"Crab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rushes away from his criticisms on snobbism to other matters. There are the details of a card-sharping enterprise, in which we cannot but feel that we recognise something of the author's own experiences in the misfortunes of Mr. Dawkins; there is the Earl of Crab's, and then the first of those attacks which he was tempted to make on the absurdities of his brethren of letters, and the only one which now has the appearance of having been ill-natured. His first victims were Dr. Dionysius Lardner and Mr. Edward Bulwer Lytton, as he was then. We can surrender ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... attending court at Christiansburg, and Mr. Speed was riding with them toward Springfield. There was quite a party of these lawyers, riding two by two along a country lane. Lincoln and John J. Hardin brought up the rear of the cavalcade. "We had passed through a thicket of wild plum and crab-apple trees," says Mr. Speed, "and stopped to water our horses. Hardin came up alone. 'Where is Lincoln?' we inquired. 'Oh,' replied he, 'when I saw him last he had caught two young birds which the wind had blown out of their nests, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... garden hollyhocks. Maria says 'at thy'd be purtier 'an hers if they were only double; but, Lord, Mr. Redbird, they are! See 'em once on the bank, an' agin in the water! An' back a little an' there's jest thickets of papaw, an' thorns, an' wild grape-vines, an' crab, an' red an' black haw, an' dogwood, an' sumac, an' spicebush, an' trees! Lord! Mr. Redbird, the sycamores, an' maples, an' tulip, an' ash, an' elm trees are so bustin' fine 'long the old Wabash they put 'em into poetry books an' sing songs about 'em. What do you think o' that? Jest back o' ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... intrusted to my friend Afrikan Korshunov, on his oath and word of honor; with him I had drunk and gone on sprees, he was responsible for all my folly, he was the chief mixer of the mash! He fooled me and showed me up, and I was stuck like a crab on a sand bank. I had nothing to drink, and I was thirsty—what was to be done? Where could I go to drown my misery? I sold my clothes, all my fashionable things; got pay in bank-notes, and changed them for silver, the silver for copper, and then everything ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... sojers. I t'ink some of ol' marster's boys went to de war but de ol' man didn' go. I dunno 'bout wedder dey come back or not 'cep'n' I 'member dat Crab Norsworthy ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... a dozen with mince-meat, half a dozen with stewed gooseberry, and then half a dozen each, of crab apple jelly, plum, peach and blackberry. They would not let us see what they filled the "Jonahs" with, but we knew that it was a fearful load. Generally it was with something shockingly sour, or bitter. The "Jonahs" looked precisely ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... making the best use of this opportunity for escape, he commenced a sort of prying adventure on his own account—a temptation he could not resist—by walking, or rather shuffling, into the guard-room, where his own peculiar crab-like sinuosities were particularly available. A number of soldiers were jabbering some unintelligible jargon, too much occupied with their own clamour to notice ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... and the consequence is that amblers are scarce, and in most cases have to be educated to their gait. This is the way in which nature adapts herself to popular want and popular usage. The large variety of apples which load our orchards were developed from the insignificant crab, and the peach was the child of the almond, or the almond of the peach—I have forgotten which. Now I suppose (with some feeble doubts about it) that man and woman started exactly together, that her singing treble better than she does bass results from usage, and that her singing treble rather ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... in her voice and sighed a little as he sprawled his signature on the next check. "I often wish I was a sour, old crab," he said, half to Helen and half to himself. "I'd get through life a whole lot better ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... finny prey he could not find; And, having neither hook nor net, His appetite was poorly met. What hope, with famine thus infested? Necessity, whom history mentions, A famous mother of inventions, The following stratagem suggested: He found upon the water's brink A crab, to which said he, 'My friend, A weighty errand let me send: Go quicker than a wink— Down to the fishes sink, And tell them they are doom'd to die; For, ere eight days have hasten'd by, Its lord will fish this water dry.' The crab, as fast as she ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... plants and trees, and probably among animals! One spring an unseasonable cold snap in May (mercury 28) killed or withered about one per cent of the leaves on the lilacs, and one tenth of one per cent of the leaves of our crab-apple tree. In the woods around Slabsides I observed that nearly half the plants of Solomon's-seal (Polygonatum) and false Solomon's-seal (Smilacina) were withered. The vital power, the power to live, seems ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... kind of victuals was cooked for poor Hansel, while Grethel got nothing but crab-shells. Each morning the old woman visited the ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... grain and seed of our present varieties of wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, lentils, and poppy, exceed in size those which were cultivated in Switzerland during the Neolithic and Bronze periods. These ancient people, during the Neolithic period, possessed also a crab considerably larger than that now growing wild on the Jura.[522] The pears described by Pliny were evidently extremely inferior in quality to our present pears. We can realise the effects of long-continued selection and cultivation in another way, for would any one in his senses expect to raise ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... phenomenon is to be observed in the blind crab (Cambaras pellucidus), which is also found in the Mammoth Cave, for in this being, according to Professor Von Leydig, the little warts on the interior feelers, which constitute the organ of smell, have also received ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... tree, weak and unnerved as I was! I was approaching the nearest tree, eagerly casting up my eyes towards the tempting fruit, which hung down in clusters, when I heard a loud hammering sound; and there I saw on the ground a huge crab, such as I had before met with in Amboyna, busily employed in breaking the shell. If I could kill him, I could secure both meat and vegetable at the same time. I had got close to him before he heard me approach, when he began to sidle off ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Curious fellow. I like him—or try to. I've an odd idea he doesn't like me, though. Funny, isn't it, how a man goes out of his way to win over a nobody whom he thinks doesn't like him but ought to? He's an odd crab," he added. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... to be seen On earth that does not overween. Doth not the hawk, from high, survey The fowls as destined for his prey? And do not Caesars, and such things, Deem men were born to slave for kings? The crab, amidst the golden sands Of Tagus, or on pearl-strewn strands, Or in the coral-grove marine, Thinks hers each gem of ray serene. The snail, 'midst bordering pinks and roses, Where zephyrs fly and love reposes, Where Laura's cheek vies with the peaches, When Corydon one glance beseeches,— The snail ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... crab the throat will seize Of him who feeds upon his guest, Fire will burn his lamp-like eyes 615 In revenge of such a feast! A great oak stump now is lying In the ashes yet undying. Come, Maron, come! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... agony I picked myself up and found my steering-gear so damaged that I could only move sideways, crab-fashion, and in this manner I crawled on to the platform just as a train was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... deliberated, and disbanded, but the tidings announced in Lilienthal's epistle did not prove to be good. In one of the fables of Kryloff, the Russian AEsop, we are told that once a swan, a pike, and a crab, decided to make a trip together. No sooner had they started than, in accordance with their nature, the swan began to fly, the pike to shuffle along, the crab to crawl backward. It was so with the delegation of 1843. Rabbi Isaac, the rabid Mitnagged, could find but little to admire in the proposals ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... playfully, "don't let's have any crying. Crying's for them as ha' got no home, not for them as want to get rid o' one. What dost think?" he continued to his wife, who now came back into the house-place, knitting with fierce rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the twittering of a crab's antennae. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... have a peculiar fondness for crabs. A dainty succulent soft shell crab, nicely cooked and well browned, tempts the eye of the epicure and makes his mouth water. Even a hard shell is not to be despised when no other is attainable. We eat them with great gusto, thinking they are "so nice," without considering for a moment that they have ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... being guided by its grunts and croaks. Then off it went again, its tremendous leap carrying it far into the fog. Suddenly, Cap'n Bill tripped and would have fallen flat had not Trot and Button-Bright held him up. Then he saw that he had stumbled over the claw of a gigantic land-crab, which lay sprawled out upon the ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... said the mate as he brought the axe to take the battons off the forehatch. "A fellow might as well try to work a crab at low tide as to keep her to it in a blow like that. She minds her helm like a porpoise in the breakers. Old Davy must have put his mark upon her some time, but I never know'd a lucky vessel to be got as she was. She makes a haul on the underwriters every time she drifts across; ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... flesh, and came up to the camp-fire; the strong hunting-dogs rushed out with clamorous barking to drive them away, and the sudden alarm for a moment made the sleepy wayfarers think that roving Indians had attacked them. When they reached Crab Orchard their dangers were for the moment past; all travellers grew to regard with affection the station by this little grove of wild apple-trees. It is worthy of note that the early settlers loved to build their homes near these natural ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... keep this up. Then again, instead of going to bed when your day's work is done, you run off to picnics at Sulzer's Park, or go to the Eldorado or Coney Island, and when you come down here next morning you are fagged out. There was no real hearse. There was a soft-shell crab dream." ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... time to inquire what kind of patties were inviting the passer-by on Mr Altham's counter. They were a very large variety: oyster, crab, lobster, anchovy, and all kinds of fish; sausage-rolls, jelly, liver, galantine, and every sort of meat; ginger, honey, cream, fruit; cheese-cakes, almond and lemon; little open tarts called bry tarts, made of literal ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... office: the crab and nick nest: the pip and bone quarry: the rafflearium: the trumpery: the blaspheming box: the elbow shaking shop: the wholesale ague ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of right the alpha, or first, of all the gods? who being but one, yet bestow all things on all men. For first, what is more sweet or more precious than life? And yet from whom can it more properly be said to come than from me? For neither the crab-favoured Pallas' spear nor the cloud-gathering Jupiter's shield either beget or propagate mankind; but even he himself, the father of gods and king of men at whose very beck the heavens shake, must lay by his forked thunder and those looks wherewith ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... excitement of the moment, the object they had in view, the poor things shouted and laughed with glee; but they dipped their oars with sad irregularity, and the boat began to rock in a violent manner. Then Young's wife, Susannah, caught what in nautical parlance is called "a crab;" that is, she missed her stroke and fell backwards into ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... copper, gold, nickel, platinum and other minerals, and coal and hydrocarbons have been found in small uncommercial quantities; none presently exploited; krill, finfish, and crab have been ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... anxiously looking around, She saw a stout crab-stick lie flat on the ground. "Kind stick," she exclaim'd, "I entreat you to flog "This cruel, regardless, unmannerly dog, "Who will not bite Piggy, though plainly you see "My pig will not stir, and there's no home for me." ...
— The Remarkable Adventures of an Old Woman and Her Pig - An Ancient Tale in a Modern Dress • Anonymous
... melted butter to them; upon this lay a medley of flocks and feathers sewed up together in a large bag, (for I am confident it was not a tick) but so ill ordered that the knobs stuck out on each side like a crab-tree cudgel. He had need to have flesh enough that lyeth on one of them, otherwise the second night would wear out his bones.—Let us now walk into the kitchen and observe their provision. And here we found a most terrible execution ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... supposed to be incarnate in the octopus, and also in the land crab. If one of these crabs found its way into the house, it was a sign that the head of the ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... trousers, we commenced our search, armed with our knives and wooden swords. No oysters were to be found on the rocks, or in the shoal water in which we waded. However, we obtained as many mussels and some other shell-fish as we could carry in our pockets; and Ben captured a large crab, which was a prize, we agreed, worth having. And as by this time the tide was running in, we were now obliged ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... The only one who seemed rather to enjoy it than otherwise was the prisoner, who was quietly and quickly making off, when the malevolent and irrepressible dwarf espied him, and the one shock acting as a counter-irritant to the other, he bounced fleetly over the table, and grabbed him in his crab-like claws. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... the Bear's[185] head have the Twins their seat, Under his chest the Crab, beneath his feet The mighty Lion ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... still, my souldier of S. Quintins: come, follow me; I have Charles waine below in a but of sack, t'will glister like your Crab-fish. ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... crab of the largest size at this reply, and remained where he fell, among the ruins of the castle in Spain, which he had erected with the scanty materials vouchsafed to him, while Warwick went back to ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... new, soft shell forms, and the old, hard one is shed. Thus comes the soft-shelled crab. In about three days the shell begins to harden again. In Maryland there are ponds for raising these crabs, so that now the supply is surer than in former years. Crabs are a great luxury, and very expensive. In the Eastern ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... justice, as he afterwards said when he brought up the matter one day.—"Sure, how can I till where he or any other mother's son is that I can't say before my eyes? I can till you, though, where I belaives him to be this blissid minnit; an' that is, by the 'Crab an' Lobster' at Gravesend, lookin' out for to say if he can say the Silver Quane ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... streams and sea for the use of the inhabitants of the world" (498. 90). With these people also the first woman was chan.a.e.lewadi (Mother E-lewadi), the ancestress of the present race of natives. She was drowned, while canoeing, and "became a small crab of a description still named after her ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... book-keeper and I have made many calculations on the subject, and being a man of literature like yourself, he gave it as his opinion the last time we talked the matter over, that it would only be avoiding Silly and running into Crab-beds; which I presume means Quod or the Bench. Unless he can have a wife 'made to order,' he says he'll never wed. Besides, the women are such a bothersome encroaching set. I declare I'm so pestered with them that I don't know vich vay to turn. They are always ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... Fortune-teller, let Frisco knowe whether Siluio my maister, that lustie Forrester, shall gaine that same gay shepheardesse or no. Ile promise ye nothing for your paines but a bag full of nuts, and if I bring a crab or two in my pocket take them ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... of his way to Holyhead, and begging a passage on board the packet to Dublin, after a fine trip landed at King's End, near that city. His first inquiry here was for an old acquaintance, and in particular for one Mr. Crab, and Lord Annesly, who had been schoolfellows with him at Tiverton. He found my Lord Annesly lived a mile from the town, but did not see him the first day, being gone to Blessington, as the servants told him. Accordingly he set out for ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... crab," said the zebra. "He lives in a pool where I go to drink every day, and he is a very impertinent crab, I assure you. I have told him many times that the land is much greater in extent than the water, but he will not be convinced. Even this very ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... apples yet; we must first find out a little about the tree. We learn in the beginning that it was one of the very earliest trees planted in this country by the settlers, because it is both hardy and useful. There is a wild species called the Virginia crab-apple, which bears beautiful pink flowers as fragrant as roses, but its small apples are intensely sour. The blossoms of the cultivated apple tree are more beautiful than those of any other fruit; they are delicious to both ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... couldn't make up his mind which. After nightfall if he flung a burning cigar stump out upon the sand he could see it moving off in the darkness apparently under its own motive power. But the truth was that a land crab, with an unsolvable mania for playing the role of torchbearer, would be scuttling away with the stub in ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... with its simple-minded standards of the field and farm, its Southern and Western habits of life and manners, its assumptions of ethics and history; but even in Washington, society was uneasy enough to need no further fretting. One was almost glad to act the part of horseshoe crab in Quincy Bay, and admit that all was uniform — that nothing ever changed — and that the woman would swim about the ocean of future time, as she had swum in the past, with the gar-fish and ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... single suspender, completely equipped him, formed his every-day suit. How, with this lavish superfluity of clothing, he managed to perform the surprising gymnastic feats it has been my privilege to witness, I have never been able to tell. His "turning the crab," and other minor dislocations, were always attended with success. It was not an unusual sight at any hour of the day to find Melons suspended on a line, or to see his venerable head appearing above the roofs of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... accordingly was opened; and the hermit, a large, strong-built man, in his sackcloth gown and hood, girt with a rope of rushes, stood before the knight. He had in one hand a lighted torch, or link, and in the other a baton of crab-tree, so thick and heavy, that it might well be termed a club. Two large shaggy dogs, half greyhound half mastiff, stood ready to rush upon the traveller as soon as the door should be opened. But when the torch glanced upon the lofty crest and golden spurs of the knight, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... ever was seen to enter the door of No. 252 except Jeanne the servant and the Sar Torrevieja, the latter coming constantly from none knew whither, and always entering, never leaving. Indeed, the neighbors, who for eleven years had watched the old sorcerer sidle crab-wise up to the bell almost every day, declared vociferously that never had he been seen to leave the house. Once, when they decided to keep absolute guard, the watcher, none other than Maitre Garceau of the Chien Bleu, after keeping his eyes fixed on the door ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... his men down towards the ford, and when the Romans saw that, their main body began to move forward, faring slant-wise, as a crab, down toward the ford; then Otter hastened somewhat, as he well might, since his men were well learned in war and did not break their array; but now by this time were those burners of the Romans come up with the main battle, and the Roman captain sent them at ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... fire they lay on matts which are their beds. The houses were double matted, for as they were matted without so were they within, with newer and fairer matts. In the houses we found wooden Boules, Trayes & Dishes, Earthen Pots, Hand baskets made of Crab shells, wrought together; also an English Pail or Bucket; it wanted a bayle, but it had two iron eares. There was also Baskets of sundry sorts, bigger and some lesser, finer and some coarser. Some were curiously wrought with ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... me, no," answered Mrs. Flagg. "My pocket's so remote, in case I should desire to sneeze or anything, that I thought 't would be convenient for carrying my handkerchief and pocket-book; an' then I just tucked in a couple o' glasses o' my crab-apple jelly for Mis' Timms. She used to be a great hand for preserves of every sort, an' I thought 't would be a kind of an attention, an' give rise to conversation. I know she used to make excellent drop-cakes when we was both residin' to Longport; folks used to say she never ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of the first eminence, in whose day (fortunately perhaps for me) I was not destined to appear before the public, or to abide the Herculean crab-tree of his criticism, Dr. Johnson, has said, in his preface to Shakspeare, that—"Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature." My representations of nature, whatever may be said of their justness, ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... adjoining kitchen she assembled a glass pitcher of sweet milk, a glass pitcher of buttermilk, a plate of cold cornbread, a platter of cold fried chicken, a dish of golden butter, a pan of cold fried potatoes, a jar of preserved crab apples and another of peach butter. Susan watched with hungry eyes. She was thinking of nothing but food now. Her aunt looked ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... gee tha tuther penny, an zummet besides!" exclaimed Farmer Tidball, leaping down the bank, with a stout sliver of a crab-tree in his hand.—The sequel may be ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... chanced that these things were said in the hour which, when it passes over the world, all the wishes uttered by men are granted. And so it was with these Indians. For the first became a Leech, the second a Spotted Frog, the third a Crab, which is washed up and down with the tide, and the fourth a Fish. Ere this there had been in all the world none of the creatures which dwell in the water, and now they were there, and of all kinds. And the river came rushing and roaring on, and ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... hackberry, the oaks, the linden, the locusts on the hill and the solitary old honey-locust down by the river's brink are as yet unresponsive to the smiles of spring. The plum, the crab apple, the hawthorn and the wild cherry are but just beginning to push green points between their bud scales. But the elms are a glory of dull gold; every twig is fringed with blossoms. The maples have lost their ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... from John's direction. When I turned my eyes to look he was lying still. Then I saw him wriggle out of danger, backing away like a crab. ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... contrivance to this of Flies shall we find in most other Animals, such as all kinds of Flies and case-wing'd creatures; nay, in a Flea, an Animal abundantly smaller then this Fly. Other creatures, as Mites, the Land-Crab, &c. have onely one small very sharp Tallon at the end of each of their legs, which all drawing towards the center or middle of their body, inable these exceeding light bodies to suspend and fasten themselves ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... said Marjorie, "and Harry can be a sand crab, for he just scuttles through the sand all the time. ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... [Cuneiform] Crab. [Cuneiform] Lion. [Cuneiform] Virgin. [Cuneiform] Scales. [Cuneiform] Scorpion. [Cuneiform] Bow. [Cuneiform] Capricornus [Cuneiform] ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... twinkling with reflections of trees, but the ardent oarswomen saw neither the beauty surrounding them nor the black clouds threatening. They were practising for a race. Neither spoke. They pulled with long steady strokes in perfect time. Suddenly Frieda's oar flopped and "caught a crab." The bow at the same moment struck the bank, and a great scrambling tearing sound followed. In a fright the girls huddled together in the bottom of the boat, not ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... and I have to ask them out to supper. Then I am always greatly alarmed, for you never can tell what will happen, sir, with two ladies at supper and only twenty dollars in your pocket, and both ladies fond of game and crab-meat. It's really very trying. I sit and tremble as I watch them, and go home with only a feeble remnant of my salary, and next day I have to ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... twenty-nine different weeds have been found to contribute to the quail's bill of fare. Crops and stomachs have been found crowded with rag-weed seeds, to the number of one thousand, while others had eaten as many seeds of crab-grass. A bird shot at Pine Brook, N.J., in October, 1902, had eaten five thousand seeds of green fox-tail grass, and one killed on Christmas Day at Kinsale, Va., had taken about ten thousand seeds of the pig-weed. (Elizabeth A. Reed.) In Bulletin ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... miles from town. He determined on the latter, and put his four troops of cavalry in motion. When he arrived at the ferry it was ebb of tide, the water was running out as from a millsluice; the banks on each side were so miry as scarcely to support a crab—the river was at least one hundred yards wide, and there was not a boat.—He however ordered Major Fraser to lead on the first troop into the river and swim across. Fraser viewed him for some time with astonishment, suspecting him not to be in his sober senses. ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... I found that it was a great crab-spider, one of the formidable arachnida, which are said to eat young birds and other small vertebrates, though they generally, like other spiders, live upon insects. This spider—the mygagle avicularia—will attack humming-birds, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... proposed to lie farther off, and come back (maybe) when I'd finished my job. So she pointed straight in for where I was standing amid my duds and chattels, just as if she was going to thump herself ashore—and then she began to slip off sideways like a misbegotten crab, and backward, too—until what with the darkness tumbling down, and a point o' palms, I lost sight of her. Why didn't I shout, and threaten, and jump up ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... apprehension. I had been living in the quaint little house with as much comfort and unconsciousness as if it were a larger body, or a double shell, in whose simple convolutions Mrs. Todd and I had secreted ourselves, until some wandering hermit crab of a visitor marked the little spare room for her own. Perhaps now and then a castaway on a lonely desert island dreads the thought of being rescued. I heard of Mrs. Fosdick for the first time with a selfish sense of objection; but after all, I was still vacation-tenant ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... So, masters, we had nigh slipped hawser and away. Why, here have we been beating about and about for three long nights; by day we durst not be seen in-shore. Yon cruiser overhauls everything from a crab to a crab-louse. What! got part of your company in the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... ask you that question,—you who know everything that goes on in our set," said the young serpent. Any tree planted in "our set," if it had been but a crab-tree, would have tempted Mr. Avenel's Eve ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... steal cold praties off a dresser." He is now leading in a girl, handsome no doubt, but who, nevertheless, does not possess sixpence, or sixpence worth for her portion. Not so the sword-fish we have pointed out to you a while ago, the tail of whose short coat lay as closely to him as that of a crab. The cassoway has secured a girl who, in point of wealth and dower, will be the making of him. However, you know the secret, Solomon says that a soft answer turneth away wrath; but what will not a soft question do, when put to a pretty girl, where ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the eight, one hundred and thirty miles of sun-baked, crab-holed, practically trackless plains, no sign of human habitation anywhere, cracks that would swallow a man—"hardly enough wood to boil a quart pot," the Fizzer says, and a sun-temperature hovering about 160 degrees (there ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... line and saunter towards the inn, leaving their places to others as leisurely sauntering from the inn. It did, indeed, occur to me to wonder how they earned their living, for during the first fortnight, beyond the occasional hauling of a crab-pot, I saw no evidence at all of labour. It was on the tip of my tongue, once or twice, to question them; but, though polite, they clearly had no wish ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... craftsmaster. (5.) The possessive case and its governing noun, combining to form a metaphorical name, should be written with both apostrophe and hyphen; as, Job's-tears, Jew's-ear, bear's-foot, colts-tooth, sheep's-head, crane's-bill, crab's-eyes, hound's-tongue, king's-spear, lady's-slipper, lady's-bedstraw, &c. (6.) The possessive case and its governing noun, combining to form an adjective, whether literal or metaphorical, should ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... kind of crab that likes to live in a shell; so if they find one empty, they take possession of it; they are called "hermit crabs." We often used to pick up a shell with ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... cherry. The calyx in these fruits was completely superior, the succulent portion of the fruit being made up of the dilated extremity of the peduncle, and possibly in part of the base of the calyx. The general appearance was thus that of a crab-apple. There was no stone in the interior, but simply a rudimentary ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... rowing?" They rushed down upon the coast of Corinth, and the youngest hollowed out beds in the sand with their hoofs or went to fetch coverings; instead of luzern, they had no food but crabs, which they caught on the strand and even in the sea; so that Theorus causes a Corinthian[81] crab to say, "'Tis a cruel fate, oh Posidon! neither my deep hiding-places, whether on land or at sea, can help ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... my shoulder I noted to my dismay an enormous land-crab towing our dory seaward. It was a harrowing moment. As agreed upon, we waited for Triplett to take the initiative and in the interim I took a hasty inventory of our reception committee. The general impression was that of great beauty and physique entirely ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... beach, he found innumerable fruits, and many of them such as no plants which he had discovered in this country produced: Among others were some cocoa-nuts, which Tupia said had been opened by a kind of crab, which from his description we judged to be the same that the Dutch call Beurs Krabbe, and which we had not seen in these seas. All the vegetable substances which he found in this place were encrusted with marine productions, and covered with barnacles; a sure sign that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... carpet of the stuff brushed ship side. One of the boys cried, "Ho, there is a crab!" It sat indeed on a criss-cross of broken reeds, and it seemed to stare at us solemnly. "Do not all see that it came from land, and land ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... simply explained on the principle of the natural selection of successive slight variations in the diverging descendants from a single progenitor! So it is with certain parts or organs in the same individual animal or plant, for instance, the jaws and legs of a crab, or the petals, stamens, and pistils of a flower. During the many changes to which in the course of time organic beings have been subjected, certain organs or parts have occasionally become at first of little use and ultimately superfluous; and the retention ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... life, than the principles which were adopted in childhood were pure, reasonable, and consistent with truth: so a tree is either good or bad, and brings forth fruit after its own kind, though it be ever so stinted. If you find a crab-apple on a tree, you may be sure that the tree is a crab-tree. So one can predicate a pretty correct opinion of a person, as to character, disposition, and modes of thinking and acting, from a single isolated remark, incidentally made, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... see them once more. Abraham Lincoln often went out of his way to do a kindness to some weak or suffering creature. [Footnote: The following incident is related by one who knew Lincoln: "We passed through a thicket of wild plum and crab-apple trees, and stopped to water our horses. One of the party came up alone and we ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... bull. The treads stopped and the blaster jerked upwards wrenching Alan's arms, then slammed down. Then the whole housing whirled around and around, tilting alternately up and down like a steel-skinned water monster trying to dislodge a tenacious crab, while Alan, arms and legs wrapped tightly around the blaster barrel and housing, pressed fiercely ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... (who is blind also) had given the Blind Man a Dog, who led him out in the morning to a seat in the sun under the crab-tree, and held his hat for wayside alms, and brought him safely ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was too feeble to sit up after nine o'clock, she refused to open her doors for the crab hunt, but gave Rachael the key of a little villa on the crest of a peak behind the house, and told her to keep her friends all ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... after its publication, wrote: "Written in pursuance of a foolish plan I forget, or have no wish to remember; the world was never to guess that such an opera, such a comedy, such a speech proceeded from the same notable person.... Only this crab remains of the shapely Tree of Life in my fool's Paradise." It was in conformity with this plan that he not only issued "Pauline" anonymously, but enjoined secrecy upon those to whom he communicated the fact of ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... toward the other doorway. Once he froze as the officer strode by, Lablet in attendance. But what the painted warrior was looking for was a crystal box on a shelf to Raf's left. When he had pointed that out to an underling he was off again, and Raf was free to continue his crab's progress. ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... enough to keep our parson going through six pipes on a Saturday night—to have it as right as could be next day—a lean man with a yellow beard, too thin for a good Catholic (which religion always fattens), came up to me, working sideways, in the manner of a female crab. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... creature, which looked as if nature had begun an insect and then changed her mind and finished it off like a crab. This thing, with the ferocious claw-like nose and chin, was a female Rhinoceros beetle, so the owner explained. The male beetle appeared to be a harmless, mild concern of much smaller size, and with no warlike appendages whatever. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Admiral knew, and ordered that the north should be again observed at dawn. They then found that the needles were true. The cause was that the star makes the movement, and not the needles. At dawn, on that Monday, they saw much more weed appearing, like herbs from rivers, in which they found a live crab, which the Admiral kept. He says that these crabs are certain signs of land. The sea-water was found to be less salt than it had been since leaving the Canaries. The breezes were always soft. Every one was pleased, and the best sailors went ahead to sight the first land. ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... and ages. I could hear a great deal of giggling among the girls, and scolding by the elder women. They were apparently selecting someone to break the ice by making the first assault. Presently a venerable dame opened the door, and sidled in like a crab. She approached me and kissed me on both cheeks, and received her presents. Then they followed in a line, old and young, pretty and ugly, each giving me a hearty kiss, which, in some cases, I returned with interest. The ceremony continued with great hilarity and much frolicksome tittering ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... crab-tree walking-stick, with a gold head, curiously wrought in the form of a cap of liberty, I give to my friend, and the friend of mankind, George Washington. If it were a sceptre, he has merited it, and would ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... woman a substratum of the brute, and in the man the material for a blackguard. Both were susceptible, in the highest degree, of the sort of hideous progress which is accomplished in the direction of evil. There exist crab-like souls which are continually retreating towards the darkness, retrograding in life rather than advancing, employing experience to augment their deformity, growing incessantly worse, and becoming more and more impregnated with an ever-augmenting blackness. This man ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... endeavoured to crush her heads by means of well-directed blows from his tremendous club; but no sooner was one head destroyed than it was immediately replaced by two others. He next seized the monster in his powerful grasp; but at this juncture a giant crab came to the assistance of the Hydra and commenced biting the feet of her assailant. Heracles destroyed this new adversary with his club, and now called upon his nephew to come to his aid. At his command Iolaus set fire to the neighbouring ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... honor that was done her. She hated her exaltation. She quoted inwardly, "They that are low need fear no fall," and trembled for what he might be moved to say next. There was a terrible opportunity of silence, for at first nobody talked. A crab of brobdignagian proportions engrossed the seniors. Bessie and the younger ones had roast lamb without being asked what they would take, and Bessie, all drawbacks notwithstanding, found herself capable of eating her dinner. The stillness was intense for a ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... the footmen a-laughing as they wait at dinner? and do the duchess's women admire your wit? in what esteem are you with the vicar of the parish? can you play with him at backgammon? have the farmers found out that you cannot distinguish rye from barley, or an oak from a crab-tree? You are sensible that I know the full extent of your country skill is in fishing for roaches or gudgeons at ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... old hunks, but it suited his humour to refer to himself constantly as "a poor farming bodie." And he dressed in accordance with his humour. His clean old crab-apple face was always grinning at you from over a white-sleeved moleskin waistcoat, as if he had been no better than a ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... also Yerkes, Robert: 'Habit-Formation in the Green Crab, Carcinus Granulalus,' Biological Bulletin, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... a little while. Then the other boat shifted about; they had not caught a single crab, and there were loud murmurs of discontent. The ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... let you know," said Mrs. Chillingworth, "what I want;" and she darted into the room past the servant. "I'll soon let you know, you great sea crab. I want my husband; and what with your vampyre, and one thing and another, I haven't had him at home an hour for the past three weeks. What am I to do? There is all his patients getting well as fast as they can without him; and, when they find that out, do you think ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Baked Crab-apple Preserves Baked Cranberry or Cherry Preserves Baked Quinces Baked Sickel Pears Canning Fruit, Baked in Oven Canning Fruit, in a Water Bath Canning in the Preserving Kettle Canned Blackberries Blueberries Cherries ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... its height. At the bottom of this rocky basin grow marine plants, some of which tower high beneath the water, and cast a shadow in the sunshine. Small fishes dart to and fro, and hide themselves among the sea-weed; there is also a solitary crab, who appears to lead the life of a hermit, communing with none of the other denizens of the place; and likewise several five-fingers,—for I know no other name than that which children give them. If your imagination be at all accustomed to such freaks, you may look down into the depths ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bolster, full of rage and jealousy, smothered Desdemona. 18. Wanted, a handsome Shetland pony suitable for a child with a long mane and tail. 19. Wolsey left many buildings which he had begun at his death in an unfinished state. 20. My cousin caught a crab and took it home in a pail of water which we had for our tea. 21. I scarcely ever remember to have had ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... bird which the children had captured, beating his wings about violently, and creating a terrible confusion, "a crab or something has caught hold of my legs, and I am being killed—help!—save ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... you stupid little nigger," I cried, angrily. "Get up and mind your oar. You caught a crab. Pull!" ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... old. He was small, thin, a little crooked, with long hands resembling the claws of a crab. His faded hair, scanty and slight, like the down on a young duck, allowed his scalp to be plainly seen. The brown, crimpled skin of his neck showed the big veins which sank under his jaws and reappeared ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... happened, I believe; but I don't remember any of them. My mother wrote, offering me Dora for a companion; but somehow I preferred being without her. One great comfort was good news about Connie, who was getting on famously. But even this moved me so little that I began to think I was turning into a crab, utterly incased in the shell of my own selfishness. The thought made me cry. The fact that I could cry consoled me, for how could I be heartless so long as I could cry? But then came the thought it was for myself, my own hard-heartedness I was crying,—not certainly for joy that Connie was getting ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... "You can put a fresh collar and cuffs in this gray waist of Mother's, Elliott—I'll have it done in a minute—while I go set the crab-apple jelly to drip. And perhaps you can mend this little tear in her skirt. Then I'll press the suit. There isn't anything very ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... 229), and Belemnitella mucronata (Figure 226), shells of the white chalk. The Nautilus Danicus (see Figure 230) is characteristic of this formation; and it also occurs in France in the calcaire pisolitique of Laversin (Department of Oise). The claws and entire skull of a small crab, Brachyurus rugosus (Schlott.), are scattered through the Faxoe stone, reminding us of similar crustaceans inclosed in the rocks of modern coral reefs. Some small portions of this coralline formation consist of ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... would guarantee that the city would abide by the terms of the peace, and not intrigue with a view of regaining its independence: and as Phokion was silent and hesitated how to reply, Kallimedon, surnamed 'the crab' a man of a fierce and anti-democratical temper, exclaimed: "If, Antipater, this man should talk nonsense, will you believe him, and not do what ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... partners cannot agree, their affair will not work smoothly, And torment, not business, will be the outcome. Once on a time, the Swan, the Crab, and the Pike, Did undertake to haul a loaded cart, And all three hitched themselves thereto; They strained their every nerve, but still the cart budged not. And yet, the load seemed very light for them; But towards the clouds the Swan did soar, Backwards the Crab did march, ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... or scallop shells. Use any of the cheese mixtures given for Scotch woodcock, mock crab, &c. With a sharp-pointed knife split the biscuit open and place in buttered tin, with a bit of butter on the top of each, in hot oven till crisp and brown. Remove to hot dish, fill in each biscuit with the mixture made very hot, and pile up more ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... twenty feet, and not often at more than twelve; whereas on the west I have seen it very distinctly, during a tract of dry weather, at a depth of sixty or seventy feet. The handles of the spears used in Gairloch in spearing flat fish and the common edible crab (Cancer Pagurus), are sometimes five-and-twenty feet in length—a length which might in vain be given to spear-handles upon the east coast, seeing that there, at such a depth of water, flat fish or crab was never ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... was cooked, and some plovers' eggs also roasted, along with a large crab which had been taking an airing before Gloy's gleg[1] vision, and was obliged to yield to fate on the instant. The lads were very hungry, and enjoyed their ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... "thing to see, not hear"—that brave, rash, resolute imp clinging like a terrier, or a crab, or a briar, on to the back of that gigantic ruffian, whom, if she had no strength to stop, she ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... was little more than ten miles away, was only a name to them. Many of them had not been as far as Leyland for months. They spent their days catching eels in the marsh canals, or in setting lobster and crab traps outside the breakwater. The agricultural labourers tilled the same patch of ground year after year. They had no recreations except an occasional night at the inn; their existence was a lifelong struggle with Nature for a bare ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... day, towards evening, I observed to my extreme surprise that the ship was under the influence of a very powerful current, which ran to the north-east with such violence that she was carried, now bows on, now stern on, and occasionally drifting sideways like a crab, at a rate which I cannot compute at less than twelve or fifteen knots an hour. For several weeks I was borne away in this manner, until one morning, to my inexpressible joy, I sighted an island upon the starboard quarter. The current would, however, have carried me past it had I not made shift, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Garry. The two men, in their combat, had approached pretty near to the bank, at a place where it descends somewhat precipitately into the stream. It was towards this bank that Hugh Mathison was now retreating, crab fashion, followed by Mr. Kennedy, and both of them so taken up with each other that neither perceived the fact until Hugh's heel struck against a stone just at the moment that Mr. Kennedy raised his clenched fist in a threatening ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... to and fro like that funny little crab we saw lately in Aquaria, who adorns his head and shoulders with bits of sea-weed, or any other stuff within his reach, and paddles about his tank self-satisfied and ridiculous. Women must and will trim, as spiders spin webs, and bees make honeycombs. They even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... somewhat ludicrous crab fashion and then she sat down, swinging around on her swivel chair toward the desk. The stack of reports lay facing her. She caught up the next ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst |
