"Creeping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Euphrasia. "She loved all nature. There wasn't a living, creeping thing that wasn't her friend. I've seen birds eat out of her hand in that window where you're settin', and she'd say to me, 'Phrasie, keep still! They'd love you, too, if they only knew you, but they're afraid you'll scrub 'em if you get hold of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sympathy, it was for that girl who had been persecuted, unfairly accused of stealing, sent to a place worse than prison, afterward branded with the stigma of "jailbird"; that girl whom Tunis Latham had befriended, had rescued from a situation which she could not think of now without a feeling of creeping horror. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the barbacans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs, my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned platters. Who ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... days now the Bolsheviki had been in control of the city. The frightened citizens were creeping out of their cellars to seek their dead; the barricades in the streets were being removed. Instead of diminishing, however, the stories of destruction in Moscow continued to grow.... And it ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... he did not. When we were winding along the narrow path, bearing no more proportion to the dizzy heights above and below than the smallest insect creeping on the wall, I looked across the chasm, and saw a row of shepherds' cottages perched midway on a narrow shelf, that seemed in the distance not an inch wide. By a very natural impulse, I exclaimed, "What does become of the little children there? ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... all the time I had a sickening feeling that my uncle's death only foreshadowed a more terrible tragedy. The guide's: "This ain't no accident; it's murder," kept running in my head, and much as I tried to drive the thought from me, a horrible suspicion came creeping to my mind that I knew ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, 'I will destroy man, whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air: for it repenteth me that I have made them.'" —Genesis, ch. vi. ver. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... stood listening. She could not hear a sound, and tiptoed cautiously along the hall to the stairs. What if the door of her mother's room should open, she thought, terrified at such a possibility. What could she say? She had promised not to tell of the letter, and what reason could she give for creeping out of the house ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... trade that passes yet that way must be creeping along cautiously with the unlighted, war-blighted black coast close on one hand, and sudden death on the other. For all the space we steamed through that Sunday evening must now be one great minefield, sown thickly with the seeds of hate; while submarines steal out to sea, over the very spot ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... king, prepared a floating hermitage, both because the king had ordered so, and also because it exactly accorded with her plan. And the floating hermitage, containing artificial trees adorned with various flowers and fruits, and surrounded by diverse shrubs and creeping plants and capable of furnishing choice and delicious fruits, was exceedingly delightful, and nice, and pleasing, and looked as if it had been created by magic. Then she moored the vessel at no great distance from the hermitage of Kasyapa's son, and sent emissaries to survey the place ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... This is the creeping blackberry of course, which every one remembers whose feet have been caught ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... of iron; and as he worked he sang magic spells to give his work power to overcome the serpents. Then he harnessed to the plough the fire-breathing Hisi-horse, and went into the field. There were serpents of every sort, creeping and crawling over one another, and hissing horribly, but Ilmarinen cast a spell over them, and ploughed the field, so that all the snakes were buried in the furrows. And then he went to Louhi, and claimed her ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... must unbosom himself, or else his whole nature becomes charged with perilous stuff, so these smacksmen had, in some instances, substituted the experience meeting for the confessional. In Italy you may see the sailors creeping into the box while the priest crouches inside and listens to whispers; on the North Sea a sailor places a very different interpretation upon the Divine command, "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... passed before the Chinese went creeping back to Simpson's Ranges, and by this time the diggers were engrossed in more important affairs, and offered no serious opposition. It seemed that the trouble was rapidly coming to a head at Ballarat. Wearying of the effort to secure reform by peaceful agitation, the men were ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... names were at all discriminated, as in No. 3), applied to the plant generally, and Honeysuckle to the flower. This seems very clear by comparing together Nos. 1 and 2. In earlier writings the name was applied very loosely to almost any creeping or climbing plant. In an Anglo-Saxon Vocabulary of the eleventh century it is applied to the Wild Clematis ("Viticella—Weoden-binde"); while in Archbishop AElfric's "Vocabulary" of the tenth century ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... the 26th it became known that the enemy had been very largely reinforced during the night and was preparing for a big assault from the northeast. This movement began about 9:30 A.M. From the ships we could see large numbers of the enemy creeping along the top of the hills endeavoring to approach our positions under cover and then to annoy our troops with their incessant sniping. He had also brought up more guns during the night, and plastered the whole position ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the hour of my bereavement its voice inspired to resistance like a bugle sounding the advance; its echoes rang with the assurance that man was not made to be the worm of Eden, darkly creeping in the dust, but rather its noblest creature, with the light crowning his head and the winds tossing his hair. And then its strong simplicity, so masculine and unemotional, was grateful to one now finally dismated, and so cruelly ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... of the 27th we had an entertainment, in which Miss Kellogg sang and I read several poems. A very pretty sum was realized for some charity,—I forget what,—and the affair was voted highly successful. The next day, the 28th, we were creeping towards our harbor through one of those dense fogs which are more dangerous than the old rocks of the sirens, or Scylla and Charybdis, or ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... comes creeping up From the waste ocean's weedy strand And fills the valley, as a cup If filled of evil drink in a wizard's hand; And the trees fade out of sight, Like dreary ghosts unhealthily, Into the damp, pale night, Till you almost think that a clearer eye could see ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... it were watching the little pink flag at the prow of our boat creeping, inch by inch, up the stern of our rivals'. The eddies from their oars came past nearer now, and the "thud" of their ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the flower: but suddenly she stopped, uttered a piercing shriek, plucked the full-blown rose from her bosom, and threw it upon the ground with a theatrical look of horror. A black earwig now appeared creeping out of the rose; it was running away, but mademoiselle pursued, set her foot upon it, and crushed it to death. "Oh! I hope to Heaven, Mr. Mountague, there are none of these vile creatures in the bud you've given me!" exclaimed Lady Augusta. She ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... north of the beach, on the island of Manhattan, stood Jumel home; a fine, white house, surrounded by a splendid lawn and gardens. A generation had already passed since its erection, and the city was slowly creeping near. It was a stately specimen of Colonial domestic architecture, built on simple, restful lines, and distinguished by the noble columns of its Grecian front. Destined to be diminished, the grounds had already begun to ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... more or less surprised even when making this remark. Fred had an idea he could see something like growing satisfaction, almost glee, creeping over the face of the other. The prospect evidently began ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... the first instinctive cry of nature was for fruit! fruit! fruit! The poor lame wretches crawled from place to place plucking greedily the violet grapes of the creeping shore vine, and staining their mouths and blistering their lips with the prickly pears, in spite of Yeo's entreaties and warnings against the thorns. Some of the healthy began hewing down cocoa-nut trees to get at the nuts, doing little thereby ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... rain. The wind arose too, and also began to buffet a small, struggling, nondescript figure, creeping along the trail over the rocky upland meadow towards Rylands's rancho. At times its head was hidden in what appeared to be wings thrown upward from its shoulders; at times its broad-brimmed hat was cocked jauntily on one side, and again the brim was fixed over the face like a visor. At one moment ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the tender feeling that had been creeping into his heart; and when he next met his little daughter, his manner was as cold and distant as ever, and Elsie found it impossible to approach him with sufficient freedom to tell him what was in ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... hill, an assemblage of roads actively reticulating and radiating, winding through the valleys, slinking off misanthropically into a tunnel, or gayly parading away elbow-in-elbow with the streams. These avenues, upon minute inspection, are seen to be obviously moving: they are crawling and creeping with an unbroken joint-work of black wagons, the rails hidden by their moving pavement, and the road throughout advancing, foot by foot, into the distance. It is hardly too fanciful—on seeing its covering slide away, its switches swinging, its turn-tables ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... brother, sleeping In thy lonely battle grave; Shadows o'er the past are creeping, Death, the reaper, still is reaping, Years have swept and years are sweeping Many a memory from my keeping, But I'm waiting still and weeping For my ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... that he was looking through his finger ends, and he noted distinctly his haggard features and the short growth of beard which made him appear jaded and unwashed. Then almost instantly the quickness died out of his perception, and he felt the old numbness creeping back. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the manner of a conspirator revealing secrets. He glanced guiltily round the room; then, creeping on tip-toe, he opened a cupboard behind the bed. Within was a tin basin and a ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... breath. I would start away before it awakened And shook the world from its shoulders. A cicada's cry deepens the hot silence. The hills open To show a slope of poppies, Ardent, noble, heroic, A flare, a great flame of orange; Giving sleepy, brittle scent That stings the lungs. A creeping wind slips through them like a ferret; they bow and dance, ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... was indeed magnificent. But my eye switched from it to a mean little human figure, moving along the foreshore with a gait which, even at a goodish distance, I recognised for Farrell's. It looked like a beetle creeping, nearing, across the flats and hummocks. But it ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Stadtholter Frederick Henry, under whom Holland escaped finally from the bondage of her foes and entered into the promised land of Liberty. Leaving the quiet streets, the tree- bordered canals, with their creeping barges, you pass through a pleasant park, where the soft-eyed deer press round you, hurt and indignant if you have brought nothing in your pocket—not even a piece of sugar—to offer them. It is not that they are grasping—it is the want ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... last time Broken-Tooth tried this. He had gained the end of the branch and begun his teetering, and I was creeping out after him, when suddenly there came a low warning cry from Lop-Ear. I looked down and saw him in the main fork of the tree crouching close against the trunk. Instinctively I crouched down upon the thick limb. Broken-Tooth stopped teetering, ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... creeping up on them. They were losing ground steadily, and there was no "spurt" in them. Cora, indeed, was ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... full brown throat so that she could gaze into the unstained sky of blue. Presently the claims of this planet made themselves heard, for she, too, was elemental and a creature of instinct. The earth was awake and palpitating with life, the low, indefatigable life of creeping things and vegetation persisting even in this waste ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... and their huge roots, living or dead, accumulate below and gradually raise the bed of the pond. Their living foliage which often covers the water almost completely for acres, becomes a shelter or support for other more delicate aquatic plants and sphagnums, which, creeping out from the shore, may so develop as to form a floating carpet, whereon the leaves of the neighboring wood, and dust scattered by the wind collect, bearing down the mass, which again increases above, or is reproduced until the water is filled to ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... overweighs All other reason. Here is Harrison— Trepanned to dangerous lodgment for the night— Each deep ravine which grooves the prairie's breast A channel of approach; each winding creek A screen for creeping death. Revenge is sick To think of such advantage flung aside. For what? To let Tecumseh's greatness grow, Who gathers his rich harvest of renown Out of the very fields that I have sown! By Manitou, I will endure no more! Nor, in the rising ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... too, the carriage in which she had sat waiting, while he, the handsome young doctor, had made his calls upon rich patients; and then, like a cloud, came creeping up the memories of the gradual decline of his practice, as he had devoted himself more and more to the dream of his life—this discovery of a vital fluid which should repair the waste of all disease, and with the indulgence in his chimera came the ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... four hind-legs move sharply and grip the point. As for the fore-legs, smitten in their nerve-centre, they are quite lifeless. The same condition is maintained for three days longer. On the fifth day, the creeping paralysis leaves nothing free but the antennae waving to and fro and the abdomen throbbing and lifting up the ovipositor. On the sixth, the Grasshopper begins to turn brown; she is dead. Except that the vestige of life is more persistent, the case is the same as that of the Decticus. If we ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... both silent," whispered Lawrence; and creeping on all-fours the little man reached over, awakened his wife, ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... body in your empty house that has once been occupied. Here, like pale ghosts upon the wall paper, are outlined the pictures of the departed tenant; here are the nails of the invisible curtains, this dent in the wall is all that is sensible of a vanished piano. I could fancy all these things creeping back to visibility as the light grew dim. Someone was irritable in the house, perhaps, and a haunting fragrance of departed quarrels is to be found in the loose door-handles, and the broken bell-pull. Then the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... Near the beginning one cut her own flag-ship almost to the water-line. The first that smote the quarry—at ten knots speed—glanced and her broadside rolled harmless into the bay, while two guns of her monster adversary let daylight through and through the wooden ship. From the turret of a close-creeping monitor came the four-hundred-and-forty-pound bolt of her fifteen-inch gun, crushing the lone foe terribly yet not quite piercing through. Another wooden ship charged, hit squarely a tearing blow, yet slid off, lay for a moment touching sides with the ironclad, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... wild morning glories crept cautiously over the steps at the studio, where now the absence of human traffic was beginning to show in that vague, venturesome way vegetation has of creeping in where mortals have deserted. The grass grew so much higher on the lawn, the flowers were having such a joyous time spreading all over and blooming as they chose, while the trumpet vine had actually climbed down from its arch with the ramblers, and was shamelessly romping all over the fern ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... for the most part low, although it was impossible to say what height they were because of the lofty hedges of creeping plants which covered every inch of ground from the water's edge to as high as fifty feet above in some places, while behind them towered the black-green forest with here and there bunches of brilliant flowers or glimpses of countless grey trunks. Sometimes these trees, pressing right up to the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... This race-type keeping, They saw men creeping Over the ridges, scant fodder reaping. They saw men eager Toil on the sea, though their take was meager, Plow the steep slope and trench the bog-valley, To bouts with the rock the brown nag rally. Saw their faults flaunted,— Buck-like they bicker, Love well their liquor,— ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... in circumference, and a depth of 450 feet. Here and there in that cold region they perceived patches of perennial snow and along the black walls, the dark entrance to labyrinthine caves fringed with long stalactites of ice. In some of these hollows flames were seen creeping along the cliff as they issued from piles of fir wood to soften the hard rock, while on every part of the deep gulf human beings were at work, the clang of their hammers sounding like the clicking ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... The fact is, the spectator sees the preparation for action made, but he sees no more. Where the strength of the men and the supply of water used to be wasted, by being thrown against windows, walls, and roofs, the firemen now seek out the spot where the danger lies, and creeping on hands and feet into a chamber full of flame, or smoke, often at the hazard of suffocation, discover the exact seat of danger; and, by bringing the water in contact with it, obtain immediate mastery over the powerful element with which they have to contend. In this daring and dangerous ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... Creeping cautiously through the shelter of the orchard he contrived to escape observation and reach the highway in safety; at this quiet noon hour the road was entirely deserted save for the presence of one small boy ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... valleys. The thrush and the mocking-bird had been driven to cool places, and their songs were not heard in the trees. The hotel was crowded with refugees from Memphis. A terrible scourge was sweeping through Tennessee, and its black shadow was creeping down to the Gulf of Mexico; and as it crept it mowed down young and old in ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... to school. You jingled in sleighs, you snowballed, you lived in snow like a snow-bird, and your blood coursed and tingled, in full tide of good, merry, real life, through your veins,—none of the slow-creeping, black blood which clogs the brain and lies like a weight on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... sitting on the balcony watching the soft, rosy afterglow that was creeping over the hills and turning to glowing points the domes and spires of the fair city, ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... enlarged. These never appear alone; forms in a like condition are diffused throughout the fluid, and may swim in this state for hours. Meanwhile, the diffluence causes a spreading and flattening of the sarcode and swimming gives place to creeping, while the flagella violently lash. In this condition two forms meet by apparent accident, the protrusions touch, and instant fusion supervenes. In the course of a few seconds there is no disconnected sarcode visible, and in five to seven minutes the organism is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... very slowly to Dumaguete, not over five knots an hour, with the cable paying out perhaps six knots, this speed limitation being necessary in order to stop the ship quickly in case of accident. It seemed a sentient thing, that cable creeping slowly along the paying out machinery, winding itself over the drum, and then stretching out to full length and disappearing down the covered wooden cable troughs on the main and quarter decks, and so into the sea at the stern of the ship; the hose meanwhile playing a stream of water ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... customary postures of strength. Again, his fear-fascinated eyes went to the row of cells that stood silently menacing on the other side of the corridor beyond the windows. His face was tinged with gray. A physical sickness was creeping stealthily on him, as his thoughts held insistently to the catastrophe that threatened. His intelligence was too keen to permit a belief that Burke's manner of almost fulsome kindliness hid nothing ominous—ominous ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... among the Judean uplands on Christmas Eve. They determined to make a descent to the point from which they had started in the morning, but, after an hour's wandering in the mist, found themselves no nearer their goal. Darkness was now creeping swiftly upon them, and they realised the dangers of a fall over one of the ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... the mountains there-a basin from which radiated upward wooded ravines, edged with ribs of rock. In this basin the Stetsons were encamped. The smoke of a fire was visible in the dim morning light, and the Lewallens scattered to surround the camp, but the effort was vain. A picket saw the creeping figures; his gun echoed a warning from rock to rock, and with yells the Lewallens ran forward. Rome sprang from his sleep near the fire, bareheaded, rifle in hand, his body plain against a huge rock, and the bullets hissed and spat about him as he leaped this way and that, firing ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... success of Hindenburg in his campaigns is too well known to require recapitulation here. He became the popular idol of Germany, the one general-in fact the one man—whom the people felt that they could idolise. But shortly before my trip to America an idea was creeping through the mind of the German people leading them to believe that Hindenburg was but the front, and that the brains of the combination had been furnished by Ludendorf. Many Germans in a position to know told me that the real dictator of Germany ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... scene the sun, a glowing disc of copper, finally set, and the struggling figures merged into the deepening dusk, and presently only black, halting shadows were creeping along the dark ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... changed eyes know their people, and Juno is startled out of their breast. But not thereby do the flames of the burning lay down their unconquered strength; under the wet oak the seams are alive, spouting slow coils of smoke; the creeping heat devours the hulls, and the destroyer takes deep hold of all: nor does the heroes' strength avail nor the floods they pour in. Then good Aeneas rent away the raiment from his shoulders and called the gods to aid, stretching forth his hands: 'Jupiter omnipotent, if thou hatest ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... my Kaiser's officers killed?" she cried enigmatically to Lena. "But I must have freedom. Oh! to be free. I am chained to my enemy, and God blesses that woman. He makes her weep, but he blesses her, for her body is free, and mine,—the thought of mine sets flames creeping up my limbs as if I were tied to the stake. Losing a husband you love—what is that to taking a husband you hate?" Still Lena could get no plain confession from her, for Anna clung to self-justification, and felt it abandoning her, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... eye: we were separated. Resolute, however, to rejoin him, I penetrated the living barrier, creeping under where I could not ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... orders to the workmen to pass their nights no longer on shore, but to go on board the barque to assure their personal safety. This command, however, was not obeyed. The next morning, at break of day, four hundred savages, creeping softly over a hill in the rear, surrounded the tent, and poured such a volley of arrows upon the defenceless workmen that escape was impossible. Three of them were killed upon the spot; a fourth ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... to the beach. On his arrival there, he observed a small turtle: creeping up softly he got between it and the water, and succeeded in turning it over. "That will do for to-morrow," said he, as he stepped into the boat; and laying hold of the oars, he pulled out of the bay to ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... wild passion of loss and desire there slipped again that cold, creeping thought of Louie—ruined, body and soul—ruined in this base and dangerous Paris, while he still carried in his breast that little scrap of scrawled paper! And why? Because he had flung her to the wolves without a thought, that he and Elise ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but they did not attract her; and at last she had climbed so high that she could see the blue waves spreading up and up to the horizon, and about a couple of miles out the white-sailed cutter, which was creeping slowly ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... a distant corner. The bear advanced, creeping, his blood burning, his hair erect, his jowls dripping. The little man yelled and rustled clumsily under the flap at the end of the tent. The bear snarled awfully and made a jump and a grab at his ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... creeping along very slowly, in absolute indifference to the galling fire from the shore guns. He knew that there must be a channel, for he and the Spaniard ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... and across lakes, and sometimes for miles and miles through woods, where they see no houses nor people, excepting here and there a single log cabin with two or three ragged children at play outside, or a baby creeping over the doorstep, while farther on among the trees stands a man with his axe, cutting, with heavy blows, some tall trees into such logs as those of which the ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... was creeping up the eastern sky when John Gray softly closed the window and went upstairs, and there was the dawn of hope in his heart too, for in his life the Sun of Righteousness had risen with ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... day or night when there are no boats floating on that pool, and no anglers trailing the fly across its waters. Before the late fishermen are ready to come in at midnight, the early fishermen may be seen creeping down to the shore with lanterns in order to begin before cock-crow. The number of fish taken is not large,—perhaps five or six for the whole company on an average day,—but the size is sometimes enormous,—nothing under three pounds is counted,—and they pervade ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... need only stand on the track exposed to the glare of the headlight and wave his arms. David sprang between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in amazement his arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred yards distant and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no head-light, and though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it blew no whistle, tolled no bell. Even the passenger coaches in the rear of the sightless engine ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... as to go abroad with, only to loosen me, for I am bound. So to the office, and there all the morning sitting till noon, and then took Commissioner Pett home to dinner with me, where my stomach was turned when my sturgeon came to table, upon which I saw very many little worms creeping, which I suppose was through the staleness of the pickle. He being gone, comes Mr. Nicholson, my old fellow-student at Magdalene, and we played three or four things upon the violin and basse, and so parted, and I to my office till night, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... sweets of authorship. He who listens once to that song hears it always in his ears, through disappointment and success—and the success is often the greatest disappointment—through poverty and hope deferred and heart-sickness for recognition, through the hot time of youth and the creeping incapacity of old age. The song never ceases. Were the longing and the hunger it arouses ever satisfied with anything, money for instance, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... through Timokles' brain. The man behind suddenly slipped, stumbling over the stones. He fell heavily, and in that instant's time, Timokles darted forward behind one of the rocks, and, creeping underneath it, lay ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... ricketty round table in the middle of the room labouring at the composition of one or two letters, which seemed very difficult to write. Sheet after sheet was torn up and thrown aside. The grey dawn was creeping in at the window before the last word was written, and the letters placed within their respective envelopes. Slowly and carefully he wrote the address of the longest letter—wrote it, as he thought, for the last ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the crest of the oak-hooded hills and the mountains, And the meadow-lark hied to her nest, and the mottled owl peeped from her cover. But hark! from the teepees a cry! Hear the shouts of the hurrying warriors! Are the steps of the enemy nigh, —of the crafty and creeping Ojibways? Nay; look on the dizzy cliff high! —on the brink of the cliff stands Winona! Her sad face up-turned to the sky. Hark! I hear the wild chant of ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... owners, not exactly like dogs and horses, but like tables, chairs, and joint-stools; that they are not even fixtures to the soil, as in countries where servitude is divested of its most hideous features,—not even beings in the mitigated degradation from humanity of beasts, or birds, or creeping things,—but destitute not only of the sensibilities of our own race of men, but of the sensations of all animated nature. That is the native land of nullification, and it is a theory of constitutional ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... cut short by a cry of distress from the dog, and looking down, they perceived that the poor fellow had been creeping about the rocks, and had descended to the little cove, whence he was incapable of climbing up again. They called encouragingly, and pretended to move away, but he only moaned more despairingly, and leapt ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unevenness of gait which would have told the shameful truth if his words had not already done so. Before he reached it, however, the sound of wheels arrested him and, leaning against the wall, he listened with a look of dismay mingled with amusement creeping over his face. "Brutus has bolted now I am in a fix. Can't walk home with this horrid dizziness in my head. It's the cold, Rose, nothing else, I do assure you, and a chill yes, a chill. See here! Let one of those fellows there lend me an arm no use to go after that brute. Won't Mother ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... character; does it not thrill your very soul and cause your very heart to bleed that such a man should be shot by a dastardly assassin? Yet on the 14th of April, 1865, J. Wilkes Booth entered the private box of the President, and creeping stealthily from behind, as become the dark deed which he contemplated, deliberately shot Abraham Lincoln through the head, and the country lost the pilot in the hours when she needed ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... were familiar; a church, the stones of which were laid, every one of them, before the world knew of the country in which he was then speaking: and how it had a spire, the lower part of which was mantled with ivy, and up which, towards its very spire, the ivy was still creeping; and how there was a tradition, that, if the ivy ever reached the top, the spire would fall upon the roof of the old gray church, and crush it all down among its surrounding tombstones. [Endnote: 1] And so, as this misfortune ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... comes, cat-like, creeping;— He opens the door just sufficient to peep in, And sees, as he fancies, the Bagman sleeping! For Blogg, when he'd once ascertain'd that there was some "Precious mischief" on foot, had resolv'd to play "'Possum;"— Down he went, legs and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... of vivid descriptions of the wild denizens of the flood and desert; and it is expressly recorded of the wise old king, that he "spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; and also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." Solomon was a zoologist and botanist; and there is palpable classification in the manner in which his studies are described. It is a law of the human mind, as has been already said, that, wherever a large stock of facts are ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... away from here; for in the hot summer months amid these neglected and decaying memorials of the dead, creeping and crawling in and out of the crumbling masonry of the tombs, gliding among the long, reedy grass, or lying basking in the sun upon the fallen headstones, are deadly black and brown snakes. They have made ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... with bars of rosy light, gradually widening. Above them a single star was poised, and in the valley below great white mists were stirring from sleep. For a moment she seemed to be listlessly watching the white, shapeless things, trembling as with life, and creeping silently into wood and up glen; and then her lashes drooped ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... which B was invisible. By and by B and A became visible again, and Medium's voice likewise showed that he had got back to his first position. But after he had returned to this position there was a noise of the guitar and other things on the table being stirred, and creeping noises like something light moving over the table. But no more ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... children and of the moaning caresses of her dumb friend, that poor mother's eyes were only opened on the dreadful scene when day was far advanced. Through the cold rain, still pouring steadily down, the twilight seemed to her faint eyes to be creeping over the earth. Sweet sounds were ringing in her ears. These were but dreams that deluded her weakened mind and senses. She strove to rise, but fell back and again relapsed into insensibility. Once again her eyes opened. This time it was no illusion. The eldest of the little watchers was ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... in the habit of wearing short skirts, long before the dictates of fashion imposed the present unbecoming skimpy garments. She did this on account of the numerous insect pests with which Jamaica unfortunately abounds. For the same reason she adopted light-coloured stockings, so that any creeping intruder could be easily seen and brushed off. Her wardrobe being destroyed in the earthquake, she took the train into Spanish Town in an endeavour to replenish it. In a large drapery store the black forewoman at once recognised the lady, and came forward, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... stall, he suddenly threw his hat into the midst of the party, and made a dash at it; but, to his intense disappointment, the vision was instantly dispelled, and nothing was to be seen on the spot but a few snails creeping over the wet grass, and gossamer threads bespangled ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. 33. And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl and of creeping things, and of fishes. 34. And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom.'—1 KINGS ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to and studied the paper carefully till bed-time. As he read it his eye more than once flashed with satisfaction in spite of a great despondency that had now for a day or two been creeping ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the island, they knew not the use of flesh for food, but they had abundance of fish, and they ate besides whatever creeping or crawling thing they happened to find. These with the yucca from which they made their casabe or bread, maize, yams, and other edible roots, ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... of the sun had now, however, reached the horizon, below which the glowing orb rapidly sank, and the shades of night came creeping ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... had been in serious difficulties before. They had even (in the woods of the Northern Adirondacks and in the foothills of the Montana Rockies) met peril in a somewhat similar form. But here, with the panther creeping toward them, foot by foot, the young friends had no weapon ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... under the pollards to be out of the way of the flies—where laughing children swarmed along the hedges in pursuit of the ripe blackberry, where every cottage front was a thing of beauty, with its ivy creeping up the roof or over the wall; while the little garden was a mass of flowers. We expected to see the old gods and goddesses again to participate in the joyousness ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... day long, and did not stop even to eat her chestnuts. On the way, a glance at the stables, still dark, where the animals were moving duly, at the stifling pens with their rows of impatient and outstretched muzzles; and the first glimmers of light creeping over the layers of stones that supported the embankment of the park, lit up the figure of the old woman, running in the dew, with the lightness of a girl, despite her seventy years—verifying exactly each morning all the wealth of the domain, anxious to ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... death of every kind has been so familiar to me, how the news of that death came upon me. I had no realisation of what death meant till then. I had heard of people dying, of course; had watched the black processions creeping, plumed and solemn, along the streets to the churchyard; had noted how in any circle of friends now one and now another falls away and returns to earth. I knew that all must die, that I must die myself, as I knew a lesson got by heart which has little meaning to the unawakened ear. But now ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... together with the Judge, in the face with comfort, having such a real, sound, effectual work of God's grace in thy soul, that when thou hearest the trumpet sound, seest the graves fly open, and the dead come creeping forth out of their holes; when thou shalt see the judgment set, the books opened, and all the world standing before the judgment-seat; I say, that then thou mayest stand, and have that blessed sentence spoken to thy soul, "Come, ye blessed of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... himself, Kane felt a pricking in his cheeks, a creeping of the skin under his hair. The apparition was so sudden, and, above all, the cool ignoring of his presence was so disconcerting. Moreover, through that half-sinister light, his long muzzle upstretched towards the moon, and raised as he was a little above the level on which Kane was standing, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... know," Colonel Hitchcock replied, a slight smile creeping across his face. "Some say yes, and some say no. Perhaps Porter ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... all Europe. Her great heart inspired her with a higher and a nobler wisdom—which disdained to appeal to the low and sordid passions of her people even for the protection of their low and sordid interests, because she knew, or, rather, she felt that there are effeminate, creeping, cowardly, short-sighted passions, which shrink from conflict, even in defence of their own mean objects. In a righteous cause she roused those generous affections of her people, which alone teach boldness, constancy, and foresight, and which are therefore the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... had been compelled to break up that house, and retire with her five children to lodge with a lone widow in this little cot, not over three yards square, in "Seed's Yard," one of those dark corners into which decent poverty is so often found now, creeping unwillingly away from the public eye, in the hope of weathering the storm of adversity, in penurious independence. The old woman never would accept relief from the parish, although the whole family had been out of work for many months. ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... A man came creeping up to me, because the slope of the deck prevented him from holding himself upright: it was Hurliguerly, working himself along with his hands like ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... the French voyageurs—with the infinite French patience smiled and sweated their way through. The New Englanders grew grim; the Kentuckians fumed and swore. But little by little, inch by inch, creeping, creeping, paying the toll exacted, they went on day by day, leaving the old world behind them, morning by morning ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... that the Abbe Dubois had as much religion as he has talent! but he believes in nothing—he is treacherous and wicked—his falsehood may be seen in his very eyes. He has the look of a fox; and his device is an animal of this sort, creeping out of his hole and watching a fowl. He is unquestionably a good scholar, talks well, and has instructed my son well; but I wish he had ceased to visit his pupil after his tuition was terminated. I should not then have to regret this unfortunate marriage, to which I can never reconcile ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... spider came creeping along the bar of his fetters. He put out his hand, and, with the manacle on his wrist, crushed it, and smiled. Instantly through the gloom came a strong, clear, yet strangely sweet voice—and the very sweetness had in it something that made the boy think of fire. And ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... the image of an owl, I hurried to the cliffs of Donegal, And saw, creeping on the uneasy surge, Those ships that bring the woman grain and meal; They are five days from us. I hurried east, A grey owl flitting, flitting in the dew, And saw nine hundred oxen toil through Meath, Driven ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... Citizen Captain would have gone is problematical. I had noticed a look of disgust slowly creeping into the Citizen Quartermaster's eyes, and at this juncture he seized the Citizen Captain and thrust ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... man, with his banana woman, Pancha, were creeping along the water part of the land—with the Peak of Tarquina in sight—toward Cape Cruz, bound round that peninsula, and so on to the Doce Leguas Cays; while the man on the mule navigated by the Sierras del Cobre of St. Jago, steering by bridle ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... after mile further yet, without passing anything more cheerful than a cluster of rocky islands or a slope covered with brownish moss. The most luxuriant of the islands boasted only a patch of crowberry bushes or a few creeping junipers too much abashed to lift their heads a ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... search of blueberries, and approaching gradually nearer and nearer to our side of the ravine. He evidently had not yet seen us, and a party to attack him was soon made up of two Kamchadals, the Major, and myself, all armed to the teeth with rifles, axes, revolvers, and knives. Creeping cautiously around through the timber, we succeeded in gaining unobserved a favourable position at the edge of the woods directly in front of his Bruinic majesty, and calmly awaited his approach. Intent upon making a meal of blueberries, and entirely unconscious of his impending fate, he ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... not the most delicate food, they were acceptable enough to us who had been long confined to a salt diet, and who, consequently, could not but be glad of the most indifferent variety. We met with vast numbers of red crabs, creeping about every where amongst the trees; and we caught several fish that had been left in holes upon the reef when ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... a body to attack a floating feather. Ulrich sat up and watched them, the little rogues, the little foolish, helpless things, that called for so much care. A mother thrush twittered above his head. Ulrich rose and creeping on tiptoe, peeped into the nest. But the mother bird, casting one glance towards him, went on with her work. Whoever was afraid of Ulrich the wheelwright! The tiny murmuring insects buzzed to and fro about his feet. An old man, passing to his evening ...
— The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl • Jerome K. Jerome
... a torch, and the houses next to it begin to scorch. Boom! The bohemian glass on the etagere is no longer there. Boom! A stalk of flame sways against the red damask curtains. The old lady cannot walk. She watches the creeping stalk ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... instructions in the art of war, the tribesmen did not hurl themselves forward boldly and with clamor. Instead, there was great restraint and self-control, and they were content to advance silently, creeping and crawling from shelter to shelter. By the river bank, and partly protected by a narrow open space, crouched the Crees and voyageurs. Their eyes could see nothing, and only in vague ways did their ears hear, but they felt the thrill of life which ran through the forest, the indistinct, ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... is doing —what he has done in this city. I cannot trust myself, Mr. Hodder, to speak of Horace Bentley's life. . . I feel too strongly on the subject. I have watched, year by year, this detestable spirit of greed, this lust for money and power creeping over our country, corrupting our people and institutions, and finally tainting the Church itself. You have raised your voice against it, and I respect and honour and thank you for it, the more because you have done it without resorting to sensation, and apparently with no thought ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... though I do go to chapel at whiles: but there are good ones among them; and I do believe she's one, though she's a little fretful at times. Keeps a little shop that don't pay over well; and those preachers live on her a good deal, I think. Creeping into widows' houses, and making long prayers—you ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley |
