"Tortoise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strip of summer-light and warmth that shone upon his table and the ground as if they were a crooked dial-plate, and himself the only figure on it. With hair and whiskers deficient in colour at all times, but feebler than common in the rich sunshine, and more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat; with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened; with a natural antipathy to any speck of dirt, which made him pause sometimes and watch the falling motes of dust, and rub them off his smooth white hand or glossy linen: Mr Carker the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... want of lofty mirrors, and The tables, most of ebony inlaid With mother of pearl or ivory, stood at hand, Or were of tortoise-shell or rare woods made, Fretted with gold or silver:—by command The greater part of these were ready spread With viands and sherbets in ice—and wine— Kept for all comers ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... of lizards and frogs abound; the latter make an astonishing noise in marshy places during the summer evening by their harsh croaking. The land crab is found on the northern shore of Lake Erie. A small tortoise, called a terrapin,[198] is taken in some rivers, creeks, and swampy grounds, and is used as an article of food. Seals have been occasionally seen on the islands in ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Bellagio by daylight, we find it to be very much of a bazaar of souvenirs along the water-front, and everybody determined to carry away a keepsake. There is so much to buy—ornamental olive wood and tortoise-shell articles, Como blankets, lace, and what may be described in general terms as modern antiquities. These abound from shop to shop; even English groceries are available. Bellagio's principal street is suddenly converted at its northern end into a delightful arcade, after the arrangement which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... consideration entertained by the mind which induces us to act, this tells us nothing. It is like the case of the Indian philosopher(23), who, being asked what it was that kept the earth in its place, answered, that it was supported by an elephant, and that elephant again rested on a tortoise. He must be endowed with a slender portion of curiosity, who, being told that uneasiness is that which spurs on the mind to act, shall rest satisfied with this explanation, and does not proceed to ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... is about a fortnight old the perforation in the septum of the nose is made by drilling it with a sharp-pointed piece of tortoise-shell, but the raised artificial scars, regarded as personal ornaments by the Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, are not made until long afterwards. According to Giaom, who states that among the Kowraregas this scarification is purely voluntary, the patient ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... ship steadily on her course. He had grown accustomed to the complaints of the agitators, and thought they would not go beyond agitation. When pressed to take some repressive measure, he answered that you must wait for the tortoise to put its head out before you hit it, and he appeared to think it would keep its head in. He is one of the most interesting figures of our time; this old President, shrewd, cool, dogged, wary, courageous; typifying the qualities of his people, and strong because he is in sympathy with ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... will see," quoth Obed oracularly. "Now, Panther, don't you be too impatient. Remember that the tortoise beat the hare in the great Greek ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... retired, and returned presently equipped for the road. She had indued her feet with goloshes and pinned up her skirts till they looked like some demented Paris mode. An ancient bonnet was tied under her chin with strings, and her equipment was completed by an exceedingly smart tortoise-shell-handled umbrella, which, she explained, had been a Christmas ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... are generally called, made of wood, bone or tortoise-shell are used for all the heavier kinds of crochet work in thick wool or cotton, and steel ones for the finer kinds. The Tunisian crochet is done with a long straight hook, which is made all in one piece. The points ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... stormed, prancing from one side of the table to the other, shaking the flimsy sheets in an angry hand, and scattering pins and needles broadcast on the carpet, while Eunice, like the tortoise, toiled slowly away, until bit by bit the puzzle became clear to her mind. She discovered that one piece of the pattern stood for half only of a particular seam, while others, such as collar and cuffs, represented a whole; mastered ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... the tail of the line, who are running rapidly. It is a curious but quite inexplicable fact that if you set a hundred men to march in single file in the dark, though the leading man may be crawling like a tortoise, the last man is compelled to proceed at a profane double if he is to avoid being left ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... keeping with the generous bulk of its owner, who had come through the door. He was well past middle-age, with a thatch of gray hair half covering his high forehead. In one hand he held the book that he had been reading, and in the other a pair of big tortoise-shell glasses. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... avoided, never wash combs, as the water often makes the teeth split, and the tortoise-shell or horn of which they are made, rough. Small brushes, manufactured purposely for cleaning combs, may be purchased at a trifling cost; the comb should be well brushed, and afterwards wiped ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... marks, Austrian kronen, Italian lires, and French francs. Most of the men regarded Europe as a wine list. In their mental geography Rheims, Rhine, Moselle, Bordeaux, Champagne, or Wuerzburg were not localities but libations. The women, for the most part, went in for tortoise-shell combs, fringed silk shawls, jade earrings, beaded bags, and coral neck chains. Up and down the famous thoroughfare of Europe went the absurd pale blue tweed tailleurs and the lavender tweed cape ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... with yellow and salient cheek bones, with eyes small but keen and penetrating, and an expression of countenance resembling at once the polecat and the fox. His head, supported by a long and flexible neck, issued from his large black robe, balancing itself with a motion very much like that of the tortoise thrusting his head out of his shell. He began by asking M. Bonacieux his name, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... called the great Fox, and one on the left, called the little Fox: these were the war chiefs or generals. At the third fire stood two warriors, who were called respectively the Wolf and the Owl. And at the other fire, two others who were the Eagle and the Tortoise. These four last named were not chiefs but braves of distinction, who held honorable places in the council, and were persons of influence in peace and in war. This lodge of four fires may have existed among these tribes. It is true that their chiefs remain ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... evening, when the fire is burning brightly and you are chatting gayly beside it, he should take off one of your shoes and stockings, put your foot on his lap, and in a moment of forgetfulness carry irreverence so far as to kiss it; if he likes to pass your large tortoise-shell comb through your hair, if he selects your perfumes, arranges your plaits, and suddenly exclaims, striking his forehead: "Sit down there, darling; I have an idea how to arrange a ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... rival aspirant in Mrs. Dodd. She educated Julia herself from first to last: but with true feminine distrust of her power to mould a lordling of creation, she sent Edward to Eton, at nine. This was slackening her tortoise; for at Eton is no female master, to coax dry knowledge into a slow head. However, he made good progress in two branches—aquatics ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... subject; but still its aim will be to get to the bottom, and nothing more. With matter it began, with matter it will end; it will never trespass into the province of mind. The Hindoo notion is said to be that the earth stands upon a tortoise; but the physicist, as such, will never ask himself by what influence, external to the universe, the universe is sustained; simply because he is ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blooms, and the same sun glows, And the same brook ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Player, who practises on this occasion all the attitudes and wild apprehensions of fear; more ambitious, as it should seem, of representing a Caliban than a Falstaff; or indeed rather a poor unwieldy miserable Tortoise than either.—The painful Comedian lies spread out on his belly, and not only covers himself all over with his robe as with a shell, but forms a kind of round Tortoise-back by I know not what stuffing or contrivance; in addition to which, he alternately lifts ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... was watching that tortoise-shell of yours on the houseboat. She was creeping along the roof, behind the flower-boxes, stalking a young thrush that had perched upon a coil of rope. Murder gleamed from her eye, assassination lurked in every twitching muscle of her body. As she crouched to spring, ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... through the snow. My optical delusions as to colour were perhaps the most remarkable; the protruding rocks invariably appeared of a strange orange yellow, with black lines along them, producing a short of tortoise-shell effect. I took these mysterious appearances at first for dead animals, ponies or sheep, and touched them to try to ascertain the fact. My hands, however, were so utterly devoid of sensation, that they were of no more ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... musical instruments at dinner; and their host now brought them some venerable lutes to examine—curiosities only, for most of the metal strings were broken. Beautiful objects, however, they were, in inlaid ivory or tortoise-shell and ebony; made, as the various inscriptions revealed, at Bologna, or Padua, or Venice; and dating, some of them, as far back as 1474. But in the midst of all this, Brand espied another instrument on one of ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... brought me, and which I found delicious. I may here mention that several days later I became aware that this same broth—the origin of which puzzled me at the moment, though not enough to prevent me from taking it—had been prepared from a kind of tortoise, the existence of which in large numbers on the spit Hutchinson had accidentally discovered that very morning, and in pursuit of which he had sent out two of the most slightly wounded with a sack, and instructions to catch and bring in as many of the creatures ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... now They have come out. They have preened And dried themselves After their blood bath. Old men seem a little younger, And tortoise-shell combs Are longer than ever; Earrings weigh down aged ears; And Golconda has given ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... feet from the window. On it was a large brass lamp which cast a brilliant circle of light upon the broad flat top of the desk with its orderly array of letter-trays, its handsome silver-edged blotter and silver and tortoise-shell writing appurtenances. By the light of this lamp Dr. Romain, looking from the doorway, saw that Hartley Parrish's chair was vacant, pushed back a little way from the desk. The rest of the room ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... Even without any anatomical dissection, the similarity of all vertebrated embryos at comparable stages of development admits of being strikingly shown, if we merely place the embryos one beside the other. Here, for instance, are the embryos of a fish, a salamander, a tortoise, a bird, and four different mammals. In each case three comparable stages of development are represented. Now, if we read the series horizontally, we can see that there is very little difference between the eight animals at the earliest ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... fear for the chair," I said, for it creaked under me very fearfully, having legs not so large as my finger; "if the chair breaks, Annie, your fear should be, lest the tortoise-shell run into me. Why, it is striped like a viper's loins! I saw some hundreds in London; and very cheap they are. They are made to be sold to the country people, such as you and me, dear; and carefully kept they will last for almost half a year. Now will you come back from ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... eleven cats at the farm here now. Papa's favorite is a little tortoise-shell kitten he has named "Sour Mash," and a little spotted one "Fannie." It is very pretty to see what papa calls the cat procession; it was formed in this way. Old Minniecat headed, (the mother of all ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... he termed him, which I should be very happy to translate, were my pen capable of rendering into English the robust thundering sentences of his powerful Castilian. I had till then considered him a plain uninformed old man, almost simple, and as incapable of much emotion as a tortoise within its shell; but he had become at once inspired: his eyes were replete with a bright fire, and every muscle of his face was quivering. The little silk skull-cap which he wore, according to the custom of the Catholic clergy, moved ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... ordinary feathers, and which cannot "be more aptly described than by comparing them to a white fowl drawn down a sooty chimney; it is, however," adds Mr. Layard, "a remarkable fact that a male bird of the pure sooty variety is almost as rare as a tortoise-shell tom-cat." Mr. Blyth finds that the same rule holds good with this breed near Calcutta. The males and females, on the other hand, of the black-boned European breed, with silky feathers, do not differ from each other; so that in the one breed black skin and bones, and the same kind of plumage, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... being suggestive of the appearance of a military man. He halted on one foot, he stooped at the shoulders, and instead of a sword at his side he carried a stick in his hand. After looking sharply through a large pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, first at Mercy, then at the bed, then all round the room, he turned with a cynical composure of manner to the Prussian officer, and broke the silence in ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... There, casting back his curious gaze, was a bewitching Moorish maid whose physical perfection seemed to cause the very place to glow. The slanting sunbeams shimmered upon her silken garments; from her careless hand drooped an instrument of gold and of tortoise-shell, an instrument strange to the eyes of the monk. Her feet were cased in tiny slippers of soft Moroccan leather; her limbs, rounded and supple and smooth as ivory, were outlined beneath wide flowing ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... I don't know; there are quadrupeds that can trot faster over the measured mile than a Tortoise, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... that he was obliged to stoop as he entered the doorway. Within was an ordinary peasant's kitchen, but cleaner than the average. In spite of the weather the floor boards were freshly scrubbed. The hearth was swept, and by the stove lay a sleek tortoise-shell cat. There was a wooden dresser, a chimney shelf with rows of plates standing on it, and in a doorway just beyond an elderly peasant woman ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... (1) torture, tortoise, retort, contort, distortion, extortionate, torch, (apple) tart, truss, nasturtium; (2) tort, tortuous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... blue, and the towering white clouds looked down through the diamond panes; and the iron-studded door, with the wonderful big key, which his hands were not yet strong enough to turn, stood wide open; and outside, amongst the deep grass that grew upon the graves, he could see the tortoise-shell butterflies sunning themselves upon the dandelions. Then it was that he used to think the outside the best, and fancy (with perfect truth, as I believe) that angels must be looking in, just as much as he was looking out, and gazing down, grave-eyed, upon the little ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... wakes in laughing day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries blow, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... of the first of these periods is the free use of small solid figures of animals as decoration—the phoenix, the elephant, the frog, the ox, the tortoise, and occasionally men; shapes grow less austere and less significant, as a comparison between figures 11 and 13 will indicate; then towards the end of the 2nd century A.D. the influence of Buddhism is felt in the general tendency towards suavity of form (fig. 14). ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... that of the Philippines, and resembles that of the Marianas Islands. Their manner of pronouncing words is something like that of the Arabs. The woman who appears to be of highest station has many rings and necklaces of tortoise-shell, that are called here carey; and others of a material that is unknown to us. This material, which somewhat ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... dealer in toilet articles (koma-mono) wandered all the wards of Edo, his little trays fitting neatly into each other, and wrapped in a furoshiki or bundle-handkerchief. His wares formed a marvellous collection of the precious and common place, ranging from true coral and tortoise shell, antique jewelry and curious netsuke of great value, to their counterfeits in painted wood, horn, and coloured glass. "Mobei San, long has been the wait for you. Is there a bent comb in stock?"—"Truly this Mobei is vexing. He humbly makes apology, lady. Here is just the thing.... How ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... to get away from this dangerous neighbourhood; but he sees on the other hand enemies not less terrible; a tortoise forty feet long, and a serpent of thirty, lifting its fearful head and gleaming eyes above ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... a man, and I a woman: we look with differing eyes, each sex to the other, and perceive by contrast. Else—why, how else could you forgive my presumption? He sees me as an eagle sees the creeping tortoise. I see him as the moon the sun, never weary of gazing. I borrow his radiance to observe him by. But I weary you with my garrulous tongue.... Have you no plan at all in your journey? 'Tis not the dangers, but to me the endless restlessness of ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... and wandering through the globe as the descendants of Noah, without a written language. The Hindoo therefore in his belief that the earth was actually drawn up at the flood, by the tusks of a boar, and that it rests at this hour on the back of a tortoise: and the North American Indian in his wild supposition that Waesackoochack, whose reputed father was a snake, formed the present beautiful order of creation after the deluge, by the help of a musk-rat, afford no inconsiderable proof that the ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... match held about three inches from it. Finally, I lit it for her, and she seemed to see me for the first time. She looked at me, at once shiftily and sharply. Her eyes narrowed. Suspicion leaped into her face, and she seemed to shrink into herself like a tortoise into its shell. "Oo's 'e?" she ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... knee. They looked haughtily about, and talked English together. I took no notice, just went on smoking. I observed that the ladies were getting angry—over my cigar, doubtless. One looked at me through her tortoise-shell eyeglass. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... black, white, gray, yellow, striped, spotted, Maltese, tortoise-shell, calico, and tiger cats! Cats of all sizes and all kinds, cats of all ages, from tiny furry babies wheeled in perambulators by their mamas to gray old grandpas hobbling along by the aid of canes or crutches—all the cats of Catnip Island had trooped down to the shore to watch the landing ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... ladies surveyed me as I stood in the centre of an open space, surveyed me through tortoise-shell glasses on the end of a long handle, and beckoned me ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... the thing has two of these sticking in it to their full length," showing the bone daggers. "I have a recollection, too, of smiting hard with this noble knob-stick, but it was like smiting the hardest kind of tortoise shell. Not yet, however, is the time to talk. Go first, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... the objects of their worship. They worship many living creatures, such as the ape, the tiger, the elephant the horse, the ox, the stag, the sheep, the hog, the dog, the cat, the rat, the peacock, the eagle, the cock, the hawk, the serpent, the chameleon, the lizard, the tortoise, fishes, and even insects. Of these, some receive much more worship than others, such as the cow, the ox, and the serpent Cobra Capella. I will speak at present only of the worship ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... another project, and this upon a third, all of them equally visionary. His finance is like the Indian philosophy; his earth is poised on the horns of a bull, his bull stands upon an elephant, his elephant is supported by a tortoise; and so ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... due to the same cause that some butterflies on small and exposed islands have their wings reduced in size, as is strikingly the case with the small tortoise-shell butterfly (Vanessa urticae) inhabiting the Isle of Man, which is only about half the size of the same species in England or Ireland; and Mr. Wollaston notes that Vanessa callirhoe—a closely allied South European form of our red-admiral butterfly—is ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Highness's collection. There is a species of cistus which grows on S. Vincent's rock, which is not, I am told, to be found in any other part of England. Helpless as I am and scoffed at in these matters, I will contrive to get some of it for you. A shoemaker showed us a tortoise shell which he had for sale. I wished to have bought it for La Sophie, but upon inquiry I found it could not be had for less than a guinea; now I thought at the utmost it would not give Sophy above half ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... drew himself up sharply, as if fearful of having said too much, and for a moment there was silence. Then Mr. Mallowe leaned back easily in his chair and, removing his tortoise-shell rimmed eyeglasses, tapped the desk thoughtfully with ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... make you out a list. There are several Madonnas that I want, and several more that I DON'T want. And I do NOT want any of Nattier's pictures or a "Baby Stuart," but I do want some of Hinde's hair curlers—the tortoise-shell kind, I mean—and you can only get ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... excited his attention, soon reconciled him to the change. In the midst of the woods he observed great numbers of dens, or caverns, which had been dug in the sand-hills, by the gopher, or great land tortoise. ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... owners' embraces and hiding away behind the cages; a family of piebald mice, consisting of a mother and five young ones, which generally went to bed in the daytime, and had to be poked out of their sleeping quarters with a lead pencil to make them show themselves; a morose-looking tortoise that would allow Wilfred to scratch its head, but spat indignantly at the others; and a whole box full of silkworms in various stages, from tiny, wriggling black threads to chrysalids in cocoons. The children were accompanied to the stable by a sharp ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... making choric music black and fuliginous. The sacred Ibis stalked to the silvery steps of the Houris; the Graces held hands. Phoebus Apollo appeared; his face was as a silver shield, so shining was it. He improvised upon a many-stringed lyre made of tortoise shell, and his music was shimmering and symphonious. Hermes and his Syrinx wooed the shy Euterpe; the maidens went in woven paces: a medley of masques flamed by; and the great god Pan breathed into his pipes. Stannum saw Bacchus pursued by the ravening Maenads; saw Lamia and her ophidian ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... forbidden) 'Rat of Ra.' If the unclean animals of Israel were originally the totems of each clan, then the mouse was a totem, {115b} for the chosen people were forbidden to eat 'the weasel, and the mouse, and the tortoise after his kind.' That unclean beasts, beasts not to be eaten, were originally totems, Prof. Robertson Smith infers from Ezekiel (viii. 10, 11), where 'we find seventy of the elders of Israel—that is, the heads of houses—worshipping in a chamber which had on its walls the figures ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... your trained editor. A miraculous sixth sense guides him. A mysterious something warns him of danger lurking within the seemingly innocent oblong white envelope. Without slitting the flap, without pausing to adjust his tortoise-rimmed glasses, without clearing his throat, without lighting his ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... legs, as the smaller birds, for the purpose of escape. Others great length of fin, or of membrane, as the flying fish, and the bat. Others great swiftness of foot, as the hare. Others have acquired hard or armed shells, as the tortoise and the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... every day; if it were warmer I should get on faster, but I cannot stir into the air without bringing on cough. Tell Ulick O'More that we entertained his brother at tea last evening, we were obliged to desire him to bring his own cup, and he produced the shell of a land tortoise; it was very like the fox and the crane. Poor fellow, it was the first good meal he had for weeks, and I was glad he came in for some famous bread that the General had sent us in. He made us much more merry ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... replied the clerk. "It's a monkey," retorted Buckland, and proceeded to show the whole animal, but without convincing the clerk, who insisted on five shillings for the dog-ticket to London. Nettled at this, Buckland plunged his hand into another pocket and produced a tortoise, and laying it on the sill of the ticket window said, "Perhaps you'll call that a dog too." The clerk inspected the tortoise. "No," said he, "we make no ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... went to see if it were or no." Vainly I endeavored to show him that this view would deprive Columbus of his greatest distinction. He answered invariably, "But without having read it, how could he ever have known it?"—thus putting the earth upon the tortoise and leaving the tortoise to account for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... with the air of soldiers; Jamaica negroes with conical heads and brown Barbados negroes with Cockney accents; English engineers in lordly pugrees, and tourists from New England who seem servants of their own tortoise-shell spectacles; comfortable ebon mammies with silver bangles and kerchiefs of stabbing scarlet, dressed in starched pink-and-blue gingham, vending guavas and green Toboga Island pineapples. Carl gapes ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... once!" screamed Fraulein Rottenmeier. But her voice was drowned by the music. She was making a dash for the boy, when she saw something on the ground crawling towards her feet—a dreadful dark object—a tortoise. At this sight she jumped higher than she had for many long years before, shrieking with all her ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... his name little need be said. Pausanias' tale, how Dionysus appeared to the poet when a boy, asleep in his father's vineyard, and bade him write a tragedy—-or the account in the Life, how he was killed by an eagle letting fall on his head a tortoise whose shell the bird was unable to crack—-clearly belong to the same class of legends as the story that Plato was son of Apollo, and that a swarm of bees settled upon his infant lips as he lay in his mother's arms. Less supernatural, but hardly more historical, is the statement ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... with a minimum of veils, swayed into sinuous beauty to the monotonous music of kettle-drums, long red flutes and guitars of sand-tortoise shell with goat-skin heads—music furnished by a dozen Arabs squatting on their hunkers half-way down the hall. The gracious weaving of those lithe, white bodies of the girls as they swayed from sunlit filigree to dim shadow, stirred even the coldest heart among the Legionaries, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... and in colour white, streaked with very light pink, which contained the ashes of Augustus, found in the ruins of his mausoleum, and now in the Vatican; the bust of Julius Caesar, made of the variety tartaruga, from the resemblance of its brownish-yellow markings to tortoise-shell, in the Museum of the Capitol; and the two large blocks of alabastro a pecorella, brought from the Villa of Hadrian, in the fourth portico of the Vatican, the largest and most beautiful specimens of this very rare ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... tortoise-shell He stretched some chords, and drew Music that made men's bosoms swell Fearless, or brimmed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... trade carried on by the Chinese supercargos of the ships frequenting the port is principally transacted by barter, they giving their manufactures for the produce of their fishery, &c., and for edible birds'-nests, tortoise-shell, beche de mer, mother-of-pearl shell, wax, gold-dust, ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... too; as, for instance, that of 'Shellyback,' the tortoise, whose little owner wrote a few months after her first letter to say that ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... tortoise shell snuffbox from his left-hand waistcoat pocket, and deliberately took snuff. "You are going to do nothing of the kind," said he calmly. "You are going to keep your promise to John Calhoun and to me. Believe me, the business ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... back and consulted St. George through her tortoise-shell glasses, tilting her head high to keep them on her nose and perpetually putting their gold chain over her ear, which perpetually pulled ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... breaks into beautiful clumps of trees, like those in a gentleman's park, and every here and there a placid clear piece of water spreads out, full of pond turtle, which I believe to be one and the same with the tortoise, and eels; the latter of which, by the by, are very sociable creatures, for in the clear moonlight nights, with the bright sparkling dew on the short moist grass, they frequently travel from one pond to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... hurried off a boy to the Mendez house with word that I was coming, sent out for flowers and made a lovely little fuss about me. I tried to make myself look as pretty as possible in a pale tulle, with little rosy wreaths upon it, and the high old tortoise-shell comb, that had been mother's, in my hair. The excitement gave me more color than I had had for weeks. I thought, "Even if I am not happy, at least ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... of the head) was dark and forbidding, its nose a large brick-colored pug, the mouth underneath shaped most extraordinarily—not unlike a barrette, for it was wide and long, and square at the corners, and full of shining tortoise-shell teeth! But the creature had only one tongue. This was loose at both ends, so that there was one tip for her front face, and one for the back. But she had only one pair of eyes. These were reddish. They watched Gwendolyn boldly from the front; ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Tortoises, the Land, and the Sea-Tortoise; but the Sea-Tortoise or Turtle, is what I mean, which is that which we have about the West-Indies. This is a fine Animal, partaking of the Land and Water. Its Flesh between that of Veal, and that of a Lobster, and is extremely pleasant, either roasted or baked. ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... head of hair in his window and leave it at that—he did, indeed, place there a smiling lady with a wonderful jewelled comb and a radiant row of teeth, but around this he built up a magnificent world of silver brushes, tortoise-shell combs, essences and perfumes and powders, jars and bottles and boxes. Manning was the finest artist in the town. Ponting, at the top of the street just at the corner of the Close, was an artist too, but in quite another fashion. ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... of such couches a good deal of decoration was lavished in the way of veneerings of ornamental wood, or thin plates of ivory or tortoise-shell, or reliefs in bronze or even in gold or silver. The feet might also, in the richer houses, consist of silver or of ivory. For the dining-rooms of people of wealth a special feature was made of such work ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... were he I wouldn't make such a glittering show of myself in that Milan carriage—all gold and silver and tortoise shell, and an angel at every corner—while there are so many hearts ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... of a Moonee "is confirmed, when, like the tortoise, he can draw in all his members, and restrain them ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... by us, "Dost thou know the king Indradyumna?" And the crane thereupon seemed to reflect a little and then said, "I do not know king Indradyumna." And the crane was asked by us, "Is there any one who is older than thou?" And he answered us, saying, "There dwelleth in this very lake a tortoise of the name of Akupara. He is older than I. He may know something of this king. Therefore, enquire ye of Akupara." And then that crane gave information to the tortoise, saying, "It is intended by us to ask thee ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that marks the open water of last year is about a mile and a half distant. There is a solitary dry spot near this, the heart of desolation—a tumulus of about half an acre, like the back of a huge tortoise, is raised about five feet above the highest water level. Upon this crocodiles love to bask ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... surveying chain and do other engineering duty, and so forth and so on; and after the Tortoises came another long train of ironclads—stately and spacious Mud Turtles for marine transportation service; and from every Tortoise and every Turtle flaunted a flaming gladiolus or other splendid banner; at the head of the column a great band of Bumble-Bees, Mosquitoes, Katy-Dids, and Crickets discoursed martial music; and the entire train was under the escort and protection of twelve ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... worms and go fishing and catch a dish of minnows for my dinner," said Mr. Jeremy Fisher. "If I catch more than five fish, I will invite my friends Mr. Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise and Sir Isaac Newton. ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... tamed and trained by Lord Erskine; others have been deeply interested in toads, crickets, mice, lizards, alligators, tortoises, and monkeys. Wolsey was on familiar terms with a venerable carp; Clive owned a pet tortoise; Sir John Lubbock contrived to win the affections of a Syrian wasp; Charles Dudley Warner devoted an entire article in the Atlantic Monthly to the praises of his cat Calvin; but did you ever hear of a peacock ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... put that whip down. How very mean of you to whip poor old Tortoise! Pray take the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... (later), believe that the earth rests on the back of a turtle or tortoise[5], and that this is ruled over by the sun and moon, the first being a good spirit; the second, malignant. The good spirit interposes between the malice of the moon and mankind, and it is he who makes ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... I came here, and then I suddenly found I could. Princess Ruby declares I make it all up—but I don't. I can even understand what some of the animals have to say, and its rather fun sometimes. The other morning in the Gardens I heard a tortoise telling a squirrel——" ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... executed a fearful howl. Timar dared not let the fire out all night, for it alone kept away the wild beasts. When he went inside, the uncomfortable hiss with which snakes receive human beings struck his ear, and a sluggish mass moved under his foot; perhaps he had trodden on a tortoise. Timar kept up the fire all night, and drew fantastic figures in the air with the glowing end of the fire-stick—perhaps the hieroglyphics of ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... being driven about by a cyclone, as they rushed from one sight to another, filling up all the chinks between with shopping, which was irresistible where everything was so pretty and so wonderfully cheap. She herself purchased a tortoise-shell fan and chain for Rose Red, and had her monogram carved upon it; a coral locket for Elsie; some studs for Dorry; and for her father a small, beautiful vase of bronze, copied from one of ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... from his eyes. 'They were gone!' he said. 'They had been gone but a few hours, for the fires were still burning, but no trace of them was to be found. I found, however, in a deserted rancho,—this!' and he held up a delicate comb of tortoise-shell." ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... which lay to his hand, whether as mason, tax-collector, or king. Such diligence often rectifies the balance between two men of unequal ability. The plodding tortoise still beats the hare, who believes herself to be so swift that she can afford time to sleep. Any one who looks back on his classmates will see that the cleverest have not proved the most successful, but that the prizes of life have usually gone ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... Betsey stopped again, and taking off her spectacles harangued the tortoise-shell cat, who was sitting on the rug and ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... could do, troubled my mind profoundly with the passive, irremediable horror of the scene. It had the power to drive me out of my conception of existence, out of that shelter each of us makes for himself to creep under in moments of danger, as a tortoise withdraws within its shell. For a moment I had a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... to perfect their agilita, which remains defective. Others, although but moderately endowed, have arrived at eminence by sheer persistence and rightly directed study. It is simply a musical version of the Hare and the Tortoise. ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... closed, and while Mr. Yerkes looks out on it from his offices in the Hotel Cecil, Londoners have to look to him to see if he or Pierpont Morgan will not open it to them again. What a pleasant alternative from the asphyxiating Underground or the tortoise-moving omnibus would not a fast, comfortably fitted line of river steamers be! It seems inconceivable that, with such a waterway and such primitive and inadequate alternative means of travel, the people should stand its being closed. What a great, stimulating, suggestive ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... a great tortoise-shell dagger, and a heavy mass of glorious red-gold hair fell about her piquant face, and her pretty milk-white ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... notes there be In the new robin's ecstasy Among astonished boughs; How many trips the tortoise makes, How many cups the bee partakes, — The debauchee ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... Paris, was certainly unique. It was wonderful the amount of decoration she could carry without being the worse for it. Her head alone, over and above its bronze hair, coil on coil and curl on curl, sustained several large tortoise-shell pins, a gold lace fillet, and a rose over each ear. It was no more to her than a bit of black ribbon to a young girl. Old rose and young rose mingled delicately in the silks and gauzes of her gown; here and there a topaz flashed rose from her bodice ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... the small laboratory room, which also had been used as a workshop and a study, were a stuffed crocodile, shark's head, tortoise, fish, and salamander, parts of which were utilized as remedial agents. Their presence provided tangible evidence that the pharmacy dispensed genuine ...
— History of the Division of Medical Sciences • Sami Khalaf Hamarneh
... dried sinews stretched across the shell of a dead tortoise to the concert-grand piano of the present day is a far flight. Yet to this primitive source, it is said, may be traced the evolution of the stringed instrument which reached its culmination in the piano. The latter has ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... pronouncing upon the cause of all things. I am contented to take the phenomena as I behold them, without pretending to erect an hypothesis under the idea of making all things easy. I do not rest my globe of earth upon an elephant [a reference to the Indian myth], and the elephant upon a tortoise. I am content to take my globe of earth simply, in other words to observe the objects which present themselves to my senses, without undertaking to find out a cause why they are ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... I cannot so much as bend my knees!" "For shame!" they answered. "It is fear and not armour that stiffens your legs." Thus rebuked, Sancho endeavoured to move, but fell flat on the earth like a great tortoise; while in the darkness the others made a clash with their swords and shields, and trampled upon the prone governor, who quite gave himself up for dead. But at break of day they raised a cry of "Victory!" and, lifting ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... or other, it came into my head, especially as my friend Padlock had asked me if I wouldn't like to go up to Saratogy—that I'd go, and I went. It was odd enough, to be sure," said Uncle Joe, taking a pinch of rappee from his tortoise-shell box—"very odd, in fact, but somehow or other, Mrs. Padlock, being in poor health, and her sister, a rather volatile and inexperienced young woman, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... for cutting it the hand of a Being, who then immediately becomes in turn a new knot for us, and a knot harder to untie than the first. An Indian tells you that our globe is suspended in the air on the back of an elephant. And the elephant! It stands on a tortoise. And the tortoise? what sustains that?... You pity the Indian: and yet one might very well say to you as to him—Mr. Holmes, my good friend, confess your ignorance, and spare ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... local cattle industry makes possible the shipment of some $2,500,000 worth of hides and skins annually. Other lines of industry worthy of mention, but not possible of detailed description here, include sponges, tortoise shell, honey, wax, molasses, and henequen or sisal. All these represent their individual thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and their employment of scores or hundreds of wage-earners. Those who start for Cuba with a notion that the Cubans are an idle and lazy people, will do ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... birds chiefly found in grassy lands, and neither fly to any great distance: at least the quail never does; the turkey will when much disturbed, but not otherwise. Also the water animals, as the tortoise, are to be found in both colonies; but not the platypus, which is confined to the country east of the great river Murrumbidgee and its tributary ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... rested on thy spacious nape; Upon thy neck, like a mere mole, it stood: O thou that took'st for us the Tortoise-shape, Hail, Keshav, hail! Ruler ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... of the desert was before them. Millicent lay curled up, like a golden tortoise-shell cat, in the sun; Michael, with his legs doubled up to his chin, rested his head on his knees. He would have been asleep in a few minutes if Millicent had not spoken; ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... states and trying to compose movement out of them, endeavour to make a process coincide with a thing—a movement with an immobility. This is the way to arrive at dilemmas, antinomies, and blind-alleys of thought. The puzzles of Zeno about "Achilles and the Tortoise" and "The Moving Arrow" are classical examples of the error involved in treating movement as divisible.[Footnote: Bergson in Matter and Memory examines Zeno's four puzzles: "The Dichotomy," "Achilles and the Tortoise," "The Arrow" and "The Stadium."] If movement is not everything, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... before them. The tray of bottles and glasses had been removed from the table, and in their place were to be seen a woman's damaged hat and a small tortoise-shell comb. Mr. Harper's hand was on the former, which was wound about ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... I made with some companions towards the upper part of the Red River, we met with several of these trappers; amongst others, with one weather-beaten old fellow, whose face and bare neck were tanned by sun and exposure to the colour of tortoise-shell. We hunted two days in his company, without noticing any thing remarkable about the man; he cooked our meals, which consisted usually of a haunch of venison or a buffalo's hump, instructed us where to find game, and was aware of the approach of the latter even sooner ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... very first compliment of welcome. Her daughter, then only ten or twelve years old, was very handsome, and a few years later became Duchess de Matalona. The duchess presented me with a snuff-box in pale tortoise-shell with arabesque incrustations in gold, and she invited us to dine with her on the morrow, promising to take us after dinner to the Convent of St. Claire to pay a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Lincoln was not suffered to go to a ball which Sandwich made the other night for the Duke, who tumbled down in the middle of a country dance; they imagined he had beat his nose flat, but he lay like a tortoise on the topshell, his face could not touch the ground by some feet. My Lady Anson was there, who insisted on dancing minuets, though against the rule of the night, with as much eagerness as you remember in my Lady Granville. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole |
