"Snake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he had served their sovereign with zeal. The soldiers declared that he deserved to die, as they had positive proof that he was a sorcerer, for, in searching his apartments, they had found the skin of a snake and several reptiles preserved in bottles. Against such proof ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... one of the countless variations of the French 'Beauty and the Beast.' A modern Greek tale narrates that a nereid, enamoured of a youth, and by him scorned, turned him into a snake till he should find another love as fair ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... cured me of the typhus, Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost. And only to think that my soul could not react, As Byron's did, in song, in something noble, But turned on itself like a tortured snake — Judge me this way, ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... up to-day in her hateful big car. She did not find me a very agreeable hostess, I'm afraid, but curled up like a nonchalant green snake in one of my armchairs and started to smoke and talk. She asked where Duncan was and I had to explain that he'd been called out to the mines on imperative business. And that started her going on the mines. Duncan, she said, should clean up half a million ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... knelt down before the open window, her shining hair, so darkly brown that it was almost black, hanging gypsylike about her shoulders. (The greater portion of Sarah's hair was at rest upon the rosewood bureau top, coiled like a pale snake, and the remainder was done up on curlers in ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Danish warships snake-shaped, and ends about doing as you'd be done by. It is long, but it has all the beef-bones in it, and all about ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... the title under which was deified a certain mythical personage, called Uga, to whom tradition attributes the honour of having first discovered and cultivated the rice-plant. He is represented carrying a few ears of rice, and is symbolized by a snake guarding a bale of rice grain. The foxes wait upon him, and do his bidding. Inasmuch as rice is the most important and necessary product of Japan, the honours which Inari Sama receives are extraordinary. Almost every house in the country contains somewhere ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... Gertrude, &c. has no more locality in common with Pennsylvania than with Penmanmaur. It is notoriously full of grossly false scenery, as all Americans declare, though they praise parts of the poem. It is thus that self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting any thing which happens, even accidentally, to stumble ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... from the tawny wolf; and {as} the water-duck, surprised at a distance, having left her {wonted} stream, from the hawk. Her the Trojan hero pursues, and, swift with love, closely follows her, made swift by fear. Behold! a snake, lurking in the grass, with its barbed sting, wounds her foot as she flies, and leaves its venom in her body. With her flight is her life cut short. Frantic, he embraces her breathless, and cries aloud,— ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... caught the other by the arm. "If you kill one snake, the others will go for us sure. What an awful lot of them! This locality must be a ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... wondered what it could he. He went, therefore, into the wood in the direction of the sound, to learn what it was. There he saw that the dry grass and leaves had caught fire, and in the middle of a burning circle a Snake was hissing. The Shepherd stopped to see what the Snake would do, for the fire was burning all around it, and the flames approached it nearer and nearer every moment. Then the Snake cried from ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... were divided, roughly, by breeds, as regarded the line of training assigned to them. The collies were taught courier-work. The Airedales, too,—hideous, cruel, snake-headed,—were used as couriers, as well as to bear Red Cross supplies and to hunt for the wounded. The gaunt and wolflike police dogs were pressed into the two latter tasks, and were taught listening-post ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... The splendour of mountain and lake, With their hues that seem ever to vary; The mighty pine-forests which shake In the wind, and in which the unwary May tread on a snake; ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... to wrestle like unto two elephants. And next they dealt each other fierce blows. And then those two mighty ones began to make chattering sounds by gnashing their teeth. And at length, having clenched his fist like a five-headed snake, Bhima with force dealt a blow on the neck of the Rakshasa. And when struck by that fist of Bhima, the Rakshasa became faint, Bhimasena stood, catching hold of that exhausted one. And then the god-like mighty-armed Bhima lifted him with his two arms, and dashing him with force on the ground, the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Columbia, Malheur and Harney in Oregon and Washington. In California encircles Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys and forms a narrow belt around Colorado and Mohave deserts. In Utah covers Salt Lake and Sevier deserts. In Idaho the Snake plains. In Nevada and Arizona irregular areas ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... likings and spites, the comings together and partings, great things were happening—terrible things, because they were so great. Her sense of safety was shaken, as if beneath twigs and dead leaves she had seen the movement of a snake. It seemed to her that a moment's respite was allowed, a moment's make-believe, and then again the profound and reasonless law asserted itself, moulding them all to its ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Set the pan where the liquid will just simmer for six hours, or after boiling for five or ten minutes, put all into the fireless cooker for eight or nine hours. With the butter, flour, and one-half cupful of the clear soup from which the fat has been removed, snake a brown sauce (see p. 39); to this add the meat and the marrow removed from the bone. Heat and serve. The remainder of the liquid in which the meat has been cooked may be ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... objects of the same species, or which, in the imperfect classification of primitive times, he believes to be of the same species. Thus, to give a common example, if some particular viper or other form of snake is the first form of fetish, in the second stage the whole species of vipers, and of the snakes which resemble them, is regarded with the same dread. He next supposes all the snakes which he comes across to emanate from a single power, manifesting ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... better than the big company, and I think it did more good in keeping alive the spirit of patriotism and desire to fight. Its discipline was strict. If a boy left the ranks to jab a spectator, or make faces at a window, or "go for" a striped snake, he was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... which Alec was running. As Bruce came alongside, and was slowly forging ahead, the vicious brute made a spring at him. Quick as it was, it was observed by his Indian master, who, although more than twelve feet from him in the rear, sent out so speedily and accurately that long, heavy, snake-like whiplash that it caught the brute on the nose with such force that, with a howl of pain, he turned to the front before any damage had been done. A few seconds later Alec and this Indian driver sped on right and left of a couple of trains mixed-up ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... has spoken to you? So, Charles Sadler, Charles Sadler!" Her voice came through her white lips like a snake's hiss. ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... joke. He does not condescend to listen. "We must get rid of hideous trousers and feet-strangling skirts [I am lost in admiration over the indictment of the skirt, for I remember a certain reception in Washington in the days of the snake-skirt when I stumbled and fell at a moment when a little dignity would have been my most precious possession]; we must wear loose white draperies amenable to the air and the washtub." I quite agree, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... lay on Epitaphs, Such as make great men gods; my little marble (That only cloaths my ashes, not my faults) Shall far out shine it: And for after issues Think not so madly of the heavenly wisdoms, That they will give you more, for your mad rage To cut off, unless it be some Snake, or something Like your self, that in his birth shall strangle you. Remember, my Father King; there was a fault, But I forgive it: let that sin perswade you To love this Lady. If you have a soul, Think, save her, and be saved, for my self, I have ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the most difficult to run away from, that ever came out of the earth's inside. It had a tail like a boa constrictor, its body was like I do not care what, and it had three separate heads, one of which was a lion's, the second a goat's, and the third an abominably great snake's; and a hot blast of fire came flaming out of each of its three mouths. Being an earthly monster, I doubt whether it had any wings; but, wings or no, it ran like a goat and a lion, and wriggled along like a serpent, and thus contrived to make about as much ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... discovered three new elements, and that had showed me I was but at the beginning of a knowledge of cosmological chemistry. Forbes! He had brought me by force out here on this beastly little planet whose orbit was like that of a snake with the Saint Vitus' dance! He had taken me to this wretched planet which lay at such a remote end of the Universe that not even explorers had ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... heresies of so violent a type that the farmer could hardly keep his seat. Social distinctions were condemned utterly, and the House of Lords referred to as a human dust-bin. The farmer gazed open-mouthed at this snake he ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... head, behind each came a hound, Padding with gentle paws upon the road. Straight silent pines rose here and there around; A dull stream on the left side hardly flowed; A black snake through the sluggish waters wound. Hark, the night raven! see the crawling toad! She thinks how dark will be the moonless night, How feeblest ray is yet ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... "if you two had been in the Garden of Eden when Eve took the apple, you wouldn't have had time to give her a look for counting the scales on the snake!" ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... striking of his match, and for an instant his arm touched a glass; it trembled and hung in the balance, and he shot out a sinewy hand to stop it, and as he did so the sleeve of his dinner jacket caught. On the brown flesh of his forearm I saw a queer, ragged white cross—the scar a snake bite leaves when it is cicatrized. I meant to avoid his eyes, but somehow I caught them instead. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... now ope thine eyes, and first behold Th' effects which thy original crime hath wrought In some, to spring from thee, who never touch'd Th' excepted tree, nor with the snake conspir'd, Nor sinn'd thy sin; yet from that sin derive Corruption to ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... good, it is very good. The white man is cleverer than a jackal. Yes, so shall it be; and may the snake of the Butiana people stand up upon its tail and prosper the war, for so shall we be rid of Wambe and the ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... that. He's used that lameness of his very effectively. It's procured him no end of sympathy, and sympathy is what Thomas likes,—from women. He will tell you all about it some time,—how his negro nurse was frightened by a snake and dropped him on a stone step ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... manifest outside are all imaginary productions in association with the sense faculties. There is first the imagination of a perceiver or soul (jiva) and then along with it the imaginary creations of diverse inner states and the external world. Just as in darkness the rope is imagined to be a snake, so the self is also imagined by its own illusion in diverse forms. There is neither any production nor any destruction (na nirodho, na cotpatti@h), there is no one who is enchained, no one who is striving, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... it'll be a perfect orgy of women and other confusion, and he doesn't like it. All the samee,{sic} I've had to assure him just fourteen times this morning that the ring, the license, the carriage, the minister's fee, and my sanity are all O. K. When he isn't asking questions he's making threats to snake the parson up there an hour ahead of time and be off with ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... the shrew as resembling the village scolds who used to be promptly ducked in horse-ponds in the unregenerate days; but the scold was an individual who was usually chastised for making a dead-set at her husband alone. The real shrew is like the puff-adder or the whip-snake—she tries to bite impartially all round; and she is often able to bite in comparative silence, but with a most deadly effect. The vulgar shrieker is a deplorable source of mischief, but she cannot match ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... snake in the dark, my friend, we jump him together! It's like you, but your friend Shiela won't ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... bands of green (hoist side), white, and red; the coat of arms (an eagle perched on a cactus with a snake is its beak) is centered in the ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... wild pigeons; the jenetee, clocking-hen, crab-catcher, galden, and black heron: the ducks, widgeon and teal; and ostriches to the southward, and of the dunghill-fowls. Of their cattle, horses, etc. Leopards and tigers. Of their serpents; the rattlesnake, small green snake. Amphisbaena, small black and small grey snake; the great land-, and the great watersnake; and of the water-dog. Of their sea-fish and turtle; and ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... and Owen, perhaps, excepted—give you not the man, not the inward humanity, but merely the external mark, that in which Tom is different from Bill. There is something affected and meretricious in the Snake in the Grass[2] ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... God's sunshine? How, through those almost divine features, dare those others force themselves upon him? And not only that; those other features smiled insolently at him. Those grey, rapacious eyes, those dimples, those snake-like tresses, how was it all that seemed to cleave to him, and to shake it all off, and fling it away, he was ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... The snake-house came next, and I went in, on my way to visit the rhinoceros family. I rather like snakes, since I had a tame green one, who lived under the door-step, and would come out and play with me on sunny days. These snakes I found very interesting, only they got under their ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... lot of boys going home from school, when a garter-snake, or any other harmless serpent, crosses their path? They know well enough that the poor things do no harm, and are as afraid as death of them; but see the great stones they heave upon the miserable reptile; the shouts they send up, as it writhes, and coils, and fills the air with ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... uneasiness,' I said, 'of living animals we have only monkeys and parrots at Rodeck, and there's never been a snake about the place; a sea serpent was coming, but it died on the way, and the elephants broke loose before they were shipped at all, and went back to their palm groves—so his highness told me. As to tigers, we have two, ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... his lines—"thought that rattler was a gin-u-ine one. Ding baste my skin if I didn't. Seemed to me I heard him rattle. Look at the blamed, unconverted insect a-layin' under that pear. Little more, and somebody would a-been snake-bit." ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... piece of intelligence: the ring dropped front his hand, and shivered into a thousand pieces; his eye glistened like that of a rattle-snake; and some minutes elapsed before he could pronounce, "Avast! overhaul ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... but a deserted lane, which Sydney had chosen as affording a short cut to Melissa's, and, of a sudden, the passage was closed by a snake fence eight rails high. It was beyond Johnny's jumping powers, but his rider was undaunted. Leaning over the right side of the horse she dexterously pulled apart the top rails where they crossed, and Johnny cleverly stepped ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... lovely pet. When you gave him a piece of meat he said 'Cree,' and clawed chunks out of you, but most of the time he sat in the corner with his chin on his chest, like a broken-down lawyer. We didn't get the affection we needed out of him. Well, then Wind-River found a bull-snake asleep and lugged him home, hanging over his shoulder. We sewed a flannel collar on the snake and picketed him out until he got used to the place. And around and around and around squirmed that snake until we near got sick at our stummicks watching him. ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... through, of the unconscious cottagers snoring there in their beds, of the safe people in the next compartment to mine—to his. Not moving a muscle, we sat there, we two, watching each other, like two hostile cats. Or rather, I thought, he watched me as a snake watches a rabbit, and I, like a rabbit, could not look away. I seemed to hear my heart beating time to the train. Suddenly my heart was at a standstill, and the double beat of the train receded faintly. The man was pointing upwards...I shook my head. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... soon as we had given bail for him. Of course the railroads and ferries would be watched, but we could manage somehow. I must take the fellow where nobody would find him and keep him there. If he ever were brought back and convicted he would turn on us like a snake. Only while he still hoped to escape prison could we count on his co-operation. Meanwhile my partner would remain in the city and try to upset the indictment. Anyhow, some one must stand guard over Dillingham; for, if he lost his nerve and endeavored to ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... form a kind of square with a sharp triangle to the south, upon the left bank of the thalweg, which overflows them during floods. The enceinte is the normal Arab "snake-fence" of dry and barked branches, which imperfectly defends the nurseries of young trees and the plots of Khubbayzah ("edible mallows") from the adjoining camping-place of bald yellow clay. The wells, inside and outside the enclosure, are nine; three stone-revetted, and the rest mere pits in ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... these peaceable incidents there were occasional threats of Indian treachery, like the theft of tools from two woodsmen and the later bold challenge in the form of a headless arrow wrapped in a snake's skin; the latter was returned promptly and decisively with the skin filled with bullets, and the danger was over for a time. The stockade was strengthened and, soon after, a palisade was built about the houses with gates that were locked at night. After the fort of heavy timber was completed, ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... Mr. McKinstry's "snake rail" fence was already discernible in the lighter opening of the woods, not far from where he had halted. As he stood there in hesitation, the pretty figure and bright gown of Cressy McKinstry suddenly emerged from a more secluded trail ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... effect arising from Gerald's recent immersion was a sense of pain in that part of his arm which had been bitten by the rattle snake, on the day of the pic-nic to Hog Island, and it chanced that this morning especially it had a good deal annoyed him, evincing some slight predisposition to inflammation. To subdue this, Henry applied, with his own hand, a liniment which ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... being settled, she goes, and he sits waiting. The afternoon sunlight is making the orchids look more resplendently themselves than ever. So still, so vivid, so alive, they hang their snake-like heads in long pendulous clusters; and among them all there is not a single one which shows the slightest sign of falling-off or decay. Presently the door is softly opened, and the Nurse, entering only ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... account, reckoning. cuento tale, story. cuerda cord, rope. cuerno horn. cuerpo body, corps. cuesta hill. cueva cave, cellar. cuidado care, solicitude, attention. cuidadoso careful, solicitous. cuidar to care for. culata breech of a gun. culebra snake. culpable guilty. culpado transgressor. cultivar to cultivate. culto worship. cumbre f. summit. cumplir to fulfill. cuna cradle. cupula cupola, dome. cura m. priest. curar to cure, care for. curial m. one in a subaltern office in a court. curiosidad f. curiosity. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... I know its value, and I have put it where, the moment you take your first step against me, you will find it lying like a big snake in ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... parrot and cockatoo tribe; a species of the latter was noticed of a rich black plumage, and very like the black cockatoo of New South Wales. Kangaroos from their traces must be numerous, but only a very few were noticed; the only reptile that was found was a black snake, which Mr. Cunningham saw for a moment as it glided past him. This gentleman made a large collection of seeds and dried specimens from the vast variety of beautiful plants and flowers with which nature has so lavishly clothed the hills and ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... another graduate of the Pasteur Institute, has extended the range of the serum-therapy to include the prevention and treatment of poisoning by venoms, and has developed an antitoxine that has already given immunity from the lethal effects of snake bites to thousands of persons ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... by buffaloes, followed them some time; when suddenly the Catawbas rose from their covert, fired at and killed several of the hunters; the others fled, collected a party and went in pursuit of the Catawbas. These had brought with them, rattle snake poison corked up in a piece of cane stalk; into which they dipped small reed splinters, which they set up along their path. The Delawares in pursuit were much injured by those poisoned splinters, and commenced retreating to their camp. The Catawbas discovering this, turned upon their ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... "The crawling snake," quickly retorted John, "serves a most useful purpose. He establishes the raison d'etre of man. Man and his heel are here ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... Suddenly a water snake wriggled across the dark pool above the ford, and the minnows disappeared under the shadow of the bridge. Then Will sighed, lifted his head, and walked on. There seemed to be something prophetic in it, and he drew a long breath. That's the way his ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... through the clamoring hack-drivers and hotel- runners who blocked the entrance to the city, I was roused by a sudden thrill of the instinct of danger that warns one when he meets the eye of a snake. It was gone in an instant, but I had time to trace effect to cause. The warning came this time from the eyes of a man, a lithe, keen-faced man who flashed a look of triumphant malice on us as he disappeared in the waiting-room of the ferry-shed. But the keen face, and the basilisk glance ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... evening I took up my position in this same tree, in the hope that he would make another attempt. The night began badly, as, while climbing up to my perch I very nearly put my hand on a venomous snake which was lying coiled round one of the branches. As may be imagined, I came down again very quickly, but one of my men managed to despatch it with a long pole. Fortunately the night was clear and cloudless, and ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... Hogni warns him against breaking his oath to Sigurd, when it occurs to Gunnar, that his brother Gutthorm had sworn no oath and might do the deed. Both now proceed to excite the latter's greed, and give him wolf's and snake meat to eat to make him savage. Twice Gutthorm makes the attempt, as Sigurd lies in bed, but is deterred by the latter's penetrating glance. The third time he finds Sigurd asleep, and pierces him with his sword. ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... said Miss Do Please. I reckon that's what she used to say to him, coaxin' like, and he kep' it up on her. Well, we was becalmed three days right out on the lake, and I had to row the blessed dingy in the bilin' sun over to Snake Island to get bread ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... hand to find the pistol at her waist. It fell back again; she had no strength; it was as though she were paralysed as a bird is paralysed by a snake so that it cannot open its wings and fly away, but sits there awaiting death. She was given over into the hands of this man whom she hated. Could Heaven allow such a thing? she wondered dimly, and all the while his lips drew nearer ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... he had any license to moon around her. She probably had a fellow; she might even be engaged, for all he knew. And—she was Harry Conroy's sister; and from his experience with the breed, good looks didn't count for anything. Harry was good-looking, and he was a snake, if ever there was one. He had never expected to lie for him—but he had done it, all right—and because Harry's sister happened to have nice eyes ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... advance, and by the cracking of his postilions' whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his traveling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at him. He looked at ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... 'em to Los Angeles, 'specially for his one customer. I know, Antonio offered me some, time and again, on my other visits, but I always thanked him polite and said no. I never did lay out to eat a snake's victuals, and that's ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... in your arms, Janet, A toad, snake, and an eel But hold me fast, nor let me gang, As you do love ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... presence by making the least noise, made his way to where the river is widest. Seen through the blackness of the night the blacker mass of the Trebassof villa loomed like an enormous blot, he stopped. Then he glided like a snake through the reeds, the grass, the ferns. He was at the back of the villa, near the river, not far from the little path where he had discovered the passage of the assassin, thanks to the broken cobwebs. At that moment the moon rose and the birch-trees, which just before had been like great ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... right in the Rigel Royal, when it all began on the night that Cliff Moran blew in, looking lower than an antman's belly and twice as nasty. He'd had a spell of luck foul enough to twist a man into a slug-snake and we all knew that there was an attachment out for his ship. Cliff had fought his way up from the back courts of Venaport. Lose his ship and he'd slip back there—to rot. He was at the snarling stage that night when he ...
— All Cats Are Gray • Andre Alice Norton
... the country from Sechelis, where I had to fly from Boer oppression. Our hearts are black and heavy with grief to-day at the news told us. We are in agony; our intestines are twisting and writhing inside of us, just as you see a snake do when it is struck on the head. We do not know what has become of us, but we feel dead. It may be that the Lord may change the nature of the Boers, and that we will not be treated like dogs and beasts of burden as formerly; but we have no hope of such a change, and ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... sank into the snow; the entire body of the carriage groaned with creaks; the animals were slipping, puffing, steaming, and the driver's gigantic whip was cracking continuously, flying in every direction, coiling up and unrolling itself like a thin snake, and suddenly lashing some rounded back, which then stretched out under a ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... mountain high, For many a sore and weary hour. Through dreary beds of tangled fern, Through groves of nightshade dark and dern, Over the grass and through the brake, Where toils the ant and sleeps the snake; Now o'er the violet's azure flush He skips along in lightsome mood; And now he thrids the bramble bush, Till its points are dyed in fairy blood. He has leapt the bog, he has pierced the briar, He has swum the brook, and waded the mire, Till his spirits ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... People we find the priests attesting their favour with the Deity, and asserting the truth of their religion, by what we may call orthodox magic. We all remember how Aaron's rod, in the form of an orthodox snake, swallowed up the unorthodox rod-snakes of the Egyptian sorcerers, and how Elijah attested the power of the true God by calling down fire from heaven in his contest with the priests of the Sun-god Baal. King Solomon too was for many ages credited with magic powers and was regarded ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... vermin of the void That hid them from his bended bow, Shall crawl from caverns overjoyed, Jackal and snake and carrion crow. And perched above the vulture's eggs, Reversed upon its hideous head, A blue-faced ape shall wave its legs To tell the world ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... I loved children. But if anything excited a suspicion of my pupils, and putting on my spectacles, I saw that I was fondling a snake, or smelling at a bud with a worm in it, I sprang up in horror and ran away; or, if it seemed to me through the glasses, that a cherub smiled upon me, or a rose was blooming in my button-hole, then I felt myself imperfect and impure, not fit to be leading ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... moment did the shrill, monotonous, unceasing rhythm of the whistle cease to dominate the dance. It always rose above the beat of the dancers, it penetrated everything, ruled everything—this single, shrill note, like the chant of a snake charmer. It even showed its power over Dick and Albert. They felt their nerves throbbing to it in an unwilling response, and the dust and the vivid electric excitement of the dancers began to heat their ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... weeks, were saying good-bye. The narrow corridors of the sleeping-cars had African spears piled up on the floor against the wall, very long and inconvenient. Ladies struggled in, with rainbow-coloured baskets almost too big for their compartments. Seats were littered with snake-skins like immense, decayed apple parings; fearsome, crescent-shaped knives; leopard rugs in embryo; and strange headgear in many varieties. Stuffed crocodiles fell down from racks and got underfoot: men walked about ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... lying on the table. Jim pointed exultantly to them and cried: "I've got him, Bupps! There is enough evidence there to send Woods up for twenty years. I wouldn't have used such underhand methods against any one else, against anything but a snake, but I had to ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... cheeks and calling him by names of endearment while her fierce eyes played up and down his trembling form. I do not know why the sight frightened me so, but it did frighten us all dreadfully, especially Leo. The caressing was so snake-like, and so evidently a part of some ghastly formula that had to be gone through.[*] I saw Mahomed turn white under his brown ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... bear her," she had confided to Marjorie. "I'm glad she's a junior. I'll have two years of comfort after she's gone. I suppose she deserves a lot of credit for keeping up in her studies and earning money as a secretary at the same time, but I'd rather have a nice wriggly snake, or a cheerful crocodile for a friend if ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... had cost, with its grounds and magnificent carriage drives, vineyards, and gardens, many thousand pounds. Then the owner died, bankrupt, and for years it remained untenanted, the recrudescent bush slowly enveloping its once highly cultivated lands, and the deadly black snake, iguana, and 'possum harbouring among the deserted outbuildings. But to us boys (when our father rented the place, and the family settled down in it for a two years' sojourn) the lonely house was a palace of beautiful imagination—and ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... she returned hesitatingly. "I had such a lightning-like glimpse of it. Still, in a general way, it was very swarthy and wrinkled—quite ape-like. The lower part was covered with a short, curling, sparse black beard; the eyes were like"—she searched for a simile—"like a snake's." ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... "Come early in the morning if you like, and we will go over to Sleepy Snake Creek and hunt moths and gather dandelions ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... stone steps, and find at their summit a second torii, from whose lower cross-beam hangs festooned the mystic shimenawa. It is in this case a hempen rope of perhaps two inches in diameter through its greater length, but tapering off at either end like a snake. Sometimes the shimenawa is made of bronze, when the torii itself is of bronze; but according to tradition it should be made of straw, and most commonly is. For it represents the straw rope which the deity Futo-tama-no-mikoto stretched behind the Sun-goddess, Ama-terasu-oho-mi-Kami, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... wide gravel drive to the grand portals of the building. They do make nice asylums over there. This was a sort of Chatsworth or Blenheim to look at. Inside it was fitted up in very great style: long carpeted corridors opening out into sort of domed winter gardens, something like the snake house at the Zoo. We came at length to a particularly lofty, domed hall, from which opened several large bathrooms. Splendid places. A row of large white enamelled baths along one wall, cork mats on the floor, and one enormous central water supply, hot and cold, which ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... last they reached a lake, winding like a snake among towering hills, and with a huge baronial castle standing out upon the rocky shore. This imitation ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... temporary politics was limited. What did I care about Peels or Melbournes, when I could enter the council-chamber of Louis the Eleventh, or pass a pleasant morning with Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle? My father lay—like a snake surrounded by fire—in the centre of what had once been his family estate; with purchasers gathering closer and closer round, till, like the snake of the above similitude, he was inclined to sting himself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... we knew, they were open also to another soul. We could see nothing save the Altar and the Effigy, we could only hear the slow chant of the priests and priestesses and the snake-like hiss of the rushing fires. Yet we knew that our hearts were as an open book to One who watched beneath the ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... bad; he was sentimentalizing, rhetorizing, a thing that he particularly abhorred. Not in any sense was he the pitiful prey of his father, the hawk or the snake. Rather was he glad that, after long doubt and perplexity, at last he knew. For that was the passion of all his chaste life: to know the truth and to face ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... simple articles as a pocket-knife, a water-bag, etc., which are indispensable to a traveller in our country, everyone ought to carry with him a good plaster, a nosebag, and some snake poison; maize (mealies) for his horse, the cheapest and most strengthening food that we know of, can always be carried in the nosebag. Snake poison prepared by a good Kaffir doctor is the only cure for snake-bites or the bite of any poisonous insect. The Kaffirs prepare it from ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... smooth, deludin' lies in that chapter. That's the way to talk to people who don't want their right hand to know what cussedness their left hand is up to. Now, Jeremiah Growther, the next time you want to do a mean thing that you wouldn't have all the town know, just remember what a wrigglin' snake in the grass ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... lake. I saw here, lying half in and half out of the water, the rotten wreck of an old overturned boat, with a sickly spot of sunlight glimmering through a gap in the trees on its dry surface, and a snake basking in the midst of the spot, fantastically coiled and treacherously still. Far and near the view suggested the same dreary impressions of solitude and decay, and the glorious brightness of the summer sky overhead seemed only to deepen and harden the gloom and barrenness of the wilderness ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... still whimpering when the mother-weasel reappeared. She did not rush him, now that her young one was safe. She approached more cautiously, and the cub had full opportunity to observe her lean, snakelike body, and her head, erect, eager, and snake-like itself. Her sharp, menacing cry sent the hair bristling along his back, and he snarled warningly at her. She came closer and closer. There was a leap, swifter than his unpractised sight, and the lean, yellow ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... supposed, in my pocket, and I slept sweetly till about midnight, when I happened to open my eyes, and saw something long and black crawl off my bed and slip under the berth. Such a shriek as I gave, my dear! "A snake! a snake! oh, a snake!" And everybody began talking at once, and some of the gentlemen swearing, and the porter came running with the poker to kill it; and all the while it was that ridiculous switch of mine, ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... retreats beneath its own powdered bones, In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes, In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low, In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky, In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs, In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods, In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador, I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... rifle. He drew out a short knife which might be used to skin a beef or carve meat, though certainly no human being had ever used such a weapon against a five-foot rattler. He stooped and rested both hands on his thighs. His feet were not two paces from the poised head of the snake. As if marvelling at this temerity, the big rattler tucked back his head and sounded the alarm again. In response the cowboy flashed his knife in the sun. Instantly the snake struck but the deadly fangs fell a few inches short of the riding boots. At the same second the ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... popular and much sought after by blind beggars. You can get three pounds of copper for a franc and it lasts all day throwing it right and left all the time. I made a great tear in Bonsal's record today by refusing to pay a snake charmer all he wanted and then when he protested I took one of the snakes out of his hands and swung it around my head to the delight of the people. I wanted to show him he was a fakir to want me to pay for ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... is, son, but we've got to go slow." And Roger's look passed furtively along the faces in the car. "We don't want to forget," he warned, "that this is still New England. Every new idea we have we want to go easy with, snake it in." ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... form and diminutive size of certain caudal vertebrae indicate so much analogy with Hydrus as to induce Professor Owen to pronounce this extinct ophidian to have been marine. (Palaeontological Society Monograph Reptiles part 2 page 61.) Among the companions of the sea-snake of Bracklesham was an extinct crocodile (Gavialis Dixoni, Owen), and numerous fish, such as now frequent the seas of warm latitudes, as the Ostracion of the family Balistidae, of which a dorsal spine is figured (see Figure 194), and ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... which will let you see what a snake you've cherished in your bosom, you uxorious old dotard," said Blueskin, tossing a packet of papers to Wood, as he followed ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... skylark's song, "like canary birds got loose"; the splendor of distance—you never see distance in Deptford; the magpie that perched on a stump and cocked a bright eye at the travellers; the thing that rustled a long length through dead leaves in a beech coppice, and was, it appeared, a real live snake—all these made the journey a royal progress to Dickie of Deptford. He forgot that he was lame, forgot that he had run away—a fact that had cost him a twinge or two of fear or conscience earlier in the morning. He was happy as a prince ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... the spot where the foolish Bandy-legs was standing, holding a rather short stick in his hand, with which he had doubtless been tormenting the larger snake just as he had previously ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... out-of-doors. One night I recall that we camped near an abandoned log cabin, and my mother decided to build a fire in that for cooking, and afterward to make a "pallet" on the floor for our sleeping. Just as the fire had gotten well started a large black snake fully a yard and a half long dropped down the chimney and ran out on the floor. Of course we at once abandoned that cabin. Finally we reached our destination—a little town called Malden, which is about five miles from Charleston, the present ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... her, following her quick movements, and swaying from side to side to get out of the reach of the furious fox, was sometimes in the shape of the letter C, and sometimes in that of the letter S, and sometimes looked like a long snake with a curling tail. Loud was the laughter, shrill the shrieks, as the fox drove them hither and thither, and seemed to be in all parts of the room at once. He was a cunning fox that, as well as a bold one. Sometimes, when they thought him ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... blacks were likely to seclude any prisoners from the 'Eva', and accordingly willingly followed the lithe figure of our little guide, as she wound her way through the tangled brake, like a black snake, and with a facility that we in vain attempted to imitate. The troopers—who had reduced their clothing to a minimum, for their sole vestment consisted of a forage-cap and cartridge-belt—wound along as noiselessly as Lizzie; but we poor whites—with our flannel shirts and other complicated ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden |
