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More "Gnaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the iris in the green meadows where the sheep graze, Lord of the fruit the worms gnaw and of the hut the whirlwind shatters, your breath gives life to the fire in the hearth, your warmth ripens the tawny grain, and your holy hand, St. John's eve, hardens the stone of the ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... change a habit or an instinct as much as to deflect a star. Indeed, nutrition itself, hunting, feeding, and digestion, are forced activities, and the basis of passions not altogether congenial nor ideal. Hunger is an incipient faintness and agony, and an animal that needs to hunt, gnaw, and digest is no immortal, free, or essentially victorious creature. His will is already driven into by-paths and expedients; his primitive beatific vision has to be interrupted by remedial action to restore ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... beside me, "is a bookworm,—one of those men who are born to gnaw dead thoughts. His clothes, you see, are covered with the dust of libraries. He has no inward fountain of ideas; and, in good earnest, now that the old stock is abolished, I do not see what is to become of the poor fellow. Have you no word ...
— Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... yaller dogs think they can put me out of office in this town they'll find they're tryin' to gnaw the wrong ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... said Albert, "but I think I could gnaw down a good-sized sapling. Hold me, Dick, or I'll be ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... divided into three stages. The first, or melancholy stage, usually lasts from twelve to forty-eight hours. The animal's behavior is altered and it becomes sullen, irritable and nervous. Sometimes it is friendly and inclined to lick the hand of its master. An inclination to gnaw or swallow indigestible objects is sometimes noted. Frequently a certain part of the ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... strange bird-beaked creature, with long legs and horns laid flat by its sides, and miniature wings on its back. Observe that the sides of the tail, and one pair of legs, are fringed with dark hairs. After a fortnight's rest in this prison this 'nymph' will gnaw her way out and swim through the water on her back, by means of that fringed tail and paddles, till she reaches the bank and the upper air. There, under the genial light of day, her skin will burst, and a four-winged fly emerge, to buzz over ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... instinctive faculties for accomplishing the final act of its metamorphosis, namely, the act of emerging from the cocoon and from the cell. Its mandibles provide it with scissors, file, pick-axe and lever wherewith to cut, gnaw through and demolish either its cocoon and its mortar enclosure or any other not too obstinate barrier substituted for the natural covering of the nest. Moreover—and this is an important proviso, except for which the outfit would be useless—it has, I will not say the will ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... I that called the masque at my house where first the King did see her. It was I that advised her how to bear herself. And what gratitude has been shown me? I have been sent to sequester myself in my see; I have been set to gnaw my fingers as they had been old bones thrown to a dog. Truly, no juicy meats have been my share. Yet it was I set this woman where ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... put himself in her place, Lanyard believed that he would never have neglected the opportunity that, so far as she knew, had been hers, to steal away from Paris while he slept and leave an enemy in his way quite as dangerous as "Dupont" to gnaw his nails in the mortification of defeat. Why she had not done so, why she had permitted Monk and Phinuit to play their comedy of offering ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... own door his wife came forth to meet him. "Much gladness!" she cried aloud before she saw his burden; "tempered only by a regret that you did not abandon your chase at an earlier hour. Fear not for the present that the wolf-tusk of famine shall gnaw our repose or that the dreaded wings of the white and scaly one shall hover about our house-top. Your wealthy cousin, journeying back to the Capital from the land of the spice forests, has been here in your absence, leaving you gifts of fur, silk, ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... by an equal ambition, all the occupants of the pea bore their way towards the delicious morsel. The journey is laborious, and the grubs must rest frequently in their provisional niches. They rest; while resting they frugally gnaw the riper tissues surrounding them; they gnaw rather to open a way ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... abruptly from the set in which he had been thrown. He had resolved to return to France,—he would try for a more respectable mode of existence. He had not found happiness in that liberty he had won, nor room for the ambition that began to gnaw him, in those pursuits from which his father had vainly warned him. His most reputable friend was his old tutor; he would go to him. He went; but the tutor was now married, and was himself a father,—and that made a wonderful alteration in his practical ethics. It was no longer ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of rats and eke of mice, Of flies and bed-bugs, frogs and lice, Summons thee hither to the door-sill, To gnaw it where, with just a morsel Of oil, he paints the spot for thee:— There com'st thou, hopping on to me! To work, at once! The point which made me craven Is forward, on the ledge, engraven. Another bite makes free the door: So, dream thy ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... face; the fishing, that promised so well when I passed, having entirely failed, and no deer were to be found. He wrote me, however, that he would maintain his post while a piece of parchment remained to gnaw! ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... third morning broke, the boys were starving with hunger, and could have eaten anything. They even tried to gnaw at bits of leather cut out of their boots, but they were so tough and sodden from their long immersion in the sea that they could ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... cage, Skirrl began to gnaw at the boxes, trying with all his might to tear them to pieces. After some thirty minutes of such effort, interrupted by wanderings about the cage and attempts to get at the other monkeys, he suddenly went to ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... palace, he heard Morgan, a man distinguished for strength, courage, and ferocity, say to the companion with whom he was sitting by the watch-fire, "Gwenwyn is turned to a priest, or a woman! When was it before these last months, that a follower of his was obliged to gnaw the meat from the bone so closely, as I am now peeling the morsel which I hold in my hand?" [Footnote: It is said in Highland tradition, that one of the Macdonalds of the Isles, who had suffered his broadsword to remain sheathed for some months after his marriage with a beautiful ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... clear; what we have got to do, as I understand it, is to outlive a crippled scoundrel. Well, love and a clear conscience will surely enable us to outlive a villain, whose spine is injured, and whose conscience must gnaw him, and who has no creature's love to ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... abrade, fray, rub; gnaw, corrode; roughen, ruffle, agitate; worry, harass, tease, irritate, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... be fresh-baked bread in the regimental ovens yonder, fetch a loaf, in God's name. I could gnaw black-birch and reindeer moss, so famished am I—and the Sagamore, too, no doubt, could rattle a flam ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... nor angel intervened. And now a week had gone by, during which nothing from without had threatened his happiness; and for a time, as he resolutely shut his eyes to all but the present, he had been supremely happy. Then by degrees the fox revived and began to gnaw once more. His soul sickened as he remembered in what a Fool's Paradise he was living. Unless Holroyd decided to leave England at once with this young Gilroy of whom Caffyn had spoken—a stranger—he would certainly learn how he had been tricked with regard ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... city by the Father of Waters where the races met, men and women were born into the world, who were to die in ancient Cuba, who were to be left fatherless in the struggle soon to come, who were to live to see new monsters rise to gnaw at the vitals of the Republic, and to hear again the cynical laugh of Europe. But they were also to see their country a power in the world, perchance the greatest power. While Europe had wrangled, the child of the West had grown into manhood and taken a seat ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... it be choice," cried the robber. "I have well earned my day. Serve supper, Calabash; Martial shall gnaw our bones—good enough for him. Now let us talk of the customer, 'Quai de Billy,' for to-morrow or next day that must come off, if I wish to pocket the money he promised. I am going to tell you, mother; but some drink—thunder! let's have some ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... body with out/ and within a soule/ sprite & life. It hath [with] out a barke/ a shell and as it were an hard bone for [the] fleshly mynded to gnaw vppon. And within it hath pith/ cornell/ mary & all swetnesse for Gods electe which he hath chosen to geve them his spirite/ & to write his law & [the] faith of his ...
— The prophete Ionas with an introduccion • William Tyndale
... Animal, which, by other observations I have made, I ghess to contain it, and become, as it were a womb to it, so long, till it be fit and prepar'd to be translated into another state, at what time, like (what they say of) Vipers, they gnaw their way through the womb that bred them; divers of these kinds I have met with upon Goosberry leaves, Rose-tree leaves, Willow leaves, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... wounds—a modern "Succubus." Pare mentions the perverted appetites of pregnant women, and says that they have been known to eat plaster, ashes, dirt, charcoal, flour, salt, spices, to drink pure vinegar, and to indulge in all forms of debauchery. Plot gives the case of a woman who would gnaw and eat all the linen off her bed. Hufeland's Journal records the history of a case of a woman of thirty-two, who had been married ten years, who acquired a strong taste for charcoal, and was ravenous for it. It seemed to cheer her and to cure a supposed dyspepsia. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... became a little restless, moved under a new thought, he would slip his finger meditatively over his nose to the corner of the other eye. It did not signify anything in particular, merely an unconscious mannerism. Some men pull their hair, others gnaw their under lip, and with him it was a queer little way of rubbing his finger in ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... so," he said at last, quietly. "The worn old heart can gnaw on itself a little longer. I have no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... not how he will eat out his heart, while his friends gnaw their thick fists for that they are deprived of the battle? So ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... Sue and Prue and Agatha Are thick with Mig and Joan! They bite their threads and shake their heads And gnaw my ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... young potentate o' Wales, I tell your Highness fairly, Down pleasure's stream, wi' swelling sails, I'm tauld ye're driving rarely; But some day ye may gnaw your nails, An' curse your folly sairly, That e'er ye brak Diana's pales, Or rattl'd dice wi' Charlie, By night ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... they say my uncle grew so fast, That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old: 'Twas two full years ere ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... had not wept A wound of the same kind that we are inflicting A string of pearls: a woman who goes beyond that's in danger A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized world kin A bone in a boy's mind for him to gnaw and worry Admires a girl when there's no married woman or widow in sight Affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening After forty, men have married their habits Aimlessness of a woman's curiosity Alike believe that Providence is for them ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rose in my brain, beginning, as I may say, to gnaw uncertainly. I went to my room for a few minutes to collect myself, and then ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... shall not go into details. There are enough unpleasant things in this world without telling about that. They must have wandered around for at least a day and a half, and in all that while they had not a drop of water, and not a thing to eat. Wait, though, at last in their desperation they did gnaw the tallow candles, and that served to keep them alive, and, in a measure, alleviate their ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... Aubrey," I moaned. "I'm ready to gnaw the napkin and eat my slippers. Please come and tighten ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... nose, You'd have to curl up, I suppose, And lay your head upon your hand; But now, I cannot understand, For you are writing with your pen! So sit erect, and smile again! You need not scowl because you write, Nor hold your fingers quite so tight! And if you gnaw the holder so, They'll take you for a ...
— More Goops and How Not to Be Them • Gelett Burgess
... Cat to climb a tree, and when he needed help to call out for him. Night coming on, water began to rise about the base of the tree, and the Giant Beaver came and began to gnaw at its base. The friendly ants[16] tried to keep the tree upright, but the water continued to rise and the Beaver kept on gnawing. Then the Black Cat in his sore dilemma called out, "Grandpa, come!" The grandfather responded, "I am coming; wait till I get my moccasins." The water rose ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... her. Those sailors need not curse them! Ships safe in port have their own perils of rot and rust and worms in the wood that gnaw the heart to dust. . ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... the modern Iguanas which now frequent the tropical woods of America and the West Indies, exhibit many important differences. It appears that they have often been worn by the process of mastication; whereas the existing herbivorous reptiles clip and gnaw off the vegetable productions on which they feed, but do not chew them. Their teeth frequently present an appearance of having been chipped off, but never, like the fossil teeth of the Iguanodon, have a flat ground surface (see Figure ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... did pretty much as they liked. Noah and his family in the ark, for instance, probably never set any tables or had any regular meals, but just ate when they were hungry, each one by himself. Savage tribes do the same to this day; they seize their bone or their handful of meat and gnaw it in a corner, or as they walk about. This was the primitive idea of comfort. But after a time people found that it was less trouble to have the family food made ready at a certain time for everybody at once, and have all come together ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... I. Feel as if I am growing as strong as a horse again. Why, comrade, it was worth getting as hungry, thirsty, and tired as that, so as to enjoy such a meal. I don't mean speaking for you, because I know you must be feeling that gnaw, gnaw, grinding pain in your wound. But do go on eating, and when you have had enough you shut-up shop and go off to sleep. Then I will ask that old chap to give me a bit of rag and let me wash and tie up your wound. I say, comrade, I hope he didn't see me laugh ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... did not miss her a scrap. At present there was not an ounce of sentiment in his composition. He was kept warm, he lay snugly soft, and his stomach was generally full. He had great gristly bones to gnaw and play with, and Betty Murdoch, with a little solid-rubber ball, played with him also by the hour together. Beyond these things Jan had no thought or desire at present. He grew fast, and enjoyed every minute of ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... roost of poultry looks at morning dusk, when, if you enter the barn, the entire roost turns one eye at you, and then for an unknown cause simultaneously shakes its head. He knows how hens catch mice in the hay-mow—how they gnaw the sucking pigs' tails to the bone (the hired man says they need the meat). He knows how to obtain bumblebees' honey, paying for this information with an ear like a garnet potato, one of the sort that "biles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... know how they retard germination, we know at all events how they render it impossible at this later stage. It is the young plant which absorbs the glucose, and which must therefore be destroyed; they cut off the radicle with their mandibles, and gnaw the stalk; the germ is thus suppressed. They have not yet finished their manipulations, which must enable them to preserve without further alteration the provisions which they have already rendered palatable. They bring out all their provisions to the sun, dry them, and ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... declaimed, rising, and striding about the room, with an occasional double-handed clutch at the lapels of his coat, his one gesture of rage—'they worry you for their twopenny-halfpenny mouthful of lineage, and they'd gnaw their own mothers out of their coffins for ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... sat down on the edge of the divan, hugging the dressing-gown round him, scowled vindictively at nothing and began thoughtfully to gnaw a ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... all; for poor Folks may eat Cockles or Frogs, or may gnaw upon Onions or Leeks. The middle Sort of People will make some Abatement in their usual Provision; and though the Rich do make it an Occasion of living deliciously, they ought to impute that to their Gluttony, and not blame the Constitution ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... all. We sent messengers to other parties of Boers for help, and while they were gone we starved, for there was no food to eat, and game was very scarce. Yes, it was a piteous sight to see the children cry for food and gnaw old bits of leather or strips of hide cut from Kaffir shields to stay the craving of their stomachs. Some of them died of that hunger, and I grew so thin that when I chanced to see myself in a pool of water where I went to wash I started ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... me away 'bout fifty yards, tie me to tree, and den dey leave me, and dey all drink and make merry, neber offer me anyting; so I hab noting den to eat. I eat de ropes and gnaw them through, and den I stay there two hour until all go asleep, and all quiet; for I say to myself, stop a little. Den when dey all fast asleep, I take out my knife and I crawl 'long de ground, as we do in our country sometime—and den I stop and look 'bout me; no man watch but two, and dey look ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dead wood, made a fire in the ditch and have had a capital supper off the warm, round vegetables with which he would first of all have warmed his cold hands. But it was too late in the year, and he would have to gnaw a raw beetroot which he might pick up in a field as he had done ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... comprehend it, Do not comprehend the reason, How thou, Hiisi, here hast wandered, Why thou cam'st, thou evil creature, 170 Thus to bite, and thus to torture, Thus to eat, and thus to gnaw me. Art thou some disease-created Death that Jumala ordains me, Or art thou another creature, Fashioned and unloosed by others, Hired beforehand to torment me, Or hast ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... commenced untying himself. Without much difficulty he loosened the cord from his arms, but the ligature around his neck, of undressed buffalo-hide, seemed to defy his exertions to remove it; and while he was endeavoring to gnaw it in vain, one of the sleeping Indians, rose up and going near to him, sat and smoked his pipe for some time. Slover lay perfectly still, apprehensive that all chance of escape was now lost to him. But no—the Indian again composed himself ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... worm destroy my skin And gnaw my wasting flesh When God doth build my bones agen He'll ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... frumpish fool, That loves to be oppression's tool, May envy gnaw his rotten soul, And discontent devour him; May dool and sorrow be his chance, Dool and sorrow, dool and sorrow, Dool and sorrow be his chance, And nane say, Wae 's me for him! May dool and sorrow be his chance, Wi' a' the ills that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the want led the way, the latter ever with his eyes red a-weeping, looking about him with starts and tremors, moaning lamentably at every wail of wind, but pausing, now and then, to gnaw a bone he had had enough of a thief s wit to pouch in the house of the blind widow. Stewart, a lean wiry man, covered the way with a shepherd's long stride-heel and toe and the last spring from the knee-most poverty-struck and mean in a kilt that flapped ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... of him began to gnaw at my heart ... I dreamed still of what I would do when I had grown to be a man ... but now it was not any more to be a great traveller or explorer, but to grow into a strong man and kill my uncle, first putting him to some savage form of torture ... torture ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... to take advantage of the darkness for an advance against the fort. Oh dear! We shall have to lie here and listen to the firing soon. Val, I don't think I'd mind being shot in the morning if I could only warn the Colonel. Do you think you could gnaw ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... him, and it became a huge wood, as thick and jagged as the teeth of a horse-comb. But the bullock went on at his old pace: every little while they went a little mile, and jolted so that they nearly tumbled off. The serpent, however, managed to gnaw his way through the wood, and then flew after them again. Then cried the little Tsar, "Alas! bullock, it begins to burn again. Thou wilt perish, and we shall perish also!"—Then said the bullock, "Look into my right ear, and pull out the brush thou dost find there, and fling it behind ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... which sleepeth, Wanderer," he said, at length. "My tongue is sealed. I tell thee more that I would tell another. Do not ask,—but hark! They come again! Now may Ra and Pasht and Amen curse them; may the red swine's mouth of Set gnaw upon them in Amenti; may the Fish of Sebek flesh his teeth of stone in them for ever, and feed and ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... a life term for both, along with Burkhardt, is my choice. I want them to suffer as my father suffered. Only worse. Dying's too easy for them. Let them have hell here for awhile before they get it on the other side. Let the iron bars and stone walls kill them. I hope they live for twenty years to gnaw out their hearts every day and every night behind steel doors. That wouldn't half pay what they owe. But if they finish in prison, knowing there's no hope, knowing I've put them there for what they did to my father and Jim Dent, ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... their first-born son, all the dignitaries of the kingdom are sighing; they are wounded in their pride, in their conquests; checked in their avarice. Dear Rossini! you have done well to throw this bone to gnaw to the Tedeschi, who declared we had no ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... am a dog that gnaws his bone, I couch and gnaw it all alone— A time will come, which is not yet, When I'll bite him by ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the solitary silent system now so popular among those cold legislative schemers, who have ground the poor man to starvation, and would hunt the criminal to madness! How false is that political philosophy which seeks to reform character by leaving conscience caged up in loneliness for months, to gnaw into its diseased self, rather than surrounding it with the wholesome counsels of better living minds. It is not often good for man to be alone: and yet in its true season, (parsimoniously used, not prodigally abused,) solitude does fair service, rendering also to the comparatively innocent ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... result if they did, cross-fertilization having been presumably accomplished. While beetles (especially Donacia) are ever abundant visitors, it is likely they do much more harm than good. So eagerly do they gnaw both petals and stamens, which look like loops of narrow yellow ribbon within the bowl of an older flower, that, although they must carry some pollen to younger flowers as they travel on, it is probable they destroy ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... said of the behaviour of beavers who gnaw the base of a tree with their chisel-edged teeth till only a narrow core is left—to snap in the first gale, bringing the useful branches down to the ground? What is to be said of the harvest-mouse constructing its nest, or of ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... pure blood, some sort of thick unwholesome fluid. The way their small sharp bones projected from under the wasted flesh spoke more eloquently than could any words. The sight of them made one's heart ache, while a constant intolerable pain seemed to gnaw one's very soul. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... was too late now, for their landing wheels were almost touching the surface as they glided on. And now, strangely enough, some of the gray streaks began to chase the plane. As if imagining it a bird with flesh to eat and bones to gnaw, they came on. Then, all at once, Barney realized what they followed—the scent of fresh meat. Timmie had killed a reindeer in honor of their departure and had presented them with a hind-quarter. This was now roped on the fuselage behind the ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... in with his mother's milk; viewing with painful sensations those irregular desires, those disgusting propensities, by which he is perpetually agitated; seeing the terrible effect of those licentious passions which torment him; of those lasting inquietudes which gnaw his repose; of those stupendous evils, as well physical as moral, which assail him on every side: the contemplator of humanity would be tempted to believe that happiness was not made for this world; that any effort to cure those minds which every thing unites to poison, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... A tinker and a tailor, Had once a doubtful strife, sir, To make a maid a wife, sir, Whose name was buxom Joan. For now the time was ended, When she no more intended To lick her lips at men, sir, And gnaw the sheets in vain, sir, And lie ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... she said authoritatively. "They might as well be in use as packed away in that trunk in the garret for moths to gnaw." ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... his Bible this passage: 'As the worm gnaweth the garment and rottenness the wood, so doth the weariness of solitude gnaw the ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... to the desert and the tongue swells out of the mouth, And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking drouth. And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the lone camp-fire, And you gnaw your belt in the anguish ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... am now wretched and miserable. I shall ne'er recover of this disease: hot Iron gnaw their fists! they have struck a Fever into my shoulder, which I shall ne'er shake out again, I fear me, till with a true Habeas Corpus the Sexton remove me. Oh, if I take prison once, I shall be pressed to death ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... bloom. Each female is supposed to lay about fifty eggs which are deposited on both the leaves and fruit, but mostly on the calyx end of the young apples. The eggs hatch in about a week and the young larvae or caterpillars begin at once to gnaw their way into the core of the fruit. Three-fourths of them enter the apple ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... Tunstall; "just come up, I suppose, to help the rest of his countrymen to gnaw old England's bones; a palmerworm, I reckon, to devour what the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... won't," he began, then, feebly surrendering to the gnaw of desire, he reached hastily for the glass, as if in fear ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... not know where to find in any play a catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as this. This is indeed, according to Milton, to "describe high passions and high actions". The fortitude of the Spartan boy who let a beast gnaw out his bowels till he died without expressing a groan, is a faint bodily image of this dilaceration of the spirit and exenteration of the inmost mind, which Calantha with a holy violence against her nature keeps closely covered, till the ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... he to her dark retreat Had driven from upper light that beast of hell (Where she herself doth ever gnaw and eat, While from her thousand eyes tears ceaseless well) Followed the knight, to guide his wandering feet; And overtook him on the highest swell; Then placed himself beside the cavalier Him from those dark and gloomy parts ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... there was a buzz of conversation going on—there always is; but at last, when the Rev. Mr. Burgess rose and laid his hand on the sack, he could hear his microbes gnaw, the place was so still. He related the curious history of the sack, then went on to speak in warm terms of Hadleyburg's old and well-earned reputation for spotless honesty, and of the town's just pride in ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... he might be attacked at once, he had made his battalion stand to arms on the shore. He walked to and fro all the length of the room, stopping sometimes to gnaw the finger-tips of his right hand with a lurid sideways glare fixed on the floor; then, with a sullen, repelling glance all round, he would resume his tramping in savage aloofness. His hat, horsewhip, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... blood, late supper, dancing, and all that. I can almost imagine that something has actually bitten me, when of course nothing of that kind has happened. Then, while I was furiously rubbing and scratching it, feeling a badger-like disposition to gnaw it off, my left arm was pierced with red-hot needles. My attentions were quickly transferred to that part; but soon my busy hands were called elsewhere, like a couple of hard-worked doctors in a town afflicted with an epidemic; ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... lives long enough will always find work to do," said the Hare. "I have sharp teeth to gnaw the boards, and paws to hammer them fast. I can set up at any time for a carpenter, for, Good tools make good work, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... make it so, he wrongs the old poet, for two centuries lapt in lead, to whose works he undertakes to play the gentleman-usher. A play written in our own tongue should not be as tough to us as Aeschylus to a ten-years' graduate, nor do we wish to be reduced to the level of a chimpanzee, and forced to gnaw our way through a thick shell of misprints and mispointings only to find (as is generally the case with Marston) a rancid kernel of meaning after all. But even Marston sometimes deviates into poetry, as a man who wrote in that age could hardly help doing, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... comparatively simple state of society and primitive treasures. Moths gnaw rich garments. Rust, or more properly corruption, would get into a man's barns and vineyards, hay-crops and fruits. Thieves would steal the hoard that he had laid by, for want of better investment. Or to generalise, corruption, the natural process of wearing away, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... noose, by which large animals are strangled up in the air, as leopards are in Abyssinia. A noose may be set in any place where there is a run; it can be kept spread out, by thin rushes or twigs set crosswise in it. If the animal it is set for can gnaw, a heavy stone should be loosely propped up, which the animal in its struggles may set free, and by the weight of which it may be hung up and strangled. It is a very convenient plan for a traveller who has not time to look for runs, to make little hedges ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... had already come to Stillwater when many a sharp-faced little urchin—as dear to the warm, deep bosom that had nursed it as though it were a crown prince—would not have had a crust to gnaw if Margaret Slocum had not joined the strikers. Sometimes her heart drooped on the way home from these errands, upon seeing how little of the misery she could ward off. On her rounds there was one cottage in a squalid lane where the children asked for bread in Italian. ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... another vision saw, In France, at Aix, in his Chapelle once more, That his right arm an evil bear did gnaw; Out of Ardennes he saw a leopard stalk, His body dear did savagely assault; But then there dashed a harrier from the hall, Leaping in the air he sped to Charles call, First the right ear of that grim bear he caught, And furiously the leopard ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... We all ran round and round his place of confinement several times; but not the least crack or opening could we discover, except through the bars, which being of iron, it was impossible for us to break or bend. At length we determined to try to gnaw through the wood-work close at the edge, which being already some little distance from one of the bars, we hoped, by making the opening a little wider, he would escape: accordingly we all began, he on the inside, and we all on the out, and by our diligence had made some very considerable ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... to resume. The languid Juan raised His head upon his elbow, and he saw A sight on which he had not lately gazed, As all his latter meals had been quite raw, Three or four things, for which the Lord he praised, And, feeling still the famished vulture gnaw, He fell upon whate'er was offered, like A priest, a shark, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... they think of their sins, they are comforted with the thoughts of their being delivered from them; but the ungodly, when they think of their righteousness, will gnaw themselves, to think that this would not deliver them ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a deep laugh. "Old Plancus talks like that," said he; "but we know that for all the world he would not change his steel plate for a citizen's gown. You've earned the kennel, old hound, if you wish it. Go and gnaw your ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... despatch, dispatch; discuss; take down, get down, gulp down; lay in, tuck in*; lick, pick, peck; gormandize &c. 957; bite, champ, munch, cranch[obs3], craunch[obs3], crunch, chew, masticate, nibble, gnaw, mumble. live on; feed upon, batten upon, fatten upon, feast upon; browse, graze, crop, regale; carouse &c. (make merry) 840; eat heartily, do justice to, play a good knife and fork, banquet. break bread, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Billy Bushytail, and the Wibblewobble duck children, and Jackie and Peetie Bow Wow, the puppy dogs. And as for Uncle Wiggily Longears, the old rabbit gentleman, who was quite rich since he found his fortune, he was so busy that he wore out two rheumatism crutches and Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy had to gnaw him another from a broom stick, instead ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... to it in his whimsical way. "My pretty little smooth white rascal," he said, "here is a moral lesson for you. A truly wise mouse is a truly good mouse. Mention that, if you please, to your companions, and never gnaw at the bars of your cage again as ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... at the railway station. You've pluck enough of that kind. You must now show that you've that other kind of pluck. You know the story of the boy who would not cry though the wolf was gnawing him underneath his frock. Most of us have some wolf to gnaw us somewhere; but we are generally gnawed beneath our clothes, so that the world doesn't see; and it behoves us so to bear it that the world shall not suspect. The man who goes about declaring himself to be miserable will be not ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... thicket opposite, cutting brush. We saw many large trees which had been cut down by them. The stumps looked as though some boy had chopped them down with a dull axe. It is surprising to reflect upon the pertinacity of these creatures which enables them to gnaw down such immense trees, and the wisdom with which they calculate the direction in which the trees ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... savage inhabitants, he was continually menaced by a prison or a gallows, which the terrific minister lost no opportunity to place before his imagination; and occasionally despatched a Paris Gazette, which distilled the venom of Richelieu's heart, and which, like the eagle of Prometheus, could gnaw at the heart of the insulated ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... water); but even supposing that you got across, can you think and suppose that those two fierce lions that are chained on the other side will not kill you, and suck the blood from your veins, and eat your flesh and then gnaw your bones? For my part, I am bold enough, when I even dare to look and gaze at them. If you do not take care, they will certainly devour you. Your body will soon be torn and rent apart, for they will show you no mercy. So take ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... gesticulated violently and fixed his eyes on something as though desirous of catching it: his lips moving as though desirous of uttering some long-forgotten word, but remaining speechless. Fury would take possession of him: he would gnaw and bite his hands like a man half crazy, and in his vexation would tear out his hair by the handful, until, calming down, he would relapse into forgetfulness, as it were, and then would again strive to recall the past and be again seized with ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... strike thee dead for this deceit, immediate lightning blast thee, me, and the whole world! Oh! I could rack myself, play the vulture to my own heart, and gnaw it piecemeal, for not boding to ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... think, right as a knight, *therefore Through love is broken all day ev'ry law; Kithe* now somewhat thy courage and thy might; *show Have mercy on thyself, *for any awe;* *in spite of any fear* Let not this wretched woe thine hearte gnaw; But, manly, set the world on six and seven, And, if thou die ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... brown, and black, and white, and green, And every kind of colour. Which will you read? Come on; O do read something; they're so wise. I tell you all the wisdom of the world Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out, And listen to the silence: on the ceiling There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters; And in the breathless air outside the house The garden waits for something that delays. There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,— Not people ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... let us look into the future. Should you die, O King, the lands will be desolate; but for me, the kahuna, the name will live on from one generation to another; but my death will be before thine, and when I am up on the heaven-feared altar then my words will gnaw thee, O King, and the rains and the sun ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... these rumors, and her life was embittered by their terrible import. A pall of gloom shrouded her sky, and anguish began to gnaw at her heart amidst all the splendors of the Tuileries and ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... would cuff, He's so bluff, For a straw. Cowed deities, Like mice in cheese, To stir must cease Or gnaw.' ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... success, suggest, or suggest, or suggest, or suggest, haov, rij, [w]heg and who, come, on, you know what I mean, as well as [h]orses. War rod: scepter, sceptic, syllables, bless, access, axes, oxen, Christ-cross, beaux, beauty, ancre, kernel, acres, craz'd, threatned, knead, bootes, Bootes, winged, gnaw'd: th is cut of from with, cum, after another of the same, at ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... no, not any fish nor fowl can penetrate them. Old stalks succumb slowly; the bed soil is quagmire, settling with the weight as it fills and fills. Too slowly for counting they raise little islands from the bog and reclaim the land. The waters pushed out cut deeper channels, gnaw off the edges ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... serpent of surprising length and thickness, whose scales made a rustling noise as it moved itself along. It swallowed up one of my comrades, in spite of his loud cries and his efforts to save himself. Dashing him several times against the ground, it crushed him, and we could hear it gnaw and tear the poor fellow's bones, though we had fled far off. The next day, to our great terror, we saw the serpent again. "O Heaven, to what dangers are we exposed!" I cried. "We escape from a giant and the waves, only to ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... looked anxious, and when he had carried Puff up to the house in his arms, they soon followed, taking Peepsy and the dolls with them. The three dogs only remained under the cotton-wool tree, discussing the party very gravely, and wondering why it was that human beings never cared to gnaw bones. And so, rather ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... don't know about each other," she had said. "We each know the other's weaknesses and strength. I hate the way you gnaw your mustache when you're troubled, and I think the fuss you make when the waiter pours your coffee without first having given you sugar and cream is the most absurd thing I've ever seen. But, then, I know how it annoys you to see me sitting with one slipper dangling from my toe, when ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... Harrison's. The heavy noonreek tickled the top of Mr Bloom's gullet. Want to make good pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara sugar, or they'd taste it with the hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot arab stood over the grating, breathing in the fumes. Deaden the gnaw of hunger that way. Pleasure or pain is it? Penny dinner. Knife and fork chained to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... adroitness it showed in shearing off the wings of the flies, which were always rejected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered; so that the notion, that bats go down chimneys and gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story. While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down upon a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... creature, hidden under the ever-replenished storm waters, had found the concrete emplacements of their trading post to its liking. Just how it was done was never learned. It is doubtful that the creatures could gnaw away the solid stone—more likely the process was chemical, but none the less it was effective. The foundations crumbled; the metal shell subsided, rolled half over so that silty water leaked in through the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... table. He seemed like an imprisoned wild beast which every now and then raises its fangs from the bone, listens and looks, seizes it again, leaves it, rushes around its cage in a rage and goes back to gnaw. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... streets. And down in the deeps of the earth, on the black feet of the abyss, they that would conquer Man mumbled long in the darkness, mumbled and goaded the earthquake to try his strength with that city, to go forth blithely at night and to gnaw its pillars like bones. And down in those grimy deeps the earthquake answered them, and would not do their pleasure and would not stir from thence, for who knew who they were who danced all day where he rumbled, ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... dispassionately, as free from vituperation and prejudice as possible. How well I have succeeded the reader must judge. How difficult this moderation has been at times only those know who, like myself, have seen, from day to day, the treason-sharpened fangs of Starvation and Disease gnaw nearer and nearer to the hearts of well-beloved friends and comrades. Of the sixty-three of my company comrades who entered prison with me, but eleven, or at most thirteen, emerged alive, and several of these have since died from the effects of what they suffered. The mortality in the other ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... window of Stangeist's private sanctum, according to the plan in her letter—was securely locked. Jimmie Dale's hands went into his pocket—and the black silk mask was slipped over his face. He listened intently—then a little steel instrument began to gnaw like a rat. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... essential to Anthony that she should muse aloud upon last night's disaster. Her silence was a method of settling the responsibility on him. For her part she saw no necessity for speech—the moment required that she should gnaw at her finger like ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... pride Crumble year by year away; Creeds like robes are laid aside, Even our very tombs decay! When the all-conquering moth and rust Gnaw the goodly garment through, When the dust returns to dust, Let not love ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Gilbert saw him stretch himself at his length, a loud snore announcing that he, also, had gone to sleep. Gilbert had been gradually getting his head closer and closer to Fenton's arms; he now in eager haste began to gnaw away at the leathern thongs which bound them. The task was not an easy one, and such as a sailor only, accustomed to all sorts of knots, could have accomplished. It was done at length, when, lifting ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... He picked up a stick from the roadside and commenced to gnaw it; then, surprised because the others were not eating, he broke the stick in three parts, and said: "Do have some of the nice tender steak, Mr. Burns and Mr. Wilson." They threw the sticks at him. He ran ahead of them. They finished the bombardment with hunks of mud, and chased after him, slipping ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... complain. But it is not the accusation that admits of defence, the arrow that flies at noonday, that is most to be feared. It is the cold, inscrutable glance, the chilled and altered manner, the suspicion that walketh in darkness,—it is these that try the strength of woman's love, and gnaw with slow but certain tooth the cable-chain that holds the anchor of her fidelity. These are the evil spirits which prayer and fasting alone can cast out. They may fly before the uplifted eye and bended knee, but never before ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... of ships, since it was never attacked by marine worms. It is known that the ships suffered greatly from these pests in the ports of the New World. This particular wood is so bitter that the worms do not even attempt to gnaw into it. There is another tree peculiar to this country whose leaves produce swellings if they touch the naked skin, and unless sea-water or the saliva of a man who is fasting be not at once applied, these blisters produce painful death. This tree also grows in Hispaniola. It ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... out of sin, of justice, and of the terribleness of the punishment that hath swallowed him up that has lost himself. Here will be no forgetfulness; yet nothing shall be thought on but that which will wound and kill; here will be no time, cause, or means for diversion; all will stick and gnaw like a viper. Now the memory will go out to where sin was heretofore committed, it will also go out to the word that did forbid it. The understanding also, and the judgment too, will now consider of the pretended necessity that the man had to break the commandments of God, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... They don't trust God; they trust money. Yet I tell you it will work. Go ahead—do your work in the world, and you won't starve nor your children beg in the streets.'" McHurdie stopped a moment to gnaw his plug of tobacco. "The general's gitting kind of a crank—and I told ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... and, besides, when once built it lasts for years. Then, again, it is not only cheaper, but it is more deadly than the steel trap, for once the animal is caught, it seldom escapes. With the steel trap it is different, as animals often pull away from the steel jaws or even gnaw off a foot in order to get free. If, however, the hunter's deadfalls and traps have been set in vain, and if the wolf has been causing trouble and the hunter is determined to secure him, he will sit up for ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... peculiarity pertained to Sheikh Hamed; as he was not a rich man, he laboured hard to make the most of every shukka and doti expended, and each fresh expenditure seemed to gnaw his very vitals: he was ready to weep, as he himself expressed it, at the high prices of Ugogo, and the extortionate demands of its sultans. For this reason, being the leader of the caravans, so far as he was able we were very sure not to be delayed in Ugogo, where ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... and stroked the bow-bearer's hand, a condescension which made the footstool-bearer, parasol-bearer, quiver-bearer, and a dozen great lords more gnaw their lips with envy. Hydarnes, the commander who had waited an auspicious moment, now thought it safe to kneel on the lowest step ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... handicapped but little by his splinted leg; but having eaten he lay down and commenced to gnaw at the bandage. I was sitting some little distance away devouring shellfish, of which, by the way, I was ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Despite the steady gnaw, gnaw at the pit of our stomachs, we had cut down our meals to the minimum amount of food that would keep us alive; we were so weak we no longer were sure where our feet were going to when we put them down. But all the fish we had to smoke was two ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Messieurs of the upper clergy who suffer monks to enjoy from 5 to 6,000 livres income each person, whilst they see curates, who are at least as necessary, reduced to the lighter portion, as little for themselves as for their parish?"—And they yet gnaw on this slight pittance to pay the free gift. In this, as in the rest, the poor are charged to discharge the rich. In the diocese of Clermont, "the curates, even with the simple fixed rates, are subject to a tax of 60, 80, 100, 120 livres and even more; the vicars, who live only by the sweat ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... shouldn't drink so much, either; but it's a well-known fact that I am an intelligent man; so I feel such things more than others would, and that's why I have to drink. My neighbor Moens Christoffersen often says to me, speaking as my good friend, "May the devil gnaw your fat belly, Jeppe! You must hit back, if you want your old woman to behave." But I can't do anything to protect myself, for three reasons: in the the first place, because I haven't any courage; in the second, because ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... man, cutting off large pieces of the pudding and passing it across the counter to the boys who took it, without speaking, and began to gnaw ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... were never seen, So soft, so nimble, and so clean; Their teeth were sharp, their eyes were bright; And when through wood she saw them gnaw As neatly, almost, as a saw, The ...
— Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs. - With Laughable Colored Engravings • Unknown
... Famine, Slaughter, and Fire, proclaiming that they had received their commission from One whose name was formed of four letters, and promising to give their employer ample proofs of gratitude. Famine would gnaw the multitude till they should rise up against him in madness. The demon of slaughter would impel them to tear him from limb to limb. But Fire boasted that she alone could reward him as he deserved, and that ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... too, are cats of valerian, being said to dig up the roots and gnaw them to pieces, an allusion to which occurs in Topsell's "Four-footed Beasts" (1658-81):—"The root of the herb valerian (commonly called Phu) is very like to the eye of a cat, and wheresoever it groweth, if cats come thereunto they instantly dig it up for the ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... and yet repeated, dying with long sighs of sweet sound, vibrated from rock to river and back again from depth to depth of cave and cliff. Her thought flew after it; she knew, that, even if her husband heard it, he yet could not reach her in time; she saw that while the beast listened he would not gnaw,—and this she felt directly, when the rough, sharp, and multiplied stings of his tongue retouched her arm. Again her lips opened by instinct, but the sound that issued thence came by reason. She had heard that music charmed wild beasts,—just ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... tides into the semblance of a head, a veritable giant's head, with masses of long, intertangled weeds on its top and sides, like the strange, wild unkempt locks of a sea-god; its front showing blurred features like a carven face eaten away by the slow gnaw of a ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... that, when the frame's diseased, Soul sickens too, there cometh, many a time, That which torments it with the things to be, Keeps it in dread, and wearies it with cares; And even when evil acts are of the past, Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly. Add, too, that frenzy, peculiar to the mind, And that oblivion of the things that were; Add its submergence in the murky waves Of drowse ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... it by the 5.15 train. Its most idolised inmate was to be killed with disappointment, or to bind herself on the morrow to a life of misery, perhaps disgrace; but in the drawing-room was already a sprinkling of guests, many more were on their way. The wolf may gnaw at the vitals, but a hostess must wear ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... point, And to his Sir Ulpianus; How then later comers dabbled. Till the Emperor Justinianus, He of all the greatest dabbler, Sent them home about their business. And I often asked the question: 'Must it really be our fate then These dry bones to gnaw forever, Which were flung to us as remnants From their banquets by the Romans? Why should not, from soil Germanic, Spring the flower of her own law, Simple, full of forest fragrance— No luxuriant southern climber? Sad fate of the late-born races! Must read till their brows are sweating, And ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... can do that. I wonder if Slider can do any tricks?" he asked, when Top had been rewarded for his efforts with a little bone to gnaw. ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... did not yield to John Barleycorn while working in the laundry, a certain definite result was produced. I had heard the call, felt the gnaw of desire, yearned for the anodyne. I was being prepared for the stronger ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... by the narrow strait of sea, Crushed at the root of Etna's mountain-pile. High on the pinnacles whereof there sits Hephaestus, sweltering at the forge; and thence On some hereafter day shall burst and stream The lava-floods, that shall with ravening fangs Gnaw thy smooth lowlands, fertile Sicily! Such ire shall Typho from his living grave Send seething up, such jets of fiery surge, Hot and unslaked, altho' himself be laid In quaking ashes by Zeus' thunderbolt. But thou dost know hereof, nor needest me To school thy sense: thou knowest safety's road— ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... reckoned without those superficial beach jealousies which overlie the essential solidarity of the fishermen. Neither man used her much. Neither man looked after her. She was a bone of contention that each feared to gnaw. While the poor little craft lay on the beach, or in the gutter above the sea-wall, the mice ate holes into her old sail and her gear was distributed half-way ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... She is old-fashioned and I shock her. As for other women, there isn't one anywhere to whom I would say a word. Only think how a girl such as I am is placed; or indeed any girl. You, if you see a woman that you fancy, can pursue her, can win her and triumph, or lose her and gnaw your heart;—at any rate you can do something. You can tell her that you love her; can tell her so again and again even though she should scorn you. You can set yourself about the business you have taken in hand and can work hard at it. What can ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... southern plains were not often formidable to large animals, even in the days when they most abounded. They rarely attacked the horses of the hunter, and indeed were but little regarded by these experienced animals. They were much more likely to gnaw off the lariat with which the horse was tied, than to try to molest the steed himself. They preferred to prey on young animals, or on the weak and disabled. They rarely molested a full-grown cow or steer, still less a full-grown buffalo, ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... my children, Nor gnaw the smoke-house door: The owl-queen then will love us And send her ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... "miserable exiles" the next; and always because some satanic ambition or passion or person entering has cast baneful shadow o'er the scene. Men talk of the scythe of time and the tooth of time. But, said the art historian: "Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm; we who smite like the scythe. Fancy what treasures would be ours to-day if the delicate statues and temples of the Greeks, if the broad roads and massy walls of the Romans, if the noble architecture, castles and towns of the Middle ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... and begin at once to beautify it with her rich and luxuriant verdure. For example, as soon as the fires went out over the clearing, she began, with her sun and rain, to blanch the blackened stumps, and to gnaw at their foundations with her tooth of decay. If Albert made a road or a path she rounded its angles, softened away all the roughness that his plow or hoe had left in it, and fringed it with grass and flowers. The solitary and slender trees which had been left standing here and there ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... fire, and plucked severall of my nailes. I stayed in that maner all night. I neither wanted in the meane while meate nor drinke. I was supplied by my mother and sisters. My father alsoe came to see me & tould me I should have courage. That very time there came a litle boy to gnaw with his teeth the end of my fingers. There appears a man to cutt off my thumb, and being about it leaves me instantly & did no harme, for which I was glad. I believe that my father dissuaded ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... stars he was no nearer. But that coward's comfort did not last him long, for Jimmie was not a coward, he was not used to letting other men struggle and suffer for him. His conscience began to gnaw at him. If that was what it cost to beat down the Beast, to make the world safe for democracy, why should he be escaping? Why should he be warm and dry and well-fed, while working-men of France lay out in the trenches in ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... of mumble-te-peg that me and Mr. Martin played, he did not come to our house for two weeks. Mr. Travers said perhaps the earth he had to gnaw while he was drawing the peg had struck to his insides and made him sick, but I knew it couldn't be that. I've drawn pegs that were drove into every kind of earth, and it never hurt me. Earth is healthy, unless it is lime; and don't you ever ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... That which sleepeth, Wanderer," he said, at length. "My tongue is sealed. I tell thee more that I would tell another. Do not ask,—but hark! They come again! Now may Ra and Pasht and Amen curse them; may the red swine's mouth of Set gnaw upon them in Amenti; may the Fish of Sebek flesh his teeth of stone in them for ever, and feed and ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the delicate laces and brilliant smile. There was no warmth, no brilliancy, no summer for this woman; so the stupor and vacancy had time to gnaw into her face perpetually. She was young, too, though no one guessed it; so the gnawing ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... while those of the Council of State were secret, and publicity was what he dreaded above all things. He was very well pleased when he had to transmit to the Legislative Body or to the Tribunate any proposed law of trifling importance, and he used then to say that he had thrown them a bone to gnaw. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... a sailor, A tinker and a tailor, Had once a doubtful strife, sir, To make a maid a wife, sir, Whose name was Buxom Joan. For now the time was ended, When she no more intended To lick her lips at men, sir, And gnaw the sheets in vain, sir, And lie ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... week, to be paid "some time," an happy O'Shaughnessy fashion. The white mice looked on coldly with their little pink eyes, while their mistress's own grew red with the misery of parting from them, and the rabbit seized the opportunity to gnaw Bridgie's skirt with its sharp teeth; but for Pixie the keenest pang of parting was over when she saw no more the floor with its scattered cabbage-leaves, and the door closed behind her, shutting out the dear mousy, rabbity smell associated with ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in the face; the fishing, that promised so well when I passed, having entirely failed, and no deer were to be found. He wrote me, however, that he would maintain his post while a piece of parchment remained to gnaw! ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... dead leaves, which the poor insects crawled over, vainly endeavouring to find a piece sufficiently moist to satisfy their craving appetite. From thence I went to the rabbits, and found them without victuals, and so hungry that they had begun to gnaw the belts of the hutches. I inquired for Emma, but was some time before I could discover where she was. At length I found her very busy in making a garden with her brother George, so much taken up with her new employment that she had totally forgotten to clean or ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... when ten minutes afterwards the cry of one of her babes struck on her ear, and the next moment Ursel stood beside her, laying them down close to her, and saying exultingly, "Safe! safe out at the gate, and down the hillside, and my old lady ready to gnaw ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up from envious historical painters," said Salvator, interrupting his young companion; "like them, Antonio, you throw me the choice bone of landscape-painting that I may gnaw away at it, and so spare their own good flesh. Perhaps I do understand the human figure and all that is dependent upon it. But this senseless repetition ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... swallowed up one of my comrades, notwithstanding his loud cries, and the efforts he made to rid himself of the serpent; which, shaking him several times against the ground, crushed him, and we could hear him gnaw and tear the poor wretch's bones, when we had fled at a great distance from him. Next day we saw the serpent again, to our great terror, when I cried out, O Heaven, to what dangers are we exposed! We rejoiced yesterday at our having escaped ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... vision saw, In France, at Aix, in his Chapelle once more, That his right arm an evil bear did gnaw; Out of Ardennes he saw a leopard stalk, His body dear did savagely assault; But then there dashed a harrier from the hall, Leaping in the air he sped to Charles call, First the right ear of that grim bear he caught, And furiously ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... nights clothed the figure of the strange stern man in her mind. Not that it affected the appetites of the pretty pair. We must not expect that of Cupid enthroned and in condition; under the influence of sea-air, too. The files of egg-cups laugh at such an idea. Still the worm did gnaw them. Judge, then, of their delight when, on this pleasant morning, as they were issuing from the garden of their cottage to go down to the sea, they caught sight of Tom Bakewell rushing up the road with a portmanteau on his shoulders, and, some distance behind him, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to take a notion to be great singers. Is there any use for me to tell you that if you persist you will succeed? Not a bit of it. You might succeed in ruining the nerves of your teacher. You might easily make those who hear you practise "want to gnaw a file and flee into the wilderness." But you would never learn to sing. There is no hope for some of us till we ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... approaching it by the 5.15 train. Its most idolised inmate was to be killed with disappointment, or to bind herself on the morrow to a life of misery, perhaps disgrace; but in the drawing-room was already a sprinkling of guests, many more were on their way. The wolf may gnaw at the vitals, but a hostess ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... Toad baked and roasted, and cut things down so finely that her fellow-servants were almost driven to chew their wooden spoons and gnaw bones. ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... always a competition among the labourers for a dead pig or sheep; it was the cobbler's turn, and he had it, cut it up, and salted it down. But when in course of time he came to partake of his side of bacon, behold it was so tough and dried up that even he could not gnaw it. The side hung in the cottage for months, for he did not like to throw it away, and could not think what to do with it, for the dogs could not eat it. At last the old fellow hit upon the notion of using it as leather to mend ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... so farr, as at length perfectly to inclose the Animal, which, by other observations I have made, I ghess to contain it, and become, as it were a womb to it, so long, till it be fit and prepar'd to be translated into another state, at what time, like (what they say of) Vipers, they gnaw their way through the womb that bred them; divers of these kinds I have met with upon Goosberry leaves, Rose-tree leaves, Willow ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... thing we don't know about each other," she had said. "We each know the other's weaknesses and strength. I hate the way you gnaw your mustache when you're troubled, and I think the fuss you make when the waiter pours your coffee without first having given you sugar and cream is the most absurd thing I've ever seen. But, then, I know how it annoys you to see me sitting with one slipper dangling from my toe, when I'm particularly ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... support to increase their number in Congress by thirty-three. Had not the moment been so tragic, nothing could have been more amusing than the helpless wrath of the Jacobins caught in their own trap, compelled to gnaw their tongues in silence, while the Democrats, paraphrasing their own arguments, hurled ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Prue and Agatha Are thick with Mig and Joan! They bite their threads and shake their heads And gnaw my ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... from the workshop to dinner and supper, and run to meet his footstep long before he was in sight, chuckling and chattering with delight. Early one morning the parrot got shut, by chance, in the cupboard, and, attempting to gnaw his way out, was mistaken for a rat, and father took the shovel to kill him, while mother carefully opened the door so that the rat might squeeze his way out to be killed, but poor Poll got the blow instead, and had his neck broken. All that day my father stayed at home weeping ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... him?" asked Mother. "I can't allow him in the house, he would gnaw the legs of the chairs and tables; all puppies do when they are ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... himself, wrought by the tides into the semblance of a head, a veritable giant's head, with masses of long, intertangled weeds on its top and sides, like the strange, wild unkempt locks of a sea-god; its front showing blurred features like a carven face eaten away by the slow gnaw of ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... when you had been most wicked: when you were sent to bed without even the supper-crust to gnaw, and when your body and arms and legs were bruised and aching from the beating they told you you deserved. The stars would go a long way off, and while you tingled and trembled and panted with expectation, would come back again as ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... excitement of what had happened, his wonder as to what would come next, and the hunger that had begun to gnaw at him, Clare could not sleep. And as he lay awake, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... not sign the paper. His design was known. He maligned his rival, and suffered condign punishment. A benign face. He was arraigned after the campaign. He deigned not to feign surprise. Squirrels gnaw the bark. He affirmed it with phlegm. The knight carried a knapsack. He had a knack for rhymes. She knew how to knead the dough. They cut the knot with a knife. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. The knave had hard ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... sparrow That I brought up at Carow. O cat of churlish kind, The fiend was in thy mind. I would thou hadst been blind! The leopards savage, The lions in their rage, May they catch thee in their paws, And gnaw thee in their jaws; The dragons with their tongues May they poison thy liver and lungs. Of India the greedy gripes May they tear out all thy tripes; Of Arcady the bears May they pluck away thine ears; The wild wolf Lycaon Bite asunder thy back-bone; Of AEtna the burning hill, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... Uncheedah, "you still insist upon bringing in some sort of bone!" but I begged her to let him gnaw them inside because it was so cold. Having been granted this privilege, he settled himself at my back and I became absorbed in some specially nice arrows that uncle ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... little further, and she met a rat. So she said: "Rat! rat! gnaw rope; rope won't hang butcher; butcher won't kill ox; ox won't drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home tonight." But the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... began, then, feebly surrendering to the gnaw of desire, he reached hastily for the glass, as if in fear that it would ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... nails," said Albert, "but I think I could gnaw down a good-sized sapling. Hold me, Dick, or I'll be devouring a ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... fastenings. The window—it was the window of Stangeist's private sanctum, according to the plan in her letter—was securely locked. Jimmie Dale's hands went into his pocket—and the black silk mask was slipped over his face. He listened intently—then a little steel instrument began to gnaw like a rat. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... suggest, or suggest, or suggest, or suggest, haov, rij, [w]heg and who, come, on, you know what I mean, as well as [h]orses. War rod: scepter, sceptic, syllables, bless, access, axes, oxen, Christ-cross, beaux, beauty, ancre, kernel, acres, craz'd, threatned, knead, bootes, Bootes, winged, gnaw'd: th is cut of from with, cum, after another of the same, at ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... abandon'd to Ambition's sway, I sought for glory in the paths of guile; And fawn'd and smiled, to plunder and betray, Myself betray'd and plunder'd all the while; So gnaw'd the viper the corroding file; But now with pangs of keen remorse, I rue Those years of trouble and debasement vile. Yet why should I this cruel theme pursue? Fly, fly, detested thoughts, for ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... bunch of yaller dogs think they can put me out of office in this town they'll find they're tryin' to gnaw the wrong ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... scent and greedily swallow whatever was offered. When he realised the sad truth that a huge hook with a strong barb was hidden inside this tempting dish and that it was no easy matter to disgorge the tasty morsel, he would try to gnaw through the shaft of the hook with his teeth. Very occasionally he might succeed, but usually his efforts failed. Attached to the book was a length of strong iron chain; and sometimes, though defeated by the hook, he ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... your name sir call'd Antipholus? And is not that your bondman Dromio? E.Dro. Within this houre I was his bondman sir, But he I thanke him gnaw'd in two my cords, Now am I ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... : zingibro. -bread, mielkuko. gipsy : cigano. give : doni, donaci, glacier : glaciejo. glass : vitro, "a—," glaso. "looking—," spegulo. glaze : glazuri. glorify : glori. glove : ganto. glow : ardi, brili. "-worm," lampiro. glue : gluo. glycerine : glicerino. gnat : kulo. gnaw : mordeti. goat : kapro. goblet : pokalo. goblin : koboldo. God : Dio. gold : oro. goldfinch : kardelo. golosh : galosxo. goodbye : adiaux. goose : anserino. gooseberry : groso. gospel : evangelio. gout : podagro. govern : regi. governess : guvernistino graceful : gracia. gradual : grada, lauxgrada. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... Nothing more so. Do you forget the angels who lost heaven for the daughters of men? Do you forget Helen, and the fair women who made mischief and set nations by the ears before Helen was born? If jealousies that gnaw men's hearts out of their bodies,—if pangs that waste men to shadows and drive them into raving madness or moping melancholy,—if assassination and suicide are dreadful possibilities, then there is always something frightful about a lovely young woman.—I love to look ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of relations established between the sexes.] Such are the institutions which gnaw at the root of Islam and prevent the growth of freedom and civilization. "By these the unity of the household is fatally broken and the purity and virtue of the family tie weakened; the vigor of the dominant classes is sapped; the ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... been thinking. It seemed essential to Anthony that she should muse aloud upon last night's disaster. Her silence was a method of settling the responsibility on him. For her part she saw no necessity for speech—the moment required that she should gnaw at her finger ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... still. It ran right toward me, and I naturally jumped, as anybody would; but I am not afraid of mice, and when the horrid thing ran up inside the leg of my pantaloons, I yelled to Maria because I was afraid it would gnaw a hole in my garment. There is something real disagreeable about having a mouse inside the leg of one's pantaloons, especially if there is nothing between you and the mouse. Its toes are cold, and its nails are scratchy, and its fur tickles, and its tail feels crawly, and there ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... he does not say that the bread is the true body of Christ, as Hesshusius does; but that it is the communion, i.e., that by which the union occurs (consociatio fit) with the body of Christ, which occurs in the use, and certainly not without thinking, as when mice gnaw the bread.... The Son of God is present in the ministry of the Gospel, and there He is certainly efficacious in the believers, and He is present not on account of the bread, but on account of man, as He says, 'Abide in Me and I in you,' ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Indeed, nutrition itself, hunting, feeding, and digestion, are forced activities, and the basis of passions not altogether congenial nor ideal. Hunger is an incipient faintness and agony, and an animal that needs to hunt, gnaw, and digest is no immortal, free, or essentially victorious creature. His will is already driven into by-paths and expedients; his primitive beatific vision has to be interrupted by remedial action to restore it for a while, since otherwise it would ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... put an iron vessel, the opening downward, on his stomach, place in the vessel several rats, then tie it securely to his body. Then these worshipers of God would wait until the rats, seeking food and liberty, would gnaw through the body ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... not want a whole clan of women and children into the bargain; the castle is as full as a bee-hive—more than sixty mouths; to say nothing of a dozen horses; spite of your potato-carts, we shall have to gnaw the stones before ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... and set them in the refrigerator and on the pantry shelves. One was a plump fruit-cake that had been keeping company in a tight box with a sponge soaked in sherry for ever since New Year's. It was ripe, or smelled so. It made me gnaw under my belt. ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a rustling noise as he wound himself along. It swallowed up one of my comrades, notwithstanding his loud cries, and the efforts he made to extricate himself from it; dashing him several times against the ground, it crushed him, and we could hear it gnaw and tear the poor wretch's bones, though we had ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... mass, there appears to be any large stock of mutual affection among the brethren of the chisel and the pencil. On the contrary, it will impress the shrewd observer that the jealousies and petty animosities, which the poets of our day have flung aside, still irritate and gnaw into the hearts of this kindred class of imaginative men. It is not difficult to suggest reasons why this should be the fact. The public, in whose good graces lie the sculptor's or the painter's prospects of success, is infinitely smaller than the public ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... long before Stychus brought a white shroud and a purple-bordered toga into the dining-room, and Trimalchio requested us to feel them and see if they were pure wool. Then, with a smile, "Take care, Stychus, that the mice don't get at these things and gnaw them, or the moths either. I'll burn you alive if they do. I want to be carried out in all my glory so all the people will wish me well." Then, opening a jar of nard, he had us all anointed. "I hope I'll enjoy this ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... free from vituperation and prejudice as possible. How well I have succeeded the reader must judge. How difficult this moderation has been at times only those know who, like myself, have seen, from day to day, the treason-sharpened fangs of Starvation and Disease gnaw nearer and nearer to the hearts of well-beloved friends and comrades. Of the sixty-three of my company comrades who entered prison with me, but eleven, or at most thirteen, emerged alive, and several of these have since died from the effects of what they ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Slough of Despond. The answer is, because they were born there. Moreover, the taxation is light, and rent is moderate. Add that, when famine has been in the land, or the inundations of the Tiber have spread ruin and devastation around, the scornful charity of the Popes has flung them some bones to gnaw. Then again, travelling costs money, and passports are not to be had for the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... Cree girl. When they had gone he still saw her, and the vision troubled him. They came in again at night, when the fire was sending red and yellow lights up and down the tepee walls, and the more he watched Oachi the stronger there grew within him something that seemed to gnaw and gripe with a dull sort of pain. Oachi was beautiful. He had never seen hair like her hair. He had never before seen eyes more beautiful. He had never heard a voice so low and sweet and filled with bird-like ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... decidedly against you," remarked the Colonel with a dry smile. He had recognized Oncle Jazon after a little sharp scrutiny. "I suppose, however, that we can let you gnaw the bones after we've got off ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... gnaw and deuour our state? Shall neuer we this blade, Our bloud hath bloudie made, Lay downe? these armes downe lay As robes we weare alway? But as from age to age, So passe from rage to rage? Our hands shall we not ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... mind for him to gnaw and worry A kind of anchorage in case of indiscretion A night that had shivered repose Am I thy master, or thou mine? An instinct labouring to supply the deficiencies of stupidity And now came war, the purifier and the pestilence And one gets the worst of it (in any bargain) ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... the grub has a skin as fine as satin and white as ivory. This dead white comes from a copious layer of grease which the animal's spare diet would not lead us to suspect. True, it has nothing to do, at every hour of the day and night, but gnaw. The quantity of wood that passes into its stomach makes up for the dearth of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... then he began, "Thou willest that I renew a desperate grief that oppresses my heart already only in thinking ere I speak of it. But, if my words are to be seed that may bear fruit of infamy for the traitor whom I gnaw, thou shalt see me speak and weep at once. I know not who thou art, nor by what mode thou art come down hither, but Florentine thou seemest to me truly when I hear thee. Thou hast to know that I was the Count Ugolino and he ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... secret of Mistress Rebecca's new-found diligence. No syllable was uttered, but it was the awfullest silence that ever a lad heard. I was lifted rather than led upstairs and left a prisoner in locked room with naught to do but gnaw my conscience and gaze at the woods skirting the crests of the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... thinking of her he heard a mouse gnawing under the boards, and every night after the mouse came to gnaw. 'The teeth of regret are the same; my life is being gnawed away. Never shall I see her.' It seemed impossible that life would close on him without his seeing her face or hearing her voice again, and he began to think how it would be if they were to meet on the other side. For he believed ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... burn, or ague freezes, Rheumatics gnaw, or cholic squeezes; Our neighbors' sympathy may ease us, Wi' pitying moan; But thee—thou hell o' a' diseases, Aye mocks ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... all his booty. No, with the indenture deeds of the dead souls, it was lodged in the hands of a tchinovnik; and as he thought of these things Chichikov rolled about the floor, and felt the cankerous worm of remorse seize upon and gnaw at his heart, and bite its way ever further and further into that heart so defenceless against its ravages, until he made up his mind that, should he have to suffer another twenty-four hours of this misery, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... all ear: I, experienced in affairs, See fifty things, say never one; But thee the people prizes not Who, doing nothing, say'st a thousand. To me, appointed to the chase, The king's hand gives the grouse's breast; Whilst a chatterer like thee Must gnaw worms ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... yet of that man when you thrashed him at the railway station. You've pluck enough of that kind. You must now show that you've that other kind of pluck. You know the story of the boy who would not cry though the wolf was gnawing him underneath his frock. Most of us have some wolf to gnaw us somewhere; but we are generally gnawed beneath our clothes, so that the world doesn't see; and it behoves us so to bear it that the world shall not suspect. The man who goes about declaring himself to be miserable will be not only miserable, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... my instructions, the lad had lain perfectly motionless and silent for over an hour, for it must have taken me at least that long to gnaw through ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... The heavenly resignation of his face seemed infamous and finished hypocrisy. I said to myself: "He apes the angel, the wretch!" and I regretted that custom interposed a sword between him and my hatred. It seemed so coldly ceremonious, I would have liked to tear his bosom open with my nails and gnaw his heart out with my teeth. I knew that I would kill him; I already saw the red lips of his wound outlined upon his breast by the pale finger of death. When my steel crossed his, I attempted neither thrusts nor parries. I had forgotten the little fencing I knew. I fought at random, almost with my ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... geese. "Can't you be quiet?" The dog stopped romping with the baby, sniffed the air, and growled. "Lie down," said the woman; "there's a bone for your supper." She threw the dog a bone. He sprang at it and began to gnaw it. ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... broke, the boys were starving with hunger, and could have eaten anything. They even tried to gnaw at bits of leather cut out of their boots, but they were so tough and sodden from their long immersion in the sea that they could ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... next day for home, in a good humour with himself and his munificence, but on the way home remembered Susan Hornby's hesitancy and later decision to make the cloak herself, and the worm of suspicion began to gnaw again. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... hill of Hermes leapt the light that said Troy was fallen, a torch funereal for the king's triumphal head. Dire indeed the birth of Leda's womb that had God's self to sire Bloomed, a flower of love that stung the soul with fangs that gnaw like fire: But the twin-born human-fathered sister-flower bore fruit more dire. Scarce the cry that called on airy heaven and all swift winds on wing, Wells of river-heads, and countless laugh of waves past reckoning, Earth which brought forth all, and the orbed sun that looks on everything, Scarce ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... your obedience, and abandon the rebel Belial and his deceitful daughters. Though their appearance is so splendid, it is only deception; Belial at home is but a very poor prince, he has only you for fuel, and only you as roast and boiled to gnaw, and you are never sufficient, and there will never be an end to his hunger and your torments. And who would serve such a malicious butcher, in a temporary delirium here, and in eternal torments hereafter, who could obtain a life of happiness under a king merciful and charitable ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... know where to find in any play a catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as this. This is indeed, according to Milton, to "describe high passions and high actions". The fortitude of the Spartan boy who let a beast gnaw out his bowels till he died without expressing a groan, is a faint bodily image of this dilaceration of the spirit and exenteration of the inmost mind, which Calantha with a holy violence against her nature keeps closely covered, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... sailing to Italy, and you shall reach Italy and enter its harbors. But you are not destined to surround your city with a wall, till cruel hunger and vengeance for the wrong you have done us force you to gnaw your very tables ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... they run is from those arrant thieves the wolverines, which, if they discover what is on the top of the scaffold, though they cannot climb up it, will set to work with their sharp teeth, and try to gnaw ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... J. Hinton Knowles' Folk-Tales of Kashmir a merchant gives his stupid son a small coin with which he is to purchase something to eat, something to drink, something to gnaw, something to sow in the garden, and some food for the cow. A clever young girl advises him to buy a water-melon, which would answer all the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... awful awaking from some weird possession or suggestion of evil by a stronger mind, Guy Waring began to walk on in a feverish fashion, fast, fast, oh, so fast, not knowing where he went, but conscious only that he must keep moving, lest an accusing conscience should gnaw his very heart out. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... at once that I began to gnaw the head of my cane, to consult the ceiling, to gaze at the fire, to examine Caroline's foot, and I thus held out till the marriageable young ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... his over-strained imagination had painted a fresh picture—that of the miserable-looking cur somewhere close at hand, settled down in a hollow to deliberately gnaw the sandy bone. For it was too much to expect of a dog that, after perhaps starving for eight-and-forty hours, it would leave the meal for which it hungered, and go and deliver such a message as that upon ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... Bloom's gullet. Want to make good pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara sugar, or they'd taste it with the hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot arab stood over the grating, breathing in the fumes. Deaden the gnaw of hunger that way. Pleasure or pain is it? Penny dinner. Knife and fork ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... "Rat, rat, gnaw rope; Rope won't hang butcher; Butcher won't kill ox; Ox won't drink water; Water won't quench fire; Fire won't burn stick; Stick won't beat dog; Dog won't bite pig; Piggy won't get over the stile, And I ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... for that title. We were a pitiful lot of fellows in this garrison. We mixed the handful of flour given to us with snow water, and, wrapping the unsalted dough around a sagebrush spike, we cooked it in the flames, and ate it from the stick, as a dog would gnaw a bone. The officers put a guard around the few little hackberry trees to keep the men from eating the berries and the bark. Not a scrap of the few buffalo we found was wasted. Even the entrails ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Mice were never seen, So soft, so nimble, and so clean; Their teeth were sharp, their eyes were bright; And when through wood she saw them gnaw As neatly, almost, as a saw, The mother's eyes ...
— Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs. - With Laughable Colored Engravings • Unknown
... leads. And sometimes it leads to the desert, and the tongue swells out of the mouth, And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking drouth. And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the lone camp-fire, And you gnaw your belt in the anguish of hunger-goaded desire. And sometimes it leads to the Southland, to the swamp where the orchid glows, And you rave to your grave with the fever, and they rob the corpse for its clothes. And sometimes it leads to the Northland, and the scurvy softens your bones, ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... a mistake to gnaw your fingers. I gnawed a good deal in my puppyhood, but chewing my paws is a trick that I ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... tool.' He said, and sought his snug retreat, Close at the rotten pine-tree's feet. Where plump he did the weasel meet; Whom shunning by a happy dodge, He climb'd the hollow trunk to lodge; And there the savage owl he saw. Necessity became his law, And down he went, the rope to gnaw. Strand after strand in two he bit, And freed, at last, the hypocrite. That moment came the man in sight; The new ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... serenade. Their blended, passionate voices often moved me in a strange excitement, for I was not musical. I had no way of relieving myself, as these singers and painters have, who crystallize an emotion or a sorrow into a picture or a cadence. I can only gnaw the bedpost, or tear up something, in the mere need of expression. Denis watched them awhile, and then it became a trio instead of a duet. Mr. Christopher brought Spanish music. Light, rippling airs, dances, whose strange swaying rhythm had been borne to his ears ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sixth captain was Captain Torment: he was captain over the resurrection doubters; his colours were those that were pale; Mr. Gnaw was his standard-bearer, and he had the black worm ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... prevailing epidemic. At one end of our barracks was the kitchen, and by the door stood a barrel into which was thrown beef bones and slops. I saw a starving boy fish out one of these bones and begin to gnaw it. A guard discovered him. He snatched the bone from the prisoner's hand, cocked his pistol, pressed it to his head and ordered him to his all-fours and made him bark for the bone ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Jan for a couple of days, despite the comforting society of her mate; but Jan did not miss her a scrap. At present there was not an ounce of sentiment in his composition. He was kept warm, he lay snugly soft, and his stomach was generally full. He had great gristly bones to gnaw and play with, and Betty Murdoch, with a little solid-rubber ball, played with him also by the hour together. Beyond these things Jan had no thought or desire at present. He grew fast, and enjoyed every ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... cats of valerian, being said to dig up the roots and gnaw them to pieces, an allusion to which occurs in Topsell's "Four-footed Beasts" (1658-81):—"The root of the herb valerian (commonly called Phu) is very like to the eye of a cat, and wheresoever it groweth, if cats come thereunto they instantly dig it up for the love thereof, as I myself ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... a wise precaution to place a protective screen around the trunk of each tree to prevent rodents from attacking it. Mice gnaw off the bark near the ground, sometimes girdling a tree and so killing it. Rabbits chew off branches and they, too, may girdle the upper part of a tree. Rabbits are very fond of pecan and hickory bark. In some places, it may ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... these years, worse than the tomb devils did the swine that ran down into the sea to cool off; and if I have changed its hiding-place once, I have twenty times. If the old General doesn't pay well for it, I shall gnaw off my fingers, on account of the sin it has cost me. I was an honest woman and could have faced the world until that night—so many years ago; and since then I have carried a load on my soul that makes me—even Hannah Hinton, who never ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Foster new ones late in the spring. He's easy, too. Warren's the one to gnaw out heels, though young people are so much ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... into the future. Should you die, O King, the lands will be desolate; but for me, the kahuna, the name will live on from one generation to another; but my death will be before thine, and when I am up on the heaven-feared altar then my words will gnaw thee, O King, and the rains and the sun will ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... Safikuli Khan, is advancing with a large army against the son of Kueprili, and the darkness of defeat threatens to obscure the sun-like radiance of the Ottoman arms. Most puissant Padishah! suffer not the tooth of disaster to gnaw away at thy glory! The Grand Vizier and I have already gathered together thy host on the shores of the Bosphorus. They are ready, at a moment's notice, to embark in the ships prepared for them. Money and provisions in abundance have been sent to the frontier for the gallant Nuuman Kueprili on the ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... you know of some place where we could stay to-night. Even a shed to crawl into would keep us from freezing. It's an awful cold night not to have a roof over your head, or a crust to gnaw on, or a spark of fire to keep life in ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the jail, as the phrase is. For this purpose the prisoners are tied up, or rather hung up, and flogged. At night, they are fettered down to a board, neck, wrists, and ancles, amidst ordure and filth, whilst the rats, unmolested, are permitted to gnaw their limbs! This place of torment is proverbially called, in ordinary speech, "Te-yuk," a term equivalent to the worst sense ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... treated to a slight shock. The bird had been carefully set on a wooden plate to one side. Their guest was being offered only the broth. This he sniffed for a moment, then, placing it carefully on the ground, seized the bird and holding it by the drumsticks began to gnaw ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... angrily, and turned a suspicious eye on me. "The Hanover rat,—George!... And the blight works—oh, it works, and the brain rots in his head and the maggots gnaw at his heart. And they wonder why!... an effectual fervent curse!—Oh, it works! For years and years I've cursed him night and day and—you see! Keep him in the dark, they said. Let no man speak to him for a twelvemonth and a day, they said. And no man spoke, but I myself, and all day ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... squirrel is acorns, nuts, and seeds and grain of all kinds, and it will sometimes nibble leaf-buds and tender shoots of young trees in the spring. Its teeth are so sharp and strong that it will gnaw the hardest nutshell. Nothing is prettier than to see this graceful creature sitting upright, its beautiful tail curled over its back, gnawing at a nut which it skillfully holds in its fore-paws. As it is not afraid unless one approaches too ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... mother in a corridor or on a staircase of the palace, he would suddenly plant a verbal dagger in her heart; and frequently, in full court, he would deal the king such a cutting reply as caused him to blanch, and gnaw his lip. If the spectacle of Gertrude and Claudius was hateful to ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... over there after the meeting to discuss the future good of the Smith Club. Then about a dozen of us would slide gently over there—and a curtain would have to be drawn over the woe that would ensue for the other gangs. Meanwhile, all we had to do was to sit around the house and gnaw our fingers. Maxwell called for our Smith last and he had the other two in tow. Oh, no; we didn't invite them in. Two Alfalfa Delts and three Chi Yis were sitting on our porch, visiting us. Three Chi Yis ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... statues and temples of the Greeks—if the broad and massive walls of the Romans, if the noble and pathetic architecture of the Middle Ages, had not been ground to dust by mere human rage. You talk of the scythe of time and the tooth of time; I tell you time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm, we who smite like the scythe. All these lost treasures of human intellect have been wholly destroyed by human industry of destruction; the marble would have stood its 2,000 years as well in the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... "He'll gnaw right through the house, he'll chew right through the roof. He'll get in. He has smelled that big cabbage ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... oft, but now I feel a wonder, In what grievous pain they die, that die for hunger. O my greedy stomach, how it doth bite and gnaw? If I were at a rack, I could eat hay or straw. Mine empty guts do fret, my maw doth even tear, Would God I had a piece of some horsebread here. Yet is master Esau in worse case than I. If he have not some meat, the sooner he will die: He ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... soon after the swarming season is over, the bees expel the drones from the hive. They sometimes sting them, and sometimes gnaw the roots of their wings, so that when driven from the hive, they cannot return. If not treated in either of these summary ways, they are so persecuted and starved, that they soon perish. The hatred of the bees extends even to the young which are still unhatched: ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... when he to her dark retreat Had driven from upper light that beast of hell (Where she herself doth ever gnaw and eat, While from her thousand eyes tears ceaseless well) Followed the knight, to guide his wandering feet; And overtook him on the highest swell; Then placed himself beside the cavalier Him from those dark and gloomy ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... children, Nor gnaw the smoke-house door: The owl-queen then will love us And send ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... usually restored him for a short time to reason, and he would crawl up the bank and gnaw a morsel of the maple sugar; but he could not eat much, for it was in a tough, compact cake, which his jaws had not power to break. All that day and the next night he lay on the banks of the salt stream, or rushed ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... of emotion, he could not stand before a looking-glass without noticing this phenomenon which he had so frequently remarked and which always terrified him; the blood flew to his neck, purpling the scar, which then began to gnaw the skin. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... of rats and mice, Of flies and frogs and bugs and lice, Commands thee to come forth this hour, And gnaw this threshold with great power, As he with oil the same shall smear— Ha! with a skip e'en now thou'rt here! But brisk to work! The point by which I'm cowered, Is on the ledge, the farthest forward. Yet one more bite, the deed is ...
— Faust • Goethe
... real modern orthodox man, like a nervous watch dog, must sit on the door-stone of his system, and bark incessantly at everything that comes in sight along the highway. And when there is nothing to bark at, either he must growl and gnaw his reserved bones, or bark at the moon to keep up the sonorousness of his voice. And so, for fear that the sweetness of our temper may lead men to think that we have no theologic zeal, we lift up in objurgation now and then—as much as to ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... kill her—as I did—once! Be patient! Watch the light shine, even though it does not illumine your path; be glad that the rose blooms for itself, if not for you! It will be difficult!— meanwhile you can live on hope—a bitter fruit to eat; but gnaw it to the last rind, my Sergius! Hope that Lotys may melt in your fire, as a snowflake in the sun! Come! Now take the poor poet home,—the drunken child of inspiration—take him home to his garret in the slums—the poet whose book has been accepted ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... work of profound erudition, that would be purchased by every man who wished to be thought learned, placed upon a conspicuous shelf of his library, or laid open upon his table—but never read. I observed him, now and then, draw a large fragment of biscuit out of his pocket, and gnaw; whether it was his dinner, or whether he was endeavoring to keep off that exhaustion of the stomach, produced by much pondering over dry works, I leave to harder students than myself ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... kill all these fellows, and be off." "But how are we to get our hands free, Rube?" "That's the only point I can't make out," he said. "If these fellows would leave us alone, it would be easy enough; we could gnaw through each other's thongs in ten minutes; but they won't let us do that. All the rest is easy enough. Just think it over, Seth." I did think it over, but I did not see my way to getting rid of our thongs. That done, the rest was possible enough. If ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... and I shouldn't drink so much, either; but it's a well-known fact that I am an intelligent man; so I feel such things more than others would, and that's why I have to drink. My neighbor Moens Christoffersen often says to me, speaking as my good friend, "May the devil gnaw your fat belly, Jeppe! You must hit back, if you want your old woman to behave." But I can't do anything to protect myself, for three reasons: in the the first place, because I haven't any courage; in the second, because of that damned Master Eric hanging behind the bed, ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... outward sufferings (though These were enough to gnaw into our souls) Hath stung me oft, and, more than ever, now. When, but for this untoward sickness, which Seized me upon this desolate frontier, and 50 Hath wasted, not alone my strength, but means, And leaves us—no! this is beyond me!—but For this I had been happy—thou been happy— ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... round the child she loved And lost. Old sorrows are forgotten now, Or but remembered to make sweet the hour That overpays them; wounded hearts that bled Or broke are healed forever. In the room Of this grief-shadowed present, there shall be A Present in whose reign no grief shall gnaw The heart, and never shall a tender tie Be broken; in whose reign the eternal Change That waits on growth and action shall proceed With everlasting Concord ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... it, Bumper began to gnaw at the lining of the muff, and pretty soon got his whole body under it, and then he began to kick and wriggle to get out. He felt he was being smothered alive, and he squealed aloud. The lady finally rescued him, but not until she had torn away half ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... hast burnt my nose; but I must still like thee, thou knave, for once thou wert a pretty fellow; and my little daughter likes thee too. Out of the crystal thou wilt never come unless I help thee; up thither I cannot clamber; but my cousin gossip the Rat, that lives close above thee, will gnaw in two the shelf on which thou standest; thou shalt jingle down, and I catch thee in my apron, that thy nose be not broken, or thy fine sleek face at all injured; then I will carry thee to Mam'sell Veronica, and thou shalt marry her when ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... gained in missionary schools to raise a check. I know that education which does not rightly train the will may be giving tools to a burglar or weapons to a mad man. The anarchism in Chicago, but for the education it controls, would have been like Bunyan's giants—able only to gnaw its nails in malice and have fits in sunshiny weather. But the American Missionary Association understands this thoroughly. In that copy of the year's review which Dr. Strieby sent me, the report of the school work was marked with a red pencil, that of the church work with a blue ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... another family—she had so frequently become a mother in the past. But month succeeded month, and she for ever disappointed me, and at last I abandoned hope. In solitude and exile Mercedes degenerated sadly; got monstrously fat; too indolent to gnaw, let her teeth grow to a preposterous length; and in the end died of a surfeit ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... influence, permitted the bones of game slain in the chase to be broken, or left carelessly about the encampment. They were collected in heaps, or thrown into the water. Mrs. Eastman observes that even yet the Dakotas deem it an omen of ill luck in the hunt, if the dogs gnaw the bones or a woman inadvertently steps over them; and the Chipeway interpreter, John Tanner, speaks of the same fear among that tribe. The Yurucares of Bolivia carried it to such an inconvenient extent, that they carefully put by even small fish bones, saying that unless ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... wood, or silver," said they, "becomes a god when man chooses that it should, and dedicates it to that end. With how much more truth do dumb animals, such as mice, swallows, and kites, judge of your gods? They know that your gods feel nothing; they gnaw them, they trample and sit on them; and if you did not drive them away, they would make their nests in the very mouth of your deity." [319:1] The Church of the first three centuries rejected the use of images in worship, and no pictorial representations of the Saviour ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... even if you did not wish it. An old man might live perhaps with such a mental cancer, but it will destroy a child. Ah! there is no remedy against the worms that gnaw away at the soul." ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... hind feet, standing higher than a man, and savagely raked the door from top to bottom with his claws while another opened his jaws wide and closed them, his teeth splintering across the smooth surface as he sought to gnaw his way inside. The remaining three circled the cabin, sniffing explosively at the cracks between the logs. Shady was seized with a fit of excessive shivering induced by these dread sounds, and Collins heard her hind leg-joints ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... on their shelves, Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green, And every kind of colour. Which will you read? Come on; O do read something; they're so wise. I tell you all the wisdom of the world Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out, And listen to the silence: on the ceiling There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters; And in the breathless air outside the house The garden waits for something that delays. There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,— Not people killed ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... nasty, brutish, and short". To live like an animal is to rely upon one's own quite naked equipment and efforts, and not to mind getting wet or cold or scratching one's bare legs in the underbrush. One would have to eat his roots and seeds quite raw, and gnaw a bird as a cat does. To get the feel of uncivilized life, let us recall how savages with the comparatively advanced degree of culture reached by our native Indian tribes may fall to when really hungry. In the journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition there is an account ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... feasting in the lodges of the Iroquois, And scalps will hang on the high ridge pole, But wolves will roam where the Yengees dwelt And will gnaw the bones of them all, Of the man, the woman, and the child. Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children, The Mighty Six Nations, ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... declaring it all a most contemptible artifice of Satan. But conscience is not hushed by this explanation. On the contrary, who would maintain a real, live devil must have a conscience for him to gnaw. Pure and elemental it need not be; he is satisfied - with any cheap group-fabrication, and the torments remain ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... learned to reach up on his hind legs and gnaw the standing plant. The management of a dry and slippery corn-ear at first presented some difficulty, but, as his muscles strengthened, he found himself able to sit up on his haunches and hold it squirrel-fashion in his fore-paws, nibbling, to begin with, at the pointed end, which is the ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... was also inside of that mule. He was hungry and vicious. He had lived in the white "settlements," and knew something. He was fastened by a long hide lariat to a peg driven into the ground, as were all the others, and he knew that the best place to gnaw in two that lariat was close to the peg, where he could get a good pull upon it. As soon as he had freed himself he tried the lariat of another mule, and found that the peg had been driven into loose earth and came right up. That was a scientific discovery, and he tried several ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... wickedness, The sanguine codes of venerable crime. The likeness of a throned king came by. 270 When these had passed, bearing upon his brow A threefold crown; his countenance was calm. His eye severe and cold; but his right hand Was charged with bloody coin, and he did gnaw By fits, with secret smiles, a human heart 275 Concealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes, A multitudinous throng, around him knelt. With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by. Brooking no eye to witness their ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... painful sensations those irregular desires, those disgusting propensities, by which he is perpetually agitated; seeing the terrible effect of those licentious passions which torment him; of those lasting inquietudes which gnaw his repose; of those stupendous evils, as well physical as moral, which assail him on every side: the contemplator of humanity would be tempted to believe that happiness was not made for this world; that any effort to cure those minds which every thing unites ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... them off, to save herself the bother of lagging useless material home to her burrow. She was so near that the Child could have touched her by reaching out his hand. But she took no more notice of him than if he had been a rotten stump. Less, in fact, for she might have tried to gnaw into him if he had been a rotten stump, in the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... proceeding, that is to say, from the monastic orders." "These," he added, "are the orange-trees of heaven, whose fruits are placed on the table of God." Of evil-speakers Rodaja said, that they were like the feathers of the eagle which gnaw, wear away, and reduce to nothing, whatever feathers of other birds are mingled with them in beds or cushions, how good soever ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... intimations he had received. First, then, he slackened his pace to a walk This was no point of quarrel between him and his rider, who had been considerably discomposed by the rapidity of his former motion, and who now took the opportunity of his abated pace to gnaw a piece of gingerbread, which had been thrust into his hand by his mother in order to reconcile this youthful emissary of the post-office to the discharge of his duty. By and by, the crafty pony availed himself ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... swallowed him up that has lost himself. Here will be no forgetfulness; yet nothing shall be thought on but that which will wound and kill; here will be no time, cause, or means for diversion; all will stick and gnaw like a viper. Now the memory will go out to where sin was heretofore committed, it will also go out to the word that did forbid it. The understanding also, and the judgment too, will now consider of the pretended necessity that the man had to break the commandments of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with an almost passionate disdain. She was suddenly aware of an intense burning misery that seemed to gnaw into her very soul. Why had she come out with this buffoon, she wondered? Why had she come to the masquerade at all? She was utterly out of sympathy with its festive gaiety. A great and overmastering desire for solitude ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... at least had been hearing all his life. At St. Thomas's we had been introduced to bananas (figs, as they are miscalled in the West Indies); to the great green oranges, thick- skinned and fragrant; to those junks of sugar-cane, some two feet long, which Cuffy and Cuffy's ladies delight to gnaw, walking, sitting, and standing; increasing thereby the size of their lips, and breaking out, often enough, their upper front teeth. We had seen, and eaten too, the sweet sop {25a}—a passable fruit, or rather congeries of fruits, looking like a green and purple strawberry, of the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... stages. The first, or melancholy stage, usually lasts from twelve to forty-eight hours. The animal's behavior is altered and it becomes sullen, irritable and nervous. Sometimes it is friendly and inclined to lick the hand of its master. An inclination to gnaw or swallow indigestible objects is sometimes noted. Frequently a certain part of the ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... there's a magick-musick in that sound, Enough to turn me into beef indeed! Yes, I will own, since licensed by your word, I'll own Tom Thumb the cause of all my grief. For him I've sigh'd, I've wept, I've gnaw'd my sheets. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... deep laugh. "Old Plancus talks like that," said he; "but we know that for all the world he would not change his steel plate for a citizen's gown. You've earned the kennel, old hound, if you wish it. Go and gnaw your ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... interest of Great Britain to settle the Anglo-Irish dispute. It has been countered in many of its policies in America and the Colonies by the vengeful feelings of Irish exiles. There may yet come a time when the refusal of the Irish mouse to gnaw at a net spread about the lion may bring about the downfall of the Empire. It cannot be to the interest of Great Britain to have on its flank some millions of people who, whenever Great Britain is engaged in a war which threatens ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... an ancient and now brushy bark-peeling near by for blackberries. But the creature that most infests these backwoods is the porcupine. He is as stupid and indifferent as the skunk; his broad, blunt nose points a witless head. They are great gnawers, and will gnaw your house down if you do not look out. Of a summer evening they will walk coolly into your open door if not prevented. The most annoying animal to the camper-out in this region, and the one he needs to be most on the lookout ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... our present lives we are storing up good or bad Karma which will stick to us closely, and which will demand expression and manifestation in lives to come. When we fasten around ourselves the evil of bad Karma, we have taken to shelter a monster which will gnaw into our very vitals until we shake him off by developing opposite qualities. And when we draw to ourselves the good Karma of Duty well performed, kindness well expressed, and Good Deeds freely performed without hope of reward, then do we weave for ourselves the beautiful garments which we are ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... Iago's own confession a mere suspicion, is now ripening, and gnaws his base nature as his own 'poisonous mineral' is about to gnaw the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... night and fetched in two and three at a time. Don't say nothin' 'bout dem rabbits for dere warn't no end to 'em. Rabbits stewed, rabbits fried, and rabbits dried, smoked, and cured lak hog meat! I et so many rabbits when I was young I can't stand to look at 'em now but I could eat 'possums and gnaw de bones all day long. Marse Billy let grandpa go fishin' and he was all time bringin' back a passel of minnows and other fishes. Us rubbed 'em down wid lard and salt and pepper, den rolled 'em in cornmeal and baked 'em. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... will—bite his head off! Fool! What can I do to him? They, these writers, are not a foolish lot and are therefore a power—a power, the devils! And I am not the governor, and even he cannot put one's hand out of joint or tie one's tongue. Like mice, they gnaw us little by little. And we have to poison them not with matches, but with roubles. Yes! Well, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... the little beaver chap. But when he began to gnaw the tree, to make it fall, the ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... few days after the death of Symmachus and Boethius,[136] the servants placed on the table a large fish's head. This seemed to Theodoric to be the head of Symmachus, newly slain. The teeth seemed to gnaw the lower lip, the eyes glared at him with wrath and frenzy, the dead man appeared, to threaten him with utmost vengeance. Terrified by this amazing portent and chilled to the bone with fear, he hastily sought his couch, where, having ordered the servants ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... published an edition of Voltaire, with the following title: Works of Voltaire, of the French Academy. "That will attract purchasers," said the ingenious editor. The general opinion was that M. Charles Loyson would be the genius of the century; envy was beginning to gnaw at him—a sign of glory; and this ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Marston were approaching it by the 5.15 train. Its most idolised inmate was to be killed with disappointment, or to bind herself on the morrow to a life of misery, perhaps disgrace; but in the drawing-room was already a sprinkling of guests, many more were on their way. The wolf may gnaw at the vitals, but a hostess must wear a ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... perception of a guilty shadow falling on its bed, that troubled its innocent rest? Did no dog howl, and strive to break its rattling chain, that it might tear him; no burrowing rat, scenting the work he had in hand, essay to gnaw a passage after him, that it might hold a greedy revel at the feast of his providing? When he looked back, across his shoulder, was it to see if his quick footsteps still fell dry upon the dusty pavement, or were already moist and clogged with the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... from envious historical painters," said Salvator, interrupting his young companion; "like them, Antonio, you throw me the choice bone of landscape-painting that I may gnaw away at it, and so spare their own good flesh. Perhaps I do understand the human figure and all that is dependent upon it. But this senseless repetition of ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... dog could not get his teeth to it, he had tied a stout stick four or five feet in length. The other end of the stick, in turn, was made fast to a stake in the ground by means of a leather thong. The dog was unable to gnaw through the leather at his own end of the stick. The stick prevented him from getting at the leather that fastened the ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... house to house; he will encompass the means of luxury; his purse will be plethoric but, oh, how poverty stricken his soul will be. Costly viands will please his taste, but unappeased hunger will gnaw at his soul. Amid the blasts of winter he will have the warmth of Calcutta in his home; and the health of the ocean and the breezes of the mountains shall fan his brow, amid the heats of summer, but there will be a coolness in his soul ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... mind my business as you mind yours. Of course, I take nuts and beech-mast and acorns, when they fall; and I admit that I am a regular whale for fir-cones. That fresh fir-seed is about the nicest thing I know. So I gnaw the cones in two and eat the seeds; and then they are gone when the forester wants them to sow firs with. But that is only reasonable. I must live as well as he and there are quite enough firs in the world. And ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... hit me. The Yankees ganged around him, an' made him leave me alone, give me my bucket o' molasses, an' I carried it on to the house. They went down to the lot, turned out all the horses an' tuck two o' the big mules, Kentucky mules, an' carried 'em off. One of the mules would gnaw every line in two you tied him with, an' the other could not be rode. So next morning after the Yankees carried 'em off they both come back home with pieces o' lines on 'em. The mules was named, one was named Bill, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... man, you'll experience it too. There are few perfectly sound trees in the forest, few horses without a blemish, few swords without a stain, and scarcely a man who has passed his fortieth year that has not a worm in his breast. Some gnaw slightly, others torture with sharp fangs, and mine—mine.—Do you want to cast ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you what this sort of luck feels like! It feels like a great raw place here on my breast. And the helpers and servers keep on flaying pieces of skin off other people in order to close my sore!—But still the sore is not healed—never, never! Oh, if you knew how it can sometimes gnaw and burn! ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... and she—Judith hid her face in her hands at the thought—she would steal away through the thicket at the first sound of hoofs. But as the minutes slipped by and still no sign of Peter, a sickening anxiety began to gnaw at her heart. Had something ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... : glaciejo. glass : vitro, "a—," glaso. "looking—," spegulo. glaze : glazuri. glorify : glori. glove : ganto. glow : ardi, brili. "-worm," lampiro. glue : gluo. glycerine : glicerino. gnat : kulo. gnaw : mordeti. goat : kapro. goblet : pokalo. goblin : koboldo. God : Dio. gold : oro. goldfinch : kardelo. golosh : galosxo. goodbye : adiaux. goose : anserino. gooseberry : groso. gospel : evangelio. gout : podagro. govern : regi. governess : guvernistino graceful : gracia. gradual : grada, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... live or strive, To think or sleep, to work or pray; At last I bade this thine accursed Gnaw at my heart, and do its worst, And so I let it ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... a palmtree, whose scales made a rustling as he creeped along. He swallowed up one of my comrades, notwithstanding his loud cries, and the efforts he made to rid himself of the serpent; which, shaking him several times against the ground, crushed him, and we could hear him gnaw and tear the poor wretch's bones, when we had fled at a great distance from him. Next day we saw the serpent again, to our great terror, when I cried out, O Heaven, to what dangers are we exposed! We rejoiced yesterday at our having escaped from the cruelty ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... in the bud would gnaw at his peace. The first was conscience: if the Syndic did not know he had reason to suspect that Basterga bore the Grand Duke's commission, and was in Geneva to further his master's ends. The second source of his uneasiness he ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... into his head that la Peyrade, to whom he is going to give his goddaughter and heiress, is over head and ears in debt; that he makes enormous secret loans; and that in order to get out of his difficulties he means to gnaw the newspaper to the bone; and I shall insinuate that the position of a man so much in debt must be known to the public before long, and become a fatal blow to the candidate whose right ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... old Small Change, don't you wish you may get it?'—-as Primrose proved to be outside the drive on one of the donkeys. 'You've got nothing to do but gnaw your fists at ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... starvation stared him in the face; the fishing, that promised so well when I passed, having entirely failed, and no deer were to be found. He wrote me, however, that he would maintain his post while a piece of parchment remained to gnaw! ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... havin' plenty to eat three times a day. There was roast beef, an' roast mutton, an' duck, an' chicken, an' soup, an' peas, an' beans, an' termaters, an' plum-puddin', an' mince-pie—' 'Shut up with your mince-pie!' sung out Tom Simmons. 'Isn't it enough to have to gnaw on these salt chips, without hearin' about mince-pie?' 'An' more'n that' says Andy, 'there was canned peaches, an' pears, an' plums, ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... the influence of emotion, he could not stand before a looking-glass without noticing this phenomenon which he had so frequently remarked and which always terrified him; the blood flew to his neck, purpling the scar, which then began to gnaw the skin. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... chicken which, by coincidence, formed the tempting bait. Distressed and perplexed, Lutra stayed by the dog-otter, trying in vain to release him from his sufferings. The trapped creature, beside himself with rage and fear and pain, attempted to gnaw through his crunched and almost severed foot; but as the dawn lightened the east, and before the limb could be freed, Ned the blacksmith was to be seen hurrying to the spot. Lutra dived out of sight, and, unable to interpose, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... chamber of his mind. He would not think about Corydon, nor about what he would do for money when he came home; more important yet, he would clear the book out of his thoughts—he would not permit it to gnaw at him ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... millions. Your day will come, and in due course the graveyard rat will gnaw as calmly at your bump of acquisitiveness as at the mean coat of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... This very night as hostage for Fitzwalter, Since he consorts with outlaws. These grey rats Will gnaw my kingdom's heart out. For 'tis mine, This England, now or later. They that hold By Richard, as their absent king, would make My rule a usurpation. God, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... scatters the shrieking girls everywhere by his impudent addresses; another bursts from a room on the ground-floor holding ears of corn in each hand, and throwing himself upon the earth begins to gnaw them as a dog would a bone, while one of his companions leaps on him, and together they give a faithful representation of two prairie wolves fighting over carrion. The greatest uproar prevails all about; the Koshare are outdoing themselves; they scatter ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... celebrated this distinction by dropping some hickory-nuts into a rubber boot hanging on the wall, and then gnawing a hole through the toe of the boot in order to extract the hidden nuts. Was it mischief that led them to gnaw through rather than go down the top? Or did something get stuffed into the top of the boot after the nuts were dropped in? And did the squirrels remember that the nuts were in there, or did they smell ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... there was one young beaver, by the name of Flat Tail. His father, whose name was Mud Dauber, had been a celebrated beaver, who, having very superior teeth, could gnaw through trees with great rapidity. Old Mud Dauber had distinguished himself chiefly, however, by saving the dam on three separate occasions in time of flood. He had done this by his courage and prudence, always beginning to work as soon as he ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... forbearance which the French used with such wonderful effect in their dealings with the North American Indians were summoned to his aid. He spoke courteously to Tandakora, but, as his words were in the Ojibway dialect, Robert did not understand them. The Indian made a guttural reply and continued to gnaw fiercely at the bone of the deer. De Courcelles still took no offense, and spoke again, his words smooth and his face smiling. Then Tandakora, in his deep guttural, spoke rapidly and with heat. When he had finished de ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... who had dared, so seriously, to insult one of his ministers. But, during the four or five days that the journey continued, they incessantly tormented him; and did not give him a fourth part of what was necessary for his support, so that the unfortunate man was frequently obliged to gnaw the bones which the Moors had thrown away; they also forced him to make the whole journey on foot; it was pretty long; for these gentlemen, on their arrival at St. Louis, estimated it at a hundred and forty leagues at the least, because the Moors made them ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... tools, the grub has a skin as fine as satin and white as ivory. This dead white comes from a copious layer of grease which the animal's spare diet would not lead us to suspect. True, it has nothing to do, at every hour of the day and night, but gnaw. The quantity of wood that passes into its stomach makes up for the dearth ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... is advancing with a large army against the son of Kueprili, and the darkness of defeat threatens to obscure the sun-like radiance of the Ottoman arms. Most puissant Padishah! suffer not the tooth of disaster to gnaw away at thy glory! The Grand Vizier and I have already gathered together thy host on the shores of the Bosphorus. They are ready, at a moment's notice, to embark in the ships prepared for them. Money and provisions in abundance have been sent to the frontier for the ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... say my uncle grew so fast, That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old: 'Twas two full years ere ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... hell to aid her, with curses, but none of them appeared, and she sank into the depths howling. There she lies to this day in pain and torment. The pikes and other horrible creatures of the depths gnaw upon her and torture her incessantly. She strikes about her with her hands and feet, and twists and stretches her limbs in her great distress. Thence comes it that the lake, which is named Peipus after her, always rises in billows ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... the masque at my house where first the King did see her. It was I that advised her how to bear herself. And what gratitude has been shown me? I have been sent to sequester myself in my see; I have been set to gnaw my fingers as they had been old bones thrown to a dog. Truly, no juicy meats have been my share. Yet it was I set ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... from the ground. This puzzled me. Squirrels could not have done it, nor rabbits, nor birds. Presently I hit upon the solution. The bark and boughs of this particular sapling were food for deer, and to gnaw so high the deer must have stood upon six or seven feet ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... seat, he gesticulated violently and fixed his eyes on something as though desirous of catching it: his lips moving as though desirous of uttering some long-forgotten word, but remaining speechless. Fury would take possession of him: he would gnaw and bite his hands like a man half crazy, and in his vexation would tear out his hair by the handful, until, calming down, he would relapse into forgetfulness, as it were, and then would again strive to recall the past and be again seized with fury and fresh tortures. What visitation ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... loose, when the four Shawnees had me bound by their fire, at night, on the banks of the Kenhawa. (Does thee remember that, Peter?) Ay, thee did, while the knaves slept; and from that sleep they never waked, the murdering villains—no, not one of them! Gnaw, little Peter, gnaw hard and fast; and care not if thee wounds me with thee teeth; for, truly, I will forgive thee, even if thee bites me to the bone. Faster, Peter, faster! Does thee boggle at the skin, because of its hardness? Truly, I have ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... with the dirty faces and meddling fingers, who poke their hands into our haversacks, to the farm servants who inspect all our belongings when we are out on parade, and even now we have become accustomed to the very rats that scurry through the barn at midnight and gnaw at our equipment and devour our rations when they get hold of them. One night a rat bit a man's nose—but the tale is a long one and I will tell it at some ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... the crosstrees, and the doublings of the masts. They climbed everywhere, up or down, on a sail or its leach, a single rope or a backstay. The mate and myself, with the steward, could shut the doors of our rooms and keep them out until they chose to gnaw through, but the poor devils forward had no such refuge. Their forecastles and the galley and carpenter shop were wide open. Man after man was nipped, awake or asleep, on deck or below, or up aloft in the dark, when, reaching for another hold on a shroud or a backstay, he would ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... spoiled behind: then he began, "Thou willest that I renew a desperate grief that oppresses my heart already only in thinking ere I speak of it. But, if my words are to be seed that may bear fruit of infamy for the traitor whom I gnaw, thou shalt see me speak and weep at once. I know not who thou art, nor by what mode thou art come down hither, but Florentine thou seemest to me truly when I hear thee. Thou hast to know that I was the Count Ugolino and he the Archbishop Ruggieri.[1] Now will I tell ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... no one knows what may happen. Perhaps some of these days I may be entrapped, like poor Peppino and may be very glad to have some little nibbling mouse to gnaw the meshes of my net, and so ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... often camped to eat their dinner during their hunting expeditions. Roderick stood close by, lazily cropping the grass, but Marmion was not in sight. The last time his master saw him, he was trying to gnaw his way into a hollow log where a ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... from the monastic orders." "These," he added, "are the orange-trees of heaven, whose fruits are placed on the table of God." Of evil-speakers Rodaja said, that they were like the feathers of the eagle which gnaw, wear away, and reduce to nothing, whatever feathers of other birds are mingled with them in beds or cushions, how good soever ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... came very near doing. On their double issue they rallied enough support to increase their number in Congress by thirty-three. Had not the moment been so tragic, nothing could have been more amusing than the helpless wrath of the Jacobins caught in their own trap, compelled to gnaw their tongues in silence, while the Democrats, paraphrasing their own ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... willing to live in the swamps, and gnaw the bark from trees. I an't afraid of snakes! I'd rather have one near me than him," ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... you not how he will eat out his heart, while his friends gnaw their thick fists for that they are deprived of the battle? So are ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... "Oh, gnaw them out of a tree!" cried Mr. Pertell, who was much disturbed and nervous. "Don't you see that fence?" he cried, pointing to one not far off. "Get some rails from that. And then get ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... squeak, my children, Nor gnaw the smoke-house door: The owl-queen then will love us And send her ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... thing in a man, but it was far more so in a mouse, belonging to a tribe who live for themselves alone, barefacedly and shamelessly, and in order to gratify themselves would defile a consecrated wafer, gnaw a priest's stole without shame, and would drink out of a Communion cup, caring nothing for God. The mouse advanced with many a bow and scrape, and the shrew-mouse let him advance rather near—for, to tell the truth, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... a space fro his care, 505 Thus to him-self ful ofte he gan to pleyne; He sayde, 'O fool, now art thou in the snare, That whilom Iapedest at loves peyne; Now artow hent, now gnaw thyn owene cheyne; Thou were ay wont eche lovere reprehende 510 Of thing fro which thou canst thee ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... mathematics that are to blame if he is grave and absorbed," said the vicar, with a sigh; "it is the two cares that gnaw most,—poverty ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... read the intense feelings of love, hatred, jealousy, or revenge that smouldered below, stifled and kept down by the iron will, the stubborn, indomitable pride? There is a deep meaning in the legend of that Spartan boy who suffered the stolen fox to gnaw his very vitals, the while he covered him with his tunic and preserved on his brave face a smile of unconcern. Most of us have a stolen fox somewhere; but the weak nature writhes and moans, and is delivered from its torment, while ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... country, and for the universal benefit of mankind. Therefore, hospitably considering the number of my guests, they shall have my whole entertainment at a meal, and I scorn to set up the leavings in the cupboard. What the guests cannot eat may be given to the poor, and the dogs under the table may gnaw the bones {140}. This I understand for a more generous proceeding than to turn the company's stomachs by inviting them again to-morrow to a scurvy meal ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... She was so near that the Child could have touched her by reaching out his hand. But she took no more notice of him than if he had been a rotten stump. Less, in fact, for she might have tried to gnaw into him if he had been a rotten stump, in the hope ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... fired by an equal ambition, all the occupants of the pea bore their way towards the delicious morsel. The journey is laborious, and the grubs must rest frequently in their provisional niches. They rest; while resting they frugally gnaw the riper tissues surrounding them; they gnaw rather to open a way than to fill ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... further, and she met a rat. So she said: "Rat! rat! gnaw rope; rope won't hang butcher; butcher won't kill ox; ox won't drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home tonight." But the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the same tale. Let this be a warning to you to economize, so that you may be able to have your enjoyments at home in all security. I do not suggest that you should give up these practices: that is quite hopeless; the dog that has gnawed leather once will gnaw leather always. ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... Father to an Indian Pagod. Hitherto I found her Demands rose upon every Concession; and had she gone on, I had been ruined: But by good Fortune, with her third, which was Peggy, the Height of her Imagination came down to the Corner of a Venison Pasty, and brought her once even upon her Knees to gnaw off the Ears of a Pig from the Spit. The Gratifications of her Palate were easily preferred to those of her Vanity; and sometimes a Partridge or a Quail, a Wheat-Ear or the Pestle of a Lark, were chearfully purchased; nay, I could ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... known this and the stripped spindles lie by the score under the big pasture pines where these have left them after eating the seeds. It seems much work for small pay for the squirrel. He must climb venturesomely to the very tip of the slippery limb, gnaw the cone from its hold, then run down the tree and gnaw it to pieces for the tiny seeds within. So light are these seeds, wing and all, that it takes twenty to thirty thousand of them to weigh a pound and it is probably fortunate ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... symptoms may be divided into three stages. The first, or melancholy stage, usually lasts from twelve to forty-eight hours. The animal's behavior is altered and it becomes sullen, irritable and nervous. Sometimes it is friendly and inclined to lick the hand of its master. An inclination to gnaw or swallow indigestible objects is sometimes noted. Frequently a certain part of the skin is ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... devour my skin, And gnaw my wasting flesh, When God shall build my bones again, He ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... of that mule. He was hungry and vicious. He had lived in the white "settlements," and knew something. He was fastened by a long hide lariat to a peg driven into the ground, as were all the others, and he knew that the best place to gnaw in two that lariat was close to the peg, where he could get a good pull upon it. As soon as he had freed himself he tried the lariat of another mule, and found that the peg had been driven into loose earth and came right up. That was a scientific discovery, and he tried several other ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... old-fashioned and I shock her. As for other women, there isn't one anywhere to whom I would say a word. Only think how a girl such as I am is placed; or indeed any girl. You, if you see a woman that you fancy, can pursue her, can win her and triumph, or lose her and gnaw your heart;—at any rate you can do something. You can tell her that you love her; can tell her so again and again even though she should scorn you. You can set yourself about the business you have taken in hand and can work hard at it. What can a ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... not hit it any more because the mouse would not stay still. It ran right toward me, and I naturally jumped, as anybody would, but I am not afraid of mice, and when the horrid thing ran up inside the leg of my pantaloons, I yelled to Maria because I was afraid it would gnaw a hole in my garment. There is something real disagreeable about having a mouse inside the leg of one's pantaloons, especially if there is nothing between you and the mouse. Its toes are cold, and its nails are scratchy, and its fur tickles, and its tail feels crawly, and there is ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... And he'd gnaw thro' a rope in the night-time, He'd eat thro' a wall or a door, He'd shwim thro' a lough in the winther, To be ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... are cats of valerian, being said to dig up the roots and gnaw them to pieces, an allusion to which occurs in Topsell's "Four-footed Beasts" (1658-81):—"The root of the herb valerian (commonly called Phu) is very like to the eye of a cat, and wheresoever it groweth, if cats come thereunto they instantly dig it up for the love thereof, as ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... hang down from the windows, drying in the sun as they flap and flutter against pretentious moulded masks of empty plaster. Miserable children loiter in the high-arched gates, under which smart carriages were meant to drive, and gnaw their dirty fingers, or fight for a cold boiled chestnut one of them has saved. Squalor, misery, ruin and vile stucco, with a sprinkling of half-desperate humanity,—those are the elements of the modern ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... fowl or birds up in your fingers to gnaw or suck them. Remove the meat with your knife, and convey it to your mouth with your fork, never being too eager to clean off every particle ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... snake! Does it gnaw you?" persisted Roderick. "Did you take counsel with him this morning when you should have been saying your prayers? Did he sting, when you thought of your brother's health, wealth, and good repute? Did he caper for joy, when you remembered the profligacy of his only son? And whether he stung, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fellowship, And force the stream of kindness up life's steep, Till, 'mid the rocky peaks of Thought it flow Unmargined by the verdant bloom of Act. Shun Self! 'tis like the worm a rosy bud Folds in its young embraces till it gnaw The heart out. Nature's is no volume writ For his interpreting who measures still Her wisdom by the inverted standard rule Of his own barrenness and blind conceit. There's not a flower but with its own sweet breath Cries out ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Dowlands and had lived with him there—in her father's house. So awful did her life seem to her that her thoughts stopped, and she became possessed of the desire of escape which takes a trapped animal and forces it to gnaw off one of its legs. She must escape from this life of lies whatever it cost her; she must free herself. But how? If she went to Monsignor he would tell her she must leave the stage, and she had promised ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... 'gnaw your own tail;' and off he went laughing at the joke. The miserable weasel cried and sniffed, and sniffed and cried, till by-and-by he heard the rat come back and begin to scratch outside. Presently the rat stopped, and was going away again, when the weasel begged and prayed him not to leave ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... informs us, that the men did not like this new contrivance, as it checked their vociferation and injured their lungs; so it was discontinued; and they returned again to the halberts, where their hands were tied up over their heads. Some of these poor wretches have been known to gnaw the flesh of their own arms, in the agonies of torture; and many of them have ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... up the trail," he said. "Didn't see a thing but an ol' gnaw bucket. We'll jest eat a bite an' p'int off to the nor'west an' keep watch o' this 'ere trail. They's Injuns over thar on the slants. We got to know how they look an' 'bout how many ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... to John Barleycorn while working in the laundry, a certain definite result was produced. I had heard the call, felt the gnaw of desire, yearned for the anodyne. I was being prepared for the stronger desire of ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... knowing that the inevitable dragon of death is waiting ready to tear me, and I cannot comprehend why I am thus made a martyr. I try to suck the honey which formerly consoled me; but the honey pleases me no longer, and day and night the white mouse and the black mouse gnaw the branch to which I cling. I can see but one thing: the inevitable dragon and the mice—I cannot turn ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... that is not sound; and that a real modern orthodox man, like a nervous watch dog, must sit on the door-stone of his system, and bark incessantly at everything that comes in sight along the highway. And when there is nothing to bark at, either he must growl and gnaw his reserved bones, or bark at the moon to keep up the sonorousness of his voice. And so, for fear that the sweetness of our temper may lead men to think that we have no theologic zeal, we lift up in objurgation now and then—as much as ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... of something to do. At last he thought of the stake to which that hateful wire was fastened. The stake was of wood, and Peter's teeth would cut wood. Peter's heart gave a great leap of hope, and he began at once to dig away the snow from around the stake, and then settled himself to gnaw the ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... might have hit him and hurt him, and he's a nice dog. Poor old purp! Did he throw rocks, honest? He did? Well, just for that, I've got a nice ham bone that you can have to gnaw on, and he can't have a snippy bit of it. All he can do is eat a piece of lemon pie that will probably make him sick. We hope so, don't we? Throwing rocks at a nice, ugly, stubby dog that ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... long ago deserting the garden neighborhood, feed at eventide in flocks upon the bloody berries of the sumac; and the soft-eyed pigeons dispute possession of the feast. The squirrels chatter at sunrise, and gnaw off the full-grown burrs of the chestnuts. The lazy blackbirds skip after the loitering cow, watchful of the crickets that her slow steps start to danger. The crows in companies caw aloft, ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... trees should, as already stated, have sufficient shade to prevent their being burned by the sun. If they are much exposed to its rays, their branches are scattered, crack, and the tree dies. They are also infested with worms, which gnaw the bark all around, then attack the interior and destroy them. The only remedy which has hitherto been found, is to employ people to kill these worms, which are deposited by a small, scaly winged insect, which gnaws the tree; as soon as it hears the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... But the girl put her ear to the ground again, and when she heard that the Baba Yaga was near, she flung down the comb, and instantly a forest sprang up, such an awfully thick one! The Baba Yaga began gnawing away at it, but however hard she worked, she couldn't gnaw her way through it, so she had to ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... drunkenness and gambling, two vices of which the Americans were ignorant in the time of the founders of their great federation, have taken very deep root. The decrease of the inflexible spirit of religion, and the increase of vice and luxury, gnaw the powerful tree, and are fearful enemies, which cannot be resisted by a structure that might resist with scorn all foreign foes, and would have played a mighty part in the world's history had ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... "Old Plancus talks like that," said he; "but we know that for all the world he would not change his steel plate for a citizen's gown. You've earned the kennel, old hound, if you wish it. Go and gnaw your bone and ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... numb and cold, That slept in her heart like a dreaming snake, Drowsily lift itself, fold by fold, And gnaw, and gnaw ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... in the lagoon. Shann wondered if the raw flesh of sea dwellers could supply the water they needed. But lacking net, line, or hooks, how did one fish? Yesterday, using his stunner, he had brought down a bird, to discover the carcass so rank even the wolverines, never dainty eaters, refused to gnaw it. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... quantities, larger and fatter, and their fur is more abundant and of a darker color, than any we have hitherto seen. Their favorite food seems to be the bark of the cottonwood and willow, as we have seen no other species of tree that has been touched by them, and these they gnaw to the ground through a ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... know at all events how they render it impossible at this later stage. It is the young plant which absorbs the glucose, and which must therefore be destroyed; they cut off the radicle with their mandibles, and gnaw the stalk; the germ is thus suppressed. They have not yet finished their manipulations, which must enable them to preserve without further alteration the provisions which they have already rendered palatable. They bring out all their provisions to the sun, dry them, and take ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... shrubbery trimmed, trained, and free from blemish, the walks clean and smooth and graveled. But that day is gone by. Our descendants have forgotten us. My grandson lives in a stately house built with money made by these old hands of mine, and I sleep in a neglected grave with invading vermin that gnaw my shroud to build them nests withal! I and friends that lie with me founded and secured the prosperity of this fine city, and the stately bantling of our loves leaves us to rot in a dilapidated cemetery which neighbors curse and strangers scoff at. See the difference between the old time and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... one spot where the meat will be most exposed. Occasionally one makes a mistake, but not often. It stands them in hand to know, and they do know. Doubtless, if butternuts were a main source of my food, and I were compelled to gnaw into them, I should learn, too, on which ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... Pegasus," he whispered in the winged horse's ear, "thou must help me to slay this insufferable monster; or else thou shalt fly back to thy solitary mountain peak without thy friend Bellerophon. For either the Chimaera dies, or its three mouths shall gnaw this head of mine, which has slumbered ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... List to my buzzing cry! list, as I growl and groan: Here is the sullen shore where the white-toothed breakers moan; Where the silky ripples run with the wolf-like wave behind, To leap on the struggling wreck and worry and gnaw and grind, To toss on the cruel crag the dead with his streaming hair! Toilers upon the sea, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... followed, taking Peepsy and the dolls with them. The three dogs only remained under the cotton-wool tree, discussing the party very gravely, and wondering why it was that human beings never cared to gnaw bones. And so, rather sadly, ended Peepsy's ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... now a week had gone by, during which nothing from without had threatened his happiness; and for a time, as he resolutely shut his eyes to all but the present, he had been supremely happy. Then by degrees the fox revived and began to gnaw once more. His soul sickened as he remembered in what a Fool's Paradise he was living. Unless Holroyd decided to leave England at once with this young Gilroy of whom Caffyn had spoken—a stranger—he would certainly ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... were at work in the thicket opposite, cutting brush. We saw many large trees which had been cut down by them. The stumps looked as though some boy had chopped them down with a dull axe. It is surprising to reflect upon the pertinacity of these creatures which enables them to gnaw down such immense trees, and the wisdom with which they calculate the direction in which the trees ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... her. This nobleman's position was such that Captain James could not object to his attentions, though they made the husband angry to a degree. The viceroy would draw her into alcoves and engage her in flattering conversation, while poor James could only gnaw his nails and let green-eyed jealousy prey upon his heart. His only recourse was to take her into the country, where she speedily became bored; and boredom is the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... was made to this statement save an imaginary one from the wind, which seemed to gnaw at the corners of the house, and the stroke of a few drops of rain upon ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... are sailing to Italy, and you shall reach Italy and enter its harbors. But you are not destined to surround your city with a wall, till cruel hunger and vengeance for the wrong you have done us force you to gnaw your very tables with ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... seem endowed with a more accurate knowledge of self; the inmost workings of our souls are abruptly revealed—feeling's mysteries stand developed—our weaknesses stare us in the face—and our vices appear to gnaw the very vitals of our hope. The veil was indeed withdrawn,—and Delme's heart acknowledged, that the fair being who leant on him for support, was dearer—far dearer, than all beside. But he saw too, ambition in that heart's deep recess, and knew that its ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
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