertheless, if I would take back the Jewels, and return all writings." [Narrative (in—Tantale—).] Eyes glancing like a rattlesnake's, as we perceive; and such a phenomenon as Hirsch had not expected, this Christmas! In short, the matter has here fairly exploded, and is blazing aloft, as a mass of intricate fuliginous ruin, not to be deciphered henceforth. Such a scene ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... after giving himself time for prayer and piety, amused himself in hunting, and drew upon his natural gaiety and cheerfulness, without knowing anything of the Court, or of what was passing! Compare this portrait with his real character, and we shall feel with terror what a rattlesnake was ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... feeling of a life-prisoner emerging from the Bastille, he began to crawl stiffly forward: and it was just then that the first of the disturbing events occurred which were to make this night memorable to him. Something like a rattlesnake suddenly went off with a whirr, and his head, jerking up, collided with the piano. It was only the cuckoo-clock, which now, having cleared its throat as was its custom before striking, proceeded to cuck eleven times in rapid succession before subsiding with another rattle: but to Sam it ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... is drawn to the rattlesnake's power, As the smoker's eye fills at the opium hour, As a horse reaches up to the manger above, As the waiting ear yearns for the whisper of love, From the arms of the Bride, iron-visaged and slow, The Captain bent down to ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... if a rattlesnake had buzzed at his back, the second leaped to his feet with an oath; they stared in the direction whence the voice ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Pearl said, addressing Mrs. White, "Jimmy and me thought anything about a rattlesnake would do for a temperance piece, and if you had only let Jimmy go on you would have seen what happened even a snake that et what he hadn't ought to, and please ma'am, Jimmy and me thought it might be a good ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... old mades met together in the village milliner shop, where the Sore-eye-siss society held meetin's once a week, and their false teeth trembled like a rattlesnake's tail, when they read my ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various |
