"Eel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trigger when the gun was whirled from his hands and a man who had stolen up from the back closed with him. The newcorner was slim, and Rogers felt that he might break him between his hands if he could only get a proper grip; but the drunken drover—for it was he—was as sinuous as an eel, and a moment later Joe was on the broad of his back with the 'darbies' on his wrists and a trooper kneeling on his chest, while the drover, transformed into Detective Downy, stood over them, mopping his face with his ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... companion. Our young gentleman, far from repining at this superiority laughed within himself at the ridiculous ambition of the pedantic doctor. He rated him in his own mind as a mere index-hunter, who held the eel of science by the tail, and foresaw an infinite fund of diversion in his solemnity and pride, if properly extracted by means of his fellow-traveller's vanity and assurance. Prompted by these considerations, he resolved to cultivate their acquaintance, and, if possible, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and caught him by the throat and the collar. But only for an instant was he able to hold the boy in that fashion. Matt squirmed and twisted like an eel, and suddenly gave the old auctioneer a push which sent him sprawling upon his back. Before Caleb Gulligan could recover, Matt was out of the door and running like a ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... the Po. At 5 A. M. we passed the boundary of Tuscany and entered the Papal territory, so that our baggage had to be all taken down and searched, and our Passports re-scrutinized—two processes to which I am becoming more accustomed than any live eel ever was to being skinned. The time consumed was but an hour and the pecuniary swindle trifling. But though the hour was early and there were few habitations in sight, there soon gathered around us a swarm of most importunate beggars—brown, withered old women spinning on distaffs ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... become of your famous General Eel?" said the Count d'Erleon to Mr. Campbell. "Eel," said a bystander, "that is a military fish I never heard of;" but another at once enlightened his mind by saying to the count, "General Lord Hill is now Commander-in-Chief of ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... general, and especially in very severe cases, it is better to refrain from white meat also. Spleen, liver, kidney, sweetbread, brains are absolutely prohibited, also sausage and smoked and canned meats, oily fish, especially eel, salmon, pike, and all smoked fish, because they may create a ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... about Peter Mink that made the younger forest people admire him. He was a famous fisherman. He could dive for a trout and catch him too, just as likely as not. And there was nothing more exciting than to see Peter Mink pull an eel ...
— The Tale of Peter Mink - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... her kiss the child slipped away like an eel, and disappeared behind a muck-heap which was piled at the top of a mound between the path and the house; for, like many Breton farmers who have a system of agriculture that is all their own, Galope-Chopine put his manure in an elevated spot, so that by the time it was wanted ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... (oval gold pieces, worth five or six dollars), ichi-bu and ni-bu (square silver pieces, worth a quarter and a half dollar respectively) he jingled the coins at a great rate, and then touching the eel-man's bill with his fan, bowed, low ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... to tell him how the next day he and the young monks had drawn the fish-ponds and secreted much pike, carp, tench, and eel for their own use: and how, in the dead of night, he had been taken shoeless by crooked ways into the chapel, a ghost-like place, being dark, and then down some steps into a crypt below the chapel floor, where suddenly ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... of Newlands runs north and south. On its east banks rise the Cat Bell fells and the Eel Crags; on the west rise Hindscarth and Robinson, backed by Whiteless Pike and Grasmoor. A river flows down the bed of the valley, springing in the south among the heights of Dale Head, and emptying into Bassenthwaite on the north. A village known as Little Town stands about midway in the vale, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... sight of it. I one day took it in my hand, and opened its mouth with a penknife, to show a gentleman how different it was from that of the adder, which I had dead by me: its teeth being no more formidable or terrific than the teeth of a trout or eel; while the mouth of the adder had two fangs, like the claws of a cat, attached to the roof of the mouth, no way connected with its jaw-teeth. While examining the snake in this manner, it began to smell most horridly, and filled the room with an abominable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... he sang out; "I have got a fellow, but he is as slippery as an eel, and very hard to hold. Lend a ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... us. I am settling the brief." Alas, for her. The infatuate even stayed to detail points of the cause. Much, it appeared, depended upon the Chancellor of the diocese: a very shaky witness. He had a passion for qualification, and might tie himself into as many knots as an eel on a night-line. Oh, might he indeed? And this, this was in the scales against her pride and joy! She was left—alone on Naxos now—while James went ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Chaldaean marshes, and in almost all the fresh-water lakes and rivers. [PLATE. VIII., Fig.] The Tigris and Euphrates yield chiefly barbel and carp; but the former stream has also eels, trout, chub, shad-fish, siluruses, and many kinds which have no English names. The Koweik contains the Aleppo eel (Ophidium masbacambahis), a very rare variety; and in other streams of Northern Syria are found lampreys, bream, dace, and the black-fish (Macroptero-notus niger), besides carp, trout, chub, and barbel. Chub, bream, and the silurus are taken in the Sea ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... are to be found in divers sorts of Vinegar, I have little to add besides their Picture, which you may find drawn in the third Figure of the 25. Scheme: That is, they were shaped much like an Eel, save only that their nose A, (which was a little more opacous then the rest of their body) was a little sharper, and longer, in proportion to their body, and the wrigling motion of their body seem'd to be onely upwards and downwards, whereas that of Eels is onely side wayes: They seem'd ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the verandah and inducing him to tell me what he had come for. But the man had other plans maturing, and when we were just about six or seven feet away from the window he gave a little twist and a wriggle and slipped out of my hands as if he had been an eel. Then, before I had quite recovered sufficiently to make a grab at the empty air, he hurled himself against the window. It was one of those foolhardy things that succeed just because of the sheer, daring recklessness of the man who carries them through. He swept through the glass with ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... along the California coast to the mouth of Klamath River;[15] the Hup[^a] villages or "clans" formerly on Lower Trinity River, California;[16] the Kenesti or Wailakki (2), located as follows: "They live along the western slope of the Shasta Mountains, from North Eel River, above Round Valley, to Hay Fork; along Eel and Mad Rivers, extending down the latter about to Low Gap; also on Dobbins and Larrabie Creeks;"[17] and Saiaz, who "formerly occupied the tongue of land jutting down between Eel River and Van ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... constantly the thought of death as the revealer was present to his mind, may be gathered from an incident related by Trelawny. They were bathing in the Arno, when Shelley, who could not swim, plunged into deep water, and "lay stretched out at the bottom like a conger eel, not making the least effort or struggle to save himself." Trelawny fished him out, and when he had taken breath he said: "I always find the bottom of the well, and they say Truth lies there. In another minute I should have found it, and you would have found an empty shell. Death is the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... eyes shine in appreciation of the suggestion. Yet the cusk is hardly a beauty. In fact, the first man who suggested eating him must have been hungry or else adventurous beyond the common run of men. If you will take a bilious looking eel and compress him lengthwise till the becomes a stubby bunch, put on him a pair of yellow goggle eyes that stare madly as if at ghosts, and seem, withal to be sadly afflicted with strabismus, you will have the beginnings ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... show themselves under simpler, though similar, contrivances. A flounder will jump and jerk about uneasily if we lay it upon a piece of tinfoil and place over it a thin plate of zinc, and then connect the two with a bent metal rod; which will happen to an eel also, if we expose it to a ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... that the willow-trees, so abundant in the region, gave the name (Celtic, Helyg) has met with some support. A third suggestion, that the word comes from the Greek for a "marsh," hardly deserves mention. The Saxon word for "eel" was apparently pronounced exactly as the modern word. Bede gives this etymology: "A copia anguillarum, quae in iisdem paludibus capiuntur, nomen accepit." William of Malmesbury, in his "Gesta Pontificum," 1125, takes the same view. The "Liber Eliensis," of about the same date, also adopts ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... so's the rest too. 'Twarn't through no blabbin', take my word for that: 'twas a reg'lar right-down set scheme from beginnin' to end, and that's why I should ha' liked to ha' give 'em a payin'-out that they wouldn't ha' forgot in a hurry. I'd ha' scored their reckonin' for 'em, I can tell *'eel" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... don't you, ducky?" said Huish. "Stand away from that binnacle. Surely your w'eel, my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... say there are two kinds of fish there, the sea-eel and the smelt, and before you start to eat them, the saliva flows ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... the coasts between Caen and Havre, of the fish called lancon at Granville and St. Malo, a kind of malacopterygious fish living on sandy shores and hiding in the sand at low tide.— Littre. A species of sand eel. This stream is now known as the Annapolis River. Lescarbot calls it Riviere ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... next, they'll shape me in your arms, "A toad, but and an eel; "But had me fast, nor let me gang, "As you do ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... of eel which has a habit of sticking to stones by its mouth," said Medenham. Then he added, after a pause: "Henry the First was sixty-seven years of age when he died, so the dish of lampreys ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... Champlain ordered a distribution of pease to be made to each person indiscriminately. The Recollets refused any assistance, and they passed the whole winter subsisting on corn and vegetables of their own cultivation. Champlain succeeded in building a mill for grinding pease. The eel fisheries were productive, and the Indians bought from the French six eels for a beaver skin. In the midst of these perplexities Champlain realized that unless assistance was forthcoming in the spring, it would be advisable for him to accept an honourable ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... varieties of game to be found in Missouri forests. As showing the chief varieties of fish, were exhibited rainbow trout, lake trout, brook trout, large-mouthed black bass, crappie, channel cat, buffalo, sunfish, perch, eel, ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... live parasitic lives. The nearest approach to a true parasite among the vertebrates is the lamprey-eel (Fig. 1) which attaches itself to the body of a fish and sucks the blood or eats the flesh. Among the Crustaceans, the group that includes the lobsters and crabs, we find many examples of parasites, the most extraordinary ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... as he often repeats, Russia was not ready for big adventures—was, in fact, still suffering from lassitude after the war of 1878, 'like an electric eel which, having in one great shock given off all its electricity, burrows in the mud to refill its battery, desiring nothing less than to come again too soon ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... bundles of light rushes. These the boy drew out one by one. Attached to each was a piece of cord which, being pulled upon, brought to the surface a large cage, constructed somewhat on the plan of a modern eel or lobster pot. They were baited by pieces of dead fish, and from them the boy extracted half a score of eels and as ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... BURBOT, or EEL-POUT (Lota vulgaris), a fish of the family Gadidae, which differs from the ling in the dorsal and anal fins reaching the caudal, and in the small size of all the teeth. It exceeds a length of 3 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... slant-eyed, yellow-skinned rice-eater," he announced emphatically. "They're against us, race an' religion. They want California, or rather, the Pacific coast, an' they think they're goin' to git it. They're no more akin to us than a snake is a cousin to an eel. They're not of our breed, an' you can't mix the two. I'll have no deal with Tamada, beyond gettin' dope out of him. If he helped us it 'ud be only to further his own ends. Not that he can ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... Anders got out of his chair. He darted like an arrow through all the halls, down all the stairs, and across the yard. He twisted himself like an eel between the outstretched arms of the courtiers, and over the soldiers' muskets he jumped like a little rabbit. He ran so fast that the Princess's necklace fell off his neck, and all the cakes jumped out of his pockets. But ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... after breaking his tackle, and found it in the pike, a part of the gimp hanging out of his mouth. He also caught another, in high condition, with a piece of strong twisted wire projecting from its side. On opening it a double eel-hook was found at the end of the wire, much corroded. This may account for so few pike being found dead after they have broken away with a gorge-hook in them. An account will be found, in 'Salmonia,' of a pike taking a bait, with a set of hooks in his mouth, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... single curious fact, which, having the sanction of his inflexible veracity, may be received as a striking instance of human insensibility and inconsideration. As he was passing by a fishmonger who was skinning an eel alive, he heard him 'curse it, because it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Southern Africa as well as of Asia, and is much dreaded by all the Dutch Boers. The creature is reported to have been seen in crossing the interior deserts, but this is believed to be a fiction invented in the Caravans. In Congo there is a small species a few sizes larger than the Conger eel, while in the section of country visited by CUMMING the Boa is the biggest ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... out how much fun it was, he kept climbing up and splashing into the water again; oh, boy, it was as good as a circus to see him. Then he'd go swimming to the skiff and climb in just like a little eel, and sit ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... A slimy eel. Slips and wriggles out of things. You'll never hold him. You're not his first ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... the excellent common-sense tactics of the lesser sand-eel, which as you doubtless know buries itself tail upwards in the mud on hearing the baying of the eel-hounds and remains in that position till the danger is past, I shall be able to postpone an interview. Should you be questioned as to my whereabouts, inflate your chest and ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... these caverns, of which the most celebrated is the 'Proteus,' a creature which has greatly perplexed naturalists. At first sight it looks like a lizard, but its movements are those of a fish. The head, lower part of the body, and tail resemble an eel, but it has no fins, and its breathing organs are quite unlike those of fishes. Round its neck is a ruffle, which seems to help it to breathe, although it has perfect lungs and can breathe, as well as move, equally comfortably on land and in water. The front feet are like hands, and each has ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the name of Bonnebault was mentioned, Marie, who was in love with the old woman's grandson, sprang into the vineyard with a nod to her father and mother. She slipped like an eel through a break in the hedge, and was off on the way to Conches with the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... considerably. It was him or me. He sprang at me as soon as I got inside, and if I hadn't got my hand over his mouth he would have given the alarm. That handicapped me, too—having to hold him, I mean—and he wriggled like an eel. Well, come on. Now look here, Hal; you ain't going to walk behind me down this passage with your sword drawn. You'd have me spitted like a lark if we were attacked either in front or behind. I'll go first with my sword, you'll come after with the lantern—shut, ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... scales, and barbed—called by the natives "mosala"—attains an enormous size and fatness. They are caught so large that when a man carries one over his shoulder the tail reaches the ground. It is a vegetable feeder, and in many of its habits resembles the eel. Like most lophoid fishes, it has the power of retaining a large quantity of water in a part of its great head, so that it can leave the river, and even be buried in the mud of dried-up pools, without being destroyed. Another fish closely resembling this, and named ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... nurse was making an attempt to capture and silence the noisy little fellow. She might as well have tried to pick up a ball of quicksilver. Tag slipped through her fingers like an eel, scurrying from one end of the cot to the other, and barking excitedly all ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... Pulcinella hesitated a bit. Then, frightened by a look from their master, they left the kitchen to obey him. A few minutes later they returned, carrying poor Pinocchio, who was wriggling and squirming like an eel ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... established a breakfast-club, in which, thanks to Drysdale's genius, real scientific gastronomy was cultivated. Every morning the boy from the Weirs arrived with freshly caught gudgeon, and now and then an eel or trout, which the scouts on the staircase had learnt to fry delicately in oil. Fresh watercresses came in the same basket, and the college kitchen furnished a spitchedcocked chicken, or grilled turkey's leg. In the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... thought we had our hands on the gang, instead of which we find a party of common crooks that we're sick of the sight of. I tell you, sir, it's annoying when you think you've hooked a salmon, to bring up a blooming eel." ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... due the foundation of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Bala Lake, the largest in Wales (4 m. long by some 3/4 m. wide), is subject to sudden and dangerous floods, deep and clear, and full of pike, perch, trout, eel and gwyniad. The gwyniad (Caregonus) is peculiar to certain waters, as those of Bala Lake, and is fully described by Thomas ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Athens who are like the eel-catchers, that choose to have the waters troubled," observed the peasant. "When the lake is still, they lose their labour; but when the mud is well stirred, they take eels in plenty. My son says he gets twelve oboli for a conger-eel, in the Athenian markets; and that ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... a bog, rose shoals of fish, of the genus monoptera, which have no other fins but their tail. I recognized the Javanese, a real serpent two and a half feet long, of a livid colour underneath, and which might easily be mistaken for a conger eel if it were not for the golden stripes on its side. In the genus stromateus, whose bodies are very flat and oval, I saw some of the most brilliant colours, carrying their dorsal fin like a scythe; an excellent eating fish, which, dried and pickled, is known by the name of Karawade; then some ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... have, then," answered Mr. Tibbles, in an injured tone; "but if he have, you needn't glare at me like that, for it ain't no fault of mine. If you ever follered a lame eel—and a lame eel as makes no more of its lameness than if lameness was a advantage—you'd know what it is to foller that chap in ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... not have much luck at first. He caught one muskallonge, after a period of patient waiting which he feels he also must call long, and once, when he thought he was hauling in a fine bass, he turned very red when the boatmen laughed at seeing him "cotch an eel." But after a while he got a royal bite. He hauled in manfully, and although, owing to the intricacies of the channel, he could not see what he had caught, he knew it was a fine fellow from its weight. At last, after tremendous tugging, he got ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... around now. A grouper saw them coming and ducked into his hole in the coral. A fairly large moray eel, only his head visible, watched their progress. Tiny demoiselles fluttered around them, and a pair of red squirrelfish watched from the shelter ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... apparently a number of causes of this trouble, all more or less obscure and hard to overcome. It is generally thought that it is due to poor nutrition, whatever the reason for poor nutrition might be. The presence of a nematode or eel worm on the roots has found to be a cause of mottle leaf in many cases. Poor drainage, too sandy soil and a number of other things frequently cause it. Whatever the cause, no one good method ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... of the first kick at the ball while the mercury tube inside was still quiet. Once the mercury was agitated, the ball would be as easy to kick as a well-greased eel. ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... discolored but not dirty nor tainted, which are set out for sale on the butcher's block. Tripe and cowheel are regarded as dainties, and there is the whole range of mysterious English preparations of questionable meat, from sausage and polonies to saveloys and cheap pies. Soup can be had, pea or eel, at two or three pence a pint, and beer, an essential to most of them, is "threepence a pot [quart] in your own jugs." A savory dinner or supper is, therefore, an easy matter, and the English worker fares better in this respect ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... in truth I'm confounded And bothered, my dear, 'twixt that troublesome boy's (BOB'S) cookery language, and Madame LE ROI'S: What with fillets of roses, and fillets of veal, Things garni with lace, and things garni with eel, One's hair and one's cutlets both en papillote, And a thousand more things I shall ne'er have by rote, I can scarce tell the difference, at least as to phrase, Between beef a la Psyche and curls a la braise.— But in short, dear, I'm trickt out quite a la Francaise, With my bonnet—so ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... was in the back room yonder, which she got in somehow. The man followed her in, sneaking and sneaking like an eel or a cop, and ...
— The Gray Madam - 1899 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... Goliath. Anyone at all familiar with the music of Couperin and Rameau will recall the variety of fantastic titles assigned to their charming pieces for the clavecin—almost always drawn from the field of nature: birds, bees, butterflies, hens, windmills, even an eel! It is but fair to state that we also find attempts at character drawing, even in those early days, as is indicated by such titles as La Prude, La Diligente, La Seduisante.[165] Haydn's portrayal ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... Blind Bartemy had arrived in good time for the eel pie. They sat one on each side of Master Pothier, full as ticks and merry as grigs; a jolly chorus was in progress as ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... present situation was admirably suited. The sun shone occasionally into Matilda's face as they drove on, its rays picking out all her features to a great nicety. Her eyes would have been called brown, but they were really eel-colour, like many other nice brown eyes; they were well-shaped and rather bright, though they had more of a broad shine than a sparkle. She had a firm, sufficient nose, which seemed to say of itself that it was good as noses go. She had rather a picturesque way of wrapping her upper in her lower ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... absence. It had been shown that Wood was met, at one o'clock of the night in question, crossing the fields toward his home, from the direction of the bank, with a large wicker basket slung over his shoulders, returning, as he had said, from eel-spearing in Harlow's Creek; and there was ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... his fantastic tricks with the Sympathetic powder, and teaching Governor Winthrop, the second, how to cure fever and ague, which some may like to know. "Pare the patient's nails; put the parings in a little bag, and hang the bag round the neck of a live eel, and put him in a tub of water. The eel will die, and the patient ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... are out of Eel River. This valley gathers all the clouds, and they often get rain here when the sun is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... answered from the door: "Was holding it," he corrected. "He's squirming like an eel now and making grimaces that frightened me. Better hurry to him, Josephine!" He went directly to his wife, and his voice was filled with an infinite tenderness as he slipped an arm about her and caressed ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... my hands like an eel every time I thought I had him. His specialty is piety. That makes me tired. I'm a church member myself, but I don't trade on ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... phratries call for special notice. The kins of the former are arranged in three groups: wolf, turtle, and turkey; and the first phratry includes quadrupeds, the second turtles of various kinds and the yellow eel, and the third birds. We find a parallel to these phratries in the groups of the Kutchin, but in the latter case our lack of knowledge of the tribe precludes us from saying whether totem kins exist among them, and, if so, how far the grouping is systematic; the Kutchin groups, according to one authority, ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... we closed with bare hands; our muscles cracking to the strain, his voice uttering one croaking cry for help as I bore in on his windpipe. He was a snake, a cat, slipping out of my grip as by some magic, turning and twisting like an eel, yet unable to wholly escape, or overcome, my strength and skill. At last I had him prone against the rail, the weight of us both so hard upon it, the stout wood cracked, and we both went over, grappling together until we ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... simple marksmen of Bunker Hill to the discipline of the armies of Europe and tested their efficiency in the din of battle. He has leisure now, and scarcely knows how to find employment for his active mind. He is telling his hostess, in broken German-English, of the whale (it proved to be an eel) he had caught in the river. Hear his hostess laugh! And that is the voice of Lafayette, relating perhaps his adventures in escaping from France, or his mishap in attempting to attend Mrs. Knox's last party. Wayne, of Stony Point; Gates, of ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... situated on an eminence in the midst of the flat district forming the centre of the county of Cambridge, and was originally a settlement termed by the Saxons Eleg or Elge, i.e. "an eel," from the number of eels found in the fenny district around. St. Etheldreda, daughter of a king of the East Angles, founded an abbey here, where she died in 679, being afterwards canonised as a saint. The monastery was destroyed by the Danes in 870, and did not regain importance till ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... the eel was safely landed on the wharf, and proved to be indeed a monster. It was a wonder that the children had ever been able to pull him in. Harvey tried to unhook him, but failed; for just as the boy thought he had him, the eel would ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... have already observed; it was there long before grandmother's grandmother was born; and yet it is but a child in comparison with the Au-mann, who is quite an old quiet personage, an oddity, with his hose of eel-skin, and his scaly Jacket with the yellow lilies for buttons, and a wreath of reed in his hair and seaweed in his beard; but he looks ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... you have, my lord; but while I was managing this young robustious fellow, that old spark, who was nothing but skin and bone, and by consequence very nimble, slipt through my fingers like an eel, for there was no hold-fast of him, and ran away to buy ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... one store where were kept odd specimens of sea-life brought in by the Delaware Bay fishermen. He saw once there a sea-horse—just a queer little sea-animal that looked somewhat like a horse—and another time he saw an electric eel which Benjamin Franklin's discovery had explained. One day he saw a squid and a lobster put in the tank, and in connection with them was witness to a tragedy which stayed with him all his life and cleared things up considerably intellectually. The lobster, it appeared from the talk of the idle bystanders, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... eyebrows, and trusting the remainder to the transformation which might be produced by the dress, or rather undress, of a Neapolitan waterman. The greatest obstacle to this arrangement had been a certain queue, which Ithuel habitually wore in a cured eel-skin that he had brought with him from America, eight years before, and both of which, "queue and eel-skin," he cherished as relics of better days. Once a week this queue was unbound and combed, but all the remainder of the time it ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... reasons for it are older than that event, as suggested by Egypt's experience and by Rome's regret for having persecuted an unknown quantity called a Christian, under the mistaken impression that she was merely persecuting a Jew. Merely a Jew—a skinned eel who was used to it, presumably. I am persuaded that in Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully with the average Jew in business—in either straight ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... philosopher once "compared a man about to marry to one who was about to put his hand into a sack in which were ninety-nine serpents and one eel; the moral of which is that there are ninety-nine chances to one against a fortunate selection." If this is true of a man about to marry, it is probably equally true that a woman under the same circumstances has nine hundred and ninety-nine chances against, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... Was a man of renown, And a dashing blue coat he wore; And a bright, brass star. And a visible scar On his brow—that he said he had got in the war As he led the van: (He never ran!) In short, he was the "General's" right-hand man, And had written his name on the pages of fame. He was smooth as an eel, And rode so genteel That in less than a week every old maid and dame Was constantly lisping ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... near horse with one hand, she sprang upon the wagon-tongue, and the next moment sat upon the board at his side. Then, rummaging in a deep pocket, she produced, one after the other, a short black pipe, an eel-skin tobacco-pouch, flint, tinder, and a clumsy knife. With a dexterity which could only have come from long habit, she prepared and kindled the weed, and was presently puffing forth rank streams, with an air ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... she was of no very elevated birth and station,—nothing more; and she herself, with her quiet, say-nothing manner, slips through all my careless questionings like an eel. She is still a beautiful creature, more regularly handsome than even Evelyn; and old Templeton had a very sweet tooth at the back of his head, though he never opened his mouth wide enough ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book V • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... oppress him; your answer is that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject him to the test of oaths? The oaths keep him out of Parliament; why, then, he respects them. Turn which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you are; but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson does when he is compelled by the gripe of reason to admit anything in ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... something that has disappeared in the distance, something that has vanished out of sight; yet they can see it still, and their eyes are dazzled with its splendours. It makes little Jean clean forget his eel-skin whiplash and the peg-top he has always been so fond of keeping for ever spinning with it in the dusty roads. Pierre and Jacques stand stolidly, their ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... the wean's in a creel! Waumblin' aff a body's knee like a vera eel, Ruggin' at the cat's lug, and ravellin' a' her thrums,— Hey, Willie Winkie!—See, ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... small live eel down his throat; as long as the eel remained in his stomach, the horse would appear brisk and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... a horse; to put ginger up a horse's fundament, and formerly, as it is said, a live eel, to make him lively and carry his tail well; it is said, a forfeit is incurred by any horse-dealer's servant, who shall shew a horse without first feaguing him. Feague is used, figuratively, for encouraging ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... of a yard long and for sweetness and fatness a reasonable food fish; he is only full of small bones, like our barbels in England. There is the garfish, some of which are a yard long, small and round like an eel and as big as a mare's leg, having a long ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... new method of fishing. Just as we use French dogs to chase hares across the plain, so do these fishermen catch fish by means of a fish trained for that purpose. This fish in no wise resembles any that we know. Its body is similar to that of a large eel, and upon its head it has a large pouch made of a very tough skin. They tie the fish to the side of the boat, with just the amount of cord necessary to hold it under the water; for it cannot stand contact with the air. As soon as a large fish or turtle is ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... the historical interest just mentioned, as because, after a long pull up the river on a summer afternoon, it was possible to obtain at the little inn upon the river bank what was euphemistically called "eel tea", a meal which, as a matter of fact, consisted of stewed eels washed down ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... between the prisoner below and the breach of the peace above, bellowing in vain, in the Queen's name, to us, and to the grinning tailors on the landing. At last, as Downes's life seemed in danger, he wavered; the Jew-boy seized the moment, jumped up, upsetting the constable, dashed like an eel between Crossthwaite and Mackaye, gave me a back-handed blow in passing, which I felt for a week after, and vanished through the street-door, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... rather than the torpor of this listless stream,—as it was proved by the blood with which they stained their river of Peace. It is said there are plenty of fish in it; but my most important captures hitherto have been a mud-turtle and an enormous eel. The former made his escape to his native element,—the latter we ate; and truly he had the taste of the whole river in his flesh, with a very prominent flavor of mud. On the whole, Concord River is no great favorite of mine; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the Cornishman landed heavily from time to time, but his opponent's elbow or forearm often broke the force. The lighter man was slippery as an eel, as hard to hit as a Corbett. Meanwhile, he was cutting his foe to ribbons, slashing at him with swift drives that carried the full force of one hundred seventy-five pounds, sending home damaging blows ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... garments poor For 'tis the mind that makes the body rich; And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, So honour peereth in the meanest habit. What, is the jay more precious than the lark Because his feathers are more beautiful? Or is the adder better than the eel Because his painted skin contents the eye? O no, good Kate; neither art thou the worse For this poor furniture and mean array. If thou account'st it shame, lay it on me; And therefore frolic; we will hence forthwith, To feast and sport us at thy father's house. Go call ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... quantity it was necessary that they should be fished up from a depth of some fathoms. The mode in which they were captured was the following. A long rope was let down into the sea, with baskets of reeds or rushes attached to it at intervals, constructed like our lobster-traps or eel-baskets, with an opening that yielded easily to pressure from the outside, but resisted pressure from the inside, and made escape, when once the trap was entered, impossible. The baskets were baited with mussels or frogs, both of which had great attractions ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... along. The smell of it emanated from the white, pale-yellow, and pink fungi that flourished on the soaked and ancient logs along the way. He heard the voice of it in the soft murmuring of the South Fork of the Eel, which went twinkling down Bear Valley through firs and redwoods straight as telegraph poles; in the caress of the soft south wind soughing in the tree-tops. Chipmunks and gray squirrels darted across ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... that this is a remarkably fine slice of salmon, there is much to be said about fish: but not in the way of misnomers. Their names are single and simple. Perch, sole, cod, eel, carp, char, skate, tench, trout, brill, bream, pike, and many others, plain monosyllables: salmon, dory, turbot, gudgeon, lobster, whitebait, grayling, haddock, mullet, herring, oyster, sturgeon, flounder, turtle, plain dissyllables: only two trisyllables worth naming, anchovy and ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... cook. She make koosh-koosh and cyayah—that last plain clabber. Mama cook lots of gaspergou and carp and the poisson ami fish, with the long snout—what they call gar now. I think it eel fish they strip the skin off and wrap round the hair ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... of wind, and Dan shook loose the linen, and a straight shining streak with specks of foam shot after us. The mast bent like eel-grass, and our keel was half out of the water. Faith belied her name, and clung to the sides with her ten finger-nails; but as for me, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... fish or bug. One year I started with a lone newt and before the summer was over I had thirteen sunfish, pickerel, bass, minnows, catfish, carp, trout, more newts, pollywogs or tadpoles, five kinds of frogs, an eel and all sorts of bugs, waterbeetles and insects. I soon found that one kind of insect would kill another and that sometimes my specimens would grow wings over night and fly away. But to learn these things, even at our own disappointment ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller |
