"Coiled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in. It was not very light in the room for the window shades had been pulled partly down to shut out the glare of the noonday sun, but sure enough, it could be seen very plainly that there was something on the bed—a half-coiled, ...
— Dew Drops Vol. 37. No. 17, April 26, 1914 • Various
... rampant; a longhorn steer regardant; two sad-eyed, unbranded calves couchant—one in each corner of the shield to kind of balance her up; gules, several clumps of something representing sagebrush; and possibly a rattlesnake coiled beneath the sagebrush and described as "repellent" and holding in his open jaws a streaming motto ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... kitten, Norah, resumed her place by the side of the heater in the library, starting once in a while in her dreams and springing up as though she heard the rustle of Aunt Lina's gown, or the sharp, clear notes of her voice—but coiled herself down with a consoling "pur," as she saw only "little me" laughing at her fears—and my little darling spaniel Flirt laid in my lap, nestled on the foot of my bed, and romped all over the house ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... one spot they aren't. They're like coiled wire—when they stretch out to get through a crack they have no dimension except length, their bodies are mere imaginary points to hang feathers on. You don't ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... various semi-possibilities of minute dimensions and unpromising developments; there were shining instruments of evil aspect, and grim plates on the walls, and on one shelf by itself, accursed and apart, coiled in a long cylinder of spirit, a huge crotalus, rough-scaled, flatheaded, variegated with dull bands, one of which partially encircled the neck like a collar,—an awful wretch to look upon, with murder written all over him in horrid hieroglyphics. Mr. Bernard's look was riveted on this creature,—not ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... then, that was coiled behind his saddle, and bound her hands. He tied the end of the leather rope to the iron ring behind his saddle, and remounted, and spurred his weary beast into a canter. The little one was forced to run behind. Again and again she fell, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... attraction was drawing all London, the great Jumbo craze. When she arrived to see the elephant of the hour, the crowd was so dense around his cage that there was no chance of getting a peep, so she marched off to the reptile house and soon returned with one of her pets coiled round her neck. She took her stand close to the people engaged in struggling to pat the trunk of the Jumbo, feed it with the most expensive sweetmeats, decorate it with choice flowers, and weep bitter tears over its impending departure. (The public of the present ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Bernard and a Newfoundland dog, came into the possession of the superintendent of the London fire brigade when he was but twelve months old. His first retreat was in the engine-house, where, on some old hose and sacking, he made himself as comfortable as he could, and coiled himself up, like the tubing on which he lay. Considering that he was thus placed in charge of the engine-house, he resented the first occasion on which a fire occurred at night. The fire bell rang, and the firemen crowded ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... sheen of her red-brown hair, and how gracefully one of its heavy ringlets coiled upon her slender, milk-white neck. She wore a gown of shimmering grey silk, and a scarlet rose, fresh-gathered, was pinned at her breast like a splash of blood. Always thereafter when he thought of her it was as he saw her at that moment, as never, I think, until ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... the nozzle end of a garden hose from where it lay coiled near a faucet in the stone foundation. Pee-wee took the nozzle and began to play the stream against the trunk of the tree, all the while looking up at the parrot. Presently, the bird began to "sit up and take notice," as one might ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... watch was of gold. It was tarnished, but he could see there were initials, which he could not make out, engraved on the back of the case. The ring, too, was of gold. It was one of the most gruesome ornaments Aldous had ever seen. It was in the form of a coiled and writhing serpent, wide enough to cover half of one's middle finger between the joints. Again the eyes of the two men met, and again Aldous observed that strange, stunned look in the old hunter's face. He turned and walked back toward the tent, MacDonald ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... I coiled down on an iron-hard horse-hair pillow next the quivering steel wall to acquire that habit. The sea, sliding over 267's skin, worried me with importunate, half-caught confidences. It drummed tackily to gather my attention, ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... mulatto had the best of it; his lithe dark limbs coiled about his adversary with paralyzing force: but soon the greater weight of the English youth began to tell; his young, well-knit figure straightened ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... broken hilltops He could trace the river's flow, And the creek's untamed meandering, With its looplike bend below, Seeming in the light of evening Like a giant serpent there, Which had coiled about its victim, And lay resting in its lair. Breaking through the tangled brushwood As the night was coming on, Creeping down the steep embankment Where the muddy waters run, Billy crossed within the timber Where the shroud of deeper ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... on either side the hill, Uncared for, well nigh grown into the ground. The tower is grey, and brown, and black, with green Patches of mildew and of ivy woven Over the sightless loopholes and the sides: And from the ivy deaf-coiled spiders dangle, Or scurry to catch food; and their fine webs Touch at your face wherever you may pass. The sun's light scorched upon it; and a fry Of insects in one spot quivered for ever, Out and in, in and out, with glancing wings That caught the light, and buzzings here and there; That little ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... I, "you are not understanding the pride of your ain folk. Yon was the God's truth and nothing else he told Mistress Helen; the hangman's rope is no decent to be coiled about a man's folk. It's just the cleverness of Helen Stockdale I will be made up with—the simple sending of a screed of news; what beats me is ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... sturdy, rosy, laughing girls and boys; but Sylvy had been a pining baby, and grew up into a slender, elegant creature, with clear gray eyes, limpid as water, but bright as stars, and fringed with long golden lashes the colour of her beautiful hair—locks that were coiled in fold on fold at the back of her fine head, like wreaths of undyed silk, so pale was their yellow lustre. She bloomed among the crowd of red-cheeked, dark-haired lads and lasses, stately and incongruous as a June lily in a bed of tulips. But Sylvy ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... with the serpent that has coiled its slimy length about the body of the people the latter resort to dynamite, and seek by savage warfare to right their wrongs, they are to be condemned and controlled, for they confound the innocent with the guilty ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... here stood a colossal image of Huitzilopochtli, the war-god. His countenance was hideous; in his right hand he held a bow, and in his left a bunch of golden arrows, which a mystic legend connected with the victories of his people. A huge serpent of pearls and precious stones was coiled about his waist, and costly jewels were profusely sprinkled over his person. On his left foot were the delicate feathers of the humming-bird, from which, singularly enough, he took his name, while round his neck hung ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... points to fiery souls that may rise to great rapturous joys but have an underlayer of gloom, a gloom sombre as the impenetrable forest, sad as the grey sea. For them the woods are haunted, the shades of night are peopled with evil spirits, in their morasses half-divine monsters lie coiled. "They worship demons," wrote the Christian chroniclers of them with a sort of terror.[29] These men will enjoy lyric songs, but not charming tales; they are capable of mirth but not of gaiety; powerful but incomplete natures that will need to develop fully without having to wait for the slow ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... certainly thus carried down by worms kept in pots; but some may have been carried down within their mouths. The sole conjecture which I can form why worms line their winter-quarters with little stones and seeds, is to prevent their closely coiled-up bodies from coming into close contact with the surrounding cold soil; and such contact would perhaps interfere with their respiration which is ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... were side by side, and slowly the long sinewy fingers of Rudolf's right hand, that held one wrist already in their vise, began to creep round the other. The grip seemed to have half numbed Rupert's arms, and his struggles grew fainter. Round both wrists the sinewy fingers climbed and coiled; gradually and timidly the grasp of the other hand was relaxed and withdrawn. Would the one hold both? With a great spasm of effort Rupert put it to ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... uncurled, coiled about the lad's waist and the next instant Phil felt himself being lifted to the big ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... bustling in and out, talking, groaning, and, hurrying in her preparations for the anticipated undertaking, suddenly there was a rustling in the branches overhead, and a bouquet of rose-buds fell at her feet. Agnes picked it up, and saw a scrip of paper coiled among the flowers. In a moment remembering the apparition of the cavalier in the church in the morning, she doubted not from whom it came. So dreadful had been the effect of the scene at the confessional, that the thought of the near presence of her lover brought only terror. She turned pale; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... working man in Great Britain staked his life on the issues of universal suffrage, would not dare a month to deny it. For when a nation's foundations are on a class of men that do not vote, and its throne stands on forces that are coiled up and liable at any time to break forth to its overthrow, it is a question whether it is safe to provoke the exertion of those forces or not. With us, where all men vote, government is safe; because, if a thing is once settled by a fair vote, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a question or an instant's hesitation. Make an unknown sound behind him as he plods along the shore, and he hurls himself headlong into the cover of the bushes, as if your voice had touched a button that released a coiled spring beneath him. Afterwards he may come back to find out what frightened him. Sit perfectly still, and he rises on his hind legs for a look and a long sniff to find out who you are. Jump at him with a yell and a flourish the instant he appears, and he will hurl chips and dirt back at you ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... difference is the figure of Lucifer which instead of being in the centre occupies the base of the picture. At the summit "Eriton cruda, che richiamava l'ombre a' corpi sui," is precisely in the same attitude as in the Pisan Camposanto, a figure holding a banner coiled around by a serpent, and near it is a simoniac with his entrails torn out, the identical figure from the Pisan Hell. The back view of the figure which a demon raises to throw into the jaws of a terrible monster is also copied entire from the ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... carriage though they had unquestionably only third-class tickets. They had the good family's dog with them, and after an unintelligible appeal to us and to the young English couple in the other corner, they remained and banished any misgivings they had by cheerful dialogue. The dog coiled himself down at my feet and put his nose close to my ankles, so that without rousing his resentment I could not express in Spanish my indignation at what I felt to be an outrageous intrusion: servants, we all are, but in traveling first class one must draw the line at dogs, I said as much to the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... difficult uder his own management to control. To him it was the thorn in the flesh, which will be seen in the following note found in his pocket-book: 'I have never loved evil for its own sake; no! nor ever sought pleasure for its own sake, but only as the means of escaping from pains that coiled around my mental powers as a serpent around the body and wings of an eagle! My sole sensuality was not to be ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... slinging his coiled lariat over the horn of his saddle. "In that case, I c'n afford to wait for your further explanations until we get along to my cabin. Sheriff Blagg is ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... vanished; my interest arose to boiling point. I refilled my acquaintance's mug, pressed a sovereign upon him (in honesty I must confess that he was loath to take it), and departed with the pigtail coiled neatly in an inner pocket of my jacket. I entered the house in Wade Street by the side door, and half an hour later let myself out by the front door, having cast off ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... she returned. She had covered her white dress with a mantle of brown linen and over her head she wore a wimple of the same material. Her hair had been coiled and secured with a bodkin. When she put her hand under the wimple and drew it across her mouth, only her fair skin and blue eyes distinguished her from any other Egyptian lady dressed ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... and softly as I could, although it seemed as if water never had been so still before. It appeared impossible that anything uncanny should hide beneath that lovely mirror; and yet when some floating wisp of reeds suddenly coiled itself around my neck, or some unknown thing, drifting deeper, coldly touched my foot, it gave that undefinable sense of shudder which every swimmer knows, and which especially appeals to the imagination by night. Sometimes a slight sip of brackish water would enter my lips,—for I naturally tried ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... stopped for a word with the two men from the Lone Dog. And then he followed them when they turned and rode to the little corral. The horses in it bunched up, quick-eyed, alert, at the far side of the inclosure. Rawhide Jones and Toothy as they rode were taking down the ropes coiled upon ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... or any other alcoholic liquor is to be distilled, it is poured into a large copper boiler, called a still, and boiled. A tube carries the vapor from the boiler into a cask filled with cold water. This tube is coiled like a spiral line or worm through the cask; it is called the worm of the still, and the cask is the worm-tub. As the vapor passes through the tube, it cools and drops out at the end into the worm-tub, changed into a liquid stronger ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... of her doorway, also shrieking. For a moment Johnny Chuck couldn't imagine what could be the trouble. Then a slight rustling drew his eyes to a crotch in the tree a little above the doorway of Skimmer's home. There, partly coiled around a branch, with head swaying to and fro, eyes glittering and forked tongue darting out and in, as he tried to look down into Skimmer's nest, was ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... his monkeys exhibited, for snakes; but their curiosity was so great that they could not desist from occasionally satiating their horror in a most human fashion, by lifting up the lid of the box in which the snakes were kept. I was so much surprised at his account, that I took a stuffed and coiled-up snake into the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens, and the excitement thus caused was one of the most curious spectacles which I ever beheld. Three species of Cercopithecus were the most alarmed; ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... of the most imaginative of American artists, the late Edwin A. Abbey. It represents a very fine gentleman of about 1610, walking in broad sunlight in a garden, reading a little book of verses. The name is coiled around him, with the motto, Gravis cantantibus umbra. I will not presume to translate this tag of an eclogue, and I only venture to mention such an uninteresting matter, that my indulgent readers may have a more ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... lip smiled! Nobody would have guessed it—none of us know each other; least of all do we know the interior being of those whom we estimate by public repute;—but what a world of simple, fond affection lay coiled and wasted in that proud ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... later Ruth slipped off her blue-checked apron, and we joined Will by the low lamp in the living-room. My sister looked very pretty in a loose black velvet smock. Her hair was coiled into a simple little knot in the nape of her neck. There were a few slightly waving strands astray about her face. Her hands, still damp from recent dish-washing, were the color ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... her surrounded by partners and made his way out of the ballroom. This was his first relaxation since landing in the North. It was well not to become a dull boy, he mused, and as he chewed his cigar he pictured with an odd thrill, quite unusual with him, that slender, gray-eyed girl, with her coiled mass of hair, her ivory shoulders, and merry smile. He saw her float past to the measure of a two-step, and caught himself resenting the thought of another man's enjoyment of the girl's charms even for ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... destroyed their papers, lists of names and other incriminating evidence. The shadow of the approaching catastrophe deepened and spread rapidly around and above them as they watched and waited helplessly under the huge asp of slavery, which enraged and now completely coiled, was about to strike. The stroke fell first on Peter, Rolla, Ned, and Batteau Bennett. The last, although but a boy of eighteen, was one of the most active of the younger leaders of the plot. Vesey was not captured until ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... whole crew were busily employed in getting the whale boats ready and the gear fitted. There were seven boats in all—three slung to the davits on each side, and one over the stern, with a harpooner to each. The whale lines were spliced and coiled away in the stern of the boats; the harpoons were spanned, that is, fastened to the ends of the lines, and various articles were stowed away in the boats, so that they were all ready to be lowered, and to ...
— Archibald Hughson - An Arctic Story • W.H.G. Kingston
... was Malvina greatly changed. Beneath her hair, dressed with stern simplicity, her forehead was furrowed with a dark, deep wrinkle; the corners of her pale mouth were drooping; on the back of her head a heavy roll of hair, coiled carelessly, dropped to her dress of black material, which was almost like the robe of a religious. She stood in the descending darkness, some steps from him. She had pronounced his name, but was unable to go further. Her white ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... wound round and round the drum as your silk is wound on its reel, but on the contrary never goes round more than six times, going off at one side as it comes on at the other, and going down into the hold of the Elba, to be coiled along in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... can enjoy: how much more reasonably the same question may be asked with respect to these barbarians! At night five or six human beings, naked and scarcely protected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous climate, sleep on the wet ground coiled up like animals. Whenever it is low water, winter or summer, night or day, they must rise to pick shellfish from the rocks; and the women either dive to collect sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their canoes, and with a baited hair-line ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... a flower in whose perfect heart a worm had coiled. Her entire feeling about life had undergone a change. For many weeks after her self-imposed exile, she had been unable to think of her mother without a mingled sense of shame and resentment; the adoring love she had borne this being seemed to die with her respect. After a time the bitterness ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... pact of peace! The poison-breath of that foul worm first came forth from the cave, hot reek-of-fight: the rocks resounded. Stout by the stone-way his shield he raised, lord of the Geats, against the loathed-one; while with courage keen that coiled foe came seeking strife. The sturdy king had drawn his sword, not dull of edge, heirloom old; and each of the two felt fear of his foe, though fierce their mood. Stoutly stood with his shield high-raised the warrior king, as the worm now coiled together amain: ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... or sweat glands, are situated in the subcutaneous areolar tissue, surrounded by a quantity of fat. They are small, round, reddish bodies, each of which consists of one or more fine tubes coiled into a ball, the free end of the tube being continued up through the true skin and cuticle, and opening on the surface. Each sweat gland is supplied with a cluster of capillary blood vessels which vary in size, being ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... valleys teeming with aquatic vegetation. It will also refuse to cross a bridge unless of solid masonry, and it is curious to observe the extreme care with which it sounds the structure, either by striking with the coiled extremity of the trunk or by experimenting with the pressure of one foot, before it ventures to trust its whole ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... discovers that whenever the armature is placed against the magnet poles, and is therefore being rendered magnetic by contact therewith, the deflection of the needle of the galvanometer shows that the coiled wire on the armature is traversed by a current of electricity; that whenever the armature is removed from the magnet poles, and is therefore losing its magnetism, the needle of the galvanometer is again deflected, but now in the opposite direction, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... that moment Peter loomed gigantic to her. His gleaming eyes and strangely smiling face held her spellbound with a fascination greater even than that wicked, vibrating thing that coiled, black and evil, on the white of Tessa's frock could command. She knew that if none intervened, Peter would accomplish ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... most progress was a chantry-chapel opposite to the porch, and containing what were evidently designed to be two monuments. One was merely blocked out, but it showed the outline of a warrior, bearing a shield on which a coiled serpent was rudely sketched in red chalk. The other, in a much more forward state, was actually under the hands of the sculptor, and represented a slender youth, almost a boy, though in the full armour of a knight, his hands clasped ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... part of the internal ear directly concerned in hearing. It consists of a coiled tube which makes two and one half turns around a central axis and bears a close resemblance to a snail shell (Figs. 151 and 152). It differs in plan from a snail shell, however, in that its interior space is divided into three distinct channels, or canals. These lie side ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... of two huge blocks of stone carved to represent two serpents coiled upon themselves, the heads meeting above in a sort of arch (not a true arch, for each of these serpents was a monolith, and was supported wholly on its own base), we entered the large enclosure before the temple. I was surprised to find—for ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... closed, and I forgot all recent events in sleep. I believe that I slept very soundly without stirring my legs or arms. At last my eyes slowly opened, and horrible indeed was the spectacle which met them. The embers of the fire were before me, and close to it, as if to enjoy its warmth, lay coiled up a huge rattlesnake not two yards from me. In an instant of time I felt that its deadly fangs might be fixed in my throat. What use to me now were my fire-arms? I dared not move my hand to reach my revolver. I knew that I must not wink even an eyelid, ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... stones and looking under stubs in order to find insects, loudly called out to me. When I got up to him, I saw at the bottom of a hole a coral-serpent, measuring about a yard in length. The reptile was coiled up, and remained motionless while we admired its beautiful red skin, divided at intervals with rings of shining black. L'Encuerado promptly cut a forked stick and pinned the animal down to the ground. The prisoner immediately tried to stand up on end; its jaws ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... have slept several hours. Though the fire was blazing grandly, the cold was intense: I was so stiff I could hardly move; all my limbs ached dreadfully, and my sensations altogether were new and very disagreeable. I sat up with great difficulty and many groans, and looked round: two figures were coiled up, like huge dogs, near me; two more, moody and sulky, were smoking by the fire; with their knees drawn up to their noses and their hands in their pockets, collars well up round their throats—statues of cold and ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... sit for hours, his fish-legs coiled up under him, singing to the wondering ears of the Indians upon the shore the pleasures he experienced, and the beautiful and strange things he saw, in the depths of the ocean, always closing his strange stories with ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... morning. The magistrate put an end to its predatory career with a shot-gun. It measured slightly over twenty feet from nose to tail and in circumference was considerably larger than an inflated fire-hose. Imagine finding such a thing coiled up at the foot of your cellar-stairs after you ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... with me last Wednesday. What a beauty she is! Such color in her cheeks! It was like the apricots when the sun was on them. Such shining black hair so wonderfully braided and coiled! Such sparkling, flashing black eyes! Such a tall, splendid figure! Such a rosy mouth! It seemed as if it was made for ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... battle of Lexington reached him, he offered his services to Congress. He was made First Lieutenant of the Alfred, and over this ship hoisted the first emblem shown on an American naval vessel. The design of this flag was a pine tree with a rattlesnake coiled at the roots and the motto, "Don't tread on me," on a ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... would fain dispel, burdens which you would strive, though ever so little, to lighten, delay, even for things so desirable as complete knowledge and perfect polish, becomes not only absurd, but impossible. Better shoot into the cavern, even if you don't know in what precise part of it the dragon lies coiled. The flash of your powder may reveal his whereabouts to a surer marksman. A transient immortality is of no importance; it is of importance that hearts be purified, homes made happy, paths cleared, clouds dispelled. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... The child turned and ran quickly across a heap of dust and iron and down into the ground behind a pillar. "It must have a father or mother below—" The breath of the invisible hearth coiled up into the air; the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... three hideous heads the German army had pushed its course over the Saar, over the Rhine, over the Lauter; it sniffed at the frontier line; licked Wissembourg and the Spicheren with flaming tongues, shuddered, coiled, and glided over the boundary into the fair land of Lorraine. Then, like some dreadful ringed monster, it cast off two segments, north, south, and moved forward on its belly, while the two new segments, already turned to living bodies, ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... sensible of a strange emotion—a conviction that something was watching her with a fixed gaze. She cast her eyes around, but saw nothing. She looked upward. From the tree immediately above her lap depended a snake, its tail coiled around a dead branch. The reptile hung straight, its eyes fixed like two rubies upon Helen's, as very slowly it let itself down by its uncoiling tail. Now its head was on a level with hers; in another moment it ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the messenger had been stowed away, the cables coiled in the tiers, and the ropes flemished down on deck, the captain made his appearance, and directed the first lieutenant to send aft the newly-impressed men. In few words he pointed out to them the necessity of their servitude; and concluded ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... the mad bondage of man, the creek finally returned to its ancient ways, all soiled and smirched from its toil, and coiled lazily among the broad flats and timbered spaces where the valley widened to its mouth. Here the "pay" ran out, and men were loth to loiter with the lure yet beyond. And here, as Li Wan paused to prod Olo with her staff, she heard the ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... he jumped upon the shore he saw before him a beautiful castle but empty and dreary within, for it was enchanted. 'Here,' said he to himself, 'must I find the prize the good fairy told me of.' So he once more searched the whole palace through, till at last he found a white snake, lying coiled up on a cushion in one ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... almost as beautiful in one season as in another. In the spring it rose from moist fields and mellow ploughed ground, its tiny brown leaf buds bursting with pride at the thought of the loveliness coiled up inside. In summer it stood in the midst of a waving garden of buttercups and whiteweed, a towering mass of verdant leafage, a shelter from the sun and a refuge from the storm; a cool, splendid, hospitable dome, under which the weary farmer might fling himself, and ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... current. The latter has curious magnetic properties; a magnetic needle brought alongside of it will be found placing itself at right angles to the wire bearing the current. On this principle is made the galvanometer for measuring the intensity of a current. Moreover, if a piece of wire is coiled round a bar of steel, and a powerful electric current pass through the coil, the ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... Alexander Purdie, a native of Scotland, was editor of the Virginia Gazette from March 1766 to December 1774. Shortly after this date he started a Gazette of his own, and in the issue of his paper for June 7, 1776, he printed the heraldic device of a shield, on which is a rattlesnake coiled, with supporters, dexter, a bear collared and chained, sinister, a stag. The crest is a woman's head crowned and the motto: Don't tread on me. Adam Boyd (1738-1803), colonial printer and preacher, purchased the printing outfit of another Scot, Andrew Stuart, who had set ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... picture of distress. "How is Mrs. Lincoln?" inquired my mother. "Oh," said the President, "I have not seen her since seven o'clock this morning; Tad, how is your mother?" "She is pretty well," replied the little fellow, who was coiled up then in an arm chair, the same lad we had seen playing down in the entrance hall. We spent but a few moments with Mr. Lincoln, and when we came out my mother exclaimed: "Oh, what a cruelty to keep that man ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... at her success, next declared that she must arrange Deena's hair, and she pushed her into a low chair in front of the dressing table, and fluffed the golden mane high above the temples, and coiled and pinned it into waves and curls that caught the sunlight on their silken sheen and gave it back. A very beautiful young woman was reflected in old Mother Ponsonby's small looking-glass, a face of character and spirit, in ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... mother, came down the walk to speak with them. She was simply dressed in a plain white robe. Her arms and feet were bare, as was the custom in those days; and no rings nor chains glit-tered about her hands and neck. For her only crown, long braids of soft brown hair were coiled about her head; and a tender smile lit up her noble face as she looked ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... its two occupants, a variety of household goods, and a dog or two coiled and motionless, his sharp nose resting between his outstretched forepaws. The tame crow occupied an ingenious ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... perhaps, have envied the hero his pleasures nor his splendors,—neither the charms of Statira nor the tiara of the Mede; but if, the day after, a cry had gone forth, "Alexander the Great is dead!" verily I believe that Diogenes would have coiled himself up in his tub and felt that with the shadow of the stately hero something of glory and of warmth had gone from that sun which it should darken never more. In the nature of man, the humblest or the hardest, there is a something that lives in all of the Beautiful ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... monsters of the uttermost ocean go heaving by; and the long lithe brutes that are toothed to their tails: and below, where gloom dipped down on gloom, vast, livid tangles that coiled and uncoiled, and lapsed down steeps and hells of the sea where even the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... singularly alive to beauty, in whatever embodiment. The girl's figure, he perceived, was admirably proportioned; she was evidently at the period when the angles of childhood were rounding into the promising curves of adolescence. Her abundant hair, of a dark and glossy brown, was neatly plaited and coiled above an ivory column that rose straight from a pair of gently sloping shoulders, clearly outlined beneath the light muslin frock that covered them. He could see that she was tastefully, though not richly, dressed, and that ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... off of him: he allowed a minute to pass, then he replaced his watch in his fob. That done, he grasped Le Cabuc by the hair, as the latter coiled himself into a ball at his knees and shrieked, and placed the muzzle of the pistol to his ear. Many of those intrepid men, who had so tranquilly entered upon the most terrible of adventures, turned ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... portion of the trunk is fashioned with equal adaptation for the ends it has to serve. The spleen is placed on the left side of the liver, in order to secrete and carry off the impurities which the diseases of the body might produce and accumulate. The intestines are coiled many times, in order that the food may not pass too quickly through the body, and so occasion again an immoderate desire for more; for such a constant appetite would render the pursuit of philosophy impossible, and make man disobedient ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... small block connected to the instruments up and down the coiled wire which formed the tuning apparatus, and brought the sending and receiving ends into harmony just as if they had been two musical instruments. When the right electric "chord" was struck he should be able to hear, just as in wireless ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... start one from another. I helped the fire to the very vitals of the mass by poking the brittle heap, and at last the sacrifice was over, the flames turned from pink to blue and died out, the red glow gave place to black, little luminous red streaks coiled across the charred sheets and vanished at the margins, and only the ashes of my inspiration remained. The ink was a lustrous black on the dull blackness of the burnt paper. I could still read this much of my indiscretion remaining, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... those delightful women peculiar to England, restful to look at, restful to know. Her thick, glossy brown hair was coiled neatly in plaits, no matter what the fashion; her skin, devoid of powder, did not shine, even on the hottest day; her smile was a benison, and her teeth ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... vildebeestes one hundred and sixteen in number, lumbering slowly towards where we stood. The wind blew straight from them towards us, so that I had no fear on the score of scent. Climbing swiftly down until almost level with the veldt, I lay cosily coiled up behind a rock, and waited for the quarry. They came at last, Indian file, about a yard and a half separating one from the other, not a hundred and twenty yards from where I lay. I had plenty of time to pick and choose, and plenty of time to take aim, so did not hurry myself. Sighting for a spot ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... brother, nor sister, nor any of kin, save an uncle abiding many leagues distant in Jutland. Thereupon befell a wonderful thing; if it had not happened it would not be told. It chanced that, on a certain evening in the summer-time, Harold walked alone where a Druid circle lay coiled like a dark serpent on a hillside; his heart was filled with dolor, for he thought continually of Eleanor, his mother, and he wept softly to himself through love of that dear mother. While thus he walked ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... as if an arrow of light had slain the Python coiled about my heart. If he believed, I could believe also; if he could encounter the vague dark, I could endure the cheerless light. I was myself again, and, with one word of endearment, left the bedside to do what had ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... some men lies coiled within them, invisible as the blood of their hearts or the stuff of their will, working darkly, day by day and year after year, for their glory or for their destruction. The destiny of other men is an accident, a god ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... hurting me again and I could not speak, but without waiting for me to answer he coiled the rope about my right arm, and told me to stay where I was, and hold fast to the boat, while he climbed the rock and took possession of it in the name ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... dismally. It was an object of great awe and horror to the superstitious housemaids; and Scott used to amuse himself with their apprehensions. Sometimes, in changing his dress, he would leave his neck-cloth coiled round it like a turban, and none of the "lasses" dared to remove it. It was a matter of great wonder and speculation among them that the laird should have such an "awsome fancy for an ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... candy and laughed and frolicked; the girls got taffy on their hair—the boys got taffy on their chins; the girls got taffy on their waists—the boys got taffy on their coat sleeves. They pulled it till it was as bright as a moonbeam, and then they platted it and coiled it into fantastic shapes and set it out in the crisp air to cool. Then the courting in earnest began. They did not court then as the young folks court now. The young man led his sweetheart back into a dark corner and sat down by her, and held her hand for an hour, and never said ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... two young men lay in their comfortable beds, partially awake and yawning—the one flat on his back as if laid out for his last sleep; the other coiled into a bundle with the bedclothes, as if ready to be carried off to the laundry with the next washing. The rooms were connected by a door which stood open, for the occupants were twin brothers; their united ages ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... and so blocked up at the entrance, that it is difficult to find the way into them. The effect of the alternate darkness and light, amid twisted creepers, some like gigantic snakes, others neatly coiled in true man-of-war fashion, is very striking and fantastic. Every crevice is full of ferns and orchids and curious plants, while moths and butterflies flit about in every direction. Imagine, if you can, scarlet butterflies gaily spotted, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... card gummed to apex: after 15 h. deflected 90o from the perpendicular and from the card: in the course of the three following days the terminal portion became much contorted and ultimately coiled into a helix. ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... inroad by Heen-yuns was made, And 'cross the frontier build a barrier wall. Numerous his chariots, splendidly arrayed! The standards—this where dragons were displayed, And that where snakes round tortoises were coiled— Terrific flew. "Northward our host," he said, "Heaven's son sends forth to tame the Heen-yun wild." Soon by this awful chief would all their tribes ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... fattest angle-worms ever dug from a rich garden-plot—all so happily, so feverishly, so exultantly captured last night when Anticipation strengthened the little muscles that wielded the heavy spade. All safe in their black soil they wait, coiled round and round each other into a solid worm-ball in ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... knowing the names of things and the places where they were to be found; but he made fair progress, and when he had tossed the gaskets into the cockpit was ordered forward to help hoist the mainsail. After that the anchor was hove in and the jib set. Then they coiled down the halyards and put everything in order before they ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... visions of seeing the lakes once more which never can be realized. Between us there is a great gulf—not of inexplicable moral antipathies and distances, I hope (as there seemd to be between me and that Gentleman concern'd in the Stamp office that I so strangely coiled up from at Haydons). I think I had an instinct that he was the head of an office. I hate all such people—Accountants, Deputy Accountants. The dear abstract notion of the East India Company, as long as she is unseen, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... to understand me, and giving a couple of turns round, he coiled himself up, and in a moment was fast asleep. I do not think that he had been asleep ten minutes before he jumped up, wagged his tail, and ran forward, as ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... toward the strident buzzing which once heard is never forgotten, and which is never heard without a tensing of nerves. He sighted the snake, coiled and ready for war in the small shade of a rabbit-bush. He circled the spot warily, his head turned sidewise, and his eyes fixed upon the flattened, ugly head with its thread ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... and collected at Philadelphia, from which city, one morning in January, 1776, a fleet of eight vessels set sail. As they were about to weigh anchor, John Paul Jones, a lieutenant on the flagship, flung to the breeze a yellow silk flag on which were a pine tree and a coiled rattlesnake, with this motto: "Don't tread on me." This was the first flag ever hoisted on ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... eyes did indeed follow him till he disappeared, but it would have taken a wise man to read them. After a meditative minute or so he coiled up his wire, pocketed it, and made off across the face of the rock by a giddy track which withdrew him at once from Jim ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Christian thought associated with this emblem is the precise opposite of the pagan one. The pagan heart shrank from naming the ugly thing because it was so ugly. So dark and deep a dread coiled round the man, as he contemplated it, that he sought to drape the dreadfulness in some kind of thin, transparent veil, and to put the buffer of a word between him and its hideousness. But the Christian's motive for the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... on the bedside exactly as she had come from the carriage, save that a white gossamer web had dropped from her head and shoulders, and lay coiled about her waist. Her tearless eyes were wide and filled with painful meditation, even when she turned to the alarmed and astonished girl before her. With suppressed exclamations of wonder and pity the girl glided forward, cast her arms ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... simple white shirt-waist and blue serge skirt, and her masses of red-gold hair were loosely coiled about her well-shaped head. The eager light of interest in her violet eyes lit her beautiful young face, lending it an animation which added a wonderful vitality to her natural beauty. The firm, rich lips were parted eagerly. The wide-open eyes, so deeply intelligent, shone with a lustre ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... originally for more timorous and less conscientious infidels who were often disposed to skulk in obscure places and to renounce without really abandoning their errors, it was provided with a set of venomous familiars who glided through every chamber and coiled themselves at every fireside. The secret details of each household in the realm being therefore known to the holy office and to the monarch, no infidel or heretic could escape discovery. This invisible machinery was less requisite for the Netherlands. There was comparatively little ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... section of the shed two placid little burros were dreamily blinking at vacancy, their grizzled fronts expressive of that ineffable peace found only in the faces of saints and donkeys. In the middle of the enclosure a rude windlass coiled with rope stood stretching forth a decrepit lever-arm. The whippletree, dangling from the end over the beaten circular track, seemed cracked with heat and age. The stout rope that stretched tautly from the ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... so beautiful to him before. Her face was as pure as a pearl; her glossy hair, falling loosely away from her white forehead, was simply coiled at the back of her small head, thus revealing its symmetrical proportions to the best advantages. Her great brown eyes glowed and scintillated, her nostrils dilated, her lips quivered with ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... He heard them all descending below, and remained still quiet, till he imagined that the forecastle was clear. In the meantime, Mr Vanslyperken who had been walking the deck abaft, unaccompanied by his faithful attendant (for Snarleyyow remained coiled up on his master's bed), was meditating deeply how to gratify the two most powerful passions in our nature, love and revenge: at one moment thinking of the fat fair Vandersloosh, and of hauling in her guilders, at another reverting to the starved Smallbones and the comfort of ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... incident affecting the Hard Cash, whose singular adventures I have to record. In this dearth, please put up with a little characteristic trifle, which did happen one moonlight night. Mr. Fullalove lay coiled below decks in deep abstraction meditating a patent; and being in shadow and silent, he saw Vespasian in the moonlight creeping on all fours like a guilty thing into the bedroom of Colonel Kenealy, then fast asleep. A horrible suspicion thrilled through Fullalove: ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... silk handkerchiefs knotted loosely around their necks over the open collar of their flannel shirts, they made a brave show, indeed. Nor was the least of the wonders about them the graceful swirls of loosely-coiled lariats hanging from the horns of ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... himself surrounded by the most dreadful-looking creatures. On one side he saw the glittering eye of a cruel tiger, on the other the gleaming teeth of a great she-wolf; here a huge bear growled fiercely, and there a horrible snake coiled itself in the grass ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... a stout rope or cable was procured. The end of this Ian ran out at the main doorway, round through the parlour window, and tied it in a trice. The other end he coiled in the punt, and soon made it fast to a stout elm, under whose grateful shade Angus Macdonald had enjoyed many a pipe and Martha many a cup of tea in other days. The tree bent slowly forward; the thick rope became rigid. Ian and Peegwish sat ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... If a closely coiled heavy wire is suspended as in Figure 173 and the weight is drawn down and then released, the coil will assume the appearance shown; there is clearly an overcrowding or condensation in some places, and ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... Depressing one end of the filled canoe, and letting go of it quickly, it bounced up, and discharged a great part of its contents; so that we easily baled out the remainder, and again embarked. This time, my comrade coiled himself away in a very small space; and enjoining upon him not to draw a single unnecessary breath, I proceeded to urge the canoe along by myself. I was astonished at his docility, never speaking a word, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... are cleaning their rifles. The proceedings are superintended by a contemplative tabby cat, coiled up in a niche, like a feline ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... little demons behind them mocking their attitudes. There were men fighting with big serpents, and skeletons dancing together. All about these pictures were blooming vines and foliage such as never grew in this world, and coiled among the branches of the vines there was always the scaly body of a serpent, and behind every flower there was a serpent's head. It was a veritable Dance of Death by one who had felt its sting. In the wood box lay some boards, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... knee, my rain coat rolled behind my saddle, my camera dangling handily, my rope coiled and lashed, I called out, "Are we ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... and a green grass-plot, and stopped there long enough to throw the pack off Sunfish, unsaddle Smoky and stake them both out to graze. Stopper he saddled, then knelt and washed his face, beat the travel dust off his hat, untied his rope and coiled it carefully, untied his handkerchief and shook it as clean as he could and knotted it closely again. One might have thought he was preparing to meet a girl; but the habit of neatness dated back to his pink-apron days and beyond, the dirt ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... in the dark. The tennis net, coiled like a grey snake on the black lawn. "Let's hide together." Harry Craven, hiding, crouching beside you under the currant bushes. The scramble together up the water-butt and along the scullery roof. The last rush across ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... which spaces take shape independently of the subject to be inserted. When the figures must occupy a narrow zone they are elongated, when they must occupy a square they are restricted longitudinally, and when they must occupy a circle they are of necessity coiled up. Fig. 265 illustrates the effect produced by crowding the oblong figure into a short rectangular space. The head is turned back over the body and the tail is thrown down along the side of the space. In Fig. 266 the figure occupies a circle, and is in consequence closely coiled up, giving ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... another—don't know much. There's a mob in most towns though, I think, that wants boilin' down bad. Some day they'll do it, maybe; they'll have to when all the good country's stocked up. After Warrigal had his supper he went out again to see his horse, and then coiled himself up before the fire and wouldn't hardly ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... over population. Now and again we passed among vast stems of buttressed trees, sometimes enormous in girth; and from their far-away summits hung great bush- ropes, some as straight as plumb lines, others coiled round, and intertwined among each other, until one could fancy one was looking on some mighty battle between armies of gigantic serpents, that had been arrested at its height by some magic spell. All these bush- ropes were as bare of foliage as a ship's wire rigging, but a good many ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... wagging around and making inquiries of Hawkins's dog, which were not satisfactory and they made war on him in concert. This would have interested the citizens but it was too many on one to amount to anything as a fight, and so they commanded the peace and the foreign dog coiled his tail and took sanctuary under the wagon. Slatternly negro girls and women slouched along with pails deftly balanced on their heads, and joined the group and stared. Little half dressed white boys, and little negro ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner |
